'Elementary' S3E5 - 'Ripoff' - only if you just go by the case itself.

The episode opens with a women walking down the sidewalk, talking on her cell, and she steps into a rather deep puddle (what do you expect when you talk on the phone while walking). Uncovered in the rather deep puddle, is a severed hand.
But no body.
Holmes and Kitty are called in to consult, at which time Holmes does some rather nice deductive work to explain where the body may have ended up.
Now the rest of the mystery is rather unimportant, because it once again becomes overly convoluted and does not really have anything to do with the episode. The episode once again suggests how unimaginative the writers can sometimes be when writing motives and criminals. And the need for some sort of grotesque crime.

The episode did however give some the other characters in the show a chance to stretch their acting wings a little.
Gregson actually had a story to participate in, and although it came rather out of the blue, it allowed his character a chance to show a little depth.
This is also the first episode where the character of Kitty actually seemed to serve some purpose other than as an irritant. She actually shows enough emotional depth to be not only a help to Gregson, but also to Holmes, who we now have to view as a character who is going to be growing and changing throughout the series. Kitty actually seemed much more capable when not in Joan's shadow. And to be honest, where Canonically we see Holmes and Watson as almost social equals (manners, habits, how they view the world), I have always had the impression in 'Elementary' that Joan has been a little more up-scale than Holmes and that the partnership was always going to be a little strained. Holmes and Kitty seem suited for each other. (Could be the accent thing of course.)

Joan was completely absent from the episode, and for me, was not all that missed. I think Lucy Liu is a very capable actress and could handle any role of Watson that is given her. I do, however, not like the sidekick as equal roll her character is taking, so I found it nice see a sidekick who was just a little less than equal to Holmes skills. I am however of the camp that thinks something big will happen to Kitty because she is turning to much into Watson, and we don't need two Watson's.
Kitty's relationship with Gregson was a pleasant surprise and it gave us a chance to understand a little more about the motives of the two individuals.

I liked the fact that the episode explored Holmes' feelings about Watson's writings, although I believe it was handled, at least his reaction to it, in the usual 'Elementary' childish way. Which now since we see that that is how the show is going to handle most things Holmes finds uncomfortable, we can accept it as the norm and move on from it being unnecessary. We do hear Canonically how Holmes sometimes finds Watson's writings an irritant, but we never really learn how he feels about it. It first comes across as something Holmes finds a complete waste of time. But then eventually we are lead to believe Holmes finds it somewhat flattering. Canonically we also find Holmes is not against others learning of his methods. He is however not a fan of the seeming dramatization of his works.

The case itself, once again, contained to many irrelevant points.
Why was the body stuffed under the car in the first place?
Did the bodybuilder actually look for a key before he ripped the hand off?
Are lawyers so bad in NY that once again they can be bribed to help commit murder? I believe we have seen that plot devise a couple of times.
Would the bodybuilder really roll over that quickly, and what was he already going to jail for anyway?
And surely the body builder knew the case was going to be attached and would have brought some bolt cutters along. Even if he did have the strength to rip a hand off, surely bolt cutters would have been quicker.
The body builder also had no other record other than substance abuse, would he really have been talked into to murder so easily.

Canonical references I imagined;
Holmes' lack of interest in keeping up his paperwork and filing.
His laying on the ground when looking for clues.
His apparent dislike of Watson recording his cases.
The use of dummies to replicate the severing of a hand is reminiscent of BLAC and seeing how much force it would take to harpoon a body and pin it to a wall.

I was hoping the scene where Holmes takes on the body builder in a show of strength would be reminiscent of the Canonical poker scene,

The episode lacked really good deductive and observational craft but made up for it in character I believe. If we, again, now accept that that is what the show will be about, we have to use that as one of the key points of judgement.

On character I give the episode a four, on the case and plot, a two, so on the average I give it;

I did also enjoy this review.

If you have a spare $90,000.00

Strand Magazine

Allow me a moment of wishful thinking. . . .

What if the posting of this image, a tease for sure, meant the special that is still a year away, would be a period Blue Carbuncle. Or at least a period Holmes.
Who of us would not love to see Benedict and Martin in a Victorian production from the Canon.

Just allow me to wish.

Which brings up a good question.

What became of 221b when Holmes finally moved out?
Did the next tenant realize who had lived there?

From the same source. . . .

The Scene of Deduction: Drawing 221B Baker Street

From pen-and-ink sketches to digital renderings, generations of Sherlock Holmes fans have undertaken drafting the detective's famous London flat

By Jimmy Stamp

SMITHSONIAN.COM AUGUST 14, 201

Ernest H. Short’s drawing of 221B Baker St. for The Strand Magazine (image: Ernest H. Short via Sherlockian)

When Sherlock Holmes walks into a crime scene, he displays the uncanny ability to deduce how the crime unfolded: where the criminal entered, how the victim was murdered, what weapons were used, and so on. Meanwhile, Scotland Yard must follow procedure, cordoning off and documenting the crime scene in order to reconstruct the criminal narrative. A crime scene sketch is an important part of this process. Typically, a floor plan is drawn before a building is constructed, but the crime scene sketch is a particularly noteworthy exception, as it not only verifies information in crime scene photographs, but includes dimensions and measurement that establish precise locations of evidence and objects relative to the space of the room. This information, properly obtained, can be used to assist both the investigation and the court case. But what if this investigative method is used on the flat of the world’s most famous detective?

