tpel

Well, I love him, with or without his shirt ;-( And we did, finally, moments before his death, learn definitively that Meisner was not wesen. Renard suggested that Black Claw might have a place for Meisner, and Meisner counters that Black Claw is wesen only, indicating that Meisner would not be included. Renard says that maybe an exception could be made. Bonaparte says something like "No exceptions." So Meisner was, as I hoped, just a badass human.

I think, right from the beginning, the writers never bothered to figure out what kind of person Nick is supposed to be. At first it didn't matter so much, because he could play the naive newbie role, introducing the audience to the strange world of the show. But once that phase started to wear off, we were left without much to go on. I'm trying to think of a character trait to ascribe to him, other than "passive" and am not coming up with much. Is he curious? No, not really. He didn't ask how wesen recognize him as a Grimm until the second half of the third season. Does he care passionately about others? At times, yes, but it is fleeting. Even setting aside his love life, he was desperate to find Trubel . . . until he wasn't. Is he a good person? Maybe, in comparison to other Grimms, but only in a negative way: he doesn't kill wesen indiscriminately. But a truly good person wouldn't propose to his girlfriend while withholding life-changing (perhaps life-threatening) information relevant to her decision. Is he a good cop? He seems OK at his job, though no better than Hank or Wu. I guess I could describe him as dutiful, and he can be funny at times. Shouldn't we have more than this in the fifth year of the show?

I don't know. Yeah, if it was clear that Black Claw had the winning horse in the race, I wouldn't put it past Renard to hitch his wagon there. But that's far from clear to me. In the short run, Black Claw is bad news. I guess he got Diana out of the deal, but I think there were more sensible routes he could have taken to get her back. For his involvement to make sense, Renard would have to believe that, in the long run, something good would come of it in terms of his own power base. Yeah, I like this too. It's a cute personality quirk, that gives depth to a mostly stoic character. He's pragmatic about torture, even casual about it -- getting coffee while someone suffers. But he isn't sadistic; he prefers not to watch. He's also comfortable enough with his status as a badass to be fine with the fact that the gals are scarier than he is!

I certainly hope something like this is going on. I'm not sure about the timing, but maybe when Meisner went over to yell at Renard for screwing up his plan to trace Marwan (the bird-assassin), they also -- off screen -- discussed a plot to have Renard run a long con on Black Claw, keeping everybody else out of the loop. Now, with Diana in play, Meisner doesn't know whether Renard has broken with their plan. This would explain Meisner's insistence that killing Renard would be a bad idea (in addition to his point, which I appreciate, that doing something stupid is not actually better than doing nothing). It would also be much more in keeping with Renard's character. The writers could have made the Black Claw position more nuanced -- perhaps the members we have seen represent the small terrorist fringe of a more reasonable civil-rights-for-wesen movement, which Renard might genuinely support. But they have steered clear of that, instead portraying them as primarily violent, with a vague political agenda serving to perpetuate more violence. That's not what Renard is about. He wants power, yes, but not chaos. So having him drink their kool-aid, for real, would be perplexing.

The wacky co-star is German -- Flula Borg. Surely they could find a role for him on Grimm! Apparently he and DG are buddies in real life.

Hee -- a badass Eisbieber :-) That would actually explain how he could see others woge, yet never woges himself. I don't think the cute and cuddly wesen get much of a strength boost by woging. And being seen as kind of adorable wouldn't help intimidate one's opponent in a fight . . . How sad is it that our crack! theory actually makes more sense than anything the writers will come up with?

Anyone else worried about our guy? In the series finale preview he appears . . . not once. And there's a dramatic scene of Trubel saying "There's no one here to fight Black Claw but us." Here's hoping Meisner is just incapacitated, not dead. I mean, it is not that surprising that he doesn't appear in a preview, being a minor character who is prone to disappearing for several episodes at a time. But Trubel's statement has me concerned.

