Elementary Meta

Collection of meta on Elementary gathered from all over internet. Submissions are very appreciated!

[reservoir-of-blood]

[shinobicyrus]

It continually baffles me that Elementary isn’t mentioned very often on tumblr. It’s like four seasons of televised, well-done Sherlock Holmes fanfiction. Just for starters:

It casts the criminally under-appreciated Lucy Liu as the show’s version of Watson

The show’s creator has been holding the line for four years that Sherlock and Joan will NOT hook up because “it’s too easy,” and the show “doesn’t need it.”

It doesn’t downplay Sherlock’s (canonical) addiction to heroin, and in fact turns his recovery and continued sobriety into an issue he constantly struggles with

Sherlock’s character is well-balanced as a rude, arrogant, anti-social misanthrope who is still capable of being kind and treats those few he considers friends with respect

Likewise, Joan is intensely empathetic and nurturing to people in need, but does not tolerate bullshit (Sherlock’s especially) and is perfectly capable of beating up grown man a hundred pounds heavier than her with a police-baton

Sherlock teaches Joan cane-fighting (a fighting style he had in the books), and is an avid beekeeper (another detail from the books)

Sherlock and Joan share a pet turtle named Clyde. He paints.

The cast orbiting Sherlock and Joan are diverse, three dimensional, and exist as more than cannon fodder for Sherlock to prove his superiority at every turn.

Ms. Hudson is a trans woman (played by a trans actress) that cleans up Sherlock and Joan’s place when she’s not cohabitating with her sugar daddies

The mysteries are pretty cool and creative detective stories

Lucy Liu herself has said that a non-sexual relationship is more “dynamic” and “interesting” to play and considers the lack of romance between them a “sacred” part of the characters

The show is unabashedly practical when it comes to sexuality: Sherlock has arrangements with women that are non-romantic but respectful, and has suggested that Joan is “dissatisfied” with traditional relationships and might be more inclined to an open or even polyamorous relationship

I can’t even ruin it but just…Moriarty is magnificent

Again: a male and a female lead in a deep, significant platonic relationship based on mutual respect.

[halloawhatisthis]

[oberynymeros]

Just because you don’t understand something doesn’t mean it isn’t awesome, okay?

[terrorbyrd]

Elementary’s cast is so diverse that I wonder if they use open casting for their minor roles?

I’m so unused to seeing Asians casually portraying “normal” people that I was literally taken aback when an Asian-American woman was a company spokesperson in this episode.

[katasstrophee-deactivated201906]

how’s it going with the case files…

[incorrectelementaries]

Elementary + The Onion headlines

[bulletproofbell]

Headcanon that joan trashed the casebook when sherlock left

[amindamazed]

As folks have noted, Kitty’s “solution” that made Stotz to quit the force doesn’t address the larger problem that he’s statistically likely to be violent with someone else someday. Removing him is a short-term fix that will make Hannah’s life easier and consequently make Tommy feel better. It’s not about justice or healing but rather immediate gratification, dealing with the problem directly in front of them. (I don’t mean to suggest Kitty was necessarily wrong to act as she did, just that it has ramifications.)

She had a similar reaction in 3x02 when she thought they should let the innocent man plead guilty and go to prison so he’d feel like he was doing something instead of nothing. It was what he wanted NOW so why not let him have it, bigger picture be damned? Pouring her soda over the laptop to destroy Watson’s mss is another example of her acting on impulse to reach a conclusion instead of belaboring the point.

At the same time that she’s drawn to the quick fix, she also has long-term (if perhaps short-sighted), goals. I don’t think Kitty actually wanted to be a detective when she started working with Sherlock; as she told Joan, she’s moving toward something, and I think that’s payback for what happened to her. The skills and knowledge and contacts she’s acquiring are for that. When Sherlock told Marcus she reminded him of a younger version of himself, I thought of “M” and his speech to Watson about how all her lessons helped prepare him for the opportunity to avenge Irene.

My guess is that Joan’s influence will alter Kitty’s plans, but to what end?

[amindamazed]

Things I liked in “Rip Off”

conversations about Watson. Sherlock and Kitty talking about Watson and the fact that she has secrets and wondering why. People ON SCREEN discussing the topic of Joan Watson. Hallelujah!

