Another modern-day Pygmalion story: this week’s Grimm

Last week in my seminar on Ovid’s Metamorphoses in translation, we looked at adaptations of the Pygmalion episode in contemporary film and television. Examples, which we derived from Paula James’ book on modern-day Pygmalions, ranged from George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion and My Fair Lady starring Audrey Hepburn; to “make-over” movies like Pretty Woman and She’s All That; and engineered-woman dramas, including Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s “I Was Made for You” (Episode 5.15), which has been the subject of a series of essays on the Open University (UK) iTunes site.

This week, add another interpretation to the file: an episode of NBC’s drama Grimm titled “My Fair Wesen”, which features interlocking plots: Nick (the titular Grimm) tries to make Theresa Rubel (aka Trubel) into a properly trained Grimm like himself, while a “family” of criminal Wesen attempt to make the scruffy runaway over as one of a cohort of high-end shoplifters (it’s creepier than it sounds).

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