Board Thread:General Grimm Discussion/@comment-24399666-20151107180145/@comment-24399666-20151107201123

76.67.125.146 wrote:

My reply:

Thanks for the thoughtful response. :) I agree with everything you said here, but I think perhaps my original point wasn't clear.

My frustration with this begins with how the "Juliette becomes a Hexenbiest" plotline was mishandled last year. Talk about a character development with major potential! Part of it was personal (I'd been rooting for Nick to get together with a Wesen for years, for many reasons, and the writers finally found a way to make it happen without breaking character for Nick), and part of it was that it had interesting world-building potential (it could have been a reasonable vehicle for some good exposition about the nature of Biests and the nature of Grimms, and how they are different from regular people). Neither of which we saw on the show, btw.

Instead, we saw Juliette go to Monrosalee and tell them that she was losing herself and needed help. Good call. But what do they do? They try to cure her of being a Hexenbiest, whether she wants that or not. Being a Hexenbiest was never the problem. The problem was (presumably... the show never adequately established anything at all) that she was going through changes that were affecting her mind. Doesn't the Spice Shop probably have something on their shelves for that? Wesen go through puberty difficulties, for example - we saw that with the Drang Zorn. I imagine Wesen come to the spice shop sometimes for remedies when their kids are having a tough time. The other problem was that Juliette didn't understand how to be Wesen, and clearly didn't understand the rules for being a Wesen around a Grimm - a problem that Monroe was uniquely qualified to help her with... but he didn't. In fact, it was never addressed.

Instead, they focused entirely on the non-problem of her being a Hexenbiest. I say it's a non-problem because, objectively speaking, for the first time in Juliette's life, she was able to really, truly have control over the threats in her own life. How is that a bad thing? The mental problems, the fact that she didn't know how to cope with the emotional changes, the fact that she didn't understand how or why her relationship with Nick would have to change... those were legitimate problems. The powers themselves, however, were never the problem.

Then Adalind comes up with the "solution" of suppressing Juliette's powers. Supposedly, this was going to help. Even though Adalind herself had proven in the past: not having powers, and not being a Hexenbiest, does not fix things.

And now this. Adalind drank the potion to suppress her powers, and the writers seem to be going out of their way to get us to believe that this makes Adalind a good person now (probably to push an eventual Nick/Adalind romance)... and they're still insisting that it's because she no longer has powers. This, in spite of the fact that, historically, Adalind was actually a better person (albeit less interesting) as a Hexenbiest, than she was as a human! I'm completely serious. Everything she did to hurt our main characters, that she did as a Hexenbiest, she did at somebody else's behest... and especially in the case of her raping Nick, she was practically forced into doing it, by Viktor. Contrast with when she was human, when she masterminded a rather intricate plot to completely destroy everyone's lives, solely out of spite.

I agree that being a Hexenbiest probably introduces instincts and character traits that make it more likely to cause evil behavior. But now, the writers seem to be trying to make us believe that being a Hexenbiest causes one to be evil. It doesn't work that way, writers. It not only goes against the theme of the show, it goes against the established history of the show... which is worse. Like it or not, we viewers can remember things that happened before, and it never helps to try to pretend we can't.

Again, though... I need to say that I'm ok with Adalind feeling like going back to being a Hexenbiest would be bad for her (I can even be ok with the total 180 of her character... she'd been through quite a bit since the last time she was human and sold her baby in order to go back to being a Hexenbiest). But if Adalind's changing into a decent person, it should be because she's finally growing up. And also because she's finally starting to notice what decent people do for each other, and has decided she wants to be that way too. And because she has a kid to think of. Not because of some overly-simplistic (at best) and backwards (at worst) thinking on the part of the writers.