Grimm "The Son Also Rises" Review

Grimm switched the detective duo for one episode only in “The Son Also Rises” because of Juliette’s sudden hospitalization. She went to the hospital after The Face’s arm came through the mirror and knocked her out. Nick, after learning about Juliette’s hospitalization, rushes to be by her side. Nick even called her Juliette. Finally, one character noticed what’s been plainly obvious since last season. 

Nothing happened at the hospital besides Nick remembering the mostly bad times him and Juliette shared, such as the time Aunt Kate told him to leave her because the Grimm couldn’t have love in his life; but the memory of his mother telling him to keep the people he loves around him balanced the other memory. Of course, then Nick remembered Juliette’s betrayal and her major responsibility in his mother’s death. They’ll reunite.

Anyway, Grimm switched out Nick for Wu in this episode’s case, which was a modernized adaptation of the Victorian classic Frankenstein. The teaser introduced Dr. Victor Shelley, an overt allusion to the literary work. Shelley lost his son in a car accident, but him and three other scientists restored him to life using dead wesen body parts. The resurrected son’s new wesen nature made him a murderer, but he didn’t murder anyone besides the scientists that made him a murderer and a monster. Hank theorized that the wesen parts changed the son, but he was wrong. Vengeance drove the son throughout the whole story. The wesen parts made him harder to stop. He asked his father to kill him in the last act when Dr. Shelly, Dr. Levy, and Hank and Wu found him.

Grimm’s modernized Frankenstein was decent in parts. The writers maintained and updated some grisly Victorian gothic tropes such as the body snatching (except it’s body selling in 21^st century Portland) and weird science experiments. Body snatching/graverobbing was used as a plot point and a plot device in a number of Victorian novels and short stories. Robert Louis Stevenson liked using grave robbing in his stories. What comes to mind is his “The Body Snatcher” story. Dickens had a “resurrection man” in his great novel A Tale of Two Cities. And the source material, of course, has all that Victorian gothic fun. Grimm began by mining these stories, sources, and modernizing them. The show wandered away from that over the seasons as the writers became distracted by an ever-inconsistent and protean mythology, but I liked that the writers returned Grimm to part of its roots in this final season.

Other Thoughts:

-Do you know how much I wanted that Rosalee/Monroe scene to be real? I would’ve written novella about Grimm reaching peak “I don’t give a bleep’ mode”. It would’ve been wonderful. Instead, the scene served to highlight Monroe’s anxiety about the triplets to come. Also, Monroe and Rosalee said that they’d look into the mirror, but they decided to lock it away without doing any research. Rosalee gave a tiny backstory about how the mirror came into her life (it involved princesses).

-Again, nothing happened in those Nick/Juliette scenes. Light work week for David Guintoli. It’s a wonder he didn’t direct this one. At the end of the episode Juliette repeated what we already knew. The end even had flashbacks of what we watched not more than thirty nine minutes ago; however,Juliette’s dialogue at the end broached meta when she said something’s coming and it’ll be here soon. Well, yeah, the series is over in five episodes. The writers could’ve really trolled the audience by doing a Waiting for Godot thing. There’s so much about the symbols, their meaning, a possible history with a painting, that it’d be incredible if nothing arrived or happened in the March episodes except for the same old Grimm.

-Speaking of the symbols, Renard contacted to a woman named Dasha. She repeated old information but added that Diana must be connected with the upcoming event.

-Todd Milliner & Nick Peet wrote the episode. Peter Werner directed.