‘Grimm’ Review: “Synchronicity”

Tonight's episode of 'Grimm,' "Synchronicity," finally brings Adalind back to Portland and she drags Nick's mom along with her. Might Adalind's plot thread finally converge with Nick's detective work, and maybe the whole Royal thing will come into focus? Here's hoping.

The episode opens with the quote "In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order." Hank tells Nick that he's going into a risky situation by being the best man at Monroe's wedding, so they try to find out how he gives away his Grimm-ness. In Switzerland Adalind waits with Meisner for their resistance contact. She's told the contact is the best. Meisner investigates the area and gets in a fight with two men, while two other people pull guns on Adalind. She's told to get in a van, but the driver is dead, and shortly thereafter, so are the people trying to kidnap her. It turns out they were killed by Nick's Mom (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio), aka Kelly Burkhardt.

Kelly takes Adalind to the plane, but Adalind is wary of Nick's mom. Adalind leaves, but not before expressing her gratitude to Meisner for keeping her alive. Compassion from Adalind? That's new. Back in Portland, Sean is informed of the mission's success. Adalind and Kelly talk briefly on the plane, but Kelly wants to keep her distance. Kelly talks to the pilot and tells them their mission is compromised, and that they shouldn't go to South America. But where will they go? Hrm. Monroe and Rosalee are in the midst of wedding planning when Nick shows up and tells them he can't be their best man. They tell him that when wesens woge they can see their wesen selves in his eyes, and it's disturbing, but they come up with a solution: He should wear sunglasses. It works.

Adalind's baby reacts poorly to the cabin pressure, but Kelly offers advise that works, which leads Kelly to open up a little bit about having kids. Juliette questions the sunglasses routine when laundry leads Nick to find their wedding ring. She says they should worry about one wedding at a time. After the failure to capture Adalind, Viktor dispatches the underling who messes up and assigns a new man to the job of finding the baby. Kelly starts being nice to Adalind, and says she'll watch the baby while she sleeps. Kelly waves a necklace in front of the baby, which makes the baby's eyes glow purple.

On the plane, Kelly flashes back to the night she sent Nick off with Aunt Marie. She's then told the plane will land soon. A man in a truck (with Oregon license plates) sees Adalind in the middle of a field, but he offers no help so Kelly knocks him out. Juliette looks at wedding dresses, and sizes one up when Rosalee comes out in her grandmother's wedding dress. Rosalee freaks out a little about the wedding, but she's mostly happy. Kelly and Adalind head to Portland, which makes Adalind think Kelly knows Sean Renard. She doesn't. Viktor gets information about the plane, and Viktor thinks Adalind might have wanted to go home. Nick is upstairs looking at the wedding ring when he heads downstairs, ready to propose again when his mom shows up with Adalind. When Adalind finally reveals herself Juliette tries to bum rush her while Adalind says "Oh, my god." An understandable sentiment.

Adalind thinks Nick will kill her, which Kelly denies, but it all leads to yelling until Nick's mom reveals that the baby is more important than anything, while both Nick and Juliette air their grievances with Adalind. The yelling upsets the baby, and Juliette offers to at least help the baby. The leads to one of the best exchanges of the show as Nick reminds his mom that she killed Adalind's mom. Kelly's response is priceless: "Oh, yeah, I forgot about that." Juliette finds out that the baby doesn't have a name yet, while Nick and his mom play catch up about what's going on/what's happened since they last saw each other. Because Nick took Adalind's powers and because Adalind went through getting her powers restored while pregnant, the baby is (basically) the chosen one. Juliette uses Jung to explain why this might be fate, while Kelly wants the kid raised normally. Adalind runs away and leaves the baby, but the baby is so powerful it teleports to be with her mom (or maybe it was a decoy, don't know). Adalind takes off in the truck.

Nick and his mom go after Adalind while they reveal more backstory about Renard. Adalind does show up at Sean's with the baby and tells Renard about Kelly being Nick's mom. Kelly wants to take the baby, and doesn't care if it means killing Sean. She and Nick argue, but she lets Nick go up first to see if he can make the situation better. Meanwhile, Sean holds his possible daughter for the first time.

Well, we've still got a number of episodes left in the season, but it was nice to see the show abandon the monster of the week plotting to just get into the mythology. I'm sure we'll get at least a monster episode before the season finale, but right now it's good to finally have Adalind back in Portland. It feels like we've been building to that all season, though it would be odd if we're asked to have sympathy for her, baby or no baby.

This was mostly a "let's get this over with" episode, as much of what happened was about finally putting the pieces into place, and characters finding out things that were obvious to the audience who've been watching the show. But this overwhelming amount of people finding out stuff and exposition because pretty funny after a while. The show was in on the joke, too which worked. But it also brought up the Nick's key and pointed out how some plot threads have just sort of floated away. Perhaps the key thing will come back. Perhaps Nick killing a regular person and being a sort of zombie will come back, but perhaps not. Though the episode didn't offer a "to be continued," this was very much set up for next week, and possibly for the last couple episodes of this third season. That's fine, sometimes that's what a television show needs to do.