ELEMENTARY - News, Reviews, and Discussion
- Thread starter Allyn Gibson
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For someone who missed the Sherlock Watson dynamic for the first half of this season this episode is a breath of fresh air.
Of course I will miss Kitty, she brought an interesting new angle to the show, but now that Watson will be moving back in with Sherlock and devoting herself to detective work full time, I find myself getting excited for the show again like I was last year and the first year.
Of course I will miss Kitty, she brought an interesting new angle to the show, but now that Watson will be moving back in with Sherlock and devoting herself to detective work full time, I find myself getting excited for the show again like I was last year and the first year.
I agree. It was nice to see Sherlock and Watson back together.
Does anyone else think everyoneisanonymous is starting to become a crutch?
Does anyone else think everyoneisanonymous is starting to become a crutch?
Raises hand.
I get the point of it (and the list of various associates that Watson suggests as roomies for Holmes) -- this Holmes needs and relies upon people. He can't do it all alone. And that's true to the Canon to some extent; Holmes had the Irregulars that he could call upon to track people and scour the city and that sort of thing. But I feel, now, that we've gotten the point, we know that there's an informal "team" that Holmes can call upon when he needs to, and it's time to move on.
I just finished watching A Landmark Story, and have a question: who, exactly, called Sherlock at the end of the episode posing as Moriarty?
^ I was hoping for an answer with some more specificity, but thanks nonetheless.
^ I guess I'll just have to be patient and finish watching the season, then (unless somebody else can answer the question).
^ I was hoping for an answer with some more specificity, but thanks nonetheless.
If I remember correctly, he's a nobody.
I just finished Season 1, and in a television landscape where the Procedural genre (be it Traditional or Serialized) has become a bit staid and cliched, it takes a lot of effort to stand out, and Elementary does just that, not only because of its connections to "the World's Greatest Detective", but also because of the ways in which it makes use of those connections.
Even with people having prejudged it because of the existence of the BBC's Sherlock and the decision to make Watson a woman and an American, Elementary made it obvious very early on that the preconceptions people had about it were wrong by simultaneously tapping into the essence of the Sherlock Holmes Canon and forging its own unique path forward, and by assembling a top-notch cast both regular and recurring.
I touched on this a bit in an earlier post, but it's easy to look at the series' earlier episodes and only see 'yet another Procedural', but what the show did well right from the beginning was weaving seemingly standalone stories into a grander, season-long narrative tapestry that was capped off by a sensationally-written 2-hour finale that was more than worthy of not only the series' titular character, but his most profligate ally. Watson can easily be seen as just being Sherlock's 'sidekick', the character who is there largely to 'ground' Holmes and make him relatable, but what Elementary did differently was to make the character Holmes' equal in narrative importance.
This is not only abundantly clear in the finale, but also manifests itself throughout the season, particularly in the Pilot, The Rat Race, M, The Deductionist, A Giant Gun, Filled with Drugs, and Deja vu all over Again.
I mentioned earlier that Elementary transcended the preconceptions and negative comparisons to the BBC'S Sherlock by simultaneously tapping into the essence of the character's Canon and forging its own unique path forward, and the most significant - and brilliant - way it did so was in its approach of taking familiar Holmesian characters and twisting them around.
I don't know how the producers came upon the idea of making their interpretation of Mrs. Hudson a male-to-female Transsexual, but it was, quite frankly, a stroke of brilliance. Ms. Hudson may have only showed up late in the season, but her appearance was the perfect way to further and highlight the changing relationship dynamic between Sherlock and Joan and to give Joan a chance to bond with someone other than Sherlock on a deeply emotional level, even in a very short period of time.
Ms. Hudson's introduction also came at the perfect moment for seeding the culmination of the season's primary narrative arc and what is, IMO, one of the most ingenious character decisions ever made: taking Irene Adler and James Moriarty - the two characters most associated with Holmes aside from Watson - and combining them into one.
By giving us a Sherlock Holmes who was brilliantly human and brilliantly damaged, the writers had set a high bar for themselves to clear when it came to introducing his mirror image/greatest opponent, but by turning that opponent into the woman responsible for him being so brilliantly human and damaged, they not only cleared that bar, but smashed it to pieces, and then found the perfect individual to serve as Sherlock's 'perfect foil' in Natalie Dormer. Making Irene and Moriarty one and the same - and giving the role to Dormer - also perfectly tied in to the series' Serialized Procedural format by allowing/affording the writers opportunities to seed important narrative ideas through largely standalone plot points (such as the story told in Child Predator).
