Grimm 1.06 “The Three Bad Wolves” Review

Another (minor) knock on the episode is that yet again, the villain gets away unscathed. I understand wanting to keep certain characters around for the possibility of returning at a later date, but it feels like Grimm is unwilling to make a move and kill off their bad guys. Obviously Nick can’t go around shooting people in the face or anything, considering the emphasis that the show puts on his cop status, but a lot of episodes have ended with a hushed trip to the hospital in the stretcher or a bad guy mysteriously high tailing it out of town, which is the fate that befell Angelina. Part of the fun of having a supernaturally themed show is the inevitable good guy vs. villain battle at the end of an episode and Grimm seems to only want to give that to us in tiny bits before calling everything a truce, picking up its ball, and going home. The show’s made some bold choices thus far and I hope that having more stakes is one we’ll see in the new year.

However, “The Three Bad Wolves” did have certain stakes that other episodes didn’t in that it directly affected one of the show’s main characters. While I’ve enjoyed some of the other cases we’ve seen thus far, the case of the Dueling Dead Brothers, where bloodthirsty blutbad Angelina killed the brothers of arson investigator Orson before he did the same, was especially enjoyable because it would have effects going forward. Regardless of the result, this would leave some type of mark on Monroe that he would carry with him for a while and that saved it from being a little too run-of-the-mill. Thus far, the cases have been very one-ear-out-the-other, with villains and victims that pass through the show, do their 42 minutes, and skedaddle, never to be referenced again. (The only recurring victim/villain is Ms. Schade, who’s three appearances in.) We may not see Angelina again, but her brief appearance meant something in the grander scheme of Grimm and that made her case resonate a tiny bit more than it would have otherwise.

“The Three Bad Wolves” was a solid but unremarkable installment of Grimm that was another stylistic shift in terms of look, tone, and approach to such an intriguing concept. The show has been a little frantic with its trips around the stylistic map, dabbling in camp, dark humor, just plain darkness, and now police procedural, with positives and negatives coming from each experiment in identity. Its venture in the world of true police dramas didn’t make for the most exciting episode in the world thanks to the almost too straightforward presentation, but “The Three Bad Wolves” did one thing extremely, extremely right. It gave Silas Weir Mitchell a very good showcase to expand his character and show us what’s behind the neurotic, wry facade of Eddie Monroe, a man caught between the world of humanity and the call of the wild.

Thoughts, Quotes, & Observations:
-“Not my Iron Butterfly!”
-“If my brother knew about this, he would crap a car.”
-“Now, pancakes are the new cupcakes. Or at least they should have been.”
-“Pork and Schnapps? Really?”
-“The call of the wild isn’t always such a good thing.”
-“Don’t piss off a woman with claws.”
-In case you missed my review of last night’s moderately rated glimpse at Roddy Geiger, Raver/Violinist, check it out here.
-For those who may not have picked up on it, Hap was played by Brad William Henke (Coover from Justified’s excellent second season) and Lt. Orson was played by Daniel Roebuck (Dr. Arzt from Lost).
-I have to admit, I had a giggle at the sex scene in the woods between Angelina and Monroe, only because of the, um, suggestive body positioning.
-If you’re curious, this episode is actually fourth in the production order – it should have aired between the episode about bees and the episode about the goat, but for some reason, it was booted back a little bit.
-Next week on Grimm: It’s the fall finale, which sees a missing persons case reopened and Nick coming to the realization that the abducted person may not be a person after all.