Both Buffy the Vampire Slayer – running 1997 – 2003 and Grimm 2011 – 2017 were extraordinarily popular science fiction series with some similarities and major differences. Both were about strong supernatural heroes that fought monsters. And eventually won. But Nick Burkhardt in Grimm was a police officer in his day job, and Buffy was a teenage girl. Both have loves, friends and demons that they fought – making both series excellent supernatural TV.
Grimm vs Buffy the Vampire Slayer
| The Grimm – Nicholas Burkhardt was a police detective before he was called to be a Grimm | Buffy was a typical teenage girl before she was called to be a vampire slayer |
| Grimms like Nick, Trubel, his Mom and Aunt Marie fight bad Wesen – monstrous people | And the Slayer Buffy fights vampires and demons, as well as a cyborg, a robot and a hell god . (There are other Slayers – but she is always the best) |
| Nicholas Burkhardt fell in love with two Hexenbeist – witches with tremendous power. | Buffy fell in love with two vampires – Angel and Spike – both of whom eventually got a soul. |
| Grimm characters are all adult. | On Buffy the characters grow up from high school to adulthood. The series Angel characters were adult, but there is a lot that adults can enjoy from Buffy. |
| Grimms have special weapons to fight with. These weapons were passed down for the hundreds of years that Grimms have existed. And you can find a lot of them in Aunt Marie’s trailer. | Buffy had a cache of special weapons – including a stake called “Mr. Pointy.” She is infamous for using the crossbow – but the Slayer Scythe saved the whole world. |
| Grimm takes places in Portland Oregon | Buffy takes place in Sunnydale, CA (which is made up) and Angel is set in LA – the city of angels |
Buffy Summers and The Grimm both fought monsters
What Buffy Fought
You never knew what Buffy was going to come up against. Buffy fought vampires, demons of all descriptions and the occasional zombies. She also was known to known to fight a god once , and even her best friend Willow the witch.
(She was out-fought in the last two fights, but she still ended up winning the mission ultimately.)
What Nick Burkhardt Fought
In Grimm Nick Burkhardt fought specifically Wesen. Wesen looked like regular people – but they were creatures and monsters underneath. These were the Grimm’s fairy tales monsters – but also legends that were from the folklore of many cultures such as Wendigo, Chupacapra, Aswang, and Anubis.
When they changed or woged – Grimms like Nick could see inside them. Most of the time regular people could not except for extreme emotion, or when they wanted to reveal their truth .
There were no vampires in Grimm. There were a lot of people who would pretend to be normal – but who supernatural beasts inside of them.
Buffy fell in love with two vampires – who turned out to have souls
Buffy did fall in love with one human at least – soldier boy Riley.
The fans were NOT happy with that choice, and they loved her monster loves.
You see the loves of her life were vampires. The first was Angel – the dark handsome stranger that she fell for early in season one. Angel had been a ne’er due well rake prone to womanizing and drink before he was turned into a vampire. He was turned by Darla. When he was turned he became a vicious killer indeed. The most vicious vampire known.
However, due to a gypsy curse, he regained his soul. Therefore he was tortured for him years as he realized how much suffering he had brought to those he tortured and killed. Ironically though the curse allowed him to experience the true love with Buffy that defined the series.
Unfortunately Buffy and Angel were doomed to have a tragic love – when they made love he lost his soul and became her arch-enemy .
She later fell for the vampire Spike who started off as an enemy and through a long series of events ended up regaining his soul. Thus she was able to eventually love him. Spike had been a mama’s boy gentleman, a Victorian poet trying to find his way and loving a woman who could not stand him. Spike was turned by Drusilla . They had a super hot affair for hundreds of years. He too had been vicious and fierce, although it had been for the sport and the chase for him.
Spike fell in love with Buffy before he had a soul, and he actually worked hard to get one. Many people think Spike would have been a better mate for Buffy.
There were wonderful love stories in Grimm – and a triangle
Besides the adventure of fighting monsters and seeing if the heroes were going to win over the apocalypse of the season, we are treated to some mighty love stories in both series. In Grimm police detective Nick Burkhardt is deeply in love with Juliette his live in girlfriend in the first seasons. In fact, it appears that he never falls out of love with her. She is a veterinarian and thoroughly cultured woman, and we all fall in love with her. We see him asking her to marry him several times – but she does not do it because she knows he is keeping a big secret – that he is a Grimm. When he does try to tell her that he is a Grimm, she starts crying. She is afraid that he is crazy, and has created a huge make-believe world.
And unfortunately just as she has the chance to really learn the truth by watching their friends Rosalee and Monroe wogue into the Wesen they are inside – the then bitch witch Adalind puts her into a coma that takes the memory of Nick. By the time they get back together a lot of time has been lost and damage has been done.
But Nick still loves Juliette – very much. Eventually the relationship is healed, and they join together in the mission of fighting the bad Wesen. But due to a series of complicated events, Juliette is turned into a Hexenbiest – the series witch. This leads her with such anger that she ends up destroying their relationship.
It becomes even more complicated when he falls for the woman who is carrying his child – and who is also a witch. Being a mother changes Adeline, and she becomes able to love Nick and their children. But by the end of the series we are left wondering if he wouldn’t have been better off if he had worked it out with his first love Juliette.
There were councils in Europe that wielded great power in their lives
The Wesen Council and Royals
As a Grimm, Nick answered to no one. But there was a Wesen Council that controlled the Wesens, so that they could continue their uneasy peace with regular people. The Wesen Council was generally depicted as a helpful force. Another powerful group in Grimm were the Royals who lived in unspecified parts of Europe. This was a force that had Grimms that worked with them in olden times, and still hoped to control him. Nick Burkhardt wanted to fight against the Royals who almost took his life.
