Although I’m not generally into spooky or scary stuff, I have done some more thematic viewing this month by starting to rewatch the TV series Grimm. This series started fifteen years ago (yikes!), and while I think it kind of went off the rails toward the end, the first season really holds up.

In case you missed this one, it followed a young Portland, Oregon police detective who starts seeing strange things that no one else seems to see — ordinary people who suddenly turn into strange creatures. He learns that he’s a Grimm, one of a special group of people who can see the monsters that hide as humans, with a duty and destiny to fight and destroy them. Except he came into his powers late and he didn’t get the training he was supposed to get. All he has is a trailer full of weapons and old books that his aunt left him. He ends up being a very different kind of Grimm because one of the first “monsters” he meets is a mild-mannered wolf man, someone who should be his enemy but who becomes his friend and helps him learn how all this works. Contrary to what his ancestors thought, not all these people are evil and needing to be destroyed. He still functions as a cop, and he applies that lens to the creature world, as well, defending the victims and going after the perpetrators, no matter who/what they are.

What I’m enjoying on this rewatch is how they play with the tropes of both the monster story and the police story. We learn in the first episode that the police captain is a bad guy in the monster world, but as a police captain he’s a very good boss who breaks all the “hardass police captain the hero has to rebel against” tropes. He protects Nick (our hero), although he does have his own agenda. He’s fair to the people working for him. He only really pulls the “I’m in charge and you’ll listen to me” act for the good of his people when they’re getting in over their heads, and he listens to them and supports their theories.

Then there’s Nick’s girlfriend, who’s the opposite of just about every TV cop girlfriend. I feel like they ruined her character in later seasons, but in the first season she’s awesome, in spite of having no idea what’s really going on. When her boyfriend has to work late because he’s working on a murder case, she understands that this is part of the job rather than having a hissy fit. Instead of being a damsel in distress, she even comes to his rescue. They have a really comfortable chemistry that makes you believe they’ve been together a long time (and it must have carried over into real life because the actors ended up married to each other and are still together).

They flip a lot of expectations in the monster storylines. It helps that they cast a guy who isn’t particularly physically imposing and who looks like the boy next door as this monster hunter. The guy that the monsters tell scary stories about is just this ordinary guy who’s baffled when terrifying things see him and run away in terror. Along the way, he builds groups of allies from creatures who learn that he is fair and that he will help protect and defend them if they need him.

And all of this is wonderfully atmospheric. They filmed on location in Portland, and instead of desaturating everything into a kind of gray, like is so common now, they amp up the color saturation, so the greens and reds are intense. The forests look like something out of a fairy tale. The homes look like fairytale cottages. Most of the episodes in the early seasons are somewhat based on one of the Grimm fairy tales, and they go for some deep cuts, the less common ones. The episode starts with a quote from the tale, and then they link the killer or the victim in some way to the tale.

It’s been long enough since I watched the series that I don’t remember specifics about each episode, so it’s almost like watching something new, but still with the comfort level of knowing what I’m getting into. I remember at the time somewhat comparing Nick to Katie from my Enchanted, Inc. series, with his ability to see what’s really there that other people don’t see. The actor actually would have been good casting for Owen back at that time (though he doesn’t seem to have aged all that much).