Grimm Season 6 Episode 1 Review: Fugitive
Kathleen Wiedel
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Hello, fellow Grimmsters, and welcome to the sixth and final season of Grimm, abbreviated though it may be.
Grimm Season 6 Episode 1 picked up right where the last season left off before leading us on an admittedly enjoyable thrill ride as Nick evaded capture by Renard.
Oh, and there was some weird stuff involving the magic stick, its cloth, and a dead Wesen? Yeah.
There was barely a chance to take a breath at all during this episode, and the mostly tight story kept the tension properly ramped up for the situation.
And what a crazy situation it was! I am honestly disappointed that Renard didn't take advantage of the perfect opportunity to redeem himself from last season. Here, he dove right off the deep end and well past the moral event horizon.
He can't possibly expect that blaming Nick for all the dead people would ever hold up in the long term (especially since, you know, he didn't actually kill most of them).
The only way Renard managed through the episode was keeping all his pieces moving so fast that they didn't have time to stop and think.
Sgt. Franco served as a voice of reason (and a gruesome voice of Renard's conscience?), but the manhunt for Nick certainly kept up the pace for the whole forty-plus minutes, which really worked in the episode's favor.
Claire Coffee, despite Adalind having been demoted to Damsel in Distress, gave a good performance; knowing that one's beautiful young daughter was an utterly remorseless killer would definitely be stressful.
And Sasha Roiz capably demonstrated Renard's downward spiral as the captain attempted to salvage the situation for himself. This despite what I feel to be the complete Flanderization of his character over the past two seasons.
As if to show how far he's fallen, Renard has gone from being genuinely complex and frightening in earlier seasons to delivering generic bad guy threats like this:
You should never have fallen in love with Burkhardt. Now you’re gonna regret it.
Renard [to Adalind]
Uh, what? Really? That's the best you can do, scriptwriters? At least Sasha Roiz was able to make it seem like Renard was about two inches from just woging out on everyone right there in the middle of the precinct.
The discovery of Rachel Woods's body (and Renard's numerous fingerprints) may be the breath of wind to knock down his house of cards. That, and whatever spanner in the works Nick will be.
My favorite exchange of the episode came courtesy of the good Sergeant Wu, one of my favorite supporting characters since the first season:
Wu: Ummm… that looks like you were shot.
Monroe: More than once!
Wu: ...You’re not a ghost, are you?
Nick [hesitates]: I don't think so...
It's definitely worth a good (blackly humorous) chuckle when you can actually have "ghost" as a legitimate option on the table!
Monroe and Rosalee were adorable and awesome together, and we get a glimpse of Monroe as a literal Papa Wolf when he stood between Rosalee and the over-enthusiastic SERT guys.
And I absolutely loved it when Rosalee simply chopped the hand off the dead Black Claw Wesen who was giving Eve that bad reaction. Talk about cutting the Gordian knot! Though it was awfully convenient she just happened to know what was going on and have a book on it right there...
I'm cautiously curious to see what will happen with Eve, a little less hopeful that anything will be salvaged from Renard's character other than Sasha Roiz.
A few final thoughts before I turn the discussion over to you, fellow Grimm fans:
- It's probably a nice thing for Nick that he made so many friends among the Wesen community by being the Good Grimm.
- There was no time skip between last season and this one, so it's still 2016 on Grimm.
- On a related note, Renard may have been elected mayor, but he hasn't been sworn in yet, so he's still just a police captain, technically speaking.
- Still sad over the death of Meisner. That guy was super awesome.
- Check out our Grimm quotes page for some of the great lines from this episode.
- Vocabulary term of the day – Flanderization, when one takes one often minor action or trait of a character and over time blowing it out of proportion, often to the point of total caricature.
If you missed this episode, never fear! You can watch Grimm online to catch up. Be sure to tune in Friday, January 13, 2017 for Grimm Season 6 Episode 2, "Trust Me Knot," as the final season continues!
What did you think of "Manhunt"? Did you find it an exciting thrill ride?
