Grimm 2.14 “Natural Born Wesen” Recap

At the spice shop, Juliette and Renard aren’t sure what’s going on regarding Nick, the cat that started this whole mess, and their attraction to one another. Monroe attempts to explain the “emotional nuclear meltdown” that they just went through, but it doesn’t seem to get through the either of them, partially because they were more focused on Nick waking up from the drink that he consumed at the end of last week’s episode. He does make it, of course, and Rosalee leads the trio into the next step, which involves Nick’s finger being pricked and Renard drinking another concoction purported to dull the attraction to Juliette.

The following day at the bank, three Wesen robbers storm in already wogied with machine guns; they attack customers, grab as much money as they can, and then leave the scene before the police can answer the silent alarm that was tripped. Bearing witness to this was Monroe, who was in line when the robbery went down, and he’s freaked out about the three Wesen (2 Blutbaden, 1 Skalengeck) breaking the Code of Swabia. The breaking of said code, established in the 1500s and relating to the Wesen never using their true selves to manipulate normal people, puts all Wesen in danger, particularly if it happens frequently enough and the Wesen involved are careless enough.

Plus, the Wesen community is incredibly well-connected, so if one gets wind of their cover potentially being blown, it gets around fairly quickly and sets them all into a panic for their safety.

Monroe suggests going to the Junkyard Dog Bar, a seedy Wesen establishment where he could find out information about the robbery itself or those who committed it. Once inside, he tries bringing up the incident to several patrons, all of whom ignore him or blow him off, until the actual robbers find out that someone’s sniffing around their heist. They surround him at the bar and he inadvertently insults them, calling their actions cowardly, which sets them off and causes a fight. Luckily, Nick and Hank were outside waiting in the car and come in to break things up before they get too intense, checking the identification of those involved and allowing Monroe to head to the spice shop.

Nick and Hank find the address of their hideout at an abandoned chemical factory; they run into a homeless man who stayed there and did the bidding of the “monsters” and though he won’t give up much information, he does give up a third name: Gus. They already had the names of the other two perpetrators, so now it would be time to check and see if Gus is a known associate or someone without a criminal record.

For their part, the robbers aren’t exactly the picture of camaraderie at the moment. While Cole and Krystal are feeling especially arrogant about their position, claiming that nobody could touch them and basking in the glow of potential fame, Gus is very nervous about being caught. He wants to be as meticulous as possible before their next planned robbery, but Cole thinks that they don’t need it, considering that humans wouldn’t be able to prove that it was them to begin with. Despite Gus’ concerns, the robbery goes on, this time resulting in two dead bodies that could easily lead back to them. Cole doesn’t care, though, since the robbery was their most bountiful to date; George, on the other hand, has only become more worried.

Monroe keeps trying to bring up the Wesen Council to Nick and while he continues to be interrupted, he heads down to the spice shop to help Rosalee out, as a sea of Wesen in the community have come to her for help. They also want to get the Council involved, but for the time being, the Fuchsbau and the Blutbad get them under control. It turns out that Rosalee’s father and brother both had an uneasy alliance with the Council and made sure to put the welfare of the Wesen ahead of everything else in their decision-making. Now, it’s her turn to follow in their footsteps and she makes a call to Dr. Groot Zonen, informing him of a violation of the code.

At the police station, Renard e-mails DeGroot with the mug shots of Krystal and Cole, the latter of whom is busy attacking Gus for wanting to take his cut and get out of the “business.” Krystal makes him get off of their partner – only to woge and attack him herself, finishing him off with a series of deep bites to the neck. Nick, Hank, and Wu show up at the apartment they were in shortly after, finding Gus dead; Nick and Hank then head to the factory where they’re spotted by Krystal and Cole, there to gather up all the money they had acquired in their robberies (two small-time, two banks) and leave town. Gun fire is exchanged, though both suspects are subdued, handcuffed, and transferred to the station.

Once there, Cole tells Nick that they’ll never be able to prove that he and Krystal were behind the robberies and that they would be out by the end of the night. While Renard was holding a press conference in front of them, a gunman walks steadily toward them and fires at Cole at pointblank range, killing him in the process. The gunman was hired by DeGroot to suppress a potential Wesen riot.

Charge!
Juliette gets home from the shop and opens the door to find a gaping hole in her living room. Not knowing what to do and unable to leave her home, she cowers by the door, psyching herself up to make a go at the stairs. She makes it to the base of the stairs only to find that running up them won’t be an option, since they now seem to go on in an endless row. Juliette heads back to the door and reaches for her phone to call Nick, promptly losing it in the cavernous canyon currently threatening her life.

No way to communicate with the outside world, she stays balled up in around the same place, though she begins to see an electric current running through (and occasionally flashing from) the hole. Feeling defeated, she falls asleep at the base of the stairs, only to be awakened by…her phone ringing. At the bottom of the hole. Rather than spend the rest of her night in fear, she decides to traverse down to get her phone. Once she makes the first step, the floor boards of her home begin to return, appearing before her feet with each additional step.

That night, Juliette’s in her room asleep and again gets woken up by the phone. This time, though, she sees the same electric currents and hears the same droning sound that she did earlier in the day.

Additional thoughts and observations:
-Couldn’t the robbers tell that Nick was a Grimm to begin with? I know that they have to be in a certain emotional state to reveal themselves to him, but I always assumed that they could sniff out a Grimm pretty easily.
-I liked Nick trying to explain everything to Hank and having a hard time believing what he was saying himself. He’s now wearing the key around his neck, but how long can that realistically last with the amount of fighting he does? Prediction: he’ll lose it during combat sometime this season.
-Part of the reason Renard wants to mend fences with Nick is so that he/they make history for doing so.
-What happened to the homeless man in the end? We saw him the second-to-last time that the robbers hit the factory, but he never turned up during the gun battle. In my mind, he found a warm, non-toxic place to stay, far away from any more monsters.
-I kind of wish that I didn’t read episode descriptions, if only because I would have liked to be in the dark about Juliette’s plot tonight.
-Next week on Grimm: Nick and Hank investigate a Wesen that feeds off its victim’s tears, while Juliette continues to work with Rosalee to restore her memory.