Is it weird to quote myself? Anyway, I think last week gave us another example of this character trait. Meisner is in Diana's room in the safe house. He hears a noise and quickly turns off his flashlight. That makes sense, right? Don't want whoever is coming into the house to see that you're there. Maybe you can catch them by surprise. But then Meisner walks right out to the living room to meet the intruder. What's the point of turning off the flashlight if you're just going to come out into the open anyway? Now, to be fair, it is possible that in the time it took him to leave Diana's room he made an auditory assessment of the situation: he could hear that it was only one or two goons, not an army. If he was ridiculously outnumbered or outgunned, perhaps he would have opted for stealth, and turning off the flashlight when he did left him that option. Still, I find his strong preference for direct engagement to be endearing, though maybe not always wise.

Well, there is a whole other thread devoted to General Show Crappiness -- the "Everything Wrong with Grimm" thread . . . But it is true that sometimes general crappiness can become a plot hole. For instance, I wouldn't construe a character -- say, Adalind -- consistently making bad decisions as a plot hole. That's just who she is. And when one other character reacts inexplicably toward her -- say, Nick -- well, he has a history of oddly passive behavior that predates the current situation, so maybe he's just poorly written. But when nearly everybody reacts, or fails to react, in ways that can only be explained by some kind of collective amnesia, yet no amnesia-producing factor is present . . . yeah, plot hole.

Roadkill. When she tried to attack Rosalee, Rosalee got her out the door where Magique had an encounter with a Subaru Forester.* Magique is fine. Fine, I tell you! The Subaru Forester is roadkill. ;-) Adalind didn't deliberately have sex with Hank. Adalind raped Hank. "Having sex" implies that Hank was capable of consent, which he was not. I didn't read # 64 as denying that it was rape, unless we assume that the phrase "had sex with" implies that there must have been mutual consent. I get why we might want to reserve this phrase for something consensual, but I think it is commonly used for both with and without true consent (e.g., "The middle school teacher had sex with two of her students. She's in prison now, for statutory rape.") In any case, # 64 is focusing on the supposed betrayal of Renard, rather than the crime against Hank. I think the answer to this question is that Adalind is a bit of a ho, and Renard's "relationship" with her was about mutual benefit, not love or loyalty. I think the short answer is, "The Royals." But that just raises the question of "Why?" Which depends on . . . 86. What is the Royals' endgame? This is related to # 79. Obviously, they want power, but power over what? Just over wesen, like a shadow monarchy operating separate from regular-world political systems? Or are they trying to re-establish some kind of political power over wesen and humans alike?

I like the idea of putting flat-out contradictions in a separate category -- we can bump that to "E". How did I miss the bit about Meisner and his girlfriend having a child who died? Does anyone know which episode told us this? I mean, that totally adds another layer to his becoming somewhat attached to Diana. All I remember is Adalind asking him if he "had someone" and him replying that he used to but that the Royals killed her "and not quickly". With regard to his father, he mentions this directly to Renard when they are at the sewer-adjacent hiding place early in season 3. Meisner removes a plank from the steps, so that incoming goons would fall down them. He notes that it was a trick his father taught him before he was killed by the Royals.

The overly analytic lunatic in me wants to categorize all of these by sub-type, but I'll try to resist and just cite examples ;-) What I mean is . . . A. Some of these are truly problematic plot holes, which I'll define as outright contradictions or plot points that just don't make any sense -- for example, # 50 (Adalind's pregnancy timeline with Kelly). B. Some of these are dangling threads that could theoretically be picked up, but probably won't be. For example, # 1 (the coins). It would be all kinds of awesome if we saw Bonaparte pull one of the coins out of his pocket, indicating that Black Claw got them off Kelly upon her death, and perhaps explaining the precipitious rise of Black Claw. But it could simply be that she hid them somewhere and now she's dead, so we'll never see them again. Category B can overlap with category A when a dropped plot thread really should be having an ongoing effect on current story events (# 21 Zombie Nick!). C. Some of these can be answered by plausible speculation. For example, #31 -- Meisner was in the Resistance against the Royals. Perhaps his father (I assume you meant 'father' not 'child') was Resistance also. His girlfriend was tortured, so that indicates that either the Royals wanted information from her (maybe she was Resistance too), or they were using her to punish Meisner -- he does seem to bump them off rather regularly, after all. While I would love more backstory for him, I wouldn't necessarily expect it. D. Sometimes the most plausible speculation is "these characters are idiots". Really, at this point, the fact that someone doesn't have a conversation conveying extremely important information to someone else amounts to a character trait. A really, really annoying character trait! Any other categories? By the way, I love it that you guys numbered the list for easier reference!

