Board Thread:General Grimm Discussion/@comment-24399666-20151107180145/@comment-24399666-20151107231453

Kind of hard to "argue" when I actually agree with most of what you're saying. :)

I agree that, in Juliette's case, being a Hexenbiest, like being most kinds of Wesen, probably introduced a lot of unfamiliar impulses and instincts that she didn't know how to handle. I've actually been positing that for quite some time. :) What's wrong is that Monroe and Rosalee, who are meant to be our eyes into how the Wesen world works, never even seemed to consider that this might be going on, and... you know... consider counseling her, or anything...

I agree that it probably introduced a lot of unfamiliar feelings, but I do think that this could have been treated. It probably wasn't all that unlike Wesen puberty, except maybe on a much larger scale. It didn't happen all at once, after all.

Which brings me to my next point: Juliette was really quite sane until well after she told Nick the truth, which was apparently weeks after her first woge. But she couldn't handle how he reacted, which makes sense, considering nobody ever explained to her that the rules had changed, now that she was Wesen, or especially why they changed. She knew that Nick was a Grimm, but I think that, like Nick himself, she never really understood that there are some inhuman instincts at work on his side, too... not to mention that he'd had some really horrible experiences with Hexenbiests in the past, and maybe some patience was in order. Especially given Juliette's relative sanity at the time, I like to think that she would have given him time to acclimate when he told her that "I need to learn to understand you"... if she'd only understood the necessity. And she wouldn't have gone out of her way to set off all of his defensive instincts by woge-ing in his face at every opportunity, if she were aware that that was what she was doing.

Regarding the suppression potion vs. Grimm blood... that's actually the opposite from the impression the show gave me, especially considering the visuals. In the case of the Grimm blood, we saw the Hexenbiest spirit struggle out of Adalind's body, before getting ripped away entirely and flying away. In the case of the suppression potion, we saw two Hexenbiest spirits (although I think one of them belonged to Kelly - it was smaller than the other) struggle away from Adalind's body but never fully disconnect... before they were both sucked back into her belly. Also, I remember the narrative stating that Adalind was human after the Grimm blood, but she presented the suppression potion simply as, "suppress[ing] the Hexenbiest in her."

They were writing Juliette out, true. I don't know the background story (best guess is that Bitsie wanted out, but I really have no idea), but just running with the idea that they had to write her out because they made her too powerful: yes, once they wrote her as too powerful, that really was the only option. But it didn't have to be that way. They could have just written her as a Hexenbiest that, because of the way she was made, couldn't be turned back to normal... but powers-wise, was no more powerful than a regular Hexenbiests. She could have become somebody who contributes something unique to the team and to the partnership, without becoming somebody who renders everybody else redundant. I guess now we'll never know.

Anyway, all of that is just details. :) My main contention is that I feel the writers are pushing us to like Adalind, probably for an eventual romance, but they're pushing that we should like her for the wrong reasons. The right way, would be to develop her over time (and there should be plenty of time, since Nick should be nowhere near ready for a relationship for a while!) as somebody who has developed a genuine interest in becoming a decent person and is willing to fight her natural instincts to be otherwise, and to show her actually struggling with that, and struggling with her past wrongs. The wrong way is to repeatedly imply over the course of two plots, two years, and two different characters, that the Hexenbiest was to blame for everything that she did, and all they have to do is make her not be a Hexenbiest anymore, and this will automatically translate into her being a perfectly decent person.