Grimm Series Premiere!

Happy Weekend, Gasmii!! I am beyond excited to be recapping NBC’s answer to Once Upon a Time, GRIMM! I begged Flipit to let me have this show after catching the series premiere.

Here’s the show it a nutshell – Nick Burckhardt is a young police detective has everything a man could want: a beautiful fiancee, a successful career on the up and up, and partner that looks like Dr. Dre. Everything is going great until his aunt develops terminal cancer. And while her cancer sucks, it’s not nearly as bad as what her dying means for the main character – it’s time for him to join the family business of keeping mythical scary creatures in check! It’s like Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets Men in Black with a dash of Harry Potter! It’s a lot like Buffy, actually – Grimm was created by writers/producers of Buffy (sans Joss Whedon). I guess they missed writing for a show about a young person is forced to take on mythical monsters as part of their birthright.

The show opens with the same scene they’ve featured over and over again in the promos. A young sorority girl wearing a red hoodie is jogging on a trail when she comes upon what appears to be a Hummel figurine. She stops to examine it and gets mowed down by a wolfman. NBC, take note – this scene would have been much more scary and effective had I not already seen it A BAZILLION TIMES.

This is why I don’t go jogging

After listening to the sorority girl scream in the woods for what feels like forever, we meet our main character as he emerges from a jewelry store with a ring. He’s going to propose to his girlfriend! I’ve only seen two minutes of this show but I already know that’s probably not going to work out.

Enjoy this while you can because your relationship is headed for the toilet

We get to meet Nick’s partner, Hank. Hank bears an incredible resembance Dr. Dre:

Ain’t Nothing But a G Thang…and the G is for Grimm. (Sidenote – do you know how hard it is to find a picture of Dr. Dre smiling? IT’s REALLY HARD).

Hank/Dre is teasing Nick about getting married when they spot a super-hot lady walking down the street. Nick gets all sour grapes on Dre and starts listing all the the reason she’s out of their league. Maybe she’s out of your league, Nick, but Dre has a super star Hip Hop mogul career going on. I’m pretty sure he can have whoever he wants. It’s a good thing Nick is ruining it for Dre because pretty lady has a secret, though – she morphs into a scary looking monster right before Nick’s eyes!

Look closely kids. This is why we wear sunscreen and floss our teeth.

There’s no time to think about what he just saw – Nick and Dre are called to investigate the murder of the jogging sorority girl. The police on the scene give the boys a tour of the crime scene; the victim’s body is all over the place. The police say they know it’s a woman because the found pink Nikes with the remains. Gender profiling! The pink sneaker could belong to an ultra-fabulous man.

Someone is a messy eater!

Nick and Hank briefly discuss the fact that there was a similar murder recently. They hear music and follow the sound to the source: the jogger’s i-pod. It’s still playing the same song from when she was killed – Sweet dreams are made of this. Two things – one, that young woman was about to go deaf from her iPod volume setting, and two, she apparently jogs to one song on repeat or owns the ultra-mega extended version of the Eurythmics Greatest Hits.

Nick and Hank/Dre head to the police station to get to work on the case. Nick sees yet another seemingly normal person morph into a monster right before his eyes. He takes it in stride. I would be like “DID ANYONE FUCKING SEE THAT? WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON??”

We take a break from the scene of the crime and head to the burbs where a bald woman rolls up to a house with an airstream trailer. I don’t know who she is, but if she’s related to anyone on that street, she’s everyone’s worst nightmare – the family that parks their trailer in the yard and is planning to stay “indefinitely”.

If you see this headed for your house, leave immediately

Hank/Dre and Nick go to investigate at the sorority house. One of her sorority sisters confirms her identity. YAWN. After a long day of investigating, Nick goes home and something is amiss. We can tell because of the creepy music and the fact that he looks around like something is amiss. He goes inside and all the lights are off – SPOOKY! What does he find? A super scary bald woman chopping tomatoes in his kitchen!

