By Joe Gibson
Introduction
We have already reviewed
the pilot for NBC’s Grimm, with a section in that post explaining some of the
context of the show and why we are talking about it. I would advise you to read
that before proceeding here, and you can follow this link: https://planninecrunch.blogspot.com/2025/01/nbcs-grimm-reviewing-pilot.html
Bears Will Be Bears
Review
As the opening quote,
“She looked in the window and then peeped through the keyhole; seeing nobody in
the house, she lifted the latch,” relays, this is the Goldilocks story, but
specifically the original 1837 Robert Southey version “The Story of the Three
Bears.” In this original version, the bears are three bachelors (which maps
onto this episode’s title being “Bears Will Be Bears” after the “boys will be
boys” masculinity motif that the episode will have some commentary on), and
Goldilocks is not named Goldilocks and is in fact not a child but an old woman.
That said, this is still inextricable from the context of the later Goldilocks
alterations because the woman here is named Gilda (gilded = coated in gold).
Why Gilda is aged up (though not fully to old woman status) seems to be either
to be more accurate to the original or simply because there was already a young
girl in danger last episode, so it would seem repetitive.
Gilda and her paramour
Rocky (I guess naming the character Locke would have been too on the nose)
immediately break and enter into a nice house littered with bear iconography
and symbolism. They sample the clothes, food and wine before trying out
multiple beds in a PG13 (or rather TV14) fashion. This kind of lower class
decadent cosplay of the rich is a valid modernization of the original old
woman’s actions as well as on the class commentary some Grimm stories include
(video on The Hare and The Hedgehog coming soon to our YouTube channel
Plan9Crunch, link here: https://www.youtube.com/@Plan9Crunch).
In any case, the family
has arrived home. Just as the old woman of old, Gilda leaps out of the window,
but some roaring thing gets its hands on Rocky before another one chases Gilda
to her truck, and she drives off.
In the hospital, a
doctor examines Nick after he took the syringe meant for Aunt Marie last
episode. It is a little unclear whether Nick survived the neurotoxin in the
syringe because he is a Grimm or because Adalind and Renard prepared just
enough to kill an old woman in a coma with it (Renard, given his backstory as
well as current job of Police Captain, should know to stay under the radar with
his moves, and, thus, I find it likely it was the bare minimum required to kill
an old lady so that it would not arouse much suspicion. If the feeble woman
covered in scars happens to have slight amounts of a neurotoxin in her system
it adds to the mystery, but, if she was obviously poisoned, that would
supersede her feeble status and mysterious past to drive an investigation
somewhere rather than nowhere).
After some banter with
Hank, Nick sees Aunt Marie being moved into surgery, and Renard swoops in to
“secure” the scene. The three go off to look at the security tapes to look for
Adalind, and Renard asks Nick specifics about his relationship with Marie
before subtly undermining their efforts on the Adalind case by stating that it
will be difficult to get an ID from the back (he must have ensured that she
would only be visible on the cameras from certain unhelpful angles before
letting her go in there).
Hank has Nick do the
same “analysis from afar” trick he used on Adalind last episode on Gilda. Many
commentators on this series have stated this “Sherlock Scan” to be a dropped character
trait and an example of “Early Installment Weirdness,” but I do not buy that
because, going forward, it will be a consistent trait of Nick’s role as a Grimm
that he has to make judgements off of quick moments relying on what he can read
of a person from the split seconds of seeing their mannerisms or later on their
Woge (which is what it is called when their Wesen form reveals itself).
Including these scenes now reinforces how he will be able to use his present
skills as a Grimm later on; including more of these scenes later would be
redundant alongside the episodic Woge scenes. (There is also more to be said
about how the backstory implications Nick highlights in Gilda and Adalind might
mirror the lived experience and often rough home life of a Wesen and how his
profiling might not be merely the same mechanism but just the same action;
however that is season 5 territory more so than season 1.)
