Grimm season 4 episode 11 review: Death Do Us Part

Juliette is still getting used to her new situation in this week's mostly filler episode of Grimm...

This review contains spoilers.

4.11 Death Do Us Part

Two weeks ago Grimm returned to our screens, offering up a couple of consecutive episodes that were chock-full of thrills and action and plot twists.

So after the excitement of the last couple of episodes, it’s difficult to get as animated about this week’s Grimm, Death Do Us Part.

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Realistically, no one can expect 22-epsiodes of high octane action – otherwise Jason Statham would have his own TV series. So it’s with some resignation that you realise this is a bridging episode at best.

There was a Wesen-of-the-week plot involving an electric eel-like creature called a Matança Zumbido that likes to toast his victims on both sides. It’s conceivable this particular monster developed his spiky attitude as a child, in response his being called Stetson. Who knows?

The story was fairly pedestrian – a sign in itself of the brilliant and inventive creatures that spring from the imaginations of the show’s creators that a giant reptilian creature channelling 200,000 amperes worth of electricity is a little ‘meh’. However, there was some gentle ribbing of the ghost hunting ‘reality’ genre that gently tickles, not least because a showboating ghost hunter got fried.

(Incidentally, eagle-eyed fans many have spotted the ‘for sale’ sign outside the so-called haunted house had a ‘for sale’ sign featured the real estate agent from the last episode, Suzanne Acker.)

Elsewhere, Wu – who generally seems to be enjoying his apprenticeship under Nick and Hank – got to see Nick’s own kind of justice first hand. When the Wesen is shot in the back by the wife of one of his victims, Nick tells Wu she won’t be arrested, thus sweeping the whole murder thing under the carpet.

It will be interesting to see how far Nick can push this with Wu. He doggedly pursued his investigation into Trubel when he suspected she was a killer, and obviously is committed to his job. Will he bend to Nick’s ways, like Hank, or will he protest at Nick’s habit of breaking the law, and his own obligations as a police officer, whenever it suits him?

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The funniest part of this week’s show, unsurprisingly, involved Wu finding out he had accidentally eaten Adalind’s love cookie, which was why he ended up eating his carpet. And we will leave that right there.

There was at least the introduction of a new character, a mysterious Hexenbiest called Henrietta (played by Garcelle Beauvais) who Juliette hopes can help her reverse the side-effects of the spell that have turned her into a Hexenbiest. (Incidentally, fans of Charmed may recognise Henrietta’s house as Halliwell Manor from in the series.)

Renard arranges for a meeting between Henrietta and Juliette after witnessing Juliette’s new-found powers first-hand. It turns out you wouldn’t like Juliette when she gets angry. Using only her mind she blew up some guy’s car that had nearly run her over, in much the same way she blew up a bad guy’s head last week.

If I were Juliette, I would embrace my new identity and the powers that come with it! It would be much less likely that she would ever be tricked, beaten up or kidnapped again, for sure.

An interesting dimension to the problem though, is that as a newly-formed Wesen, she’s experiencing flashes of fear towards Nick, obviously on a primal level, demonstrated in one of her dreams where he tries to kill her. So for now she’s avoiding him, rejecting his advances and generally acting a bit shady.

In return, Nick’s pretending not to notice there’s something up with Juliette. Or he’s just being dumb. Probably the latter.

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The episode concludes with Captain Renard experiencing sudden pain, followed by bleeding from the bullet wounds where Steward gunned him down. As we know, his mother Elizabeth used her powers to bring him back to life, so perhaps he is experiencing his own side-effects of Hexenbiest magic?

There was no Monroe and Rosalee this week – as we saw last week, they finally managed to get away on their long-awaited honeymoon.  The writers really should have let them enjoy the break, instead of shoe-horning in a Skype call from the most obvious beach set at the studios. And who is Monroe without his sweaters, anyway?

If this episode was setting things up for the action to come, let’s hope next week delivers on it.

Read Christine’s review of the previous episode, Tribunal, here.

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