Review: "Grimm" - Season 1

Carpenter, Stephen, et.al. (Dirs.) “Grimm – Season One”, 2012, Universal Studios/Sony Home Entertainment.

I was watching the bonus features on these DVDs and one of the creators made a fairly jarring comment that put me on the back foot. Fortunately, I had already watched all the episodes and come to my own conclusions, but this off-hand comment certainly left a bad taste. What he said was, in essence, that, in the need to find a TV project to shop around the studios, he set out to find something that was long out of copyright which he could use. Now, I’m aware that rights to intellectual property are expensive and that shows like “Game of Thrones” wouldn’t be around without an enormous monetary outlay and one that doesn’t immediately translate to onscreen value, but this cynical aside really knocks the shine off something that – prima facie – relies on a certain magical quality to sell itself. Maybe this guy didn’t get the memo? In context though, the comment seemed to underscore the fact that the content of the television program is secondary to the fact that there should be a program. It helps to explain a lot of the sloppiness of execution and incomplete thinking on this show.

The premise of this program is that, throughout history, humans have lived alongside a society of hidden monstrous or animal-like beings who refer to themselves as “wesen” (pronounced “vessen”, German for “creature”). These beings have physical and behavioural traits in common with many European animals, like foxes, wolves, bears, boars; even mice. Some of them have more monstrous traits, and the show asks us to believe that these wesen gave rise to the legendary notions of trolls, witches and dragons. The society in which these beings organise themselves is ruled by seven royal houses and, by and large, they keep themselves away from the doings of humanity: the real physical appearance of the wesen cannot be seen by ordinary humans unless the particular creature chooses to reveal itself, sometimes accidentally, during an emotional crisis, or surge, referred to as the “woge”

On the human side of things, there are certain individuals who can see the wesen when the woge is upon them. A majority of these individuals descend from a single familial line based in Germany and named the Grimm family. It transpires that the Brothers Grimm were writing cautionary tales, not just to instil good behaviour in wayward children, but also to keep people from making inroads into the wesen world. At the beginning of this show, Detective Nick Burkhardt receives an unexpected visit from his Aunt and, before dying (mainly) of the cancer which is consuming her, she reveals to him that he is a Grimm and that he must ditch his girlfriend, accept the sacred flame from her and continue the family tradition.

Of course, she pops her clogs before she can give Nick any meaningful instruction into the lifestyle of the Grimms. He is forced to make do with her caravan packed with crossbows and blunderbusses and mystical potions, and the creepy books of wesen lore compiled by Grimms over the ages. Of course, Nick is a police detective, so he doesn’t start as a complete novice in the ‘search and destroy’ stakes; but his new existence as monster wrangler does interfere quite a bit with the legal proceedings.

The stories of which this show is comprised tend to start as very familiar police procedural fare: bodies are found; crimes are investigated; forensics discussed. However, at some point along the way, certain inexplicable anomalies occur; inexplicable that is, for those unaware of the presence of wesen in the universe. By the end of the episode, Nick is desperately trying to wrap up the investigation in a manner which will appease real world expectations as well as the fantasy ones. And he doesn’t always succeed.

The show works on a couple of levels. First, because it’s structured generally around the standard police procedural format, it satisfies in that the crime gets revealed, the baddy is pursued and justice is served. It’s like a supernatural “Midsomer Murders” in that regard. Secondly, the location works to underscore the premise. The show is set in Portland, Oregon, home to all that’s quirky, hip and cool in American society. This means that zany people are a dime a dozen so they don’t really ping anyone’s radar by engaging in overtly unusual activities – like Bigfoot hunting, for example. As well, the landscape is replete with moss-shrouded forests, waterfalls, wide lakes, and is dotted with funky, quaint and picturesque architecture – all the gingerbread houses you could ask for.

Many of the actors turn in a serviceable performance also. Nick’s main contact with the wesen world is Monroe, clockmaker by day and Blütbad by night (that’s werewolf to you and me). (Well, not werewolf per se; the word means “bloodbath”, but it’s what they call werewolf-y things in this show.) Silas Weir-Mitchell has really sunk his metaphorical teeth into this persona and it really stands out as the gun character of this series. In the human world, Reggie Lee playing Sergeant Wu steals every scene he shows up in; in the bonus material, he notes that he originally tried out as Nick’s cop partner but was so good that they wrote this character in instead to capitalise on his acting chops. If you’ve seen the movie “Safe”, in which Lee plays the Chinatown gang leader Quan Chang, you’ll know how good a performer this guy is, so it kind of sucks that he was fobbed off with a second-string role like this; still, like I said, he belts it out of the park. Finally, Bitsie Tulloch who plays Juliet Silverton, Nick’s live-in girlfriend (they keep on referring to her as his “soon-to-be fiancée”; if they’re co-habiting on this level, why wouldn’t they just take it as read?). As a vet, I began to anticipate that her involvement would become more and more crucial as more of the animal-like wesen crept out of the woodwork and she (inevitably) became aware of the true nature of reality. This didn’t quite happen by the end of Season One, but I’m sensing it’s on its way. Bitsie is attractive (of course, because this is TV and ugly people don’t headline in TV-land) but she’s not the conventionally pretty type we’ve come to expect, and she has a nicely dry sense of humour and delivery which works very well.