Oh, I see. I was assuming that it wasn't an alarm-system type security breach, though now that you mention it, the flag on Eve's computer could certainly be read that way. Instead, I figured that Diana was in deep cover with some Resistance couple, who checked in regularly but perhaps indirectly, so as not to draw any attention to themselves. That is, I'm assuming a bit of separation between the Resistance and HW, such that Meisner was telling the truth when he told Renard that he didn't know exactly where Diana was. I'm not sure that the Resistance would want to give up control to HW enough to let the latter place electronic surveillance on their people's house. But when Diana showed up on the HW radar, and her guardians failed to check in, the HW system put two and two together and presumed them dead. At that point, Meisner and Trubel (either just back from wherever they were -- Peru? -- or called back due to this development), went to investigate. Thus, a few days delay. We have some evidence that the safe house was in Nevada -- the camera zoomed in on the plates of a car outside it. That would fit with Trubel and Meisner being able to get back to the HW headquarters fairly quickly. It is possible that I'm thinking this through more logically than the writers have. I like to try to fill in plot holes as plausibly as possible ;-)

There is so much in this show that makes no sense ;-) but I'm not sure what's particularly non-sensical about this. Is it just that HW was a bit slow on the uptake? I'm guessing that Diana was grabbed from the safe house a few days ago and brought to Portland. For whatever reason, it took a little while for this to show up on HW's computer. Meisner and Trubel went to investigate. Trubel commented on the smell, indicating that a little time had passed since the deaths of Diana's guardians, which is consistent with the presumed timeline. Perhaps the puzzling part is, I thought the alarm flag on the computer identified the two operatives (the guardians) as dead, or presumed dead, when Trubel and Meisner did not confirm their deaths until this episode. Perhaps they didn't check in and were assumed to be dead.

Here's my best stab at an explanation: Grimms' powers emerge naturally at different times -- females usually in their teens and males usually in their twenties -- but powers can also be triggered by the death of another Grimm to whom they are connected. This is a messy explanation, but the expression of many human genetic traits is messy too. Before their powers emerge, they have normal strength and resilience, though of course those who know they are in Grimm families may be training for the possibility, and thus be more fit than average. Before their powers emerge, they cannot see normal woges, such as those induced by stress. They would be able to see the deliberately-showing-the-world woges, just like any other human could, but these are rare: the wesen community strongly discourages such displays. It does strain credulity that the wesen community is so successful that very few cops have seen a deliberately-showing-woge, as it seems likely that some wesen would try it as a desperation move to avoid arrest. It is possible, however, that wesen sightings are significantly under-reported among Portland's finest, who want to avoid psych evaluations. The seeing-wesen-is-crazy-making idea is also a bit messy, as perhaps it should be: people have different levels of tolerance for things they can't explain. We've seen some humans deal with it, and we've been told, I think, that children deal with it better than adults. Once their powers emerge, Grimms gain moderately enhanced strength, significantly increased resistance to and healing from injury, the ability to see the normal stress-woges, and perhaps enhancements of speed/reflexes/agility. The physical enhancements don't, in themselves, mean that a Grimm could best any human in a fight. A top-notch human fighter -- let's assume Meisner -- could be nearly as strong and fast, and way more skilled in martial arts. Where a Grimm has a serious advantage over a human in a fight is in resistance to injury. Perhaps we saw that come into play in Meisner's recent fight (though some of us were . . . distracted ;-). He does fine against the wesen until the latter manages to land a few consecutive blows; usually opponents don't get that far against him. A Grimm might have been able to shrug that off, but it takes Meisner a few minutes to re-group (it would probably take most humans a trip to the hospital for a concussion, but hey, this is TV, and he is a badass). So, wesen fear Grimms not so much because they are a bit stronger than humans, but because they are really hard to kill. Grimms also know who the wesen are, keep records of the best ways to kill each species of wesen, have a history of collusion with Royals, and have a penchant for decapitation.

