**** Grimm can be watched on NBC WCMH Channel 4 for Time Warner and Insight Communications customers . For HD channel versions, check your local cable or satellite provider for more information. ***
One of the most under hyped shows until recent weeks has been NBC’s Grimm. Now, I’m not entirely sure if that is because ads for ABC’s Once Upon A Time are saturating the marketplace, or what, but when it came to finally watching Grimm, it’s easy to say one was not ‘biting at the chance’ (pun intended) to watch the pilot. Actually, Once Upon A Time which Grimm being lumped together with was getting bigger waves from audiences before it aired, while the latter seemed to barely feature a beep.
Imagine my surprise. While Grimm is a case of the week-type crime show, what is amazing is that, well, the show actually works. I know, I’m just as surprised. Also surprisingly, is the show is headed up by David Greenwalt, who should be known as one of the strong forces helping Joss Whedon, the man behind Angel and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
I keep saying the word surprised a lot, as because, frankly put, Once Upon A Time looked like, between the two fairy-tale-like shows to do well, this one would fail. And be crap. And lo-behold, Grimm has not been sold to me as one thing, and then is another. No, Grimm is exactly what it set out to be.
Grimm is the tale of a detective, Nick Burckhardt (David Giuntoli) who is solving the brutal murder of a woman in a red jacket. His partner Hank Griffin (Russell Hornsby) is always in tow, and the two are trying to find out who, or as the clues seem to lead them to believe ‘what’ killed the poor college girl who happened to be wearing the wrong jacket at the wrong time. If the murder wasn’t brutal enough, Burckhardt starts to see things; normal every day people start turning into nasty deformed people, almost monsters, in a way. But Nick shakes his head, and moves on. He’s seeing things, right? Add onto these new ‘sights’, Nick returns home to find his terminal Aunt Marie (Kate Burton) stopping by for a visit. Something new though in her visit is a large RV, where Marie advises that she needs to desperately speak to Nick about something. Those illusions that he keeps seeing aren’t illusions at all. In fact, Detective Nick Burckhardt is the last scion in a way of the Grimm family. Yeah, that Grimm family. The Brothers Grimm, the ones who wrote the stories? Well those stories are real, they penned the books to warn people and also force the creatures into hiding. As time has gone on, the Grimm family has dwindled down, hunting those creatures who still do wrong, do evil. Imagine Buffy the Vampire Slayer but instead of vampires, it’s fairy-tale monsters. And maybe Nick’s first major suspect who turns out to be the Big Bad Wolf aka Eddie Monroe (Silas Weir Mitchell) may be the only one who can help him ‘hunt’ down the real murderer.
At first glance, Grimm is very basic in it’s structure, very straight forward, but makes no qualms what it is trying to do. It’s literally a modern-day version of the film The Brothers Grimm, mixed with the mythology of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. And the show has also not been sold as one thing, and then given us another, like Once Upon A Time. You’ll notice I keep saying this a lot, but the facts are there. Clearly, between both shows, the buzz was that I should be liking the latter, but instead like the former. While Once Upon A Time creates interesting storypoints and mysteries, it then answers most of these questions by the end of the pilot, begging me to go ‘what’s the point’? While in Grimm we are only give a glimpse of Nick ‘Grimm’ Burckhardt’s powers or means in stopping the bad guys, the monsters from the fairy-tales we grew up with, and also reveals a possible big-bad. And then it leads us to the fiancé of Nick, who his Aunt tells him he needs to break it off with because it will put her in danger. And then there’s the idea that his partner doesn’t know what’s going on with him, you have plenty of little things that can lead a show forward. We might be able to recognize these plot points that will be addressed in future episodes, but to what extent? What will happen? In Once Upon Time there are no mysteries, really. Nothing that really drives the plot forward. We know that the heroine is the beginning of the end for our villain and her evil curse. There’s nothing really worth nothing for story. And while Grimm may fit the confines of a procedural television show, at the same time, it is entertaining and begs the question “What next?”
Definitely worth a shot at your time tonight, if you aren’t watching Game 7 of the World Series on FOX.
But what do YOU think, examiners?
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