Gilda leads Nick and
Hank back to the house, where their coworker Drew Wu is already there on
account of the family, the Rabes, reporting breaking and entering upon arriving
home from Seattle. (The timing of their arrival is coincidental but does not
qualify as any plot issue because it is literally the inciting incident of this
story; if they had not arrived back precisely when they did, the entire story
would not have happened, not just some parts of it. I will elaborate on what
plot points I do take issue with in the “plot holes in Grimm” section of this
review.) Rabe is, of course, an anagram for Bear, and Hank identifies their
aboriginal art collection while Nick grows more and more suspicious based on
claw marks by the window. Mother Rabe brings up respecting their ancestors,
while Father Rabe tries to shut her down. This will play into some of the
larger themes: the name is Rabe, not bear, an anagram of bear nonetheless, but
the patriarch whose name the rest bare is the least interested in being a bear,
and so he is Rabe. The son is named Barry (a homophone of bear) so guess where
he stands on the issue (I am not arguing that the characters are aware of the
philosophical coding in their names; it is the storytelling priming us for
their later roles).
Cut to Rocky in a den
being menaced by a bear, likely this missing Barry, and, now is a particularly
late title card (10 minutes in) just simply showing the word Grimm and a brief
flash of Adalind’s Hexenbiest face (in this episodic procedural, Nick and
Adalind are the main players in every title card. That will be important). At
the station, Nick and Hank finally get Gilda’s statement, and it seems a little
weird they are only doing this now, but the brief excursion to the Rabe house
did reveal her guilt, so this could be them finally booking her. Nick is more
sympathetic than Hank and asks, once Hank leaves the room, if she can identify
what chased her. Wu reveals Rocky is definitively poor, lacking a phone, which
will make it even harder to find him in the Rabe den, but Nick is determined to
go back there until Marie calls him.
Marie tries to console
Nick, calling him to hunt down the bad Wesen. (She indicates that there is a
reason he is a cop, and this could be about his sense of justice or my idea
that he is already using the playbook of a Grimm, or perhaps both.) She is
paranoid about the Reapers and exposits briefly on that organization as well as
the importance of keeping the trailer secret.
Nick and Hank, returning
to the Rabe residence, stumble upon three bikers each wearing a primary color.
These are Barry and his friends, and while Hank interrogates the Rabes, Father
Frank Rabe watches Nick watching Barry woge. Frank immediately becomes hostile
to Nick, who reflects on the bear symbology on the premises (specifically a
totem pole he researches on his home computer with Juliette a couple scenes
later).
Renard meets with
Adalind under a bridge, and their dialogue explains part of their aims. Renard
cannot allow Marie to tell Nick anything more, because Renard wants Nick on his
side in regards to some unspecified conflict. Renard wants Adalind to outsource
this hit to humans, specifically so that they do not get excited and woge. Now
what Renard is in this world is a mystery for a little while, but this shows
him to be knowledgeable about the woge, meaning that if anybody could stifle
their woge long term, it would be calculating Renard. Someone threatens Adalind
under this bridge, and Renard rolls his window up as she kills or at least
probably maims the man.
After a scene reminding
us of Nick and Juliette’s relationship, Barry and his friends prepare a
sacrifice pit (remember the bears will be bears title; it’ll be important to
these characters), and Nick dreams of Aunt Marie advising him in the trailer
and stabbing his hand with a knife. Juliette tries to support and comfort Nick,
and this might be the first confirmation of her job as a veterinarian, which
will have plot relevance toward the end of the season. In the trailer, Nick finds
a bear hand item just like one the Rabes had, and he visits Monroe mid-workout.
As I mentioned last
time, much of the structure of season one is devoted to deepening the
friendship and partnership of Nick and Monroe, so this mostly comedic scene of
Nick asking for Monroe’s help has some tension but also displays the
characters’ chemistry. Monroe sighs when he opens the door to see Nick, but he
also sighed when he paused his pilates to get the door, which makes sense
insofar as the last episode indicated Blutbaden have a very heightened sense of
smell, so he probably knew Nick was there before opening the door. Monroe
identifies the Jagerbars by the item Nick has as being important to the
Jagerbar coming of age ceremony the Roh-Hatz, and Monroe voices fear about the
proposition of Aunt Marie being in town and hunting him (after Renard pulls the
guards, Nick will task Monroe with protecting Marie in the hospital as the
comedic subplot for this episode).