DUN DUN DUN!!!!

JUST KIDDING, it’s his Aunt Marie and her baldness telegraphs to the viewer that she’s got cancer. Cue the Flipit sad horn section! Aunt Marie showed up unannounced and acts all sweet in front of Juliet but lays it down for Nick. They need to talk so they go for a walk. She tells him that she is dying; she could have 2 months, 2 weeks and 2 days to live, who knows?  She hasn’t told anyone, but I think her being bald is a big fat sign she has cancer. It’s not like people probably aren’t guessing.

Nick asks why she didn’t come sooner, but she doesn’t have time for small talk. She gets straight to the point…or not:

“There are things you don’t know, things about your family…that I’m not going to explain. Have you been seeing strange things? I knew it! No, I will not tell you what it means.  When it happened to me, it knocked me on my ass, I couldn’t move for a week. What happened to me? Oh, nothing. The misfortune of our famliy is already passing to you…but I will not explain further! I know you love Juliet, but you’re going to have to ditch her ass…for reasons I’m keeping to myself!”

Before we can learn more, Aunt Marie gets all badass and jumps into a knife right with a scary looking demon face guy carrying a scythe. Nick tries to help but he’s not doing much at first. Just when it seems that Aunt Marie is going to take a scythe to the chest, Nick remembers he is a police officer and he carries a weapon. He puts several bullets into the guy, whose face returns to human after he dies.

Never bring a scythe to a gun fight

After putting down the demon, Nick rushes to his aunt’s side to presumably see if she is okay and ask her what the fuck is going on. Instead of an explanation, he gets is a necklace and the announcement that his parents didn’t die in a car crash, they were killed. OMG, he’s Nicky Potter! She passes out before we can learn more.

Here, hold this. Also, your parents were murdered. PEACE OUT!

Emergency services and Hank/Dre arrive on the scene. Nick tells his partner that his aunt says she knew the attacker, which I am sure is raising even more questions than answers for poor Nicky. Hank/Dre graciously offers to wrap up the crime scene so Nick can go visit his aunt in the hospital. While he waits, he sketches the creepy guy:

Let’s hope she didn’t know him sexually

Aunt Marie is conscious! This means we will get to the bottom of this, right? WRONG. More cryptic bullshit. We can see things others can’t! What THEY wrote about really happened! You’re a Grimm! Now go check out my trailer to figure out what the hell is going on. Don’t lose my necklace! Visiting time is over, so Nick has no choice but to leave. As he leaves, he finds out that the thing she gave him is a key. Hopefully it’s a key to a box full of answers.

At the police station, Nick discovers that the attacker’s scythe has an inscription “Reaper of the Grimms”. Apparently the attacker has a criminal record, so it’s okay that Nick shot him. Another officer tells Nick that the Captain wants to see him. The Captain wants to check in with him to see how he is feeling after his first shooting and lets him know he has to check in with the staff psychologist. We’ve come a long way since the Dirty Harry days!

So you shot somebody, huh? Tough stuff. Let me know if you need a hug.

Nick is going to need to see the psychologist to help deal with his nightmares in which is wife is running through the woods in a nightgown and gets attacked. The nightmare wakes him up in the middle of the night; rather than go back to sleep, he decides the dead of night is the best time to go check out his aunt’s creepy trailer. I’ve been in a trailer or two in my lifetime, and I think his aunt must have some super powers to enlarge the inside:

There is no way the inside of that trailer is bigger than my living room

Nick finds a few disturbing things: weapons and a monster encyclopedia that appears to be hand written. One of the entries is the Hexenbiest (probably spelled wrong), which he saw at the beginning of the show!

Juliet comes in to see what he is doing and starts talking asking questions in a snotty tone like “Did you live with her full time…in the trailer?” To be fair, it’s good for her to be skpetical. It’s good to ferret out the crazy early on in a relationship. Juliet is no fool; she knows that if Nick is close to his aunt, that trailer is going to be a permanent fixture in their yard.

