I had to wake up at a$$ o’clock in the morning because I can’t get my brain to stop thinking about the prior evening’s entertainment: BBC’s Sherlock Series 2. A week previous I also watched Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes 2 in theaters.

Warning, spoilers are abound in this. Continue only at your peril. :)

I’ll cut to the chase and tell you I am amazed at what has been brought to the table by both of these re-engineered versions of Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. Originally I wasn’t too sold on Ritchie’s first movie/vision (didn’t have this problem with BBC, though). I thought, “Okay, here is a movie for guys—slow motion, fighting scenes, dark action-y atmosphere, etc.” Robert Downey Jr. plays a quirky Sherlock who is not only an outright drug addict (go Downey!, lol) but a man more prone to swinging his fists than “talking” his way out of a fight. I don’t think Ritchie understood in his first movie that we needed more than a gritty side of Sherlock Holmes to happily except his alternate universe; but he made up for his lack of insight in the second movie, he really did. I admit I was sitting in the theater thinking, god, how long is this movie? at times but it still managed to keep me focused on the slow reveal of the plot. Downey Jr. feels his character, you can tell that right away. And his Watson—as aloof as Jude Law can make Watson at times—had more depth this time around to show what a “team” they were. It was Moriarty, however, who made things better than Sherlock being strange and Watson griping about Sherlock experimenting on his dog. Professor Moriarty was a lovely foil to Sherlock, testing him at every turn and daring Sherlock to do better, think faster, as the villain is meant to be. The only character who didn’t do anything for me (in either movie) was Irene Adler. She was meant to be a love interest—attractive to Sherlock because she is clever as insinuated in canon—and a plot device. She served both of those purposes and not much else.

But BBC did something fantastic with her character. In fact, they made a whole new character where there existed only an idea from a short story (see Doyle’s “A Scandal in Bohemia”).

I kind of digressed for a moment but I said in the beginning I have come to appreciate the two new visions of Sherlock Holmes, each for the uniqueness they bring to the fandom. If you are looking for something more canon and less alternate universe, you are setting yourself up for disappointment. This is more apparent than ever in the second series of Sherlock.

Okay. Modern-age Sherlock. He is a consulting detective, like nobody else in his brilliance to solve puzzles. Check. He is so brilliant he is kind of a loner. Check… and more. Here we already begin to deviate with BBC’s version. Sherlock isn’t simply a loner; he is somebody who is almost incapable of understanding how to socialize normally with others, which is more of a result of his arrogance (and his disinterest) than any mental problem. In this regard, Sherlock doesn’t associate with others beyond professionally unless he needs to use them to achieve an end (an end all his own and never anyone else’s). John Watson (played brilliantly by Martin Freeman) is probably the first person to stay with Sherlock long enough without dumping the pretentious and rude man in disgust. (To say this Sherlock is eccentric is an understatement. He keeps body parts in his refrigerator.) But my point here is that while Ritchie needed a love interest for Sherlock in Adler, BBC put some serious thought into how her character would interact with their version of Sherlock. They made her dynamic and in doing so, in short, we get an entire episode called A Scandal in Belgravia which is less of a mystery to be solved and more of a character study of BBC’s Sherlock Holmes.

Sherlock thinks it’s boring to interact with ordinary people, and women are more ordinary than most. This is quickly affirmed by the fact he is oblivious to Molly Hopper’s crush on him. She shows up at the party rocking her tiny black dress and he only sees a puzzle of how/who she may be dressed up for. He isn’t interested in her as a woman because sex is something he considers “above him” as a genius. Sex is a waste of his brain power. So she can look gorgeous and he simply doesn’t see it. It takes more than sex appeal to keep the attention of Sherlock Holmes.

Herein is where Irene Adler is used to her potential. First, let me just say that Adler is true to the play on her name—an adder, a snake in the grass. She is not just clever; she is manipulative, self-confident, and, yes, arrogant. Where Sherlock doesn’t understand—or care—about other people’s needs, she makes it her career to pander to them. She knows what people want and how to give it to them, always to her own advantage. It’s not that BBC went out on a limb here and made her a dominatrix—it’s that they gave her a role to emphasize how she uses her skills to keep herself in demand and, I imagine, from being bored all the time like Sherlock. I don’t exactly buy into the idea that she is as brilliant as Sherlock (how could anybody be but possibly Mycroft Holmes?) but I think she is more than intelligent enough to be superb at craftiness and power plays. …Not unlike Moriarty (who I won’t mention much because sadly he hasn’t reached his potential at all except as BBC’s ultimate teaser of a villain), whom we all know from the very beginning Adler is in league with.

