Unthinkable Faces: Grimm as usual

I hate Grimm. The worst show in the world, yet I watch and watch it. It's certainly not addictive or "so bad it's good" or anything. It's just that hating Grimm has become such a consistent part of my identity. I found an old half-finished post about how terrible it is, and it is just as true in September as it was in April.

It's my fault for tagging my hate but oh my gosh, I just had another interaction on tumblr with someone who likes Grimm. I posted complaining about all the retcons, and they replied that these were not retcons but an example of how good the show is at character development.

I mean, okay, you can argue that some things are character development (even though I'd say they're probably not because they're so badly telegraphed, and it just comes off like the writers forgot what a character was supposed to be like).  But you sure can't construe it that way when two characters who were never dating talk about "getting back together."

And aside from character inconsistency, there is just so much sheer laziness and refusal to do worldbuilding of any kind.  Like, let's talk about the voge.  If you don't watch Grimm, why are you reading this post, but also, the voge is when Wesen (monster people) show their monster face, enabling Nick to realize what they are.

At first, the whole point of Nick's powers is that he can see the monster faces when Wesen are feeling emotional. Other Wesen can see it too.  That's the voge, and humans can't see it. Then it got inconvenient that humans can't see it, so they said there's a different kind of voge where the Wesen can intentionally show their faces to humans, but they're not supposed to because it will make people go insane. This gradually bled into Wesen voging for humans all the time and absolutely no humans ever going insane.

Now that I describe this, it sounds a little silly because if it happened on a good show, I wouldn't care.  Even if they completely retconned characters on a good show, I'd probably be the one on tumblr trying to explain why this was just really subtle and complex character development.  What's the difference?  Grimm not only is lazily written, everything about it is lazy to the point that I can't understand why anyone would like anything about it.

TERRIBLE THINGS ABOUT GRIMM

1. The nonexistent concept.  Grimm tried to start out with the idea that fairy tale monsters are based on real creatures, which is acceptable enough, but they immediately dropped the fairy tale angle and ended up with a confusing and boring as hell concept: some people aren't human, which in most cases literally just means that their face turns into a CGI wolf, witch, sheep, dragon, tapeworm, etc.  A few of them have superpowers, like the dragon people can breathe fire.  They're also supposed to have personality traits associated with the kind of monster they are, but a lot of them don't.  Also, there are "the Royals" who are a bunch of humans in France who are important for some reason, and there are also "the Resistance" who fight against the Royals.

There is nothing appealing about any of this.  The Wesen usually don't have interesting powers, and their monster faces look horrible; at times they're hilarious, at other times just sort of ugly and awkward looking.  One of the times I laughed the hardest was when Monroe and Rosalee (the only two semi-likable characters in the show) solemnly put on their wolf and fox faces at a Wesen funeral.  Now, Monroe sure doesn't look like a wolf, but that's not as funny as the fact that Rosalee looks like a stuffed animal, AND that this is supposed to be a serious and touching moment.

I read the AV Club recaps for Grimm and the commentariat always seem pretty clear on the fact that this show isn't great.  Where I differ from them is that they think it can be fixed.  They're always saying things like, "The concept is good, if they would just execute it better or do more worldbuilding or..." no.  Just no.  It's a show about people's faces turning into ugly CGI monsters.

While we're on the subject, I would like to compare Grimm to Lost Girl, which everyone who's anyone knows is one of my favorite shows.  Lost Girl is cheesy and like Grimm it has a lot of retcons, involving both characters and worldbuilding.  Both are supernatural detective shows that include basically any mythological creature they want to, and also make them up.  Somehow, this is a good quality on Lost Girl and a minus when it comes to Grimm.  Everything in Lost Girl is just so...lush, I guess is the word?  They have no money but every time the characters go into a new environment or a new kind of magical creature is introduced, it's colorful and surreal, sometimes haunting or funny or both.  In Grimm, every new character is just some dick whose face turns into an eagle.

