This review of last night’s Grimm comes late because I had an event at church last night. The opening scene had the eerie quotes from a Japanese fairytale, The Goblin Spider.
“Instantly, the priestess changed into a monstrous goblin-spider and the warrior found himself caught in her web.”
We are first introduced to our antagonist for the episode,Lena Marcinko played by Dollhouse’s and Angel’s Amy Acker at a fancy bourgeois art gallery. A guy named Ryan pursue her, and attempts to rape her (he being a Creature/Wesen himself) but before he does, she kills Ryan in what looks like self-defense.
Meanwhile, Juliette and Nick’s house gets egged by kids (who happen to be Wesen, and the children of Wesen). Juliette’s conversation with Nick (Grimm) leads to Nick asking, “You’re telling me you think these kids think I am some kind of monster?” Still confused, Grimm turns to our favorite Blutbat, Monroe. Eddie informs Grimm, “You’re the monster under the bed.” There continued to be a little economic commentary from Grimm’s characters; Renard and Hank both suspect that our victim Ryan is a gambler, in the Stock Market. There have been tidbits throughout the season of this, the struggle of the rich versus the poor, and I do really wish they would make that a larger part of the story, given the original historical context of the Brothers Grimm’s stories.
Nick, seeking answers to his questions, goes to the trailer to read Aunt Marie’s diary. She apparently had met a Grimm from the Asia-Pacific, by way of Singapore Steamer, Japanese doctor by name of Hasegawa who left notes with a rough translation about an unknown creature, a Spinnetod (spider-creaturely, usually a woman) who has feed on young men in order to keep her youth. GrIMM’s writers wanted to make it obvious that this story was a tribute to “The Goblin Spider”;
“Japanese? That’s interesting.”- Eddie to Grimm
Grimm and Hank discover that although Lena is behind the murders of two young men, her family happens to be a trio of Spinnetods, her husband and her teenage daughter. As a way of providing dark humor, Nick and Eddie go to a Wesen retirement home, to visit a “retired” Spinnetod named Charlotte. Charlotte tells our friends that if Spinnetods want to avoid the Mortification process (aging/dying), they must kill three young men every few years.
“The biological imperative is virtually impossible to resist.”- Charlotte to Nick.
Charlotte also tells our men that in so many words, these black widows are also gold-diggers: “We’re attracted to shiny objects, we are.” I admit that I was satisfied with this episode of Grimm, and Fred from Angel made it all the more worth to watch. Even though Grimm’s mythology borrows from fairy tales from other cultures, I wonder just how much the American myth of the woman as gold-digger as well as the evil old spinster played a part in this particular story. This specific episode, Tarantella could easily be interpreted as playing into sexist and ageist stereotypes, one in which only men win the day, and therefore patriarchy.
