‘Grimm’ Review: “PTZD”

After last week's season opener, we're hoping that 'Grimm' wraps up some of the hanging threadlines. Right now Nick's a superpowered zombie, but hopefully his friends can cure him in this episode, because it's a plot point that can only be stretched so thin.

The episode opens with the quote "It's not more surprising to be born twice than once; everything in nature is resurrection." The episode then opens with Nick running around the forest being chased by Monroe and Hank. Nick sees people going into a house and runs up to it as the owners fumble with their keys. They get in but then Nick starts to break in the house. Uh oh.

Nick chases the family around the house as the father says he has a gun. They barricade themselves into a room as Nick tries to break in. Monroe and Hank find the house as Nick breaks in the room, and then the three wrestle and fight. Nick has super strength and when Hank tries to throw a statue at him, Nick's super-hearing allows him to catch it. Oh, and the gun is loose. Hank and Monroe try to get Nick out of the house, but Nick catches up with them, so they head into a barn and up into its hayloft. Monroe finds a loose board, and when Nick pursues them Nick and Monroe use the board as a trap to make him fall into something of a prison. Rosalee, Juliette and Sean Renard show up outside, and then so does the homeowner, who wants to shoot Nick, but Hank talks him down, and Renard gives the man a fake name. Vack int eh barn, the men prepare to battle Nick, and Monroe and Sean Wesen out.

Nick breaks out of his prison, and fights the three. Nick puts up a great fight, but then Juliette and Rosalee inject him. It takes a minute, but then he passes out. The group takes him back to the shop as cops show up. Back in Europe, Adalind is to sow flowers into the body of the witch, while back in the shop they give Nick a second dose, and Sean decides to go back to the precinct. Everyone's upset at Sean's brother. Nick starts moving around, so Hank handcuffs him. Back at the office, Sean finds out his brother was killed in a car explosion.

Juliette hovers over Nick while Rosalee patches up Monroe. They theorize about what the Royals want with a Grimm. Nick wakes up and has no idea what's going on. See the wounds, he asks if everyone was in an accident. Nick blanks out about his time as a zombie. Juliette explains what happened. In Europe, a man gets a call from Sean about family (wink wink) as Wu informs Sean that one of the guys in Nick's bar fight died, which makes it murder. Whoa. But there's no evidence that it was Nick as Sean stole the surveillance footage. Thank god no one in the bar had a modern cell phone, I guess. Sean looks at the footage and then locks it away. But back at the shop they try to comfort Nick about his acts of violence, without knowing that he killed someone, and the irony is laid on thick. Juliette invites Nick back to their house, and so they head home. Nick tries to have sex with Juliette but she's a little worried there might be some monster left in him. Back at the precinct, Hank finds out about the dead person and Sean tell Hank that he plans to protect Nick.

Nick sleeps and Juliette is woken up by her phone. Hank tells her to meet him at the spice shop. There Monroe, Rosalee, Sean and Hank argue about what to do as they tell Juliette about the death, and Sean explains that they've ID'd the perp as Thomas Schirach (Nick's fake passport name). Sean lies about the surveillance footage, as everyone agrees to protect Nick. In bed, Nick turns blue-ish/white. Hank goes to talk to the cops investigating, and one of them is played by Jay 'Dutch Wagenbach' Karnes from 'The Shield!' He finds out that the bar had security camera, and then he confronts Sean about it. Karnes them comes in to get the names of the women with him at the time of the incident. Juliette is in bed when she touches Nick and finds him looking extra pale so she slaps him, but he doesn't wake up.

She pounds on him, and starts to call 911 when he wakes up and his color returns. Nick says he feels fine, though Juliette says he looked dead, but then the two go back to bed. Adalind is awoken to "reap what she's sown." The dead witch is cut open and Adalind has to scoop out the insides. Adalind then gets naked and smears the stuff all over her stomach. It creates a skull shape then absorbs into her. Back at the spice shop, Monroe and Rosalee flirt when the detectives show up to talk to her. She gives her stock responses, and then calls Juliette. Just then the detectives show up at Nick and Juliette's place, and they tell Nick about the death. As Nick listens he turns white and breaks his coffee cup. The detectives leave and Nick freaks out about the death. Nick goes to the station and so Juliette calls Hank. When Nick shows up Hank comes to stop him. He explains about all the abuse he and Nick's friends took in trying to protect him. But that doesn't stop him. Sean gets a call from his mother who is happy that his brother Eric is dead. Nick comes into Sean's office. Sean shows Nick the surveillance footage, and shows him that the man he killed pulled a knife on him. Sean then tells Nick that if he turns himself in Eric and his friends will get what they want. And when he sees the detectives, Nick decides to go back to work.

Okay, so Nick is mostly back to normal, maybe only part-zombie, and now the show can continue to build a new overarching story for the third season (with some seeds possibly planted already). Look, as long as the Nick as zombie stuff didn't stretch out all season (like Juliette's amnesia last season, something we'd rather forget about), then all the better, and now there's a weight on him for killing someone, and things could get interesting.

Perhaps it's just the nature of serialized television: your lead can only be in so much danger, and it's best to stretch that out over an episode, maybe two. What amde this episode work is that it showed what the show's been building to, which is that there are five other people in Nick's life who can help him/partner with him/work with him on the Grimm side of things, and the possible combinations of that group is what could made the third season the best yet.

But right now, the show has had its palette cleansed, and what made that work best was (at least for me) the appearance of Jay Karnes. Sorry, I just love 'The Shield' and his character on that show, and it's been too long since I've seen him play a detective (though the imdb tells me that he was on 'CSI' as Dutch... hrm). Hopefully Karnes gets to make more appearances, though somehow I doubt it, unless this case becomes a runner. That doesn't seem to offer great dramatic possibilities, but more Dutch is good Dutch. All in all, it was a good episode, but we'll be happy to see a monster of the week shortly.