It's hard to imagine what Grimm would be like if everything but the concept was good. I can't help but feel that no amount of consistency or creativity with the genre elements could ever do anything and Grimm's only hope of salvation is to focus on having good characters.  Which brings me to...

2. Nonexistent characters.  Let me tell you what I know about Nick Burkhardt, the main character on Grimm.  He is a police detective.  He is a Grimm.  He grew up thinking he was an orphan and being raised by his aunt.  He lives with his girlfriend Juliette, in a big house that somehow only has one bedroom.

Since Nick doesn't seem to have any strong interests or issues or personality traits, I guess I can characterize him as calm, well-adjusted, and dull, but I don't think the show was necessarily going for that, they just never gave him any personality traits.

Juliette and Hank have the dubious honor of being less boring than Nick, but still boring compared to any reasonable standard of what characters should be like.

Monroe is the breakout character because he's almost the only defined character on the show--he's a wolfman who used to eat animals (and maybe people, but that was retconned) but now devotes himself to fixing clocks and making elaborate Halloween decorations.  The implication is that Monroe's bloodthirsty urges get channeled into these geeky pursuits, which he throws himself into with a creepy, but cute, intensity.  It's all clever and original, and Silas Weir Mitchell is perfect as Monroe.  The fox apothecary Rosalee is better than Juliette, Hank, and Nick, but not as good as Monroe, although she has the potential to be if the show spent more time on her.  It feels like Monroe and Rosalee are from a different show, one where characters are actually developed and not just woodenly moving through one stupid plot after another.

The result of all this is that I only care what happens to Monroe and Rosalee; Nick, Hank, and Juliette could all get blown up by a bomb and my only reaction would be happiness that Monroe and Rosalee had become the main characters in the show.

3.  If blandness was an extreme sport...well, blandness is an extreme sport, because this show exists.  If there's even a brief possibility of a character or situation not being bland, they jump in there and beat it to death.

I remember a while ago there was a scene where Monroe is trying to ask Rosalee to move in with him, but instead of asking he just keeps awkwardly talking about how small her apartment is and how his house is much bigger and has a lot more room for her stuff.  Rosalee is pretending to have no idea what he's talking about--"So, you want me to keep my clothes at your house?" while Monroe gets more and more nervous.

Watching this scene, I was feeling as usual like Monroe and Rosalee come from another show.  It was like they even had different writers writing their dialogue instead of the boring, obvious dialogue that usually comes out of Grimm characters' mouths.  As if someone had heard my thoughts, the following exchange then happened:

Monroe: ROSALEE, I WANT YOU TO MOVE IN WITH ME. WILL YOU MOVE IN WITH ME? BECAUSE I LOVE YOU.

Rosalee: YES. I LOVE YOU TOO, MONROE. AND, I WILL MOVE IN WITH YOU.

(A random man approaches them in the restaurant.)

Man: Hey Monroe! You are just so amazing and wonderful.  Excuse me, Rosalee, I just want you to know how WONDERFUL Monroe is.  He fixed my antique watch!  Bye, Monroe. You're so great!

(The random man leaves to become the victim of the week.)

It was like the spirit of the show came down all, "What?  This scene doesn't suck enough!  Everything that didn't suck up until now has to be averted in the last minute of the scene."

In no particular order I will list some of the bland events that have happened in this fucking show:

I. The endless parade of male-on-female violence.  I'm not saying it shouldn't be portrayed but it's done in such a stock way, as if "a man beats his wife" is the only development the characters need.  On top of that, they will have the man be a wolf or lion while the woman is a mouse, sheep, rabbit, etc.

The problem is, Wesen aren't very open to interspecies relationships, and prey tend to avoid predators.  So the existence of so many lion/mouse, wolf/sheep couples doesn't really fit with the way they portray Wesen, because those relationships would be discouraged.

Now, I think you could create a story of an abusive Wesen who intentionally chooses a partner of a different species, in the hopes of isolating her from her family and community. Or a mouse who marries a lion over her family's objections, and then he becomes abusive and it's really hard because she has no social support. But I don't think Grimm is going for this--they genuinely don't think any farther than, "A man is abusing a woman.  He's a scary dragon and she's a pigeon.  Great work you guys we can all go home."

