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"Grimm" Season 1, Episode Eight: "Game Ogre"
Beast of the Week: Siegbarste, described by Eddie Monroe as "your basic ogre." He essentially looks like an orc from World of Warcraft.
Source Material: "Jack and the Beanstalk," although the adaption is even more loose than that of "Rapunzel" in the last episode. Still, let it be known that Grimm got a jump on all the ogre mania that's sure to run wild once the sexy teen version of the fairy tale is released later this year.
The Procedural: Sgt. Wu responds to a home invasion at the house of a judge and finds the judge's fresh corpse on the floor of his study, a gavel shoved down his throat. The prints on the gavel belong to a Portland naval officer, but by the time Hank and Nick get to his apartment, he too is already dead, with his hand severed, leading to the inevitable "our killer needed a helping hand" quip from Capt. Renard. Wrapped around what's left of the victim's arm is an antique woman's watch, with an inscription to someone named Mary. Utilizing Eddie Monroe's skills as a clock repairman, Nick asks Monroe to help trace the history of the watch. After discovering glue in the gears purposely stopping the date and time at a specific moment, Monroe makes a few calls and, within literally 25 seconds, discovers the last known owner of the watch was a former Portland district attorney named Mary Robinson. And naturally, she's found dead too, with her tongue cut out and placed on a scale. It's then that Hank realizes who the killer is: A guy named Stark, who he and Robinson were involved in convicting of a double homicide years prior. The detectives quickly learn that Stark busted out of a California prison days before, and also that he has a rare genetic disorder than essentially makes him Wolverine, more or less impervious to pain. For Hank's protection, Renard demands he stay at the police station while Nick goes out to investigate a car explosion in a parking lot of Southeast Belmont.
As Nick returns home later that night, he's attacked by the ogre now identified as Stark (played by Eric Edelstein, though he looks and sounds a lot like Jason Segel's impression of Andre the Giant from a recent episode of Saturday Night Live) and beaten to shit as the giant demands to know Hank's whereabouts. Nick is saved when his fiancee throws boiling water in the ogre's face, giving Bitsie Tulloch the most screen time she's had since the pilot (although we learn that when she cries, her already odd features screw up unintentionally into a face not unlike that of a Beast of the Week).
From his hospital bed, Nick calls Monroe and orders him to go down to the Magic Winnebago, grab a gun and dip some bullets into a jar of rare poison that acts as Siegbarste kryptonite. That leads to a fun scene of Monroe in the mystical trailer, geeking out over all the Grimm weaponry. Around the same time, Hank visits Nick and informs him that back when Stark was being tried for the triple homicide, he destroyed evidence in order to ensure Stark's conviction. Now, he's going to use himself as bait to lure Stark to the scene of the crime and either arrest or kill him. Nick calls Monroe and tells him to somehow get the gun with poisoned bullets to Hank. Monroe trails Hank, who's being trailed by Stark, out to the quarry where the murders took place. As Hank gets his ass handed to him by the ogre, Monroe hides in the weeds, aiming the gun. Stark looms over Hank with a big-ass rock over his head, but as we all know, if you wait too long to crush somebody's skull in, you're gonna get capped, and that's precisely what happens to the ogre. Monroe rushes back to the Winnebago without being spotted and hides the gun. The episode ends, intriguingly enough, with Capt. Renard analyzing the bullets found in Stark's body and wondering who owns the rare brand of elephant gun needed to shoot them.
Other Developments: Nothing in terms of Renard's shadiness, and still no mention of Hank's dinner with Adalind Schade. But early in the episode, when Hank and Nick go to Monroe's house to show him the watch that belonged to Mary Robinson, Monroe nearly lets it slip that he and Nick have a deeper bond than it appears, causing Hank to shoot him a skeptical look.
Grade: B-. The more Grimm deviates from the supernatural, the more it looks like a regular old cop show, and that does it no favors. Aside from the ogre's super strength and near-invincibility, there was really no paranormal bent to this week's episode, so it came across like an installment of Criminal Minds or something. On the other hand, it was interesting to relegate Detective Nick to background status in favor of Hank. Less David Giuntoli and more Russell Hornsby and Silas Weir Mitchell is definitely a good thing, although that's a problem for the show as a whole since Giuntoli is, y'know, the lead and title character and everything.
WWeek 2015