Tag: ask box

did you feel like nick was badly written in the last two seasons? cause to me he sometimes seemed to be a different nick altogether which is sad since I loved nick and they kinda ruined him… and it wasnt just nick either. it was everyone. it’s like the writers gave up on being true to their characters. such a shame.

A little yes, and a little no, anon. Let me see if I can explain.

There were definitely arcs where I felt Nick behaved very out of character. And in the Juliette/Hexenbiest arc at the end of season four, I felt that everyone behaved out of character without any good explanation (except for Juliette, who had all the reason in the world). It was almost like they made the entire team thoughtless and incompetent just so they could force Juliette’s arc, when there were definitely better ways to make that happen.

Granted, some of Nick’s writing during this time was par for the course–emotional avoidance, disregarding Juliette’s feelings, making things about him that so very were not–but the beauty of the show was that the characters’ flaws often balanced each other out. Nick’s tendency toward emotional avoidance and self-centeredness was balanced out by Juliette’s insistence on facing things head on and Hank’s tendency to point out the problems in his actions. Monroe’s pigheadedness was balanced by Rosalee’s level-headedness. The entire team’s collective gooeyness was balanced by Renard’s ruthless pragmatism…and occasionally Rosalee’s, depending on the subject. They all had skills and strengths that worked well with the rest of the team, and they were (mostly) good at communicating when it mattered.

But in that arc, suddenly, no one was balancing anyone out. No one was reacting to anything the way they usually would. Everyone was being ridiculously obtuse and not talking about shit and it was infuriating to watch. They basically all fell back to letting Nick do whatever he wanted–similar to how they acted in season 2, actually–and the end result was Juliette dead and Diana in the wind.

But overall, I thought Nick’s writing was fine in seasons 5 and 6, with the exception of one particular subplot (you know the one) in which the writing, acting, everything felt forced and stilted and just wrong. So wrong that up until the final episode I was sure it had to be some kind of spell causing him to act completely out of character. It wasn’t just that he was displaying traits that seemed unusual for him, it was that he was portraying certain emotions in a way that Nick Burkhardt definitely did not express himself, with no plausible explanation given as to why.

So. Yeah…I kinda feel you. But there were also moments that Nick felt every bit the Grimm we all know and love. Notably, his solo interactions with Hank, Monroe, and Juliette/Eve were super in-character and smacked of season one so hard that I had to swallow a nostalgic lump in my throat at times. And although sometimes his actions as a Grimm made me sad, they were also part of a clear progression that had been building for a few years, so I understood them as (not necessarily positive) character development, rather than OOC writing.

What happened with the storyline of Nick turning zombie? Do you have a plausible headcanon that explains why that stopped being an issue?

Well they cured him of the zombification at the start of season three, and he just experienced a few after-effects: increased stamina and strength, ability to go for long periods without breathing, with his heart barely beating, etc. 

From what I remember of early season three, this was initially an unconscious response to stimuli that he couldn’t really control. But as time went on, it’s possible he grew used to the power and learned to control it, the same way he eventually seemed able to filter out his super-hearing unless it was needed in a specific situation.

That being said…that’s ALL headcanon. They really didn’t do much with that idea once they got into the latter half of season three. I know his super hearing showed up a couple of times after that, but I don’t think the stoneform power ever showed up past season three.

One theory that’s been floated before in fandom is that the whole reason he developed, for lack of a better word, actual superpowers each time some kind of wacky magic was used on him was that one of the adaptations of the Grimm line is not only a certain level of immunity to some poisons/forms of dark magic (i.e. Nick being able to resist things like the Coins of Zakynthos)…but also the ability to incorporate anything that would make them stronger.

So when Nick gets turned into a zombie–cold-skinned, super strong and fast, never-tiring monster that doesn’t need to breathe–and then is cured of the ill effects, his body somehow manages to hold onto the useful aspects of the condition. Same story earlier on with his super-hearing. He lost the use of his eyes, so his ears just upped their game almost immediately. And then after he gets his sight back, they just kinda…keep going at that higher level without adjusting back down.

All of that to say that it’s possible when Adalind worked the spell to strip him of his Grimm powers at the end of season three, he was also stripped of most, if not all, of those adaptations as well.

And then when he gets his powers back, he either has lost all of the powers (not likely, as the hearing remained), takes some time to learn how to access them again, or loses only the purely mystical ones but keeps the super-hearing because it was a physiological change in response to the loss of his eyes rather than the side effects of a semi-mystical infection of sorts.

