Interesting episode. I wonder if Nick's trick with the blood will work on all the critters or just the Hexenbeasts?
If that is how Nick is so dangerous, why on earth wasn't there a scene with that girl winding an entire roll of ducttape around her face?
I think Dwight did that on the office a couple years ago?
I think Dwight did that on the office a couple years ago?
I guess Adeline slept through How Not to Get Killed By a Grimm 101 in Wesen school. 
Ratings went up! Yay! (Not that the show is in danger but it's always nice to see.)
Ratings went up! Yay! (Not that the show is in danger but it's always nice to see.)
Good call! 
This show is getting ambitious! So Nick's ancestors were working for the bad guys? That stuff about the Spanish Civil War was interesting.
Ratings dropped, but Grimm still tied for first for the timeslot.
Ratings dropped, but Grimm still tied for first for the timeslot.
One of Grimm's best episodes so far, but the show is still struggling to escape the confines of its procedural premise.
They need to establish a reason all these bigwigs are coming to Portland fast or it is going to start feeling more and more contrived.
The leader of the Resistance comes to Portland to get a fake ID? It is getting more and more laughable each week. At least Buffy had the existence of the Hellmouth to explain things away. Portland, so far, is just Portland.
They need to establish a reason all these bigwigs are coming to Portland fast or it is going to start feeling more and more contrived.
The leader of the Resistance comes to Portland to get a fake ID? It is getting more and more laughable each week. At least Buffy had the existence of the Hellmouth to explain things away. Portland, so far, is just Portland.
Why does it need to escape it's procedure?
That's like saying that you need to escape your skeleton.
That's like saying that you need to escape your skeleton.
Because the cases of the week are generally the weakest part of each episode.
The best episodes have all been when the case of the week ties into the mythology and non-procedural elements of the show.
If you enjoy seeing Nick keep the wool pulled over his partner's eyes as they investigate a different murder each week, more power to you. But I think the bulk of Grimm's audience is probably waiting for it to go beyond a 2nd-rate fairytale-flavored procedural.
The best episodes have all been when the case of the week ties into the mythology and non-procedural elements of the show.
If you enjoy seeing Nick keep the wool pulled over his partner's eyes as they investigate a different murder each week, more power to you. But I think the bulk of Grimm's audience is probably waiting for it to go beyond a 2nd-rate fairytale-flavored procedural.
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I'm of the mind that tv shows need to decide whether they want to be episodic/procedural or arc based. I simply can't stand when shows try to have it both ways. Inevitably series in the last decade can't manage to elevate the standalone storytelling to make it entertaining in its own right so you basically become frustrated having to sit through the very definition of filler to get a few small nuggets tied to the bigger arc and reminds you how weak the story-of-the-week is or worse yet the entire episode is standalone.
Frankly I've seen pretty much every cop story there is and thanks to The X-Files pretty much every interesting sff spin on the cop story so I am pretty adamant that television series need to eschew cop stories unless they are true blue cop shows like CSI or Criminal Minds. All the ones that do try to have it both ways are boring--Past Lives, New Amsterdam, Alcatraz, The 4400, Fringe etc.
This is one of the reasons I dropped Grimm after the second episode--that and its campy nature was awful. SFF is so much better with heavy serialization. I'm convinced there isn't any new standalone that hasn't already been done before and done better thanks to shows like TOS, TNG, TXF.
I'm also a tv viewer that is soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo tired of every new show trying to copy LOST with its large cast, flashbacks, fast densely plotted storytelling and non linear approach starting off with avery limited premise that constrains the storyteller. They can't pull it off not even LOST did--it always turns into a long drawn out disappointing unnecessarily convoluted mess with little to no satisfying payoffs--Harpers Island, Invasion, Surface, Life on Mars, Persons Unknown, S1 Heroes, Alcatraz, The Event, V, Flash Forward, The Nine, Kidnapped, Reunion, Vanished or they are a long plodding pretentious meditative bore like Caprica, Rubicon, The Killing, Camelot etc. That's why I have given up on most shows this season and plan to start next season with a cloean slate and hopefully the networks will have one or two consistently entertaining new programs that get back to a simple general premise with a modest ensemble straightforward linear storytelling that is heavily serialized and none of this overly complicated LOST model of storytelling that just needs to ermanently go away.
