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Author Topic: Sherlock  (Read 4609 times)

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Thad

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Sherlock
« on: January 03, 2009, 05:41:37 PM »

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Mongrel

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Re: Sherlock
« Reply #1 on: January 03, 2009, 08:57:56 PM »

Quote
Moffat will move 221b Baker St. to modern London and lighten the feel comedically.


We need a "DANGER! DANGER WILL ROBINSON!" emote.
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Thad

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Re: Sherlock
« Reply #2 on: July 25, 2010, 09:35:40 PM »

Moffat to do modern Sherlock Holmes.

Quote
Moffat will move 221b Baker St. to modern London and lighten the feel comedically.


We need a "DANGER! DANGER WILL ROBINSON!" emote.

It was, in fact, pretty good!  I wouldn't describe it as "light" or "comical", though it DID have Moffat-y banter that made for some laughs.

The modern setting didn't distract -- sure, Watson's journal is a blog and everybody's got cell phones, but it feels a hell of a lot more like Sherlock Holmes than the Guy Ritchie movie did.

The weakest part of the story IS the mystery -- for all that Holmes is supposed to be the world's greatest detective, it takes him too long to figure out who the murderer is.  Watson, likewise, only has his attention called to one of the clues because on TV shows, computers constantly make noises for no discernible reason.

Sherlock himself is an interesting protagonist -- he'll spout a Doctor-y line now and again, but he's not the Doctor; he's ruthless and utterly lacking in empathy.  (He refers to himself at one point as "a high-functioning sociopath".)  But Benedict Cumberbatch makes him likeable.  Martin Freeman does quite a good job as Watson; I wasn't expecting I'd buy him as an Afghanistan vet, but he does just fine in a serious role.

All in all, not as good as Jekyll, but satisfying.  I'll keep watching.
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Niku

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Re: Sherlock
« Reply #3 on: July 26, 2010, 06:20:06 AM »

All in all, not as good as Jekyll, but satisfying.

And on the bright side, it might not go off the rails like Jekyll did at the end.  I mean, Jekyll was still entertaining, but the last episode or two were just kinda off.

Next episode, Sherlock fights a land war in Asia.
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Thad

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Re: Sherlock
« Reply #4 on: August 02, 2010, 08:12:14 PM »

Second Sherlock: writing not nearly on par with the first, though the direction was probably better.  The climax was pure bullshit (Watson quivering and scared instead of the cool, confident military man in last week's climax -- but still an improbably good aim!), but the rest of the episode was pretty okay.
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Büge

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Re: Sherlock
« Reply #5 on: August 03, 2010, 04:01:00 AM »

Yes, but was he obsessed with jam?
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Thad

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Re: Sherlock
« Reply #6 on: August 08, 2010, 08:18:46 PM »

Bit of an odd one this week.  I quite liked the Batman/Joker thing they've worked up with Holmes and Moriarty, and I PARTICULARLY liked the talking-through-other-people bit.  But the hour-and-a-half runtime's starting to kill me and they're playing a bit of a dangerous game by making Sherlock so thoroughly unsympathetic and unlikable -- there needs to be a payoff here; you can only do the "Is Batman as bad as the criminals he fights?" theme for so long without reminding the audience that the answer is in fact "No."

Oh, and I understand you need to bring a certain amount of suspension of disbelief to any show, but there's a point where it breaks down.  A man who can trace intimate details about people based on trivial details that a normal person would never notice?  Eh, okay, I'll buy that conceit.  The smartest man in the world NOT FUCKING KNOWING THAT THE EARTH REVOLVES AROUND THE SUN?! on the other hand, may make for a couple cheap laughs, but IT IS NOT EVEN REMOTELY PLAUSIBLE.

Direction good overall; overbearing in the planetarium scene but interesting and memorable nonetheless.  I've seen some hate directed at the pop-up text messages but they work all right for me -- I particularly like one shot where the message shrinks as the camera zooms out, like it's part of the background.  Little bit of an Eisner vibe.

