Review: "Grimm - Season 2"

CARPENTER, Stephen, David Gereenwalt & Jim Kouf, Creators, “Grimm – Season Two”, 2012-13, Universal Studios.

I’ve recently realised the reason why I have such strong initial antipathy to watching this show: the main character on the front cover of the DVD packaging looks an awful lot like the kid who plays Merlin in the eponymous TV show, and the gung-ho brandishing of bipennis weaponry adds to the overall medieval effect. Whenever I contemplate taking a dip in this quagmire my brain goes “hold on – we don’t watch kids’ shows”. And then I opt for something else instead. Like “Arrow”. Or “Flash”. (Don’t judge...)

(Actually, when you get into this show, the main character of Nick Burkhardt looks nothing like the Merlin kiddie, but rather the hunky-dory tough-guy cop that the script calls for. I guess all the Photoshop action on the packaging is just working against him...)

In this season of “Grimm”, David Giuntoli is called upon to do a lot more than what he accomplished in Season One. In the first season (where everyone was saddled with bad haircuts) Dave acted like a robot with emotions that were clicked on and off like a switch was being worked somewhere; in this run around the block, he manages to segue more smoothly through the drama, matching the action with much more believable responses. It struck me that there is a weird tension in this character: on the one hand, he’s supposed to be a no-nonsense cop; on the other, he’s supposed to be every woman’s dream partner. It’s a hard act to pull off and I get the impression that Giuntoli likes the one and does his best to endure the other.

His partner Hank Griffin (Russell Hornsby) is back and duly whips his shirt off whenever required. Nothing has changed here. I started to get irritated whenever he and Nick kick in doors and stride into houses ready to pop caps: they both go into a half crouch with their guns held out in front of them and tip their heads sideways. Is this normal? I mean, surely if you hold your head up straight you’ll see better and be able to comprehend what you’re seeing to a greater degree. Try walking through your own house like this; you’ll see what I mean.

I had hoped that the CGI puppet heads of the Wesen characters, that show up whenever they “woge”, would have taken a quantum leap forward in expertise and look somewhat passable – nope. Nothing to see here. Or rather, all the wrong kinds of things to see. Try to ignore it.

Once more the ‘gun’ characters form a core network of entertainment quite apart from the police action: Monroe and Rosalee (Silas Weir Mitchell and Bree Turner), Sergeant Wu (Reggie Lee), Bud the Eisbiber (Danny Bruno), and Juliette (Bitsie Tulloch) - Nick’s amnesiac one-time vet girlfriend - are all back and having a ball with things. My only criticism is that Juliette is saddled with her memory-loss and misdirected romantic feelings for “Prince (not so) Charming” Captain Renard for most of the season, and her usual dry wit and sly humour gets canned for most of the show in favour of a hesitant school-marm persona that just isn’t a good look on her. Thankfully, by the season’s end, she’s back, firing on all cylinders, and – as a bonus – completely au fait with the Wesen world and Nick’s place within it.

I was pleasantly surprised by the developments that took place with Captain Renard (Sasha Roiz) in this season. Like Hank, he seems to get his shirt off quite a lot, but I can forgive him since he does actual stuff as well, unlike Mr. Griffin. Having been set up as the local villain last season, the expanding intrigue of the Royal Houses in Europe sees him make some unexpected and very interesting decisions which align him quite strongly with Nick and his buddies, rather than trying to oppose them. Of all the main characters, Renard is definitely the brooder and, having ditched his hat of black, the grey replacement is a far better fit for him.

(On the down side, every time we cross to Vienna to see Renard’s brother Eric’s latest villainy, the scene is subtitled with the disclaimer “Vienna, Austria”. I’m guessing this is so we don’t think we’re looking at “Vienna, Rhode Island”, or “Vienna, Wyoming”, but seriously – is there anywhere outside mainland USA where this kind of mistake would reasonably take place? “Vienna” will do, people; believe it or not, we know where that is and we know what you mean.)

Once more I’m left wondering what kind of abilities a Grimm has, apart from being able to see a Wesen for what they are when they freak out. In one episode, a Tsetse fly Wesen creature comes to town invading grief counselling groups in search of the tears which act upon him like opiates. Unfortunately, while licking the eyeballs of his victims, he passes on hideous barbed worms which permanently blind them – I kid you not. In the course of the episode, Nick becomes temporarily blind and discovers that his hearing is preternaturally sharp, finally taking out the bad guy without needing to see him at all. Sadly, having made this point about Nick’s ears, the fact is dumped and forgotten about entirely for the remaining episodes. There’s a lack of focus about Nick that’s becoming painfully obvious as time rolls on...

Good things about this show are that the police procedural bits – unlike “Sleepy Hollow” – form a basis for the action, and justice – real, non-supernatural, non-head-lopping, non-spell-casting justice – needs to be seen to be done by the end of each instalment. This attention to detail is a plus for the show, even though I suspect there’s a lot of grumbling in the background about just ‘magicking the boring stuff away’. The fact that the magical stuff sits firmly in a mundane world is what helps ground this particular drama.

There is a point that I’d like to raise about this show which I found deeply disturbing. In the new credits for Season Two, it’s strongly implied that Adolf Hitler was a cranky Wesen who pushed all the wrong buttons. A cut scene of a Blutbad morphing into A.H. happens during the credits for the first three or so episodes, before being ditched for the rest of the run. I assume that some other people – like me – found the absolving of Europe’s genocidal dark times by saying “oh, it wasn’t really a person behind it all; it was just a monster” deeply disturbing and had them yank it. That doesn’t stop them strongly implying that Jeffrey Dahmer was some kind of undercover beastie also at another point. Listen: people do bad stuff; people who live in what we take for granted as enlightened, reasonable and accountable societies like that in which we believe we live. You can’t rewrite, debunk or trivialise history – even on a fantasy platform – just to make people feel better about themselves. That way lies Snoop Dogg and his ongoing belief that Game of Thrones is real medieval history...

To lighten up a bit by way of a conclusion, again, there’s too much bad German and creaky rationalising, backed up by dodgy-looking books of lore (which, although penned by Grimms across the centuries, are all illustrated by the same person), but the 100% effort thrown at the vehicle by the majority of the people involved helps enormously in bringing the concept home. This is a show which is having a lot of fun with itself and which is starting to spread – like some kind of mystical rhizome – into some very intriguing areas. You definitely need to shut your higher brain functions off and just watch the pretty people (while ignoring the bad CGI), but it’s turning into a very amusing ride...

Two-and-a-half tentacled horrors.