Grimm Recap: Skin Deep

Season 5 / Episode 15 / NBC

This week’s episode starts with Malcolm Caulfield, a photographer creeping on two young ladies in the mall. He runs the “you have a face for modeling” game that everyone sitting at a makeup counter at the mall wishing for better cheekbones wants to hear. He leaves his card with the Zoey Deschanel knock-off and heads off as they look him up online to see if he’s legit.

Back as casa de awkward, Nick is playing with Kelly while Adalind showers. As she comes into the room with only a towel on (they are getting cozy, I guess), Nick’s phone rings and Adalind answers it. What?! How are they at Relationship Def-Con Level 5 already? They are an awkward kiss, an awkward night of you’re-leaving-and-might-die sex, and two horrible secrets between them and she’s answering his phone? So when Adalind answers the phone, it’s Eve. She essentially tells Nick to get his ass over to HW. And he does.

Meanwhile on the other side of town, the Zoey Knock-off whose real name is Summer Blake shows up at Malcolm Caufield’s apartment/studio for her photoshoot. It’s all flashbulbs and “look natural.” Summer needs a break so Malcolm grabs her some water. They start the shoot again. And quicker than you can say rohypnol, Summer starts to feel dizzy and lightheaded.

She sits down, passes out, and Malcolm woges. He uses his mandibles to attach himself to her face. Well, that was a not-at-all veiled metaphor.

When Nick arrives at HW, Eve is all business she lays out the day that Andrew Dixon was assassinated including her takedown of Marwan and Renard’s subsequent killing of Marwan.

She explains some part of Renard’s questionably choices as of late. Nick is hesitant, but Eve assures him that she doesn’t want him to do anything except tell her where Renard is. Then she dismisses him.

When Summer wakes up on Malcolm’s couch, he shows her the shots from the evening and she heads back home. Her roommate (who was with her when she met Malcolm) agrees that the shots are beautiful and then goes out to “dance’ with her boyfriend. But not before pointing out a wrinkle on Summer’s face (weird, but who I am to judge their friendship?). Summer, filled with dreams of runways and photoshoots, runs to the bathroom. There is one visible wrinkle. The moment, she has graying hair. Then her hand looks that it belongs to a 70 year old. Then she starts to collapse. She is still on the floor, aged, when her roommate returns the next morning.

After Summer left his place, Malcom goes and meets a man in his car. Malcolm gives him a glass jar full of white slugde-y stuff. The man, a doctor, pays for the stuff and gets a little fied-y as he asks when he can more. Malcolm, suspicious, asks if he’s been using it. He, of course, says yes. Malcolm warns him against using it. So I think we all know how that’s gonna go.

Before Wu calls Nick and Hank to the Summer Blake crime scene, Nick tells Hank about his conversation with Eve and her suspicions about Renard. As if on cue, Renard comes into the office and calls them into to talk. He tells them that he’s going to run for Mayor – which he phrases as “I’m thinking about running for mayor. What do you think?” Nick voices a completely valid concern about who will take over the Wesen division of PPD. Nick is skeptical, but Hank thinks that Renard is getting played by Dixon’s campaign.

In her HW lair, Eve is being creepy. She’s just laying in the dark thinking about being a hapless human named Juliette and that silly time she inhaled smoke from a hexbiest’s hat and became Adalind. Good times. Clearly she has an idea. She goes to her closet where she stores her hexbiesting gear. Hmmm.

At the crime scene, Wu walks them through the weirdness: an elderly woman in the apartment dressed in Summer Blake’s clothing. When they pull the prints from the geriatric corpse, the fingerprints come back as Summer’s.

At the Doctor’s office, he is pouring the white sludge into small containers as a line of women forms outside his office. When he gets one on his chair, he rubs the sludge on her face and turns on a UV light. The “cream” seems to bubble and the woman looks a decade or more younger.

The coroner declares it death by sudden onset progeria, an aging disease. But Nick and Hank are already thinking about which type of Wesen did this.