The Roh-Hatz is
explicitly masculine and about connecting with the inner beast by chasing
victims. Aunt Marie fills Nick in on the rest of the procedure, such as that it
happens at sunset. When Gilda returns to the Rabe’s with a gun to get some
answers about Rocky, Barry woges and restrains her, prompting the reveal that
his traditional mother is in fact the one organizing the Roh-Hatz for them. The
presence of a trio of Jagerbar bachelors in Barry and his friends should have
clarified to anyone familiar with the original tale that the family of Rabes
would not be the trio of bears, but the earlier disagreement between Father and
Mother Rabe indicates that only the Father is truly innocent of this. Now, the
title, once again is Bears Will Be Bears, and Barry’s mother is taking this
attitude toward Jagerbars, not only insofar as bears will be bears but bears
must be bears for their society and family unit to work. Barry’s father
contrasts this style of masculinity by neglecting that side of themselves and
what they can do/have done historically. Instead, the Rabes are quite wealthy
collectors of Jagerbar artifacts, and this would be because Father Rabe is not
concerning himself with rituals to justify killing people, instead being a
lawyer.
Nick and Hank arrive
back at the Rabes trying to intercept Gilda, and, once Hank leaves, Nick and
Frank talk about what they are and who that means they are to each other.
Mother Rabe refuses to yield to her husband when he asks her to tell Nick where
the boys are keeping Rocky (clarifying the type of masculinity she responds
to), and Frank Rabe takes Nick with him in his 4-wheeler to find Gilda and
Rocky. Meanwhile, Hank finds Gilda’s truck. Frank makes Nick promise not to
hurt the boys if he does not need to. Cutting to the bear boys, part of their
ritual is cutting themselves to put their blood on the victims.
Monroe confronts a
sleeping Marie, who awakes and threatens him, but in doing so, he foils an
attempt on her life, so he goes off to follow the would-be assassin. The
assassins beat up Monroe until he woges, rips off one of their arms, and says
things went too far. Monroe, in wanting to avoid violence but still being aware
of his cultural heritage (briefly wanting to kill Marie because a Grimm killed
one of his relatives), represents the same kind of masculinity as Frank.
Frank and Nick find the
den, but the hunt has started. Frank woges, prompting Nick to pull his gun on
him, and Frank runs off to try to intercept the boys. Nick finds Gilda and
Rocky, kicking the boys down and firing his gun in the sky to try to get them
to stand down. Frank comes between Nick and Barry, who stands down, but Mother
Diane Rabe barrels out of the forest as an actual bear (I’ll get to that), and
accidentally impales herself in the sacrifice pit trying to kill Nick. As the
boys, Gilda and Rocky are arrested, and Diane is taken away in an ambulance,
Rocky is aware he has done something wrong, Diane insists that they have to
respect their ancestors, and Frank responds, “Not like this.”
At the hospital, someone
dressed as a reverend attacks Marie, and she dies killing him. Juliette watches
on as Nick moves the trailer and visits her grave in a time lapse. Some Wesen
watches Nick at the grave from within the bushes, and, if I had to guess, it
seems like it would be Steinadler (bird Wesen) Farley Kolt, played by Titus
Welliver, who has a role within the overarching plotline of the season and a
past with Aunt Marie.
Episode two is more
ambitious than the first in terms of thematic content and juggling the amount
of characters and the moralities of all involved. However, my predisposition to
it is a little negative compared to the first episode because of the moment
where Diane Rabe turns into a full bear and not just full Jagerbar, so the
back half of this post will be about the plot holes in Grimm and why, while
frustrating, they do not ruin the show.
Plot Holes In Grimm
I will have to spoil
certain things in talking about some of the plot holes of this show, so, unless
you want spoilers pertaining to mostly random oddities and contrivances scattered
throughout the show, you can stop reading here.
As I was flipping
through a collection of The Brothers Grimm stories, I noticed one called Mother
Hulda, which was interesting because Marie's attacker in the pilot was named
Hulda, but, as far as I could ascertain, Hulda would be closer to a witch (or
prophetess via Biblical allusion) than a male assassin. It does make me wonder
why the showrunners didn't use that name for a Hexenbiest, especially for
Henrietta whose name already started with H, but it does not appear that the
name meant anything after all. (This is not a plot hole by any means, just a
curiosity and additional paragraph to give you a chance to leave if you do not
want spoilers for the show.)
