4 Ways To Fix NBC’s Grimm

1. Give stories the time they need to unfold.

One of my biggest gripes about Grimm is its dismaying ability to introduce promising plots and then totally sweep them under the rug by episode’s end. While the procedural side of Grimm may appeal to some viewers, the monster-of-the-week set-up ensures that very few episodes end in logical, satisfying ways.

Case in point: the season one episode “Tarantella.” The titular Wesen is a spider-like creature called a Spinnetod, who sucks out the lives of innocents in order to keep from rapidly aging. By episode’s end, the Spinnetod (a woman named Lena) has been captured and detained; without any sustenance, she begins to age rapidly. I’d love to see the face of the cop who comes by to retrieve her the next morning. Unfortunately, the episode ends there, and Lena never appears in the show again.

Need another example? Season two’s “The Good Shepherd” offered a feeble main plot (a wolf Wesen hypnotizes and steals from a congregation of sheep Wesen) that collapses half-way through when a ridiculous series of affairs and financial double-crosses come to light. The subplots are just as awful. A Nuckelavee (horse Wesen), previously dispatched to Portland by the aforementioned Prince Eric, was introduced as a major threat to Nick. However, the writers forgot about him until the last moments of the episode, only to write the creature off by having Nick quickly cave in his head with a decorated hammer.

Though it’s understandable for Grimm‘s writers to want to hide behind procedural formula, the show suffers as a result of their refusal to let plots play out logically.