TheCheshireKitten

Renard going Black Claw in the first place didn't make sense with the character they established.... Black Claw itself was basically swept away, under a rug somewhere far from Portland.

And that ties into my main issue with the show - the way they continuously dropped ongoing/world building plots.

They unceremoniously threw away the Royals without ever giving Nick or Renard (you know, the character most tied to them) any kind of true confrontation or pay off with them. Renard never even had a scene with his father. They turned the Royals into the Adalind and superbaby arc, then just threw it all away.......while going through brothers, cousins, like none of it mattered. They wasted James Frain and Alexis Denishof. Pure stupidity there.

With the Royals, they dropped the Resistance....so what did they do next? The Royals and Resistance 2.0.....err..... Black Claw and Hadrian's Wall. And what did they do with it? Hardly nothing!

Except make me hate Meisner. Something I didn't think they could do. There is that.

I apologize if I'm sounding too negative - my boyfriend and I are watching Buffy (his first time through), and it's just crazy watching that and seeing the storytelling, the character development, the Big Bads..... and then watch Grimm. Grimm's cast of characters (and actors) were every bit as good - but the writing and storytelling just wasn't there.

I've read many opinions that the show was better as a procedural - and I heavily disagree, as I think the over focus on the procedural elements was to the detriment of the individual characters and their development, and the world building/richness of the mythology as a whole. I think this show would've been much, much, MUCH better if they'd done a better job at balancing stand alones with the ongoing arc, more like Buffy did.

And frankly, I'm bummed we never got a traditional Grimm arc on this show - a big deal was made of Nick being a different kind of Grimm compared to the "boogeyman" the Wesen feared, and I think it would've done good for Nick's character and provided an opportunity to explore the conflict and differences of two Grimms. Kelly seemed to quickly accept Monroe and Rosalee and Marie had a relationship with a Wesen.

A Grimm as a Big Bad could've been cool as hell.

My favorite seasons of Grimm will remain seasons 1 and 2. I'll definitely miss the show - I just think I'll miss it as much, if not more, for what it could've been and the potential it, and its characters, had.

Rickylious

True!

I still would love to have a spinoff of Kelly, Diana, and the triplets though

Little_Stewie

I agree with almost everything in the 1st post on this page....very well said! You put into words many of the things that had been buging me about Grimm, all these years. I simply hadn't been able to put my finger on what had been bugging me. The analogy with 'Buff' is an important one of course. I just finished re-watching it for the ~4th time just 2 weeks ago. I think one should be fair and point out that even Joss Whedon himself is no longer able to write storylines of a quality comparable to the Buffy years, anymore. I am trying to watch 'Agents of Shield', rather reluctantly in fact, since I think the writing is weak. Same thing for 'Dollhouse', etc. Maybe the networks don't allow long, coherent arcs anymore? After all, they want the quick buck, that"s all.

As for Renard and Black Claw, I still think it was a different, or at least an extreme case, since the writing was bordering on character assassination. I hate when that happens, and I have rather little tolerance for it. Why did he act the way he did? No explanation was given, imo. I understand the supposed temptations of a pseudo-revolutionary movement (analogies to early Naziism in Germany were obvious), but it was not obvious what Renard was actually attracted to, with regard to Black Claw. Power?!? As bad as this was in itself, him just resuming his job at the precinct as if nothing had happened (after a fist fight with Nick!), was downright comical.

Oh, well... I miss this show already.

TheCheshireKitten

Thank you!

I love this cast, but the show never really got "there" to me because of the storytelling, and lack of character exploration - too many times it was plot and Wesen over the week over the characters. Characters went whichever way the plot wind was blowing and some of the decisions they made with characters didn't feel true or earned through the writing. Sometimes the show seemed like it was going somewhere strong, but then it would revert to status quo. When characters changed, those changes were only explored on a surface level and never given the depth they deserved. And they weren't good at balancing the characters (see Nick and Monroe's friendship kinda fading into the background once Hank finds out and can solve Wesen cases with Nick and Monroe suddenly leaves the Spice shop a lot less. See also Renard: he becomes an ally but he was never treated as a Scooby, his relationships with the others never changed or grew so it was totally ineffective for me from a dramatic standpoint when they tried to play the Renard betrays the Scoobies! card, and that's not even going into it not making any sense with the character's history. The character remained static for seasons, unexplored, stuck in his office or on the phone).

To follow through the Buffy comparison, those characters were turned inside out and outside in - there was no guessing their motivation or stones left unturned. And while you never forgot Buffy was the main character, all the Scoobies and (some of the foes) were thoroughly explored, as was their relationships to each other and the main character.

Dollhouse is all Joss, but Joss only helped launched SHIELD; it's his brother that's the showrunner. I don't think he has very much to do with it beyond that.