No, the real purpose of Adler is to catch the attention of Sherlock Holmes. She can’t simply be sexy. She has to be a puzzle for Sherlock to solve and she knows this, which is why her first meeting with Sherlock is in the nude. She gives him no clues except her words. And keeping his interest? Therein lies her particular specialty: knowing what her clients want and how to tease them with it. …Which she continuously does to Sherlock, first by playing cat and mouse with him via texting and then later by sending him her “vitally important” phone to puzzle over.

FYI, I never believed for a second that she was dead, and I never believed that Sherlock THOUGHT she was dead. After all, how could such a cunning woman die so easily? I also never bought into Sherlock’s “depression” over her faked death either—though I will believe he might have been aggravated at the loss of a good mystery if he at some point hadn’t figured out she was changing the game on him. (Which makes for a poor, sweet flat-mate John. Aw, John, bb, you don’t have to fix what it isn’t broken! Sherlock isn’t a fragile flower.)

I have to say, I am not quite certain that Sherlock had a chance once he met Irene. She plays his curiosity like a fiddle and then she teases him with the fact he considers sex to be uninteresting. She is saying to Sherlock: things are only uninteresting until someone comes along who can make them your own brand of fun. That she considers herself equal to the challenge of Sherlock is no surprise.

Sherlock is growing as a character in this series, even though he seems the least likely person to want to change. We get snippets of dark!Sherlock (I was all awash in fangirl glee as he took revenge for Mrs. Hudson) and a Sherlock who isn’t as aloof as he might have come off in the first series. It’s not all about mysteries to Sherlock anymore, though he may be aware of that yet. I attribute this slow development to John, who is about as close to a significant other as Sherlock may ever get. When Adler says, amused, to John, “You are a couple,” she is only telling the truth. Sherlock and Watson may not have a relationship that crosses into the bedroom but they are co-dependent on each other like nobody’s business. It’s more than best friends solving mysteries together—which is essentially what every girl John dates points out to him. Until John can actually see himself living a life separate of Sherlock and the inherent madness therein, he hasn’t even taken the first step toward independence. But I have my own theory about this… mainly that Sherlock is what John needs after he comes back from Afghanistan, and John is—obviously—the reminder that the rest of humanity matters, a fact which Sherlock likes to so easily forget.

Anyway, Adler says John and Sherlock are a couple, John insists he isn’t gay (BBC, you are so funny, playing up to us like that! :P), and Irene counters that she *is* gay. LOL. Case in point: Sherlock is the factor you can’t account for, or see coming, and when you play in his little Sherlockian world, you adapt to it accordingly.

I’ll wrap this up but saying that I was pleasantly surprised by a lot of things in the episode: that Martin Freeman is so comfortable in his role it’s ridiculous, the expansion upon Mycroft’s character (yay, less umbrella twirling and more emotion!), and the way Irene Adler highlights the foibles of Sherlock by playing, perhaps, a better villainous foil to Sherlock than Moriarty at this point.

This makes me excited, everyone. Finally we have writers bringing out their alternate universes with no stops barring the way. They take the box-shaped word Canon and make something, while resembling basic canon concepts, which has its own flavor and its own set of expectations. It isn’t afraid to be *different* and demand that you believe in those differences. Frankly, I want to see more of BBC’s Sherlock than I did before (which I didn’t think was possible, lol). I want to know what it is, essentially, that drives Cumberbatch’s Sherlock to be so abstract. He isn’t the quirky Sherlock Downey, Jr. plays for us. He is a new animal. And rather refreshing. We saw hints of him in the first series and now it’s rising to the forefront.

I plan to watch the episode again to look for all the things I missed. But the fact it made me think this much is a win in my book. :)

I hold high hopes the same can be done with Star Trek. The Reboot ‘verse already has the potential to be darker than the original Star Trek universe. I want to see JJ Abrams dare to push the limits (but not by having Spock and Uhura as a couple, wth?). I want to see a more dystopian Star Trek than a utopian one like Roddenberry envisioned. That’s the feeling I get from BBC’s Sherlock. And now I want to see that same courage passed on to my beloved Star Trek!

Related Posts:

• SHERLOCK! – from January 15, 2012