Make sense? Kinda? Maybe?

A few people have already mentioned this but Diana always called Renard Dad and not Nick so I think there’s every possibility that she meant Mom Adalind and Dad Renard. Not as a couple but just as you know part of team grimm. And Kelly would know what she meant by Mom and Dad cause he’s used to growing up in a mixed family. So maybe Kelly’s mom is Mom Jules and Dad Nick. Just maybe. A wild hope but why not?

I feel the same. I mean…Diana adored Sean. And in spite of everything, he ended the series in a pretty good place with all of Team Grimm. So while I guess it’s possible that as she grew up, he might have messed things up OR she might have grown close enough to Nick to start calling him dad as well, it just makes more sense to me personally that she would have continued calling Nick by his name and Sean as “dad” or “daddy.”

Come to think of it…maybe that’s it. Maybe she does call Sean “daddy” and Nick “dad.” That could make a lot of sense. And she might call Monroe and Rosalee Aunt Rosalee and Uncle Monroe, even though they’re not technically related. Likewise Uncle Hank, Uncle Drew, and Auntie Eve.

If you were wesen, what type would you be? ^^ I love your blog, by the way!

Thanks so much! Now let’s see…hmmmm….

I would probably be a Bauerschwein. I’m not naturally a combative person but can be pushed to that place eventually, I hold grudges like a boss, and I LOVE me a good bath (not a mud bath…a bath bomb bath…but I did once cover myself in dirt as a kid because I saw on the discovery channel that elephants use this method to keep bugs away and cool down from the heat. And whattaya know…it worked!).

Admin D would most definitely be a fuchsbau…she can elaborate on that for you if she wants. 😛 Aaaaand I can’t speak for the other admins but they’re welcome to chime in!

I’ve decided to regard the second half of season four and all of S5-6 as a sort of Grimm-Writers Fanfiction and enjoy the Grimm I loved :-D cause I just can’t stomach some of the crap that happened in the later seasons

Yeah…I think the fandom is basically split down the middle in this regard. Either they loved the last two seasons or hated them.

For me personally, I feel like the show was still good up to about 2/3 of the way through season 4. And to be fair, it was still good after that, too, in some respects. It still had some great moments with all of the characters I loved, good dialogue, fantastic acting. Several episodes in season 6 were at least as good as season 1, and the whole season had the same feeling the show had in season 1 as well.

But it also had its bad points, things the writers wanted to happen but didn’t put in the time to make work within the story and characters they’d already built. And the big payoff to the whole mytharc that started in the very first episode feels rushed, cobbled together, and a little underwhelming, in retrospect. Then again, I’m not sure there’s anything they could have given us after 5 seasons of buildup that would have felt completely satisfying.

So I feel you, I really do. As much as I love some parts of the show, I’m only able to accept others because of all the headcanon room the writers left us in the final episode. Which at least says something about the writers themselves…that they knew their audience well enough to know that they would never be able to please everybody, and cared enough to give as many of us as possible something to walk away happy with at the end.

would you say its worth it for a newcomer to watch grimm at all? What would you advise?

I would say…proceed with caution. There are a lot of great characters, storylines, and moments in the show. But if you have any triggers related to rape, gore, or body horror, it might be more painful than it’s worth to watch for you. If it helps, you can check our trigger warning tag to see warnings we’ve marked for each episode. Unfortunately I haven’t figured out how to get our theme to show tags in scrolling view (yet), but if you click into an individual post the tags should list the name of the episode.

If you have a trigger that’s not listed or have specific trigger-related or content questions, feel free to ask us about it! We’ll be happy to help you out.

i love grimm but in the later seasons it was seriously lacking monroe & nick bromance. that’s what really pulled me into grimm and it made me sad that pretty much faded when n/dalind took center stage

To be honest, I think it faded long before that. I mean, don’t get me wrong, not a Nadalind fan AT ALL but this is one thing I don’t think we can lay at that ship’s door. Monroe and Nick’s bromance dropped by like 80% around mid-season 2, after Monrosalee really took off and Hank learned the truth and became part of Team Grimm.

That’s not to say that either Hank or Monrosalee should be blamed for it, either…I think it was just a natural side effect of the show’s transition to an ensemble cast. It was nice, though, in the last two seasons, to see them call back to the importance of that early relationship and give it a few more great moments.