This review contains spoilers.
2.1 Bad Teeth
Unlike its predecessor Buffy, which topped off an uneven first season with a cracker of a finale in Prophecy Girl, NBC’s Grimm failed to end season one with much of a bang.
As finales go, Woman In Black was one long cliff-hanger, which, just when you thought the cliff edge had run out of space, flung Burkhardt’s recently un-dead mother over to dangle alongside Juliette’s magical coma, Hank’s fast-disappearing sanity, the enigmatic true identity of Captain Renard, and that Japanese Wesen with a yen for the one true coins.
Bad Teeth picked up where Woman In Black left off, or to be more precise, an hour or so beforehand with a business-as-usual pre-credits sequence featuring a toothy monster, bloody death, and entrails (never a great show to watch with your evening meal, this one).
The Mauvais Dents sabre-toothed dude had spent his shipping container journey from Le Havre to Portland snacking on illegal immigrants and daubing poetry over the walls in their blood (that’s Europeans for you). His mission? To hunt himself un beau Grimm, something that by the end of the episode, he was well on his way to achieving.
Did anyone else utter a bad word when the “To Be Continued…” title flashed up on screen at the end? After pulling the same trick at the close of the last season, Grimm’s writers may well be testing their audience’s patience with the delayed gratification thing. On the shopping list for next week’s episode: a bit of resolution please (oh, and if they someone could just FedEx those coins to Mount Doom or wherever it was they were forged and have that be the end of it, I’d be mighty grateful).
Bringing Burkhardt’s mum back from the dead (not literally, though considering the debt Grimm owes to David Greenwalt’s previous work on Buffy and Angel, that move wouldn’t come as much surprise) is cause for celebration, if only because it means the world’s slowest reader gets the abridged audio book version of his supernatural legacy. In just a couple of lines from Kelly Burkhardt (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio), we learnt more about Grimms than Nick had discovered throughout the entire last season.
We now know that though Grimm-ness is a power passed down the family line, not everyone inherits it, and that Nick’s grandfather, great-grandmother, aunt, mother, and presumably father were all card-carrying members of the Grimm brigade, descended from crusading knights. We’re still in the dark about much of the rest of the mythology, including the tantalising question of how many other active Grimms are around, and what is the powerful world-controlling doohickey that the seven keys will lead them to, but that’s plenty to be going on with for the time being.
What the mother/son scenes had in exposition though, they made up for in lack of chemistry. As much as Giuntoli improved during Grimm’s first season, he’s still not much of a leading man, and even less of a comedian. Nick’s mum’s dewy-eyed fondness for Wesen castration, and her hey presto act with the apothecary chest’s secret panel were comedy swings and misses that, in other hands (Silas Weir Mitchell’s for instance), would have worked a treat.
Speaking of Monroe, Bad Teeth could have done with a lot more of him, though his relegation to Magic Box Scooby for the instalment is understandable in an episode with so many Nick-related threads. The dynamic between Nick’s Wesen-prejudiced ma and his two Wesen sidekicks was the episode at its liveliest, and hopefully something that’ll be revisited in coming weeks.
Thanks to Rosalee and her magic chemistry set, it seems as if Juliette’s soon to be awoken (something of a shame really, as being tucked up in that hospital bed is one of the better uses the writers have found for the character), that is, if Adalind’s Hexenmilf doesn’t get there first. Any guesses as to what may be the unusual application method for the wakey-wakey potion? Licked on by beaver people gets my vote.
In its comatose state, Juliette’s brain is doing what neurosurgeons refer to in technical circles as a Back To The Future, i.e. wiping out her memories of not-fiancé Nick, conveniently starting with that iffy dinner party with Monroe during which she swallowed more bullshit than a Bush Tucker Trial contestant. Let's just hope the amnesia isn't used as a convenient reset to put Nick's paramour back in the dark about his magical inheritance.
What else? Oh, the new castle-dwelling English baddie seems a promising addition. Every supernatural series needs a sadistic toff and Grimm’s just taken delivery of its very own. The more fey multi-lingual baddies a show has the better, I say.
Overall, Bad Teeth was a confident return for Grimm, even if it left us with more questions than answers. Can Nick really trust his mother? Did she spend the last eighteen years in Kevin Costner’s tree house? Will Juliette be changed by her coma? Will Hank get more than a line next week? And most importantly, who was the mysterious fatal sandwich giver, and will they strike again?
Read our catch-up on season one of Grimm, here.
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