Holmes Set Loose Upon NYC

Earlier this year, I wrote that there were no new compelling TV shows in the fall lineup. Well, I am here now to declare myself a liar. Recently, a friend was telling me about the new CBS show Elementary, which features a modern-day Sherlock Holmes, and how she was enjoying it. Previously I had heard only a little bit about the show and didn’t think I would be interested. After her recommendation though, I decided to give it a try.

Once I watched the pilot of Elementary, I dove right into the rest of the episodes that have aired so far (albeit there’s only been four all together). The show is on Thursday evenings, but since I watch all my TV on the web now, that means I have to wait until Fridays to watch the latest episode. I know many people love to go out on the town on Fridays, declaring it the beginning of the weekend and all kinds of fun, but I’m generally exhausted by then. I like to stay home, do some laundry, catch up other things, and watch something on Hulu or Netflix. So I’m pretty pleased that Elementary will be available to me on Fridays; I’m already sensing it will be become part of my Friday routine.

But less about my dull life and more about the show! Elementary, as I’ve already mentioned, is a modern-day take on Sherlock Holmes. Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller) is a recovering drug addict, having picked up a nasty heroin addiction while in London. In order to stay in his father’s good graces (and thus retain residence in his New York City apartment), Holmes has been assigned a sobriety partner in the person of Joan Watson (Lucy Liu), a former surgeon. Having met police captain Gregson (Aidan Quinn) in the past and wowed him with his powers of deductions, Holmes has managed to secure himself a position as a NYC police consultant, helping with tough-to-crack kidnappings and murders. Rounding out the cast of characters is police detective Marcus Bell (Jon Michael Hill).

First off, let’s start by looking at the characters that make up Elementary. One of the most compelling things – if not the compelling thing – about the show is the character of Holmes. Expertly played by Jonny Lee Miller, who I have loved in the past (excepting the terrible disappointment of Dark Shadows), Elementary’s Holmes is a great new take on a classic character. Sure, A.C. Doyle’s Holmes didn’t require a sobriety partner per se, but he was indeed a habitual drug user. For just one instance of this, in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, it is noted that Sherlock spends his time “buried among his old books, and alternating from week to week between cocaine and ambition, the drowsiness of the drug, and the fierce energy of his own keen nature.”

We are first introduced to Holmes in Elementary with a woman departing from his residence; Holmes quickly explains to Watson that he has no interest in relationships but is occasionally driven by his animal nature to seek out sex. While Elementary’s Watson later insists this is because Holmes is afraid of commitment, A.C. Doyle’s Dr. Watson explains of Holmes: “All emotions, and that one [love] particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind. He was, I take it, the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has seen, but as a lover he would have placed himself in a false position. He never spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe and a sneer. They were admirable things for the observer—excellent for drawing the veil from men’s motives and actions. But for the trained reasoner to admit such intrusions into his own delicate and finely adjusted temperament was to introduce a distracting factor which might throw a doubt upon all his mental results. Grit in a sensitive instrument, or a crack in one of his own high-power lenses, would not be more disturbing than a strong emotion in a nature such as his.” Doyle’s frequent references to Sherlock’s cold and reasoning mind have lead some to suspect that he might have Asperser’s syndrome; Jonny Lee Miller plays Holmes in this way also – he is often brusque and unfeeling in his speech to others, particularly potential suspects, witnesses, and even friends and family of victims. At times, he is downright dismissive of Watson, saying things like, “Situations like these cases require my total concentration. I talk to you, never the other way around.” or “For future reference. When I say I agree with you, it means I'm not listening.” But while he’s sometimes irritatingly arrogant, he’s also lovably quirky and endearing.

And, of course, the Sherlock Holmes of Elementary is a stickler for details, observant to a fault, highly knowledgeable, and able to draw large inferences from the slightest thing seemingly off at a crime scene. In this respect, he is very much like his 19^th century counterpart, who has famously said such things as, “It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.” But, in line with bringing things into the 21^st century, this Holmes also uses Google to make some of his pronouncements and loves the brevity of texting. And while this Holmes does have a superiority complex that allows him to view himself as above the police, he seems to value them more than the original Sherlock and certainly relies upon them more as he does not (as of yet) take in any private consulting cases. This is very unlike Doyle’s Holmes who primarily worked on private cases, which only occasionally called for the assistance of the police.

