TV Review: GRIMM 1.1, Overly Stale Fantasy Cop Drama

By Emile Lewis / October 22, 2011

rating: 2.5

NBC€™s new fantasy/crime series Grimm doesn€™t officially air until next Friday, but we got an early look at the pilot episode this week. There has been a fair bit of hype for this Fables-esque show featuring stories that are loosely based on the popular Brother€™s Grimm fairytales, with the added mash up of a modern cop/detective drama. Unfortunately it seems like the hype was just a lot of hot air, because Grimm fails to deliver anything new or extraordinary. Being about the one-hundred-millionth cop drama out there they were already shooting themselves in the foot on that front, but it€™s actually the fantasy elements that seem overly stale. Up until the title card (about 10 minutes in) I was actually pretty excited by what I had seen so far; the episode opens with a young college girl going for a morning jog in the creepy woods (as you do) and she€™s blatantly sporting a red hoodie. So OK, we€™re going to be dealing with Little Red Riding Hood, not my favourite fable, but it quickly became my favourite modern update when Red is brutally torn apart out of nowhere by what we can assume is the Big Bad Wolf. Awesome. Next we€™re introduced to the main character Nick Burkhardt, a homicide detective played by David Guintoli (whom I will try not to refer to as Brandon Routh Jr.) Nick€™s having a pretty strange day, because he keeps seeing peoples faces turn into demons. Why? Well here€™s where we get the list of fantasy clichés that will probably put Grimm in the line for cancellation. Turns out Nick is the last in the line of actual Grimm€™s, an order of warriors sworn to protect the unsuspecting world against all the monsters and baddies under the bed. His Aunt Marie (Kate Burton), also a Grimm, passes the mantle of Grimmdom onto him and gives him a secret key, which he must guard with his life€ I know right? Oh and guess what? His parents didn€™t die in a car crash like he has been told all his life, no they were murdered. Geez€ I guess they threw that one in just for good measure. I was hoping this show would take less of a supernatural approach and have more of a forensic investigation style, set around a crime that has been based on the fairytale. The Big Bad Wolf didn€™t have to be a were-wolf, just a crazy axe-murderer who lives in the forest, and detective Nick didn€™t have to be a Grimm; they could have done away with that whole part of the story. Instead he should just be a really smart detective, with an eye for strange and unusual crimes. He even does the whole Holmesian analysis thing in his first scene (albeit brief and unrelated to the crime) but then this is never a skill he uses again. Also the CGI wolf/demon faces are pretty laughable and in this day and age, if you can€™t get decent CGI, just don€™t do it at all. The only good thing I can say about Grimm was that the scenery suited the fairytale nature of the show. It€™s set in Portland, Oregon, but there€™s some pretty epic looking creepy trees in this neighbourhood. If anything, atmosphere goes a long way to selling film. The only other redeeming point would be the brief appearance of Silas Weir Mitchell as the Not-So-Bad-Wolf Eddie Monroe. Eddie is initially a suspect in the Red Riding Hood murder but is later revealed to be a Wolf in recovery. He no longer indulges in his animal nature through a strict regiment of diet, drugs and Pilates. He€™s the comic relief, and briefly helps Nick on his case, before hightailing it at the scene of the real bad guys house. Since we€™ve now dealt with the Red Riding Hood story, there€™s no real reason for him to stick around, but thankfully he will remain as a series regular, otherwise there won€™t be many reasons for me to tune in for Episode 2. Thanks to our early review this will now be two weeks in the waiting. I€™ll be looking forward to your comments on this one because I thought it was an uninventive pile of crap! Prove me wrong!