Elementary may have had a lot stacked against it, but if its first season proves anything, it's that you shouldn't bet against Sherlock Holmes or the viability of the Serialized Procedural genre.
Even with people having prejudged it because of the existence of the BBC's Sherlock and the decision to make Watson a woman and an American, Elementary made it obvious very early on that the preconceptions people had about it were wrong by simultaneously tapping into the essence of the Sherlock Holmes Canon and forging its own unique path forward, and by assembling a top-notch cast both regular and recurring.
I touched on this a bit in an earlier post, but it's easy to look at the series' earlier episodes and only see 'yet another Procedural', but what the show did well right from the beginning was weaving seemingly standalone stories into a grander, season-long narrative tapestry that was capped off by a sensationally-written 2-hour finale that was more than worthy of not only the series' titular character, but his most profligate ally. Watson can easily be seen as just being Sherlock's 'sidekick', the character who is there largely to 'ground' Holmes and make him relatable, but what Elementary did differently was to make the character Holmes' equal in narrative importance.
This is not only abundantly clear in the finale, but also manifests itself throughout the season, particularly in the Pilot, The Rat Race, M, The Deductionist, A Giant Gun, Filled with Drugs, and Deja vu all over Again.
I mentioned earlier that Elementary transcended the preconceptions and negative comparisons to the BBC'S Sherlock by simultaneously tapping into the essence of the character's Canon and forging its own unique path forward, and the most significant - and brilliant - way it did so was in its approach of taking familiar Holmesian characters and twisting them around.
I don't know how the producers came upon the idea of making their interpretation of Mrs. Hudson a male-to-female Transsexual, but it was, quite frankly, a stroke of brilliance. Ms. Hudson may have only showed up late in the season, but her appearance was the perfect way to further and highlight the changing relationship dynamic between Sherlock and Joan and to give Joan a chance to bond with someone other than Sherlock on a deeply emotional level, even in a very short period of time.
Ms. Hudson's introduction also came at the perfect moment for seeding the culmination of the season's primary narrative arc and what is, IMO, one of the most ingenious character decisions ever made: taking Irene Adler and James Moriarty - the two characters most associated with Holmes aside from Watson - and combining them into one.
By giving us a Sherlock Holmes who was brilliantly human and brilliantly damaged, the writers had set a high bar for themselves to clear when it came to introducing his mirror image/greatest opponent, but by turning that opponent into the woman responsible for him being so brilliantly human and damaged, they not only cleared that bar, but smashed it to pieces, and then found the perfect individual to serve as Sherlock's 'perfect foil' in Natalie Dormer. Making Irene and Moriarty one and the same - and giving the role to Dormer - also perfectly tied in to the series' Serialized Procedural format by allowing/affording the writers opportunities to seed important narrative ideas through largely standalone plot points (such as the story told in Child Predator).
Elementary may have had a lot stacked against it, but if its first season proves anything, it's that you shouldn't bet against Sherlock Holmes or the viability of the Serialized Procedural genre.
^Yeah, nice little surprise cameo there. Although it's weird that something as important as the murder of Joan's boyfriend and the impact it had on her life was relegated to a B-plot in a story about zebras and quaggas. It would've been better to have Joan's situation (including the investigation into Andrew's murder) be the A-plot with Sherlock and Marcus's Ungulate Adventure being the comic relief -- then maybe we could've avoided having the obligatory murder tacked onto the animal-abduction story.
Of course, Lucy Liu directed this episode, which is no doubt why her time in front of the camera needed to be dialed back. But that doesn't ease the strangeness of the decision to do something so important to Joan's arc in an episode where Joan is in the background.
Of course, Lucy Liu directed this episode, which is no doubt why her time in front of the camera needed to be dialed back. But that doesn't ease the strangeness of the decision to do something so important to Joan's arc in an episode where Joan is in the background.
First, Gov Kodos, I love the Lagertha pic. Ragnar chose poorly when he let Aslaug into his life.
I loved last night's episode. Honestly, it made me wish for more scenes of Holmes and Bell working together; Miller and Hall have a fantastic rapport, and the relationship between their characters was far more like the traditional Holmes/Watson pairing than what Elementary has given us. If Lucy Liu left the series and Holmes and Bell started solving crimes together on a regular basis, I'd be really happy with that.
