Thoughts on Sherlock
Jan. 23rd, 2012 12:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackStupid external brain! You've stopped reminding me about awesome cult TV shows before they're shown on TV.
For a more comprehensive overview, read http://wrongquestions.blogspot.com/2012/01/big-guns-thoughts-on-sherlock-s-second.html instead. Abigail Nussbaum is usually right about what's good about a show and what's bad, even if I only see it later.
I agree that 70% of it is awesome or good, 25% is annoying or problematic, and 5% is really terrible. I wish it could _all_ be awesome, but it isn't. I enjoyed it anyway, but we warned, there ARE significant problems (both in plot and in terms of not being offensive).
Good things
Making any incarnation of Sherlock Holmes normally faces a few questions: how do you show Holmes solving mysteries without it seeming out of the blue or pointless? how do you show Holmes as sufficiently flawed there's a natural plot, rather than just watching superman swatting flies?
I thought Sherlock in the modern world worked surprisingly well. In the world of blogs, it's almost MORE plausible he would acquire a cult following like that.
The Sherlock/John relationship is unsurprisingly great. Yes, John gets underappreciated sometimes, but Sherlock is eccentric enough and has enough difficulty dealing with people, they're genuinely both contributing to their relationship.
Several times, I thought Sherlock's deductions were done well. It's a fact of life that MANY of them will be implausible, but I was impressed that any of them were plausible, and several did have a "Ah! That makes sense!" moment, which is the holy grail of a mystery story.
For instance, guessing people's passwords. Yes, it's still very unrealistic: in real life you never expect to guess someone's password in three goes by thinking hard. But on the other hand, the process he went through IS the realistic process someone might go through that would work OCCASIONALLY. The mistakes people made in coming up with English-word passwords I really hope people wouldn't make in situations that important (although I'm nowhere near as optimistic as many people in thinking they AREN'T made), but they're the SORT of mistakes people make, when they come up with a password "good enough for now" and don't change it when the password gets more important later.
Neutral Things
Someone made the point that the relationship between Sherlock and John, or Sherlock and humanity, doesn't actually make a story: each individual instance of Sherlock "getting it" or "not getting it" is touching, but are essentially all drawn from an eternal present where he "nearly gets it": there are moments of character growth, but he's not more grown afterwards, he's like he always is, able to admit humanity at the right possible moment, but still avoiding it by default.
I think it would be better if the characters did show some actual development over time, but I also think that this is basically how this sort of show works: people like this sort of character relationship, and when you don't know you'll be able to make five series, you can't easily afford to start somewhere with room for growth.
Bad Things
Blah blah blah portrayal of women blah blah. Massively more progressive than it might have been. Massively far short of where it should have been. Irene Addler was a pretty interesting character, but (I may be wrong) looks like what's made when someone sits down and says "how can I write an interesting female character" not "how can I write an interesting character".
The "piece of code that can unlock any door in the world". For heaven's sake. If you have a bizarre genre-convention premise, DON'T USE IT AS A MAJOR PLOT POINT. And yes, it IS a premise -- it didn't exist, but it was plausible enough that the most intelligent man in the world thought it might exist, which is about the same. It's ok to use genre conventions -- even stupid ones -- sometimes, although it's better if you don't. But it's ridiculously abuse of your audience's patience to present them with a bunch of premises and say "I know this doesn't make sense, but for the sake of the plot, just assume it", and then jump in with another and say "HAHAHAHAHA! YOU R SO GULLIBLE YOU BELIEVED MY STUPID PREMISE WHY R U SO STUPID?"
For a more comprehensive overview, read http://wrongquestions.blogspot.com/2012/01/big-guns-thoughts-on-sherlock-s-second.html instead. Abigail Nussbaum is usually right about what's good about a show and what's bad, even if I only see it later.