Frankly I've seen pretty much every cop story there is and thanks to The X-Files pretty much every interesting sff spin on the cop story so I am pretty adamant that television series need to eschew cop stories unless they are true blue cop shows like CSI or Criminal Minds. All the ones that do try to have it both ways are boring--Past Lives, New Amsterdam, Alcatraz, The 4400, Fringe etc.
This is one of the reasons I dropped Grimm after the second episode--that and its campy nature was awful. SFF is so much better with heavy serialization. I'm convinced there isn't any new standalone that hasn't already been done before and done better thanks to shows like TOS, TNG, TXF.
I'm also a tv viewer that is soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo tired of every new show trying to copy LOST with its large cast, flashbacks, fast densely plotted storytelling and non linear approach starting off with avery limited premise that constrains the storyteller. They can't pull it off not even LOST did--it always turns into a long drawn out disappointing unnecessarily convoluted mess with little to no satisfying payoffs--Harpers Island, Invasion, Surface, Life on Mars, Persons Unknown, S1 Heroes, Alcatraz, The Event, V, Flash Forward, The Nine, Kidnapped, Reunion, Vanished or they are a long plodding pretentious meditative bore like Caprica, Rubicon, The Killing, Camelot etc. That's why I have given up on most shows this season and plan to start next season with a cloean slate and hopefully the networks will have one or two consistently entertaining new programs that get back to a simple general premise with a modest ensemble straightforward linear storytelling that is heavily serialized and none of this overly complicated LOST model of storytelling that just needs to ermanently go away.
Did you see the Simpsons the other week where they mugged Lost?
Hopefully the do more episodes that expand on the mythos of Grimm. The case of the week episodes were getting reptitive so it's nice to have them go beyond it and do more with the backstory. Usually with a show like this they mainly do standalone episode in the bulk of the first season and slowly start going explore the mythology more. I'm intregued by what the resistence guy meant about the war that's coming. Maybe the show will morph beyond just a cop who is also a Grimm investigating cases involving Wessen every week.
I think the nice thing about Grimm is that it has an organic reason to have cop-show elements. The fact that Nick is both a Grimm and a cop is being used as an interesting complication - the Wesens have to worry about the fact that the guy chasing them is "legit" in the eyes of the larger society and can use his position against them.
Having his boss be onto him and be one of the "bad" Wesens also adds to the drama. And his workplace gives him a couple co-workers to worry about as they fall afoul of various schemes and dangerous cookies. I'd say they're getting the balance just about right. Contrast that with Alcatraz, where the cop stuff was just a boring slog that kept the real story from emerging soon enough to maybe salvage the ratings.
Having his boss be onto him and be one of the "bad" Wesens also adds to the drama. And his workplace gives him a couple co-workers to worry about as they fall afoul of various schemes and dangerous cookies.
I'd say they're getting the balance just about right. Contrast that with Alcatraz, where the cop stuff was just a boring slog that kept the real story from emerging soon enough to maybe salvage the ratings.
I stopped reading right about here. Would you like some cheese with that whine? You do realize you're in a thread about Grimm, right?
Grimm's drastically improved since its second episode. No, it's not up there with the heavyweights of SFF but it's improved enough to be pretty entertaining each week which is considerably further than a lot of the recent attempts at SFF ever got (Flash Forward and Alcatraz spring immediately to mind for examples of shows that went absolutely nowhere).
Being entertaining is about all we can ask for from a show on an American broadcast network. Anything beyond that is gravy considering how much they aim to the lowest common denominator and hate any kind of serialization due to how much they think it confuses the audience. If Grimm sticks with light arcs featuring characters I like underneath its procedural shell, I'll be perfectly happy with that.
I loved this episode, it was my favorite of the series so far. I really liked getting some more background on both the Wesen and Rosalee. I'm very curious to see how much of a role the Verat and the Resistance will play in the show as it goes on, because I got the feeling this was just the set up for bigger things down the road.
As for the arc/standalone elements of the show, I think so far Grimm has done the best job of combining arc and standalone elements of any show I have seen in a long time. I've found most of the standalone stories we've gotten to be both interesting and very informative when it came to Wesen, even when it didn't impact the bigger arcs. At the same time I've really enjoyed the arc elements, even when they were just a few little bits in some of the more standalone episodes.