II. When Nick and Juliette can't sleep in the same bed because she has amnesia, he sleeps on the couch.  Even though they own an entire house together, apparently there is only one bedroom, and also they don't even have any sheets or blankets that they can put on the couch.  This may seem like a nitpicky thing to complain about, but to my mind it shows just how lazy the writers are. They had to make Nick sleep on the couch because that is the most clichéd possible way to show that a couple are having problems.

III. Juliette wearing so much makeup in bed.

IV. Juliette getting so dressed up for work when she is a veterinarian.

V. There was this episode where a bunch of Wesen beat someone up outside a diner and the only person who witnesses it is a black teenage boy. He tells his white girlfriend that he wants to go to the police, and she replies, "No, the police won't be on your side...not in this neighborhood." Is it me or does this seem like the show is trying to avoid being "political" by implying that police don't discriminate against black people, but only against "people who live in bad neighborhoods?" That white people and black people who "live in bad neighborhoods" are equally affected, as shown by the white girl actually being less trusting of the police than the black guy, and having to tell him to be cautious of the police?

Of course, she was wrong since this is a fantasy show and the police are perfectly nice, but then why even bring up the subject in the first place? I guess this is the standard in mainstream TV where you have to avoid 90% of real life issues even though it makes everything confusing and boring--but like, why did they even start to mention it but then cloak it in such a weird way? Bland Attack.

VI. Blah blah I'm bored of writing about this.

I will just discuss Monroe's profession, although I may have posted about it before. Monroe is introduced as a wolfman who--surprise!--fixes clocks for a living and is an adorable nerd. It's so complicated and cute how he has to manage his desire to be a good, adorably, nerdy person with the evil wolfpeople he comes from, whose lifestyle he has abandoned.

But then we find out Monroe's dad also fixes clocks and I think he's from a long line of wolfmen who did the same job.

Um, okay?

But also Monroe's parents are supposed to be old school because they freaked out about him dating a fox person.

WHO CARES. Anyway, Grimm is just terrible and it makes me so disappointed to think of all the great shows that are being canceled when this PAP is on television every week, just making a mockery of everything.

Short form TV diary, part 2

I was excited about this blog but I haven't really been keeping it up. As always I've been watching TV though, so here's some stuff I've watched in the last year:

Grimm season two was better than season one. They sidelined Juliette, the worst character. They let Hank, Nick's partner, find out about the animal people so he just wasn't awkwardly wondering what was going on all the time. Towards the end of season one they introduced Rosalee, a fox person who is a love interest for Monroe, the only charismatic character in the first season. Monroe is a wolfman who has decided not to hunt and kill humans, instead going in the other direction of repairing clocks, setting up elaborate Christmas and Halloween decorations, and drinking craft beer. Silas Weir Mitchell, who plays Monroe, is really cute but has something slightly awkward and creepy about him.

I guess I should have mentioned him when I reviewed the show before but I don't think I did. The short version is that the concept and execution of Monroe is the only thing on the show that ever got my attention and it doesn't take a lot to get my attention. Rosalee isn't quite as good as Monroe, but she's appealing and very pretty, and their relationship increases the amount of the show that isn't about really boring characters doing really boring things. Also did I mention the show now sort of has arcs and isn't just about Nick finding out that all murderers are actually snakes?

I'm not saying Grimm has become good, but there have been times that I was sorry the episode was over and I genuinely was frustrated during the midseason hiatus. It also has all the wonderful moments Grimm has always had, like when a woman is on a date with a guy and says, "I'm sorry I'm always crying," and the guy says, "But I want you to cry," grows a giant tongue, licks her tears, blinds her, says, "It's better if you can't see this," and then turns into a giant fly and kills her.

