Elementary (my dear)

2013-01-14T16:24:02Z

I'm doing a bit better, but still feeling quiet. However, I'm actually feeling genuinely fannish (gasp, I know).

While working on yet another quilt on my best beloved new sewing machine of ADA awesome, I ran out of audiobooks saved to my ipod. Which is kinda shocking, since I had to upgrade my ipod when I blew past the 16 GIG limit on my old one. Ahahahaha. (When a cousin asked me what kind of music I liked, and I answered, 'All kinds!' he seemed skeptical so I handed over my tiny charcoal overlord. Then he looked at my playlists and slowly shook his head. 'You really do like all kinds. You have the Bee Gees and Alice in Chains and Sigur Ros and and folky stuff. And classical. And pop. And grunge. Is this Barry White?' 'Well, yes,' I said. 'You never know when you might need some schmoozy soul, I always say.' 'Huh,' he said, still flipping through the albums. But he quit trying out-music-geek me, which is pretty funny, considering everyone on that side thinks I am the most boring person ever.)

So there I was, working on a simple fabric experiment (more on this in another post) and I wanted something fresh to listen to. I'd just inhaled a few lovely recs and hadn't figured out what to download next. Besides, I thought, it would be fun to switch to TV and maybe give my ears a rest from the earbuds.

I flipped up the laptop and started poking through various free series on Netflix (too weird, too dull, too creepy, too depressing, hmmm) and then Amazon, and found myself remembering that a buddy had mentioned that Lucy Liu was in the recent American adaptation of Sherlock Holmes. I enjoy Sherlock Holmes and I love Lucy Liu.

I wasn't sure about the whole drug addict thing, since TV gets addiction wrong so often (House MD I am looking at you, yes) but.... Lucy Liu. I promised myself I could shut it off at any time and gave it a go.

And I really enjoyed it!

The setup is simple and straightforward. Sherlock is a recovering addict, Watson is his live-in sobriety coach, and together they fight crime.

Sherlock consults for a police captain at the New York Police Department. The captain is played as a solid, thoughtful cop who is both ethical and smart. The captain's semi-assistant is a detective who, while also smart, finds Sherlock deeply irritating (mostly because Sherlock is, in fact, irritating).

In this show, Sherlock is a know-it-all asshole, but not actually sociopathic. He treats people in general rather poorly but he's not cruel and he has some hidden caring. He searches for justice in part because he doesn't like seeing people hurt. As time passes in the show, he begins to care (in his own way) for Watson and to push her to re-engage with the medical practice she left behind.

Watson, for her part, begins as a competent but distant, surgeon who has now become a sobriety coach. She's shown as very honorable and deeply ethical. She won't discuss patients unless she believes their lives are at risk, she thinks of others' well-being over her own, and she is shown again and again as sensible and competent. The disgrace that caused her to stop practising medicine is revealed, over the episodes that I watched, to be a mistake not of hubris or competency or what-have-you, but just....a mistake, as all humans are prone to make sometimes. She feels deep remorse over the mistake, as all ethical people would, and she makes penance as best she can.

I've read criticism of Watson, as her character, as showing her as fallible, as various things.

But I quite like her, and I think the show portrays her quite well. I've met many medicos in my day. Very few admit to human fallibility beyond it being a theoretical possibility that happens only to other people. It takes the very best, the most compassionate, to admit they can screw up. And only by admitting the possibility for those mistakes can such mistakes be prevented. This is dealt with in one episode quite well.

Sherlock himself is brash, snotty, sarcastic, and difficult. But since he always came off that way in the books, I don't mind.

Personally, I'm planning to watch the rest of the shows available on Amazon and, if I get a good plot bunny, might happily craft a bit of Watson fic.

Also, to tie this back to my beginning.... I instantly the recognized the music as it came on. What's my favorite independent Canadian cellist doing on a mainstream TV show? I have no idea! But there she was and continued to be, from episode to episode, her haunting melodies creating great theme and set music. Check her out here: http://www.zoekeating.com/

ETA: If you happen to have fic/vids/podfic about Joan Watson being awesome, I sure wouldn't say no.

comments

vom_marlowe

Elementary (my dear)