tpel

There are two outcomes of the Diana situation that I would have liked. Sadly, neither is going to happen now: 1. Adalind learns that her baby was kidnapped by the Resistance. So she goes looking for the only Resistance member she knows: Meisner. Upon finding him somewhere in Europe, she learns that the Resistance does not have Diana. Adalind and Meisner continue to develop the relationship they started when Meisner rescued Adalind. They retrieve Diana from Kelly, who is willing to relinquish Diana to them when it becomes clear that Diana approves. Besides, Kelly is getting tired of dealing with a spooky infant; she comes back to Portland and mentors Trubel. Adalind, Meisner, and Diana live happily ever after (OK, probably not . . . Adalind and Meisner both do various violent things to other people, but they take good care of Diana), mostly off-screen. Renard occasionally makes amusingly cryptic remarks about Diana's developing powers, indicating that he visits her. 2. Elizabeth (Renard's mother) went off in search of her granddaughter. She finds Diana in Kelly's custody. Instead of fighting to the death, the two mature women decide to work together to protect the child they both care about. Since nobody would expect them to cooperate, they are able to make Diana virtually untraceable by trading custody periodically under the guise of fighting each other. Growing up with the tutelage of two such badass grannies, Diana becomes a force to be reckoned with . . . but not for several years, during which time she is mostly off-screen. Either of these plot lines would tie up the Diana story in a fairly satisfying way, without sucking up much time from the major characters. The first one, of course, has the advantage of precluding Nadalind ;-)

I find Nick insufferable a lot of the time, but I do want to defend him on the kidnapping-baby-Diana issue. He wasn't acting completely alone; he did have the consent of the man who was presumed to be the baby's father. Renard isn't exactly a paragon of virtue, but based on the evidence Nick had, he would be justified in thinking that Diana's father would better look out for her interests than would Diana's mother. Not saying that makes it OK -- I wouldn't give any of these people custody of a goldfish -- but the mom actually contracting to sell the child seems to be an instance where paternal authority trumps maternal. In the aftermath, when Adalind showed up and Nick just avoided her? That's when he went back to insufferable to me.

I always thought that the Royals were not so much embracing Diana as wanting to have her in order to make use of her. The male progeny of hexenbiests don't seem to have any particular powers, except perhaps increased strength and resilience. The females have more magical abilities, and Diana doubly so because of the ritual performed while she gestated. When Renard and Adalind did not want their daughter to be in the hands of the Royals, I didn't get the sense that they were worried about her becoming a princess and living in the lap of luxury; rather, they did not want her to become a tool. Yeah, spaulding, I find Nick much more likable when we're seeing the wesen world through his eyes. He's great as an "every man" perspective -- I remember enjoying his bemused reactions early in the run of the show. But when he is dealing with personal relationships, I find him much less likable. Hank, on the other hand, is always great.

He was, and that's another thing I don't get. Where the hell is she, and why doesn't Renard know where she is since he's responsible for helping put her there? If she's with "The Resistance" doesn't that mean both Renard and Meisner should know where she is since both were part of said Resistance? I think it's one of those situations where you intentionally parcel up knowledge so that if someone is captured and tortured, the damage is limited. So Renard knows that Diana is with the Resistance, and Meisner knows who he dropped her off with, but neither of them knows her exact location. Meisner could probably find out, if he wanted to. As far as we know, Renard did not ask him to locate her. So it is odd that Renard is acting like they just got their first chance to track down their daughter, when one would think pressing the guy who saw her last for details would be an obvious step. Of course, getting Diana back might not be as simple as making a few phone calls. The Resistance may be pissed at our Portland crew for basically setting them up as having kidnapped baby Diana from the Royals. And Meisner seems to like Diana, and has his own agenda, so he may have reasons not to want to bring her out of hiding. Still, working with the Resistance seems like a saner approach to getting her back than working with Black Claw. Honestly, whenever I see that "special snowflake" moniker, I am momentarily confused as to whom it refers. Obviously, it is meant as a put-down to Juliette/Eve, but she is hardly the "most special" character on the show. Right now, she's mostly a robotic functionary who sits behind a computer, occasionally going out and using her hexen-mojo on someone. Diana, also, was presented initially as a "special" breed of hexenbeist, and she too has faded into obscurity. Adalind now seems to be getting the "special" treatment -- a good hexenbeist! in love with a Grimm! -- but it seems to have reduced her to a clingy housewife. The moral is, on this show, you don't want to be special!