Lost Girl. I watched seasons one and two last year and loved them. The first episode of season three was like the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival in the form of a genre TV show, although I will give the writers some credit for sort of apologizing when people were mad about it, but they didn't really apologize that much. "I'm sorry you thought this 'demon,' who looks like a woman but has a penis and stubble and is trying to get into female-only spaces in order to rape women, was supposed to be a trans woman. Obviously it's just an imaginary demon." (It was also really sad to see queer cis women on AfterEllen.com implying that no one should criticize Lost Girl because it portrays queer cis women positively.)

Anyway that put me off the show for a while. When I started watching again, all the other episodes in the season were pretty good. The best part was Tamsin, a new love interest for Bo who is actually likable. I know I'm the only person in the world who hates Lauren, Bo's first female love interest, but I just think she is the worst and it was so great to get a character like Tamsin.

Also just really appreciate how much of the show is given over to female characters, female friendships, and lesbian relationships.

Community. Haven't watched season four, don't care, never will. I can't believe I've never written about this show on here because I've been seriously in love with it for...like a year now? It really meets all my ideals of what an ensemble show should be by trying to compassionately portray people who are really different from each other. I think Shirley (the character who is most different from the most central character, Jeff, and also probably from most of the viewers) is written kind of weakly though and could be better.

Obviously the pop culture references are one of the most notable things about the show and I love them, but I got into it because I heard good things about Abed, the Autistic character. I have a whole lot to say about Abed so I will say it some other time. Basically I like how the show inverts so many tropes about how to portray Autistic, crazy, or disabled characters though. Abed is often portrayed as smarter, more in the know, etc. than the other characters--he's not othered so much by them and when he is, they're usually shown to be wrong--and the show makes constant sneaky references to his disability, without talking about it so bluntly that it seems like they're trying to be educational or define him by his disability. I don't know. It's really classy.

Game of Thrones. Watched the first season, read the first book, spoiled myself for EVERYTHING and got really into reading theories and analyses by fans, started reading the second book, watched the second season, and got so overwhelmed by the length of the book and so offended by the crappiness of the adaptation that I just gave up on everything. Then in the last few months, I started reading the books again and this time am really enjoying the length and density and kind of appreciating the show as a chance to relive the books, even though the show fundamentally misses the point of the books.

I won't go on about this because lots of people have written about it much better than me, but just an example. In both the show and the books, a guy gets married to a woman who, for political reasons, he shouldn't marry. To avoid spoilers let's call the guy Donald. In the book, Donald is a 15- or 16-year-old who had sex with a girl because he was stressed out, and now he wants to marry her because he ruined her life by taking her virginity. He announces this out of nowhere and is freaking out about what an idiot he is. In the narrative, this event isn't even treated as that important because Donald isn't a POV character, even though forbidden love is usually this dramatic, world-altering thing, especially in fantasy fiction.

In the show, Donald is the hero and is an adult, and his girlfriend is elevated to a much more major character who shocks him by standing up to him even though he's really powerful (something that would be really unsafe to do in that society!) and travels around the world doing awesome heroic things (something that would be really unsafe to do in that society!) and even kind of snarks about other women who aren't cool enough to travel around the world being heroic and sticking it to powerful men. The book series has smart, talented women characters accomplishing what they can in a patriarchal structure, and this character is a complete fuck you to that by implicitly blaming them for their own oppression. There's also sort of an implication that Donald and his girlfriend are just getting married because Donald decides it's lame to take political consequences into account. The show version of the romance undoes the cleverness of the book version, where instead of being super-romantic and the main thread of the story, the forbidden love happens off to the side and everyone feels like an idiot.

So, yeah. And then this kind of thing is about 50% of the show. The ASOIAF books subvert expectations for fantasy fiction and then the people adapting it for TV are just like, "But fantasy fiction isn't supposed to be like this! Let's make it more like he should have written it, i.e. more stereotyped!"

I probably watched some more shows but now I'm bored. Oh I watched Parks and Recreation. It's fine/would watch again.

