Friday, May 15, 2015

'Grimm' 4x21 Gif-Tweet-Cap: Juliette is a 'Headache'

As one tweet states, the Grimm episode "Headache" continues the theme of Juliette being a bi*ch. That, and Renard not knowing "Jack." The following gifs are also available on this Tumblr post.

Continuing from last week, Hank saves Monroe from freezing in the face of death by Juliette-controlled bullet in the "nick" of time!
Nick calls Renard to warn him that Juliette is out for blood, but Jack the Ripper (another continuation from last week) answers instead. Nick and Hank go off to save Renard, but learn that Henrietta was the last person he saw. When they find her body, they put a lookout on his home.
As they learn more, they become suspicious. Wu is sent to watch Renard while Nick and Hank go to Bud's to talk to Adalind. As usual, their interchange hilarious, before they even get inside. Bud has been on constant watch, sitting in a chair with a bat all night. He freaks out when Nick calls, and flips enough to woge when he hears a knock at the door. Of course, it's just Nick and Hank.
Adalind informs them that Renard must be possessed by Jack because his mother must have brought him back from death... along with an evil spirit that tagged along. The only solution is to kill him.
Rosalee comes up with another solution: almost kill him using death-faking drugs, but make him (and Jack) believe that he's dead so Jack will leave.
Meanwhile, Juliette helps Kenneth and his people to finish setting the trap for Nick's mom by giving them the info they need to kill a few of her innocent neighbors and set up a watch on Nick's house.
Soon, we see that someone is hanging out at Nick's house, so Kenneth sends a goon to check her out. We don't need to see her face to know it's Trubel. The answer is in the efficient kill.
Renard agrees to come to the spice shop to drink a drug that he believes will return his memory. Monroe protects his wife by taking over the death-juice-handing activity.
Renard begins falling asleep, but Jack catches on, realizing that the drug is not what they said it was. He begins choking Rosalee, receiving a nasty bite and a slew of rubber bullets in return. Unfortunately, Renard is the one who will suffer the pain from all that.
Believing the bullets were real, combined with the sensation of dying from the fake-death juice, Jack leaves Renard's body in a tiny puff of smoke. Rosalee quickly brings him back with a nice shot of adrenaline.
This bonus gif is a bit indulgent, but it surely belongs, seeing how Renard's chest was a major character in this episode. Oh, and the reason he flashes everyone is because he's afraid that the bleeding has returned. Instead, it's the pain of the gunshot injury finally healing. And with that, Normal Renard is back! Hopefully, we can still have more reasons for #ShirtlessRage in the future.
Soon after Renard returns, Trubel comes knocking to warn Nick of all that is going on at his home.

One annoying thing about the episode is that Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio must not have been available to play the part of Nick's mom Kelly any longer, because they never actually show her face. The person playing her backside is clearly not Mastrantonio, and all we get after that is the sounds of her being killed.

Juliette seems only slightly saddened by the sounds of Kelly dying, but does seem a bit more upset when Kenneth gloats about having ownership of Diana. Still, there's no coming back from this, even if she has a remnant of a heart in there somewhere.
Next, Nick returns home only to see his mother's head in a box. Nick's reaction is painful, but at least his character is becoming more interesting by the minute. Plus, we have Trubel back. We can only hope that her blood will fix Juliette (since Nick's won't work), and that she doesn't have to die to donate her blood to the cause.

Thursday, May 14, 2015

'Elementary' 3x23 'Absconded' GifTweetCap: Mass Bee Murder!

"Absconded" is Elementary's first dud episode in awhile. It had a few good elements, but defied logic in a number of areas. Ah, well, they can't all be winners, right? Let's just hope the finale makes up for it. Oh, and gifs and tweets can help make up for it as well! The following gifs are available on this Tumblr post. The podcast I co-host is not yet available for this episode, but you can subscribe on iTunes.