Elementary’s Watson, however, does not strike me as very similar to her 19^th century counterpart. For starters, I think the show’s creators missed a golden opportunity by not making her a veteran like Doyle’s Dr. Watson – it just seems too absurd not to when history has conspired to make it possible to plausibly have a modern-day Watson also be an army surgeon who served in Afghanistan. And wouldn’t it have been delicious for Holmes’s first line when meeting Watson to be, “You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive,” as he pronounced upon their initial acquaintance in A Study in Scarlet? But, I have to admit that Watson’s past, hinted at only briefly so far, as a surgeon who lost a patient under suspicious circumstances could potentially become more interesting and add some depth to her character. (Of course, I could also argue that making her an army vet, perhaps suffering from what she’s seen of war, could provide depth and an interesting back story that continues to surface occasionally.) I do love that the creators decided to make Watson female in this version, showing that these characters can indeed transcend time, place, and even sex.

But, unfortunately, so far I have found Watson to be a fairly dull character. True, I doubt many people would have devoured – and continue to do so – the original Sherlock Holmes canon for Watson alone, but I felt that telling the stories through his eyes always gave the reader a tenderness toward Watson and a feeling that he had a more active role in the cases. Making Watson a sobriety partner rather than a retired army surgeon with times on his hands changes that dynamic very much. Instead of Watson coming along to help unravel a mystery out of his own interest or Holmes’s request for assistance of some sort or another, Watson is merely tagging along out of necessity and frequently standing on the sidelines without engaging at all.

However, there have been a few times already when Watson has provided medical knowledge or has somehow figured into Holmes’s scheming to get information or signal the police for assistance. I hope to see more of this in the future, with Elementary’s Watson taking on an increasing role just as Doyle’s Watson did over time, reaching the point where Holmes could say of his assistant in The Hound of the Baskervilles: “I am bound to say that in all the accounts which you have been so good as to give of my own small achievements you have habitually underrated your own abilities. It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it. I confess, my dear fellow, that I am very much in your debt.” Perhaps not the praise most of would want to hear, but coming from Sherlock Holmes, that is a very high compliment indeed. Still, the writers of this show aren’t far off from reaching this kind of level between their Holmes and Watson, and the language they use to express it is similar, with Holmes telling Watson, “You know Watson, I take it all back. I'm beginning to find the chat that accompanying your companionship extremely useful. It's like white noise. It puts me in a state where I think and obverse better.”

At this time, I can’t really recall anything else I’ve seen with Lucy Liu in it, but her name is a big enough draw for many viewers I suppose. However, I’ve been a bit disappointed in her performance as Watson. There doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of nuance in her acting, and it hasn’t served to counteract the flatness I currently see in the character, as outlined above.

My bigger concern with Elementary’s Watson though is that she is only contracted to remain Holmes’s sobriety partner for six weeks. With four episodes already passing (generally considered in TV time to be four weeks then), there are only two more weeks where she is required to be Holmes’s constant companion. After that time, what will happen? Will we see Watson no longer? Or will the show’s writers need to come up with some other contrived premise to keep her around to continue to help Holmes in his work?

Similar to Watson but to a greater degree, Captain Gregson and Detective Bell are pretty dull and flat characters. Right now, Gregson’s main purpose seems to be to provide the details of a given case and support Holmes’s seemingly wild deductions based on their past history. Meanwhile, Bell mostly serves as a sounding board for Holmes, always questioning the validity of Holmes’s assertions, only to find out later that Holmes was indeed correct. It would be nice at some point if we got a bit more out of these characters, although I don’t think it’s strictly necessary that they become more fleshed out characters in order for this show to work. Between the show’s four main characters, there’s a fair amount of diversity in terms of age, ethnicity/race, and sex, which I'm always pleased to see on a TV show.

