"Grimm" gets it wrong again

It is a source of pain for me that - every now and then, when checking blog stats - I see that "10 reasons you should be watching Grimm" is still getting page views. The later posts from when it started going bad never seem to come up. Maybe I need to add a disclaimer.

Anyway, while "The Seven Year Itch" had more logical flaws, the episode before it was wrong in very specific ways that I want to address.

Spoilers:

In "El Cuegle", a baby is stolen from his crib by a three-eyed, three-armed monster. Parental tensions that were already there about the mother obsessively posting everything about the baby on social media are exacerbated by the father assuming the mother's claims of seeing a monster are a sign of brain injury or distress, but obviously not possible.

Baby Auggie is eventually rescued by the police, but not before they learn the reason for the kidnapping. El Cuegle sees the future, and he sees that while the parents' marriage continues to deteriorate, Auggie will grow up isolated and emotionally damaged, killing them and other people when he is 19. They only eat the babies to prevent evil. Previously this cuegle had been unable to kill another baby he kidnapped, who later became a school shooter.

One thing that struck me was that when the parents got their baby back and the father told Nick that he could not know what this meant to them, Nick said he thought he did because he had a son. This struck me because back in Season 1 a character had mentioned losing her mother to Nick, and it appeared to be an attempt at commiseration, but he didn't bite. One person had pointed this out as being smart police work and the reasons you would not want to reveal too much about yourself. I have been very frustrated with how all of them have become worse cops.

In that episode, despite Nick trying to maintain boundaries, she kidnapped his girlfriend. In this new one, when Nick told the father that his wife wasn't crazy, he got a nasty "And you would know." I don't think this was intended to show the perils of trying to develop too much of a relationship as it was to remind us that these were terrible parents who would raise a killer.

To be fair, they did not appear to be unusually bad parents. He was impatient and not good at listening, though you can certainly see how his wife obsessing over their newborn (manifested through incessant social media posting) would be frustrating. In some ways, the least realistic part of the episode was the glimpse of the future that showed the parents still together, along with the wooden way they expressed love for their son while he was pointing a gun at them. That shouldn't have been enough to set him off though; maybe he was also bullied at school.

Those are minor complaints. Of more concern was the attempt to make you feel torn with that dilemma of do you kill this innocent baby now or allow him to grow up and do his evil deeds? Would you kill baby Hitler?

It's a false dilemma. Help him not to be bad. If you can see the future and you see that someone has a dark path ahead, help them.

The mother was already sure she had seen a monster. Knowing she had hit her head did not change her mind on that. So come clean. Have someone woge for the father to get him on board. Tell them to work out their issues. Get the kid a mentor. It doesn't have to be one outcome or the other.

It bothers me more because I also happened to catch the "Born Psychopath" episode of Law & Order SVU (that other show that I once loved but it turned into a growing disgust). Forget the fact that the brain of a 10 year old is not fully developed, forget that a lot of psychopathic behavior is taught, let's avoid real issues for a cheap thrill that requires no action on your part. I guess at least they didn't kill the kid like in the "Conscience" episode.

The actions that properly value all human life are a lot more work. They require sacrifice. They also produce happiness. They are right. And in our current climate, we need to figure that out really quickly.