Nick and Dre have a lead in the case of the dismembered sorority girl – the plaster cast of a boot print at the scene of the crime revealed what kind of boots the killer was wearing. Cut to a postman wearing the boots! A little girl who is wearing a red hood gets kidnapped by a postman. The USPS is struggling enough, let’s not characterize them as creepy pedophiles / kidnappers too.

“Going postal” is about to take on a whole new meaning.

Back to the hospital, Aunt Marie has fallen into a coma. People on TV are always falling into comas. How common are comas, really? Get googling and let me know.

Coma? Well SHIT. Did she happen to say anything about the arsenal of weapons in her trailer, or perhaps something about how my parents were murdered? No? Just checking.

The doctor wants to know if Nick is aware that he aunt has tons of knife wounds. He was not! This just keeps getting worse for Nick – the woman who is practically his mother apparently was a card carrying member of some kind of hairy freakshow fight club. The doctor asks what she did for a living, and he tells her that his aunt was a librarian. Judging by the weapons in her trailer, I bet they don’t have a lot of problems with late fees, misuse of computers, or noise at her branch.

You know what is more effective than shushing? An axe.

The little girl with the red hoodie has been reported missing, so Nick and Hank/Dre are in the woods investigating again. Nick’s super powers reveal to him that a man living next to the woods is also a hairy monster! Nick gets the cops to take him in, but they don’t have anything to hold him. Nick puts up a weak effort: He lives alone! By the woods! Let me help you, here Nick: he is wearing a Mr. Rodgers sweater and he drives a yellow VW bug. You know who else drove a yellow VW Bug? Ted Bundy! He’s totally guilty in the court of flimsy circumstantial evidence!

Case Closed

Back at home, Nick decides to spend more time in the trailer reading the monster encyclopedia. If it were me, I would take that bad boy to Kinko’s, get it scanned and uploaded to an iPad. Trailer time can’t get the man from earlier off his mind, so he returns to the man’s house at night and spies on him. He finds the guy peeing in his back yard. Nick clearly thinks it’s weird, but hey, it’s that guy’s property, he should be able to do what he wants!

Are we not in America? Can a man no longer pee all over his backyard as he wishes? FUCKING FASCISTS.

The peeing monster man spots Nick and the jig is up! Peeing Monster Man’s reaction is unexpected – he knows what Nick is! Peeing Monster Man invites him in for a beer and starts filling in the gaps of the story – he’s Mr. Exposition! Mr. E grew up hearing stories about Grimms, and his aunt is notorious among mythical creatures. The Grimms started profiling monsters centuries ago and the rest of us dummies interpreted their research as “fairy tales”. It turns out that Mr. Exposition is a reformed monster – a blootblad, or a turnblad, or blutbad, something like that. You and I know him as a werewolf. Thanks to medicine, a balanced diet, and pilates, Mr. Exposition has given up murder! Now he’s a humble suburban clockmaker! Is that lucrative?

Nick realizes that the Mr. E was peeing in the backyard to mark his territory. Nick is impatient and gets aggressive with Mr. E. Bad idea, dude. I’m no Grimm, but even I know it’s not wise to piss off a werewolf. Or bluetbad.

Meanwhile, it’s off to the killer’s house! He lives in what can only be described as “grandma’s cabin” out in the middle of nowhere. When he’s not rocking a postal uniform, he dresses like Mr. Rogers. He takes the little girl down into his uber-creepy basement that has been decorated like a bedroom. It’s also where he keeps his victims’ red hoodie collection:

No wire hangers!

The killer is scary calm as he tells the little girl not to be afraid. Yeah, there’s nothing scary about being kidnappped by a mild mannered postman with a red hoodie fetish. There’s killing for food and then psycho. This guy is clearly the latter.

