After hearing that his (ex-?)almost-fiancee had been cheating on him with his boss, Nick is ready to get violent on somebody, preferably Renard. Monroe intervenes before anything could happen, delaying his friend long enough that a call comes in about a quadruple homicide – the quadruple homicide that Nick committed in the fall finale. The four dead bodies – all Verrat, three of them men – were never disposed of nor were they hidden, although taking their ids and doing the act in an area not beholden to surveillance cameras keeps Nick’s secret under wraps. For now.
While at the murder scene, Renard gets a phone call from Juliette, begging him to come over and tearfully telling him that Nick moved out. When he got the call about the homicide, the Captain had been in the middle of exploring the trailer that he found, but he does decide to go over there after heading back to the station to review evidence from the crime. The one thing that Nick didn’t count on was surveillance in front of the hotel, which catches Monroe leaving shortly before the crew of Verrat; he does manage to steer the conversation elsewhere before leaving and waiting outside of Juliette’s house. He sees Renard come to the door, become noticeably touchy with Juliette, and enter the house, but again, he gets a phone call before he can inflict any damage.
This time, it’s Monroe with news straight from Rosalee, who is set to arrive in town by bus the following morning. The two talked earlier and she told him that it’s likely that Captain Renard is the one that woke Juliette up from her coma and the obsessive, hypersexual behavior they’re acting out isn’t from free will. They know they’re doing it and yet they don’t have a choice in stopping it, due to the spell. Monroe urges Nick not to do anything stupid and recounts Renard’s visit to the spice shop, where he told the Blutbad that whatever’s got a hold on him could be dark arts-y in nature.
During this time, Juliette and Renard are alternating between passionately loving and passionately hating one another, their fight including everything from dramatic shirt ripping to Juliette firing five shots around the room. Following a round of slapping, kissing, biting, and pistol whipping, Renard trashes the house, nearly woges in front of her, and staggers out of the residence to his car. For the two of them to be cured, Nick and Monroe are going to have to look through the customer records at the spice shop for a purification potion that Catherine Schade inquired about; if they can find what exactly Renard took, they can figure out the way to counteract it and break the spell once and for all.
As they’re pouring through the meticulous record keeping, Wu calls Nick and tells him that there’s been a shooting at his house. Nick arrives to find a nearly catatonic Juliette balled up on the couch, refusing to talk to anyone. She eventually does admit to the shooting, though she claims it was because she thought she heard an intruder; with no weapon on the scene (Renard took it with him) and no signs of a perp, there’s not much they could do, so Nick informs Wu about the self-defense claim and Juliette about the fact that he knows about Renard.
Meanwhile, at the station, Adalind has been released from her cell due to lack of evidence. However, she doesn’t want to leave the comfort and safety of the jail, especially not in the middle of the night with more than one individual that could be lurking around the corner to get her. She (literally) runs into Renard while trying to make it home and although she threatens to scream, she eventually goes with him when he mentions having access to the trailer. Instead of rifling through Nick’s Grimm paraphernalia and teaming up to search for the key, the two end up at a different location and have sex, with Adalind claiming that she wants Renard to show her the “real him”, the one that he wouldn’t show Juliette.
Rosalee returns home to flowers and kisses from Monroe and immediately sets her sights on concocting a cure for Renard and Juliette. The only problem is that for the cure to happen, they have to be in the same room at the same time and willing to take it together. Nick promises to make it happen, even now that the first/best option for curing (locating the instrument of original infection, i.e. Adalind’s cat) has been hit by a car. The second cure is a bit more dangerous; the first step involves Nick drinking the same purification potion that Renard did before kissing Juliette and waking her up. If he drinks it, it’ll help her remember him, though he gets a call from Hank before he can chug the contents of the glass. It’s Hank, back at the station for the first time since receiving the beating from Adalind – he tells Nick that he caught Renard snooping around at his desk and Nick urges him not to let the Captain leave while he makes his way down there.
However, Renard does power his way through Hank and receives a call from Juliette, letting him know that Nick knows about them and that he told her – the previous night. Renard’s upset about the short notice and returns home to find Adalind getting ready to leave and return to his brother. He denies having found the key (he remembered it being in Nick’s desk and made an ink imprint of it on a piece of paper, joining three others) and she leaves, thanks him for the previous night. Once she returns to Vienna, Adalind takes a pregnancy test that turns out to be positive – she got what she wanted and is having Renard’s child.
Back in Portland, Renard calls Nick and tells him that they need to talk. The two meet up at the site of Nick’s first case, deep in the woods at the cabin of a former postman who kidnapped little girls wearing red coats. Once there, Nick immediately swings on Renard, but the Captain has other plans for the night. He doesn’t want to hurt Nick; he actually wants to team up with Nick to help protect the key from falling into Adalind’s (and subsequently, his brother’s) hands, something that would mean the death of both he and Nick. Renard goes on to confess to Nick that he knows about the detective being a Grimm and that he was the one who woke Juliette up from her coma, in addition to woge-ing in front of him and giving the key back.
Renard also tells Nick that he doesn’t want the thing with Juliette to continue, making Nick’s job to bring the two of them together to administer the cure much easier. The two stop by and get Juliette before heading to the shop where Rosalee has another batch of potion blended up. Nick chugs the glass down and thinks that it doesn’t have an effect on him…until he experiences the excruciating stomach pain that Renard did and ends up on the floor of the shop, stunned.
Additional thoughts and observations:
-Welcome back, you guys! We have 10 episodes in a row from here until the middle of May, so hopefully we’ll get back into the swing of all things Wesen here soon.
-I loved how this entire episode was basically people filling each other in on stuff. I don’t mind a little secrecy, but the first half of the season was a little too evasive for my liking and felt like it was stalling by not bringing some of these people together more quickly.
-Of course, the amount of times something got interrupted by a cell phone got comical by the end of the episode. Someone needs to teach these people how to set up their voicemails.
-The Nick/Renard glare off before the opening credits was very soap opera but in a good way.
-Weirdly, I think my favorite scene of the episode was Adalind walking down the street alone. Say what you want about everything else regarding the show, but Grimm is really great about setting a mood with its production choices.
-Not mentioned in the recap above, but Nick also found out that Renard is the Royal living in Portland. Rosalee really is the glue holding this thing together, right? She’s gone and nobody knows anything; she comes back and fixes everybody’s problems, all the while getting flowers from Monroe.
-The scene at the cabin was, of course, really good and much needed re: people finally finding stuff out, but didn’t it feel like a series finale scene? The flashing back to the pilot especially.
-#ShirtlessRage
-Next week on Grimm: Nick and Hank investigate a series of bank robberies done by Wesen, while Juliette questions her mental state.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOhq8k8-YtM
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