A woman named Jill is up on Mount Hood taking samples for the company she works for, Eon Industries. She notices that the rocks are unusually warm and that there are different kinds of rocks than she expected, but she largely ignores this and attempts to leave for her office, only to be accosted by a strange man yelling about how she took what doesn’t belong to her. She pepper sprays him and manages to escape without being injured, leaving him to woge into a bull-like creature.
Jill goes home and experiences shaking she attributes to an earthquake around a 4.3 on the Richter Scale, only for steam to invade her home, lights to go out, and the temperature to noticeably shoot up. It’s then that she’s attacked and killed by a creature made of rocks and fire, who ends up leaving fiery hand prints on her arms and neck. Nick and Wu go to Eon’s offices, meeting with Tom and hearing about how he called the police and was waiting for a follow-up when Jill was killed. The company was collecting rock samples in the name of geothermal energy, testing them for their mineral and chemistry make up, so Tom decides to take Nick and Wu out to the spot that Jill called him from, to prove that they’re a legitimate organization and not interested in environmental terrorism.
It’s there that they find a truck severely damaged and Nick ends up spotting a suspect after he make the trek into the woods. He gets Wu’s attention quick enough for an arrest to be made of a man named Marcus Hemmings, a former archaeologist who’s been living off the grid for the past 15 years. The autopsy on his wife, who died more than a decade ago, matches that of Jill, so they decide to begin questioning him to find out if there’s a link between the two cases. He mentions that Volcanalis, priest of fire and descendent of god of fire Vulcan, is out for revenge, which it gets on anyone who disrespects its land. That includes Tom, who took rock samples when he brought Nick and Wu up to Mount Hood and ends up seeing the same fate that Jill did.
Nick and Renard did manage to catch Volcanalis at Tom’s house, but it used the smoke from the attack as a means to escape, even with bullets failing to slow it down. Along with Monroe, Nick goes to the trailer to find that Marcus is a Taurius Armenta, a stubborn, courageous Wesen who loves being on the frontlines and has a nerve made entirely of steel. However, the tale of Volcanalis in the books isn’t quite as inspiring, as he was responsible for the Pompeii massacre, known to appear right before volcanic eruptions, and often confused with Satana.
Nick takes the book to Marcus and gets an idea to use liquid nitrogen to freeze Volcanalis dead in his tracks after drawing him out through stealing more rocks. Along with Marcus, Renard, and Wu, he lures Volcanalis to an abandoned warehouse where they spray him down with nitrogen and Marcus delivers the crushing blow that sends the (newly obsidian) creature shattering.
Making Memories of Us
Juliette comes home and immediately hears a hissing sound behind her, which turns out to be another memory of Nick, this time cooking eggs. Almost immediately, several different versions of her former boyfriend appear, all talking over and walking through one another. She grabs her things and leaves the house, passing by another memory in the process, only to be confronted with yet another Nick in her passenger seat. This causes Juliette to crash into a parked car and seek the aid of the medium she met during the La Llorona case, who has been guiding her through the restoration of her memory. The medium gives her a drink that, while not tasting good, is said to help her mind focus. If she is to regain her sanity (and her memory of Nick), she’s going to have to pick one memory to be there with, to become part of.
The following day, she does just that when she begins to feel overwhelmed at facing a number of Nick’s again. The memory she picks? The day that she and Nick moved in together, including the departure of his prized Mexican Elvis lamp. Once she figures out what she said during the original event, Juliette becomes much more comfortable and eventually manages to rid herself of the excess memories. She’s no longer haunted by her memory loss, even though she intentionally goes back to the time he proposed to her, if only to experience the type of joy that has been absent from her life this season.
Additional thoughts and observations:
-Not mentioned above is that Adalind and Frau Pech go to Stefania Vaduva Popescu, the “Zigeunersprache” (or Queen of the Schwarzwald Gypsies), to find out the worth of the former’s unborn child. After a painful process to verify that the child’s blood is royal, Stefania tries to set a price point (500,000 Euros for a boy, 750,000 for a girl), only for Adalind to name her terms. She wants the powers that the Grimm took from her back, which Stefania thinks is impossible.
-If you didn’t get a chance to bask in the good news today, Grimm has been renewed for a third 22-episode season, slated to begin this fall. Where it goes on the schedule, though, is another story; personally, I’d leave it on Fridays where it’s been doing solid business, but if the network isn’t as confident in their pilots or sees the show exploding after The Voice, it might escape the Friday death slot.
-Hank’s on vacation for the first time in four years and it was the strangest thing to actually see him for a good 4 seconds before he left. I know they did that so they could get in the line about Hawaii, which tied back to the talk about the Ring of Fire, but still.
-I would watch an entire series of Bud and Monroe going to bars and watching soccer games.
-The decision to use color in the Juliette memory was a great one. I liked how the more she remembered, the brighter/fuller everything became. Simple? Yes. Visually effective? Definitely.
-Another cool visual moment: having the Volcanalis eyes still moving when the sledgehammer hit, as well as after when he was in 1000 pieces. Very creepy and very Grimm.
-As a result of the preemption last week and the cancellation of Ready for Love, the next episode of Grimm is set to air Tuesday, April 30th at 10:00. In the installment, titled “Endangered,” Nick’s put on a case that causes him to question the existence of aliens in the Wesen community, while Juliette’s memory starts coming back in a big way.