221B Baker Street is rarely the scene of the crime (there are exceptions, such as “The Adventure of the Dying Detective”), but is instead the scene of the deduction, where Sherlock smokes his pipe or plays his violin while unraveling the latest mystery brought to his doorstep. Whether made by pencil or computer, these architectural drawings represent a reversal of the building-plan relationship. We’ve previously described the extent to which some Sherlock Holmes devotees have constructed their own version of 221B in tribute to the great detective. However, those with a curious mind who lack the resources to collect enough Victorian antiques to recreate the famous London flat are not excluded from the game. In fact, their pen-and-paper speculative reconstructions are not limited by cost and space. With such freedom, is it possible to determine what 221B Baker street truly looked like? As with the full reconstructions, there are many different speculative floor plans on 221B, ranging from the crude to the highly detailed. Most of these scholarly drawings are found exclusively in the pages of Sherlockian journals and club publications, but two of the most widely circulated plans will suffice to illustrate the complexities of rendering a literary space.

In 1948, Ernest H. Short drafted what would be one of the more widely circulated and thorough renderings of 221B when it was published in the pages of The Strand Magazine in 1950. Short’s drawing includes the rooms and furniture of Holmes’s flat, as well as sundry artifacts from his adventures and annotations noting the origin of each item. Traces of Holmes’s exploits and evidence of his proclivities line the walls and adorn the shelves. The Baker Street flat is a reflection of its occupant: his violin, his pipe, his costume closet. Chris Redmond, of the expansive Holmesian resource Sherlockian.net has called it “probably the most elegant re-creation of the sitting-room and adjacent rooms in Holmes and Watson’s lodgings.” His claim was likely true until 1995, when illustrator Russell Stutler drew 221B for an article in the Financial Times.

Russell Stutler’s drawing of 221B Baker St. for the Financial Times (image: Russell Stutler)

Stutler created his rendering after reading through every Sherlock Holmes story twice and taking extensive notes of every single detail mentioned about the flat. The details of Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories are full of contradictions that Sherlockians revel in rationalizing, and the various descriptions of Holmes’s flat are no exception. Most famously, “The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone” presents some difficulties for those reconstructing 221B, as evidenced by some of the clumsy resolutions in Short’s drawing. Stutler notes:

“The Adventure of the Beryl Cornet” implies that Holmes’ room (called his “chamber”) is on the floor above the sitting room while “The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone” clearly puts Holmes’ bedroom just off the sitting room where it communicates with the alcove of the bow window. If you need to reconcile these two descriptions you can assume that at some point in time, Holmes moved his bed down to the room next to the sitting room. This could be the same room just off the sitting room which had been used as a temporary waiting room in “The Adventure of Black Peter.” The room upstairs could then be used as a lumber room dedicated to Holmes’ stacks of newspapers and “bundles of manuscript…which were on no account to be burned, and which could not be put away save by their owner” as mentioned in the “The Musgrave Ritual.” “The Adventure of the Six Napoleons” does mention a lumber room upstairs packed with daily papers.

As we’ve seen previously, these ostensible inconsistencies in Conan Doyle’s stories can be quite rationally explained by a well-informed Sherlockian. After all, as Holmes reminded Watson in “A Scandal in Bohemia,” “It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.” I highly recommend reading Stutler’s full post, which includes a list of every reference used to create the image as well as a fully-annotated version of the above drawing.

More recently, the BBC television series Sherlock has introduced an entirely new generation of potential Sherlockians to the world’s only consulting detective. Some of these men and women have already dedicated themselves to analyzing the series, which presents an entirely new canon—clever interpretations of the original stories—for mystery enthusiasts to dissect and discuss. Instead of thumbing through a text page after page in search of clues describing 221B, these new digital drafstmen are more likely to pause a digital video frame by frame to dutifully reconstruct, in digital form, the new version of the famous flat now occupied by Benedict Cumberbatch’s Holmes and Martin Freeman’s Watson. These contemporary Sherlockians turn to free drafting software or video games instead of pen and paper. The following renderings, for example, come from the free drafting program Sketchup and the video game Minecraft.

A Sketchup rendering of 221B Baker St. as seen in the BBC series “Sherlock” (image: livejournal user static lights via Sherlock BBC Livejournal)

A Minecraft rendering of 221B Baker St. as seen in the BBC series “Sherlock”(image: created by themixedt4pe via the Planet Minecraft forum)

If documentation, speculation, and informed reconstruction of a crime scenes make the criminal narrative clear, then perhaps applying the process to a “deduction scene” can do the same for the detective’s literary narrative. Like the crime scene sketch, the above deduction scene sketches of 221B Baker St are architectural drawings created ex post facto with the intent to clearly illustrate a narrative in pursuit of understanding.  In “The Five Deadly Pips” Sherlock Holmes himself states that “The observer who has thoroughly understood one link in a series of incidents, should be able accurately to state all the other ones, both before and after.” By drawing 221B , the reader or viewer gains a more thorough understanding of one link in Holmes’s life, his flat, and can perhaps then, by Holmes’s logic, gain more insight into the life and actions of the famous detective that continues to capture the world’s imagination.

This is the sixth and final post in our series on Design and Sherlock Holmes. Our previous investigations looked into Mind Palaces, The tech tool of a modern Sherlock, Sherlock Holmes’s original tools of deduction, Holmes’s iconic deerstalker hat, and the mysteriously replicating flat at 221b Baker Street.

Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/the-scene-of-deduction-drawing-221b-baker-street-23049988/#dBuRBGOrR3uCGVRD.99
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Ah, to have a room like one of these in my basement .. . . . . .

Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson drawn by Sidney Paget in The Adventure of Silver Blaze (image: Sidney Paget, Wikimedia commons)

The Game is afoot, dear reader. For today, Design Decoded starts its newest series as the world turns its eyes to London for the Olympics: Design and Sherlock Holmes. Created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the incomparable consulting detective Sherlock Holmes and his intrepid assistant Doctor John Watson made their debut in A Study in Scarlet, published in 1887 in the the pages of Beeton’s Christmas Annual. Though the last canonical adventure of Holmes and Watson was published in 1927, Sherlock Holmes is still an international cultural icon. In fact, he may be more popular today than ever before. The zeitgeist is saturated with all things Holmesian: two Hollywood films; a recent BBC television series; another forthcoming series for American television; and then there are the countless television shows, plays, and films inspired by the adventures of Holmes and Watson. Indeed, we can perhaps trace the entire “buddy-cop” genre back to Arthur Conan Doyle’s detective duo.

Let us begin our series today by stalking down the gas-lit streets of Victorian London, and turning our magnifying glass toward an architecture that was defined by Holmes and Watson and poses something of a mystery itself: their London flat at 221B Baker Street.

Baker Street circa 1890 (original image: George Washginton Bacon’s New Map of London, via wikimedia commons)

The mystery of 221B Baker Street is not one of secret passages or hidden symbols. Rather, it could be described as a sort of existential spatial riddle: how can a space that is not a space be where it is not? According to Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories, Sherlock Holmes and John Watson lived at 221B Baker Street from 1881 to 1904. But 221B Baker street did not exist in 1881, nor did it exist in 1887 when A Study in Scarlet was published and Baker Street house numbers only extended into the 100s. It was a purely fictional address – emphasis on was. Time marches on, Baker Streets are renumbered, and 221Bs are revealed.

The Sherlock Holmes Museum at 221B Baker Street (image: © The Sherlock Holmes Museum)

If you visit 221B Baker Street today you’ll find the Sherlock Holmes Museum, which was opened in 1990 by the Sherlock Holmes International Society. But the Sherlock Holmes museum is not, technically speaking, located at 221 Baker Street. In fact, there is still no 221 Baker Street. Since the 1930s, the famous address has been lumped in as part of a larger block of buildings originally occupied by the Abbey National Building Society. From almost the day the Abbey National opened they began receiving letters from all over the world addressed to Mr. Sherlock Holmes at 221B Baker Street. Such a profusion of letters were delivered that the bank’s public relations department found it necessary to employ a full-time secretary charged with responding to the urgent inquiries from those in need of Holmes’s unique deductive prowess (these inquiries were usually met with a response that the detective had retired to keep bees in Sussex).

When the Sherlock Holmes Museum opened at 239 Baker Street in a Georgian townhouse that likely bears a close resemblance to Conan Doyle’s imagined 221 Baker street, there emerged a dispute over which business should receive the letters. The new museum argued that they were better equipped to respond to the inquiries while the Abbey National presumably wanted to continue their accidental role as the secretary to a fictional detective. The debate lasted more than a decade and was not resolved until 2002, when the Abbey National vacated their building and the Royal Mail finally agreed to deliver all letters addressed to 221B Baker Street to the museum at 239 Baker Street. The Sherlock Holmes Museum, which includes a full replica of Holmes’s flat, was also allowed by special permission of the City of Westminster, to bear the address 221B – although its physical location is still found between 237 and 241. To recap: a fictional flat in a real city has been made a reality at a fictional address in the real city near the real address of the fictional flat. Confused yet? The controversy doesn’t end there.

The fact that there is no real 221 Baker Street has not stopped literary historians from speculating about which Baker Street building Doyle used as his proxy for the home of Holmes and Watson. By closely reading the texts, scholars have proposed multiple Baker Street addresses as a possible inspiration for the literary 221, yet there is no definitive answer. Equally vexing is the design and furnishing of the famous flat itself.

When the Baker Street flat is introduced in A Study in Scarlet, the rooms receive little attention other than the note that they meet the needs of Messrs. Holmes and Watson and consist of “a couple of comfortable bed-rooms and a single large airy sitting-room, cheerfully furnished, and illuminated by two broad windows.” There are other equally brief descriptions scattered throughout Holmes canon, but usually nothing more than a few words. Yet from these scant clues, dedicated collectors around the world have been inspired to reconstruct their own versions of 221B.

The Sherlock Holmes Museum at 221B Baker Street (image: © The Sherlock Holmes Museum)

Perhaps the most visited replica of 221B is the aforementioned recreation at the Sherlock Holmes Museum on Baker Street, which promises visitors that “the interior has been faithfully maintained for posterity exactly as described in the published stories.” The Museum flat may also be the most complete of the many 221Bs, as it includes Watson’s bedroom on the second floor whereas most reconstructions focus solely on Holmes’s sitting room.

“Visitors can sit in Mr Holmes’s armchair by the fireside to pose for photos, and enter his bedroom adjoining the study; but please bring your own pipe to smoke!  His possessions are in their usual places: his deerstalker, magnifying glass, calabash pipe, violin, chemistry equipment, notebook, Persian slipper and disguises.”

In this sitting room, visitors will find the original wicker chair referenced by famed Holmes illustrator Sidney Paget in his portrayal of the seated detective. In a sense, it could be argued that this chair is Holmes’s chair. But while the flat includes many recognizable Holmesian artifacts and ephemera, certain inferences must be made to complete the fictional Victorian setting. Such a replica is essentially an architecture of deduction – a physical manifestation of Sherlock Holmes’s signature art form. But unlike Holmes’s brilliant deductions, the answer is never certain. The pipe and magnifying glass, the many newspapers and books and test tubes – these things are an index of the life of Sherlock Holmes. But the wallpaper selection, choice of period furniture, the selection of books on Holmes’s shelves – these are pure extrapolations that reflect that taste, style, and opinions of the collector. Indeed, when it comes to the mystery of 221B Baker Street, there are as many deductions as there are detectives.

