"Elementary" pilot play-by-play

(My friend Kate told me to watch CBS's Elementary pilot and tell me what I thought. The pilot in question came under quite a bit of controversy before it even aired due to being an American knockoff of BBC's Sherlock, though Elementary's creators claim that they took their own direction in modernizing the sleuth. I pulled up the pilot via video search and typed a series of notes as I watched. Here are my first impressions.)

It starts out in the exact same way as Sherlock - someone's getting murdered, then cut to Watson starting a normal day. I guess there's not really much of another way to start out such a series, but still, it sticks out at you.

The "sober companion" angle is fine on its own, so why make Watson a woman?  Once you've changed both aspects, it ceases to seem like Sherlock Holmes. Besides that, the whole situation feels forced; I don't pretend to know much about sober companions, but the notion of a rather petite woman suddenly having to move in with a large, muscular, half-dressed druggie who just broke out of rehab is difficult to buy.

Joan seems, so far, to have no personality of her own; the straight man at her very flattest and paperiest. She doesn't seem even remotely surprised to be in such an odd situation. Holmes is just a bit too reminiscent of Cumberbatch's Sherlock to ignore, although he's balanced it out with a shred of that guy from Psych (unfocused eyes; wild, cheerful speech). They go to too much trouble to make him eccentric; though he abhors sex, he's decided for some reason that it's good for his brain and has been hiring prostitutes. The first scene between him and Joan was cliché to the max. Also, he shortens "sober companion" to just "companion", with a significance which feels like a big, dirty, unwelcome wink at the Whovian crossover audience from BBC.

Once again, Watson's watch becomes a smartphone, and Holmes is using it to find out dark family secrets--this time, it's about her dad's affair. Rather liked the Elementary take on the situation, but it's nonetheless stolen from Sherlock, and then it all gets subverted in a way that's supposed to be funny but just falls flat.

The investigation consists mostly of Holmes goofing around the place like Matt Smith's Eleventh Doctor in new surroundings. The "finding the body with a marble" thing was, admittedly, clever and fun. I even enjoyed Holmes' reaction ("Sometimes I hate it when I'm right."). But the problem was, it didn't feel at all like a Sherlock Holmes reaction. It's as if they treat him like a separate character 80 percent of the time, then awkwardly shoehorn him into the Holmes role now and then so we'll remember who he's supposed to be ("I don't think. I observe. I deduce." He was barely coherent two seconds ago. Why so intelligent and terse all of a sudden?)

I liked the line "Did he also wear bigger hands when he strangled his wife?", and the way it was delivered; that feels more like the Holmes I know. (Echoes of that famous sarcasm from The Sign of the Four: "On which the dead man very considerately got up and locked the door on the inside.")

I loved Holmes keeping bees on the roof; very cool visual, and nice nod to a bit of canon that hasn't come up in Sherlock yet. The comment about Joan having two alarm clocks was nice too; good line. And the fact that he's actually gone off drugs puts an interesting spin on things.

Holmes texting Joan is a little…well, I guess I can't really blame them, since such is modern communication, but that's, like, the famous thing from Sherlock. I'm glad they're having Joan look at the medical shots and be that trustful person victims can talk to, because it somewhat justifies her continued presence; it was beginning to seem a little weird and why-is-he-even-bringing-her. And I guess she's curious about the case, at least. It's slightly smoother than it was, but it's still not Holmes and Watson. It's as simple as this; you can't do Holmes and Watson with a man and a woman. You can do a very interesting, complex relationship, but it won't be a Holmes and Watson relationship.

Okay, I'm glad Joan is kind of showing some personality now. She even buys opera tickets--and he's not the one who likes opera. Some interesting twists here, and there's almost a fatherly quality to Holmes now. (Interestingly, this Holmes doesn't seem to have trouble understanding feelings--he tried to spare Joan's. Earlier in the episode, a woman called Holmes "a jerk", and now it seems she's genuinely right. Cumberbach's Holmes comes off as a jerk because he's socially backwards; this Holmes is just eccentric, but he understands people. Therefore, when we see him acting like a jerk, it actually is because he's a jerk. Hah.) I like Holmes' handling of the case so far (noticing the mole in the photos, and suddenly this case seems more complicated then we thought), but it feels stupid when he says he got all the photos "via" Facebook.

