Lonelyhearts (Grimm)

"Lonelyhearts" is the 4th episode of the supernatural drama television series Grimm of season 1, which premiered on November 18, 2011, on NBC. The episode was written by supervising producer Alan DiFiore and co-executive producer Dan E. Fesman, and was directed by Michael Waxman.

Plot

Opening quote: "There she paused for a while thinking... but the temptation was so great that she could not conquer it."

A girl, Faith Collins, is tormented by frustrating visions and then hit by a car. The driver, Leroy Kent calls an ambulance while a mysterious man arrives and strangles her to death before disappearing. Nick (David Giuntoli) and Hank (Russell Hornsby) are called to investigate and they find glass cuts in her arms. They interrogate her husband, Roy, as he has been reported for abuse but he doesn't reveal anything.

After locating a comment she made, Nick and Hank arrive at a bed and breakfast and question the owner, Billy Capra (Patrick Fischler. He states that Faith appeared at the bed and breakfast but didn't stay. He shows them the garden where Nick sees Capra shift into a creature form. Nick later finds with Monroe (Silas Weir Mitchell) that he is a Ziegevolk and that their pheromones make women fall in love with them. Nick and Hank then discover that many women have disappeared since Capra arrived in Portland and some of them were pregnant. In his basement, Capra feeds three women locked in a cage.

Nick tells Monroe to follow Capra to a bar while Hank sneaks into the inn. Hank discovers the girls caged but is tormented by the same visions of Faith. Nick arrives shortly after Capra leaves the bar. Looking for Hank, they're locked by Capra, who turns on the gas. Nick and Hank escape by breaking the door but Capra escapes with a woman.

Meanwhile, a man (Henri Lubatti) shows up in the police station, asking Sgt. Wu (Reggie Lee) for the officer (Nick) who killed his friend, Hulda (the Reaper that tried to kill Marie). Captain Renard (Sasha Roiz) tells him to check his information. Renard then meets with the man, confronting him for arriving at Portland without his permission and cuts his ear with a scythe, telling him to never come back.

Nick and Hank track down Capra using a locator in his car. They find him in a park and as he flees, he's hit by a car. As Nick and Hank walk away, Capra uses his pheromones into the paramedic officer.

Reception

Viewers

The episode was viewed by 5.44 million people, earning a 1.6/5 in the 18-49 rating demographics on the Nielson ratings scale, marking a 5% increase in viewership and ranking second in its timeslot and fourth for the night in the 18-49 demographics, behind Dateline NBC, CSI: NY and Blue Bloods.^[1] This means that 1.6 percent of all households with televisions watched the episode, while 5 percent of all households watching television at that time watched it.

Critical reviews

"Lonelyhearts" received mixed-to-positive reviews. Amy Ratcliffe of IGN gave the episode a "okay" 6.0 out of 10 and wrote "This series has to be careful to balance the camp factor and the dark subject. If it goes too far in either direction, it just becomes something silly. The bee episode was too campy. I feel like this episode hit the ideal balance and added in a touch of horror movie feeling. It's too bad the plot wasn't meaty; it was just... toad-y. Standard cases aren't enough for this show. We've already seen Grimm can do better, and I hope it does."^[2]

The A.V. Club's Kevin McFarland gave the episode a "B-" grade and wrote, "I'm having a hard time assigning a grade to this episode of Grimm. Really I've been having a hard time grading this whole series. Look, I like classic Disney movies as much as the next animation fan, but the way Once Upon A Time takes the path of least resistance with all of its princess characters has really started to bore me. Other than Rumpelstiltskin, who's a breath of fresh air thanks to an extraordinary re-interpretation, most of the OUaT cast fails to defy expectation. It's not just that I've got the Grimm beat here at the A.V. Club, I honestly believe that what this show is doing to reinterpret fairy tales and folklore is genuinely more creative than how ABC's fantasy drama is doing with Disney stock characters."^[3]

TV Overmind's Shilo Adams wrote, "One of my main problems with the pilot of Grimm was its worrying dual selves, wherein the show could go big and a little campy or it could go dark and somewhat gritty, with both sides of the coin containing a certain amount of credibility. It's a backhanded sort-of problem ('you do too many things well! stop it!') that generally gets worked out through time, network notes, and fan feedback, but until it does get worked out, episodes tend to be more hit-and-miss than the talent involved would make you think."^[4]

Nick McHatton from TV Fanatic, gave a 3.5 star rating out of 5, stating: "'Lonelyhearts' didn't offer much this week, there were some high points, but they were few and far between. As always, one of the high points was Eddie, in a slightly different capacity no less! Nick's reliance on the book to paint a bigger back story on the Blue Beards allowed us to get a better idea of what the creature was before Eddie filled us in with small details about them. By doing this, Eddie's role was expanded slightly. Less exposition by Eddie means more comedy, and that's always a good thing."^[5]

References