Clearly, our interpretations of this scene differ. And since this is the episode thread of a different episode, it is not the place to debate them. But I do think Nick's tendency to take an avoidance-based approach to emotionally charged situations -- whether or not he did so specifically in the scene above -- is relevant to current events. We saw it with early Juliette (when he asked her to marry him without taking the emotional risk of seeing whether she could handle the truth about his Grimmness); we saw it with Wu (when he procrastinated about deciding whether to confirm Wu's fears after Wu had seen wesen); we saw it with Adalind (when he basically made Monroe and Rosalee deal with her when she was grief-stricken over losing Diana). Like most of us, Nick would rather avoid emotionally charged confrontations; what makes me kind of dislike him a lot of the time is he continues to do this even after it is clear that other people involved in the situation are endangered or suffering due to his inaction. Now with Adalind and Kelly, I suppose we'll see him nobly dealing with the situation head-on. The writers can call it emotional growth, but I'm afraid it will play more like amnesia. This is all kinds of awesome!

I noticed that the HW scenes lacked both Trubel and Meisner. Were they on vacation? Of course not; nobody on this show gets vacation time except for Hank. So they were probably off somewhere kicking ass. Thus, when the episode got boring, I tried to imagine what they were up to. Those two don't need no stupid masks to beat people up!

I don't think the Black Claw woman was seriously suggesting a "family values" platform for Renard. I think she was just using it to introduce the idea that he could benefit from being allied with them: they would help him get his daughter back. That's kind of stupid, as I remarked above, since Diana is being hidden for her own protection, not being held against Renard's will. But it is not quite as crazy as strategizing that Renard's freak-show love life would be appealing to socially conservative voters ;-) Perhaps the BC folks believe that the Resistance did kidnap Diana, not understanding the entire situation. I was maybe not clear enough on the time frame for my comment about Nick being repulsed by hexen-Juliette. Clearly, later on he was repulsed by her actions. And there was a scene, before that, where she woges and demands that he kiss her -- not entirely fair, though Nick would have won serious points in my book if he had sucked it up and done so. But I was talking about the scene where Juliette first reveals what has happened to her. Nick does say something about dealing with the situation, but he means dealing with the situation by fixing her, not by learning to live with her condition. And then he walks out of the house, leaving her alone. Granted, such a revelation might warrant getting a breath of fresh air, but it played like rejection: she was desperate for reassurance, and he couldn't give it. So that makes me think his revulsion runs pretty deep. Of course, as johntfs points out, Adalind was always a hexenbiest, so Nick might perceive this less as something to be fixed. And, of course, the writers are happy to re-write the characters' personalities to fit the exigencies of the plot. Thus, we'll probably get some nauseating crap about Nick nobly accepting the mother of his child. I thought Meisner pushed the king from the helicopter. He said "Down with the King" and Diana smiled. But I didn't think she actually killed her grandfather. Meisner reported to Renard that the king was dead (hinting that he might be responsible, but not directly saying so) and that Diana was with the Resistance. I think Meisner is fond of Diana, but Renard doesn't know that. So if Renard went all Black Claw, Meisner could perhaps use Diana as leverage. It would be a dangerous game, however.

The wesen-of-the-week was a sympathetic idiot; I felt bad for him, even as he made awful decisions. But the plot dragged more than it should have. I was pleased that Nick realized that "we don't tell anyone about the magic healing stick" includes not telling Adalind. But I thought his conversation with Adalind about what might happen if her hexenbiest nature re-emerges was ludicrous. Unless Nick had a brain transplant since last season, we know he finds hexenbiests completely revolting, as evidenced by the fact that when Juliette finally revealed to him what she had become, he couldn't even stay in the house with her when she obviously needed his comfort and reassurance. Now it's no big deal? Huh? I was confused by the Black Claw lady dangling Diana over Renard as a motivator. Isn't Diana in hiding for her own protection? Renard voluntarily gave her to Kelly to protect, and he knows that the Resistance placed her somewhere. Meisner said he didn't know exactly where, but if Renard really wanted her back, I don't see any reason why the Resistance wouldn't cooperate -- if anything, hiding her brings heat down on them.

