As you might have seen from my post on bingeing, I have recently gotten into the tv series Grimm. What I didn’t do in that post was tell you anything about the show itself. I’ll do that now.
Grimm is a take-off on Grimm’s Fairy Tales. In the opener, Detective Nick Burkhardt starts seeing strange things in people’s faces, things he can’t explain. He is then visited by an aunt, who explains to him about his heritage. She tells him that all the fairy tale creatures are real, but they appear human most of the time. They only show their true selves when under stress. But the only humans who can see them are those descended from the Grimm brothers, like Nick and his aunt (unless the creatures want to show themselves). These people are known as Grimms, and the creatures are called wesen (pronounced “vessen”).
Historically, Grimms have chased down and killed wesen, but as a police officer, Nick doesn’t want to do that unless absolutely necessary. He chases wesen when they break the law, but tries to stay within the law himself. Luckily, he has information and weapons left by his aunt to help him identify and stop the various wesen types.
The tv show contains a lot of different languages, mostly German, but also French and Spanish. If you’ve taken any of these languages, it’s fun to try and understand them without use of the subtitles. But what I enjoy even more is the pseudo-German used in the names of the wesen. Since I studied German in school, I like to try and understand the basis for their names. (For instance, “blutbad” means blood bath and “jaegerhund” is hunting hound.)
I like all the characters: Nick, his girlfriend Juliette, his partner Hank, but my favorite is Monroe, Nick’s wesen friend who helps him find his way in the wesen world. Monroe is kind of a geeky blutbad (sort of a werewolf), who Nick relies on heavily. At first, Monroe didn’t want to be bothered, but over time has accepted his role, and he and Nick have become friends. Of course, Hank and Juliette know none of this (at least at first), but that just contributes to the fun of the show.
I love this show. It’s kind of a quirky Supernatural, full of suspense and whimsy. It’s just a lot of fun. Don’t take it too seriously, but enjoy what it has to offer. I’m sure you won’t regret it.