Post by Fenril on Feb 6, 2013 15:16:51 GMT -5
Shortly after his tough-as-nails aunt (and surrogate mother) Marie returns to his life, homicide detective Nick Burkhardt discovers that he's a direct descendant of the Grimms --not, it turns out, linguists and folklorists, but monster hunters: he can see the true form of mythical creatures that walk among us everyday.
But times are changing, and things are no longer so simple as good versus evil. Nick must now juggle his carreer with his duty to keep humans and "Wesen" balanced. Fortunately he soon gains allies both human and not. Unfortunately a good amount of those allies might not be as noble as he believes...
This began as a fairly awkward monster-of-the-week show (very much in the vein of shows like "Supernatural", "Buffy" or "Kolchak", yet clearly not knowing where it wanted to go for the first two or three episodes), but over the season managed to become it's own dark fantasy show.
Mainly it specialized in one detail that many of those shows ("Supernatural" in particular) don't usually dwell on: the idea that monsters and / or supernatural creatures have been around for so long they have developed a strong culture of their own, with hyerarchies, traditions and even prejudices of their own [another neat element is that in Wesen culture, Grimms *are* the monsters --bloodthirsty humans who kill Wesen for no reason. And as Nick dicovers over the season, this idea isn't entirely wrong; most of his ancestors weren't anywhere as nice as himself].
The cast is good. Like the setting, the characters started a bit awkward, but they all developed overtime [another neat element: human and Wesen each have their own conflicts and interests beyond their relationship to Nick]. Despite the title and the fact that each episode opens with a quote from a fairytale compiled by the actual
Grimm brothers, this episode is only loosely connected to fairytales (there are episodes vaguely inspired by famous stories like Cinderella or the three little pigs; but really, this show has less in common with "Fables" or "Once upon a time" than with that old tradition of fantasy / detective hybrids).
The makeup and special effects are the weakest part of this show IMHO (Supernatural has better visuals for it's monsters. The ones on this show aren't really much to look at), but the actual storyline is usually strong enough to make up for it. So... I can't think of any major complaints here.
But times are changing, and things are no longer so simple as good versus evil. Nick must now juggle his carreer with his duty to keep humans and "Wesen" balanced. Fortunately he soon gains allies both human and not. Unfortunately a good amount of those allies might not be as noble as he believes...
This began as a fairly awkward monster-of-the-week show (very much in the vein of shows like "Supernatural", "Buffy" or "Kolchak", yet clearly not knowing where it wanted to go for the first two or three episodes), but over the season managed to become it's own dark fantasy show.
Mainly it specialized in one detail that many of those shows ("Supernatural" in particular) don't usually dwell on: the idea that monsters and / or supernatural creatures have been around for so long they have developed a strong culture of their own, with hyerarchies, traditions and even prejudices of their own [another neat element is that in Wesen culture, Grimms *are* the monsters --bloodthirsty humans who kill Wesen for no reason. And as Nick dicovers over the season, this idea isn't entirely wrong; most of his ancestors weren't anywhere as nice as himself].
The cast is good. Like the setting, the characters started a bit awkward, but they all developed overtime [another neat element: human and Wesen each have their own conflicts and interests beyond their relationship to Nick]. Despite the title and the fact that each episode opens with a quote from a fairytale compiled by the actual
Grimm brothers, this episode is only loosely connected to fairytales (there are episodes vaguely inspired by famous stories like Cinderella or the three little pigs; but really, this show has less in common with "Fables" or "Once upon a time" than with that old tradition of fantasy / detective hybrids).
The makeup and special effects are the weakest part of this show IMHO (Supernatural has better visuals for it's monsters. The ones on this show aren't really much to look at), but the actual storyline is usually strong enough to make up for it. So... I can't think of any major complaints here.