I was given a chance to attend a special screening for NBC’s upcoming drama Grimm (see our review of the pilot here) at an actual movie theater with actual audience members. Grimm is one of two new supernatural and faerie tale driven dramas of the fall season, the other being Once Upon a Time — and when you hear “crime/drama fusion procedural with a supernatural twist,” like you, I immediately think “Trivia Game!” And before the show started, a series of old school riddles were given to the audience, with the winners each receiving an appropriate colored Red Hooded Sweatshirt. Unfortunately, critics were not included in the prize eligibility, so I had to sit on my hands while someone incorrectly guessed the faerie tale of “Beauty and the Beast” with obvious clues for “Little Red Riding Hood.”
Watching anything in a movie theater is always a different sort of experience from watching in the comfort of your own home/dorm/department store, and a TV show is no different. As the lights dimmed and the spooky score began to resonate around us, you couldn’t help but immediately become drawn into the show of hidden monsters and reluctant heroes. It only took a few minutes before the first jump scare, and then the ice was officially broken.
Another thing about seeing movies in a large group is the inevitable series of comments that are made by people. Sometimes that’s very annoying for very subtle and engrossing movies, but that wasn’t so much an issue here. Although I didn’t hear any of the stock “Don’t Go In There!” type specifically, there were more than a few “Creeper!” and “Shoot his @#$!” to enhance my viewing enjoyment. It also helped to illustrate and compliment some of the better and worse aspects of the show.
Subtle moments of humor received appreciative laughter and overly maudlin melodramatic moments had much of the same. Cliffhangers that were intended as punches to the gut sometimes seemed a tad more like “Eh? Gotcha!” bits instead. But in general, there was a convivial spirit and overall pleasant responses to the episodes and the collective feeling was mostly: “Sure, I’d watch another episode”.
And that’s basically what I thought as well — if you’d like to read a full review, check out our review of the pilot here as mentioned earlier.
Clacked by Jeremy Fogelman 
on Oct 28, 2011 @ 11:00 EST5EDT
