I bailed on this show a few years ago after initially liking the concept and execution. Lost its novelty.
Hm. I was never crazy about the concept and I found the execution mediocre. It was one of those shows I watched more because it was mildly interesting and I hoped it would get better rather than because it really grabbed me. And it never actually got better. There's so much about its premise that has never worked for me and that's just gotten worse over time.
Well, I did initially quite like the subversion of the usual monster-hunter trope -- that most of the monsters weren't really that bad, and that Nick's forebears had arguably been genocidal racists rather than noble champions. I liked the way the first season was going, with Nick establishing himself as a kinder, gentler Grimm, someone who placed his duties as a cop over his questionable heritage as a race-warrior and who took on more of the role of a liaison between human and Wesen, serving as a just peacekeeper for both communities. But that's a thread that kind of got lost in later seasons as the show began to meander in its focus. It never fully came out and confronted the evils of the Grimm legacy, and Nick's growing role as a liaison trusted by the local Wesen community seemed to be forgotten. Even four years in, we still see stories of Wesen in Portland who haven't even heard of the friendly Grimm cop, and that just doesn't make sense. The part that had the most potential was forgotten.
And the more Wesen-of-the-week they've thrown in, the more progressively absurd the premise has gotten. So many people that the characters randomly interact with have turned out to be Wesen -- Nick's captain, his plumber, Juliette's college roommate, almost every homicide suspect or victim Nick and Hank get randomly assigned to -- that by this point, statistically speaking, Wesen would have to constitute the majority of the population, raising the question of why they're even hiding. And why are there so many different species? Why not give us more development of a finite number of Wesen breeds instead of constantly throwing in new, increasingly weird designs? Okay, they've done both of these, but they keep adding more species, some of which are just silly. Also, how come Wu is the only one who had the sense to read through the books in Nick's trailer
in advance rather than just waiting until a crime happens and then searching the books for the right species?
And one element that I never liked much was the whole Woge thing, the way all these species of inhuman creature go around hidden in human form 95% of the time and only briefly show their true faces when provoked. That just screams "We don't have a big budget so we're gonna cheat and have our monsters look human most of the time." And the CGI Woge effects have never looked very good.