221B Baker Street at the Sherlock Holmes Pub (image: The Sherlock Holmes Pub)

If you’re in the mood for enjoying a pint while viewing a recreation of 221B, you’ll want to head over to The Sherlock Holmes Pub in London, which has the honor of housing the first collection of Sherlock Holmes memorabilia. Originally assembled for an exhibition in 1951 as part of the the Festival of Britain, the pub’s collection includes the desk and chair used by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to write many of the Holmes adventures, as well as a chair that belonged to Paget. The pub also claims to be a part of Holmesian lore itself – specifically, the site where the detective tracked down a suspect in “The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor.” Not only that, but it stands in close proximity to other prominent locations frequented by Holmes and Watson.

“Old Scotland Yard is just across the other side of Northumberland Avenue, and the Turkish baths that Holmes and Watson used to enjoy were right beside the Hotel. It is still possible in fact to see the entrance, which now forms part of the wall of the bank in Craven Passage. With Charing Cross Station immediately beside the pub, one can just imagine the duo dashing off to catch a train into the countryside on one of their hair raising adventures!”

The Sherlock Holmes Museum in Meiringen, Switzerland (image: Catherine Batac Walder and Mike Walder, via Fine Books & Collections)

Just as the adventures of Holmes and Watson sometimes took them out of London to exotic locales around the world, the same holds true for their surprisingly mobile flat. Another replica of 221B Baker Street is located in The Sherlock Holmes Museum at Meiringen, Switzerland near the Reichenbach Falls, the site of the climactic final battle between Holmes and his arch-nemesis Professor Moriarty. The Meiringen Museum claims to have the largest collection of Holmes ephemera, as well as the most accurate reproduction of the famed sitting room, reconstructed by Tony Howlett, former President of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London, and architect John Reid. Its windows are authentic to the era, made in London and shipped to Switzerland; the wallpaper is designed after an 1890s pattern and was bought on High Street in London; the fireplace, oil lamps, and other Holmesian paraphernalia are all authentic Victorian antiques.

221B at the Sherlock Holmes Museum in Lucens, Switzerland (image: The Reichenbach Irregulars)

There is another 221B replica at another Sherlock Holmes museum in Switzerland, an older one established in 1965 at a hotel in Lucens, which was frequently visited by Conan Doyle’s son. It’s interesting to note that all these 221Bs have been purposely arranged to look as if Holmes and Watson had left only moments ago. It seems as if pipe smoke should still be lingering in the air. Looking at the scattered newspapers, books, and teacups, one can imagine the detective springing up from his chair, hot on the heels of a suspect or following a new lead. The carefully curated disarray suggests an unknown narrative, a new mystery for readers to imagine.

The 221B Room at the University of Minnesota (image: still from The University of Minnesota Videos)

Yet another 221B can be found across the ocean on the fourth floor of the Wilson Library at the University of Minnesota, which also has the distinct honor of being home to the world’s largest collection of ephemera related to Sherlock Holmes and Arthur Conan Doyle. “The 221B Room,” as it is known, was donated by the estate of Holmes collector Allen Mackler, who painstakingly recreated Holmes’s sitting room in his own home using authentic period artifacts. Mackler’s room was then moved piece-by-piece to the University library.

The 221B room at the home of Allen Mackler (image: The University of Minnesota Libraries)

There are surely many other partially reconstructed 221Bs in the homes of private collectors around the world.  And then there are the myriad sets built for film and television, some of which loyally followed Conan Doyle’s text in the crafting.

These replicas, especially those that have been relocated, call to mind a similar reconstruction, Julia Child’s kitchen in the American History Museum, which was painstakingly moved from her home in Cambridge, Massachusetts – cabinets, appliances, cookbooks, kitchen table, utensils, gadgets and all. Visitors to Julia’s kitchen (though the exhibition is currently closed for renovation) get a sense for how she worked, how she lived, and what she was like as a person. Architecture and interior spaces are records of our lives; they are extensions of our own identities. In the same way that visitors to Julia’s kitchen gain new insight into the life of the famous chef, the visitors to one of Sherlock’s many flats can gain insight into the proclivities of the famous detective and his life in Victorian London.

There is, of course, one major difference between Julia’s kitchen and Holmes’s sitting room: Julia Child is a real person. Her kitchen in the Smithsonian was her real kitchen. It is a real space. Holmes’s flat, on the other hand, was not. It can’t properly be called a “replica” or “reconstruction” because it never truly existed. Instead, the many 221Bs could more properly be considered a simulacrum—unless you’re a Sherlockian abiding by the rules of the Game, in which case the study is very much a recreation of a true place. The Game is a sort of friendly competition among Holmes scholars, created to explain the many inconsistencies in Conan Doyle’s quickly-written stories using Sherlock’s own methods of deduction. Timothy J. Johnson of the University of Minnesota explained one of the most important rules of the Game in a correspondence with a peer who was critical of his intent to create a “replica” of a fictional space:

“According to the rules of the Game, Holmes is considered a real person, who has never died (no obituary having appeared in The Times), and Doyle is merely the ‘literary agent’….One looks at all the descriptions of the room as provided in the stories and creates a replica. There’s a whole little industry in the Holmesian world that has spent time and ink describing the exact location of 221B Baker Street and the contents of the room.”

By the logic of the game, those Sherlockians looking for the Arthur Conan Doyle’s inspiration for 221B are, in fact, searching for the true apartments of Holmes and Watson, which were obviously disguised in Watson’s “memoirs” with a false address. The line between fiction and reality is blurred for the most ardent fans of Sherlock Holmes.

While it can be argued that the non-Baker Street flats are less authentic, in that they exist independently from their historical context, it could also just as easily be argued that there is no real historical context. After all, 221B Baker Street does not now exist, nor has it ever existed. These replicas are all, to one degree or another, authentic recreations. But is any 221B more authentic than another? How does a non-Game-player measure the authenticity of a place that isn’t real? By location? By how closely it resembles the sparse descriptions and illustrations in the original text? Or perhaps by the authenticity of the Victorian antiques used in crafting the reproduction?