What makes Renard's transition much more believable than Adalind's supposed transformation are the following factors: (1) Renard didn't make a complete 180-degree switch -- he went from dark gray to off-white; (2) there was an explanation for his sudden change that makes sense within the world of the show -- the purification potion; (3) the other characters did not trust him quickly after the change -- arguably they trust him more now than they used to, but they still keep him at arm's length most of the time. None of these hold true for Adalind. To me, the third is the most troublesome, as it makes the implausibility spread to the other characters. One of the more frustrating aspects of the situation is that I actually like Adalind as a character, think CC is a good actress, and think there could be an interesting redemption story for Adalind. I'm just sad that they don't seem to be writing that story.

Yes, the heights I listed were for the actors -- I assume the characters are meant to be approximately the heights of the people who play them. The directors don't seem to be trying to film anyone as, say, much taller than they are, though they may sometimes try to minimize height differences when Sasha Roiz is in a scene, just to get everybody's face in the frame!

Re: character heights: Based on extensive research (i.e., Google :-), here is the line-up: Renard = 6'4" Monroe = 6'3" Hank = 6'2" Nick = 5'11" Meisner = 5'10" Trubel = 5'8 and 3/4" Wu = 5'8 and 1/2" Rosalee = 5'8" Juliette = 5'6" Adalind = 5'4" OK, so not super relevant to this particular episode, except that this was one of the times that Renard's stature was noticeable. Hey, isn't there supposed to be a correlation between taller candidates winning elections? If he does run for mayor of Portland, maybe that'll help . . . along with being able to eviscerate one's opponent . . . It's kind of sad that I care more about Renard's political ambitions than I do about the other stupid storylines!

Oh, everybody looks short standing next to Renard. Some of the scenes of him walking down the hall in the precinct are unintentionally funny, since he towers over everyone else (besides Hank, who is only a couple of inches shorter than him). Meisner, at least, can console himself with the thought that he could probably kick Renard upside the head if he had to. I agree with comments above to the effect that, if the Adalind thing is supposed to be a long con, it is poorly executed. My guess is, it is not a con, but the writers have not clued the actors in one way or another, so CC is playing it straight yet somewhat ambiguously -- maybe she can't believe that the storyline is for real either.

Yeah, the lack of (metaphysical and moral) clarity makes me crazy, too. Here is what I've surmised about hexenbiests, though I'm not sure it is correct: Hexenbiests give birth to female hexenbiests and male zauberbiests. They are not obviously biestey at birth, but at some point -- maybe adolescence -- the biest emerges. I don't think we've ever been told this, specifically, but baby Diana never woged (unless we count glowing purple eyes), and nobody seemed to expect her to, and other wesen seem to start woging in childhood or early adolescence. Whether or not they are technically wesen, hexenbiests are clearly not like other wesen in at least one crucial way: you can de-biest a hexenbiest, but you can't de-blutbad a blutbad -- the latter would be like de-humaning a human or de-catting a cat, it just doesn't make sense. When Nick stripped Adalind of her powers, we saw a spirit-like entity rise out of her. This gives credence to the idea that one has a hexenbiest within one, rather than that one is a hexenbiest, or that perhaps 'hexenbiest' is a name for a compound entity. While losing her 'biest was apparently psychologically traumatic for Adalind, her personality did not change much. Are hexenbiests bad? I think, early on, there were notes about the show that indicated that hexenbiests were considered untrustworthy by other wesen. Most of the hexenbiests we've met were kind of bad, but to different degrees. Renard's mother actually seems pretty decent. Since "bad" may be hard to get a handle on, maybe a related question would be, are they sociopathic? Can they genuinely care about others or is it all just manipulation? I have a wholly unsubstantiated theory that childbirth is key. If they didn't care for their own children, at least when they are very young, the species would die out. So they do. Thus, we have Adalind, who conceived Diana in order to sell her, bonding deeply with her daughter. How long this bond would last is hard to say. Adalind's own mother dropped her like a hot potato when she lost her powers, showing that the parental bond can be fragile, but Renard's mother still loves him and cares about the welfare of her granddaughter. I think that not only can hexenbiests bond with their own children, but they also bond with people who are with them at the time of the birth. Thus, Adalind bonded with Meisner, and then later with Nick. Maybe they are genetically programmed to seek protection for their offspring, or maybe this is just a vulnerable time for them when their emotions are more intense. How long does it last? No idea. We've never heard of a hexenbiest in a long-term relationship, have we? Speaking of offspring, is Diana a monster-to-be in the guise of a cute little girl?