So uh apparently that was it.  Hoping there's more and they don't pull a Jekyll and just leave it there.  Course, where Jekyll actually works ending the way it did, I don't think this one does; will be very disappointed if that's the end.
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Bal

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Re: Sherlock
« Reply #7 on: August 08, 2010, 08:57:00 PM »

No Jeremy Brett = No sell. Yes yes, I know he's dead.
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Mongrel

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Re: Sherlock
« Reply #8 on: August 09, 2010, 02:51:27 AM »

No Jeremy Brett = No sell. Yes yes, I know he's dead.

:hi5:

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TA

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Re: Sherlock
« Reply #9 on: September 02, 2010, 02:49:36 PM »

There is a second set of episodes planned to air next August.  Long wait, but then, damn good show.

The whole heliocentrism thing was in the original books, but then the books always were kind of silly.
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inyandep

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Re: Sherlock
« Reply #10 on: September 02, 2010, 03:29:09 PM »

The smartest man in the world NOT FUCKING KNOWING THAT THE EARTH REVOLVES AROUND THE SUN?! on the other hand, may make for a couple cheap laughs, but IT IS NOT EVEN REMOTELY PLAUSIBLE.

Quote from: Arthur Conan Doyle, "A Study in Scarlet"
My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar System. That any civilized human being in this nineteenth century should not be aware that the earth travelled round the sun appeared to be to me such an extraordinary fact that I could hardly realize it.

"You appear to be astonished," he said, smiling at my expression of surprise. "Now that I do know it I shall do my best to forget it."

"To forget it!"

"You see," he explained, "I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skilful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones."

"But the Solar System!" I protested.

"What the deuce is it to me?" he interrupted impatiently; "you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work."

like TA said, it's just a throwback to the original books, wherein it was really no less ludicrous. but there you have it. sherlock holmes is just the greatest autist ever
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Dooly

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Re: Sherlock
« Reply #11 on: September 02, 2010, 04:01:12 PM »

So Sherlock Holmes only retains information that's convenient to him?  He sounds like a Tea Partier.
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inyandep

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Re: Sherlock
« Reply #12 on: September 02, 2010, 04:23:51 PM »

well, he doesn't retain information that's explicitly contrary to fact either so.
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Royal☭

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Re: Sherlock
« Reply #13 on: September 02, 2010, 07:43:56 PM »

well, he doesn't retain information that's explicitly contrary to fact either so.

Quote from: Arthur Conan Doyle, "A Study in Scarlet"
"But the Solar System!" I protested.

"What the deuce is it to me?" he interrupted impatiently; "you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work."

So yeah, dude is full on Tea Party.

Although you have to remember that he was written by a man who was tricked into believing in photographs of fairies.

Bal

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Re: Sherlock
« Reply #14 on: September 03, 2010, 06:19:00 PM »

Conan Doyle was a huge spiritualist, and was into basically every kind of magical nonsense to which he was introduced. Case in point, he and Houdini were good friends, except that, no matter how many times Houdini tried to explain that it was all tricks, Conan Doyle was convinced he was a "real" magician. What finally killed their friendship, though, was Houdini's campaign against the spiritualists that were so popular at the time. He thought (quite rightly) that they were misguided charlatans at best, scoundrels at worst, preying on people at their most vulnerable. Conan Doyle on the other hand was obsessively credulous to their claims, particularly after his son died. Which was kind of Houdini's point, but I digress.

Holmes himself is an incredibly rational, grounded person, given the views of his author, and I think the point of that excerpt isn't so much that he doesn't believe that the Earth moves around the sun, but that he does care because knowing that doesn't solve crimes or get him his cocaine.
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Thad

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Re: Sherlock
« Reply #15 on: September 08, 2010, 08:30:18 PM »

...yeah, I've only read a few stories.  After posting that it did occur to me that that was probably in the books, because really, that's pretty much the only way it's at all forgivable.
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Thad

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Re: Sherlock
« Reply #16 on: January 03, 2012, 07:26:58 AM »

they're playing a bit of a dangerous game by making Sherlock so thoroughly unsympathetic and unlikable -- there needs to be a payoff here; you can only do the "Is Batman as bad as the criminals he fights?" theme for so long without reminding the audience that the answer is in fact "No."