Nadia Dajani as an M.E. who completely ignored Sherlock’s attempt to take credit for her findings. Hope we see her again; a semi-regular female M.E. has been on my wishlist for a while.

Sherlock acknowledging Watson’s rights to privacy & to tell her own stories

"That’s not the sound it makes."

Eloquence of body language: Kitty and Sherlock accidentally brushing hands when he stops her from using the laptop; she flinches and he pulls back his hand, rubbing his fingers as if to remove the sensation

Similarly, Sherlock’s reaction to Kitty destroying Watson’s document.

Sherlock telling Kitty her voice is valuable. I didn’t read the final scene as specifically suggesting Kitty should write about Sherlock and Joan but rather encouragement and appreciation for her perspective and input generally.

Things that are complicated and need further development that I don’t trust the show to provide, but for now it’s too soon to tell what they’ll do

long-term psychological, social, and political aspects of intimate partner violence

erasure of Joan’s words on several levels (her absence on screen; the lack of any mention of her writing over the previous 25 episodes; the character’s decision to delete the file; the narrative not sharing her words; other characters re-erasing her words (good reason or no); the likelihood it will never be mentioned again; etc)

I assumed that if Joan wanted to keep the mss, she kept copies herself. I can also imagine her angrily deleting it in the immediate aftermath of Sherlock’s abandonment and possibly regretting that decision some time later. Pretty sure we’ll require fic to tell that story. (here’s mine)

whether or not deleting Joan’s text was a critical adaptation of ACDcanon to revise Watson’s role and if it was, to what end? Up-ending the lone-genius trope worked because we were repeatedly shown the trope, its limitations, and the alternative. We’ve barely seen Watson as chronicler, we’ve seen nothing of the limitations of that trope, and no clear sense of what the alternative is intended to be.

Kitty’s interactions with Gregson felt OOC, specifically for her to go out of her way to encourage him to confide in her. I don’t know enough about her to judge whether her intervention for Hannah is in-character, but suddenly being Gregson’s buddy didn’t ring true to me.

Things that annoyed me

gratuitous screaming by the woman who found the hand. 

stereotyping of orthodox judaism (although the synagogue was a beautiful location)

Elephant in the room

Because I assume Joan’s absence was 100% due to Lucy Liu wanting the time off, I wasn’t bothered by it. I was intrigued that they not only didn’t provide advance notice in promotion but apparently attempted to hide the fact with the inclusion of old clips of Joan in the promo. And then aired the episode on a day very likely to have low viewership. As previously noted, I was happy with how they brought her into the episode anyway. I hope we get an episode without Sherlock that’s treated the same way, but since we have lots and lots of instances of people talking about Sherlock, I’d like to see them try not to mention him at all. They managed not to include Sherlock in any way in Gregson’s story this week; maybe that was a practice run. (I will be shocked, shocked, if this actually happens.)

[stardust-rust]

You know what really chokes me up about Sherlock and Joan and his departure?

At the end of Season 2 Sherlock felt very threatened by Joan’s move out of the brownstone and partly out of his life. It was so bad that it actually drove him to the need to use drugs again, which is kind of a huge deal!??!?!

The thing is though, that at that moment in time, all Sherlock wanted, and thought he’d ever want, was just to live at that brownstone with Watson, and they’d solve crimes together. That was as close to perfect as his life had ever gotten, more perfect than even his life with Irene I’d say. With a romantic partner there is still a little sort of tension, a little sort of ‘competition’ with each other. But with Joan, he had a platonic soulmate; someone whom he could love freely, with complete trust and knowing where they stood with each other. She understood him and accepted him and made him better as no one else in his entire life ever had.

And Joan herself had grown so much, as both a person and a detective under his tutelage. She flourished and found a whole new unique career, they even adopted a tortoise together. He probably never gave a thought to her leaving - the brownstone was her home, and while I couldn’t say he imagined them to both grow old together in there, I’d imagine he refused to think about a future in which she left. Their life was perfect to him.

Like he said in ‘We Are Everyone’ he thought they weren’t cut off from the world at all, they had everything they needed (with each other and the cases). That they are in fact creating a better world to live in, while ‘eliminating anything extraneous’ (well at least what he believes to be extraneous, which seems to consist of social interaction on a regular basis).