As a real manifestation of a fiction, the many 221Bs attest to the power of Arthur Conan Doyle’s writing. So strongly do the Holmes stories resonate with our culture that we have manifested his home in our own reality, creating shrines and sites of pilgrimage across the world. But these “replicas” also attest to the power of architecture and interior design, which by their very nature make things real. Every building and space is a manifestation of narratives that results from a confluence of theories, politics, cultural beliefs, pragmatic necessities and opinions. But not only is the built environment a manifestation of these narratives, it’s also a venue for new narratives. Stories are an inherent part of the architectural process. The reconstructions of Sherlock Holmes’s flat at 221B Baker Street just makes that much more explicit.

Source

Is this the thing to come?

The special?

Here is a link to the BC story on NPR today. . .

NPR

'Elementary' S3E4 - 'Bella' - a review unresolved

While 'bleeding' himself, Sherlock and Kitty get a late evening visitor in the form of computer software expert Edwin Burstein.
Burstein as had a very important new piece of AI (Artificial Intelligence) software stolen and his business will be ruined if the thief is not caught and the program returned.
Although reluctant at first, Holmes takes the case. Seemly more to prove AI is impossible, rather than to solve the case. Intending to leave most of the leg work to Watson and Winter. (He can not completely keep his hands out of it however.)

The actual original case in this story turns out to be very unimportant, for Holmes quickly resolves it (allowing, once again, the criminal to remain free) and makes sure the stolen copy is destroyed. (Apparently industrial espionage is not very high on Holmes crime list.)

When bringing the good news to Edwin, Holmes and associates find Edwin dead from a seizure, seemly brought on by Bella the AI program on the computer. Is Bella the murderer? Holmes does not think so.

Holmes and Irregular Mason deduce, during a very annoying session of very loud music review, that the a virus as been placed on Bella by it being introduced hidden between tracks on a heavy metal CD.

Holmes suggests that the virus has been placed there by an anti-AI Professor named Pike, who believes Artificial Intelligence will eventually destroy mankind.

Unfortunately one of the professors proteges takes the fall, not very convincingly, (would Kitty do this for Holmes?)(and surely the NYPD could disprove her story!) for the crime and Holmes has to result to a bluff to try to prove that Pike was the one actually responsible.
Pike seems very formidable in his confrontation with Holmes.
We are left believing Holmes was unable to go through with the bluff.

The plot was unconvincing in how the protege, such a seemly weak individual, was able to find and follow, then steal and replace the Heavy Metal Cd. We are left to assume that she may have gone about it the same way as Raffles (which really seems highly unlikely). But, where along the way was the way-laying taking place?
Is this plot line going to suggest that Pike has a network of followers (much like Moriarty) who are able to do his bidding and who will willingly go to jail for him?

Although the episode still allowed itself some room to include moments of unnecessary quirkiness, it was not over done. The leach bit in the beginning served no purpose, and the time could have been better used.

Most of the plot actually still dealt with relationships and personalities as they reflect on Holmes.
And, nicely, the story was allowed to focus on that and much of it used the relationship between the computer and Holmes to show that.


Although I don't usually like an unresolved story, especially since next weeks preview did not suggest the story would be continued, I think it worked well with the exploration of this part of Holmes personality. Is Prof. Pike going to end up being one of the few who have beaten Holmes (beaten four times, three by men). The closing scene did suggest Holmes had however come up with a clue, from Bella, or that he had had a personal revelation about how to solve the crime.

The episode also took a step closer to explaining the path of the relationship between Holmes and Watson. Canonically it would be suggested that at times Watson must have wondered about his roll in the relationship with Holmes. It is a Canonically good discussion point to wonder how the relationship with Watson may or may not have changed Holmes. We see suggestions of this change every week in the show. How would that be reflected in the Canon?

Kitty, to my mind, is proving to be unnecessary to the stories, and I hope her character develops a little more soon. At the moment she is serving as little more than a go-fer and someone who is just taking lines away from the Watson character

Joan, now not living with Holmes, gives the show a chance to explore Holmes' life without Watson living at the faux 221b. We will have to just wait and see if we agree with how Holmes handles it.
Will something happen in Denmark to her new love? And will Holmes be involved with the investigation? Holmes likes the guy, Watson likes the guy. Something is going to happen, right?

Another reviewer suggests that it is unfortunate that 'Elementary' is unable to come up with a plot line that does not include murder. As we Canonically know, many of Holmes' cases did not include a death. Are the writers capable of coming up with a plot that does no require someone to die?

Several good Canonical references were present;

A client coming to Holmes after a recommendation from a previous client.
Holmes taking a case for no fee because it interests him.
Holmes being a thinking, logic machine, not allowing emotions to make his decisions.
Not being hired by the police force, so therefore, not required to turn in a criminal.
Holmes and Watson not sharing 'Baker St. (We can't use Watson moving out because of a relationship because she moved out before then to get her own 'space')
Spending many hours on a case without stopping to take a break.
Irregulars, (who's numbers have vastly increased these last few weeks).
Holmes' knowledge of important world wide criminals.
(And there is one big one that I just can not remember this morning!)

Although I am still not a big fan of Miller's portrayal of Holmes, last nights episode was a good story and had some strong Canonical references, and shows signs of growth and also suggested discussion-able points. I think that is going to be may gauge for this show now; Does this episode offer some good Canonical references and possible Canonical discussion points?

How does that work for you?

So, for that reason, I give this episode, . . . .

'Sherlock' star on NPR today. . .

and as soon as I know the time, I will post it, or a least a link to it. . .

