I figured out “The End” about a one-third of the way through
the episode. At a certain point, killing off characters loses the ‘shock and
awe’ quality, and one wonders what’s going on. Major characters died every few
minutes in “The End”, a fun trend that started at the end of last week’s
penultimate episode. Once Renard took Zerstorer’s rod through the heart in
defense of his suddenly pro-Zerstorer daughter, I started thinking about where
it’d all lead. It didn’t take long for my Eureka moment. The writers made sure
to emphasize the fact that two realities exist concurrently; thus, Nick was in
the Bad Reality.
David Greenwalt did the whole ‘kill off nearly every major
character’ before when he worked for Joss Whedon on Buffy, the Vampire Slayer.
Greenwalt directed episode nine of Buffy’s third season when a wish demon
grants Cordelia her wish by making a world in which Buffy never came to
Sunnydale. A Sunnydale without Buffy is a bad Sunnydale. One of the iconic
scenes in Buffy belongs to the end of “The Wish” when Buffy, Xander, Willow,
and Angel die. (When Angel dies, Buffy didn’t even wince, because she and Angel
never met nor fell in epic love in this bad wish reality). If Nick hadn’t been
in The Other Place, I expected Zerstorer’s Rod to do its thing and resurrect
everything.
Anyway, the series finale of Grimm highlighted two major
things, both Nick related. Nick, like Buffy Summers, would be nothing without
his friends. Losing his friends nearly motivated him to give Zerstorer the
stick. Also, the Grimm line is strong, like the line of Slayer blood that
united every slayer from the First to Buffy to…well, I won’t give away the
ending to Buffy. Zerstorer’s most deadly power wasn’t the Rod, though its power
neared ultimate—it was his ability to manipulate reality and to take away the
people Nick loved the most, a loss so great he would’ve sacrificed the whole of
humanity to bring them back. (And that’s another echo of ANGEL, though
Greenwalt wasn’t involved in the fifth season or the specific fifth season episode
“A Hole in the World”).
Trubel saved him from himself, and his mother and Aunt Marie
provided him strength when he needed it most. Isn’t that what we, too, hope for
in our lowest moments: the strength of love, fellowship, and family bonds to
help us fight what we think we cannot defeat? I loved the shot of Nick, Kelly,
Aunt Marie, and Trubel surrounding Zerstorer in The Other Place. That’s an
image for a final Grimm poster—specifically the overhead shot of Zerstorer
standing tall as four Grimms surround him (or three. Was Aunt Marie a confirmed
Grimm).
A part of me felt bummed during the episode because of the
quick deaths to the other major characters, because I wanted more impactful
involvement from them. Of course, such a perspective is, ultimately, selfish
and skewed. Characters don’t need to be active physical presences in someone’s
specific story for them to be impactful. Let us not forget that Grimm was
Nick’s story. David Greenwalt and Jim Kouf wanted to finish Nick’s story in
“The End”.
Grimm began with Nick on his own (aside from Monroe). No one
knew, not Hank, not Wu, not Juliette, and Rosalee wouldn’t enter his and
Monroe’s life for another season. Like other supernatural genre shows, Grimm
began as a show of discovery. Nick discovered a new life and a new world and
began the hero’s journey. Aunt Marie called him to adventure. He refused the
call, found a mentor in his Aunt and a guide in Monroe, and then he crossed the
threshold when he saved the little girl in the “Pilot” and faced off with his
first Wesen as a Grimm. He returned to his home, having changed. The hero’s
journey repeated throughout the six seasons until “The End” when it reached its
synthesis, and the writers switched from the monomyth to the Hegelian triad
where Grimm then spiraled into a new thesis, twenty years later, with Kelly and
Diana helping their Mom and Dad fight Wesen alongside the triplets and Monroe
and Rosalee.
Now, did Grimm need to tell a trippy fever dream Other Place
story over the span of three episodes? Sure. Why not? Grimm was a trippy,
weird, crazy, fever dream of a show. This show dropped plotlines and characters
without abandon. The writers wrote off major overarching stories with one line.
I had no idea where everything in Grimm’s history would lead to in the end. I
learned to go along with Grimm’s battiness after awhile. It turned out that
Grimm returned to its roots to the end. The end of stories often return to its
beginning in some ways. The hero in the monomyth returns home transformed, like
Frodo at the end of The Lord of the Rings. Finnegans
Wake “brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle
and Environs” at the end, which is the beginning.
Nick returns to his home where his friends are, all of them,
Hank, Monroe, Rosalee, Wu, Eve, Renard, and his lover, Adalind, where he’s
stronger with them and because of them. Yes, every series on television
resurrects characters now. Death doesn’t mean a thing, but it doesn’t always
need to mean finality on television. Sure, it’d be nice if it did, sometimes.
We get plenty of death’s finality in our lives, though. I wanted to see Nick
and his friends together in the end somehow. I even liked the group hug. So,
yeah, I’m a softie.
Grimm is over now. I wrote three weeks ago in my final post
for The Vampire Diaries that ending a story is incredibly difficult. It is. A
writer, or writers, can’t satisfy every fan in the world. Someone, somewhere,
will feel disappointed. That’s unavoidable. It’s often to best to think about
the whole of the story you experienced after it ends, whether it’s a book, a TV
show, a movie, a podcast, or a music album, and consider whether or not you
felt glad you watched and experienced it. Maybe you’ll think of it in terms of
worth. Was it worth the time you invested in it? I’m sorry if you thought it
wasn’t. I hope it was for you.
Other Thoughts:
-Grimm was the weirdest show I wrote about, I’d say. One
wouldn’t think it was weird. It’s a supernatural procedural about fighting
creatures from fairy tales, right? Well, it began so simply. Little things
about Grimm threw me: the structure of some episodes, for example, or the
pacing, or the treatment of exposition, dialogue choices—not to mention some
arcs as well as other things I’ve rambled about in past reviews.
-My thanks to Grimm’s delightful cast for great work over
the years and to Grimm’s crew, writers, and many directors. Not many folks
thought Grimm would make it to thirteen episodes in the late summer and early
fall of 2011. I offer my additional thanks to all for giving me something to
write about for the last six years. Grimm joins Everwood as the only shows I
wrote about in toto.
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-Jim Kouf & David Greenwalt wrote the finale. David
Greenwalt directed.