Success in the television industry is a mercurial
thing. Sometimes a show can look like it
will run for decades, but it is cancelled after 12 episodes (although Firefly
is more prominent now in popular culture than when it was on TV in 2002). Other times, a show about a bunch of sots in
a bar in Boston (Cheers), or in Philadelphia (It’s Always Sunny) will debut
with abysmal ratings and end up running for years. You never now.
Five years ago NBC debuted an unpromising horror show from a
former writer f Buffy the Vampire Slayer and gave it the Friday Night Death
slot. The show had a clever premise, but a lead actor who was as uncharismatic
as they come, a lead actress who was even blander, a backstory that wasn’t
fully thought out, and they never did figure out what to do for the opening
credits. But here we are five years
later and Grimm is
being renewed for a sixth season.
When Grimm started it had two things going for it: a premise
that put a modern spin on ancient fairy tales, and Silas Weir Mitchell, the
sidekick Monroe who was a Blutbaden, a sort of wolf that looked human. David Giuntoli, the titular Grimm who was a
Portland detective by day and slayer, er, killer of monsters by night, was a
dull character with a dull partner (Russell Hornsby) and a dull live in girlfriend
(Bitsie Tulloch). Mitchell was the only
actor able to show any kind of emotion when strange things started happening
and dead bodies started piling up. The
relationship between Giuntoli’s Nick Burkhardt and Tulloch’s Juliet Silverton
(I didn’t know her last name until I looked it up just now) bugged me a lot;
they were the typical TV couple who had absolutely nothing in common except
they were both good looking, yet we were supposed to accept on faith that they
were deeply in love.
Through the first two years of Grimm I longed to give the
creators some advice, especially David Greenwalt who had worked on Buffy the
Vampire Slayer and Angel. I wanted to
tell him that the secret to Buffy’s success was that the audience loved Buffy
and didn’t just want her not to die, but to be happy, have a boyfriend, and
enjoy herself. Nick Burkhardt wasn’t
given enough personality to root for.
The scripts were often clever, but while the monsters were excellent the
human element was missing.
Grimm made some smart decisions. The backstory involving some strange Middle
European royalty made the stakes much larger, and also integrated Nick’s police
captain (Sasha Roiz) to a greater extent.
The belated decision to let police officer Drew Wu (Reggie Lee) (possibly
the worst character name in history) in on Nick’s secret life paid huge
dividends. And if you thought they
couldn’t write romance, they added a love interest for Monroe (Bree Turner’s
Rosalee) with whom he had real chemistry.
The stories were less about a case of the week and more about the
maneuverings of secret societies on a global scale. Tulloch was dispatched (temporarily) and
replaced with long time guest star Clare Coffee, who’s character had a child
with both Nick and Nick’s captain (don’t ask about the details).
Grimm still isn’t close to the Buffy/Angel comparisons in
aspires to. But the plotting has become
faster paced, the characters deeper, and the monsters more imaginative. However, the is still not much of an
emotional connection with Nick, despite him now having a child and a much more
promising relationship. Nick is a
homicide detective but relies on Monroe and Rosalee’s help far too frequently
to solve his cases; just once I’d like to see Monroe look at his caller ID and
ignore Nick’s call.
Grimm just passed its 100th episode threshold, which
is a milestone
in television. An additional season makes it one of the longer running
fantasy/horror shows in television history.
Not bad for a clever little show that never figured out how to do
opening credits.
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