I like that Holmes is actually calling Watson "Watson". It just feels right, and it put a smile on my face. (That was one thing that always bugged me about Sherlock--the first-name basis, with Watson being "John". I understood them trying to incorporate the modern element, but "Watson" is a name with some heft to it, a name that one can snap out or whisper huskily in the same breath as "The game is afoot!", and I felt that, by removing the constant use of the name, they'd taken out a more potent element than they were aware of.) The fact that he's trying to embarrass her at the opera house so she'll listen to him, however, killed my Holmesy-good-feeling buzz and reminded me that this guy ain't Holmes. Holmes would show some reverence for the opera.

Section with Holmes discovering the killer was really well-acted and intense. Once again we see him filled with human concern for the victim and anger at wrongdoing; none of that "you're scum but so am I, really" thing Cumberbach's Sherlock has when interacting with killers. Tough and gritty, this Holmes, but certainly not emotionless or sociopathic. We actually see his face set like a Sidney Paget illustration at one point, which was unintentional, but awesome.

The whole "redeeming conversation through prison glass" setup was cheesy, but well-acted. "I'm very pleased, Watson" made me feel happier than that hive of bees on the New York rooftops--great delivery. And Watson makes the point I made before: that Holmes' shtick feels forced. He's not a misanthrope, she posits, just afraid to make connections. Kind of taking the opposite tack of Cumberbach's Holmes, who simply doesn't understand or need connections.

Y'know, it occurs to me that this whole show would be vastly better if Jonny Lee Miller's character were being played as a somewhat delusional wannabe Holmes--a guy who's read the Conan Doyle stories (and probably seen Sherlock as well), who genuinely has a gift for deduction, who longs for Holmes' emotionlessness but doesn't actually have it. A broken man, hiding under a Holmes disguise that doesn't really fit him.

Bottom line: Lucy Liu's stoic female Watson turned out to be genuinely lovable. Holmes is enjoyable, too, if you regard him as what he is--a guy who isn't really Sherlock Holmes, if they'd just stop pretending.

Just so I know

I'm drinking decaf tea that I think might have some cinnamon in it, out of a multipurpose mug with a too-wide mouth.

I'm supposed to be studying Latin instead of surfing the Internet, so I pin this blog post here to hold myself accountable.

Non-Comet Allie

I don't know why it is, but when I'm someplace where I really shouldn't be writing--in the back of my Art History class, for instance, with the lights out and the projector running--I have almost no choice. Those phantom ideas I keep hoping to catch in my free time cross the boarder of my brain on exaggerated cartoon-like tiptoe, shoes in hand. And there I am, off my guard, and not knowing how to handle them.

(Internal monologue starts with something about a meteor--it sounds like meatier. What's meatier than a meteor? A comet, maybe. But it can't be a comet, because they had one of those in Avatar: The Last Airbender. No comets. I could have a meteor about to come crashing to earth, and Din would call it "the wrecking ball of the gods"--how like him--and some enemy or other has "the wrecking ball of the something gods at their beck and call", for the sake of the rhyme. I just need an adjective there, to make the metre work…)

Now once I get out of class, and I have some hours of free time in the library, with my cup of tea and everything handsome about me, I simply don't write. I flit from shelf to shelf, reading titles and beginnings, but not committing to anything, and I idly check to see if I've been emailed. Sometimes I don't even touch the laptop, as if some instinct kept me from it--maybe some instinct that, thousands of years ago, prevented men from messing with cave paintings all day long and turned them toward the crops.

Wow, too much college lecturing on social evolution for me. Also too much Steinbeck. I have a musty copy of The Wayward Bus beside me, and I'm reading it--noncommittally.

teabag's torn to form a bookmark in case

I want to come back to it next week

Grab Your Hat and Fetch a Camera

What website would any of you recommend for starting a photo blog on? Because I need to start a photo blog, and badly. I suppose it would make more sense to just upload stuff to Facebook like everybody else, but Facebook is greedy and I think it does Facebook good to be denied a morsel or two of my existence now and then.

See, when I got my new iPhone 4s with its perfect little camera perfectly smushed inside it, I really had this idea that I'd be a smart, judicious photo-taker. The perfect round of images from all the events I went to, and no more.

And now look at me. There are things I go to and don't take a photo at all, and then there are times when I let my camera get its hungry little mouth around every view I see. Today, for instance, with the sky too bright an Autumnal blue to be really feeling well, and the sun and the shadows making such a sweet contrast--I started taking photos off the top of the swingset, feeling vaguely that it reminded me of some Robert Louis Stephenson poem. And I had to get every angle of this little idyll, even with a guilty part of me knowing how much it filled up memory space.

