Grimm season 5 episode 18 review: Good To The Bone

This review contains spoilers.

5.18 Good To The Bone

With only a few more episodes left this season, Grimm is leaving it a little late to start ramping up the suspense. While this week we have another Wesen of the Week that occupies Nick for most of the episode, elsewhere the main story arcs of the season are neglected or unfold at a snail’s pace.

Don’t get the wrong, the episode was fine. It just feels like we deserve a bit more than something we’ve seen countless times already this season – particularly with only five episodes remaining.

We’re led to believe that Black Claw wants to infiltrate the US government, and believes starting with Renard’s mayoral appointment is a good start. Okay, we watch Grimm, so our imaginations are already stretched.

But the return of Diana continues to puzzle. Up to this point Renard hasn’t shown any signs of interest in Diana, or her whereabouts – and now he’s playing the doting dad?

Further, the biggest ‘twist’ this episode was the reunion between Adalind and Diana. But why kidnap Adalind to bring her to Diana – unless it’s a play by Black Claw to bring Adalind into the fold? It sort of makes sense to use Diana to get to Adalind to get to Nick.

Renard seems to confirm his allegiance to Black Claw, with Adalind spitting out: “You bastard!” at Renard when she realises their secret meeting was a trap. “I know,” he agrees.

The problem is, the show hasn’t spent long enough on Renard this season for us to know whether he really has gone to the dark side, or if he’s playing Black Claw at their own game. We haven’t seen him deliberate to any great degree about the decision, or signal what his motivations might be either way – aside from the obvious lust for power that Black Claw can deliver to him.

Adalind will clearly be left conflicted by the events. Initially furious with Renard, her anger may subside now that she has Diana – unless Renard dangles Diana as a carrot to convince Adalind to betray Nick.

This comes at a time when Adalind is trying to inject some level of trust into her relationship with Nick, with each sharing a little more information about Renard, but both keeping with big stuff back. The difference is that Nick knows that Adalind is keeping her returning powers from him, and she doesn’t know he knows.

To be honest, there’s a lot of ‘does she know he knows?’ type dialogue this episode – mostly from Eve who seems to be putting her deadly assassin duties to one side to interfere in Nick’s love life. We’re being led to believe that there is still some semblance of Juliette left inside of Eve, but quite honestly they’re both awful.

Elsewhere Hank has a date at last. In the early episodes of the show we were led to believe that Hank was somewhat of a player. He has gone on to have zero dates (save the ones under the influence of magic cookies.)

The date in question is with physiotherapist (and Yaguaraté), Zuri, whom we first encountered in Season three’s Red Menace. Now, I don’t want to pee on Hank’s parade, but do we trust her? She happens to run into him at the grocery store and literally demands a date with him. Then on their date she then fires off a load of questions about Nick. Could this be a coincidence as Black Claw gains a foothold in Portland?

Meanwhile, Nick’s busy trying to solve a case of boneless bodies popping up in Portland’s seedier neighbourhoods. If nothing else the strange case reveals that Nick has the sense of humour of a teenage boy: “Well, this guy got boned,” he says after encountering his first Mr Soft victim.

Incidentally, the Portland ME must groan whenever she sees Nick and Hank coming. They bring her the weirdest cases that are never seen anywhere else – she surely would have a paper published on some of them, at least.

A couple of other things to note. Firstly, Nick and Hank seem to take Monroe for granted. Poor Monroe doesn’t get paid to fight crime but he is still coerced into being the rather smelly bait for a vulture-like Wesen, Barbatus Ossifrage. The, after risking his life for them, the detectives won’t even give him a lift home due to his unfortunate smell. If I were Monroe, I’d start looking for new friends.

Secondly, Wu’s transformation to big dog continues. Following on from coughing up a hairball to developing a claw for a hand, Wu fully woges out! It seems Wu is in denial about what is happening to him – it wasn’t so long ago he thought he was going mad after getting too close to the Wesen world – but let’s hope everything comes to light before he starts chasing cats and humping legs. Or maybe we could stand to see a little of those things.

Ultimately, we’re left none the wiser as to how things are set to play out in the remaining episodes. We haven’t seen Truble or Meisner for weeks. After all the effort to uncover it, the Stick of Destiny has seemingly been side-lined. Plus, we still don’t know what Game Renard is playing.

Let’s hope the writers throw us a bone soon. Sorry.

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