Review:
There is zero magic to be found in this show.
The premise you can pretty much guess from the title: a cop suddenly is able to see the fairy tale creatures that inhabit our modern day world because he is one of the last descendants of the Brothers Grimm.
Let’s all take a moment to wince at that ridiculously tired premise.
It doesn’t take a Grimm to see through this show’s paper thin genre veneer to the generic and fairly inane cop show lurking underneath. Worse, the creative forces behind this series seem to think that the use of cool make-up effects somehow excuses them from the need to construct a compelling plot. I mean, the leading man, Nick, basically solves the case only because someone leads him – literally! – to the killer. And don’t even get me started on Nick’s complete lack of personality…
I’m actually a little in awe of just how many tropes they managed to stuff into one hour of television. Buddy cops, check. Case of the week, check. Fairy tales in real life, check. Mysterious heritage, check. The ability to see the unseen, check. Bad things lurking in the dark, check. Important Book of Knowledge, check. Ridiculous use of archaic weapons, check. (I mean, seriously? You have a creature go after someone with a SCYTHE? Because no one would notice a guy carrying one of those down the street…Plus I love how easy it is for Nick to use his newfangled gun to shoot the scary creatures – but ahem, you’re supposed to be overcome by the dark lighting and moody music! Be afraid, be very afraid! Here be SCARY creatures! Just, er, stock plenty of knives and leave your guns at home!) But you can’t make a show out of tropes alone – and sadly Grimm really has nothing else.
So it all comes down to this: NBC ignored all the fabulous Urban Fantasy books in the world and instead served up this bland mush of forgettable dreck. (And you thought the Night Stalker remake was bad…) And now I’m going to go re-read Holly Black’s Valiant or watch some Buffy to get the bad taste out of my mouth.
Grimm premieres Friday, October 28 on NBC.
Bleargh. Yeah, this is why I couldn’t stand Sanctuary. That and all the blue-screens. Sometimes it sucks being able to see the difference between real and fakey!
oh, too bad. I actually believed they had a good reason (aka great original content) not to adept an existing story >< I'd love to see an October Daye TV series f.ex.
So would I! And here’s hoping the CW gets Kim Harrison’s The Hollows right…
The tropes don’t bother me as much as the utter vanilla blandness of the characters. Tropes such as the ‘tortured soul’ detective might actually have been preferable to the blank slate innocent. I don’t necessarily think they are bad actors- I just don’t think the lead was given much to work with besides ‘rookie cop’ and ‘nice partner.’ Even the ‘big bad wolf’ character was much less entertaining than the wolf in The 10th Kingdom. Consequently there’s a big miss on the dramatic possibilities of facing his new awareness of the supernatural – there’s no tension between the person he is and his new role as a vigilante. Shouldn’t a cop care that he’s going to have to go killing people outside of the law? In comparison, remember Ben Browder’s combo of football jock and science nerd having to face the existence of aliens in Farscape? Or Buffy learning she had to be a slayer? Or Gwen facing aliens for the first time in Torchwood Even Witchblade, a pretty terrible show, had better cop-facing-the-supernatural scenes. Really any choice they could have made about who the lead character is would have been much more interesting.
Also, the show didn’t really realize either its identity as a cop show or as a show about the supernatural. The procedural side is weak- no clues are actually used to find the killer (as bookyurt said, they’re led there by the nose) – and there is no concern for procedure, evidence or proving fault. The killer’s MO isn’t consistent, which seems like an excuse to have a rescue the kid scene. The supernatural side is also underutilized – only used for grimacing and fight scenes. The killer is scary in a standard Law & Order SVU pedophile way rather than being wolfish. Maybe the decision that these bad guys can be killed with bullets will turn out to be interesting (they’re another part of the natural world) but it just came off as simply convenient – too easy. For a show called “Grimm,” so far it’s not all that dark or grim.
Production value is decent on this show- higher than The Dresden Files or Charmed, for example. I’m sure it will have some fans who are willing to be credulous and go along for the ride. But I wouldn’t recommend it for hard-core urban fantasy fans. If you have much to compare it to, it disappoints.