Grimm "Lost Boys" Review

After two episodes that established the central threat of the season—with the appropriate vagueness for a serialized TV show—episode three of Grimm leaves the threat of the claws to tell a Peter Pan-esque story about four wesen children who need a mother. They don’t know what or who they are. Every adult has abandoned them. The lost children hope Rosalee will be the one that doesn’t abandon them after she lets Peter, the angry killer one among the four, leave with medicine to help his sister.

“Lost Boys” is an okay episode. Grimm episodes can flail around for extended periods. Rosalee’s taken about halfway through the episode. Monroe, Nick, and Hank arrived at the start of the last act. In between, she told them a story about grimms and wesen they didn’t understand. Rosalee ate a berry. Big John and his brother fought. Peter tried to look menacing. The sister beamed to have a mother. The kids have no idea about life. They’re motivated by need and act by instinct. They need good guidance. For a spell, I thought Monroe and Rosalee would take the children into their home. I wondered about the potential storytelling disaster of that choice. Peter was the lone kid with any semblance of definition. The girl coughed a lot. Big John obeyed Peter. The other kid wanted berry credit.

Rosalee laments that the kids will re-enter a system that’ll confuse them more and make them angrier at the world. The kids took another woman. She escaped them, presumably out of terror after seeing them woged. The kids don’t know that they’re scary. I suppose the twist is that they meet the hammy leader of the claws group at the end of the episode. He told the boys, “The girl is safe” before swearing them into their new family. Will these kids come back to haunt Rosalee, Monroe, and Nick? Peter promised he’d find Rosalee and kill her if she left. Now a bad person is raising him. Grimm takes a good while to return to any plot points; so, the audience may not see Peter follow through on his threat until season twelve (or it’ll be dropped, and both the audience and the character will forget four lost children took Rosalee in #503).

Beyond the central lost kids/Rosalee plot, it’s a subdued episode. Nick moved out of the house and into a warehouse with Kelly and Adalind. Near the end of the episode, Adalind asked Nick to lay next to her to help her sleep in the new place. Nick looked awkward and uncomfortable next to her. Before long they’ll probably snuggle and spoon. The warehouse looked wide open. Filming action sequences should be easier for the staff. The two future lovers reminisced about their first meeting in the “Pilot.” It was the first woge Nick saw, and a major part of NBC’s marketing campaign.  

Meisner debriefed Renard about the latest nonsense with the Royals and the Resistance. Viktor holds the throne. He paid The Resistance to help overthrow the king. The rest of the scene did not advance the overall purpose of Meisner’s shadowy wandering around Portland. He freed Trubel from her cell in the last act. I assume she’s ready for whatever The Resistance trained her for.

All in all, there was a kidnapping, some dramatic intrigue, some slow progress toward romance, and no Wu. It was an episode of television.

Other Thoughts:

-I think the store Big John and Peter chose may’ve been the most heavily guarded store in TV history. Pharmacy techs everywhere. The security guard roamed the premises. It looked like a government facility compared to the homely rustic quality of Rosalee’s spice shop.

-Nick’s back on the force. The other guy disappeared. So, that’s good. Grimm needn’t do more of the ‘He doesn’t know!’ storylines.

-The writers took the epigraph from Peter Pan. “I think I had a mother once.” I thought of the paragraph in Lolita about Humbert Humbert’s mother (“Picnic. Lightning.”) I don’t know why. VN gave Humbert a mother trauma to fool and trap the Viennese council. Well, this is becoming a digression.

-A former lawyer colleague of Adalind's told her she'll get her job back if asked. He's probably evil.

-Sean Calder wrote the episode. Aaron Lipstadt directed.