Characters being turned into "imbeciles" isn't unique to Grimm. I believe it's prevalent in serialised fiction on network tv. The majority of characters aren't allowed to act sensibly or even smartly or else there would be nothing to watch for lack of "drama". With the writing on this show being nothing exceptional, the character work is rather generic/tropey, what happened in S4, turning a character from good to evil is also not unique to the show. These writers have done it before on Buffy with Willow's character. Adalind being turned good was preceeded by Spike and Angel also from Buffy. There is clearly an audience for either of the two plots or else it wouldn't become a trope on tv ready for writers to exploit on their respective shows. Grimm never aimed to be anything above a typical TV show. The only unique thing about it was the fairytale/wesen/Grimm concept. The show was generic and relied heavily on ideas that have been recycled countless times either on other cop shows or fantasy fiction shows but with less skill.
Everyone's crimes on this show are almost on par with everyone else however, they aren't the same. I believe Juliette was already disliked by a good portion of the audience, even if S4 played out differently, Nick and Adalind would still have their fans. There are people who've liked them since day one (I admit to not being one of them) and Juliette hardly registered for them. I didn't need Juliette's character to be destroyed in order to dislike her. I have relentlessly disliked her presence on the show because I found her completely useless and a drag. I also didn't need Juliette becoming a bad guy in order to like Adalind. I liked the blonde hexenbiest independently of Nick and his love life, just as I loved Nick despite his relationship with Juliette for four whole seasons.
This show did a terrible job of depicting the good guys as absolutely good (Diana's kidnapping, Kenneth's murder) and perhaps the same goes for their depiction of the bad guys as wholly bad. They obviously went to the extreme with Juliette's descent into crazed vengeance but it wasn't without foundation, four years' worth of foundation (her life endangered because of Nick and by extension, his friends) and the same can be said about Adalind for wanting a better life for herself and her children. (Edit: what I'm trying to say here is that nearly all the characters played the role of a victim as well as the role of someone who victimized someone else at one point or another throughout the six seasons. Nobody is wholly good or wholly bad. By the end of S6, these characters are a sum of all their parts, good and bad. It's not all black and white with no shades in between).
I don't think assumptions should be made about viewers and how they perceived the show, why they like what they like. These characters are the writers' fancy on celluloid. They go where the writers choose, they do and say what the writers want. It's fiction not even done well and we simply react to them individually. We can't expect everyone to love/hate the same character/thing as ourselves.
Everyone's crimes on this show are almost on par with everyone else however, they aren't the same. I believe Juliette was already disliked by a good portion of the audience, even if S4 played out differently, Nick and Adalind would still have their fans. There are people who've liked them since day one (I admit to not being one of them) and Juliette hardly registered for them. I didn't need Juliette's character to be destroyed in order to dislike her. I have relentlessly disliked her presence on the show because I found her completely useless and a drag. I also didn't need Juliette becoming a bad guy in order to like Adalind. I liked the blonde hexenbiest independently of Nick and his love life, just as I loved Nick despite his relationship with Juliette for four whole seasons.
This show did a terrible job of depicting the good guys as absolutely good (Diana's kidnapping, Kenneth's murder) and perhaps the same goes for their depiction of the bad guys as wholly bad. They obviously went to the extreme with Juliette's descent into crazed vengeance but it wasn't without foundation, four years' worth of foundation (her life endangered because of Nick and by extension, his friends) and the same can be said about Adalind for wanting a better life for herself and her children. (Edit: what I'm trying to say here is that nearly all the characters played the role of a victim as well as the role of someone who victimized someone else at one point or another throughout the six seasons. Nobody is wholly good or wholly bad. By the end of S6, these characters are a sum of all their parts, good and bad. It's not all black and white with no shades in between).
I don't think assumptions should be made about viewers and how they perceived the show, why they like what they like. These characters are the writers' fancy on celluloid. They go where the writers choose, they do and say what the writers want. It's fiction not even done well and we simply react to them individually. We can't expect everyone to love/hate the same character/thing as ourselves.