According to a tie-in
book called The Icy Touch, the Brothers Grimm do exist but are not actually
Grimms. The novel, from Titan Books, allegedly has many explicit continuity
issues (mistaking Hasslichen for Reapers and conflating Siegbarstes and
Hasslichen) including worsening a would-be plot hole in the main show by
referring to Sean Renard as part Hexenbiest. (He is not, in fact, a Hexenbiest,
but half its male counterpart Zauberbiest and half Royal.)
The possible plot hole
comes in season 2, where, after it is made explicit that ingesting a Grimm’s
blood negates a Hexenbiest's powers long term, Renard ends up ingesting Nick’s
blood with no power loss. (I am more than fine to give the show benefit of the
doubt on Hexenbiests and Zauberbiests having separate material properties
because there is a name distinction between them, but writer John Shirley
evidently thinks that Renard is a Hexenbiest and thus, retroactively applying
cause and effect, should have lost his powers in season two.)
When I think of a plot
hole or contrivance, there are obviously different levels to it, but I
generally think of something that is impossible or highly improbable based on
the established rules. There is some leeway if an event is circumstantial
enough to be just a coincidence and not a contrivance, but even coincidences can
stack into an overall contrivance. In this episode, Wesen are capable of fully
becoming the animal they embody as we see with Mother Rabe. Now, technically
speaking, when viewed in the context of the rest of the show, this seems like a
trait of merely the Jagerbars. I recall seeing a claim that some early season
one interview implied Monroe was also capable of this “if he got angry enough,”
but I could not find any citation (in this episode though Monroe is stifling
his true power, so there is nothing in the episode to say that a fully centered
and bloodthirsty Monroe would not be able to turn into a full wolf). Throughout
the show, there are moments that would drastically change if just any Wesen
were able to do this, but, as the viewer, we can construct a minimally invasive
headcanon to create greater organic unity.
In the first episode for
later payoffs in catching the Postman to work, Oster’s ipod must keep playing
Sweet Dreams continually from the moment she dies to the moment Nick and Hank
find her body and ipod or have cycled through an entire playlist back to that
song precisely when they show up. As audiovisual storytelling and shorthand, it
is a good writing decision to keep that song playing as a motif through the
episode, but placing plot importance on it risks damaging the overall cohesion.
The Reapers altogether
disappear from the show after season one, and, while Nick puts up a credible
defense against them, even landing a major victory, it does not make sense that
a successful and storied organization would cease just on the account of one
man they failed only a few times against. The later Royal family arc shows the
international political scale of such factions, and the Hadrian’s Wall and
Black Claw war of season 5 shows an efficient way to marry large international
organization status with the personal stories of a few key players (that, if
destroyed, mean the functional destruction of their causes), but none of the
thought that went into these plotlines can retroactively work to explain the
Reapers, and so I must conclude it a poor mark on the overall show.
In season two,
supernatural shenanigans place a major strain on Nick and Juliette’s
relationship to where they do not sleep in the same bed anymore. Consequently,
Nick is forced to sleep on the couch or at Monroe’s house, but season three
reveals they had a spare bedroom the entire time. The best defense I have heard
for why Nick does not sleep in the guest bedroom is that it is their routine to
sleep on the couch during disagreements, but that does not hold water, because
the reason for this spat is that Juliette has literally forgotten everything
about Nick and their cohabitation (it makes more sense in context). Clearly, the guest bedroom did not exist yet
and would have changed season two if it did.
I notice fewer issues
with the show in its later seasons, but even these earlier examples are
contextual and only an issue based on specifics. I do not like plot holes and
like even less playing defense for plot points I can’t even argue are mere
coincidences, but it is also about a story’s overall cohesion. The contrivance
that allowed for a payoff is not the only notable feature of the plot; we must
also evaluate the strength of that payoff, since it was evidently so important
to get to that point that logic was allowed to falter. Most stories do not
manage to have great payoffs built on the shaky sand foundation, and that is
why plot holes are as big a deal as they are, but this show is very good at
using all of its pieces to tell a cathartic and fresh story, so it is not the
biggest deal. The presence of plot holes and, at that, ones that affect the entirety of
seasons means to me that I cannot give the show a 10 out of 10, because a
perfect version of this show would inevitably be different, but the execution
of ideas good and bad in this show are so strong that I could give it up to a 9
out of 10...pending another rewatch of course. We likely will not cover any more episodes with in depth reviews on this blog, so I invite you to watch this show for yourself on Amazon Prime Video.
