Sunday, November 13, 2011

NEW! - Grimm 1:3 - BeeWare

Overall Rating: 5.5

Foreshadowing and clever bogeymen can only get you so far.



Plot Synopsis:

BEEEEEEES!!!!  No, seriously, Nick investigates a flash mob style murder that leads him to discover that one of his Grimm Reaper enemies is actually involved in a conflict of unspecified description with a new beast of the week - essentially a gigantic bee hiding in a human body with the capacity to make huge swarms of bees obey her every command and to inject victims with huge doses of bee-sting toxin.  The net result is that he is forced to defend an enemy from the bee attack despite her refusal to give him any information he might use to fend off whatever it is that might soon be upon him.

The Skinny:

I'll give them credit for doing a lot of clever hinting and foreshadowing about coming doom...and I'll give them credit for continuing to amuse me a bit whenever our Blud Bot friend shows up to assist in Nick's investigations.  I'll even give them a bit of credit for putting some serious evident thought into the history of the Grimms, the Grimm Reapers and the human-disguised misdeeds that various races are committing all around us.  I'll even give them time to fill in their characters some more.  But I have to admit that right now...this show just isn't doing it for me.  The stakes aren't big enough, the characters aren't deep enough, and the plots...well they're sort of routine.  I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt...I'm sure there is more to this show than we've seen thus far.  But I liked the characters of Buffy the Vampire Slayer within a few episodes of the start of that series. The same is true of Deep Space Nine or even The Walking Dead.  Here...I'm not feeling the urge to root for anyone except perhaps Nick's fiance...because she's hot.

Writing: 4.5

This just isn't adventurous enough for my taste thus far...if we had some sense for larger stakes - if all of these beasts of the week were involved, for example in trying to overthrow human global order or something like that - then the small time stuff they're doing right now would seem more interesting.  As it stands, though, it's some poor everyman with no distinguishing character traits caught up in a monster on monster war about which he (and the audience) knows nothing.  And that just isn't gonna cut it.  This particular episode is about as bland as any Voyager spatial anomaly or BtVS creature feature...only without the clever dialogue of Buffy or the hilariously bad science of Voyager to amuse me.

Acting: 6.0

Nothing stands out...and frankly, I think a big part of it is Nick...who thus far reminds me mostly of Harry Kim...lifeless as an actor AND as a character.

Message: 6.0

Que?

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