OK, maybe I'm thinking too logically about this, unlike the writers, but mightn't there be some geographic factor here? We saw Nevada plates on the car outside the safe house. That's only a state away from Portland. I don't know where Diana was prior to this, but she may have been too far away from her mom and the other key players to be aware of them or mind-quest toward them. While it is certainly possible that Diana did something that attracted Black Claw, it is also possible that they found her the old fashioned way: tortured the information out of a Resistance member. I thought that Nick had enhanced Grimm abilities -- strength, speed, resilience. Here's something from the Grimm Wiki (not sure how authoritative that is) on the subject: "Grimms also possess slightly superhuman strength, durability, agility, reflexes, speed, and even morphallaxis ("The Chopping Block"). This allows them to go toe to toe with any Wesen, except Siegbarste, and survive things that would kill a normal person. Nick was able to take on a Skalenzahne (one of the strongest known Wesen) and defeat it. His aunt, despite dying of cancer and weakened by the drugs, was still able to kill her human attacker, and she showed no fear when she saw Monroe. Grimms' strength can also be measured in the fact they can casually take down Wesen who possess superhuman strength, such [as] Jagerbars or Klaustreich, and can easily overpower humans. Grimms' durability is particularly notable; several times, Nick has shrugged off blows from creatures with incredible strength. For example, when facing a Schakal, the creature smashed a toaster on his head, but he recovered in seconds. ("Woman in Black") He was even able to escape from a beating with a Siegbarste, with the worst of his injuries being a few bruised ribs." This is one of the reasons I am interested in what Meisner is. I think we now have pretty good evidence that he is not wesen (they seem to get a strength boost when they woge, and he didn't woge even when losing the fight in this episode). Some people have proposed that he might be a Grimm. I kind of hope he's not. If he is a normal human, that gives us some sense of just how enhanced Grimms are. Since Meisner can match or best Grimms in a fight, that means Grimms aren't too far above top level human strength and speed -- close enough that Meisner can make up for any gap with skill and training (presumably he's been doing this a lot longer than Nick or Trubel). He wouldn't have the durability, of course, but that only comes into play if the other guy manages to hit you.

Anyone else notice the pictures on the wall of Diana's bedroom in the safe house, presumably drawn by her? One of them was a rocket ship; one was a woged hexenbiest (looked like Adalind); the third was a woman holding hands with a girl and nearby there is some kind of animal. At first I thought the last one might be a representation of her and her mother, but as both figures in the picture had dark hair, it might not be. There was also a Grimm fairy tales book on Diana's bed, with a picture on the cover of a girl and a wolf, so perhaps the last picture was related to this. The levels of drawing skill are quite different, with the third picture looking like it was done by a young child, and the hexenbiest looking like it was done by a talented tween. Makes sense if she is rapidly aging. The woged-Adalind picture shows that her mom is on her mind, and that either she remembers what she looks like woged from seeing her do it when Diana was an infant, or she had some telepathic awareness of her mother even before Black Claw grabbed her.

Yeah, the show is overrun with special snowflakes-- JuliEve, Diana, Adalind. I would prefer it if Meisner is simply a badass fighter, without any physical enhancements. To me, that's more impressive: his "super power" is normal human talent, plus years of training and hard work. That said, I guess I wouldn't mind if he were the Grimm equivalent of a Squib (from a Grimm family but not a Grimm), just because his personality goes against the trope, as we've seen it play out in Harry Potter. He's not lacking in confidence; he's not bitter; he doesn't seem to want to be what he isn't, but makes the most of what he can do; he doesn't have a lot of cats ;-)

The show has never been clear on recessive traits for either Grimm or wesen, have they? From Monroe and Rosalee's obscure comments about wesen procreation, and the fact that we've only seen one wesen with mixed traits (the result of genetic engineering), it seems that the offspring of different species of wesen are one or the other, not a mixture of both. And wesen/human offspring are the same--wesen or human, not a mixture. Genetically, of course, even those who present as human must have some wesen in them. I don't think we've seen any evidence that this recessive wesenality or Grimminality gives one any special abilities. So it might not contribute much to Meisner's badassness. But it might explain why he is so easily accepted in wesen circles. Nobody seems to be balking at the fact that a regular old human was a key player in the Resistance and is now basically running the show over at Hadrian's Wall. And then there's the Royals who aren't wesen, I guess. But didn't Kenneth seem to be kind of super-strong? Can Royals see wesen?