Now, about the ending...
First, I really feel like Watson is lying to herself about what she wants from her life, and she's running away from the wreckage of her life to something that she thinks will make it all better. I heard a lot of self-justification in her speech, and Holmes' reaction seemed to me to indicate that he knew it, too.
And second, after Moriarty's letter, I wonder if she, not Ilana, engineered the attack on Watson and then set up Ilana and her people to take the fall.
I loved last night's episode. Honestly, it made me wish for more scenes of Holmes and Bell working together; Miller and Hall have a fantastic rapport, and the relationship between their characters was far more like the traditional Holmes/Watson pairing than what Elementary has given us. If Lucy Liu left the series and Holmes and Bell started solving crimes together on a regular basis, I'd be really happy with that.
Now, about the ending...
First, I really feel like Watson is lying to herself about what she wants from her life, and she's running away from the wreckage of her life to something that she thinks will make it all better. I heard a lot of self-justification in her speech, and Holmes' reaction seemed to me to indicate that he knew it, too.
And second, after Moriarty's letter, I wonder if she, not Ilana, engineered the attack on Watson and then set up Ilana and her people to take the fall.
Do you mean that she intended to kill Watson, then shifted the blame when she failed? It seems unlikely that Moriarty would bungle the job like that -- or use a poison as easily detected as hemlock. And if she merely wanted to make Watson think she'd been targeted, then she had no way of knowing that Andrew would drink Joan's coffee, so that doesn't seem to work.
That was exactly what I was thinking. I agree with you about all of those problems with the idea, and I've entertained all of those objections. Ultimately, I think that I was Ilana behind the attack. It was an interesting thought experiment, though.
Interesting was Holme's use of the Sigerson alias. It is one mentioned in 'The Empty House' when he is telling Watson about his time in hiding after defeating Moriarty and hunting down his lieutenants. That, and Holme's younger brother in a Gene Wilder film. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventure_of_Sherlock_Holmes%27_Smarter_Brother
Another thought, for Moriarty references, I wonder if the first note with the drawing of the coffee cup sent from the post code of Ilana's prison was a subtle reference to Moriarty. Watson attributes it to Ilana, but the drawing could be a reference to Moriarty's artwork, and a hint that she is aware of Ilana's machianations confirmed in the final letter to Watson?
It's unlikely, but my darker angels are wondering if Sherlock faked Moriarty to save Joan.
Thursday night's episode -- Holmes is a suspect in the murder of a woman who went missing three years, during the time when Holmes was heavily into heroin abuse -- was, for me, something of a mixed bag.
I thought its exploration of the person that Holmes was before the start of Elementary was long overdue. I liked the way the episode built up a history for Holmes through his interactions with Oscar, his former dealer. That was compelling.
As a mystery, it was not as compelling. The problem with a television show like Elementary is that there aren't a lot of plausible suspects in the best of circumstances, and Thursday night's episode, because it spent its time trying to make Holmes a plausible supect, really suffered from that. It if can't be Holmes (because he's the lead of the series and couldn't have done it for reasons outside the narrative) or Oscar, then that only left one person by process of elimination -- the councilman.
Otherwise, I liked the episode a lot. It was engaging, the direction was solid, Jonny Lee Miller's performance was very good, and the music, especially the dischordant cello, was haunting.
I have the first Elementary novel, The Ghost Line, to read. I may have a chance to start it this week. Maybe.
I thought its exploration of the person that Holmes was before the start of Elementary was long overdue. I liked the way the episode built up a history for Holmes through his interactions with Oscar, his former dealer. That was compelling.
As a mystery, it was not as compelling. The problem with a television show like Elementary is that there aren't a lot of plausible suspects in the best of circumstances, and Thursday night's episode, because it spent its time trying to make Holmes a plausible supect, really suffered from that. It if can't be Holmes (because he's the lead of the series and couldn't have done it for reasons outside the narrative) or Oscar, then that only left one person by process of elimination -- the councilman.
Otherwise, I liked the episode a lot. It was engaging, the direction was solid, Jonny Lee Miller's performance was very good, and the music, especially the dischordant cello, was haunting.
I have the first Elementary novel, The Ghost Line, to read. I may have a chance to start it this week. Maybe.
I agree on the second part. I might not have been so bad had they not gone down the obvious and overdone route of "It's the politician."