Next off, no discussion of this show would be complete without looking at the cases delved into each week. So far, they have been you standard, run-of-the-mill crime show cases: kidnappings and murders. To that end, there’s a bit of sensationalism in some of the show’s scenes, particularly the opening sequence of the pilot episode. But compared to the many rather gory crime shows on TV now (think Bones, Criminal Minds, NCIS, etc.), the show is focused more on revealing the thought process behind solving a crime than on autopsies and gun fights with suspects. Although the crimes are typical of what you see on other detective shows, the solutions are rather convoluted in order that the writers might show off Sherlock’s prowess in deducting from rather insignificant clues that the obvious solution is in fact not the right one.

While it seems unlikely at this point, I’d like a break from all the violence and murder we see on so many other TV shows. It would be nice to get some cases that involve more mundane – but certainly no less interesting – events. I’m thinking of the many odd cases that A. C. Doyle created for the original Sherlock Holmes, which varied from retrieving a scandalous photograph for a member of royalty to tracking down the mysterious “red-headed league” and reclaiming a member’s dues to determining whether or not a young woman should take an offered role to be a governess for a family out in the countryside. While these may seem insignificant, these cases are always absorbing to read about and usually develop into something larger than they first appear. And, as A.C. Doyle’s Holmes points out, “Singularity is almost invariably a clue. The more featureless and commonplace a crime is, the most difficult it is to bring it home.” Right now, Elementary’s cases are pretty commonplace for TV crime shows and not particularly singular. But because the show’s writers have decided to go the course of having Holmes be a consultant for the police only and taking on no private cases, it’s unlikely we’ll see any mysteries in the vein of the ones seen in the original stories.

On a final note, as this has gone on rather longer than I expected, there’s a few things from the original series that haven’t transferred over to this new show that I really think should have. The first is another golden missed opportunity – wouldn’t it just be fun if Holmes and Watson lived at 221B Baker Street in New York, just like their 19^th century counterparts did in London? It seems wrong to have Holmess and not have Baker Street. Maybe that’s just me. The second is that Holmes as written by A.C. Doyle was a master of disguise as suited the purposes of his cases. It would entertaining to see Jonny Lee Miller as Holmes do so also, but again I think the character may be limited by the choice of having Watson as a sobriety companion rather than army vet roommate – Holmes and Watson are not allowed to be apart more than two hours, so unless Watson also joins in the fun and games of dressing up for a case, it would be difficult for Holmes to do an extended undercover ruse requiring a disguise. And, finally, there is Holmes’s archenemy, Moriarty. There are rumors that the show will introduce such a character eventually, and I don’t think it’s necessary for him – or her – to have arrived so quickly into the series so on this particular front, I’m happy with how things stand at the moment.

And, since the power went out while I was beginning this post and didn’t come back on for days, it’s now almost Friday again and I can look forward to the next episode of this show!

Down the Rabbit Hole: Phoebe in Wonderland

Some of you may know that I have a slight obsession with all things Alice in Wonderland, so when my cousin proposed that we watch the movie Phoebe in Wonderland, I was happy to comply. (I had been meaning to get around to it anyway, so this was as good a time as any.)

Phoebe in Wonderland is about a 9-year-old girl (the titular Phoebe) who is an outcast at her rigid, rule-bound school but feels things might change with the addition of Miss Dodger, a quirky new drama teacher who encourages everyone to sign up for the school play, Alice in Wonderland. After much debate, Phoebe signs up for auditions and wins the role of Alice. While all seems to be going well on the theater front, all is clearly not well with Phoebe at school and at home. She suffers from a severely debilitating case of OCD (her hands are raw from obsessive hand-washing and her knees are scrapped up from jumping up and down the stairs in a specific pattern instead of merely descending), she confesses she cannot help but say or do certain things, and she is having hallucinations (all of which are wrapped up in the Alice storyline in some way). Despite all this evidence, however, her mother Hillary is insistent that Phoebe is just a regular child and does not have any kind of disorder.

