GENREALITY

Last night, I watched my first episode of the TV show GRIMM.

Well, to be perfectly honest, I watched half an episode. I was curious, because I had seen so many comparisons of GRIMM to ONCE UPON A TIME, which is my favorite new show of the year. They are both, ostensibly, about fairy tale creatures living in the real world. They both feature main characters who are cops.

And…. there the comparisons end. While ONCE UPON A TIME does, in fact, star fairy tale creatures, it’s actually more of a small town/family drama show. I described it to someone recently as The Gilmore Girls meets LOST. Grimm, on the other hand, is a police procedural with a paranormal element.

I’m not a fan of procedurals, which, judging my the TV listings, makes me different than 99.9999% of the population. It doesn’t matter if they are law procedurals or medical procedurals (a’la HOUSE). It doesn’t matter if the people solving the mysteries are cops or Naval investigators or crime scene investigators or fake psychics or famous novelists or private investigators suffering from OCD or people with amazing powers of total recall or whatever other procedural on the air right now. It’s not my thing. And I have tried. The guy on NCIS? Loved him on The West Wing. The guy on Castle? LOVED him in Firefly.

There is no doubt in my mind that there are people out there who love Grimm *and* Once Upon a Time, purely by dint of their fairy tale connectivity. Which is why comparisons don’t always work. How often has someone recommended a book to you after you said you loved XYZ (mysteries, vampires, cowboys, small-town romances). Because what you discover, upon reading the story, is that the quality that so appealed to you about your favorite book was not, perhaps, that the hero was a blood sucking vampire, but that the hero was a WISECRACKING vampire, so instead of flitting off to the next vampire book, you find you’re really drawn to a book that has, say, a wisecracking carpenter in it.

For me, the appeal of Once Upon a Time is not that they are fairy tale characters living in the real world (because most of them don’t even know they are fairy tale characters, to start with). I’m much more drawn in by all the machinations of small town life, and the long histories that are binding and manipulating all the characters’ actions. (Tellingly, the cop character is the one I care about least, though she’s supposed to be the lynchpin of the whole setup.)

A lot of times, I get letters from folks who have read my secret society books and want to know what else they can read that will give them the same experience. Often, these are folks who don’t want to read fantasy novels, which is the rest of my CV. So my suggestion that they read, you know, my other books, is not helpful. I often recommend they try E Lockhart’s The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau Banks for more girl-causing hijinks in an all-boys secret society or Stephanie Perkins’s Anna and the French Kiss for a sweet contemporary romance about a girl at boarding school, and though these titles are remarkably different, they do appeal to readers who enjoyed my books for those particular reasons.

(Now, the ones who say they can’t read YA novels, and aren’t there any other adult books like mine — they’re out of luck.)

Sometimes, you don’t even know what it is you like about something, and seemingly outside the box comparisons nail the secret ingredient that makes you a crazed fan. One day, maybe I’ll find the procedural that appeals to me. After all, I used ot watch the X-Files, and that was pretty proceduralish. You know, with aliens.

I understand why the media focused so strongly on the comparisons between Grimm and Once Upon a Time. It’s unusual to suddenly have two fairy-tale inspired shows on major networks, and that’s an easy headline to write. But for an actual audience member, it’s an entirely different viewing experience.

How about you? Any “never thought I’d like this” recs that hit all your unexpected buttons? How about shows, books or movies that you thought would be right in your wheelhouse but didn’t quite get there?

Be Sociable, Share!

•