Grimm - Season 4

[JD]

I enjoyed last week's episode. I wonder if Christmas episode like this will be an annual thing now.
I am disapointed to see Truble go, I liked her a lot. But like you guys said, she's still on good terms with Nick & co. and is perfectly healthy, so I doubt it'll be long before we see her and Josh again.
I wonder if all of the talk about Nick's mom and the baby means they'll be popping back up soon?

 

[Taylirious]

I feel bad for Wu. They want to tell him now. Juliette is Hexenbiest?

 

[JD]

Yeah, I really hope they do actually tell him this time. I can understand the producers wanting to keep at least one person in the dark, but at this point Wu has seen so much they have to have him find out or it's just going to get ridiculous.
Juliet did appear to be a Hexenbiest at the end there. I wonder if she really is one, or if it's just some kind of temporary side effect of breaking Adalind's spell?

 

[Christopher]

^They did try to tell Wu, but he freaked out and drove off. At this point, I think telling him the truth is the only thing that's going to keep him sane. The reason Nick and Hank were going to tell him is because they realized that too.

So either they'll bring Wu into the loop and he'll be one more valuable ally (and really, they were stupid not to do that a year or more ago), or he'll go somewhere dark or maybe fall under the wrong influence and become a villain. I hope it's the former.

 

[Vendikarr]

^They did try to tell Wu, but he freaked out and drove off. At this point, I think telling him the truth is the only thing that's going to keep him sane. The reason Nick and Hank were going to tell him is because they realized that too.

So either they'll bring Wu into the loop and he'll be one more valuable ally (and really, they were stupid not to do that a year or more ago), or he'll go somewhere dark or maybe fall under the wrong influence and become a villain. I hope it's the former.

A third option is a lack of understanding can cause his death, which could bring plenty of angst for everyone.

 

[DWF]

Wu's reaction is a fairly normal one, it's strange that nobody thinks it's odd that both Hank and Juliette accepted the truth even quicker than Nick did. Wu's reaction is also a good reason why the Wesson society is a secret, I imagine more people would react like Wu rather than Hank and Juliette.

 

[Sto-Vo-Kory]

Maybe Wu's that guy at work who everyone "accidentally" forgets to invite to the bar afterwards, when everyone else is meeting up for drinks, because working with him is faintly tolerable but socializing with him would be agonizing torture?

Nick and Hank spend a lot of time hanging out in the trailer, looking through books and bullshitting around. They invite Monroe to the trailer, but only rarely (I assume he smells like a gamey dog) and Juliet just stops in to sate her curiosity and see what her boyfriend's man-cave is like (meh), then goes home to fry more bacon.

If Wu were in the loop on all of this craziness, Nick and Hank would be obligated to invite him into their trailer of mysteries and they would never find an escape from his constant presence. Wu is fine for delivering exposition at crime scenes and eating couch cushions, but I don't blame them a bit for not wanting to hang out with the guy.

His bored line delivery. His face that doesn't know if it's smirking or frowning. And now, his unprofessional and sarcastic responses to Nick and Hank, that file folder on Trubel apparently glued to his hand and shown to any passerby...

Screw Wu.

 

[Greg Cox]

I fear they're going to show that Wu can't handle the truth, in order to demonstrate that, yep, Nick and Hank were right all along when it came to keeping him in the dark.

'Cause otherwise they look like jerks . . ..

 

[Guy Gardener]

Wu is going to kill every one, or die trying.

 

[Dream]

NEW EPISODE TONIGHT!

I marathoned the first three seasons of Grimm over Christmas holiday, and all of the first half of season 4 over the last few weeks. Great show!

My favorite season might still be the first season, when it was just the Nick and Monroe buddy cop series and the silly Royals plot hasn't taken over the show yet.

I love all the main characters except for Juliette and Adalind, not sure why Juliette is still on this show. Her whole amnesia plot was a chore to sit through in season 2.

Also I find Adalind much better as a reoccurring antagonist that appears only in a few big episodes in a season, her European adventures and baby plots have been really dragged out. I feel like the producers love Claire Coffee too much, and gave her the inane plots just to keep her in the series. A mistake in my opinion, the actress should have just been kept as a reoccurring character.

I didn't think the show would last during the first year. It seems like it is really hard for fantasy or Sci Fi shows to last these days. I only jumped aboard after getting the first three seasons over the holidays. It is a shame the show is not more popular. But at least it has survived so long because keeps getting good ratings for NBC on Friday, while amusingly all the more popular "brand" name shows like Dracula, Hannibal, and Constantine have failed in that department.

