In the end, Grimm was an excellent show with plenty of creative ideas and strong characters but throughout its run, and particularly when it embarked on its own personal mytharc it suffered from pervasive, recurring continuity problems; problems that left viewers struggling to make sense of the overarching story and sapping strength from the power of the narrative.
Grimm was at its best with individual episodes, running stories of investigation and discovery about who and what the vessen were, how they interacted with normal society, and how their unique abilities created problems for the individuals involved. The writers were masters of pacing within individual plot lines, carefully timing introductions, reveals, climax and explanation.
The show also excelled at creating not just interesting characters but complimentary sets of characters, each with their own sets of strengths and capabilities, each bringing something unique to the show. And with this rich cast, the writers explored the potential for friendships, for rivalries, and for reconciliation. They assembled one of the greatest casts of cooperative friends since the show Friends, itself. This wasn't just a team of co-workers, but a group of friends who genuinely shared and showed affection for one another, with past histories, tensions, hopes and disappointments.
I personally credit Silas Wier Mitchell for crafting that relationship between Monroe and Nick, setting the tone for a relationship that was echoed with Hank, and later Dru Wu. I hesitate to diminish its importance by calling it a buddy show, but by the final season, each of the principles was able to firmly establish lasting personal relationships among everyone on the team. And it was this feeling of mutual support that carried the show over some of its rocky passages.
Where Grimm struggled, however, was with long term storylines. It seemed that on several occasions the writers of the show would make abrupt reversals of characterization and show direction, would seemingly disregard previously established concepts, and would shift the focus and importance of many of the key elements presented. For example, Sean Renard and Adelind Shade were successful in engineering the death of Nick's aunt and fellow Grimm, murdering her in the hospital. Later we find them working hand in hand with Nick and Hank. Adelind was an evil hexenbeast, then a sympathetic mother, a helpless fugitive, an estranged and outraged antagonist, back to being a love interest and finally a companion for Nick. And each of these transitions seemed to be more bewildering and unjustified than the last.
This kind of show whiplash happened over and over again. The writers could never find a satisfying role for Juliet to play on the team. She was initially introduced as a veterinarian, which they seemed to be hinting would help her integrate into vesen (Wesen) culture, as a sort of doctor with unique perspective on vessen maladies, and perhaps insight into what kind of animal they might be dealing with. I believe that they had originally envisioned Juliet as a research resource (Ex.: what kind of animal would make this bite mark, or use this chemical?) but they found after the introduction of Rosalee that the spice shop filled that role more successfully.
Monroe and Rosalee became the resource on Wesen, instead, and between the library of ancient Grim lore, Rosalee's reference library of cures and remedies, and later Adelind's mother's spell books, the team became a powerhouse of arcane research, leaving Juliet without a role to fill. Her later transition to Eve was an obvious re-sculpting of her character in a desperate attempt to make her relevant.
And these kinds of character shifts happened with others as well. We've already mentioned Adelind character reversals and those of Captain Renard, and it was unclear if these were character flaws, or if they were victims of their own wesen nature (as the coins of destiny and Adelind suggested), or if they were simply expedient sacrifices to a confused writing team. It's difficult for a show, where the premise is a core team of friends against the forces of darkness, to sustain too many unsupported character reversals, particularly when they were handled so clumsily and without foundation.
In her own way, Trouble went through several transitions, none of which seemed to develop her character or give her any lasting meaning. We introduced her, only to ignore her, bringing her in and out of focus several times without giving her a satisfying ending, and finally dismiss her entirely. In the conclusion she has a climactic fight with Nick, which doesn't seem to do anything more than kill time. Nor was it enjoyable to see Nick beat up Theresa, in the way that it might have been to see a match between a Grimm and a Zauberbeast. Theresa was an amazing character but one which, like Juliet, the writers were never able to integrate into the premise of the show.
In fact, showrunner James Kouf recently revealed there's at least one reason he is fine with the show getting cancelled, and that reason has to do with running out of ideas. Here's what he had to say: "You know, 123 times through the fairy-tale world, and you start getting a little slim." CinemaBlend
David Greenwalt, "There was a chance that we would have gotten 22 [eps], and we were going, 'Oh my God. That's a long trek.' We did that for five years."The take away from the show was that the writers were just making things up as they went along. It would seem that they would plan out a season, only to be struck by a new thought partway through and start plunging off in a new direction, leaving themselves and the audience scratching their heads on how their conflicts would be resolved.
For example, Meisner was a great character introduced int eh Adelind and Diana story line. We brought him back for the Black Claw story, only to kill him off again, resurrect him as a ghost, and finally render his work meaningless when Trouble tells us that Black Claw quietly collapsed off camera while we weren't watching. Instead of a satisfying confrontation and struggle with Black Claw, the whole story line just seemed to be forgotten and summarily wrapped up with a single line of dialogue. The writers, after having gotten the audience invested in the threat that Black Claw represented, just abandoned it and went off chasing some new shiny thing. And Meisner became a throwaway prop to demonstrate Renard's ambition and Bonaparte's evil
In the end, we never got a satisfying conclusion or rehabilitation for Renard's betrayal and we got to shrug it off with a quick "I'm sorry for my bad decisions." We left unexamined the fact that Diana killed two people, that Juliet had Kelly's head chopped off and mailed to Nick in a box. Like so many story lines and plot elements, these were things we were just too busy to resolve.
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