'Grimm' Recap: Baaad romance

We watch an unseen person go through the motion of locking up a house, just before a hand smashes through a window. The scene quickly cuts to a woman running outdoors across a bridge. In a state of disorientation, she doesn’t notice the oncoming car and is hit. The motorist leaps from the car to check on her as someone walks up behind him. He tells them to call 911 but goes back to the car to do it himself, leaving her alone with the mystery man. It seems as though the man cast a spell on her with his touch alone. He caresses her face before covering her nose and mouth, suffocating her. The man disappears shortly after the driver, Leroy, calls the police. Nick and Hank question Leroy about the man but they aren’t given much to go on. They note that the woman’s arm is cut up but not due to the car accident.

An unknown Frenchman exits a taxi and checks into a hotel. He opens his suitcase revealing a scythe before briefly transforming. An autopsy is done on the victim, Faith. Due to past reports, Hank assumes she was running from her abusive husband. Upon questioning, her distraught husband reveals that he and Faith had an argument. That night, she left, however did not return home. The officers find that Faith uploaded a photo to her online profile over an hour after she had left home. The location of the photo is Brambles bed and breakfast near the bridge where she was killed. They talk to the owner, Billy, to find that he remembers her but that she did not stay the night. Hank accidentally steps on an endangered frog while on a tour through the garden where Faith took the picture. Nick notices that Billy morphs in irritation. As they turn to leave, the man devours the dead frog.

The Frenchman from the hotel comes to the station looking for the police officer that shot his friend, the man that put Marie in the hospital. Renard has him told that someone will be in contact soon. Nick does some research and discovers that Billy is a Ziegevolk, a Bluebeard, and has the ability to attract women. Monroe gives him more information telling Nick that they often look for attractive women to breed with. Hank gathers some information about Billy and a number of missing women. When found, many of them were pregnant.

Back at Brambles, Billy ventures into the basement to give food to three women held in cages. Before leaving out for the night, he turns on a gas and pockets a frog from the garden. Nick follows him as Hank looks around the house for the broken window. Nick watches as Billy consumes the frog. He calls Monroe to ask him to track the Zeigevolk. At the house, Hank finds a piece of broken glass in the garden.

Renard visits the Frenchman from the station. He exhibits no fear as he talks to the man. The man explains that he has come to avenge his fellow reaper whom Nick killed. Renard tells the man that he has been insubordinate in doing so. When questioned as to whether he is protecting a Grimm, Renard proceeds to cut off the man’s ear. He then instructs him, in French, to leave his town and not to return.

Monroe arrives and meets Nick at the bar. He tells him that because Billy eats frogs he is not just a breeder but a herder. While searching the house, Hank discovers that one of the windows has been repaired. Monroe witnesses Billy hypnotizing a woman at the bar and he too seems to become entranced. In the basement, Hank hears whimpering. He ventures down stairs and, struck by the gas, he becomes disoriented. Billy leaves the bar and heads back to the house. Nick tries to warn Hank but he has fallen unconscious in the same room as the kidnapped women. He follows Billy back to Brambles. The woman from the bar arrives at the house just as he goes to shut off the gas. Nick stops her and tells her to leave. Nick finds Hank in the basement but it is too late. Billy locks them both in and turns the gas up high. He tries to flee, but the woman catches up with him and leaves with Billy. The tracking device that Hank has planted on Billy’s car leads them to him. They follow it to a park and chase him down and, as he tries to run, he is struck by a car. Before being loaded into the ambulance, he manages to entrance the nurse helping him.