At the one stop youth-sucking-shop photography studio/lair, Malcolm is setting up seemingly legit wedding photo gigs when a commercial comes on. It’s his friendly neighborhood doctor selling fountain of youth cream. Malcolm is pissed and calls the doctor in a rage. The doctor needs more of the youth sludge because he already used half his last supply. The good doctor starts throwing around words like “millions” and “partner” and Malcolm’s anger subsides. He agrees to try to get more of the “cream.”

Nick and Hank join Monroe and Rosalee in the basement of the Spice Shop where they all go through what I presume is Nick’s new collection of Grimm books bought and paid for with Monroe’s Uncle’s death.

They find a passage from an Egyptian Grimm about a Musasat Alsh-Shaba, a Wesen that leaves his victims into wrinkled old people by stealing their youth. When it woges, it sinks its mandibles into its victim’s face and sucks out a liquid, yanbue, which it stores in its cheeks for later collection. Um. Ick.

So the interesting thing about the Musasat Alsh-Shaba,it’s always a supplier (of white sludge). I’m having some feelings about this whole genetically predisposed to being a drug dealer undertone that’s going on. [sucks teeth].

Next scene, we see Malcolm pulling the same “you should be a model” line on a young man. Then sucking the youth right out of his face.

Back at the precinct, Nick and Hank are looking up progeria-related deaths in Portland. Surprise, surprise! There are more than one might expect. While they’re at odd medical research, the body of a 90 year man whose license and fingerprints say he’s a 19 year old man.

When they arrive on scene, they find one of Malcolm’s card. Nick remembers Summer Blake’s roommate mentioning that Summer had been on a photo shoot so they pay Malcolm a visit. They ask him about the two dead geriatric bodies, but he plays it cool. No woging and accidentally revealing himself to Nick. He asks incredulously, “Do you think I had something to do with this?”

As they leave, they decide to surveil him. They are barely out the door when the good doctor calls asking him if he has more. The doctor doesn’t seem to hear or care when Malcolm tells him that the cops were just there; he just wants more of the cream. So obviously he’s been using it. We see him in his office admiring himself in the mirror while patients, anxious to recapture youth, pile up in his waiting room.

At the station, Nick and Hank are checking Malcolm’s phone records. The find the doctor’s beauty treatment clinic number among the last-called. That can’t be a coincidence. They send in Rosalee as a decoy to find out if the doctor is the buyer.

Rosalee shows up at his clinic and uses her powers of [cough privilege cough] persuasion to get an appointment. Turns out the doctor is charging $5000 for a treatment. Wow.

Meanwhile, Eve is at HW still hexenbiesting. She’s brewing up something unsavory using hair clippings and the dried dust of her old personality.

When the doctor sees Rosalee, he is anxious to say the least. He’s twitchy and aggressive. And his face is distorted (which may be my biggest understatement of the year). The doctor tries to skip the consultation and just use the cream on Rosalee. She knows what it can do, how it can ruin lives, so she tries to politely leave. But… Malcolm the drug-pushing photographer shows up. Monroe is in the car with Nick and Hank listening. He is not trying to hear the doctor rubbing hyperaddictive human by-products on his wife’s face. He’s also not trying to have Rosalee in between Malcolm and the doctor.

So he rushes in and struggles with the doctor. The new supply of cream that Malcolm brought gets smashed on the floor. Nick and Hank struggle with Malcolm the Musasat Alsh-Shaba. In an odd turn of events, the doctor stabs Malcolm in the neck. And after asking a bewildered Rosalee how old she thinks he is, collapses.

Back at the precinct, Renard announces his candidacy for mayor. Rachel Wood is by his side looking like the shady Black Claw operative she is.

But Eve, the ever-shadier, is in her lair huffing hexenbiest smoke from a witch’s hat. And then her body begins to contort and she writhes in pain. When she stands up, she’s… abs. I mean Renard, she looks like Renard.

Oh this is about to get interesting.

So many questions:

Has Renard become a Black Claw operative or is he still a pawn in a larger game? More importantly, what is his workout routine? Does he just pay people to punch him in the abs while he flexes to deflect the blows? How old was that doctor? Are Adalind’s powers returning and if they are how long can she hide that from Nick? How long can Nick hide the magic stick from everyone? Also, what does the stick do?

And Grimm just got renewed for another season! Woo!

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