'Grimm' recap: 'Natural Born Wesen'

Courtesy NBC
BY MELISSA HARKNESS

Opening Quote: "So the animals debated how they might drive the robbers out, and at last settled on an idea."

How are you liking Grimm so far? Lets see if Nick survives his purification potion. And I pray to the Brothers Grimm that the love triangle is over.

So we rejoin the gang right where last episode left off.


Juliette is freaking out over Nick, who is lying on the floor turning a lovely shade of fuchsia. Monroe tries to calm Juliette and keep her from calling 911. I find this exchange a little odd, Juliette has not been exhibiting even an iota of brain activity prior to this episode of lucidity. And when Monroe brings up Adalind's cat, she goes ballistic. Seriously, one of her best moments.

"If anybody else tries to blame all of this on the cat, my head is going to explode!"

Monroe tries to put it into terms she, being a learned veterinarian, might understand; namely chemicals and pheromones. Suddenly, Nick wakes up and seems pretty out of it. At this point Rosalee quickly leads Juliette and Renard away with a "There's one more thing you have to do."

Monroe echoes that as he grabs Nick and leads him in the opposite direction. We are next met with Monroe performing a little bloodletting on Nick and dripping the blood into a little vial. He thinks it's best if the others don't know about this part. Rosalee calls out to see if Monroe has that "last ingredient" and they rejoin the others. Monroe and Rosalee are such a sweet little team. He palms the vial of blood to her and Rosalee declares it just a flavoring agent to "cut the bitterness." Snort.

Juliette and Renard drink their medicine down and Rosalee says they just have to wait and see. At this point, Juliette has had enough and takes herself home, alone! "I think the alone, was a step in the right direction," Monroe helpfully blurts out. When Juliette walks into the house, she almost falls into the huge pit that now makes up her living room. Oh, and she can't get the front door to open now. And to top things off, the stairs that should go to the upstairs, are now one never ending staircase going upwards.

On another front, Monroe is innocently trying to make a deposit at the bank, when it gets robbed. As the bank robbers maraud through the bank, they are clearly Wesen, hence the title of this episode.

Nick and Hank are sitting in a diner. Nick is explaining to Hank what the Key is. There are seven Keys, they make a map to find something hidden in the 12th Century. Where's Nicolas Cage when you need him? Get it? Nick, Nicolas ... I'll be here next week, too.

They have to cut this fun short, to go to the bank robbery, where the teller is going on and on about the masks the robbers were wearing. Of course, they soon spot Monroe, who fills them in on the not-a-mask wearing criminals. He tells them how they broke the Code of Swabia, or the Gesetzbuch Ehrenkodex, by showing their true faces. It's important, there was a big meeting about 400 years ago and everything. To sum up, Wesen are not allowed to let humans see their real faces; it leads to things like the Salem Witch Trials and stuff like that. Monroe is highly agitated by all this and he's going to go ask around. He is also highly offended that two of the perps were blutbad.

Meanwhile, poor Juliette just can't catch a break. Her phone rings, which I guess is the first time she has realized she has one. Anyway, the poor girl fumbles it out of her pocket and drops it directly into the pit. I hope it wasn't an expensive one.

Back at the precinct, Renard calls Nick into his office. They have a little macho conversation about Juliette and then get down to business. Renard explains to our Grimm that he has protected him and they need to work together. Aww! He trusts Nick more than he trusts his family. That's not really saying much, though, is it?

So, Monroe is staking out a bar called The Junkyard Dog. He is sure someone inside will know who is behind the robberies. He waits for Hank and Nick to get there and then goes inside alone. Unfortunately, it's a Wesen bar. No humans allowed. Ha! Sounds like the music playing is German Death Metal. Monroe compliments the ambiance. Yeah, Monroe doesn't really fit in. He inadvertently asks one of the bank robbers himself. This leads to an assault of course. Poor Monroe. A good old fashioned bar fight ensues. The bank robber chick, Krystal, claims that Monroe started it, "He grabbed my ass!." Lacking any evidence, they can't arrest them. Back at The Spice Shop, Monroe tries to convince Nick that he needs to just be a Grimm and take care of this situation. But Nick wants to try to do it the right way first. As Nick and Hank take off, Rosalee asks Monroe why he didn't tell them about the Wesen Council.

Back at the bank robbers' den, Gus, the skalengeck, tries to get the two blutbad, Cole and Krystal, to plan the next heist. Unfortunately for him, they are too busy groping each other to notice. They go to bed to rest up for the big day tomorrow. Gus is digusted, probably on many levels.

Juliette has spent all this time still trapped against her front door. She suddenly hears her phone ringing. Looking up, she mutters "Screw it" and walk to the edge of the pit. Like magic, the floor knits itself back together under her feet until she reaches her phone in the middle of the living room. she answers the phone and looks around, the pit is gone and she tearfully thanks Nick for calling. Aww.

Our ne'er-do-well's are hitting another bank. This one doesn't go so well. Cole shoots a security guard and an innocent bystander as they are running away. This will up the ante nicely.

Nick wakes to Monroe making breakfast, quinoa blueberry pancakes with spinach basil walnut purée maple syrup. Yummy! Nick decides to pass. While he waits for his French Press coffee, Monroe tells Nick about the Wesen Council. It's apparently a council of justice for Wesen. They tend to use the penalty of death a lot. Nick gets a call, it's the bank robbery of course, and he bolts out the door.

Monroe gets to Rosalee's only to find the shop filled with panicked Wesen screaming for her to call the Council. Monroe looks a little astonished. She manages to calm the panicked townsfolk and sends them away. She calls Monroe to the back and pulls out a big trunk. Apparently, her family has had an uneasy relationship with the Council and with her brother dead, she's the only one who knows how to call them in. She pulls some papers out of the trunk, and finds a phone number of his contact. She makes the call and wakes up an old man in Amsterdam. He takes her information.

Uh oh, there's trouble in the ranks. Gus has had enough of the Cole and Krystal's level of crazy. They don't care that the cops are looking everywhere for them, they want to rob another bank tomorrow. Gus says he's taking his share and leaving. At this point, Cole attacks him, but Krystal pulls him off Gus. After screaming at Cole for a second, she then rips out poor Gus's throat herself. These people are annoying. I'm ready for them to die already. Oh, yay! Nick and Hank have finally figured out where Gus lives and get there to find his corpse. So, the boys head off to the factory after the other two. Only Cole hears them and a quite impressive firefight rages for a bit. But ultimately, they get the two annoying criminals. But as they are leading them into the precinct under the watchful eyes of a lot of news cameras, the two morons are shot. Ah, the Council hired a local hitman and the matter has been successfully resolved. I'm grateful to them.

If only Juliette's issues had been so easy. Her phone rings in the middle of the night. But when she answers it there is nothing there, only little flashes of lightning on the screen. She looks over the side of the bed and she is once again surrounded by the pit where more lightning scurries around. As she sits there terrified she hears a sound, which slowly clarifies into a voice saying "I just want you to know the truth".

Aww, looks like Juliette might finally get her memory back. What do you think?

The next episode of Grimm, "Mr. Sandman" airs Friday, March 22 at 9 p.m. ET on NBC.