Didactic Pirate: Ok, my beloved Weirdgirl -- you and I were both psyched to watch the debuts of two new shows that claim to put some new creepy spin action on classic fable and fairy tales. In one corner, we've got Once Upon A Time on ABC, and in the other corner we've got the way darker Grimm on NBC. I definitely found one of them more appealing, by far. How about you?
Weirdgirl: I agree, DP. I was instantly hooked by the energy and tension of Grimm. I also like the characters they're developing. I think Once Upon A Time as a show is taking more risks but to be honest, they almost lost me when they carted out the dwarves.
Didactic Pirate: I agree that any show with actual dwarves faces some real risks. Let's go back, though: both shows take place in the present, but Once Upon A Time seems to be the one that's drawing more from specific fairy tales. The premise is that a single, fairly jaded woman named Emma (Jennifer Morrison, who was on House, right?) is a bailbondsman/person who ends up going to the little town of Storybrooke, Maine, which is populated by fairy tale characters -- literally. Snow White, Prince Charming, Little Red Riding Hood and her Grandmother, Rumplestiltskin, Jiminy Cricket, etc. Except that they all have amnesia and don't know who they really are. They think they're just regular people, with regular towny jobs. Morrison's character has a connection to them, and it looks like she's going to be running around solving mysteries. Like The Case Of The Really Dangerous Spinning Wheel or something, which doesn't really create a lot of suspense for me. So that's one show. How would you describe Grimm?
Weirdgirl: You forgot that Jiminy Cricket isn't actually a cricket anymore, he's a man. That had to be painful
Grimm follows the tried and true path of monster-hunting stories. Think Buffy, Van Helsing, Supernatural. Detective Nick (David Giuntoli) has been seeing things and when his aging auntie shows up out of the blue it turns out -- shocker -- he's descended from a long line of "Grimms." Grimms can see all the big bad wolves, trolls, et al, that are hiding among humanity and they've been profiling them for years in a big book of monsters. As Nick's aunt suffers failing health, he inherits her Grimm ability of sight and the family heritage of hunting the bad ones down. The twist is he's already a police detective so he should be pretty good at it, and that sort of legitimizes him running around shooting random people in the head. Oh wait, that's zombies.