And NPR has a rather large back-log of Sherlock Holmes related stories. . .

This would have been something to see. . .

Anyone know what ever came of this. . . .

BRIGADIER GERARD

In Movie Theaters:	To Be Announced (TBA)
Screenwriters:	John Altshuler David Krinsky
Cast: more cast	Steve Carell
Produced by:	Media Rights Capital Ternion

Storyline

The story about a French solider during the Napoleonic wars who is deluded about his level of bravery.

A comedy set during the Napoleonic Wars. Steve Carell would play Etienne Gerard, a soldier who considers himself a gallant swordsman but whose actual skills often pale in comparison to his own conception of them.

ComedyPeriod

Additional Notes:

Based on a series of short stories written by Arthur Conan Doyle. Mobilizing for a spring2009 production start.

and this is on Wikipedia

As of 2014 television and movie writer John Altschuler is developing Brigadier Gerard, as a feature with Steve Carell attached to play Brigadier Gerard and Ricky Gervais attached to play Napoleon.

I had never seen this wonderful illustration by FDS before

source

Which I know Brad will appreciate because it ties in so wonderfully with 'Elementary'.

(There are other great photos throughout the web site.)

A nice tribute to Brett. . .

Sherlock Holmes was played according to Doyle by Jeremy Brett

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- It was 30 years ago that I first met Sherlock Holmes.

He didn't look like Benedict Cumberbatch, the star of those marvelously modern"Sherlock" mysteries that air on PBS. And he didn't look like Jonny Lee Miller, the star of another contemporary Holmes take, CBS' "Elementary," which began its third season Thursday night on WOIO Channel 19.

He also didn't look like Basil Rathbone, the star of the addictive 1930s and '40s Sherlock Holmes films that regularly showed up on television when I was in school and first discovering the original stories penned by Arthur Conan Doyle. What kind of school? Why, elementary, my dear Watson.

The Sherlock Holmes I met in 1984 looked as if he had just stepped out of one of those Sidney Paget drawings that illustrated many of Doyle's stories when they ran in the British magazine The Strand. He looked like Jeremy Brett, who was starting his 10-year run as the great detective in a British television series that stressed fidelity to the celebrated source material.

No great mystery why Brett has been much on my mind of late. MPI Home Video has released a majestic Blu-ray box set, "Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Granada Television Series."

The 1984-94 Granada series featured 36 episodes and five films. This is the mother lode for anyone who so appreciated Brett playing Holmes according to Doyle: 12 discs and more than 38 hours of sheer Sherlockian joy (suggested retail price is $229.98).

Which brings us back to the summer night I met Sherlock Holmes. PBS was importing the Granada series for its "Mystery!" series in 1984, and, in those days, the "Masterpiece Theatre" and "Mystery!" press conferences were served up with a dinner in the grand ballroom of the Beverly Hills Hotel on Sunset Boulevard.

The "Mystery!" host, Vincent Price, was wandering around, and I was hoping to be placed at his table for dinner. I was looking around for Price when I realized a PBS publicist was standing in front of me. She had a favor to ask.

"Look, we have these two fellows from England, Jeremy Brett and David Burke, who are playing Holmes and Watson in these new mysteries," she said. "They're sitting by themselves. Would you mind sitting at their table?"

Remember, Brett's brilliant interpretation of Holmes was still a mystery to most Americans. And Brett was hardly a household name. Maybe -- maybe -- you would have recognized him as Freddy Eynsford-Hill in the 1964 film version of "My Fair Lady."

But it was an intriguing invitation. Somewhere behind that publicist's request was the thrilling cry uttered by the super sleuth (quoting Shakespeare) in "The Adventure of the Abbey Grange": "The game is afoot."

Only one other critic accepted the invitation. And that's how I lucked into one of the first Holmes interviews with Brett on American soil.

"The irony is that I've never been a big detective reader," Brett told me. "It's never been a big part of my life. I much prefer history. Everything I've learned has been from reading Doyle."

Gracious, glib and charming, Brett spoke of the immense pressure of getting it right for Sherlock devotees and for those encountering Holmes for the first time -- for children and adults. He had an actor's appreciation for a guiding principle articulated by Holmes.

"The little things are infinitely the most important," Holmes says in "A Case of Identity." "Never trust to general impressions, my boy, but concentrate yourself upon details."

Brett's portrayal soon was acclaimed coast to coast, and more adaptations followed. Edward Hardwicke replaced Burke as Watson, and the hope was that the entire Sherlock canon of 56 short stories and four novels would be translated for television.

"God willing, I'll get the canon done," Brett said in the early 1990s. "I mean, I'll probably finish them, getting the walker out. We're going to finish the canon, and that idea is very exciting."

Alas, it was not to be. When Brett died of heart failure, at age 59, in September 1995, 42 of the 60 stories had been adapted (the 36 one-hour episodes and five films, with one film using elements from two stories).

The New York Times said at the time of his death: "More than any other actor since Basil Rathbone, Mr. Brett was regarded as the quintessential Holmes: breathtakingly analytical, given to outrageous disguises and the blackest moods and relentless in his enthusiasm for solving the most intricate crimes."

If you want overwhelming proof of that, it can be found in this handsome box set, which includes such extras as commentaries by director John Madden and an interview with Hardwicke, who also was Brett's Watson for the 1988 London stage production of writer Jeremy Paul's "The Secret of Sherlock Holmes."

My wife and I saw that production, but it was not my last close encounter with the man who would be Holmes. That occurred in Cleveland.

Brett came to town in late 1991 to give a talk and tape promotional spots for WVIZ Channel 25. I was contributing stories to two magazines specializing in the mystery genre, so my friend Tom Feran, The Plain Dealer's TV critic at the time, and I were given two splendid hours to talk Holmes with Brett at a downtown Cleveland hotel.

