Friday, October 5, 2012

'Grimm' Review - 2.06 Over My Dead Body

        On the newest episode of NBC's Grimm, Angelina (Jaime Ray Newman) comes back to town with bad tidings as Monroe learns his continued cooperation with Nick may come at a high cost; Nick has Hank help keep Monroe sage; Hank urges Monroe to tell him more about the "Wesen world"; and an old European acquaintance (Alice Evans) pays Captain Renard a visit.

        After a more lackluster return to Friday nights last week, this episode was a much better return to form in the kinds of story the show has been producing for the second season so far.
        But in order for this episode's story to be successful, the writers took a huge risk by having Jaime Ray Newman's Angelina returning and expecting the audience to remember what happened the last time she appeared. She first popped in an early season one episode. I will openly admit that I don't really remember the specifics of that episode other than she and Monroe have some kind of past and they had insane chemistry. But other than that one episode she has never really been mentioned again on the series. The show became much better at incorporating its recurring elements near the end of the first season but they are trying to make you believe that were doing it all along. That aspect of things didn't quite resonant in this hour but once the story really started to kick in it became less and less important.
        As soon as the show stopped asking its characters "Do you remember Angelina?", the action was able to kick in and the episode became much more engaging to watch. Some people have enjoyed seeing Nick's progression to a Grimm who fights the various creatures and those fans should be happy since the episode had a great sequence with him facing off against the main snake-like Wesen. The last third of the episode as well as some great Monroe lines were able to make this episode an improvement over last week and excite me for the series moving forward.
        Captain Renard has always been this powerful and prominent figure to the overall mythology of the series. But the main flaw with him is that the show is always making him out to be super mysterious all the time. So in each character we get a little bit of information but the majority of his arcs are just teasing his overall presence in the world but the show never has really effectively answered those questions without adding even more intrigue on top of it. He and the Alice Evans played off of each other well but there was just a piece of backstory missing from their dynamic to truly make it stand out in this episode.


So what did everyone think of the episode? How much of Angelina did you remember? Did you wish that there was more explanation with the Renard storyline? Share your thoughts in the comments.