Sadly, the performance of the rest of the cast is fairly patchy. Of course, I’m not convinced that it’s all the actor’s faults; some blame rests with the writers. Nick (played by David Giuntoli) is suitably handsome, with black hair and blue eyes, and more than capable of looking stern, worried, or anxious when called upon. Given the stresses in his character’s life – suddenly thrust into a secretive fantasy world; grieving for the Aunt who raised him; filled with questions over the deaths of his parents – none of this is really ever projected out of his performance. Instead, he just clicks from moment to moment doing whatever is required as it needs to happen: tough cop now; caring boyfriend now; beer-drinking buddy now. It’s a fractured performance that hasn’t quite pulled together into a single frame of reference. Worse is Nick’s cop partner Hank Griffin (Russell Hornsby), who I suspect is there just to get his shirt off intermittently, because he’s woeful at anything else.

(Okay, let’s be frank: he’s also there to make up the head-count of African-Americans in the cast list. In a show with well over a hundred performers across 22 episodes, there are three – count them – three black performers with lines, and this guy is one of them. Maybe this is because the producers are going for an accurate portrayal of the Oregon community, I’m not sure; but it certainly speaks to the notion that sci-fi/fantasy as a genre is a white person’s world and that little is being done to correct this.)

As far as the writing is concerned, there is a lot to work with in the world that the writers are creating. By the end of Season One, we’ve learnt that there are seven royal houses in charge of the wesen communities and that they all have a vested interest in a mysterious key which Nick’s aunt gave him before she died, with the instruction to never let it out of his sight. We’ve discovered that the European “old world” of the royal houses is hidebound and that more potential for expansion and power lies in the new world of the Americas. Nick’s superior officer, Captain Renard, is descended from one of these houses and is also trying to get the key, without anyone else knowing about it (certainly not Nick). The way ahead from here looks promising and we’ve been exposed to enough different types of wesen to make the journey complex and interesting. However, there are some issues:

Firstly, why are the wesen afraid of Grimms? None of this makes much sense: Nick can see the wesen, when they let their guards drop, but that’s it. I pity the Grimm who wasn’t working for the local P.D., carrying a sidearm and backed by the authority – and resources - of the Law. The notion that all wesen are raised to think of Grimms as bloodthirsty decapitators is amusing (especially in the scenes where the Eisbiber families attempt to propitiate him with offerings of food), but when it all boils down, there’s nothing about a Grimm that makes them particularly frightening or deadly. (Alright, their blood turns Hexenbiests into normal human beings, if they’re silly enough to drink it, but that’s it.) I place myself on record as being less than impressed.

Second, why is everything in bad German? The Brothers Grimm were German themselves, but we’re told that Grimms come from all over the world and, by inference, the wesen are a globe-spanning community also. So why do all the different types of nasties have German designators? Apart from underscoring the loosely-maintained source material, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

Third, and last: what is it with Captain Renard (Sasha Roiz)? He works with Nick; he works against Nick; he works with Nick. I mean, dude! Pick a team, already! I put this down to the fact that there are a heap of writers on this show and they are all pulling the material in different directions to see what shakes out. Still, by the end of Season One, just as I am not sure about Nick’s motivations on any particular issue, I’m bewildered about what this guy is aiming for. He’s supposed to be a hard-nosed, focussed nemesis, but his strategy is just a dog’s breakfast (or Monroe’s leftovers, one or the other).

Finally, I have to say that the SFX are more simply FX, without any kind of S. All of the wesen are portrayed as human beings with funny heads. Whenever an actor shakes his head for no apparent reason it’s a sign that they’re about to woge and suddenly, a computer-generated mask pops on for a second or two. Most of these masks are just silly – especially the bird species, like the Steinadler – and are far removed from any kind of scary. By the end of Season One, I just found it annoying. It’s a one-trick pony FX-wise, and I’ve seen it already.

In the final analysis, I’m torn. This isn’t a kid’s show, but it’s not fully grown up either (unlike “Sleepy Hollow”, which is definitely an adult gig). I have a weird hankering, despite myself, to see more, but I suspect that things will only get worse, not better: more pixel masks; more clunky acting; more unfocussed writing. In the meantime, I’m giving it two tentacled horrors and crossing my fingers...

*****