Monday, December 14, 2015

Elementary S4E5 - The Games Underfoot - well somethings on the bottom of my shoe, that's for sure.

Well, the show has done away, for the most part, with the very odd habits of 'Elementary's' Sherlock.
His behavior no longer shocks us, and usually this season the only bizarre bits are some of the grotesque crimes.

The cases have become a little repetitive in nature, even if most are rather timely in subject matter.

This episode, for me, has been the weakest one so far this season.

Although still good in a police procedural kind of way, it had very little in the Sherlockian kind of way to make it Canonically discussion worthy. Where Brett's habits with the character I think for the most part people assign to Sherlock Holmes, Miller's, although individual, do not stand well enough on their own to afford recognition as Sherlockian. Most of the time in this episode Miller's Sherlockian came off more as a spoiled anti-social individual. Not that Miller played it much different than he has been, it's just that nothing else "Sherlock Holmes" remained in the show.

While Canonically we accept the fact that Watson appeared to be Holmes' only friend, Elementary seems to want to prove that Holmes good have many friends. (However, Canonically, Lestrade, did start stopping by for social calls later in the Canon.)

The part illustrated in the photo above made for a fun exchange in the show.

Still stronger than most episodes last year, but with it's lack of Holmesian habits, I can only fairly give this episode;


On another note; Does Miller's Holmes watching several TV's at one time serve the same purpose as the Canonical Holmes' three pipes?

5 comments:

  1. I thought Miller's Sherlock was strangely unengaged with the mystery of the week, leaving Joan and Bell to do the investigating and deducing. Perhaps Sherlock though the crime was too easy or unremarkable---I thought the case was was rather forgettable. Certainly Sherlock was more concerned with Alfredo than anything else. While the Canonical Watson was Holmes' only close friend, in the chronologically later stories Holmes seemed to mellow about socializing. True about Lestrade in the post-Reichenbach years, but there was Shinwell Johnson, Langdale Pike and Mercer (as well as Billy the page in MAZA) who seemed to fill the working void in Holmes' life as Watson drifted into his second marriage.

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  2. "I thought Miller's Sherlock was strangely unengaged with the mystery of the week" --- sounds like how I became with this show, strangely unengaged, and in just a few episodes. As for what is at the bottom of my shoe, that could be elementary, or just plain #$@%, they are both the same aren't they? Down to a mere 2 pipes, sounds like you are finally coming around to what Brother Brad has been preaching for years.

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    1. Two pipes for one show hardly, thankfully, puts me with 'Brother Brad'.

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    2. When you have a 24 episode-per-season of any show, Howard, some are bound to be better than others and due to how network shows are put together under time and budget constraints, some shows are bound to be sub-par. For example, I thought season seven of Star Trek: The Next Generation was disappointing, especially as the showrunners knew it was to be the last season, with at least half of the shows lackluster. I have found the first three seasons of Elementary on the whole to be satisfying on a Sherlockian and storytelling level. I am not one of those fans who think that their show can do no wrong and is always excellent. I try to evaluate things as honestly as possible. I find that out of the first nine episodes of BBC Sherlock that five are average or sub-par, I find it less "brilliant" than it is generally proclaimed (bombs with off switches; cold-blooded murder as problem solving; ADHD, suicidal criminal geniuses distracted by phone calls and brothers-as-the-British-Government with get-out-of-jail-free cards) and, in fact,the equal or slightly-less-than-equal of Elementary. That's just my personal opinion. I'm looking forward to "The Abominable Bride" and I hope it approaches "A Study in Pink", BBC Sherlock's yet-to-be-matched high-point. To come around to Brother Brad's theology means having to hate something before seeing it. See http://sherlockpeoria.blogspot.com/2012/07/elementary-perversion.html I try to live a more Sherlockian lifestyle: "It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence. It biases the judgment." As I am human, not Sherlock Holmes, that is an ideal I will always have to strive for. I do not look at the bottom of my shoe for inspiration.

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