A eulogy is supposed to be praise spoken over the deceased at his funeral.\u00a0 It literally means \u201cgood speech\u201d in the Greek.\u00a0 So technically I suppose this should be called a kakology* because I won\u2019t be saying too much good.\u00a0 Maybe what this should be called is a post-mortem.<\/p>\n
I started watching Grimm when it premiered in 2011.\u00a0 When it began I thought it was fun.\u00a0 The special effects were alright and the conceit that just about everyone in Portland Oregon was a monster (called Wesen) hadn\u2019t yet become a reductio ad absurdum.\u00a0 Also, I hadn\u2019t grown to despise most of the characters yet.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll give my analysis for what went wrong with Grimm.\u00a0 I think the problem with any of these urban fantasy TV series is the open-ended aspect of weekly TV.\u00a0 While it is possible to advance the \u201cmythology\u201d component of the show toward some long-term plot line in a way that can be sustained for several seasons, the single episode plot component needs to have some interesting writing each week to prevent the show from seeming repetitive and boring.\u00a0 I mean, how many ways are there to have the protagonist (Nick, the Grimm) skewer the monster du jour with a sword or a pitch fork or a lawn dart?\u00a0 Eventually the look of boredom starts showing up even on the well-paid actors\u2019 faces.\u00a0 This is similar to the problem that occurs on all long-running TV shows but it\u2019s especially dangerous to these fantasy shows because the action is already incredibly close to ridiculous from the get go.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t take much to achieve the reductio ad absurdum I mentioned earlier.\u00a0 After all, hiding the prodigious body count of terminated monsters (who revert to human form upon being deep sixed) is kind of hard to justify over the course of years.\u00a0 And with just about every individual introduced in the series being a Wesen it seems laughable that they haven\u2019t already taken over Portland and massacred Nick and his friends.<\/p>\n
Another problem is the lack of likeability of most of the main characters.\u00a0 \u00a0Nick\u2019s girl-friend (Juliette) becomes a Wesen and eventually murders and beheads his mother.\u00a0 And after Juliette is killed (and then re-animated as an emotionless zombie named Eve) Nick becomes intimate with the Wesen (a hexenbiest or witch named Adalind) that was responsible for Juliette becoming evil.\u00a0 Her ex-lover (Sean who also happens to be the chief of police and Nick\u2019s boss) goes from being an enemy to an ally to a mortal foe of the good guys,\u00a0 He is also the step father of Nick\u2019s son.\u00a0 Basically it\u2019s hard to really take any of the relationships seriously or even remember how we got to where the story stands. \u00a0However, over the course of the series, the only character that I didn\u2019t come to despise was Monroe.\u00a0 Regardless of how idiotic the script that this vegan werewolf clock repairman was given, the actor managed to inject humor and interest in the character.<\/p>\n
And finally, the biggest reason Grimm stinks is because the plots are all the same.\u00a0 The variations for why Wesen were murdering the few humans that exist in Portland or each other were wholly unimportant and extremely boring.<\/p>\n