What if you found out you were a descendent of a legendary group of hunters who secretly know that fairy tales are real? That is the premise of ‘Grimm’, a show that introduces its audience to Nick Burckhardt, a descendant of the Brothers Grimm who can see beyond the veil that separates the two worlds. Last night was the pilot episode and if the rest of the episodes are as good as the this one, then we are in for another great supernatural show! Here’s a recap of last night’s show:
A young co-ed in a red sweatshirt is going for a run. Her route takes her through the woods and as she is running she notices a figurine on a log. As she stops and picks it up to admire it, she is suddenly blindsided to the ground. Screams are heard along with the sounds of a timorous beast. All that is seen is her iPod earphones.
Nick is coming out of the building and he is greeted by his partner, Hank Griffin. Hank notices Nick looking at a couple of ladies walk out, and comments that Nick should stop admiring the girl as he is about to ask his girlfriend to marry him. Nick replies how he is not just seeing her and proceeds to give Hank a profile rundown of the girl. Hank just wonders why he can’t just look at her ass like the rest of the male population. As the girl goes by, Nick sees her face change briefly before going back to normal.
Nick and Hank are called to the scene of the crime in the woods involving the young co-ed who was out for a jog. The horrific remains of the girl are shown to the guys as they examine the crime scene. They realize that this crime is similar to another one at Munson Creek Falls a month ago involving what appeared to be a bobcat attack. However, the only tracks they were able to find at this crime scene was a boot print.
When Nick gets home, he sees that his Aunt Marie has stopped by for an unexpected visit. She tells him they need to talk. They go for a walk and Marie tells him that she is worse and doesn’t have long to live. She states that now is the time she needs to tell him about his family and asks if he has been seeing strange things that he can’t explain lately. She admits that she experiences the same thing and tells Nick he needs to break off his relationship with his girlfriend, Juliet, because things in his life are never going to be the same. She spots a car at a distance and exclaims, “Oh my God! He’s here!” Suddenly a humanoid creature comes out and attackes both of them. A fight ensues and the creature gains the upper hand knocking both Nick and Marie to the ground. As the creature is about to swing his sickle onto Marie, Nick fires out several shots from his gun. The creature falls dead and his face starts to turn back to human in front of Nick’s eyes.
As Marie lies injured on the street, she gives Nick a talisman and tells him to never lose it and guard it with his life. “They’ll” be looking for it. Before she loses consciousness, she tells him that his parents didn’t die in a crash as he always thought. They were murdered.
At the hospital, Marie tells Nick that their family has “the ability to see what no one else can. When they lose control they can’t hide and we see them for what they are.” She tells him that fairy tales are stories that really happened and he is one of the last Grimms. She begs him to go to her trailer because everything will be explained to him there. As he walks out of the hospital room, he takes a closer look at the talisman and realizes it is a key.
Back at the police station, Nick is examining the weapon the creature had. The weapon had writing on it that translated to Reapers of the Grimms.
Later that night, Nick awakens from a dream and decides to go check out Aunt Marie’s trailer. He finds an arsenal of weapons and an old book. Incredulous, Nick goes through the book and notices pictures of the “people” he has seen in the last 24 hours.
The next morning, when Nick goes back to visit Marie, she has fallen into a coma. Nick gets a call and reports to another crime scene. A little girl who was walking to her grandfather’s house never made it. She was reported last seen wearing purple leggings and a red sweat shirt. Nick realizes that the co-ed who was found torn to pieces was also wearing a red sweatshirt. As Hank and Nick go over the route that the little girl took before she became missing, Hank comments that when he was little, he didn’t always go the route his mother told him to go on and would take a shortcut. They decide to go on a trail the little girl might have taken to get to her grandfather’s house. Hank finds the little girl’s backpack and they start to investigate. They find the same boot print that was found at the scene of the co-ed’s disappearance. The boot print trail leads to a street where Nick sees a man at his mailbox whose face changes as he looks at a couple kids go by on their bicycles. Nick runs over and tackles him to the ground.
Nick is convinced that this guy has the girl but Hank tells him that the suspect (Eddie Munroe) has no priors and is clean. They have to let him go. Nick decides to keep watch on the guy. Later that night, Nick tries to sneak round the house and is suddenly jumped on by a humanoid wolf like creature who tells him he should never have come back. The face changes back to normal and Eddie starts to laugh and suggests they grab a beer. Inside Eddie seems to instinctively know that Nick is a Grimm and is astonished to be meeting one. He tells Nick that his parents used to tell stories about the Grimms when he was a little kid and that the stories would scare him to pieces. Eddie tells Nick that he is a Blutbad and when Nick questions what that meant, he responds that he is what the Grimms vilified in their books. Nick exclaims, ‘You know about the books?’ Eddie calmly replies that everyone knows about the book because the Grimms have been profiling his kind for several hundred years but not to worry as he is a reformed Blutbad and no longer kills. Nick asks him to help him find the little girl and Eddie reluctantly agrees.
Nick and Eddie go on the hunt for who took the little girl when Eddie gets a scent and they follow it to a house. He gives Nick some pointers on how to hunt people like him as they slowly creep up to the home but Eddie finds he can’t control his Blutbad self and leaves once they are close to the home.
Nick calls Hank for back up and as they approach the house, Hank is asking Nick questions on how he got the lead on this guy. Nick is unable to answer them truthfully. They approach the door of the alleged perpetrator who lets them inside. They question him and search his home but find nothing to link him to the kidnapping. As they leave the house, Hank recognizes the song that the owner of the house was humming. They storm back in and are attacked. Although Nick sees the kidnapper as a Blutbad, Hank sees him as the guy who owns the house. Shots are fired as the Blutbad tries to escape but before he can tell them where the little girl is, he dies. Hank and Nick are desperate to find the girl when Nick notices that there is no water on the floor where a vase with flowers had fallen. He pulls back a throw rug and finds the trapped door leading to the room where the little girl was being kept. She is saved!
Later, Nick is back at the hospital talking to the comatose Aunt Marie when a nurse comes in to give an injection. Nick recognizes her as the female “creature” he first saw at the beginning of the episode and leaps to prevent her from giving his aunt the injection. She thrusts the needle into Nick and as he is about to lose consciousness, he sees her face change. She makes her escape. She gets into a car where her accomplice asks if Marie is dead but she tells him that Nick was there. As they drive away, her accomplice states they will have to try again.
I really enjoyed the retelling of ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ and like the premise that fairy tales are case files and explanations of the evil in this world. After all, wasn’t that the purpose of fairy tales in the first place? To teach children a precautionary lesson? Expect to see more twists and retelling of other fairy tales as the series continues on!