Grimm

I love Grimm because I can't believe it's real. It resembles a fantasy story written by a 12-year-old who isn't suited to be a fantasy writer, but doesn't know it yet. I've been there. When I was 12 I loved werewolves, but I was too lazy to learn about wolf physiology or come up with any rules for how transformations would work. So all my stories were about "werewolves" who didn't actually turn into wolves. Now I discover that adults can get paid to write a TV show about werewolves who don't turn into wolves.

The "plot" of Grimm is that a police detective founds out he's one of a long line of monster hunters, which included the Brothers Grimm. One tagline of the show is "The Tales Are Real," implying that the monsters are going to be villains from fairy tales. For about two episodes the show actually tried to stick to this, but pretty soon it surrendered and the crimes Nick solves can now correspond to fairy tales, random contemporary literature, or nothing at all. The correspondence is usually really forced, like a feral child who uses her hair as a weapon is supposed to be Rapunzel, and this originally drove me crazy but I decided to just try and forget that the episodes were supposed to be based on stories.

Now I'm free to enjoy the incredibly low-concept monsters. Here is the low concept: some people are part animal. As far as I can tell most of them don't actually transform into the animal, they're just sort of like it. Occasionally this gives them abilities or conditions that are actually supernatural, like when a spider woman has to kill and eat men to avoid aging rapidly, just like the episode of Fringe where the same thing happened. But most of the time we learn that snake people are good lawyers, mouse people are shy, and rat people have a special connection to rats. The only thing that makes the average Grimm episode a fantasy is that at some point Nick's magic powers allow him to see a vision of a person's face turning into a CGI animal. Then he goes home and reads a book that tells him what personality traits that animal/person has.

Now that I think about this it seems really messed up. "I just found out that the suspect is black! I'm going to go to the library and look up what kind of crimes black people commit!" But you know, wolf people and so on are not real, so it's all in good fun and I've managed to remain unaware of this implication until now.

I think what I find appealing about Grimm is that it seems so real. The magic is exactly as boring as magic would be in real life. The monsters seem something other than human when they actually have powers, but they usually don't, and the Amazing Revelation of magic is basically: "Hey, you know that guy who killed someone for a reason that already makes sense? Well, his worldview was influenced by the fact that he was part lion."

Maybe it's more like Aesop's Fables than fairy tales, but the monsters are never able to be metaphors for humans because they explicitly identify as non-human and have their own culture. Grimm ends up being the most childlike show possible as it comes close to implying no human evil is really the fault of humans. Most murderers, rapists, etc. are just animal/people pretending to be people.

And you can't Godwin your way out of this, because in a recent episode, Nick was inexplicably watching footage of Hitler when Hitler's face turned into a CGI wolf! It all becomes clear: Hitler didn't hate Jews, he just wanted to eat them. I don't think this radically silly message was intended, even though when you think about it it's the only way to read the show. Its complete unawareness of how offensive and ridiculous it is makes Grimm the most adorable show on television.

Three-second review: I've been watching Lost Girl, which could be VERY lazily described as a combination of Angel and Buffy, and maybe Neil Gaiman. Not life-changing but it has been completely satisfying from the beginning. The worldbuilding is pretty good, ~strong female characters, gay and straight love interests treated equally, silly jokes, basically a good time.

short form TV diary

Blogging about TV makes me feel better about how much I watch, but I've neglected to write about 95% of what I've been watching.

shows I've started this fall/winter/spring:

The Vampire Diaries. Aside from being "so bad it's good" or whatever, I think this show is interesting because it avoids the hypocrisy of most vampire-romance fiction. The main characters just are really selfish and awful, and that's okay. The show doesn't try to hide or excuse that Stefan and Damon are former (sometimes current) serial killers. Elena isn't in denial, she just doesn't care.

China, IL. After the last episode we watched, Clayton said, "I wish they would just let Brad Neely make one Professor Brothers and one Baby Cakes video and show them as an episode." It's not unpleasant to watch, but it seems like they had to make all these changes to do a BRAD NEELY ADULT SWIM SHOW because the original videos didn't conform to some stereotype of what Adult Swim shows are supposed to be like. They had to "improve" the animation for no reason and make Baby Cakes unrecognizable/terrifying looking, and every episode has a huge fantastical epic story arc, when one of the best things about the original videos was how mundane they were.

