the bbc sherlock series by the dr who 'bloke' and starring tim from the office

They deliberately pushed the portrayal of Moriarty to an extreme and then pushed him over a cliff, where he should have stayed.

i see a lot of complaining about the "mansplaining" on the most recent episode. which is fair enough, but i'm racking my brain and i can't actually recall sherlock holmes ever _not_ "mansplaining" anything.

Not really, mansplaining is 'explaining' something that the listener already understands. The whole point of Sherlock Holmes is that he is supposed to explain shit that no one else gets.

There's a vague get-out-of-jail card about that scene all being in Sherlock's head - and in any case I think Dream-Sherlock was explaining feminism to Dream-Watson rather than the Suffragettes themselves - but the whole thing was so flimsy, clunky and stupid that I'm not inclined to play it. And that's before you get onto the issue of the world's greatest detective being unable to spot a woman in a false moustache.

Mansplaining is when men explain things for women, instead of letting them have their own agency and explaining things themselves. In that sense Sherlock's final summation was a perfect example of it, because it was inexplicable why the women couldn't explain their scheme and motivation themselves, and this being inside Sherlock's dream is no excuse, because Watson still had plenty of agency there... Unless the point of that scene was to expose Sherlock's inner sexism, but it didn't really read that way.

Also, Aimless' "what if the genders were flipped" excuse doesn't really work, because mansplaining is about the difference in power positions of genders, so a woman can't mansplain, just like a white Westerner can't be a victim of racism.

In my first iteration I also mentioned the point Matt made, that Holmes' ability to explain was unique to him, and therefore 'uniquesplaining', which part I removed, but I shouldn't have. It was the combination of the two (flipping gender and uniqueness of ability) that removed the 'man' from the 'splaining'. My error.

To think I assumed this worst of all things couldn't get worse

enjoying the men splaining mansplaining itt a lot more than I did that episode

all-purpose use of mansplaining as a rhetorical device is reminiscent of the many uses of rubber-glue in elementary school

As a rough guide:

The random guy at the bike store who wanted to tell my partner how to use a bicycle pump properly = Mansplaining

Sherlock summing up whodunnit at the end of a TV show/short story = Not Mansplaining

Sherlock summing up whodunnit at the end of a TV show specifically about how men deny agency to women = Probably Mansplaining

wasn't even revealed until well after we found out it was all dream, so it wasn't even a clue

this is what I said

just an example of the writers trying to cover up their own ineptitude with a meta wink.

since they have the ability to go back pages in Final Draft, I would assume that they didn't accidentally realise that it made no sense for Lady Carmichael to hire Sherlock on page 80 and have to go with it. therefore it seems more reasonable to read it as, especially as it becomes apparent after the meta nature of the 1880s story is entirely revealed, a further commentary on Sherlock's narcissism and selective observation, which at this point has become a major theme of the episode.

again, I'm not arguing that it is a great or clever or satisfying element. but in context it does appear to be deliberate.

(same goes for Sherlock's line about shooting the back of one's head off: it could be that he is speaking specifically and only about Moriarty's suicide, by intentional contrast to the Abominable Bride scenario - as the Moriarty one took place directly in front of his eyes, not on a mid-distant balcony, with a lace curtain behind him that an accomplice could spray fake blood through. It could be a set-up for a revelation in S4 that Moriarty did somehow fake his own death after all, by showing that it can be done. Or it could just be one of many, many examples across the five years of this series of Sherlock saying things that are wrong - again, possibly as a herald of a twist in 2017, or as in other instances in this episode of imaginary-Sherlock making incorrect observations, or of drugged-up real-world Sherlock being incoherent in his chemical cocktail haze. The audience has a year or two to enjoy the tension caused by this ambiguity, if they want to.)

it's interesting that in august of 2010, martin freeman was "tim from the office". from that to arthur dent to watson to the greatest little hobbit of them all.

bravest, rather

As a rough guide:

The random guy at the bike store who wanted to tell my partner how to use a bicycle pump properly = Mansplaining

