zephyrantha:
aethersea:
honestly it was a red flag when bbc sherlock went “well obviously the word written in blood isn’t the german word for revenge, it’s clearly the beginning of the name ‘rachel’, what absolute idiot would fail to see that” when in the original novel it is, in fact, the german word for revenge, which sherlock points out gleefully to a roomful of policemen who all figure it’s the beginning of the name ‘rachel.’
and by red flag I mean it was a clear sign that the adaptation was trying to one-up the source material, instead of engaging with it with love.
#sherlock holmes#finx rambles#this kinda bugged me even when I first watched it and still thought it was a super cool show#and tbh it WAS super cool in a lot of ways#they had such dynamic and exciting editing#good pacing#cool character introductions#great snappy lines#but this was a small thing that rankled even then
You’re so right. I remember watching 1x01 and thinking “wow! they got the texts to pop up on the screen, that’s super cool!” and thinking it was just like. A super well done show and so amazing. But looking back, what I actually liked about it was the snappy editing and the little bit of development that Martin Freeman was allowed to give to his character.
Apart from that, the show is so full of… contempt? Like even from the beginning, there’s this sense that the show thinks you’re probably too stupid to be watching it, but sure, I guess we’ll let you tag along and see what a clever, amazing person Sherlock is. He’s definitely smarter than you though so don’t even try to engage with the source material, a dummy like you could never get anything right.
And then that just stayed the tone of the show until I got fed up and stopped watching.
That’s just it, that thing with the texts on screen was the first time I’d ever seen phones so smoothly and cleverly integrated into the visuals, it was genuinely brilliant, and the Watson we’re introduced to in ep1 is a compelling character. And frankly even the condescension doesn’t jar yet in ep1, because part of the joy of mystery stories (and especially of sherlock holmes adaptations) is watching the detective be so incredibly clever, so it wasn’t immediately apparent that the writers didn’t want us to be able to follow along. They’re just showing off their mystery-writing skills!
And – I think this part was really important actually – because in ep1, Sherlock responds to John actually being impressed by his deductions with the startled vulnerability of someone who’s never before met someone who doesn’t immediately want to either defeat him in battle or never speak to him again. John is truly impressed with Sherlock, but unthreatened by him, and Sherlock doesn’t really know what to do with that but he really doesn’t want to lose it. So he invites John along on his case, and then shows off for him like a peacock flashing his tail in the nervous hope that John might say more nice things, and he’s clearly floored when John does.
And that’s a really good dynamic on which to build a friendship! Closet thrill-seeker who’s extremely secure in his own abilities befriends arrogant mean girl genius who’s spent so long being envied and disliked by everyone he meets that he imprints like a duckling on the first person who doesn’t do that, but he has no clue how friendships work so he just drags this person to crime scenes and worse in the hopes that somehow this’ll do the trick.
But although John is confident in his own abilities, the writers don’t actually want him to have any. My beef with this show actually started in the very next episode, where John and his date get kidnapped by bad guys. They’re tied up and being interrogated, and John is unable to do literally anything but sit there and yell about it, even when they nearly murder his date. Sherlock has to swoop in and save the day.
In ep1 when John meets Mycroft, Mycroft’s parting shot is “fire your therapist,” because she says John’s psychosomatic tremble is a response to danger but Mycroft has been unsubtly threatening him and his tremble has firmed up and gone. John responds to danger with level-headed courage, we are told this explicitly in the text. And then when his date is about to be murdered by bad guys who believe he knows the location of the hidden whatever, he can’t find the presence of mind to fucking lie about it? String them along a little? Come up with SOME way to buy time, convince the bad guys he’s cooperating so they’ll stop paying so much attention and he can figure out a way to send a message, something. Anything.
That’s when I realized the writers didn’t actually want John to be able to do anything, they didn’t want this to be the partnership they set up in the end of ep1, they wanted Sherlock to be the competent one and John to be his fangirl. And the thing is, John is the viewer insert character. He’s the one we’re supposed to be able to identify with so he can hook us into the story. And it turns out the writers just want John – and us – to do exactly what you said: tag along and see what a clever, amazing person Sherlock is.
But it requires Sherlock to be wrong. It requires him to be completely wrong, and specifically it requires him to be wrong to have dismissed the locals as superstitious peasants whose fears were silly. It requires him to admit that just because he’s smarter than someone doesn’t mean his worldview is more correct.
Which, I suspect, is something the the writers of bbc sherlock don’t really know how to wrap their heads around.
