![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
First thougts: Grimm and Once Upon A Time
So I've finally caught both the new tv shows dealing with fairy tales -- which are completely different takes, yay! -- and have some thoughts for those of you who have seen one or the other or both.
Grimm -- AKA You got your fairy tale in my cop show! You got your cop show in my fairy tale!
First, Monroe is love, right? He's such a geek, and it's adorable! The Big Bad Wolf loves model trains, antique cameras, clockmaking, and yoga... I particularly liked the bee episode where he pointed out that this was the point in the horror movie where the sidekick gets it, and therefore he did NOT want to go into the creepy house. Because that's how any fan would react because we're genre-savvy.
Nick, as our presumptive main character, is spending entirely too much time flailing about. I'm not sure why he hasn't sat down and read at least one of Grimm journals from start to finish -- or maybe he has and that's why he can find most of the monsters week and week -- but for an experienced detective he sure spends a lot of time being slightly clueless. Part of it is the perils of the set-up, I'm sure. I do like that he was an excellent tracker and people-reader even before he got the Grimm powers, and they haven't changed him all that much. And he's loyal to Juliette, which is a nice change from the usually unattached hero.
Juliette finally got some development in the episode with the ogre, and as of the latest episode (the one with dragon-creature) is having severe doubts about her ability to handle the stresses of a relationship with Nick. Considering she's wound up fighting off a home invader and been kidnapped by a woman who was apparently obsessed with her boyfriend inside six months, I think this is a healthy reaction to have.
Hank Griffin is neat, but I wish he didn't have to be in the dark quite so much as part of the story set up. He's a great partner for Nick, and I love how their interaction is trust and knowledge about each other's strengths.
Capt. Renard is still mysterious as a mysterious thing, and I hope the reveal is a good one. They can't play it out beyond the end of the season, even if Nick doesn't clue into the fact that his superior is a Vesen.
I am sad that the show has mostly failed the Bechdel Test -- we rarely see female characters other than Juliette and the medical examiner, and besides the occasion of Juliette accompanying Nick when he took the street kids to dinner, and maybe conversation with Aunt Marie, I don't think she's actually talked to another female character onscreen. I do like that Nick inherited his Grimm-ness from his aunt, who got it from her sister, Nick's mother -- I'm not sure if it's going to be significant or not, but it wasn't until that was reveal that I realized that I'd been assuming that Nick's dad was the Grimm-family member (but I had been assuming that Marie had been the older/more suitable sibling, and had gotten the Grimm from her parent, not her sibling.)
Onto the other fairy tale show:
Once Upon A Time -- I haven't caught nearly as many episodes (only the latest five or so), but it occurs to me that a lot of this show is about how people both fail and succeed at being parents -- and grown-ups in general, but parents specifically. Due to the nature of it, with everything in the Fairy Tale World being a flashback and everything in Storybrooke being 'the present', what we're seeing is a lot of adults that have already gone through life changes like meeting their spouse and having or planning to have kids -- just they can't remember that they did that in most cases and are having the forces of the universe work against them -- quite literally -- when they try to achieve happy relationships and a good family life again.
In the Fairy Tale World, Snow White and Charming did marry and have a child (not for long, but they did it), Cinderella and her Prince were expecting, even Rumplestiltskin had a been a father... but apparently the Evil Queen was never quite accepted as a mother by Snow, and kept trying to achieve motherhood by taking other people's children -- her offer to Hansel and Gretel, and then her adoption of Henry in Storybrooke.
Frankly, given that Fairy Tale World is pretty much a Crapsack World -- cannibalistic witches, the tv version Dung Ages society, the Ogre Wars -- I expect that even if the Dark Curse shatters, there will be quite a number of people who are not terribly happy at being returned to Fairy Tale World, especially if they go back to being sheep farmers, woodcutters, and artisans. Sure, Storybrooke might not have given them any higher standing in life, but at least there were dentists, running water, washing machines, fridges, and a modern market economy -- instead of dental abcesses, fetching water in buckets, scrubbing laundry by hand, unsafe food, and feudalism. Rumplestiltskin might have like to spin even after he got his magic, but he was using that to make gold, instead of having to spin in order to weave his own clothes.
Oh, and this is a hobbyist picking on a detail, but I want to smack the props department for Rumplestiltskin's spinning wheel. It's a Great Wheel, aka a Walking Wheel, and they're managed to run the drive band around the axle of the wheel, instead of the rim -- which means that the drive ratio is greatly reduced -- and no spinner who had actually used a wheel in his day-to-day life would do that, because it means a lot more effort to get the same result. Possibly the prop department just thought a Great Wheel looked nice and impressive, but clearly nobody actually cared if the actor did it right on camera -- fortunately, they didn't try to mock up a foot-pedal, and Robert Carlyle figured out that it was meant to be turned by hand, but seriously, that style of spindle wheel is called Walking Wheel for a reason! (and would be a complete pain for someone with a bum leg)
I am completely in love with how most of the plots in this show are about the women -- there are male characters, but most of them are important because they are the woman's love interest -- Charming is important because of Snow White's story, Sean is important because of Ashley, The Genie is there to support the Evil Queen's schemes, even Henry is important because Regina and Emma are in conflict over who has his best interests at heart. Heck, even Grumpy is there mostly to support Snow, even if he did get his own focus episode. Rumplestiltskin is an independent operator, but he's a trickster figure as well as a Big Bad -- since it is a bit of Evil vs Evil behind the scenes, it will be interesting to see what happens as he and Regina move ever closer to open warfare. Regina is powerful and ruthless, for certain, but she's also as blunt as a sledgehammer and gets stymied when people sidestep her. Rumplestiltskin is a lot more clever than she is, and he seems to be willing to play the long game.
