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

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)

Every season gets even more overconvinced of its charm. And every episode still has enough interesting moments to make the dross seem all the more perplexing. Yesterday's bonus: one of the sloppiest-directed fight scenes I've ever seen (by the pool)

First of a series of 3 was on last night. It was partially based on the story with the Napoleon plaster busts but it substituted Margaret Thatcher and gave an explaining story about how Thatcher was seen as comparable to Napoleon.
I enjoyed it, it was more coherent than the one off story last year.

I do enjoy this programme and think it has lots of good quality despite its various flaws and its unusual self-regard, but I agree with those who think it has made a mistake in leaving Detection behind and going in for International Espionage Fist-Fights, Gun-Battles etc.

Good of Mark Gatiss to give himself so much screen time.

I agree with those who think it has made a mistake in leaving Detection behind and going in for International Espionage Fist-Fights, Gun-Battles etc.

Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Mycroft Problem. (Conan Doyle used him, what, in three of the stories total? He's an interesting add-on used very sparingly in a couple of highly notable cases -- only one of which was a full-on espionage case IIRC -- and by making him, institutional spying and The Government more and more of a central thing throughout, it all gets more boring, somehow.)

Will not be much of a surprise when they let the cat out of the bag that Sherlock faked the death of "Mary" aka "Rosalind" in order to fulfill his preposterously sentimental vow, thus putting Watson through the grief of once more losing a loved one 'for the team'. Also, "Mary" as a Jason Bourne-alike is not especially convincing. I like this version of Holmes better when he was more of an insufferable asshole.

yeah i dunno that i care all that much about all this espionage nonsense? sentimental sherlock and sad dad watson flirting with a girl on a bus and of course its never just a girl in a bus so who knows what all thats about

i was behind on last season & caught up yesterday
- i hate storylines like "all the worlds secrets are kept in x" and that vault being in the bad-guy's mind made it 10 times more stupid, so gatissy/moffaty to resolve in such a facepalm way
- abominable bride was ok, setting it in 19th c actually make all the affectedness of the show a bit more pleasant & less annoying for me...but the flashing forward & back was p silly imo
- AGRA flash drive, rmde nonsense that anyone would house all that info in one place x 4! (like the stupid magic James Bond hard drive with all the agents names in Skyfall)

But it's not a terrible way to kill an hour and a half on a Sunday night/Monday morning. I enjoy it despite all my petty annoyances & eyerolling

(like the stupid magic James Bond hard drive with all the agents names in Skyfall)

I laughed out loud on a plane when hacker genius Julia Stiles started downloading a folder labeled BLACK OPS in the latest Bourne movie.

Feeling the American 'Elementary' way more than this

What a mess. Gatiss has a big problem with structuring a 90 minute story. the last 3 episodes have all been bad. OTOH this means i am fine with them dropping the rupert murdoch murder cliffhanger.

the cases that flashed by weren't clever, didn't make sense, didn't involve any clues, and felt like a first draft to be filled in later. was there ever a reason given for why watson's house had been repainted?

gun & pool fights looked awful and added nothing. agra bond plot was a bore. part of the fault is "the sign of four", the weakest doyle sherlock novel. at least a study in scarlet was enjoyably bad!

i can't work out how ammo/amo was supposed to be a hint. there's a person who used the codename "love", and... it wasn't her?

i liked the 5-minute mystery with the cars.

Where have I seen the dressing like a chair trick before? It seemed familiar.

this thing?
http://www.businessinsider.com/man-attempts-to-illegally-enter-us-by-disguising-himself-as-a-car-seat-2016-7

it was this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nHxBux1JAg

which i think is an advert based on something that the same guy did a few years earlier - taking an 'empty' car through a drive-thru, for the lolz.

I saw one in a museum in Berlin, about the ways people got through the iron curtain - they had the car with the fake seat, and a mannequin inside.

tbqh, that seemed like one of those "it's in the Conan Doyle original", like the question is not so much "how did he die" rather than "why would he do that?" (I know, I know, there weren't cars back in the 1890s and so on)

A bit like that old one about the hanging guy with only a pool of water underneath him..

Also..

I know we are in the future now and all that, but a tracking device inserted into a USB stick?

Shrines to M.Thatcher. Who does that? nobody, that's who.

right?

Oh, it wouldn't surprise me if some rabid Tory arseholes did.

Though they'd be voting UKIP these days.

I'd normally roll my eyes at nitpicking about credibility but everything about this was just egregiously terrible and insulting. The Thatcher shrine was the single most believable element.

I don't imagine that Mary will return - it would be pleasant from the point of view that I quite like the actress and he writes well for her on a scene-to-scene basis. It would also be quite surprising because the actress has recently separated from Martin Freeman.

But mostly there is noting in Moffatt's history of Heroic Men and the Women who Facilitate Them that suggests this would be a feint.

I didn't realise they'd split up. Would've been better to kill him and keep her then, really. Could still be Sherlock & Watson, just a more interesting Watson. Plus it'd be easier from a scheduling perspective.

He doesn't seem to have much coming up, but otherwise I approve of your plan.

was there ever a reason given for why watson's house had been repainted?

I'm not really a devotee of this show and was only half-watching as I walked in and out of the room doing other things but even if I was a rabid fanboy I don't think this question would ever occur to me.

presumably we find out in the extras on the dulux edition

I like how they compressed the actual mystery-solving into a dismissive handful of incoherent text message montages. It was a hearty fuck you to everyone who enjoys the idea of Sherlock Holmes actually solving mysteries instead of spending the entire episode on the tragic family life of John the Bus Stop Pickup Artist and his wife Mary, Ex-Superspy with her Signature... Dice and USB Thumb Drive. Just the dumbest possible bullshit they could come up with to hang a bunch of unearned pathos on. The same thing that makes recent Doctor Who unwatchable.

Just the dumbest possible bullshit they could come up with to hang a bunch of unearned pathos on.

The average viewer takes little or no pleasure in intellectual pursuits, but far prefers the luxurious sensation of wallowing in unearned pathos. Pleasing that average viewer is what makes for the biggest audience and greatest commercial success. /captainobvious

people love to repaint their homes, especially when they're having a kid

I'd normally roll my eyes at nitpicking about credibility but everything about this was just egregiously terrible and insulting. The Thatcher shrine was the single most believable element.

The Scottish accent of the woman on the bus was pretty unbelievable.