The worst thing to do when you're planning what to do on a Saturday night is to try to take a quick nap because that almost always leads to you oversleeping and waking up at 11:30 or so and not wanting to get up and do much of anything. But that's what I did last night and so my Saturday night plans turned into me laying in bed and checking out TV's two new fairy tale shows, "Grimm" and "Once Upon a Time".

I started off with "Grimm", which was probably good for "Once Upon a Time" because the former severely lowered my expectations for the latter. I'd say that "Grimm" should be on SyFy but, honestly, SyFy has better shows than this. The show opened with a scare that got me to jump but after that, it was pretty bad. The writing was painful at times and the actors didn't do much of anything to help out matters. Most problematic David Giuntoli, who reminded me of a bland and charmless Bradley Cooper. This might not be a huge issue but the show kept ending scenes on Giuntoli turning and giving a look that I'm sure was supposed to convey an emotion of some sort but it really looked like he was just turning and staring off into space. The photo to the left is essentially his one look off into the distance.

The show also doesn't seem to have a tone yet. There's a definite "They Live" vibe to the premise and the writing and acting aren't good and one of the key characters/scenes in the pilot is an inch away from devolving into full camp but the show doesn't go for it. It strives to be a modern X-Files but fails miserably and, at times, seems more like a satire than an actual show. The show tries to present a "What if Grimm's fairytales were real..." but they fail miserably in establishing the real world so it comes off as "What if Grimm's fairytales existed in phony TV land..."

And finally, the show already has the "Terminator: Salvation" problem of, "If the bad guys goal is to kill certain people, why don't they just kill them when they have the chance?" The final scene of the show is almost laughable in its execution and basically cements the fact that the only way this show is going to work is if they play up the camp value. And I don't mean modern meta-camp, I mean the old school let's just go balls to the wall because nobody's buying this shit as real approach.

So next up was "Once Upon a Time" and I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised by this one. Pilots are always tough and this show had a doozy of a plot to set up but they did a great job with it. My one fear is that this seems like a show that could make for a great mini-series or a strong one of two season show but, if it does well, it could definitely turn into the kind of situation where they have an end in sight but then stretch out the storyline to get as many episodes as possible and, in doing so, water down the quality of the show.

I'm very interested in seeing where this goes in episode 2. They promise that the final battle will begin soon but I'm really not sure how the battle is going to go down. This show also could have the "Terminator: Salvation" issue but, so far, it's set in a fantastical enough world that they could find an easy way around it.

I also watched another episode of Prime Suspect and it did nothing to change my opinion that they should have just hired Maria Bello for Law & Order and rejiggered the format a little bit to freshen it up. There's nothing particularly wrong with the show but it's a standard procedural and is somewhat cold. NBC tried to fix this up by ditching the plain white font on a black background title card and giving the show a full opening intro package but that doesn't really change it up enough. They also changed Bello's fellow cops from being openly and aggressively upset about having a female cop in their house to more accepting but still ball-busting and I think they should focus on that more and ditch the whole family storyline. There a pretty good show to be made here (and an even better show if they stuck closer to the original BBC "Prime Suspect") but given the direction in which they've already headed and the lagging ratings, we'll probably never see it.