My More Thoughtful Reaction to the Elementary Pilot

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The weird thing is that, going into watching this show, I was worried that they would get Holmes wrong. And it turned out that the character that bothered me the most was Watson. Not because Watson was a woman, just because…Watson didn’t seem like *Watson* to me. And I really like Lucy Liu! I was really excited about her, I thought she could make a good Watson, and then…she irritated me the whole time. Jonny Lee Miller’s Holmes I actually found reasonably interesting, I could mostly see the interpretation they were taking of that character and he had a couple of good lines, but Lucy Liu’s Watson just bothered me. And I’ve spent some time thinking about why that might be. I mean, does Martin Freeman just own that role that much at this point? I don’t know, maybe. But I think there was more to my dissatisfaction with the show. 

I think part of my issue is this isn’t just a modern AU. Nor is it just a modern AU set in New York. Nor is it just a modern AU set in New York with a female Watson. Nor is it just a modern AU set in New York with a female Watson who is not a soldier. Nor is it just a modern AU set in New York with a female Watson who is not a soldier and also no longer a doctor. It is *all* of these things and, on top of that, they’ve changed the circumstances of the Holmes / Watson meeting so radically that they are basically unrecognizable when compared with the canon. Now I love AUs. I read them voraciously. I *write* them voraciously. But this is just too much AU-ness at once for me, I think. At a certain point, somewhere, they changed one detail too many, and I lost what makes Watson Watson for me, and what makes Holmes & Watson Holmes & Watson for me. And I don’t think that it’s the same for every person, this cut-off point. I mean, some people’s cut-off point is the first AU step and they would never even watch a modern interpretation. But I do think that, somewhere, my cut-off point was met here. (Interestingly, the baseball bit at the end was my favorite bit. I am writing a baseball AU right now, and I felt their interpretation of, at least, what Sherlock Holmes would like about baseball was spot-on, right in line with what I’ve decided.)

Part of the problem with changing the circumstances of the Holmes / Watson meeting so much is that Holmes has no incentive to be even a little bit nice to Watson (which he does canonically), and Watson likewise has no real incentive to think anything about Holmes at all, other than that he’s her job. Watson tags along with Holmes here, but it is (at least initially) because it’s her *job,* and not because of that weird thing that all Holmeses and all Watsons should have that draws them together and keeps them there. I have read AUs that change up how Holmes and Watson meet, and for me the essential inevitability of their connection has to be there, that charge in the air, that instant attraction, not necessarily sexually but in some indefinable way, that these two people have just met their match, that they should have known each other forever. And I didn’t get that from this. I think they were *trying* for it, but for me their efforts at adorable exasperation with each other fell short. 

Now I am aware—trust me, very painfully aware—that I am judging by the standards of “Sherlock.” Maybe that’s unfair to “Elementary,” but, I don’t know, I don’t think it is. If it’s going to keep my interest, a modern AU of Sherlock Holmes should be at least as good as “Sherlock,” I think; otherwise, that position is already filled in my life. I needed “Elementary” to bring something to the table that “Sherlock” was leaving off of it for me. And I didn’t feel that way. Honestly, I felt like “Sherlock” did the beginning of the Holmes / Watson relationship *so* *well* that it almost would have been better not to do an origin story pilot for me here, to just start them off in the middle. I mean, in “Sherlock” there’s that bit where John comments on the mess and Sherlock is like, “Oh, I can tidy up a bit,” and, like, throws a few pieces of paper in a pile and thinks that takes care of it. That is *so* *Holmesian* to me, that absent-minded desire to please Watson in some way that is so much less than an average person would do but so much more than Holmes would ever do for anyone else. I need to feel like yes, Watson would live with this person, and not just because someone was paying him/her to. Sherlock is absolutely insane, immediately, in “Sherlock,” and he takes John on this incredibly mad adventure, and John clearly loves it, they giggle together and smile at each other and make jokes and they adore each other by the end of the episode, the way Holmes and Watson clearly adored each other by the end of “A Study in Scarlet” and would never be without each other again. I missed that here. I missed the part where Holmes and Watson actually *like* each other. 

I think there’s actually nothing terribly wrong with “Elementary” as a show. In fact, it’s probably a very good procedural. But for *me* and for what makes Holmes so beloved by *me,* it has nothing to do with Sherlock Holmes. In fact, I kind of resent a little bit that they put Holmes’s name on it, because it made me watch a show I would otherwise never watch. I’m not big on standard CSI-style procedurals, they freak me out a little bit, and under normal circumstances, without the Sherlock Holmes label, I would never have tried out “Elementary.” Without the Sherlock Holmes label, I would never have tried out “Sherlock,” either. I tried them both. I went into “Sherlock” with no real expectations, and I was blown away (I will tell you the exact moment I knew I would love the show forever and ever: Sherlock telling John he pickpockets Lestrade when Lestrade’s being annoying. I thought that line was pitch-perfect). I went into “Elementary” thinking that, for me to watch it, it had to be as good as “Sherlock,” because that’s where the bar had been set for me for modern Sherlock Holmes AUs. And, *for me personally,* it just didn’t hit that. (Would it have been different if “Elementary” had come first? I have no idea. I’m not sure it would have been, but, I don’t know, maybe? I do know I like Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock Holmes better than Robert Downey, Jr.’s, and I liked Robert Downey, Jr.’s quite well enough when I watched the Sherlock Holmes movie, so it’s not like the first thing I watched was necessarily, to me, the *best* thing I watched.)

Anyway, I felt like I needed to think through this whole thing, to come to terms with how I felt about it, and hopefully a few of you found the rambling at least semi-interesting. Probably the most telling thing about all of this is that, as soon as I finished “Elementary,” I put “A Study in Pink” on. You know what? For *me*, it’s still perfect.