The episode starts right off with a solved crime... involving a dumb criminal who thought he could set up an elaborate plan involving a Raggedy Andy flash mob that he could hide within after killing his boss in broad daylight. Yeeeeeah... and he left all the evidence they needed to find him right in the production of the masks!
Next up, we've got the murder of USDA Bee Man Everett Keck, but it's OK, because we soon learn that he is a mass bee murderer in a ridiculous plot to become rich.
Then a doofus cop arrests Sherlock for saving him from killing himself through the sniffing of the cyanide murder weapon.
Side note: Gregson is being offered a promotion, yay! Well, except he wants Watson to check out his replacement first, in case she's a nincompoop or evil drug kingpin or something like that.
They soon find the killer, because he had accused Keck of killing his bees. He soon confesses out of guilt for killing a man over bees, but why the heck did Keck kill the bees in the first place?
Sherlock decides to test a new theory that bee stings can appear to be hypodermic marks. He does this test while on the phone, hoping they won't put him on hold... but wasn't he just about to put them on hold so he could hold the bee on his arm so it could sting him?
The reason for the test is to see whether someone had attempted to murder Keck's boss, Calvin Barnes. Barnes had a heart attack, but also had several bee stings. He was also very healthy, which means that he could have been injected with something to cause a heart attack, and the evidence hidden among the bee stings.
Well, that's exactly what happened, but why? Because of incredibly stupid reasons, that's why. Things seem fairly logical until a kidnapped Sheikh is thrown in the mix. Some freaky woman named Tara Parker and her husband Griffin hatched a plan along with Keck to kidnap the Sheikh and hold him for ransom so they could be rich.
When Sherlock connects Keck's Buddha shirt to a theology hood on some racy photos Tara used to lure the Sheikh to town, her husband confesses to everything because, you know, now that he can see that she slept with Keck, he hates his wife and his life and EVERYTHING!!!
At the end of the episode, Gregson turns down the promotion because he is already at the high point in his life and loves everything and everybody. Unfortunately, his buddy who brought him the promotion news thinks that the promotion was a setup to get him to leave his current job. He doesn't offer any other info, so we are left with an extremely mild cliffhanger going into the finale.

Wednesday, May 13, 2015

'Elementary' 3x22 'The Best Way Out Is Always Through' Gif-Tweet-Cap: Lockbell!

"The Best Way Out Is Always Through" is a great Elementary for Lockbell fans. This is the closest their friendship has ever been. If you're wondering why this is almost a week later than normal, it's because I had to save my new garden from a storm, and it's difficult to make extra time other than what I schedule for these recaps. The following gifs are also available on this Tumblr post. The podcast I co-host, Baker Street Podcast, is not yet available, but you can subscribe to it on iTunes.
The episode begins with an annoyed Joan: the Stanley Cup got first dibs for the tub again. Wait, what? Oh yeah, Sherlock is trying to prove his theory that a new Stanley Cup he acquired is the genuine article, and that involves a water displacement test. Silly Sherlock, he knows it can dry off somewhere else!
Then we have a couple of thieves stealing from a rich drunk dude... or not. He's actually dead by screwdriver, and one of the kids has to coax his idiot buddy into at least calling the cops before they take off.
Then we have a very cute moment between Bell and his girlfriend, Det. Scott. She asks if he'd like to come over, and he gives her an adorable smile in return when she tells his favorite kind of joke: about getting rid of all those bodies in her apartment.
Bell and Scott are both called to the screwdriver crime, along with Sherlock and Watson. The dead guy is Judge Vaughn, and Sherlock quickly concludes that he recently had sex in the hotel where he just attended a fundraiser because he smells like their soap.
The woman he left with has an alibi, but the prints come back to a different woman anyway: an escaped drug dealing convict named Nikki.

The prison from which Nikki escaped is privately owned by a company called Reform Enterprises. Everyone, including the people who work at the prison, dump on the whole concept of it being privately owned, since it's all about profits.

Bell seems a bit embarrassed when Joan asks about Det. Scott. He had hoped nobody noticed that they were together. While discussing it, they find a poetry book given to Nikki as a gift from Jeff, an attorney who sometimes visits the prison.