The Watchers Council in Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Even though Slayers had the REAL power, they all had Watchers. One of the ironies is that there was a council in England that existed to advise and correct Slayers through correcting the Watchers. They had immense knowledge, and power to make things happen. They might have had a helpful purpose, but their power corrupted them. They became obstacles to Buffy, as well as to Giles her watcher who they eventually fired. She eventually quit listening to them.
The nerdy guy in both series had an animal side – they became werewolves
Oz was the smartest guy at Sunnydale high. So of course he was the lover of Willow our favorite witch.
And then he became a werewolf. In true Joss Whedon style – he was bitten by a young nephew when he was tickling him.
In Grimm, Detective Wu was the brilliant cop who could figure out any computer password, and was a total computer and puzzle nerd. He was only under Detective Burkhardt and Hank as detective.
Unfortunately he got bit by an lycanthrope – a Blutbad with a disease that makes it an uncontrollable werewolf. Like Oz, he was able to learn how to use this for the cause.
In both Buffy and Grimm – it was hard to be or love a witch
In Buffy they were just called “witches and warlocks.” We didn’t get to see much Warlock action, but Willow. Tara and Amy (and of course her mother) were the most famous witches.
The difficulty that being a witch caused in Buffy is infamous – season 6 of Buffy is all about that. Willow gets addicted to the power of magic. And she uses it to kill Warren Mears in a brutal way (flaying anyone?) when he accidentally kills Tara in his attempts to kill the Slayer.
In Grimm witches and warlocks were called Hexenbeists and Zauberbiests . The blond temptress Adeline was the first Wesen that Nick saw. The most tragic Hexenbeist was Juliette. She became a Hexenbeist accidentally when she was trying to help Nick become a Grimm again. In one of the most confusing series of episodes ever – Adeline had sex with Nick in the body of Juliette so that she could take his Grimm powers – then they smoked a hat and Juliette became Adeline – and Nick had to have sex with her so he could become a Grimm again. You have to watch the series to understand. The point is – Nick ends up in love with two witches during the series.
Then there is the little Hexenbeist “Dianna” who was a daughter of Adeline the Hexenbeist and Sean Renard the Zauberbiest. She was the most powerful of all the witches.
The hard part of loving a witch is that they have a hard time in dealing with all that power. Willow goes bad when she gets heart-broken, as does Juliette.
Eventfully both witches learn to use their powers for good, but it was a rocky path to get there!
Big ancient books full of folklore, spells and monsters were tremendously important
Both Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Grimm are intelligent series, as opposed to many other horror or crime shows.
“We begin as usual with research,” Giles said. Besides being Buffy’s watcher he was a school librarian and had a tremendous collection of archaic books. Later in Angel he also had access to books of magic, as well as access to the computer where they did their local history.
In the case of Grimm – the trailer full of Grimm books that were essential to their work – which made it even more tragic when Juliette burned it down. When Monroe’s uncle finds a cache of Grimm books in his work as an antiquarian book dealer, they are able to replace part of the important, priceless knowledge.
Travel to and from another hell or heaven dimension at your peril
Buffy had to send Angel to the hell dimension to keep from the world ending . He was animalistic when he came back, and could not even remember who he was.
And when Willow innocently pulled Buffy out of Heaven to the Earth – it was like her hell. And she wasn’t the same. Not only was she a little less human as Spike found out – she unleashed a string of evil that had to be resolved.
In Grimm, when Eve (Juliette) and Nick Burkhardt cross over the mirror to the other place – their coming back brought evil into the world.
Both Buffy the Vampire Slayer had a Mission that was hard to accept
Both Burkhardt and Buffy were one of a kind people – they both had missions to protect the world. And both missions proved to be hard to accept.
Buffy in particular “just wanted to be a girl,” as her destiny was to be far greater. In order for her to protect the world, she had to be outside of it. She had to forgo the acceptance as a “cool kid” that she would have undoubtedly received if she had just ridden the ripples of being accepted by Cordelia when she moved from Hemery high. But she was sunk when she tried to stake Cordelia when she mistakenly believed she was a vampire. And the social faux pas’s just kept a comin’ .
But it was a lot more serious than being a social outcast in high school – being a slayer could be life threatening. In fact – it was guaranteed – no one got out of the job alive, and few slayers lived past young womanhood.
Even if Buffy had been able to pass as completely normal, her destiny would have grabbed her and held on. In fact several times, she tried to just quit – and she was denied. In the season one finale “Prophecy Girl” – Buffy learns that she is destined to die when she fights the Master. She hears Angel her love and her watcher Giles discussing this and she interrupts them: “So that is it huh? One slayer dies, next one calls. ….They say how he is going to do it? Do you think it is going to hurt?……..I’ve got a way around it. I quit! ” But when the vampires committed a massacre of fellow students – she knew that she had to confront the Master in whatever she could. And that way was by being a slayer even if it meant her death.
Both Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel and Grimm are intelligent compelling series that created a loyal following
Let’s face it, a lot of vampire and supernatural shows are just often silly, or immature. But both the shows in the Buffyverse as well as Grimm were based on bright ideas and had memorable writing. Both series are missed, and will be re-watched over and over by their fans.
Which is better? Well, I guess you know my preference . I think Buffy was the most original, clever TV ever. But I truly like Grimm.
Grimm fans are called “Grimmsters”, and although Buffy and Angel fans don’t have an official nickname – many folks like nicknames based on the brilliant creator – Whedonites deserve a vote.
I am convinced that if you check out either series you will become a fan.
Grimm: The Complete Collection
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Complete Series
