I am new to this and trying to figure a way to make the datagrid look a little less "cartoonish". The edit buttons with the over-sized pencil, for example, is way too big and distracting. Are there themes available for the datagrid?

You can style the datagrid as you like by writing appropiate css and by using appropiate images. The Mvc Controls Toolkit DOESN'T FURNISH READY TO USE STYLES the one provided in the examples are just very, very simple examples. In september we will release a new pugin called "Data Moving" with a  a ready to use grid compatible with the jQuery UI Theme Roller, and styles and with all options ready for the use:

Filtering, Paging, Sorting, Detail Window, etc. Configurable with a fluent API. Moreover it will be herarchical so that we can represent one to many relations with it.

It will have also the capability to send to the controller just a change set, that is just the data modified, inserted or deleted. It will be compatible also with the Webapi controllers.

I will post a video of the new plugine with the next release of the Mvc Controls Toolkit that will be released within 7-10 days

However, the plugin will be not free. ...