Grimm Season One: Pilot. A Recap And Review

I admit it: I was afraid to watch this show.  A little.  Okay, maybe a lot.  I was intrigued, because I love fantasy and fairy tales and it has an interesting premise; but I was also nervous because the trailers have a horror-film quality to them.  So as much as I wanted to watch, I almost skipped by this one, like Red Riding Hood on the way to Grandma’s house.  But then – I saw the Producers of Buffy and Angel were behind it.  David Greenwalt (Producer of both Buffy and Angel) and Jim Kouf (Angel) are both working on Grimm, along with some other big name producers and one of the Writers, Dan E. Fesman, has written and produced for Eureka and NCIS.   There are some serious power hitters working on this show, and I like their stuff.  And thus it was that I gathered my courage and sat down to watch Grimm.

It’s scary.  It starts out with a poor innocent co-ed wearing a red-hooded sweatshirt getting ripped to shreds by a blur of a big bad wolf.  The detectives sent to investigate, Nick Burckhardt and Hank Griffin are stumped.  The only tracks they find match a men’s work boot.  Also they find her iPod, still playing music – Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This), by the Eurythmics.  (My first twinge of fandom – I do appreciate a show that appreciates good 80’s music.)

The show unfolds from there, with Burckhardt and Griffin tracking down this guy/wolf in work boots who in the meantime has also abducted a little girl wearing a red sweatshirt.  Notice a trend?  But poor Burckhardt has got a lot more on his plate than hunting down one big bad wolf.  His aunt’s come to town.  She’s dying and she has something very important to tell him.  It has to do with those odd visions he’s recently been having.  He’ll be looking at someone and suddenly their face morphs into a grotesque creepy creature of the dark fairy tale variety – and then morphs back to normal again.  Turns out, he’s from the line of the Grimm’s, and those fairy tales are not just stories.  In the middle of sharing this important piece of family history, his aunt is attacked by some wild something or other that nearly kills her before Burckhardt remembers he’s a cop carrying a gun and can therefore shoot the freaky beast five or six times until he’s good and dead.   But don’t worry, the aunt’s not dead yet.  She still has a few more clues to share with her nephew along with a funky gothic looking key and directions to go check out the stash in her trailer parked out in his back yard.

Does he find the big bad wolf?  And what about the young red riding hood?  If you haven't seen it yet, you don’t want me to spoil the suspense – go watch it for yourself.  Yes, it’s scary.  But it also has a pretty good sense of humor, much as Buffy and Angel did.  Not to mention a killer update of Sweet Dreams near the end.  Did I mention how much I love a good soundtrack?  (Egads: It's the Marilyn Manson version.  I hate myself now for liking it.  And yet, I still do.  Oh the shame.)

I’ve noticed that shows and movies often come in twos.  Antz came out the same year as Bug’s Life.  Armageddon and that other earth-is-going-to-be-destroyed movie back in 1998.  And now Once Upon A Time and Grimm.  But it turns out these last two are not so much alike.  Once Upon A Time has more of a nighttime soap opera feel to it, where this one is firmly in the action genre.  The question is, will audiences respond well to both?  Or will only one show live happily ever after?