Sherlock summing up whodunnit at the end of a TV show/short story = Not Mansplaining

Sherlock summing up whodunnit at the end of a TV show specifically about how men deny agency to women = Probably Mansplaining

This is pretty much accurate. I didn't mean to say that every Sherlock summation is mansplaining, since besides Irene Adler there haven't even been female master criminals in the series, but with this particular case and these particular culprits it veers towards it. Note that mansplaining isn't some special way of talking, nor are the men doing it usually even aware that they're doing it... So Sherlock could be doing the same style of summation he did when talking about Moriarty's crimes, but because the power dynamic is different, because he denies agency from someone not socially equal to him while talking for her, it's mansplaining.

mansplaining is totally a special way of talking

that is why you can make the #actually joke

What I meant by that was that you can't say a "Sherlock summation" can't be mansplaining, because he's done similar speeches in non-mansplaining situations. It's not about the particular way he talks, it's about who's present, who's he talking for, and who remains silent.

My mum hated this... according to my sister... I didn't see it.

this was awful. last year's was awful too... there's a real problem with them doing one big meta story each year when most people watching are mega hungover each time, can't remember what happened the year before, and (at least in my house) aren't willing to put up with the nonsense they're shovelling as narrative. when was the last episode they did that was just an investigation without all the awful stuff about what it MEANS and who Sherlock REALLY IS

because nobody cares about that stuff.

best thing about it was the hidden skull print that he had on the wall, similar to this one:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_pun#/media/File:Allisvanity.jpg

This was wanky and annoying. It feels to me as if they (they being Moffat and production team) have bitten too hard into the belief that Sherlock is big and clever and important TV, hence doing one big meta story, which never works. Because you end up enjoying Silent Witness way more.

Went to find a copy from the usual sources, read thread, skipped.

Reminds me of when I watched Moonlighting as a kid - in later seasons you would also cross your fingers that it'd be a "case" epsisode, and not a "relationship" episode... but it was always a bloody relationship episode with a dream sequence,

I think a series can afford to do a big meta story when it's been running for years and the iconography and character are so familiar it's fun to see them being deconstructed. IMO the first part of this episode was kinda enjoyable like that, because the meta wasn't about this particular series but about Sherlock Holmes fiction in general, so they had plenty of history and familiar material to play with. But as soon as it jumped to the present day and it became apparent this was just another character study of this particular Sherlock Holmes (not Sherlock Holmes in general), it became boring, because Sherlock hasn't been on long enough and hasn't established its own iconography deep enough to earn the right to get meta about itself.

Last few posts otm. I read the summary for last year's (which I did see at the time) and it just sounds like complete garbage.

xps As anyone who's read my posts in the past year or several will know, I am all in favour of seeing mansplaining and microaggressions everywhere, and I do like Chuck's breakdown in this particular case

however the entire genre of detective stories does rather revolve around that final detectivesplain, where the hero lists all the events in painstaking detail while the suspect/master criminal listens meekly to their own motives and actions. not quite sure abt saying that if the suspect is a woman this improbable-in-reality narrative device itself becomes problematic

though I am thinking, do female-protagonist whodunnits have less grand-splainy-narration in their denouements? I do not remember e.g. Miss Marple giving a Sherlockesque monologue, more flashbacks and nudging the suspect into a detailed confession instead. could definitely buy a "genius man holds forth" / "socially adept woman says little - nobody likes a woman who monologues* - but prompts the (often male) murderer to tell all" dichotomy, but maybe that's all in my had.

* oh um hi

the Moriarty schtick is p. unbearable at this point, yes. I mean I suppose that's the point, but less of it anyway please

Though of course deconstructions of classic Sherlock are hardly new ("The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes" and "Without a Clue" are funnier examples of that), and the first Guy Ritchie movie did the "Victorian Sherlock but with a modern sensibility" better than this episode, so it's not like the 19th century parts of the story were super classic either.