As for the arc/standalone elements of the show, I think so far Grimm has done the best job of combining arc and standalone elements of any show I have seen in a long time. I've found most of the standalone stories we've gotten to be both interesting and very informative when it came to Wesen, even when it didn't impact the bigger arcs. At the same time I've really enjoyed the arc elements, even when they were just a few little bits in some of the more standalone episodes.
"resistance"
Imagine if Lukes doing his shit, but no one had mentioned the rebel alliance till half way through the... Actually, Imagine Luke was doing his own shit but no one mentioned the Empire till half way through Jedi.
The exposition that they dole out in buckets to explain the secret word of harry potter to Harry potter is taxing, but is there an evil Wessen government or just a bunch of assholes who show the colours every few decades and take virgins for lunchmeal?
Imagine if Lukes doing his shit, but no one had mentioned the rebel alliance till half way through the... Actually, Imagine Luke was doing his own shit but no one mentioned the Empire till half way through Jedi.
The exposition that they dole out in buckets to explain the secret word of harry potter to Harry potter is taxing, but is there an evil Wessen government or just a bunch of assholes who show the colours every few decades and take virgins for lunchmeal?
Imagine if Luke was doing his shit and it turned out the Jedi may be the bad guys after all.
The notion that the Grimms are working for Renard's type of people, in some Wessen class war (???) is a very unexpected twist. I don't see how anyone can argue that this show is "campy" when it throws in complications like that. Grimm is getting ever more serious and, well, "real." That's the opposite of campy, which means a show that's not taking itself seriously.
I was pleasantly surprised that they have enough faith in the audience's intelligence that they would just toss the Spanish Civil War at us, with no further explanation or context, and trust that we actually know the first thing about what that was, or have ever heard of it. I wouldn't bet any money that most of the audience could tell you the first thing about the Spanish Civil War or its connections to fascism and WWII. (And the way they did it, you didn't really need to know historical context anyway.)
JMS had a 5 year plan they forced him to squeeze into four.
Enterprise season 3 with the Sphere Builders? No plan. Week to week they made stuff up and then pretended retroactively that had always been part of the landscape.
If those two examples are the furtherest sides of either side of the giving a shit about continuity and forward planning spectrum, where do you think Grimm falls?
The Jedi believe in Chaos, the Sith in order. I have no doubt that the Jedi are Hippies that just wander about putting out fires and getting stoned, while the Emperor sits on a throne collecting taxes to maintain a great social welfare state and maintainig the border from dirty foreigners
Enterprise season 3 with the Sphere Builders? No plan. Week to week they made stuff up and then pretended retroactively that had always been part of the landscape.
If those two examples are the furtherest sides of either side of the giving a shit about continuity and forward planning spectrum, where do you think Grimm falls?
The Jedi believe in Chaos, the Sith in order. I have no doubt that the Jedi are Hippies that just wander about putting out fires and getting stoned, while the Emperor sits on a throne collecting taxes to maintain a great social welfare state and maintainig the border from dirty foreigners
Another terrific episode! (Where is everybody - am I the only one still watching???) Nick has really evolved from the bland, milquetoasty guy he was at the start. He does badass better than I'd hoped at the start. Mailing heads in a box, very nice.
The way Nick and Monroe were acting at dinner, I seriously started to wonder if Juliet might suspect what Nick's hiding is that he's actually gay and in a relationship with Monroe, which would account for all the times he's missing and gives a vague explanation about being on some big case.
I wonder if anyone will ever start to uncover all the bodies Nick and Monroe have been burying in the woods. They're gay lovers and serial killers!
Ratings unchanged from last week. But if Fringe can survive on Fridays, Grimm certainly can!
The way Nick and Monroe were acting at dinner, I seriously started to wonder if Juliet might suspect what Nick's hiding is that he's actually gay and in a relationship with Monroe, which would account for all the times he's missing and gives a vague explanation about being on some big case.
I wonder if anyone will ever start to uncover all the bodies Nick and Monroe have been burying in the woods. They're gay lovers and serial killers!
Ratings unchanged from last week. But if Fringe can survive on Fridays, Grimm certainly can!