Episode Title: "The Bottle Imp"
Writer: Alan DiFiore
Director: Darnell Martin
Previously on "Grimm":
Episode 2.06 "Over My Dead Body"
Story:
Nick (David Giuntoli) wakes up from a dream in which Juliette (Bitsie Tulloch) suddenly remembers him. Meanwhile, Monroe (Silas Weir Mitchell) gets a call from Rosalee (Bree Turner), who asks him to make a concoction for a customer named Leroy, who's suffering from an ear infection.
When the credit card is rejected, a man traveling with his young daughter in a pick-up truck is confronted by the attendant. The man goes to get money from his car when the attendant is attacked in the garage.
At the station, Wu (Reggie Lee) identifies the man from his license plate as William Robert Granger. Fearing the police are onto him, Granger and his daughter convince a man to give them a ride in his truck. At Granger's house, Nick and Hank (Russell Hornsby) find his wife badly beaten in the bathroom. She asks Nick where her daughter is and transforms into a wesen.
While in the truck, an amber alert for the young girl comes over the radio. Granger grabs the wheel and runs the truck off the road. At the station, Wu tells the detectives about receipts he found in Granger's home for building supplies and a number of websites about guns and knives on his laptop. Just then, Juliette surprises Nick with a visit. When she's greeted by Renard (Sasha Roiz), Juliette seems slightly shaken. Afterwards, Renard gets a call from Adalind (Claire Coffee) asking about her mother.
At the trailer, Nick and Hank identify Granger as a drang-zorn, a kind of Wesen that seeks refuge underground. They speculate that Granger is using the building materials to make a safe house.
After pinpointing Granger's safehouse location with the pictures from his laptop, the detectives find his safehouse and rescue his daughter, April. However, Granger is still at large having left for town to get supplies. Meanwhile, Monroe goes to Leroy's after realizing he used the wrong ingredient when mixing the potion. He finds the man hysterically chainsawing a clock. He chases Monroe, who slams the door on him. With Leroy knocked out, Monroe gives him the correct potion.
Nick and Hank learn from a neighbor that Granger is headed to the hospital to see his wife. There, they find him standing over her. When they go to arrest him, Granger's wife insists that it was their daughter, April who beat her. She explains that April is going through "the change" earlier than she should and they don't know how to handle her. April was also responsible for killing the gas station attendant.
The detectives race to the home of April's new foster family. There they learn that she bit her new foster father on the arm after he attempted to punish her. Now in custody, Nick meets with a juvenile detention guard who is friends with Monroe. The guard, a Wesen, promises Nick she'll keep an eye on April
That night, Nick and Juliette have an romantic dinner at home. Afterwards, they dance which leads to kissing. However, Juliette pulls back when she looks at Nick and sees Renard's face staring back at her.
Breakdown:
A cool twist, a freaky reveal and a little comic relief. 'The Bottle Imp' had it all as Nick and Hank learned the truth about an eight-year-old with a serious behavioral problem.
First up, the cool twist. We've seen wesen children before, but this episode marks the first time Nick's come across one this young and this vicious. The scene where her new foster father tried to extract April's teeth from his arm was fun stuff. Nothing like watching an eight-year-old drang-zorn get thrashed around the backyard.
As for the freaky reveal, it was clear Juliette had some kind of recollection when she encountered Renard at the police station. And when she and Nick shared a dance at the end of the episode, it looked like Nick's dream about Juliette remembering him might come true after all. But then there was that kiss. Will Juliette tell Nick what or rather, who she saw? And what exactly is Adalind up to? Now that Hank's in the know, it looks like Renard won't be able to keep his identity a secret might longer.
And finally the comedy. Monroe's debacle with the Woody Allen impersonator with the ear infection provided some great comic relief. Especially his reaction to Leroy taking a chainsaw to a clock. I'm glad to see Monroe getting his own separate storylines however pointless they may be.
"The Bottle Imp" was the kind of episode that makes me happy this show was given a second season. In terms of quality, "Grimm" isn't up there with some of the better genre series in recent history, but it continues to be a fun Friday night show that's occasionally awesome.