Payoff achieved, in an episode that revolves entirely around Sherlock caring about people, in his own damaged way.  And yes, the climax revolves entirely around him casually asserting that caring about people is stupid and makes you sloppy (well, that and a pun that made me literally groan), but his actions throughout the rest of the episode suggest otherwise.

Really some wonderful Moffat dialogue, and a great version of Miss Adler.  A couple of weaknesses, the biggest of which is the MacGuffin.  The show, up to this point, has done a brilliant job of bringing a Victorian series into the twenty-first century, but this time we have an episode that relies fundamentally on a twentieth-century conception of technology.  Moffat can handwave all he wants to try and make it plausible that there's a cellphone with important data stored locally on it, no backups anywhere, and no way to retrieve that data outside of correctly typing in a passcode within a set number of tries, but it's stupid.  Honestly it would have made more sense just to make it a briefcase full of negatives and spend all that handwaving on explaining why she'd be carrying around a briefcase or using film.

(Also, fridge logic time: [spoiler]Even allowing for a phone that uses a 4-digit, case-insensitive alphanumeric passcode, what if she'd spelled it "sure" instead of "sher"?  Pun still works -- arguably better, even -- and Holmes is left with a phone full of melted hard drives.  Because phones have hard drives.[/spoiler])

Those technical quibbles aside (and [spoiler]the far-too-quick resolution of last season's cliffhanger -- though the Stayin' Alive ringtone was a nice touch[/spoiler]), it was pretty excellent.  Indeed, even the 90-minute runtime worked well in this one, not least because of the three clearly-defined acts.

Next week: Hounds of Baskerville.  Looking forward to it.
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Da_Beerman

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Re: Sherlock
« Reply #17 on: January 03, 2012, 12:07:44 PM »

I don't have much to add other than being reminded of Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century

and that three episodes are available on netflix.
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Thad

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Re: Sherlock
« Reply #18 on: January 09, 2012, 08:16:46 PM »

Some good lines this week, but rather a weak denouement.  Sherlock's realization that [spoiler]"hound" is a clue because nobody fucking says "hound"[/spoiler] is quite clever, but the actual solution to what it means does not even remotely approach being a fair mystery.

The [spoiler]fear gas[/spoiler] is just within the realm of plausibility, but only just, and the whole government conspiracy angle felt a little flaccid to me.

Still not bad, but one of the weaker episodes.
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Thad

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Re: Sherlock
« Reply #19 on: January 16, 2012, 07:31:35 PM »

Well!  Quite a good finale, complete with final showdown and [spoiler]pretty unambiguous end for Moriarty[/spoiler].  And a good mystery to keep us until next year.  (Er, there IS going to be a third season, right?)  (EDIT: Yes.)

Prediction: [spoiler]There was a lookalike.  There's a reason that little girl was terrified of Sherlock -- she'd seen his face before.

Molly, clearly, is key to all this somehow; there's a reason Sherlock went to her, and she's conspicuously absent from Moriarty's list of targets.  (Presumably because he saw how Sherlock treated her when they first met.)

Presumably the "IOU"/"I am you" bit is important as well.

Also: as anticlimactic and disappointing as the reveal was on Moriarty's code, it was satisfying in another way: it punctured the show's tendency toward stupid MacGuffins and an absurd approach to computers.  Of COURSE there's no fucking way to crack every security system in the world using a few lines of code, and it's far simpler just to bribe people.  And I like how it was hidden in plain sight: all three people WERE checking their phones when the respective breaches occurred.[/spoiler]

Very satisfying; looking forward to more.
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