Friday, May 17, 2013

Season Wrap Up on Elementary **SPOILERS**

Well, that was... trite. Even predictable, that finale. So Irene never really existed, she was Moriarty all along, and "Irene" was Sherlock's Mirror of Erised... everything he really ever wanted, and deeply distracting. And when she proved not to be distracting enough, she was taken away to pull the carpet out from under him. And if you couldn't spot this within the first couple of minutes (or even get inklings right from the start of the Moriarty arc), then you really haven't been paying close attention.

I've watched Elementary right from the beginning, and initially I was prepared to hate it. To my very great surprise, I didn't hate it. I found Miller's take on the character entertaining, and his relationship with Captain Gregson a mite touching. The episodes were enjoyable as little mysteries, but nothing too taxing on the cerebellum. It's been a decent procedural with a bit of flair, so I've kept with it.

As an adaption of Holmes, though (and I'm not even a ACD fanatic) it's disappointing, primarily because it doesn't really go to creative risks. Sure, they changed Watson's gender and ethnicity, they changed Moriarty's Gender, and made Mrs. Hudson transgendered. Of the three of them, though, they only bothered to do anything interesting with the lattermost.

Joan Watson is boring. Sure, she gives the dialogue adequately, and she's learning Sherlock's trade. She's gone from one profession to another, but she's not really grown as a person at all. She's learned new skills, but she's the same boring person she was at the beginning. There's just no chemistry at all between Liu and Miller. They get into scenes together, they say their lines, but the don't really interact. Occasionally Liu gets the serious "Oh, no. Is he gonna relapse" face on, but they don't really bounce off each other. There's little if any conflict between them. And frankly, there's more UST between Freeman and Cumberbatch than there is between Liu and Miller, not that UST is required, but just sayin'.

And then there's Moriarty. Take away the change in Gender, and she's Moriarty by the numbers. She's a posh, level-headed criminal mastermind who mostly operates through intermediaries and proxies. It's just Moriarty as Moriarty has been played, just played by a woman. And this has made me realize how little the gender swaps matter at all. Changing a person's gender might, on the surface, seem like a risky, creative thing to do, but, in reality, it's just obvious and unimaginative. I know that Sherlock's version of Moriarty has split most down the middle, many finding his Joker-like madman of a Moriaty too OTT, but say what you want, they did something legitimately different with the character. Making him the unhinged counterpoint to Sherlock's controlled logic was a Moriarty that had never been done before. The Dormer Moriarty is just the same old Moriarty with a different gender.

Now Miss Hudson, that's the only time they added something to a character, really. Not because she's transgendered... true, it's never been done before, but like I said above... the gender doesn't matter so much as what you do with the character. And Elementary gave Miss Hudson a life outside of Sherlock's flat. Making her the lovelorn inspirational muse currently between geniuses... well, that's genuinely an aspect of the Hudson character that's been made just for this version. So, accolades there.

Over all, I've found Elementary entertaining, but ultimately disappointing so far. It's better than I felt it had any chance of being at the beginning, but falls just short of what it could be.