Handsome South African Andre arrives at a grief support meeting for the first time and listens as a woman named Molly talked about what the loss of her brother has meant to her. When she finishes and (mostly) dries her tears, it’s his turn and he tells the group about becoming a widower after his wife Suzie died of bone cancer. The two bond after the meeting and Molly agrees to his invitation to continue their talk over coffee. Once back at her apartment, he attacks her by blowing a stream of mist into her eyes that disorients her and makes her cry; he then woges into a fly-like Wesen and feeds on her tears before blinding her permanently. She tries to get away, but she ends up pulling a bookshelf down and accidentally killing herself.
At the crime scene, Wu and company deduce that she did indeed have company that night and had been to the meeting before arriving back home. However, the attack wasn’t deemed sexual, considering that her clothes weren’t ripped; they also take note of her swollen red eyes and bruised wrists. Later, the medical examiner determines that Molly had a crushed wind pipe and had just been blinded when she died, in addition to having sand in her eyes. Upon further inspection, her eyes were similar to those of someone with river blindness, so unless she just came back from Africa, there’s something strange about her death.
Nick and Hank go to the church where the meeting was held and talk to the man who ran it, where they find out that the man Molly left with had an accent. Meanwhile, Andre has taken a second victim (Kelly) at another grief support meeting, only this time, he gets interrupted before he can completely blind her. The interuptee (Casey) only gets a brief view of his face before he flees in his red Cadillac, but she tells the police everything she knows, including confirming Andre’s motive in seeking out vulnerable victims.
Nick, Hank, and Monroe go to the trailer and find out information about the Wesen, known as a Jinnamuru Xunte, or “tear-stealing evil spirit.” It originated in Kenya where it terrorized villagers by using its role as a priest to feed its addiction to tears. With a brain said to be swollen, black-ish, and infested with red worms that hook into the brain, the Jinnamuru Xunte also creates a web of grief by revisiting the families of its victims to continue feeding. Nick and Hank then rush to the hospital where they find that the second victim is still alive and with her, the parasite growing inside her. They get the name of the perp before Kelly’s time runs out and her eyes pour blood and they’re informed that Andre’s car was found at a local high school. They catch him coming out of yet another grief support meeting with another potential victim, only to chase him back into the school. Wu, Hank, and Nick all separate, with Nick finding Andre trapped in a room, desperate to get out. As he’s slapping the cuffs on the Jinnamuru Xunte, Nick gets blinded with the same mist that Kelly and Molly did, while Andre car jacks someone and flees the scene.
Nick is taken to the shop where Rosalee reveals that the worms are slowed down by direct light and has him sit in front of a light source to buy them some time. While Hank, Monroe, and Rosalee discuss a way for Nick to get his sight back (extract an eyeball from the Xunte in full woge and use it to make a paste that they’ll spread on Nick’s eyes), Nick discovers that his other senses have been heightened and begs to go after Andre. Reluctantly, they bring him along with them to Casey’s house, where she’s trying to fend off Andre from doing to her what he did to her sister. She puts up a pretty valiant fight and stays safe long enough for Nick and Hank to make it there; however, Nick is told to stay in the car while Hank goes to the front door and Monroe the back. Hank ends up out back with Monroe, thinking that Andre had escaped out there, only for Nick to make it out of the car with Rosalee’s help and use his enhanced hearing to follow Andre up into the attic.
The two then have a fight where Andre tries to use Nick’s lack of sight against him, but Nick ultimately prevails and holds the Xunte down long enough for his eye to be scooped out and the paste to be made. Rosalee puts it onto a blindfold that she ties around Nick’s eyes, while Andre stumbles down the stairs that led to the attic only to be stabbed in the stomach by Casey and die.
Later, Nick is seen blindfolded in the woods with Monroe, hitting melons with a baseball bat. He doesn’t miss a one, meaning that his brush with blindness and subsequent curing might have done him a bit of good and enhanced his senses.
Losing My Mind
Juliette comes home from the grocery store and hears something in her home. She tentatively creeps around until she sees that its a ghostly mist hovering around her, a mist that disappears almost as soon as she sees it. This motivates her to go to the spice shop to see Rosalee, who comes home with her to talk about the hallucinations she’s been having. Juliette recounts the hole that she saw and the voices she’s been hearing until she sees the mist again, only this time its becoming more human. Before it merely stood still, now it ran upstairs into the master bedroom, although Rosalee still couldn’t see it.
After Rosalee leaves, Juliette sees the mist once again; this time, she sees a clear figure in it. It’s Nick.
Additional thoughts and observations:
-Apparently NBC wants us to know that The Voice and Revolution will be back in three days. Just a hunch, considering the volume of ads for both that were shown.
-Someone from The Wire will be guesting on the show later this season.
-Other stuff that happened tonight: Renard had a nightmare about Juliette, proving that she’s not the only one being affected by what they drank; Adalind told Frau Pech about her pregnancy and wants help in using it to her advantage; Nick, Hank, Monroe, and Rosalee made dinner and discussed what they think Captain Renard’s true motives in seeking Nick’s aid were.
-I wonder what Nick, Hank, Monroe, and Rosalee talk about when they’re not having to defend themselves against the latest Wesen threat. Politics? Movies? Recipes?
-I can’t tell if using “I Only Have Eyes for You” was heavy-handed, clever, or both. Probably both.
-God bless the person who invented closed captioning. There was no way in the world I could have gotten “Jinamuru Xunte” without reading it on screen.
-Grossest episode of Grimm yet? I don’t mind a little gore, but the eye scooping and what happened to Kelly in the hospital were both disturbing.
-Next week on Grimm: Nick and Hank investigate a Wesen that has targeted a video game company, while Juliette’s hallucinations begin to take shape.
How come Casey didn’t freak out when Andre came down the stairs lookin like a friggin fly?
I don’t know why Casey didn’t freak out, but I’m hoping we see more of her.