Though Grimm, the newest addition to the awful new shows on NBC’s prime time line up, has a bit of a potential in its quirky pilot episode, it doesn’t do justice to the centuries of mythology its based on (better known as fairy tales) and without really explaining the point, it leaves Grimm feeling more like a failed low-budget script for a CW or ScyFy series. Add in a a pilot with no apparent visual direction and a poorly constructed narrative, and what do you have? Well, just another underwhelming NBC pilot episode.
The story revolves around a typical premise: on the same day Nick Burckhardt makes homicide detective, he plans on proposing to his wife, and then finds out his entire lineage of his family is a sham. Of course, his first murder case is directly related to these revelations, and the pilot just assumes we’ll fill in the rest of the blanks, and believe the whole mess. The main character is poorly performed by David Giuntoli (of Road Rules fame), who spends most of his time wearing too much lipstick and making too many “I’m frustrated and I want answers now” faces at other characters in front of the camera. It feels like miscasting, if I’m being honest.
Moving onto the script, it is obvious Grimm is going to follow the typical path of your criminal procedural. Man chases down clues to help someone, bullies a few people, and generally struts around masochistically until he solves the case, gets the bad guy, and gets an ominous clue or two about his past. Yes, this is another LOST clone, whose writers only use generalities when writing expositions, for some sugar-coated attempt at suspense. If I could count the times Nick’s aunt or the innocent werewolf said “you’re one of them” or “they are going to get us”, I’d run out of fingers and toes to keep track by the time the pilot went to its first commercial break.
Is Grimm bound to be on television for more than a single season? With its underwhelming writing, stock direction, and lack of any substantive plots to generate drama through the first season (and the plethora of terrible special effects makes a nice little cherry), it seems it may be an uphill battle to capture the bits of personality and charm sprinkled throughout the disappointing first hour. If you can make it to the end of the pilot, enjoy the idiotic and horribly offensive and inappropriate lead up to the climax (yes, I’m talking about the sick portrayal of the antagonist), and its subsequently ridiculous conclusion (complete with ‘twist’), which of course features heart warming music and hopeful notions (“I don’t know how you did, but you did it”).
Jokes on you