But he realised that it wasn’t enough for Joan. She needed her own space, time away from crime solving and a place she could call her own sanctuary. He knows that she isn’t leaving him and that she still thinks the world of him, but he can’t help but feel like he is the one who wasn’t enough. That her version of a perfect life is one in which he is only a part of, and not entire.

He asked her to stay, but was rebuffed. I can’t even imagine how that felt to him. Like rejection I suppose, from your own soulmate. The temptation to use again was so bad that he needed to run away, push everyone away and go into hiding until he could get a grip on himself and redefine his perfect life. Of course, his reaction to the entire thing was basically to stick his head in the sand and pretend that he hadn’t really needed Joan, it was just the ‘partnership’ he needed.

Which we know is a crock of horse manure, but we’ll have to see how the rest of Season 3 pans out and if he admits to it or not.

[sanguinarysanguinity]

I really am an actor, you know. In London I had a small part in a radio drama. Yeah, we still have those across the pond. Sherlock wrote me a letter when he was ten, saying I alone of all the cast…

— Elementary 1x06, Flight Risk

[sanguinarysanguinity]

A few years after that “small part in a radio drama” that young Sherlock so enjoyed, Roger Rees (the actor who plays Alistair Moore in Elementary) played a much larger role in a radio drama: Sherlock Holmes himself, in the 1988 Bert Coules production of “Hound of the Baskervilles.” It’s available on the BBC’s website right now, and will be for the next 10 days.

…

(According to amindamazed​’s Elementary Timeline, the story that Alistair told to Joan took place in 1985 or 1986. But allowing for Elementary’s usual sloppiness with dates, I’m half-inclined to believe that Elementary intended this story to be a direct nod to Roger Rees’ own go at Sherlock Holmes.)

[addictedtobeinghimself]

can we talk about the fact that joan recognized the cigarette butt in that burnt out building and therefore obviously finally read sherlock’s monograph on recognizing tabacco types?

can we talk about how she probably sat in the brownstone after he left, surrounded by all of his papers and things, and when she couldn’t stand to reread his stupid note one more time she set it aside and just started reading everything else in that ramshackle old brownstone, anything to take her mind off of it all, his monographs included?

can we talk about how then she just started compulsively tidying, packing things away and shelving books and unplugging televisions and lamps and computers and shutting blinds and shutters and curtains and emptying the fridge and collecting clyde and her handful of belongings and finally putting that protective covering over all of sherlock’s furniture, because she knew if he was coming back at all it wasn’t going to be the next day, because she knew he left, really left, and she wasn’t going to just sit around waiting for him or pretending she couldn’t function perfectly well without him?

can we talk about joan watson having one moment of weakness and daunting aimlessness before steeling herself, picking up pieces, and then thriving in the aftermath of sherlock holmes, please?

[stardust-rust]

Right, after that VERY emotional first post response to “Bella”, I can finally articulate more than a sentence at a time. Well, I’m trying, because this is a difficult episode for me to pull apart.

So this episode explores artificial intelligence, and how the line between human and machine becomes blurred. I believe rather deeply that this is a case Sherlock is very very emotionally compromised by.

It’s not a leap at all to imagine Sherlock having been accused of being  ‘robotic’ perhaps, or just compared (even if complimentary) to a machine/computer. I can’t imagine growing up with a mind so sharp that it alienates you from the world around you, from your family, to the world at large, and to your friends (if you even had any), and constantly being aware that you are different from everyone, and the closest comparison to your intelligence is cold hard machines.

It must have really affected how he viewed himself, and soon, how he wanted to be viewed by others, as a defense mechanism. I think Sherlock’s ineptitude for social interactions and conventional social etiquette is partly an act (to rile people up/get them off guard) partly he doesn’t care for ‘nice/normal’, and partly a result of his self image from his upbringing. Maybe at one point he wanted to be a computer, to rise above the petty and cruel human beings, so that if they mock him or bully him, he is immune to their taunts. But there was his mother, and then Irene happened, and then the drug addiction, and then Joan. All things that pushed emotions in his face and forced him to confront his humanity.

