Speaking of bad guys, I liked how “Of Mouse and Man” had two of them interacting at the same time and A) one of them wasn’t a blutbad and B) they were varying degrees of icky. Until now, it’s typically been Grimm protocol to introduce a villain, give a little background, show him acting alone, and take him out through arrest (or death). This time, there was an established relationship between the two villains and gave us a look at how they interacted, with the snake (Lausenschange) aggressively bullying the mouse (Mauzhertz) and eventually sending the Mauzhertz off the deep end. For Grimm to be able to survive (or at least, become a more intriguing series), there has to be some supernatural world building, mostly because you want the introduction of new beasts to be exciting and potentially game changing. You do that by filling in more than a couple of character traits and sending them packing never to be heard from again.
Even though we won’t see Mauzhertz Marty again after his Grimm-ified schizophrenia hit a fever pitch, he ended up being one of my favorite villains the show has introduced so far. The best villains are those that are so dark that scare you or that are sympathetic to some degree. I don’t know, I felt bad for Marty for the most part; it was obvious that he’s mentally disturbed, dead father or no dead father, and the years of abuse he took from his dad couldn’t have helped him mentally/emotionally grow in the way he needed to. He killed several people and he needed to be punished for that, but anybody that’s ever felt like an outsider or powerless in their current situation could feel Marty’s loneliness and desperation to escape on some level. The fact that they went for a “good” villain was a nice move because, as has been reiterated ad nauseum, the Grimm world needs more shading and that includes the type of creatures we see. If they’re all unquestionably bad with no motivation besides “I need to kill/hurt something”, it can get a little stale and cartoon-y, but villains like Marty and Roddy from “Danse Macabre” help keep the struggle between humanity and animal instincts, so to speak, in the forefront.
Slowly but surely, Grimm seems to be stepping out into the world of sci-fi mythology. It’s been a fairly serviceable supernatural procedural that bounces between camp and darkness, but adding in a layer of serial elements should be just what the show needs to go to the next level. I don’t need Grimm to become infuriatingly dense by February or anything, but the show needs to go somewhere and “Of Mouse and Man” felt like we were building toward something. What that something is, I don’t know, but going into episode 10, I can say that I’m more excited than ever to find out.
Thoughts, Quotes, & Observations:
-“Living with all these shattered dreams can turn your head inside out.”
-“I know an ass when I see one.”
-“It’s a gig. I got a gig.”
-“He isn’t a rodent. We’re all mammals here.”
-“I left out the bad language ’cause I couldn’t write that fast.”
-“No matter how many times you kill him, he’s everywhere.”
–Grimm has always been a very impressive visual show, which I’ve mentioned in past reviews, and tonight was no different. I loved the shot of Marty seeing his dad’s face all over the restaurant and the shot of Hank sneaking behind Marty during the “stand off”.
-Did anybody else check out a featurette on the show that E News did recently? Nice to see word getting out about Nick and the gang, no?
-Casting spoiler: Looks like there’ll be a new recurring character here soon. Plus, learn a little more about upcoming events from Entertainment Weekly’s Spoiler Room.
–Grimm‘s taking the week off next week while we bid adieu to Chuck, but when it returns on February 3rd, we’ll be heading into the black market for human organs. Yum?
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