Grimm season 3: the pacing so far

Spoilers for 3.01 and 3.02 ("The Ungrateful Dead" and "PTZD")

Grimm came back two weeks ago and it's probably too early to say much about the pacing of season 3, but so far I think it's too slow. Did we need to devote four episodes to this mashup of zombie breakout, Grimm kidnapping, Juliette joining the Scooby gang, and Adalind getting her powers back?

Because even though that's a lot of stuff going on, there wasn't much forward movement when you take into consideration that these stories were the focus for the last two episodes of season 2 and the first two episodes of season 3.

We'll take the story bits one by one, shall we?

The zombie breakout

I don't know if this was connected to the popularity of The Walking Dead, but last I checked, Grimm is not that show. I don't tune in to watch scenes of zombies disrupting traffic, scaring people, and breaking stuff. The writeres could have gleaned over those destruction scenes and used that time to develop other things. The zombies keep coming and they wreck everything in their path, we get it. The most important part out of the zombie breakout was that Nick was infected and went on a rampage, and even so, did we need all that time to watch Nick trudging through the forest and beating up people? (The answer is no.)

Grimm kidnapping

This is the most interesting piece for me because we don't know Eric's motive. If he wanted only to kill Nick, then why make plans to transport his body? If Eric wanted to use Nick, did he have the antidote to the infection, or did he want a zombie Grimm? And if Eric wanted to snatch Nick away from Portland, why now? What else is going on with the Royal Families and the wesen that we aren't seeing? It seems like Sean knows more about what's going on and of course he doesn't say much, so I would have liked to see the other characters investigate this (maybe Monroe and Hank). That would have been better than most of Zombie Nick.

Juliette joining the Scooby gang

Not much to say here except that I'm glad she is more involved now. I hope it stays that way.

Adalind getting her powers back

These scenes were such. a waste. of time. By now we know there are rituals and certain ways things have to be done in the wesen world. Two scenes of Adalind messing with dead body parts would have been plenty. The cross-cutting to her and the icky stuff she had to do was unnecessary nastiness. Sidenote: I hope the writers have actual plans for what Adalind will do with her regained powers. I like her character but I don't want to retread season 1 stuff with her.

Overall, I think Grimm is setting up great things for season 3: Hank, Renard, and Nick working together; Juliette in on Nick's secret; Nick dealing with killing a human; a broader scope of wesen and Royals. But episodes need to be structured differently so that we see forward motion and significant story details, instead of fight scenes and B-movie horror tropes to fill episodes.