Tuesday, October 1, 2013

In-Class Movie: Elementary - "Step Nine" (2013)

“No, the murderer has escaped.”
Sherlock Holmes smiled demurely.
“Your Grace can hardly have heard of any small reputation which I possess, or you would not imagine that it is so easy to escape me.”

--Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Adventure of the Priory School”

Austin: Now I'm the one feeling like the addict.

We've quit this show. Then I tweeted the Super Bowl episode. Then we reviewed the last four of the season. Now we're back for the premiere and once again.....I just want to quit the show. I know it's the name of our blog and our initial premise, but we need to stop this.

The last four episodes gave me some hope. I really liked one of them and it did some interesting things. Now we have this big premiere that was filmed in London where we get to meet Lestrade and Mycroft and see 221B and.....all of them felt worthless.

If you didn't know the show, could you tell which one was Sherlock and which one was Mycroft?

The mystery that drives Sherlock back to the most emotional place on the Earth is flimsy and forgettable. There is no drama about him returning. Mycroft has no personality. Lestrade, I actually liked quite a bit thanks to Sean Pertwee. (Yes, he is the son of the Third Doctor because--everyone together--there are only 15 British actors.) Pertwee brought this extra energy and friction that I've been craving on this show. And yet once the mystery started, that all faded away to the point where I forgot he was in the room. There was this really poor attempt at character study by saying that he craves attention, but that was only done because Sherlock kept repeating it over and over again. (Just like how Mycroft is lazy. No evidence of it; just Sherlock repeating it.)