Perhaps he came to realise being human wasn’t so bad after all, when you surround yourself with people you love and respect. But maybe deep down he still believes himself to be an ‘automaton’ as the professor so very keenly dissected about Sherlock. He still resists, in some part, to the idea of being human and vulnerable. He constantly struggles with things like love, for example, which he wants to believe is a social construct, and thus meaningless and inapplicable to him. Except for that he has felt love, and is in fact currently confronted with this feeling whenever he sees Joan (my shipper heart be still!).

However I’m still on the fence about his motives for being so desperate to prove Bella isn’t really self-aware or a ‘true’ A.I.  Did he want to prove that although he wants to believe himself a machine, no machine could truly become human/be smart enough to be considered human? Or is he just trying to prove himself smarter than even an intelligent computer program? If Bella IS a true A.I., what would it mean for Sherlock?

Would it mean a blow to his self-identity I wonder? Right now Sherlock might think himself an automaton, but he is still superior to computers because he is still human (with creativity, self-awareness, emotions etc). But if Bella is a true A.I. and self aware herself, it would mean that a machine is on its way to surpassing him, shaking his belief about his superiority, his relevance. He would once again have to question where he stands on this human/machine line, and where one becomes more superior to the other.

Also: WHY IS SHERLOCK HAVING THE A-HA MOMENT AGAIN UGH. Seriously at first I was like okay, this episode is great - Sherlock has his tantrum with Bella, and Joan and Kitty find out who the burglar is. But then boom, Sherlock immediately recognises the burglar they’re looking for and suddenly the ladies are back to following Sherlock’s direction. COME ON WRITERS let’s have the ladies have that a-ha! moment please, they kinda deserve one.

And I just HAVE TO say how utterly lovely Sherlock’s little speech to Joan was. I mean. I MEAN. She even wanted to hug him! And if only he wasn’t such a no-touchy-please person WE COULD HAVE HAD IT ALL. Then again, we didn’t even get a hug or A SINGLE TOUCHY after her kidnapping so at this point I’m holding out a vain hope. I will only have that ONE moment after he attacked Lucas Bundsch and broke his finger and she treated him (his getting shot by that assassin guy didn’t count, she had gloves on).

[wondersmith-and-sons]

"I kinda feel like hugging you right now"

but oh good gods, can we please talk about Joan’s voice and her body language and reaction because this scene is killing me and I could go on a 10-page rambling spree about this.

Joan has always been forthcoming in her emotional response to Sherlock - in anger, in irritation, or in her expressions of friendship, Joan never held back. She is so straightforward in her affection, so direct in expressing her anger (“you even made a friend. Me? I’m talking about me.” her Robert Frost poem gift, and that plate-smashing and lock-smashing scenes respectively) but in this scene she is so awkward and displaced.

She’s been surprised by his actions before, this is the first time we see her work through her feelings about it - Joan’s emotional response is usually instantaneous. It flares, they talk through it, and it settles. Sherlock can be sporadic, but Joan is still able to predict his behaviour to an extent.

But this is different - this is the first time he’s taken into account of her personal life without being invasive and controlling. She had every right to be angry and suspicious of his meddling with Andrew, because he has pulled worse crap than this before, let’s face it.

But Sherlock promised her he would change. She must have heard that same promise from so many ex-clients, and saw most of them fall through, so she recognised it as the placating gesture it was - and then he legged it to MI6 with a 5-sentence goodbye, so it’s not like he was showing much promise. But this is him making his way to fulfilling his promise, making amends and slowly bandaging their relationship together.

and so Sherlock’s admission, his respect for Andrew and her boundaries just comes so completely out of the left field. She is in increments sheepish, grateful and surprised and Joan doesn’t know how to react. She is left fumbling about for a response in the silence that follows, something that is usually Sherlock’s forte.

We had a glimpse of the power dynamic switch-up in the season premiere, and this is a wonderful continuation of that theme.

[evayna]

Maybe I’m reading a bit too much into this but I felt like the imagery in the scene where Joan beats up that guy…

gif credit (x)

Might be a jab at Martin Freeman’s ‘joke’ about Lucy Liu being a dog. Here she is wearing a ferocious dog on her shirt, in a place where dogs are not allowed, taking this white guy to the ground.

Whether intentional or not, it’s a great scene.

[elementarymeta]

hi! I wonder if someone would like to help out running this blog?