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So this happened last week: Liss and Ana Talk About Elementary.
I've love it if ya'll wanted to read it there and come back here to talk about it some more. (Or we can talk about it there, but I don't get email notifications for Shakesville comments like I do here, lol.) Probably my favorite part of the post is here:
Ana: And, hey, you know what? Watson being Sherlock's live-in pet isn't canon. (HAHA WATCH ME USE MY CANON-POWERS FOR GOOD.) Watson moves out really early on in the stories and has a wife and a life and just consults with Sherlock on a regular basis and for exceptional cases. So, HEY, there's actually good reasons (besides all the other ones) to establish Joan as a separate being who has a home and furniture and people and loved ones and things other than her owner Sherlock who takes her to the station for walkies because what the fuck this show I don't even.
Liss: LOL!
Ana: The second thing, uggggggggggggh the Broken Aesop in this episode. I mean, I agree that Sherlock should be nicer. But he should be nicer because people deserve a basic modicum of respect and kindness. (Also: Didn't we solve this in Season 1 when Joan taught him to listen in group? Apparently not, because we never, ever reference Season 1. Who needs continuity??) What I do NOT agree with is this ridiculous strawman that Sherlock Holmes is GOD ALMIGHTY and is responsible for the actions of everyone else on earth.
Shut Up!
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Here is the latest of Liss and Ana talking about Elementary! You should go see it, if only for the DOLPHIN FACE. And also for this comment I added tonight:
A thing that really struck me later is that this could have been Joan and Sherlock.
Sherlock is wealthy, or rather his father is. (He owns, like, 5 houses in NYC alone, and the brownstone is the smallest, iirc.) Joan isn't suggested to be wealthy; she was a surgeon, but we don't know if she had her school loans paid off before The Accident, and sober companion was a step down in pay scale. And she was certainly dealing with feelings of guilt over the death of her patient when she hired on with Sherlock.
If he'd killed someone last season, say the "M" guy we all thought was Moriarty, and she'd gone to jail to protect him and serve time over the death of her patient... that would have been amazingly bad. BAD. So she could have said something in THIS case. She could have easily pointed out that this ending was hella-bad for EVERYONE. (I certainly don't think this was good for Graham. I think it was bad for Graham.) This could have been her. She could have made that connection. She didn't. And I think she didn't because the WRITERS didn't.
And I think part of why they didn't understand HOW wrong this ending was, was because they didn't understand that a woman protecting herself from abuse is NOT substantially different from a man protecting himself from abuse. And I find that implication really upsetting and deeply disturbing because it's the literal definition of a double-standard.
Shut Up!
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I feel like I should post something about my life circumstances, but the longer I don't post something, the more anything I could post seems inadequate and it becomes this vicious cycle. So here is a brief metapost, a pointer to some Elementary commentary I co-wrote, and an open thread to talk about both.
[CN: Disability]
I have spent the last three weeks rapidly deteriorating in physical ability. I spend most of my non-work days lying in bed or on the sofa (which is less comfortable but easier to get out of when I need to use the bathroom) and trying to concentrate on breathing through the pain. To distract myself, I play video games and take notes on them, but it's not really bringing me a lot of enjoyment -- I'd rather be up and washing the dishes because I feel bad about leaving all the chores to the able-bodied people in the house. Since I am still struggling with getting my laptop to behave the way I'd like, I don't have a lot of computer access -- I can read everything that comes in, but writing is harder. Emails are piling up, and (as of right now) I have no posts scheduled for next week. :(
So this has not been a great month for me, and I find myself once again asking for your patience through a difficult time. I'm sorry that these posts [about delays and disability] are so frequent; I wish they were not.
[/end CN]
However, one thing I can do is text at people, and my friend Liss can assemble my texty babblings and occasionally-dictated email into interesting posts on Elementary. I didn't have the spoons to cross-post last week's, but here it is now:
Season 2, Episode 2
Season 2, Episode 3
Here is a nice open thread for talking about them, and once again I am sorry that I've been so quiet online lately. It's not by choice, but I realize that doesn't make it easier on any of you.
Shut Up!
Remember when I was breathlessly documenting everything awesome in Elementary before that whole "Texas Republicans hates its lady citizens" thing I got distracted by? Well, Elementary is back on and WHOOPS, my abject apologies to the eleventy billion people I recommended it to.
Liss and I discuss it in depth here.
Here's hoping next week won't suck so hard.
Shut Up!
[Content Note: Drug Addiction, Child Abuse, Stockholm Syndrome, Reversal Twist, Surgery]
Official Episode Synopsis: Sherlock and Watson consult on a child abduction case involving a serial killer who is nicknamed "The Balloon Man," because he leaves a signature batch of balloons at each of his crime scenes.