(xxpost)

however the entire genre of detective stories does rather revolve around that final detectivesplain, where the hero lists all the events in painstaking detail while the suspect/master criminal listens meekly to their own motives and actions. not quite sure abt saying that if the suspect is a woman this improbable-in-reality narrative device itself becomes problematic

The problem is that in most cases the master criminal is morally reprehensible, and the detectivesplaining is the first part of his punishment; he thought he was being so clever, and now he has to sit and quietly listen how the detective outsmarted him. But in this case the Suffragettes were supposed to be right in their cause (as acknowledged by both Mycroft and Sherlock), and they were presented as sympathetic characters, so there was no reason whey they couldn't explain it all themselves.

I think you might have a point with your Holmes/Marple dichotomy too. Though sadly I haven't seen/read enough classic whodunnits with a female lead to know whether this is a more general phenonemon in them?

not quite sure abt saying that if the suspect is a woman this improbable-in-reality narrative device itself becomes problematic

Yeah I'm not sure about this notional female master criminal voluntarily standing there admitting their own crime and exactly how they did it just to show "agency", (as if becoming a master criminal doesn't require agency in the first place, up until the point at which they are arrested/defeated at least).

None of this is particularly relevant in this case because this episode was apparently written for the benefit of a child with no idea who the Suffragettes were, rather than an audience of 21st century viewers who aren't idiots. In fact I'm not really sure why there were Suffragettes in this in the first place, except to go "look, Suffragettes! Weren't they great?"

It's almost as if Moffatt was stung by criticism of his treatment of female characters and decided to ostentatiously swing the other way, and getting it equally wrong in the process. In fact it's amazing how one episode could manage to be simultaneously so condescending and so incomprehensible. Moffatt didn't bother to shake himself out of Dr Who mode, essentially.

if a man explains something in the forest and no one hears does he make a splain/what is the sound of one man splaining

I remember the old Joan Hickson Marples always had a detectivesplain sequence at the end; and certainly there was always an extensive Jessicasplain at the end of every Murder She Wrote.

I really like the idea above that the reveal scene is the "first part of the villain's punishment". The other function (on TV anyway) is to give your lead actor a bit of monologue scenery to chew, so they don't feel like they're being upstaged by their own story. (Hickson was particularly good at using those scenes to reveal the real self behind her doddery oldperson act).

One of the best things about Elementary is that the explanatory monologues at the end of the cases are usually tag-team routines between Holmes and Watson, each of them filling in parts of the puzzle.

My favorite part of this episode was the retro Sherlock Vision with newspaper clipping on strings.

For an episode entirely in Sherlock's head, it didn't seem to reveal many of his internal workings. Why was Watson the main character in the first half? What conclusion does he draw from the grave scene -- his theory involved Ricoletti being dead, the grave dream proved it wrong, so why does he wake up and say Moriarty is dead?

it's interesting that in august of 2010, martin freeman was "tim from the office". from that to arthur dent to watson to the greatest little hobbit of them all.

yes and in january of 2016 he is still "tim from the office" and so it shall be forevermore

this was awful. last year's was awful too... there's a real problem with them doing one big meta story each year when most people watching are mega hungover each time, can't remember what happened the year before

You're so not paying attention that you don't remember that this has previously been three separate episodes each series, that the first was broadcast in July 2010, and the last was two years ago.

What conclusion does he draw from the grave scene -- his theory involved Ricoletti being dead, the grave dream proved it wrong

???

His theory was that Ricoletti used a double and the double was buried in the same grave.
There was only one body in the grave, and the whole scene turned out to be part of his dream.
Therefore he should think that his theory is unproven.

i'll also point out that the method of her fake death was the same as how sherlock survived jumping off the building that was revealed in the last season.

there was no actual reason to think the double was in the grave - that's the point, that he got wildly obsessed with this latest incorrect side-detail he'd pulled out of his arse, dragging Lestrade and Mycroft down into his pit of narcissistic bullshit and pushing Watson & Mary, who care about him in a closer fashion, away.

His subconscious is telling him this behaviour is damaging and inappropriate, the way the Sherlocksplaining scene is his subconscious telling him that he is horrible to women.