And I can't delete photos, not even the bad ones. Because so what if it's blurry, it's a moment in time, a second in time, and if I touch that little trash can it'll be gone forever. It's a big responsibility I have. (This is also why I don't usually take video. Because I have a pathological fear of forgetting, and if once I let myself get too obsessive with the video camera, I'd never stop filming long enough to watch.)

This is the same side of me that ran around with mittens on when I was little, trying to catch all the snowflakes, because I'd heard no two were alike and I needed to save all of them that I could before they fell into that snow bank and got lost to the ages. I wonder if all writers feel on a pretty day that they're being dictated to, and that they're so busy listening that they're forgetting to write down every single word.

Two songs compete in my head right now. Panic! at the Disco, reminding me what I owe:

Go on, grab your hat and fetch a camera,

Go on, film the world before it happens.

And on the other hand, Matt and Kim insist:

No time for cameras, we'll use our eyes instead.

Sing, o muses.

Well, anyway, my camera's crammed and I need to start a photo blog.

I'm gonna sing a song to you and I refuse to make it fake

College continues. I find myself on a perplexing new schedule where I want to sleep suddenly at three or four in the afternoon, and then I have to resist the urge to drink my tea at seven. I come early for my lectures and sit in the dark theater, tapping my fingers on a paperback copy of The Odyssey, my mind wandering from the subject of the morning's sermon at daily Mass to whether or not those sounds I heard could possibly be rats. I develop a weird affection for the speakers in the cafeteria, which are always playing some dippy song along the lines of Whoa, I swear to you, I'll be there for you, this is not a drive by-y-y-y-y. I seem to tremble beautifully on the brink of figuring out this Latin thing.

Clair, seeing that I'm busy, has enlisted Mary as her new cartoons-in-the-evenings buddy. As I work on my latest summary essay and hear them in the other room, laughing their heads off over The Regular Show, I wonder if there's room here for some pithy aside about Lost Innocence. (Hey, we're studying Genesis. Maybe I could work it in.)

Doesn't really matter, though, that I'm not an active cartoon-watcher anymore, since at literally any given moment, the question is not so much whether I have a song from Adventure Time stuck in my head as which one it is. I walk from this building to that hall and people don't know that I'm walking to the strings of an invisible ukulele, mentally singing a song that makes zero sense outside the context of the scene in question:

So Finn and Jake set out to find a new home,

It's gonna be tough for a kid and a dog on their own,

There's a little house, ah, Finn's sticking his foot in,

Well that's a bad idea, dude, 'cause now that bird thinks you're a jerk, Finn.

And now they're chillin' on the side of a hill and thinkin' livin' in a cloud'd be totally thrillin',

Unless they find something inside,

Like a mean cloud man and his beautiful cloud bride.

A beehive, oh no! Don't stick your foot in there, guy,

Y'all tried that before, and you know it didn't turn out right.

Perhaps I'll never really grow all that old.

(Aside: I'm way more opinionated about Adventure Time than I should be. In case you're familiar with the show, my issues specifically have to do with my loathing for toilet humor, combined with the fact that they totally jumped the shark introducing that "Flame Princess" character to be Finn's new love interest. If anyone wants to debate me, I'll take them.)

Agatha Christie Week (with a side order of Sayers)

“She was a lucky woman who had established a happy knack of writing what quite a lot of people wanted to read.”

- Agatha Christie, Elephants Can Remember

I don't go in much for these holidays no one's heard of, unless they celebrate something of which I'm personally fond, in which case I break out the garlands. Apparently it's Agatha Christie Week. You've probably got a paperback of hers lying around somewhere, and it's the perfect rainy Sunday on which to read it. Make some tea and find yourself a cozy chair someplace.

Oh, and surely the woman they call the Queen of Mystery wouldn't mind if I gave a little attention to some lesser-known lady detective writers while I'm at it. The other day, two used books I'd been awaiting came in the mail--Lord Peter, with all of Dorothy L. Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey short stories, and The Likeness, second in Tana French's contemporary Dublin Murder Squad series. Plus, I'm literally about ten pages away from finishing Sayers' Strong Poison, and it'd be a shame to put it down now, especially considering how long I had to wait for my copy.

