For the characters in "Grimm," Friday night's series finale will bring the story to an end, after six seasons, 123 episodes, and countless dangerous confrontations between Portland Police detective Nick Burkhardt (David Giuntoli) and the supernatural creatures known as Wesen.



In the show, a longtime Friday-night staple for NBC, Nick learned that he's descended from a line of criminal profilers known as "Grimms" - including fairy tale authors the Brothers Grimm -- who can see the secret Wesen identities lurking beneath seemingly ordinary humans.



Some episodes were better than others, but "Grimm" was always eminently watchable, thanks to the chemistry of its ensemble cast, including Monroe, a werewolf-like Blutbad Wesen (Silas Weir Mitchell); Rosalee, a foxlike Fuchsbau (Bree Turner); Nick's girlfriend Juliette, who transformed into a witchy Hexenbiest before transforming into a warrior woman known as Eve (Elizabeth Tulloch); Adalind (Claire Coffee), the Hexenbiest nemesis who became the mother of Nick's child; Nick's police force comrades, Hank (Russell Hornsby), Sgt. Wu (Reggie Lee) and his enemy-turned-ally-turned-enemy-turned-ally-again, Captain Renard (Sasha Roiz.)



For Portlanders, "Grimm" has been something exceptional. Each week, viewers here in the Rose City -- and all over the world -- saw our city's neighborhoods, storefronts and streets serve as the setting for fanciful tales of crime and triumph.



More than anything else, the Portland area's forested parks, cloudy skies, rainy weather, and aura of mystery were essential to the show's mood. It made sense, given the deep greens and blue-grays of the Portland landscape, for creatures both benign and deadly to emerge from the shadowy mist of the Northwest.





So, saying goodbye to "Grimm" isn't just a sentimental farewell to a TV favorite. For Portland viewers, it's the end of a show that made a significant impact on the city, from showcasing Oregon scenery to bringing jobs and money into the local economy.



Tim Williams, executive director of the Oregon Governor's Office of Film & Television, says that "Grimm" provided about 300 jobs year-to-year, and directly spent nearly $300 million in Oregon over its six seasons.



"People are personally connected to it," Williams says of "Grimm," adding that he's encountered more than a few locals "who are getting very depressed that the show is going away."





Although the TNT series "The Librarians" returns to the Portland area later this year to film its fourth season, and "Portlandia" will shoot its eighth and final season this summer, Williams doesn't expect another series like "Grimm" to locate here anytime soon.



The reason has to do with how the TV industry has changed in the years since "Grimm" debuted, back in October 2011.



"Grimm" was an example of what networks routinely did back then, which was to order series consisting of 22 episodes a season, and which would run as long as the ratings held up.



"'Grimm' was a big engine," Williams says. "But the 22-episode primetime series are getting thinner and thinner on the ground."





The growing trend now is for 10 or 12-episode series, made for Hulu, Amazon, Netflix, HBO, Cinemax, "and everything in between," as Williams says.



Williams says some possible TV projects are in the works that would shoot in Portland, but he can't go into specifics until deals are finalized.



As always, he says, Oregon is competing with other states that offer incentive programs, which help production companies save money. Among Oregon's incentives are the Oregon Production Investment Fund, which offers rebates for film or TV productions, which must directly spend at least $1 million in Oregon to qualify.



Lana Veenker is founder and casting director of Cast Iron Studios, the Portland casting company. She estimates that close to 1,000 individual Northwest actors were cast on "Grimm" in principal roles, and that nearly 200 of them appeared in multiple episodes, such as Danny Bruno, who played Bud, the beaver-like Eisbiber Wesen.





"Not only did 'Grimm' provide a lot of work for local actors," Veenker says, "but it also helped raise the bar on the level of talent here."



Veenker agrees that, thanks to "Grimm," more people know about Portland, and not just as the hipster enclave satirized in "Portlandia."



"I remember, going back to Season 1 of 'Grimm,' the producers telling us that in Los Angeles, they kept asking, 'When you're shooting in the forest up there, how do you get that color of green on the trees?' They thought it was lighting, or special effects."



The trees and greenery were built into "Grimm" from the start, say executive producers and co-creators David Greenwalt and Jim Kouf. The pair wrote the show to take place in Portland, specifically because the scenery here reminded them of Germany's Black Forest, and Grimm's fairy tales.



"In Portland," Greenwalt says, "everything looks like a fairy tale. The Victorian homes, and the Craftsmans, and how it's spooky and gloomy there. We loved that. I can't imagine the show being filmed anywhere else, frankly."



Since "Grimm" was broadcast in 200 countries, Kouf says, "it had a great universal appeal." But the Rose City was always a key element, Kouf adds. "Portland was one of the characters."



Marcus Hibdon, senior media relations manager with Travel Portland, which promotes leisure and business travel to the city, says "Grimm" has helped attract tourists. Visitors from around the U.S. and abroad, Hibdon says, "want to see how the real Portland compares to the places they've seen on TV."





Bruce Lawson is a 30-plus year veteran of working in the film and TV industry. The Portland native worked on the crew of "Grimm" for all six seasons.



"To be able to stay at home and do what we love to do, and not have to worry about leaving town, or where the next job was going to come from, was huge," Lawson says.



The first few weeks after "Grimm" filming ended in January were, Lawson recalls, "really tough, because it was the loss of that family that we built together. It wasn't just the show, it was everybody who works every day to make it all happen. It was a well-oiled machine. It was truly a family."



Lawson says "the support of the Portland community was always a great thing, and I know it impressed anybody that was from out of town. Obviously, the actors felt the love, and gave back to the community," Lawson says, citing the Grimmster Endowment, a pet project of Roiz's. The endowment raised a total of $1.5 million for the OHSU Doernbecher Children's Hospital Foundation.



Lawson has other work coming up. "But I don't know that there's ever going to be another 'Grimm,' where everything happened perfectly, crew-wise, production-wise, cast-wise, and the creativity of it," he says. "It was a pretty special project."



-- Kristi Turnquist







kturnquist@oregonian.com

503-221-8227

@Kristiturnquist