I was amused by the scene at the end when Meisner goes and yells at Renard. They go back and forth with "you should've told me . . .", "I didn't know you would do that", etc., and Meisner finally concludes "this worked out badly for both of us" -- which I read as acknowledgement that for a couple of guys who spend an inordinate amount of time on phones/computer screens, they kind of suck at communicating actual information. [On the shallow end of the pool, while I was pleased that Meisner finally got to leave the building, I think he's a lot hotter when seen in daylight . . . preferably with snow falling in his hair.] I don't want to think about the embarasment that is the whole Adalind plot, but can someone remind me: do we know for sure that Nick's blood, or Trubel's, can't un-biest her again?

Based on tonight's episode, I might be getting my wish. Black Claw is recruiting Renard, and he seems to be tempted. Of course, what comes of this, and whether it is done with any shred of plausibility remains to be seen!

I get the sense that maybe Meisner is in charge of the local chapter of HW by default. He was an assassin/mercenary affiliated with the Resistance, then, after bumping off the king he maybe decided that there were bigger fish to fry, so he joined up with HW, apparently under Chavez. Then Chavez died and there was a leadership vacuum; he stepped in. While he seems to be in charge, he views himself as a tool of HW the same as Eve and Trubel -- when someone remarked that the latter were kept in cells, he said something like "they keep us all here". Obviously, he has a bit more autonomy than most, and he gives orders, most notably to Trubel. OK, that almost makes sense, though I'm not sure why someone who appears to have been a successful free agent for so long would submit to HW's authority. But I really don't think the writers have worked all this out. They are just lucky that the actor playing Meisner manages to make the character engaging. As for the "good guy/bad guy" issue, yeah, I'm not sure that HW qualifies as good. They did torture a dying woman/hexenbiest in order to brain-wash her into becoming a living weapon. That's not nice ;-) But they may fall into the "lesser of two evils" category.

Yeah, I loved Howard's line about, "Is the fetus helping you? Because that's cheating."

I don't want Renard to go full-on villain at this point, just because we've had so much jumping from one end of the moral spectrum to the other lately (Juliette, Adalind) and it's been done so badly. I'm sure SR could pull off a bad-guy character well -- I agree with OtterMommy that he is one of the strongest actors on the show -- it's just that there has been too much extreme flip-flopping already. Now, bringing him back to gray, that would be cool. His transition from gray to (mostly) good came about because he drank that purification potion. Potions wear off eventually. I could totally see his dabbling in politics triggering his latent power-hungry tendencies. What would be the most fun, I think, would be for him to try to take over Black Claw from the inside -- not in order to shut it down, as a purely "good" character might, but also not in order to let it operate the way it has been operating, as a purely "bad" character might. He sees that the power in the wesen world is shifting away from the royals and toward this more grass-roots group. Renard goes where the power is. Of course, Renard likes civil order and has no use for random acts of violence, so if he took over, the looting and killing would go way down. But his agenda and Nick's would, in the big picture, diverge.

Yeah, I'm not sure what the deal is with Meisner repeatedly restraining Trubel from helping her friends. He doesn't seem to be the kind of guy to throw his weight around for no reason, so I'm guessing he gets orders (or at least input) from above. Yet why would HW think that engendering resentment in their Grimm is a good idea? Speaking of Meisner, maybe we could keep the Meisner thread a Nadalind-free zone, so OtterMommy can enjoy it. I think most of us over there believe Adalind could do better anyway ;-)

Heh -- I'm not complaining about Renard's apparent fabric allergy, by any means ;-) But I am annoyed that Meisner has been placed in this limited role of late. I get it that he is a minor character, so I don't expect him to have the kind of screen time that the regulars get. But his role used to be one of getting stuff done -- even if it was sometimes done off screen. Now he is more of an information source, and a leash for Trubel, not letting her become involved in local issues. The latter function could go somewhere interesting, I guess, if they are setting Trubel up to rebel against the strictures of HW. She seems to be gathering reasons to be irritated with Meisner. Yet, I wonder if she knows that he basically saved her life when Nick dropped her off at the hospital and forgot about protecting her.

