“Hell hath no fury for a Hexenbiest scorned,” or something like that.

GRIMM (May 18, 2012) – We come to the end of season on of NBC’s Grimm and after 22-episodes we are back where we started–not knowing anything. Yeah we learned quite a bit in the finale; it seems a deluge of information was poured out at one time to answer just about all the questions I’ve been asking all season–haphazardly. Still, there is still an element to the series that is inevitable–it kicks ass! Fooled you didn’t I? Thought I was going to go on about all the missing elements in the story, the end of what could have been a significant rival for the series–Monroe’s (Silas Weir Mitchell) awesomeness. I will but before I do, let’s get into the Grimm background of last night’s episode. For those of you who want to proceed with the review, skip down to the subheading ‘I didn’t sleep a wink!’

“It shall not be death but a sleep of a hundred years into which the princess shall fall.”

Did you know that there are 5 tales of Sleeping Beauty that aren’t so pretty?  The Ninth Captain’s Tale (1001 Nights); Sun, Moon, and Talia (Giambattista Basile); The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood (Charles Perrault); The Glass Coffin (Margaret Hunt); and Little Brier-Rose, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s 1812 version, which is the version researched:

There is a King and Queen as always in these tales that desired a child. A crab crawled out of the Queen’s bath and told her that she will soon bring a daughter into the world. Of course, that is exactly what happened. When their daughter was born the King announced it to the world. He invited all of the inhabitants in the Kingdom, including twelve of the thirteen fairy folk, for he had only twelve golden plates. The fairy left out was of course, pissed about it.

The thirteenth fairy rolled up in the party and told the King and Queen that the little Princess “will prick her finger on a spindle and will die on her fifteenth birthday.” Luckily, the twelfth fairy’s a sweetheart, so instead of the Princess dying she will sleep for a hundred-years. The King thought “screw that” and he ordered all the spindles in the Kingdom destroyed. As well all know, you cannot escape fate. She found a spindle, pricked, and fell to sleep, as so did the entire Kingdom.

Many Princess came to her rescue, but soon “the” handsome Prince was came to her rescue–crawling over the skeletons of the other Princes who tried. He found her within the sleeping kingdom, kissed her and things resumed as if nothing happened. The Prince and Briar-Rose lived happily together until they died because nothing lasts forever.

I didn’t sleep a wink!

SPOILERS! Hank’s been having a rough time of it all after being bumped into by a Blutbad–seeing a guy change from a ‘big feet’ to a human is giving him nightmares! It did not help that there was another problem that he became inadvertently involved in: remember those three coins? Well someone else wanted them as much as those thieving Fuchsbau.

With all the going on’s (his home was ransacked), Hank is becoming paranoid and by the end of the episode, he arms himself and sleeps in a chair with a shotgun.  I guarantee that after all this, Hank’s character will play a significant role in season 2. He is super-sensitive after all, but will this prove to be a problem for Nick? I mean, Nick still uses Monroe for help and I am wondering if this will cause a problem. I am sure that Hank and Monroe will run into each other again. For better or for worse.

Nick. Grimm. Badass.

As Nick get deeper into his role as a Grimm, a mysterious woman appears, dressed in black; she, predictably, is another Grimm. While Nick and Hank were checking out a picture of Akira Kimura (Brian Tee), Hank noticed the tattoo on the side of Kimura’s head. Nick was able to tell him exactly what it was. Sad thing about this is when Nick found that Kimura used a private detective to follow him and his entourage around town–including Captain Renard–Kimura went after them all one-by-one and eventually, wound up dead. Why? This dude would have been an additional bad-ass to the show. I believe that Tee’s role could have been spread at least into another episode; what a waste.

Kimura’s tie in to episode thirteen, Three Coins in a Fuchsbau, was significant–he was one of the four who may have been involved in the death of Nick’s parents. Towards the end of the season, in the last four episodes, we learned more about what may have happened to his parents. Come to find out, his mother (Mary E. Mastrantonio) isn’t dead–she was the ass kicking woman in black. She came in just at the right time to sink a knife into Kimura’s chest.

Other than Nick rapidly improving on his Grimm skills–he finally told Juliette (Bitsie Tulloch) just who he is. She didn’t take it very well.

Juliette is our Sleeping Beauty.

With Adalind’s (Claire Coffee) surprise return in this episode, came with a grimm purpose–to bring harm to anyone Nick cares about. That meant drugging a poor defenseless feline and bringing the “sick” pet to the vets to harm the thing Nick cares for the most, the beautiful Juliette. Juliette takes the poor cat in and after it scratched her, she slowly fell ill.

This was right about the time Nick disclosed to her who he is and what he could do with Juliette growing ever concerned about his mental health. Nick thought it was a good idea to bring her to Monroe so he could ‘prove’ to her that he wasn’t losing his mind. She passed out just before she could see anything. Now, she rests up in the hospital, and just when we thought she was going to no longer be part of season two, she wakes–but her eyes glaze over in black. A parting gift from Adalind?

When there’s a cure, Rosalee is the way to go.

Who better to find out what ails Juliette than Rosalee (Bree Turner)? Nick and Monroe pick up the cat at the vets and brings it over to see if Rosalee can find out what Adalind did to the cat–who didn’t like being in that cage, or near Monroe, not one bit. Then the episode ends. Yeah other things happened in-between–like Captain Renard suffering a beat down;  Kimura’s trail led him to Renard’s home where he killed his maid and brutally interrogates him about the whereabouts of the golden coins.

Of course Nick has them, which probably be covered somewhere in the next episode. However, the finale left us with even more questions unanswered. What annoyed me more than anything about last night’s episode was its pacing–the show went too damn fast! Its like, “Yeah, we have a lot of unanswered shit from the season so let’s try to wrap it all up into one episode,” when there was all season to do so. Clumsy.

Too much time was spent on the revealing of Nick’s missing parents and the attempt to wrap up the season by pouring his heart out to Juliette when so much between Hank, Captain Renard, and Sgt. Wu went neglected. There is absolutely too much information disclosed throughout the season, for the half-assed reveal in this finale. This absolutely has to stop. Had the pacing for the show–each momentous event remedied within the same episode; or in a following episode–the finale would have been the icing on the cake.

What was left of this episode are more unanswered questions. Looking forward to season two!

ps. Monroe (Silas Weir Mitchell), Nick (David Giuntoli)–the immediate supporting cast Reggie Lee, Sasha Roiz, including Bitsie Tulloch, Claire Coffee, and Bree Turner are solid gold characters! Keep them!

Here’s a NBC video on my favorite character of the season–Monroe!

Source: NBC Grimm