I agree that 70% of it is awesome or good, 25% is annoying or problematic, and 5% is really terrible. I wish it could _all_ be awesome, but it isn't. I enjoyed it anyway, but we warned, there ARE significant problems (both in plot and in terms of not being offensive).
Good things
Making any incarnation of Sherlock Holmes normally faces a few questions: how do you show Holmes solving mysteries without it seeming out of the blue or pointless? how do you show Holmes as sufficiently flawed there's a natural plot, rather than just watching superman swatting flies?
I thought Sherlock in the modern world worked surprisingly well. In the world of blogs, it's almost MORE plausible he would acquire a cult following like that.
The Sherlock/John relationship is unsurprisingly great. Yes, John gets underappreciated sometimes, but Sherlock is eccentric enough and has enough difficulty dealing with people, they're genuinely both contributing to their relationship.
Several times, I thought Sherlock's deductions were done well. It's a fact of life that MANY of them will be implausible, but I was impressed that any of them were plausible, and several did have a "Ah! That makes sense!" moment, which is the holy grail of a mystery story.
For instance, guessing people's passwords. Yes, it's still very unrealistic: in real life you never expect to guess someone's password in three goes by thinking hard. But on the other hand, the process he went through IS the realistic process someone might go through that would work OCCASIONALLY. The mistakes people made in coming up with English-word passwords I really hope people wouldn't make in situations that important (although I'm nowhere near as optimistic as many people in thinking they AREN'T made), but they're the SORT of mistakes people make, when they come up with a password "good enough for now" and don't change it when the password gets more important later.
Neutral Things
Someone made the point that the relationship between Sherlock and John, or Sherlock and humanity, doesn't actually make a story: each individual instance of Sherlock "getting it" or "not getting it" is touching, but are essentially all drawn from an eternal present where he "nearly gets it": there are moments of character growth, but he's not more grown afterwards, he's like he always is, able to admit humanity at the right possible moment, but still avoiding it by default.
I think it would be better if the characters did show some actual development over time, but I also think that this is basically how this sort of show works: people like this sort of character relationship, and when you don't know you'll be able to make five series, you can't easily afford to start somewhere with room for growth.
Bad Things
Blah blah blah portrayal of women blah blah. Massively more progressive than it might have been. Massively far short of where it should have been. Irene Addler was a pretty interesting character, but (I may be wrong) looks like what's made when someone sits down and says "how can I write an interesting female character" not "how can I write an interesting character".
The "piece of code that can unlock any door in the world". For heaven's sake. If you have a bizarre genre-convention premise, DON'T USE IT AS A MAJOR PLOT POINT. And yes, it IS a premise -- it didn't exist, but it was plausible enough that the most intelligent man in the world thought it might exist, which is about the same. It's ok to use genre conventions -- even stupid ones -- sometimes, although it's better if you don't. But it's ridiculously abuse of your audience's patience to present them with a bunch of premises and say "I know this doesn't make sense, but for the sake of the plot, just assume it", and then jump in with another and say "HAHAHAHAHA! YOU R SO GULLIBLE YOU BELIEVED MY STUPID PREMISE WHY R U SO STUPID?"
no subject
Date: 2012-01-26 10:22 pm (UTC)Mmm ... I was with it up til the point where Sherlock thought it was about the rhythm that Moriarty tapped out using his fingers. (My theory was that Moriarty left a small fruit knife stuck in the apple - I think he did? Would have to rewatch to be sure - and that contained some sort of chip / USB / etc containing the code).
no subject
Date: 2012-01-27 09:48 am (UTC)I thought the rhythm thing was quite clever: Sherlock is exactly the sort of person who might notice that (although it's a bit much to bet that he definitely would). It's not realistic but it's interesting. If Moriarty had been telling him a PIN number or something, that would work a lot better. But it obviously doesn't work at all with the idea of encoding a computer problem.
I mean, however ignorant someone is, they must realise that if a 20-byte computer program could be that omnipotent, we'd have found it by now by trial and error...