It wasn't quite 221B Baker Street, but it was the next best thing. So there we sat, playing Holmes and Watson (we'll argue later about which is which), searching for clues to the enduring popularity of Sherlock in general and Brett's Sherlock in particular.

"I didn't want to do it at first," Brett told us. "My response was, 'Oh, everybody has done that. What could I possibly add that hasn't been done before?' "

We soon found out. And it didn't take Sherlock Holmes to deduce the answer.

"The only thing we've really done, and I cannot understand why it has not been done before, is to do the stories as Doyle wrote them," the typically modest Brett said. "It seems simple enough, but no one has done that. Dame Jean Conan Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's daughter, is a great friend of mine. She's quite a lady, quite a force.

"And Dame Jean once said that I was the Sherlock Holmes of her childhood. That's when I felt that I had truly passed the audition. We've talked about how her father was overtaken by his own creation. But all the credit goes back to where it belongs -- to Doyle."

For Brett, Conan Doyle's writing was the rule book. And he kept the rule book close at hand.

"Granada took the most enormous gamble," he said. "They said, 'We want to go back to what Doyle meant with Holmes and Watson. We don't want Watson played as a buffoon, but as Doyle intended -- the best-est friend a man has ever had.' Whenever anyone wanted to take things away from the original, I'd be standing there with my copy of the book, saying, 'Don't you think Doyle is better?' "

Brett, of course, was in great demand as a speaker at meetings of the Baker Street Irregulars, the international organization of Holmes enthusiasts.

"I fully understand that their enthusiasm has nothing to do with me," he said. "They're fans of Sherlock Holmes. I'm just a presentment of Sherlock Holmes. It's not me they've come to see. They've come to see this actor who has the audacity to portray this character they adore. And it's much more than a character to them, of course."

Holmes, who made his first appearance in print in 1887, came to be much more than a character to him, too.

"When I started, I once said that I wouldn't cross the street to meet Sherlock Holmes," Brett said. "Then, a while later, I amended that to, 'He wouldn't cross the street to meet me.' Slowly, though, Holmes has become my buddy. I don't see him as depressing at all, but as a streak of light."

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I am not much into the ripper thing, but others are. . . . .

Sherlock Holmes Vs. Jack the Ripper

One was the best detective of his day. The other was a serial killer who was never caught. So why didn’t Holmes catch the Ripper? Only don’t say ‘because Holmes wasn’t a real person.’

LONDON — If Sherlock Holmes was such a smart detective, why was he not put on the case of Jack the Ripper? It’s a reasonable question. After all, Sherlock made his first appearance in 1887 and the Ripper’s killing rampage took place between August and November 1888. With all other sleuths failing to catch the beast, why not call in the world’s greatest forensic mind?

Of course, you could protest that Sherlock did not really exist and the Ripper did. But Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the mind behind Sherlock, was real enough and he—like his creation—inhabited the feverish world of late Victorian London. He would have followed the series of eviscerating murders in the sulfurous alleys of East London as they were reported in the press.

This thought began to trouble me as I immersed myself in the truly Holmesian world created at the Museum of London, at a show called “Sherlock Holmes, The Man Who Never Lived and Who Will Never Die.” To be honest, the visit did not begin well. The entrance to the show is a wall lined with books that conceals a secret door. It took several attempts for me to find the door and gain admission—a performance regarded with some contempt by the people behind me.

Holmes addicts had arrived at the show from all over the world. Language was no barrier; just about every tongue on the planet was babbling away, caught up in the elaborate mystique of a cult. There were learned discussions about the domestic arrangements at 221b Baker Street, surely the oddest of bachelor pads, with its armory of weapons—various makes of revolver, walking sticks concealing swords, and a dopehead’s full paraphernalia of pipes (Holmes’s preferred trips were morphine and cocaine)—and wardrobe of tweed capes and deerstalker hats.

However, the most striking thing about the show is its evocation of a character that Conan Doyle described but did not invent and yet is indispensable to his yarns: London. Holmes inhabited a posh part of central London, Marylebone. Terraced townhouses had basements and attics large enough for live-in domestic staff—and also large enough to be divided into the kind of generously sized flats replete with a housekeeper that Conan Doyle allotted to Holmes and where he was attended by his sidekick, Dr. John Watson.

Baker Street was far enough north from the Thames to be clear of the worst of the foul odors and vapors of a river that had become a vast waste pipe for the first world city. With Britain at the peak of its imperial and industrial power, London was layered with the detritus of more than a century of commercial development, most of it concentrated around the docks of East London. Here was the other extreme of the polarized society in which Holmes dwelt, a maze of alleys, narrow streets, and waterfront dives—the habitat of the Ripper.

We should wonder why the author didn’t take the tour of Ripper crime scenes himself and talk to the many (and conflicting) witnesses.

The Museum of London deploys its visual resources to recreate both worlds—the affluence of Baker Street and the squalor of East London. There are the illustrations that went with the Holmes stories, contemporary photographs, paintings, and some flickering footage from very early documentary film. Caught in these frames is a capital city of dense, manic energy, the streets gridlocked with hansom cabs and horse-drawn omnibuses.

Often present, enrobing many of the street scenes, is the indigenous special effect that all London writers enlisted for their darker tales. Here is Dickens, in Bleak House: “…smoke lowering down from chimney pots making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snow flakes—gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun.”

Or later, from Oscar Wilde: “Those wonderful brown fogs that come creeping down our streets, blurring the gas-lamps and changing the houses into monstrous shadows.”

Holmes’s amanuensis, Dr. Watson, noted the contrasts of summer and winter as observed from 221b Baker Street: “It was a blazing hot day in August. Baker Street was like an oven, and the glare of the sunlight upon the yellow brickwork of the houses across the road was painful to the eye. It was hard to believe that these were the same walls which loomed so gloomily through the fogs of winter.”