While there are plenty of serialized shows still around, procedurals are easier to get into syndication, the way I understand it. But some shows don't truly thrive as procedurals, especially fantasy shows. Grimm, I believe is one of them. As a result of that, Grimm never reached the kind of storytelling and character depth that a show like Buffy the Vampire Slayer did.

NikNak

Impossible Girl

^ I compared it to Buffy too because the showrunners come from Buffy and I personally expected more from them, especially for the female characters. The guys were well written but the women not so much.

Little_Stewie

Yeah, I also remembered that some of the show runners were originally working with Buffy. Which ones exactly - can someone educate me? Then, the whole 'Monster of the week' versus Mythology episodes was of course not invented by Buffy and existed before, for instance with the X-Files, but that was another similarity. Most importantly, however, there was the parallel of a chosen hero fighting evil with the indispensable help from his friends ('Scoobies'). Ironically, another parallel is the romantic entanglement of the chosen one and some of the evil non-humans (Buffy/Angel or Buffy/Spike versus Nick/Adalind), in both cases leading to the evil non-human becoming good. I have to agree that the character's motivations (as well the relationships they were in) was much clearer in the case of Buffy: romantic love with Spike, versus sexual lust with Spike, for instance (at least initially!). In Grimm, one would have expected to learn how Nick's feelings towards Juliette develop, once she's no longer a Hexenbiest/Eve, for instance.....but the writers did not go there, which is quite hilarious, when you think about it. Also, it's amazing considering Grimm was a production airing on one of the 'big' networks, and not WB/UPN as in the case of Buffy. The latter have descended into Soapy territory after the fusion into CW, imo.

Impossible Girl

David Greenwalt, Jim Kouf (who was on Angel) and then some producer and Directors from Buffy or Angel like David Solomon

Little_Stewie

Thanks!

Impossible Girl

no problem

ladybugjess

Showrunners are important, but I think this is where writers are more important...

Impossible Girl

^ but the Showrunners on Grimm were heavily involved in the writing. They have writing credits.

ladybugjess

Fair enough. But my point still stands I think... Some writers just can't write good well rounded characters...

Little_Stewie

True. But how likely is it that all writers combined fail to develop characters over the course of 6 seasons? I tend to agree with the opinion that they simply weren't aiming for that. Good enough for me. When you think about it, the writers of Grimm rather focused on an aspect that Buffy consistently ignored: The question how it feels to regular people, to live amongst 'monsters'....how surreal is that? Ironically, the people outside the Buffy Scoobie gang never even seemed to realize that there even were Vampires around. I always found that peculiar. Instead, every episode of Grimm was more like a recurring nightmare, in which people realize their surrounded by (fairytale) creatures. In that respect, in makes sense that characters didn't develop. Nothing develops in fairytales, nobody really changes. It's all rather static.

TheCheshireKitten

Storytelling and character development - season long arcs and the way characters grew and changed and were explored. Those are general criticisms - I used Buffy because IMO, it is arguably the best fantasy show made when it comes to those things.

I don't mean to say they needed to do exactly what Buffy did, but that the strengths that Buffy had were those that Grimm lacked and kept it from being as good as it could've been.

Character development and storytelling and world building (in the case of fantasy shows like this) are all general things that - the stronger they are - the better the show.

Agree on their female characters. I had a Grimm magazine that had an interview with Bitsie Tulloch that I believe took place in early season two or so, (I think it was the #1 issue of 2 magazines) in which she mentioned this very thing due to the showrunners having worked on Buffy - strong female characters like those on Buffy and how she wanted to prepare for that for possibility for Juliette. She seemed excited about that.

Unfortunately, I feel Juliette, along with Adalind, had some of the worst writing in the show. I think Trubel's initial pre-HW arc was the best, perhaps because of, and not in spite of, the span of episodes she was in. Meanwhile, Buffy, Willow and Faith all had such strong development and character arcs.

The procedural element always took precedent. But they wanted a little bit of both, with the Royals, the keys, the resistance, etc and the world building they attempted.... They just couldn't manage both given the amount of time the procedural aspect was given - so many episodes a season with only one thing here or there on the arc running in the background, then a crammed two part or single part finale and then a reset to the procedural status quo. But the potential depth of the characters - like Nick being a different kind of Grimm, Renard and whether he truly wants to be accepted by his family or if he's even content with the Wesen part of himself he inherited from his mother, Monroe's dark past before he reformed and being BFFs with a Grimm, Juliette's struggle with becoming a 'biest and Nick deciding if he could love her in spite of that or accept that....etc, etc.... All those things were screaming for more in depth writing. Grimm only touched the surface.




I think showrunners and writers are equally important and can often overlap.