It is possible that Diana went along peacefully with her Black Claw abductors because she knew (mystically or otherwise) that they were bringing her where she wanted to be: in closer proximity to her mother. Before Bonaparte, they had a more scruffy, grassroots kind of Black Claw leader. Unfortunately, he was the opposite of charismatic.

Yeah, this makes no sense whatsoever. This is not the time to assert your rugged individualism, Wu! I'm also curious about Meisner's reaction to her. Would he be reluctant to kill her? Possibly, though he might do it anyway, if he felt it was necessary. Yeah, but now has a reason to take it off before all future fights: shirts can be used against you ;-)

I don't think he's ever particularly reacted to a woge. But not knowing when someone is woging, and therefore is wesen, could put him at a disadvantage in this world. Maybe he recognizes that distinct head motion wesen make when woging, so he knows that someone is woged, without necessarily seeing it? Having a Grimm, or even wesen, in his family would explain how comfortable he is with wesenality and why he is mentally unaffected by the intended-to-be-seen-by-humans woges.

Re: that scene in last night's episode. If you're in this thread, you know the one: Meisner is fighting one-on-one with a badass wesen, and the guy literally pulls Meisner's shirt over his head and down around his wrists, making it hard for him to fight back. The writers -- or at least the stunt coordinators -- must have a sense of humor. It's like they cackled, "The audience wants to see Meisner fight, and a significant portion of them want to see him loose his shirt, so let's do both things simultaneously!" It was gratuitous and implausible, but I'm not complaining -- for the obvious reason, but also because the fight was beautifully done. Meisner got in an awesome spinning kick and some other slick moves, and the sheer flukeyness of the shirt thing made it kind of make sense that he could have been taken by surprise and actually lose a fight. Luckily Trubel was around to lend a hand. On a more serious note, this might have been the best evidence we've had so far that Meisner is not wesen. The other guy woged, and he was getting the better of Meisner in the fight. If ever there was a time to woge and get whatever strength-boost that entails, this was it. Yet he didn't.

I was thinking the same thing, particularly since this show made me recall the excellent job Fichtner did many years ago playing a blind guy in the movie Contact. Again, awesome performance, but don't we have actual blind actors for the role? With regard to Adam, this point is somewhat lessened due to the fact that not just any wheelchair-using actor would do; for example, someone who had been paralyzed from birth or early adulthood would perhaps have muscular atrophy or other physical changes that wouldn't fit with Adam's backstory of being injured three years ago (and the recency of the injury is important for how he relates to Bonnie). So I don't know how large the relevant pool of actors is. Also, you need an actor that can get you totally invested in the character through his voice only, in the first episode, which I'm guessing not many actors (with or without disabilities) can pull off. Still, I would like to see more of a good faith attempt on the part of casting directors to look at disabled actors first for such roles.

I don't think the show has enough time left to plausibly bring Nick and Juliette back together, and the Nadalind business has left a bad taste in my mouth in terms of not wanting Nick to be in a relationship with someone who has done awful things to him. But I, too, felt that the Juliette character assassination was abrupt and unfair on the part of the writers. So I would be happy if Juliette gets some sort of redemptive death -- maybe die saving baby Kelly to atone for her part in killing his grandmother. It's not that I especially want her to die. It's just that with only 16 or 17 episodes left in the series, I would worry that her reconciliation with Nick would come off as rushed and forced. They could solve the sustainability issue, while still letting us look forward to the demise of the gross parents, by saying that healthy members of the species only need to suck bones every decade or so, but much more frequent ingestion of bones can stave off death for elderly individuals.