Nick convinces Mr. E to help him find the real killer, who is also a blutbat – turbocat – boobot – whatever. They hop in the Bundymobile and head out to the woods. Mr. E does not need GPS because he has a super sense of smell. It turns out that the killer lives in the middle of the woods and he ALSO drives a VW! Nick wants to charge in with guns blazing, and Mr. Exposition tells him that’s ridiculous – the killer has super senses and will hear them coming from a mile away. They have to rub wolfsbane all over themselves and take the long way! As they get closer, Mr. E starts to morph; he can’t go any further without turning and he can’t promise he’ll be on Nick’s side, so he decides to bail.

LATER!

Nick calls Hank/Dre for backup. Hank rolls up and is understandably skeptical and irritated, especially when Nick rubs wolfsbane on him.

If this leaves a stain, YOU are paying my dry cleaning bill.

Nick confesses that he did not call for any further backup cause he already cried wolf once today. Get it? GET IT? SEE WHAT THEY DID THERE? Puns are awesome.The killer senses Nick’s approach and peers through the window when the little girls starts knocking on the trap door. Killer opens it up and she pleads to go home – no dice; he informs her she IS home before closing the door again.

I miss my mommy and there’s no Wii down here. I WANT TO GO HOME!

Nick feeds Hank/Dre a bullshit story about finding this guy in the criminal database as they approach the house.They roll up to the house and the murderous Mr. Rogers greets them. Hank is still skeptical, but COME ON – this dude is setting off all of my creep alarms. Figurines of little kids everywhere! Decoration by grandma! Flat, monotone voice! VOLKSWAGON VAN! Mr. Creepy takes dinner out of the oven and invites the officers to look around.

Mmmmmm…people pot pie!

Hank/Dre and Nick look around but turn up squat. Nick knows it’s the killer, but he can’t prove it, so they leave. Once they’re outside, Nick starts to apologize when Hank/Dre has an epiphany – Mr. Creepy Mailman Murderer was humming “Sweet Dreams are Made of This”! Despite the fact that this is one of the most overplayed songs ever, it’s suspicious enough that they decide to go back.

“He was humming the Eurythmics, Nick. Shoot to kill.”

Good call – Mr. Creepy reveals himself to be a werewolf-blutebot-truedot creature! A fight ensues; Nick and Hank/Dre emerge victorious. Nick tries to get the killer to tell him where the little girl is, but he only utters “Grimm” before dying. Nick and Hank/Dre run into the house to find the little girl, but they can’t find her! MAJOR CRISIS Y’ALL – the way they’re freaking out, you would think that he told them he buried her alive, or next to a bomb that is about to go off.  It’s Nick’s turn for an epiphany – something is amiss with the broken vase and the coffee table:

The water is dripping from inside the house!

He figures out that the rug is covering a trap door, goes downstairs and liberates the little girl. They’re HEROES!

Nick returns to the hospital to tells his Aunt that he understands what he has to do, and he will do it. She’s still in a coma, so who knows whether or not she heard him. While he’s talking, someone in a lab coat draws bright green liquid into a syringe. Nick notices just in time that it’s the blonde lady from the start of the show! She lunges for his aunt, but Nick stops her and gets injected instead. Blondie bails and Nick hits the ground.

I don’t know what was in that vial, but I’ll take two please!

As the Marilyn Manson version of Sweet Dreams Are Made of This plays, Blondie emerges from the hospital and jumps into a car to deliver the bad news to a man in a suit.

“I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed”

She wasn’t able to get to the Aunt, and he admonishes that they better get her before she wakes up. What happens immediately after? She wakes up. AND IT’S THE END!

What do you think Gasmii? Does this show have what it takes to stay on the air, or will it be ancient history by this time next year? Will Nick drop the “Gri” from “Grimm” and go on tour with Dre? Will the legions of Buffy fans be captivated by the male Buffy? Let’s hear your thoughts in the comments!