In August, 1889, Conan Doyle met Wilde for the first time at a dinner given at one of the most fashionable hotels of the time, the Langham, by J.M. Stoddart, the editor of Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine. This dinner not only acquainted two mutually respectful writers, but Stoddart also commissioned a Holmes novel, The Sign of Four, from Conan Doyle that helped to create an insatiable demand that the author was powerless to halt. By 1893, when he was turning out a complete Holmes story every month for The Strand magazine, he tried to kill off Holmes in the famous combat with his nemesis, Moriarty, at the Reichenbach Falls but reincarnated him in 1902, in The Hound of the Baskervilles, and ended up writing 56 Holmes short stories and four novels.

It’s hard to believe that Conan Doyle and Wilde did not discuss the most sensational murder case of their day, the outrageously savage killings perpetrated by the Ripper less than a year earlier. Ripper theories, fanned by journalists who make today’s hackers seem models of propriety, were fueling gossip from the lowest pubs to the most decorous salons, where there were rumors that the psychopath was a member of the royal family. And the Ripper industry was already born. Doing a roaring business in Whitechapel High Street, close by the Ripper’s chosen turf, there was a waxworks displaying grotesque models of the victims.

How would the mastermind of criminal investigation, the true precursor of today’sCSI shows, have approached the Ripper case?

I fancy he would have said it was not the murders themselves that were the riddle but why they stopped. The usually accepted number of victims is five, although two more murders are sometimes attributed to the Ripper, Mary Anne Nichols on August 3 and Mary Kelly on November 9.

Did they end because the beast had been sated? Did they end because in killing prostitutes he was making a point about the desperation and hopelessness of these women? At that time Whitechapel had at least 1,400 prostitutes and more than 80 brothels, but, the knifing of women was rare, with only 11 in the whole of England the previous year.

Did the Ripper quit because he feared that he was close to being caught? He wasn’t. The cops were as incompetent as they often appear to be in the Holmes stories. Later heads of Scotland Yard admitted that the Ripper should have been caught. Was he dead, by his own hand or others? Or—as some still believe—were the murders an accidental conjunction of separate killers and not of anyone called Jack?

Holmes’s mental powers were ideal for a case like this. He could read far more into a letter than its message. He would have given careful scrutiny, for example, to the note that arrived at the Central News Agency on September 27, addressed to “Dear Boss” and signed “Jack the Ripper,” the note that first sent the story viral.

Or, for sure, Holmes would have been eager to examine a letter received on October 16 containing what is believed to have been half a kidney of one of the victims. After all, Holmes could break a case simply on the basis of how a package was addressed, as he did in The Adventure of the Cardboard Box, in which the package contained two severed ears. The address was printed “in rather straggling characters. Done with a broad pointed pen, probably a J, and with very inferior ink.”

Give the great sleuth a few clues like that, and presto! He’s on to the killer.

Conan Doyle’s apparent contempt for the forensic skills of Scotland Yard at the time is embodied in his invention, Inspector Lestrade—“wiry, dapper and ferret-like.” Ferret is a carefully chosen comparison, implying diligence but absolutely no imagination. Lestrade’s role is to seek Holmes’s help and then resent the efficacy of his method. Conan Doyle’s deployment of the dim-witted Lestrade was made in the wake of the Yard’s futile pursuit of the Ripper, and it’s almost like a disguised editorial on the failings of the police. And since it’s Conan Doyle’s imagination that brings credibility to Holmes’s laser-like powers of observation, we should wonder why the author didn’t take the tour of Ripper crime scenes himself and talk to the many (and conflicting) witnesses.

Had he done so, we might just have been spared the Groundhog Day sensation of reliving the Ripper case every year as a “breakthrough” theory proposes a new perpetrator. Patricia Cornwell’s own lavishly funded research turns up the artist Walter Sickert as the prime suspect, only to be followed by the Ripper-industry promoter Russell Edwards with his choice of the Polish barber Aaron Kosminski, both of them employing mitochondrial DNA and both adamant they have the right man. I fancy Holmes would have destroyed those theories with nothing more than his intuition.

If you do want to drink deep of the London of the Ripper and Holmes, go to Louis’ London Walks for handy pocket-sized guides on both. But since Holmes is an invention, along with his haunts and habitat, there really is no shred of authenticity to cling to, just a make-believe tour of pubs and tourist traps.

With the Ripper it’s different. Whitechapel and the rest of the Ripper topography retain the identifiable streets and alleys of the late 19th century and have historical merit that can help you rise above morbid CSI curiosity. Successive waves of immigrants have come and gone, from Huguenot silk weavers in the 17th century to Eastern European Jews in the 19th and 20th centuries to Indians and Bangladeshis now. Synagogues became mosques, the mosques are surrounded by some of the best Asian food in London.

For the most part, the fogs have gone. These days they are occasional meteorological irruptions, white river mists, not dense and toxic industrial pea-soupers. This makes the guide to the Jack the Ripper Walk seem rather dated. It warns: “We do not advise you to take this walk after dark.” These days the only danger to night walking in Spitalfields, a neighborhood including three Ripper murder scenes, is that you might find it hard to escape the carousing of bankers burning their bonuses in the glitzy clubs and restaurants.

It was on the fringe of Spitalfields, in Hanbury Street, that on September 8, 1888, a prostitute called Annie Chapman was literally torn apart by the Ripper’s knife and left in a backyard. The night before she had been seen leaving her house with a client and standing on a corner talking to him. Witnesses said he was “wearing a black coat and a deerstalker hat.”

Ahah! So that explains everything. Elementary, my dear Watson.

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