This film was very different from what I expected from the brief blurbs given about it. My thoughts were that the movie would be a quirky surrealistic film about a young girl's imagination. Instead, it was a dramatic look at a neurodevelopmental disorder and its effects not just on the sufferer but her family as well. Indeed, the movie belonged more to Hillary than Phoebe, even if Phoebe is the one on screen more. The movie's story arc is more about Hillary's coming to terms with the idea that her daughter is not just a typical child and finding the help she needs to cope with her disorder and still be herself. Some of the most poignant scenes in the film belong to her, such as when the psychiatrist Hillary hires first tells his diagnosis and she refuses to believe it outwardly, ranting about how doctors just want to prescribe medication instead of letting kids be kids while the tears on her distorted face indicate that on a deeper level, she knows he is right. Another powerful scene comes when her husband tries to apologize for an earlier insensitive remark and Hillary responds with a whole list of things that frustrate her, including her inability to understand what is wrong with her daughter or how to help her. Still another emotional scene occurs when Hillary goes to comfort a scared Phoebe waking up from a nightmare; Hillary notices Phoebe's battered knees and both mother and daughter cry for different reasons. There are plenty of other such scenes of Hillary's struggle with mothering a special needs child as well as her other daughter who sometimes wishes that she had another sibling that she didn't have to take care of and explain away her actions to others, despite being the younger one.

In addition to these deep scenes and themes, there are a number of other messages underlying in this movie. There's the power of art as a redemptive force, as seen in the play's ability to largely subsume Phoebe's symptoms. Likewise, theater - and especially Miss Dodger - encourages the school's children to be who they are and learn how to direct their own paths. Fitting in or rather, not fitting in, is a recurring element in the movie. It is not just Phoebe and her lack of friendships with most of her peers. There's her one and only true friend at school, Jamie, a young boy who happily plays with dolls and hopes for the role of the Queen of Hearts in the upcoming school musical. And, it's also her younger sister, who is wise beyond her years and dresses up as Karl Marx for Halloween, goes on a hunger strike when she learns their dinner was not made with cage-free poultry, and worries that at 7 years old she has not produced as much as the 6-year-old Mozart did.

There's some brilliant acting throughout the film, especially by young Elle Fanning as Phoebe and Felicity Huffman as Hillary. Miss Dodger, as played by Patricia Clarkson, was an interesting character as well, with some suspecting that she can relate so well to Phoebe because she, too, has a disorder - quite possibly she has Asperger's syndrome. In addition, the filmography is mostly well done, although there was an occasional scene that was too abrupt or seemed misplaced. Throughout, I found the dialogue to be very quiet while the music soared incredibly loudly, although this is not a problem unique to this movie alone. (It is a continual pet peeve of mine to have be continually changing the volume because filmmakers seem to think that the spoken word should be barely audible but the soundtrack should blast your eardrums off.)

All and all, this is a very interesting movie, but certainly a more serious one that I was expecting. Don't go into this one looking for some light-hearted, quirky fun -- but do go in to it to explore how difficult life could be for a child - and a family - going through the process of suffering from something unknown and finally learning - and making peace with - what this unknown factor is.

It's Elementary: Spotting Characters with Asperger's Syndrome in Popular Culture

I just started reading The Last Sherlock Holmes Story by Michael Dibdin, a pastiche of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous works, and a short phrase near the beginning caught my interest - Watson refers to Holmes’s cold-hearted rationale. This made me think of the character Temperance Brennan on the TV show Bones, who could sometimes be described in the same way. From there my brain immediately jumped to, does Sherlock Holmes have Asperger’s syndrome?

Some other things about Holmes’s behavior suddenly clicked and I could not stop thinking of Holmes as having Asperger’s. I googled “Sherlock Holmes + Asperger’s” and came up with more than half a million results, so I’m guessing I’m not the only one who’s had this theory! One person even came to this conclusion from the recent Sherlock Holmes movie, although I have to admit it didn’t occur to me when viewing the movie (even after a second viewing, which was necessary after an unfortunate technical error meant the movie theater I saw it in the first time was unable to play the last 10-15 minutes of the movie).

