Grimm: 3x11 “The Good Soldier”

“Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, 

hand for hand, foot for foot”

Monroe: "Life is the scale upon which is measured the depth of a man's soul." 

Well, there are great episodes, there are good episodes, there are so-so episodes, and then there is that.

What a total boring disappointment it was! This review might not only be very late, but also brief (maybe).

It actually started out quite well. The appearance of Fringe’s Kirk Acevedo in the opening scene was promising, only few minutes later he turned out to be the total jerk and got killed off before the opening credits. And then it went down hill pretty quickly.

The story of rape and abuse in the army has been done before. Those things are awful and horrible and they do happen, but what was the purpose of it in this episode? Yes those are the stories that must be told, but they have to be told properly. Here we had Nick and Hank chasing down the killer and being late every single time, meanwhile the main crime that happened four years ago has taken a back seat. Yes it was meant to be central, but they didn’t pull it off.  Instead we had a bad case of Law & Order SVU with Manticore.

Even Monroe and Rosalee were no fun this week. Trip to Rosalee’s mother was boring and family dinner was as awkward as could be expected when family members haven’t seen each other for a long time. The impact of the family reunion would have been much stronger if they didn’t just introduced the two characters from Rosalee’s past and expected us to care. Well, I didn’t.

We spent about five minutes in Vienna, only to observe Adalind’s new telekinesis power as well as some pretty explosive tricks. Then we had Meisner report back to Sean describing what he has just seen. It was repeated for us, in case we didn’t get what was going on. That is lazy writing to have something happen to one character and to be repeated by another. Anyway, Sean thinks it’s because Adalind is getting her powers back. I got the impression it was the baby who was playing. I might be wrong though.

Juliette was on a “trailer research’ duty this week. It could have easily been done by Hank or Nick. But I guess they had to find away to include her in the episode. That is lazy writing again.

Why, oh, why do we have episodes like this one? There was zero character development (except for Rosalee, sort of), there was no moving forward in the main arc. We still know almost zero about Royal Families, Sean has been seriously underused. What happened with Victor? There are so many things that they could do. I understand that Nick is a cop Grimm, and this is a supernatural procedural drama, but nobody said those have to be so unexcited. Grimm can be much better, we all know that.

Some observations  

Rosalle’s mom turned out to be quite a nice lady. I almost expected a monster.

Fun moment when Rosalee’s sister managed to sneak up on Blutbad. We rarely see Monroe caught off guard.

Rosalee’s past keeps peeling off, and what a big onion it is. Last week there were drugs, now prison. What next?

All those years ago Rosalee shoplifted a watch and now she is dating Monroe. It’s a love story written in the stars.

All my observations are about Rosalee. No, no! Wait for it: I caught the number of the episode: Francesca lived at 311 Oak Grove Avenue.

Memorable Quotes:

Monroe: “You and your mom and your sister... You share a history... Of love and pain, and... and that's just family. There are no easy solutions.”

Wu: “The closest match is scorpion venom. Obviously, we're not talking a real scorpion 'cause it would have to be 6 feet tall.”

Sol’s rating: No excuse. 1 out of 5.