Elementary, (Season 1 | Episode 3) "Child Predator"
So, hey, content note upfront: this episode involves child abduction, child abuse, Stockholm syndrome, and then a reversal twist where a victim turns out to be a victimizer. One of the praises I've heaped on this show in the past is that it doesn't rely on this trope nearly as often as some crime dramas do, but it is here for this episode and not everyone will want to come along for the ride. So here's a content note upfront and I'll try to handle the issues herein sensitively.
Shut Up!
Since I'm going through Elementary from the beginning, and very slowly, it'll be awhile before I have a chance to register my serious issues with Dead Man's Switch which (coincidentally) aired right after I told everyone on earth to watch Elementary and which was easily the fail-iest episode they've aired. Whooooops!
So instead, I will just direct everyone to this co-authored Shakesville post which sums up my issues pretty thoroughly. There will obviously be more later, but in the meantime here is my take.
Shut Up!
[Content Note: Drug Addiction, Murder]
Official Episode Synopsis: Sherlock uses his powers of deduction to consult on the murder of a young man who is shot upon entering his apartment. Jon Michael Hill joins the cast.
Elementary, (Season 1 | Episode 2) "While You Were Sleeping"
The second episode of Elementary opens during a session of Addicts Anonymous. A man talks about his struggles with addiction and how long he's been sober, while Joan watches with obvious sympathy and support. Between testimonies, she notices that Sherlock seems to have zoned out to an almost alarming degree and is unresponsive to his surroundings; when she nudges him to ask if he's okay, he suddenly leaps to his feet shouting, "amygdala".
Shut Up!
[Content Note: Drug Addiction, Murder, Domestic Violence, Victim Blaming, Ableism]
Official Episode Synopsis: Detective Sherlock Holmes, along with his sober companion, Dr. Joan Watson, uses his uncanny ability to read people and analyze crimes to assist the NYPD on some of their more difficult cases.
Elementary, (Season 1 | Episode 1) "Pilot"
This first episode of Elementary opens with a woman being violently assaulted in her own home by an unseen assailant. This is potentially triggery, obviously, and that is going to be a hurdle for a lot of detective shows -- not everyone can watch them and not everyone will enjoy them. But, speaking as someone who enjoys detective shows, I can already say that there are a couple of things foreshadowed here that I love about Elementary.
Shut Up!
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(I wanted to say "Elementary Saturdays", but I cannot promise that, lol.)
Several things have happened to me this year, some emotional and some practical, and all of them have rolled up into a big ball of awesome to bring you all a new deconstruction picking apart everything I love regarding the newest Sherlock Holmes reboot: Elementary.
For one, Melissa McEwan has introduced me to the show, and helped to foster a deep and abiding love for this feminist-friendly masterpiece. Some of you have been following the "Liss and Ana Talk About Elementary" posts over at Shakesville, and those will be continuing as long as I have fingers to type and Liss has the patience to compile my random thoughts into a lovely coherent narrative.
For two, Best Friend has introduced me to Roku, which allows me to watch Amazon Instant Video with captions (omg, thank you, thank you, thank you, Best Friend), and which means that I can buy Elementary and watch it on my computer for screencappy goodness and deconstructiony rewindy times. This is a very necessary hurdle for deconstructing visual media and I am grateful.
For three, Melissa McEwan has written this amazing post -- Seek and Ye Shall Find -- about the awesome power of feminist love. Love for other people, yes, but also love for things like kickass television shows. And while I do have a love-deconstruction in the form of The Hunger Games, I'm also fully aware that a lot of those books is depressing like whoa, which has affected how quickly I can go through them and how many of you can follow them.
And thus has Liss inspired me to invest some time and energy into explaining all the reasons why I love-love-love Elementary, partly because I like to undercut the laughable Humorless Feminist stereotype where I can, partly because I want Elementary to succeed as much as possible, and partly because I want to encourage other shows to be more feminist-friendly in response. And mostly because I love this show more than I love Pirate's Booty Aged White Cheddar Crisps. (Which is, obviously, a LOT.)
Also, inspired by the Feminist Harry Potter and Friends and Feminism tumblrs, you'll be seeing stuff like this sprinkled into posts here and there on the blog:
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Sherlock and Joan demonstrate that men and women
can be friends and colleagues
without becoming romantically involved with each other.
(SHERLOCK: Do you believe in love at first sight?) |
(Posts with one-offs like the above will also be tagged as "
roflbot" in honor of the swiffy site that provides this capability.)
Update: And it has belatedly occurred to me that my original plan of scattering roflbot posts over the blog over the next few weeks will mean accidentally spoiling people who haven't seen the show. So I will retire the tag and confine the screencaps to deconstruction posts under the cut.
Shut Up!
