Grimm Season 5 Episode 6 Review: Wesen Nacht
Kathleen Wiedel
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Um, yeah, so, that happened. I confess, I did not see that one coming. And by "that one" I mean the sudden apparent resurrection of Juliette. Wow.
Grimm Season 5 Episode 6 was quite a strong entry, especially as a lead-in to the winter break. It featured the first public signs of the Occultatem Libera Wesen uprising with a night of vandalism targeting Wesen shops, with one storekeep murdered and another kidnapped.
The great thing was that the Case of the Week actually directly dealt with the long-term story arc, so there was no feeling of disconnect, as happened with Grimm Season 5 Episode 5.
The title of the episode, "Wesen Nacht," is almost certainly a reference to Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, which was a notorious coordinated attack on Jewish-owned businesses throughout the Germany on the night of November 9, 1938.
Even the black shirt "uniforms" of the Occultatem Libera seem designed to evoke the Brown Shirts (Stumabteilung), who were the Nazi paramilitary group responsible for Kristallnacht. Just this side of heavy-handed, to the point that I was snickering when Nick and Hank confronted Billie with the black shirt.
Nick: We found this black shirt in your residence!
Billie: Uh... yeah? What does that prove, anyway?
Hank: ...ya know, she's got a point, Nick.
Nick: But it's a black shirt!
Hank: Dude, everyone's got a black shirt. You've got a black shirt!
Nick: Drat. I guess we'll have to let her go.
Billie: But wait! I need to lead you to our Evil Lair (TM)!
Okay, fine. The confrontation actually went completely differently:
Nick: I know you're Wesen, and I know your friends are Wesen.
Billie: So I guess you're Wesen, too, right? You think that makes us family?
Hank: No.
Billie: Well, I don't either. You're a cop!
Hank: I'm a cop. [points a Nick] *He's* a Grimm.
Given that the whole thing was a setup, I wonder if, at any point, Billie realized just how much trouble she was actually in with this group. Maybe she was just feeling over-confident with their strength in numbers?
For the viewers, the fact that it was a trap became totally obvious as soon as Xavier didn't tell Nick the kidnappers were targeting Monroe (presumably because they saw Monroe as a threat, though why haven't they targeted Renard?).
Still, wasn't it awesome when Rosalee figured it out and totally smacked him (twice!), then did the smart thing and called Monroe? It's sometimes altogether too easy to forget that foxes are predators, too, and Rosalee has an iron fist of doom hidden in a velvet glove.
This leads us to the return of Bitsie Tulloch. I have to hand it to the cast and crew, though: in the age of Twitter and all that, they managed really, really well to keep that a secret! So, kudos to them on that count.
I'll be the first to admit that I wasn't satisfied with the way Juliette's story line turned out during Grimm Season 4, but this development came as a huge surprise for me. Did Hadrian's Wall (yay, finally a name for them!) fake her death?
Something worth noting is that Trubel revealed to Adalind that she went back to Nick's house specifically for Juliette. Given Trubel's affection for Juliette, it doesn't seem all that outlandish that she would fake kill her over really killing her, especially if Hadrian's Wall had a way to mentally stabilize Juliette.
I do offer a note of caution, however, that the writers better be careful about making death cheap. While comic books are notorious for characters never being truly dead, that sort of thing tends to annoy television audiences (except for soap operas, I guess). When death becomes cheap, the stakes tend to feel a little meaningless.
I hope that Bitsie Tulloch and the Grimm team pull off an interesting twist here, rather than leaving us utterly disappointed, as they did with her Hexenbiest-ification leading to her one-note villain deterioration last season.
There weren't an overabundance of memorable Grimm quotes, but there were a few, like this amusing exchange as Team Grimm was barricaded in the factory while the Occultatem Libera was trying to kill them:
Nick: I though Xavier was your friend!
Monroe: He was!
Renard: They got to him.
Wu: Well, now they're getting to *us*!
Really, it was the look on Wu's face that sold it.
A few final thoughts before I turn the discussion over to you:
- Renard actually decided to give his endorsement to Andrew the Mayoral Candidate. I am about 99.98% certain this will come back to bite him somehow in a future episode.
- Also, apparently Renard's been in law enforcement for 20 years. This little tidbit is a reminder that we really don't know a whole lot about his past, beyond the fact that he and his mother had to flee Europe.
- Hey, more Renard! When he woged to threaten Billie, he went full woge, because it startled the stuffing out of Wu, too. Billie better hope that Juliette slaughtered her with everyone else, because Renard does not like being played...
- Dallas Cruz: Occultatem Libera supreme ubermensch...killed in his first appearance. Yep. The only way he would've been owned faster is if Meisner showed up, too.
- Trubel asked Adalind about the complicated status of Adalind's relationship with Nick. Well, they're not sleeping together, just next to each other. Trubel's deadpan response? "Uh-huh."
- Hadrian's Wall marked the northern limit of the Roman Empire in Britain, essentially defending the "civilized" Empire from the "barbarians" to the north. (Parts of it still stand today and are tourist attractions.)
So, what did you think? Did you find the episode exciting? What do you think Rosalee's going to do with Xavier? Were you surprised to see Juliette again? Let us know in the comments section below!
That's all for 2015, folks! If you missed this episode or just want to relive the Wesen shenanigans, be sure to watch Grimm online! Grimm returns with Season 5 Episode 7 on January 22, 2016. Catch y'all then!