Ricoletti was dead, and had to be for the entire premise of the mystery to exist, based on the autopsy.

I've been reading some Holmes stories to my daughter and his explanations are part of the formula. They're not about punishing the villain (who often isn't present for the explanation) and there's no reason for them to become problematic when women are involved. It's just what he does. It's a bit odd to discuss modern ideas of agency when a character is doing exactly what he was created to do in the 1800s, especially in a case which is taking place in his head.

I thought the silly suffragette vigilante reveal was clearly signposted as a symptom of Holmes's guilt about how he treats women (doesn't Mrs Hudson protest that she's more than a plot device?). But clumsily done yes.

More nitpicking, wasn't the '"it's never a twin" ho-ho how we laughed' moment at the start entirely out of character? Holmes would never indulge in such evidence-free generalisation.

Well, I'd rebut that a little, if only because there's tons of meta/deconstruction stuff in the short stories as well (not so much the novels). Take "The Blue Carbuncle", where the crime is pretty piffling, and Holmes lets the culprit go, or "The Yellow Face", where Holmes gets everything wrong. Even "A Scandal in Bohemia", the very first short story, deliberately goes against the formula with the Irene Adler plot.

What you end up with is this ironic situation where the best episodes of A Very Modern Update of Sherlock are the ones that play it straight, while (some of) Doyle's best stories are the weird self-referential ones.

What's lame about the most recent episode isn't Sherlock's mansplaining (who cares, really) but that the (really interesting!) suffragette stuff gets shoved under a bus for all that tedious Holmes/Moriarty legend building.

(xpost)

I've only read The Red-Headed League, Silver Blaze and The Speckled Band to my daughter so far so my memory of those self-referential stories is foggy. My point wasn't that Conan Doyle was relentlessly formulaic, only that the word mansplaining is meaningless in the context of Holmes. The whole idea is that nobody sees what he sees and he loves showing off about it so he's never going to let the culprits explain their own plan, whoever they may be.

Er, I don't think anyone was saying anything about the original Conan Doyle stories, rather than this particular modern TV episode, which wasn't based on (except for some small details) any of the original stories. Also, it's not like the writers of any modern Sherlock adaptation are completely ignorant of the social context where it's made. You can't just deflect criticism by saying, "but it was in the Conan Doyle stories too". The original stories also have (obviously, given when the period they were written) loads of casual sexism, such as in "A Case of Identity", where Holmes lets the bad guy get away with his fraud, because he thinks it's better than letting the woman he screwed over know the truth and get upset.

Also, like I said, "mansplaining" isn't some particular type of speaking that you can identify regardless of context. Even if "Sherlock summation" is a formula inspired by the Conan Doyle stories, it can also be mansplaining when it denies women the authority to speak for themselves. And "loves showing off" is also often a part of mansplaining, when men feel like they have to show they're smarter than women, even when the women (as was the case in this episode) are clearly more knowledgable on the subject at hand.

I'm not saying they should recreate Victorian values. I'd be worried if the TV version kept casting aspersions on gypsies. I just think that calling the most fundamental part of Holmes's character mansplaining in this one situation is stupid. He talks that way to everybody. He's not meant to be an empathetic modern dude.

but, since it was all a dream, those women were not real women, but only dream images, so that no women were 'splained to in the making of that scene. it was just Our Hero having the Holmesian equivalent of a wet dream.

While having flashes of guilt about how he treats women. It's sort of doing the opposite of what Tuomas says.

Hmm.

Its a sort of wacky version of "Mr Selfridge"

I did recognise that "If you ever feel I'm getting too sure of myself" bit from the original book(s)..

ah is it time for my annual wish of orrible deaths to all involved again already? my my the time does fly

ahem ahem

i wish an orrible death on all involved

I was thinking of posting that this was rather slight, then I remembered we only watched half of it. Lots to look forward to clearly.

Has a new episode come out or are you still talking about last year's mess?

Pretty sure it was new, but I've not seen the other(s)