Later, Sherlock decides to use some soup to taste whether his Stanley Cup is the real deal.
Sherlock mentions that Det. Scott leads a double life, but Joan is surprised to learn that she is in IAB. Meanwhile, Sherlock had failed to notice that Scott is dating Bell, so they each learn something new. Joan insists on telling Bell that Scott is IAB, against Sherlock's warning not to get involved.
When Deputy Warden McCann is murdered on his way from grabbing a pizza, Nikki seems to take the credit. Sherlock is skeptical. He's been doubting the whole time whether a woman such as Nikki would do any of the things she has apparently been doing because it doesn't fit any of the statistics of female criminals. This earns him several eye rolls and a stank face from Joan.
He earns yet another eye roll when he steals Joan's toothbrush and the underwire from her bra to fashion a diorama of the prison and test out his theory to see whether there was a way for Nikki to escape. He finds 11 possibilities, none of which she employed.
Then Bell and Joan speak with Jeff, but they realize that he is most likely not their culprit. But they do learn something important: Nikki had been forced to work in a recycling area at the prison. That is important because Deputy McCann had drawn up a document stating that she requested the position, and then signed off on it. This causes Sherlock to realize that McCann probably murdered Nikki and put her in one of the toxic waste bins by the recycling center, which turns out to be exactly true.

That solves the murder of Nikki (which they hadn't even known about until they found her body), but who murdered McCann and the judge? One more key piece of information stands out: after the problems with Reform Enterprises, Loretta Nichols began arguing against their ownership of prisons in the state, and arguing for C.A.G., the only other private prison company.
Consequently, C.A.G. has the most to gain from the murders, and was also McCann's previous employer. One of the officers of C.A.G. just happened to be at the same fundraiser as the judge right before the judge was murdered, and the cops quickly find evidence that he was behind the murders.
After Joan tells Bell about Scott being a member of the IAB, he does not take it very well, breaking it off with Scott. Sherlock seems to think it's all his fault that Bell wants to be alone, but warns him that he should give Scott another chance for her mistake rather than risk being lonely for the rest of his days.
Bell decides to apologize to Scott for being so hard on her, but it's too late: she has decided to change her life and become a full-time IAB detective rather than hiding her true job. Unfortunately, it will take her some time to make the switch, but hopefully they can be together later. In the mean time, Bell decides to do the lonely thing and play a game of card-throwing with Sherlock.

Friday, May 8, 2015

'Grimm' 4x20 'You Don't Know Jack' Gif-Tweet-Cap: Or Do We?

The Grimm episode "You Don't Know Jack" has a creature of the week, but it's not your typical creature. In fact, it may be one of our main characters, and may not even be Wesen! The following gifs are also available on this Tumblr post.

The episode begins with lots of frowny-faces. The gang reminisces at the burned-out trailer, where only a few of the weapons and books have survived.
Then we meet the monster of the week, who seems to actually be Jack the Ripper, out killing Wesen prostitutes.
Soon after, Renard wakes up fully clothed in the middle of a pool.
Nick is finally on a rampage to fix Juliette before she does any more damage. Adalind helps out by exhuming the body of her mother so she can create a potion that will remove Hexenbiest powers. This seems a little too closely related to the potion used to return lost Hexenbiest powers.
Rosalee is the only one who can stomach ripping out organs from the long-dead Hexenbiest, while Monroe can barely stomach being in the same room as the body.
Adalind doesn't much enjoy drinking her mom potion. At least it was filtered through a witch hat rather than smoothie style.
Once she drinks it, she asks everyone to hold her down while her powers bubble up and supposedly leave her, causing the whole room to shake. Luckily, Monroe is able to catch the mom-juice before it falls to the floor.
The gang watches as Adalind tests out her powers as they slowly fade. Adalind can be stupid at times, but she's also sneaky. There's no way she truly believes that Juliette will drink the potion, or that she can be forced to drink it. It's amazing that the others can be so deluded. Is it possible that the potion has actually made Adalind stronger than Juliette so she'll have a fighting chance?
As Juliette creates more havoc, Renard creates a whole different kind of havoc when he goes to Henrietta for help, blowing up with emotion about how he's losing control of his mind, likely because of the way his mother brought him back to life at the beginning of the season. He storms out, but the Ripper (who may also be the captain) returns, killing Henrietta. We'll miss you! You were an awesome Hexenbitch!
Juliette answers Nick's call to come to the spice shop, but of course refuses to drink the potion. Instead, she throws everyone around, and forces Nick to raise his gun, apparently to kill Monroe. A shot rings out, but it's to be continued. The preview for next week contains some spoilers on what happens next, in case you can't stand not knowing.