Quote:One scenario presents the characters’ honestly examining their actions and motivations, and Nick recognizing the conflicts of his Grimm and detective obligations. The other provides an easily written, uncomplicated WoW episode where the hero stops the indisputable antagonist.
When I was a kid, I was an avid Star Trek fan. I would watch it anytime I could, and that was not easy to do with only five channels! Star Trek defined good and evil from the get go. I am still a Star Trek fan, but I am with the majority who believe that Season 1 and midway through Season 2 were among the best of the episodes. Even then, not all of them were good. But midway Season 2 and completely through Season 3 were just like Grimm in its final laps. It became the top three characters against the universe. They were good, everyone else was evil.
At the time, I was a kid and loved sci-fi so I didn't care. I had a big crush on Kirk and it was a show about him. As I got older, though, I started to discriminate and found there were some absolutely outstanding episodes that focused on the complexity of the characters and that made the series a standout in some areas. But not all and not all of the time.
I thought the first episode of Grimm did very well in establishing the parameters of good. At least good enough in my opinion to establish complexities in the characters. I'm not saying it was great because it wasn't. But there was enough there for me to realize I wasn't watching a complete mess.
The issue I had was with the episode where Kelly decides to kidnap Diana. This, to me is right along with what you stated:
Quote:One scenario presents the characters’ honestly examining their actions and motivations, and Nick recognizing the conflicts of his Grimm and detective obligations. The other provides an easily written, uncomplicated WoW episode where the hero stops the indisputable antagonist.
In the very first episode, the postman kidnaps the little girl, planning to fatten her up and consume her. The gist I got from this was that it was abhorrent behavior to Monroe. For Nick, it was against the law and (I think) he had some personal issues with wesen kidnapping children.
Yet a couple of years into the series, Kelly kidnaps Diana. Because Nick is involved in all of the details of the kidnapping, he's in agreement. Gotta save the world, right? Well, then you gotta do what you gotta do to make that happen. Yet Nick doesn't really know what's going to happen in Diana's future. But he and the scoobies go along with it to keep the child out of the hands of her relatives, the Royals. They've been established as the good characters so this should be a good thing, right?
Which brings me to the Royals and specifically to Kenneth. We know very little about the Royals, only that they are always evil. As we know little else, the evil was apparent the moment Kenneth strolled onto the scene. So instead of a complex character who believes in the Royal dynasty but struggles with the duties of being a Royal, we get the man who's able to boot Adalind out without a fight. He then very simply coerces Juliette into helping him. Which is another issue because, isn't that all Juliette is about now? Revenge?
So Kenneth kidnaps baby Diana from the original kidnapper, does what he's supposed to, has an obligatory roll in the hay with Juliette (because that's what evil characters do, right?), and then heads back to the royal sanctuary only to be told he needs to go after Nick. And the rest is history. Nick violates every law in the code to apprehend Kenneth. In addition, Renard manages to pin the Ripper murders on Kenneth, because after all, he is the only one who has an English accent in Portland.
So to me, the series has established some complexities in some of the characters so the audience knows them as "good". The evil characters are simply cardboard meanies, opposite of the "good" ones.
The best way to frustrate a cyberbully is to ignore him.