The Mellifer's sting.
She'll sting you one day. Oh so gently, so you hardly even feel it. 'Til you fall dead.
The station is abuzz as Nick and Hank are called to a case where an innocent flash mob results in a gruesome homicide. As Nick delves further into the investigation, he learns more about his unique family history, and finds himself at odds when he and Hank are assigned to protect a dark character from his recent past.
This episode provides examples of:
- Body Horror: Being injected with fifty milligrams of bee venom does not make for a pretty corpse.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: Really, all of Season One has this, but in comparison to the previous two episodes, Episode Three reveals a couple notable examples:
- When Nick is discussing the Monster of the Week with Monroe, Monroe comments that isn't aware of every "creature" in the world. It won't be for another few episodes until the show settles on "Wesen" being the collective term for all the various creatures that appear. Moreover, Monroe's dialogue in a later episode when he explains to Nick what Wesen are imply that he would have known the term at this point in the series.
- When reading up on Hexenbiests and how they are natural prey of the Mellifers, the journal entry Nick reads calls the Hexenbiest's Game Face their "morphed" form. Later on, the show would use the term "woge" for when a Wesen shows their Game Face.
- Facial Horror: The effects of the Mellifer's sting are not pretty.
- Flash Mob: The Wesens of the Week participated in these. They were arranged as cover for the murders.
- Foreshadowing: Melissa, in her final moments, tells Nick that "he" is coming for the former. This could be referring to Renard, or maybe someone (or something) far, far worse...
- Genre Savvy: Monroe constantly compares events to a horror movie.Monroe: Oh, this is usually the part in the movie where the sidekick gets it!
- Lame Pun Reaction:Hank: The beekeeper just buzzed me. That's right. I went there.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Nick guns down a Mellifer queen. At the end of the episode, he's stung by a bee. What makes this look a lot like direct payback is the fact that the bee first lands gently on the back of his right hand, ambles around harmlessly for a moment, and then stings his trigger finger.
- Magical Security Cam: Implied when Nick asks if they can "do anything" (answer: "no, the camera's stationary") with recorded footage of a flash mob murder.
- Meaningful Name: The Queen Bee of the Mellifers is Melissa, which means "honey bee" in Greek.
- One Dialogue, Two Conversations: Nick and Adalind, since he knows she's a Hexenbiest, and she knows he's a Grimm. When he has to question her for his case, they discuss it but take subtextual shots at each other with their word choice.
- Rewind, Replay, Repeat: Nick repeatedly rewatches the Flash Mob videos taken by various security cams in hopes of finding the person killing people at each Flash Mob event.
- Snark Knight:Monroe: Don't you have a partner for this stuff?
Nick: Yeah, sure, because if I told him my two main suspects turned into bees, he'd completely understand. - To Be Lawful or Good: Nick has to protect Adalind from Melissa. In the eyes of the law, Melissa is a murderer, and he's a cop. In the eyes of the supernatural, Adalind is a Hexenbiest, an archetypal Wicked Witch, and Melissa a Mellifer, messenger and helper to Grimms. This time, Nick chooses the law.
