Genre Character of the Week: Monroe

This week I’m looking at not just my own, but one of my whole families favourite characters in Dark Fantasy, Monroe, the Blutbad (pronounced BLOOT-Baad-in) from the television series Grimm.

 

For a quick description of Grimm, you can either view it as a Fairy-Tale themed Police Procedural or (as I do) the American version of the current Canadian Dark Fantasy series Lost Girl.  Basically you have a cop in Portland, OR who finds out he is the last in a long line of Grimms, that is people who can see the monsters (called Wesen in the series) around them and are innately good at fighting and killing these creatures.

 

In the pilot our Cop/Grimm (named Nick and played by David Giuntoli) comes across the character of Monroe and the two become friends, or I suppose uneasy allies, then friends. 

 

Here’s what I like about Monroe – he’s a kind of wolf-like creature called a Blutbad (which translates to “Blood Bath” in German) who is working very hard, through drugs, diet and sheer willpower, to be a better non-violent person.  The idea of a non-violent killing machine is pretty cool, and he also tends to get the best comedic lines in every episode.

Played by Silas Weir Mitchell (Who I had really enjoyed in both My Name is Earl and Burn Notice), the performance is a really nice balance between a man who has found a sort of peace with himself, but is also just barely holding himself over an abyss of primal violence.

 

Although I’m still a bigger fan of Lost Girl at heart, I have to say that Grimm has grown on me, and a large part of that is due to the character of Monroe .

Lost Girl Season 2 Review

As a Canadian I’m always happy to see Horror, Fantasy or Science Fiction coming from my own country and on television that goes as well. So when Showcase started airing a little show in 2010 called Lost Girl, I was definitely excited. Here we had a show focusing on a succubus in an urban fantasy setting and it included all sorts of crazy fairy creatures (which are called Fae in both the show and the folklore).

My original opinion of the show is listed here, but now it’s time to move on to the second season. Obviously some spoilers will follow as we are talking about season two.

First off, unlike the first season, when the competition from the major networks were pushing heavy Science Fiction fare like The Event andNo Ordinary Family, this season offered a lot of competition for Lost Girl from the major networks in the states with series like Once Upon A Time (which I prefer to call, let’s take all the great ideas and concepts from Fables and ruin them) and Grimm (which I like to call – Lost Girl (US Version))

Season Two follows up the appearance of Bo’s (the succubus) mother from the first season (sorry for the spoiler, but what can I do), Dyson spends the majority of the second season dealing with the fact that he gave up his love of Bo to help her deal with her mother at the end of season one (again, sorry!), and overall the season moves away from the new-kid-in-town vibe of season one and into a closer examination of the world of the Fae in this season.

The writing is great, the acting is well done (again with many of the best lines going to my favourite character, Bo’s human friend Kenzie), and overall I think it was a strong season.

In the next couple of weeks season one is going to show up on DVD and you know what? I think I’ll be picking it up.

Genre Character of the Week: Kenzi

Having just finished watching the new first season of the Showcase series Lost Girl, I thought it would be fun this week to look at my favourite character in the show, the title character’s side-kick Kenzi.

Unlike everyone else on the show (who are all members of a race called the Fae – think different types of faeries), Kenzie is delightfully human. She’s street smart, wise cracking thief, and after being saved by the main character, Bo, in the pilot (which I reviewed here), she is the main characters best friend and often the voice of the audience.

Kenzi (played wonderfully by Ksenia Solo), comes across at first as a sort of grifter, looking for any way to make a quick buck and get on with her day, but throughout the series it becomes more and more apparent that as she becomes involved with the world of the Fae and Bo in particular, she is a decent person at heart and is willing to do the right thing when the chips are down.

What can I say, I’m a sucker for the loud mouth characters, also she tends to get the best lines in each episode.

First Impressions: Lost Girl (TV Series)

Last night my wife and I checked out the pilot for the new genre series, Lost Girl. The show focuses on a woman named Bo, who has spent years on her own, travelling from place to place and using her strange abilities to feed on the sexual energies of others.

Discovered by other supernatural beings (called the Fae), Bo is drawn into a world wherein everyone must choose a side (light or dark) and nothing is as it seems. My wife said the idea of Canadian Fae running about is very similar to Canadian fantasy author Charles De LInt's Newcastle series of books, and the series definitely plays up the humour to match its dark premise (it turns out that Bo is a succubus, and that both groups of the Fae may want her dead), in introducing a side-kick character for Bo, a young girl named Kenzie who is both quite brave and a little stupid (a great mix, by the way).

I would consider the series Urban Fantasy, and although the subject matter means it is not for younger audiences, I think that older teens would probably find the show a lot of fun. The cheese factor is pretty high, but finding a good balance between humour and dramatic tension can definitely win a show over for me.

Overall, the pilot was fun, I think we'll be watching the series from now on (unless it goes horribly wrong), and I'm quite interested to see where they are going to go with this intriguing characters throughout the season.

Things I've noticed: The new genre TV lineup is getting lean

Last year with the end of Lost, the networks were filled with possible replacements – from Flashforward to V and The Witches of Eastwick to The Vampire Diaries, there were a lot of new television series with a significant Genre focus.

This year there are just a handful (to my knowledge, be sure to correct me if I’m wrong); No Ordinary Family on ABC, Lost Girl on Showcase (a specialty cable network up here in Canada), The Walking Dead on AMC, and possibly The Event on NBC (Although if they are a genre show, they are playing it really close to the vest – I guess we won’t know for sure until the pilot airs).

There is a deluge of Police and Legal shows this year (as compared to last years overwhelming Medical offers), and although there are a number of these shows I want to check out (most notably Terriers on FX, but I’ll have to wait for the DVD), I am starting to feel like the offerings for genre fans are starting to get pretty lean.

I guess it’s good in a way, as it lets me focus on the massive backlog of genre shows I’ve got on my shelves and still haven’t got around to (I’m still at season seven of The X-Files, and I’m really hoping to watch both the original Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits someday too), but like with any genre fan, I wish there were more shows specifically made for me!

Hmmm... (The sound of Bookmonkey imagining a bored TV executive coming across his blog and deciding to base a show on the things this blogger talks about – and yes that is a specific sound – the sounds and behaviours of the bookmonkey are a sadly underrepresented science!)

Executive: Perhaps if we made a show focusing on storyline and intriguing concept mixed with well thought out story arcs and perhaps nods to classic genre stories of the past... matching this with any number of up and coming actors, with a significant Canadian percentage... yes, I believe this show could definitely be created at a reasonable charge and it would impress one lone Canadian blogger (and possibly the readers of his blog), we will call it, The Wisdom of Bookmonkey – quick let’s send this blogger an offer to option his blog!

...or maybe I’ll just have to wait and see which of the new shows I’ll like best like everyone else.