Isn't Grimm Kind of Heavy on the Child Abduction?

Despite Monday's exciting Sean Hayes tweet to the contrary, the Oregon Governor's Office of Film & Video insists there's still no deal with NBC to film the full run of Grimm in Portland. In the meantime, I've had a chance to watch the upfront highlight reel of the filmed-in-PDX pilot, and have to ask: Is this show going to cement Portland's reputation as a capital of child abduction?

It's not the quality of the Grimm pilot that's worrisome, but rather the emphasis on missing children. The premise seems to be that Portland is populated by disguised, wolf-like monsters who have an appetite for flesh. In the pilot, one monster (dressed as a postal worker) kidnaps a little girl and locks her in a basement, feeding her pot pies to fatten her up. Then the hero comes, shoots the wolfman/mailman, and rescues the girl.

So the pilot's about a serial killer targeting children. This is not exactly an advance on Portland's The Hunted and Untraceable history, and not nearly so jolly as the Wizard Cops idea I had in mind.

I get it: Grimm is playing off how fairy tales are mostly cautionary stories about  hungry beasties imperiling little kids. But the whole scenario feels uncomfortably close to The Lovely Bones. And with Portland already attracting speculative reports that call the city a hotbed of teenage sex trafficking, and having spent last year as the center of national hysteria over a still-unsolved child disappearance, let's hope that Grimm isn't going to make kidnapping and predation a recurring theme. Because even if the show isn't shot here's it's going to be set here.

Watch the four-minute preview for yourself, and tell me what I'm missing:

WWeek 2015