Grimm -- AKA You got your fairy tale in my cop show! You got your cop show in my fairy tale!
First, Monroe is love, right? He's such a geek, and it's adorable! The Big Bad Wolf loves model trains, antique cameras, clockmaking, and yoga... I particularly liked the bee episode where he pointed out that this was the point in the horror movie where the sidekick gets it, and therefore he did NOT want to go into the creepy house. Because that's how any fan would react because we're genre-savvy.
Nick, as our presumptive main character, is spending entirely too much time flailing about. I'm not sure why he hasn't sat down and read at least one of Grimm journals from start to finish -- or maybe he has and that's why he can find most of the monsters week and week -- but for an experienced detective he sure spends a lot of time being slightly clueless. Part of it is the perils of the set-up, I'm sure. I do like that he was an excellent tracker and people-reader even before he got the Grimm powers, and they haven't changed him all that much. And he's loyal to Juliette, which is a nice change from the usually unattached hero.
Juliette finally got some development in the episode with the ogre, and as of the latest episode (the one with dragon-creature) is having severe doubts about her ability to handle the stresses of a relationship with Nick. Considering she's wound up fighting off a home invader and been kidnapped by a woman who was apparently obsessed with her boyfriend inside six months, I think this is a healthy reaction to have.
Hank Griffin is neat, but I wish he didn't have to be in the dark quite so much as part of the story set up. He's a great partner for Nick, and I love how their interaction is trust and knowledge about each other's strengths.
Capt. Renard is still mysterious as a mysterious thing, and I hope the reveal is a good one. They can't play it out beyond the end of the season, even if Nick doesn't clue into the fact that his superior is a Vesen.
I am sad that the show has mostly failed the Bechdel Test -- we rarely see female characters other than Juliette and the medical examiner, and besides the occasion of Juliette accompanying Nick when he took the street kids to dinner, and maybe conversation with Aunt Marie, I don't think she's actually talked to another female character onscreen. I do like that Nick inherited his Grimm-ness from his aunt, who got it from her sister, Nick's mother -- I'm not sure if it's going to be significant or not, but it wasn't until that was reveal that I realized that I'd been assuming that Nick's dad was the Grimm-family member (but I had been assuming that Marie had been the older/more suitable sibling, and had gotten the Grimm from her parent, not her sibling.)
Onto the other fairy tale show:
Once Upon A Time -- I haven't caught nearly as many episodes (only the latest five or so), but it occurs to me that a lot of this show is about how people both fail and succeed at being parents -- and grown-ups in general, but parents specifically. Due to the nature of it, with everything in the Fairy Tale World being a flashback and everything in Storybrooke being 'the present', what we're seeing is a lot of adults that have already gone through life changes like meeting their spouse and having or planning to have kids -- just they can't remember that they did that in most cases and are having the forces of the universe work against them -- quite literally -- when they try to achieve happy relationships and a good family life again.
In the Fairy Tale World, Snow White and Charming did marry and have a child (not for long, but they did it), Cinderella and her Prince were expecting, even Rumplestiltskin had a been a father... but apparently the Evil Queen was never quite accepted as a mother by Snow, and kept trying to achieve motherhood by taking other people's children -- her offer to Hansel and Gretel, and then her adoption of Henry in Storybrooke.
Frankly, given that Fairy Tale World is pretty much a Crapsack World -- cannibalistic witches, the tv version Dung Ages society, the Ogre Wars -- I expect that even if the Dark Curse shatters, there will be quite a number of people who are not terribly happy at being returned to Fairy Tale World, especially if they go back to being sheep farmers, woodcutters, and artisans. Sure, Storybrooke might not have given them any higher standing in life, but at least there were dentists, running water, washing machines, fridges, and a modern market economy -- instead of dental abcesses, fetching water in buckets, scrubbing laundry by hand, unsafe food, and feudalism. Rumplestiltskin might have like to spin even after he got his magic, but he was using that to make gold, instead of having to spin in order to weave his own clothes.
Oh, and this is a hobbyist picking on a detail, but I want to smack the props department for Rumplestiltskin's spinning wheel. It's a Great Wheel, aka a Walking Wheel, and they're managed to run the drive band around the axle of the wheel, instead of the rim -- which means that the drive ratio is greatly reduced -- and no spinner who had actually used a wheel in his day-to-day life would do that, because it means a lot more effort to get the same result. Possibly the prop department just thought a Great Wheel looked nice and impressive, but clearly nobody actually cared if the actor did it right on camera -- fortunately, they didn't try to mock up a foot-pedal, and Robert Carlyle figured out that it was meant to be turned by hand, but seriously, that style of spindle wheel is called Walking Wheel for a reason! (and would be a complete pain for someone with a bum leg)
I am completely in love with how most of the plots in this show are about the women -- there are male characters, but most of them are important because they are the woman's love interest -- Charming is important because of Snow White's story, Sean is important because of Ashley, The Genie is there to support the Evil Queen's schemes, even Henry is important because Regina and Emma are in conflict over who has his best interests at heart. Heck, even Grumpy is there mostly to support Snow, even if he did get his own focus episode. Rumplestiltskin is an independent operator, but he's a trickster figure as well as a Big Bad -- since it is a bit of Evil vs Evil behind the scenes, it will be interesting to see what happens as he and Regina move ever closer to open warfare. Regina is powerful and ruthless, for certain, but she's also as blunt as a sledgehammer and gets stymied when people sidestep her. Rumplestiltskin is a lot more clever than she is, and he seems to be willing to play the long game.