 

[Christopher]

It seems like it is really hard for fantasy or Sci Fi shows to last these days.

I'm sorry, I had to laugh at that. There has never been a time when it was easy for fantasy or SF shows to last. Prior to ST:TNG, hardly any SF shows on American TV ever made it longer than five seasons -- the only ones I can think of that ran longer were Adventures of Superman and Bewitched. And most were canned after one season, two if they were lucky. The original Star Trek was extremely lucky to get three seasons with its ratings.

And while there were a number of '80s and '90s genre shows that ran for seven years or more, they were still massively outnumbered by the shows that made it a season or less. We just have more awareness of the long-lived ones because, well, they were long-lived. Everyone remembers The X-Files, but what about Strange Luck or MANTIS or Roar or FreakyLinks or The Visitor? Most shows of any type are short-lived, and it has always been thus.

I've been watching SFTV for four decades now, and I would say it's far easier for genre shows to last today than it was in the past, because genre TV is now mainstream rather than niche, and because modern techniques make FX-heavy programming more affordable.

 

[Sto-Vo-Kory]

NEW EPISODE TONIGHT!

I marathoned the first three seasons of Grimm over Christmas holiday, and all of the first half of season 4 over the last few weeks. Great show!

My favorite season might still be the first season, when it was just the Nick and Monroe buddy cop series and the silly Royals plot hasn't taken over the show yet.

I love all the main characters except for Juliette and Adalind, not sure why Juliette is still on this show. Her whole amnesia plot was a chore to sit through in season 2.

Also I find Adalind much better as a reoccurring antagonist that appears only in a few big episodes in a season, her European adventures and baby plots have been really dragged out. I feel like the producers love Claire Coffee too much, and gave her the inane plots just to keep her in the series. A mistake in my opinion, the actress should have just been kept as a reoccurring character.

I didn't think the show would last during the first year. It seems like it is really hard for fantasy or Sci Fi shows to last these days. I only jumped aboard after getting the first three seasons over the holidays. It is a shame the show is not more popular. But at least it has survived so long because keeps getting good ratings for NBC on Friday, while amusingly all the more popular "brand" name shows like Dracula, Hannibal, and Constantine have failed in that department.

Agree with much of what you wrote here.

Juliette was given a pretty lousy arc in the second season and her character took quite a while to recover from it.

I remember a big chunk of that 2nd season had Nick crashing on their couch because Juliette didn't want to share a bedroom with a stranger. He would complain about his back and his crummy sleep, but he wanted Juliette to have the bedroom.

Flash forward to Trubel's introduction on the show: Nick and Juliette invite Trubel to live with them and stay in their guest bedroom! I thought, if that house had a guest bedroom this entire time, then why did Nick suffer through all of those nights on the couch when he could have just slept in the guest bedroom?

A stupid nit-pick, I know, but it's always bothered me since I first laid eyes on that extra bedroom.

 

[Greg Cox]

Fyi: Star Trek author Andy Mangels is appearing as one of the bad guys in tonight's episode. Watch for the masked Wesen with the bushy beard . . ..

 

[Dream]

Juliette was given a pretty lousy arc in the second season and her character took quite a while to recover from it.

I feel like the writers drag out their season arcs too much. The series would be much better if Juliette had recovered from her amnesia mid season 2, Adalind got back her powers in the season 2 finale, and had gone back to Portland mid season 3 and actually STAYED there. It bugs me so much that she is back with the Royals already, completely away from the lead character again.

I was bored to tears at some points in season two. Grimm was doing the cliche love triangle and amnesia plots typically found in bad soap operas, but it got better in season 3 thankfully! I find it amusing that the Monroe/Rosalee relationship is so much better done than the lead Nick/Juliette relationship.

I remember a big chunk of that 2nd season had Nick crashing on their couch because Juliette didn't want to share a bedroom with a stranger. He would complain about his back and his crummy sleep, but he wanted Juliette to have the bedroom.

Flash forward to Trubel's introduction on the show: Nick and Juliette invite Trubel to live with them and stay in their guest bedroom! I thought, if that house had a guest bedroom this entire time, then why did Nick suffer through all of those nights on the couch when he could have just slept in the guest bedroom?

I'm guessing the writers still hadn't decided that there was a guest bedroom in the house back then. I'm not sure why they just didn't have Trubel sleep in the living room in S3. That wouldn't have changed the plot at all!

 

[Thestral]

Juliette has become a wonderful character and I'd be sad if she were gone. Not Monroe and Rosalee levels... but then who is?

