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October 01: LA Billboards

So I was driving along in LA today, passing the Hollywood sign on the hill and offramps with names like "Melrose" and "Universal" and such, and I noticed several very interesting billboards advertising what looked like the same upcoming television series with two different titles.

On the one hand, there were these flashy images with the word ONCE (and yes, I wondered for a split second if it was some television version of the cult favorite featuring musicians Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova). I was able to make out the small print, "upon a time," which certainly cleared up the otherwise incongruous imagery of the billboard.

Then there were those nearly identical adverts with the word GRIMM. I immediately (and illegally) punched both titles into my cell phone to look up when I got home. I don't usually have much hope for any series based on fairy tales, Arthurian legends, or Robin Hood, but with these two there are very significant indicators that suggest a turn in the tide. Once Upon a Time was created by Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis, most notable for their work on Lost. Grimm was created by David Greenwalt and Jim Kouf.

In other words, what we have here are two very different sorts of brilliant hitting the same subject in radically different tones. What with the variant takes on Snow White coming up next year (and it's worth it to mention that the same character plays a pivotal role in the first of these two shows), I think we have a theme for the season: Magic.

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