Oooh starts with Eurhythmics “Sweet Dreams are Made of This” I like it already. That's an extra fang right there. And I legitimately jumped out of my skin when the furry thing got her. So here's the start – good music and me nearly falling out of my seat – I'm impressed.
So we see Detective Nick who sees dead people monsters and his token black sidekick Detective Hank (ok maybe I'm jumping the gun, but let's see, my cynicism is rarely wrong).
I'm going to try and review without too much of a recap to avoid spoilers. Of course, if it's bad I'll have to recap so fit in more snark, it is known.
Nick has to confront his family legacy – yes he is seeing monsters. Seeing people morph into monsters, their faces transforming but only to his eyes. Passed to Nick by his aunt – who also tells him that his parents were killed – they didn't die in a car crash. Yes, dead parents.
Everything the brothers Grimm wrote about was real – and a Grimm is a human that can see the monsters that hide as people and now that legacy and ability has fallen to Nick, the last of his family now his aunt is in a coma. Along with the really nifty looking key and a collection of awesome medieval weaponry (though, hey, the gun worked. Just get a bigger one). His aunt works as a librarian – but after and attack she is hospitalised the nurse says she is covered in scars – a stark reminder of the cost of their ability.
A young woman has already been maimed – and now a child is missing. Nick jumps into action but we also see the limits of his ability – he leaps up and sees Eddie - a man whose face shifts into a werewolf (well, Blutbad) and leaps on him as the kidnapper. But just being a monster doesn't make you the monster. I have a feeling Eddie is going to be Nick's guide to all things supernatural, since Nick has only just inherited his powers and his Aunt's library without any training or knowledge
It's an interesting introduction and intrigues me a lot. I'm a lot more positive about this programme. I don't think it's going to follow the same tropes or all the same creatures. I'm not usually as fond of hunter stories but I think this is going to be interesting enough to make watching it fun – with enough unique little twists (I love how that kidnapping Blutbad was after women and girls in red coats :)). And I love Nick's ignorance as Eddie points out so many things that he thinks are blatantly obvious. It really does shoe how utterly out of his depth he is so perfectly.
And of course there's a shadowy organisation out to kill him and his aunt – there always is but I do want to see more.
I did have a horrible feeling we were going to get some very clumsy aesops though – however when Nick attacked Eddie they had a prime chance to make a grossly wrong and inappropriate comparison to, say, racial profiling and they DIDN'T do it. I was sat there cringing, waiting for it, and they didn't go there. This brings me hope. Not a lot of hope, but still.
I can see we're also going to see how Nick's new life is going to impact with his fiancée, Juliette. On the one hand I approve because it is unreasonable that leading such a double life would not have consequences for a relationship, especially when it's such a huge change. But it's not going to be a storyline I enjoy, I imagine, even if it's done well.
There's also going to be a lot of conflict with them being police and hunting creatures that aren't human – but look it. How do you pursue arrests and searches in these situations without breaking the rules? And how much of the rule breaking is going to be justified and/or ignored?
We have 2 regularly occurring POC – his detective sidekick and an Asian sergeant. I hope we get to see more than tokenism from them but my hopes are low (did I mention cynicism?) I especially don't like that he called Hank to come back him up against a Blutbad without any other back up or explanation – putting him at risk without explaining the situation. Sure it's a hard situation to explain, but he put him in a bad position on his word alone.
All in all – yes, I'm in. I likes it I does :) I will be watching with interest rather than creeping dread – and I definitely want to see where this goes.