I don't think it is practical to guess what percentage of the fanbase wants Nadalind and what percentage is opposed. On this board, there is a lot of anti-Nadalind sentiment, but Fanfiction.net and YouTube appear to be full of Nadalind-love. I think the reasons against the pairing have been made perfectly clear by many other posters, and I agree with them, so I'm not going to rehash that here. But I do want to address the "chemistry" issue. Whether this supposed chemistry is the only reason for pairing the two, or whether (as jewel21 states) there are other reasons, I think "the powers that be" are convinced that the two do have chemistry. Honestly, I don't see it. Back when Adalind had a more forceful personality, she and Nick had a fun enemy vibe, but with her blandification that went away. The big declaration-of-love-followed-by-sex scene had to be as chemistry-free as any romantic scene on this show so far -- including those with the much-maligned Juliette. It's like they eviscerated Adalind's personality and made Nick's emotional reactions indecipherable, yet still expect the actors to portray some kind of deep emotional connection. The writers could respond by having Adalind's hexenbiest nature reassert itself, or by at least giving Adalind back some of her old spark. But I think they've painted themselves into a corner in this regard. Nick has made it clear that he finds hexenbiests utterly repulsive; for him to consider accepting one for who she is rather than trying to "fix" her would undermine everything we saw of his personality last year. And having Adalind's snarky and manipulative attitude come back a bit without her hexenbiest nature re-emerging, even if it were balanced by good qualities (i.e., she is scheming to get information about BC or HW), that would destroy Nick's "she's not the same person" narrative.

I know Meisner only takes his shirt off for strategic purposes -- unlike Renard who seems to have some kind of fabric allergy that makes him do it whenever he can. But based on recent episodes, one might conclude that not only does he feel the need to be fully clothed, but also to never be exposed to sunlight! I don't think we've seen him outside, in daylight, for a very long time. HW has this trio of badass characters (Meisner, Trubel, and Eve), yet they mostly seem to be stuck in a room with a bunch of computers. Kind of dull.

ITA!!! A male viewing companion remarked to me that, if the writers decide not to continue with the Nick/Adalind relationship, now maybe Trubel is old enough to date Nick. My response was, "Yeah, because clearly all female characters are interchangeable!" Ugh! My companion was aware enough to sort of get why Nick/Adalind is gross, but not to get the deeper problem that, with few exceptions, the writers don't seem to know what to do with female characters and treat them like chess pieces to fill plot holes rather than like people with personalities. Considering the above, it is odd that much of the fanservice on the show seems to be aimed at women. The straight women and gay men in the audience get eye-candy in the form of shirtless Renard and Meisner. It is hard to recall similar eye-candy moments featuring the female form, though I assume it has come up now and then.

That's interesting. I would expect vocabulary to deteriorate, and probably grammar, but I would have guessed that pronunciation, intonation, and cadence, would be more enduring. I studied Irish Gaelic as a child. Both my parents spoke it (secondarily to English), though I never lived in an area where it was spoken, and I never became anything like fluent. Today I can understand little and express less. But my pronunciation, including sounds that are not in English, is still quite good -- MUCH better than Monroe's German pronunciation. Eh, this might not be a character point or a clue to Monroe's history. Monroe is clearly supposed to have good German reading comprehension. If Monroe was supposed to have lived in "the old country" until he was old enough to terrorize the countryside, then maybe it's just a case of an otherwise excellent actor not being able to pronounce foreign words as well as perhaps we might hope. But I'm not sure about our evidence that his terrorizing took place in Germany. I always assumed that he raised hell in America in his younger days, then went vegan, started pilates, etc. Tying back into this episode, pronunciation or not, Monroe having to impersonate his recently deceased uncle over the phone was heartbreaking, and beautifully portrayed by SWM.

I think you've hit the nail on the head, lovesnark. My father, who is elderly and not overweight, was hospitalized for a while last year, The doctors and supervising nurses were always encouraging him to get out of bed, sit in a chair, etc. But patients who are considered to be any kind of fall risk are not supposed to get out of bed on their own, and generally the staff don't want family members to help. Nursing aids/PCAs -- the people who actually help get you out of bed -- are always in short supply. So, if a patient takes the initiative, he can pester the staff repeatedly to get him out of bed. But then he must be willing to stay sitting for a long time, since there may not be anyone available to get him back into bed when sitting becomes uncomfortable. If that's the situation when one only requires one or maybe two staff members' assistance and is used to sitting in ordinary chairs, imagine what it is like when several people are required for bed/chair transfers and the patient has legitimate concerns about being able to tolerate sitting for long periods. The end result is lots of time in bed.