One of these Google results linked to an article from The New York Times, in which it is tossed around that Sherlock Holmes might be bipolar (while I can see where this theory comes from, I find this diagnosis less likely) or have Asperger’s syndrome. An interesting point to me was the final sentence of the article: “…clearly Holmes’s peculiarities have a persistent appeal. Just look at Temperance Brennan of “Bones,” Adrian Monk of “Monk,” and, of course, Gregory House of “House,” who exhibit at least a few Asperger-like symptoms and owe much to Sherlock Holmes.”

As I mentioned above, Brennan from Bones came to mind immediately in comparison with Sherlock Holmes. And while Monk’s creators had Sherlock Holmes’s methods of observation in mind for their beloved character, I think Adrian’s battles with OCD and a myriad of phobias are enough and he doesn’t need another diagnosis. (I’ve never thought of him as having Asperger’s anyway and still don’t think of it now even with prompting.) I never watched House so I don’t know about its eponymous character’s display or lack of Asperger-like symptoms.

The article, however, missed two other characters in pop culture today who clearly display Asperger-like tendencies even if they are not explicitly labeled as having Asperger’s – Sheldon from Big Bang Theory (again, I haven’t viewed this show myself but I’ve heard this explanation of Sheldon enough to feel comfortable repeating it) and Dr. Spencer Reid on Criminal Minds, who is one of my favorite TV characters on the air today. Reid, who arguably can read a lot more body language, nuance, etc. than he should be able to if he actually had Asperger’s, has a way of adding charming humor to an otherwise dark show. (Don’t get me wrong, I like Criminal Minds, but it can be incredibly intense at times and needs a ray of sunshine, no matter how weak). Just take some of Reid’s contributions to conversations otherwise all about crime:

Reid: How about pharmaceuticals? No one gets therapy these days without a healthy dose of medication.

Garcia: What are you implying Reid?

Reid: That everyone is medicated.

Garcia: Did you just make a joke?

Reid: No, I mean, statistics, they show that…

Garcia: Reid, next time, just say yes.

Reid: Statistically, 94% of all serial arsonists are male, 75% are white and few, if any, are ever caught.
Prentiss: Few? You don’t have a percentage?
Reid: 16%. Those 16% set 30 plus fires before they’re ever apprehended. I’m trying to be more conversational.
Prentiss: Oh. It’s not working.

Hotchner: Well, define love.

Reid: Chemically, it involves surging brain elements called monoamines, dopamines, norepinephrine, and serotonin. Love chemicals controlled by phenethylamine, also found in-

Prentiss: Chocolate. I love chocolate.

Reid [excited]: Peas, too! It’s also found in peas!

In line with The New York Times writer’s assertion about the “persistent appeal” of the “peculiarities” of Asperger-like symptoms, I had been interested to see when TV.com had a “favorite smarty-pants” contest late last year, in the top three were Brennan from Bones and Reid from Criminal Minds. Sheldon from Big Bang Theory and House from House were also on the list. Though Abby Sciuto from NCIS ultimately won, the contest certainly said something about the ability of Asperger’s characters to hold the interest of audiences. So much for their lack of social skills!

TV also introduced an acknowledged Asperger’s character with young Max Braverman in last year’s new show Parenthood. The show has been hailed as an honest look at a family’s struggles of dealing with an Asperger’s diagnosis. Try as I might, this show held no interest for me (for a variety of reasons, not particularly the presence or absence of a storyline involving Asperger’s), although I do think that assessment rings true from the few episodes I watched early on in the first season.

And the big screen also had an acknowledged Asperger’s character with the 2009 film Adam. While I had some problems with this movie, Hugh Dancy’s portrayal of a character with Asperger’s was not one of them, and the film gave audiences a fair amount of factual information about Asperger’s syndrome without being overly didactic. Of course, it seems like the kind of movie that would appeal to people who already had some knowledge on the topic, so that’s a bit of a drawback.

It’s late and I’m not sure that my rambling makes sense to anyone besides me, so I think it’s time for me to sign off on this post.