 

[Christopher]

Heck, I'd rather they dumped Nick than Juliette. He'd be my least favorite character if it weren't for Adalind.

 

[Dream]

Wow! What an awesome episode! It has been a while since the last two parter.

I really liked the plot this weekend with Monroe being held as a prisoner. Loved that he fought back and tried to escape. I'm interested in finding out more about these Wesen KKK guys. How long have the Wesenrein been around and I hope they don't go away when Monroe gets rescued. I wish we learned more about the other guy being held prisoner, and hope we eventually see the man's wife.

All the cop stuff was business as usual, but it was nice to finally see Wu in on it.

I'm already anxious about how long they are going to have Juliette keep her transformation a secret. I hope she tells them what happened to her in a few episodes instead at the very end the season. I have a hard time imagining that she could keep it a secret from Nick for long. I really doubt she has the self control that Renard has at hiding his Wesen half. For a moment I believed Juliette had actually killed Rosalee, what a horrifying scene! I just hope they keep Juliette a Hexenbiest, and take her character in this new direction. No magic instant cures!

Overall, this was a great first episode to watch live!

 

[Enterprise is Great]

Wu still looks like he's about to lose it. I noticed that while beating up that Wesen in the police station that he went pale for a few seconds. It's been quite awhile since any of the zombie Nick stuff was even referenced.

 

[Christopher]

I'm getting tired of the "include a tiny bit of every ongoing subplot in the same episode" format. It's too cluttered, and doesn't give any of the individual plotlines the attention it deserves. Monroe getting kidnapped deserves to be the focus of a full episode. So does Juliette's transformation. I think it would be better for a show like this to follow the format where there's a single main story that gets resolved within one episode, and various serialized subplots are threaded in alongside the cases of the week. This show is too much in the habit of using serialization as an excuse to drag everything out interminably. It's easy to keep the audience wondering how something's going to resolve, more challenging to come up with an actually satisfactory resolution. So serialization can be a cheat for lazy writers, a way to avoid ever actually resolving anything.

I'm also tired of fakeout dream sequences that make us think they're real. Dreams never work that way. They're far more stream-of-consciousness and irrational. While you're asleep and your brain isn't fully engaged, you're generally unable to employ enough critical thinking to realize that you're dreaming, but any fully conscious observer watching a dream narrative would never mistake it for waking experience. So it's a cheap trick to show a lengthy sequence that plays out like reality and then have it turn out to be a dream.

And while I'm glad Wu is finally in the loop, I'm disappointed in how it played out. It didn't feel any different from the previous "Here's what Grimms and Wesen are" scenes that we've had multiple times now with Hank, Juliette, and Trubel. At least Trubel was actually a Grimm herself, so there was something new about it. Here it just felt like well-trodden ground. With all the setup of Wu freaking out, I thought they were going to go someplace darker, but instead all that is easily brushed aside and he's part of the team by halfway through the episode.

Given how many weird, unexplained homicide scenes Wu has seen over the past few years, I developed the wish to see a scene where Nick finally told Wu about the Wesen and Wu just shrugged and said "Yeah, I figured it had to be something like that." So I'm really not happy with the direction they took him in. It makes him seem less intelligent that he never suspected any of this even after all he's seen.

 

[Dream]

Wu still looks like he's about to lose it. I noticed that while beating up that Wesen in the police station that he went pale for a few seconds. It's been quite awhile since any of the zombie Nick stuff was even referenced.

I was worried the writers making Nick lose his Grimm sight was also their way of resetting Nick, and taking away the Zombie stuff. I'm glad Nick still has his Zombie powers.

And while I'm glad Wu is finally in the loop, I'm disappointed in how it played out. It didn't feel any different from the previous "Here's what Grimms and Wesen are" scenes that we've had multiple times now with Hank, Juliette, and Trubel. At least Trubel was actually a Grimm herself, so there was something new about it. Here it just felt like well-trodden ground. With all the setup of Wu freaking out, I thought they were going to go someplace darker, but instead all that is easily brushed aside and he's part of the team by halfway through the episode.

Given how many weird, unexplained homicide scenes Wu has seen over the past few years, I developed the wish to see a scene where Nick finally told Wu about the Wesen and Wu just shrugged and said "Yeah, I figured it had to be something like that." So I'm really not happy with the direction they took him in. It makes him seem less intelligent that he never suspected any of this even after all he's seen.

I'm really happy we can finally move now with Wu knowing the secret. It has been dragged out for 18 episodes now, almost just as bad as the amnesia plot from season 2 which lasted an ENTIRE season. Wu can finally go back to being funny, and making snaky comments. That is what the actor is best at.