My Little Pony Friendship is Magic. Highly amazing show.

The Fades.

Bedlam. Hilariously, almost the whole cast is going to be replaced for series 2.

Game of Thrones. I'm enjoying this a lot.

American Horror Story. This was great.

Grimm. This seems like it would just be one of those placeholder shows where you're like "why is this on TV, does anyone actually care about it at all?" and indeed there are some obviously terrible things about it. For example, did you know Hitler was a wolfman? But something about its particular flaws makes me imagine it's being written by a 10-year-old who sincerely cares about the show, and I find it relentlessly enjoyable.

shows I've been watching for years but finally sat down and watched every episode of and/or caught up with:

United States of Tara. I feel like most TV critics just don't like crazy people very much because it seems like the more grimdark the show gets, the better they think it is. Whereas when it was more of a comedy, they were like "this show is offensive and unrealistic because it doesn't portray how hard it is to live with a crazy person." I enjoyed watching it to the end, but I definitely didn't feel that it became a better show. In fact, I kind of think it got less interesting.

Six Feet Under. I know this is a good show, but I'm so glad I finished watching it because it seems like all the writers have the same problems as me. I like depressing TV, I really do, but I just could not handle that every episode addressed something I was depressed about in real life.

Flight of the Conchords. Best show ever made (seriously, it's perfect--never stops being funny for a minute, and somehow doesn't annoy me with how sweet and innocent it is, even though I usually find that annoying, as with Portlandia).

Mr. Show. Other best show ever made.

Portlandia. This never fails to disappoint me but I'll keep watching because of my high school crush on CB.

attempted rewatches that I didn't really get that far with and don't have much to say about because I obviously like the show or I wouldn't have been rewatching it:

Spaced, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Battlestar Galactica, Mad Men, Being Human, Skins.

abandoned shows:

Skins. I was actually going to keep watching after the first episode, but Josh told me that the best-looking girl on the show, who also happens to be part of my OTP, died. Obviously shipping and attractive girls are huge motivations for sticking with a show that isn't good, and I no longer felt motivated. I also felt annoyed because since the end of last season, everyone in fandom has predicted that this character would die. It seems like she died because there has to be a mandatory death in every generation (in every generation a mandatory death is born!) and the writers didn't want to deal with either developing the OTP, or breaking them up to get back together at the last minute like Sid/Cassie and Naomily. I guess I can see why this would be difficult, but they just destroyed the only reason I would be interested in the show. Why did they retcon Minky?? That would have kept every lesbian in the world obsessed with Skins during series 6.

The Walking Dead. Maybe I'm just really tired of zombies, they're so horrifying yet so uninteresting. I was never motivated to start season 2.

Being Human. When I heard that not one but three of the four main actors would be leaving the show (with one actor quitting so suddenly that they had to say the character died offscreen), it just didn't sound like Being Human to me and I wasn't interested. Josh has been really positive about the new incarnation though so I'll probably get around to checking it out.

to watch list:

Lost Girl. The Onion AV Club did a weird review of this show where they talked about how the production is really bland in a distracting way (and all the actors are "bored Canadian models") but somehow the show itself is good? They compared it to Buffy and Angel. I also heard that the main character dates a man and a woman and this is a non-issue. So I'm very interested and likely to start this today or tomorrow.

The Secret Circle. This is by the creators of Vampire Diaries and I watched the first episode with Clayton several months ago. Everyone is pretty good-looking and lives in a good-looking town.

The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret. Clayton and I were trying to watch this in fall 2010 but I got so mad when Russell Tovey was replaced after the pilot that I flipped my lid and refused to watch anymore. I am finally starting to get over it and Clayton's interested in trying again.

how great my life is going to be in a week when Mad Men starts and then a week after that Game of Thrones starts:

pretty great.