Grimm "Synchronicity" Review

Baby plots end one of two ways on television: the baby lives with an off-camera couple, far away from the destructive people waging war over the child, or the baby ages quickly in a hell dimension and returns to break his father’s heart pieces, because his father broke another man’s heart centuries ago. Grimm’s set the baby as the centerpiece of the foreseeable action. Nick and Hank don’t have a murder to solve. The battle between The Resistance and The Royals intensifies. Kelly, the not-so-surprising returning character this week, worked with The Resistance so that she could subvert their mission to possess the baby. The baby represents unlimited power. Juliette learns the baby is a history-changing creature. Well, then. Nick resolves to help his mother succeed in moving the baby far away from the destructive world of Royals vs. Resistance, of Grimm v. Everyone Else.

The baby storyline plodded along slowly for a seemingly unthinkable amount of time. Prince Viktor may’ve angrily punched a tabletop a dozen times. Renard spent the last several episodes on the phone. Grimm moves at its specific and unique pace. Various characters throughout the season have stressed to Adalind the importance of her baby. Adalind’s been a passive character throughout the baby arc. She’s been moved from place to place without choice, because someone said she should move, because Renard wanted to protect her from Viktor. Meisner leaves Adalind in Switzerland after Kelly saves their lives from yet more Verrat assassins. Kelly takes Adalind away on a plane and opts against telling her anything important about where they’re going and her identity. Adalind sits, smiles, sleeps some until the plane lands, and then follows Kelly to Portland. Kelly doesn’t bring her to Renard because of reasons and instead takes the new mother to her nemesis’ house, where Nick and Juliette express a few concerns about her living with them for an extended period. Adalind’s history with Nick and Juliette, though, finally moves Adalind from passivity to activity.

Adalind decides to use the baby’s tremendous powers of illusion, deception, and trickery, to escape from Nick’s house. The discussion downstairs included taking the baby away from Adalind, yet another conversation that leaves her powerless despite her possessing some of the most beastly power in Grimm. Adalind chooses to see Renard. Nick and Kelly follow her. Nick talks his mother out of rushing into the room and forcibly kidnapping the child. Nick’s been consistent since he realized what his family’s history meant for him in looking for a different way to resolve a problem between himself and those he fights. Nick does not trust Renard, but he doesn’t distrust him. Renard’s a complex figure: a royal working for the resistance, the first known bastard hybrid, born from a human royal father and hexenbiest mother, a zauerbiest working with Nick and who holds more power over Nick as his captain. And now he’s the father of the most powerful baby in the history of humanity. The inevitable conversation between Nick and Renard may lead to a sensible plan about how to protect the baby from everyone infectious, but violence and screaming seems a more likely result of Nick’s pragmatic approach. Grimm’s writers, like Nick, don’t take the traditional approach in their storytelling. Expect different.

Nick spends the first half of the episode thinking about weddings and marriage, specifically how to avoid slaughtering the families of Monroe and Rosalee. Nick’s concern leads to Hank’s wonderful idea to find out how Wesen know he is a Grimm. “Synchronicity” includes several scenes of the writers poking fun at seemingly dropped plot turns and unasked questions, beginning with Hank’s bright idea about what Nick can do to avoid being seen as a Grimm. Monroe and Rosalee explain Wesen see their form in the reflection of Nick’s eyes. The solution: sunglasses. The sunglasses will fall off his face during the upcoming wedding episode. Other bits of fun in the episode include Nick’s reminder to his mother that she killed Adalind’s mother which she forgot. Grimm had a quite a few scenes to jar the memory of the audience. Anytime a series needs to run four or five scenes for the sake of plot means the writers should create a more steady urgency or forward momentum for that story so that every expository scene isn’t accompanied with a helpful ‘THIS HAPPENED’ scene.

Juliette used Carl Jung’s synchronicity idea to explain Adalind’s return to their lives. The idea states that events needn’t always be casually linked because meaning can link events in people’s eyes—meaningful coincidence, to use another term. Something—the baby--has brought the characters together, brought on by the past and spurred by the future, and each character’s responsibility, and role, is to carve out the most meaningful existence for the child, free from everything we’ve seen. That’s a worthwhile baby story.

Other Thoughts:

-Monroe and Rosalee prepared for the wedding. Rosalee picked out a wedding dress. I can’t remember what Monroe did. Hank disappeared after his revelatory idea.

-David Solomon directed the episode. I forgot the names of the tonight’s credited writers. IMDB does not list the credited writers. My apologies.