Television thinks you're stupid.

First of all, thank the heavens nobody reads this thing, since it has been near on a YEAR since the last time I did anything with it. Can I tell you what a year it's been? No, I can't. I'm thinking that it might just be a novel in the works, or something. It would be called something like "The Year that Everything was Okay and then Wasn't in a Big Way but Hey I Got Through it." Or something. That's the thing about shitty years: you always get through them.

Anyway.

Lately I've been watching a lot of Hulu, catching up on certain shows and starting on others. It's an educational experience: I've learned why I never liked The Office (it makes me sleepy) and why sometimes terrible television is the best television. Specifically, the sadly canceled The Playboy Club.

Oh secret lesbian bunny, we hardly knew ye.

Plots driven by stiletto homicide aside, I'd like to talk about Grimm. All summer long there's been a buzz here in Portland, a stir of excitement for this show, mostly in the form of people commenting on where they were shooting it: "They're shooting that show Grimm in the Pearl district/downtown/Forest Park/the Park Blocks!" At first I knew nothing about it, and truthfully, I didn't give a shit. I went to school in Vancouver, after all, a place that's great at being any other city in the world besides Vancouver. So I was not only used to shooting locations, I was used to avoiding them. That being said, I never actually saw the location shooting, but slowly I learned what it was. It was a cop show. It was a cop show about fairy tales.

A word of warning to the folks who make this show. I know about fairy tales. And what I don't know, my best ladyfriend knows more.

So when the show premiered to surprisingly outstanding ratings, I was intrigued. It marketed itself, I thought, for a niche audience: true, everyone loves cop dramas, but one apparently based off the work of The Brothers Grimm? Granted, I had a feeling that most people in this town who still watch television were watching it, given that it was all over the news and there's nothing Portlanders love more than, well, Portland.

So I booted up the ol' Hulu and checked it out.

Shit was shit, all I gotta say. The first episode involved two of my favorite horrible dramatic lines, "Your parent's didn't die in a crash....they were murdered." and "Where is she? WHERE IS SHE?!"

I'd devolve into the pithy details involving plot and characters and blah blah blah, but mostly I'd like to explain a few things that I've learned in these four episodes that I've watched:

• It takes about ten seconds to get to the deep, dark forest from pretty much anywhere in Portland
  
• The streetcar goes to Hillsboro
• Not only do Portland Police detectives carry their guns all the time, they whip 'em out at the drop of a hat
• Portland is full of monster type persons, and they all have basements where they keep their victims, usually in cages, occasionally on a four-post bed
• Chemotherapy just makes your hair fall out, the rest of you stays pretty strong
• There's a junkyard right next to Union Station
• The Portland Police Bureau looks like somewhere Sam Spade would hang out
• You can track someone's location based on a picture they took on their phone and then posted on Facebook
• Queen bees always leave the hive
• tree frogs live in Portland, and they're actually toads
• Wanna track a car? There's an iPad app for that.