New TV Season Starts Early

NBC is capitalizing on the high ratings it earned during the Olympics, hoping those viewers will stick around and watch Season 2 of Grimm, its monster-hunting procedural . The new television season usually begins in the fall, but Grimm is back in the dog-days of summer with new episodes on Monday nights before returning to its usual Friday night timeslot.

If you tuned in to Grimm for the first time with this week's "Bad Teeth" episode, you witnessed a creepy, action-packed drama that builds upon the cliffhanger of last season, while continuing all the elements that made the show so interesting -- shock-and-awe special effects, endearing characters, crime plotlines, and gruesome creatures like the saber-tooth bad guys of this season's premiere.

Even though some of the features of the show that I criticized when it first debuted still bug me, the parts that I really liked have gotten even better. I think fans who have stuck with the series will continue to be rewarded and people checking it out for the first time will find reasons to enjoy it and come back for more.

It looks like NBC's experiment started out successfully, earning the best numbers in the network's key demographic so far. Will it be able to keep it up? The rest of the new shows for the season will debut in the more traditional September, October, and November time periods.