Funny story about Strong Poison, by the way. I continued to await the order, wailing and gnashing my teeth, until I was convinced that it must have arrived when I was out of the house, and that someone must have lost the package. Because I knew that meant I'd stumble upon it sooner or later, I spent a long, weary month refusing to order another copy. Finally I caved in, and the day they shipped it I found the original order, still in its package, in a pile of books beside my bed. It had indeed arrived, and someone had delivered it up to my room without letting me know. I'm no Lord Peter.

So, seeing as I've got two copies of Strong Poison on my hands, I feel I might as well pass one on to somebody. I can't think of a better book to celebrate Agatha Christie Week. It concerns a detective novelist as a murder suspect, and shows how much trouble Christie could have gotten herself into if anyone close to her had died suddenly of the same poison she'd researched for use in her latest.

If you'd like my extra copy, let me know! I'll get it to you ASAP so you can enjoy it before the week is out.

A Motivational Spider

Spiders seem to be appearing in my life a lot lately. Not those meek little measly-spindly house-dwelling ones, the kind you see Garfield smacking with a rolled-up newspaper in the Sunday funnies. I mean those giant garden-variety spiders that spin big, gorgeous orb webs wherever they find a place to hang their hat. They've been in my yard, they've been in Delaware--the other day I caught a collection of students staring one down on my campus, coffee cups forgotten in their hands, completely awed. Maybe there's been an insect surge on the East Coast, and these guys have decided to drape their webs out and try their luck. (Or maybe they got wind of the reboot of the Spider-Man franchise.)

Wandering into the living room today to do nothing in particular, I happened to glance at a window, and I saw this orb web coming out at me like an air-bag. It nearly touched the glass, then slacked back as the wind died down. In the dead center, curled up tight as a nut, was a spider, and not a small one.

This fellow decided to spin his web right outside a window--a window, I need not add, that any one of us could crank open at any moment. It's not an up-and-down window, it's a window that opens out. That takes guts, I guess. He risked demolition for a pretty view. Either that, or he just doesn't know.

At any rate, that window's the least of his problems. It's the first truly blustery day of the season, and he happens to have placed himself right at the crux of the storm. Every time the merest breeze goes barreling by, that web of his bops around like one of those cheap old screensaver graphics, and every time it happens you're positive it's going to detatch. But when it calms, there he is in the center, utterly motionless, pretending that nothing happened. I think he's got a spidery stoic-philosopher thing going on.

Other spiders sprawl around in their kingly webs like Emma Lazarus's take on the Colossus, with conquering limbs astride from strand to strand. Not this guy. He can't afford to sprawl. He remains huddled against the cold, cringing in the way spiders do, looking like one of the test subjects for Mad-Eye Moody's Cruciatus Curse. It's all the odder because he's one of those spiders with a vacant smiley face etched on their inner abdomen, so all the while his top half buries his head in his hands, his bottom half looks on the verge of throwing me a merry wink.

One time a pine needle landed among the strands somewhere near the edge. The spider felt it and eagerly trapezed his way over, convinced that it was his dinner. When he got to it, he fished it out, examined it tremulously with his front legs, and finally threw it away with the same air of disgust a writer has as he flings his fourth crumpled paper across the room. Then he went back to the center of the web, to wait.

I wanted a photo of that beautiful web of his, so I went looking for my phone. (By the way, none of the photos I did get were any good. Glare too bright.) When I came back the wind had punched a hole in it and turned it from an orb into a work of modern-industrial art. And there sat Spider among the wreckage, looking subtly, stoically sarcastic, as if to say, why me?

But after a moment of this, he stretched his legs and went climbing out to the pieces where the thread had frayed, connecting a bit here, eating a bit there, until it looked--well, it didn't look the way it had before, but at least it looked like something that was serving its purpose. And he crawled back to the place that used to be the center to wait.

I like this guy. There's something valiant about him. He's brave in the old-fashioned sense of putting forth a good face. I dread the day that someone opens that window and sends his web floating into the atmosphere.

Though, knowing him, he'll probably just tack it to the nearest tree and keep on waiting.

It ain't all satin / And silk, this Latin

It's hard to know what to even write about anymore, because a lot is going on. I'm a college student now. Navigating a campus, lugging my books from building to building, taking a million notes, the works.

I'm also a commuter, and thank goodness for that. I'm simply not a dorm-dweller by nature. I need to recharge. I've decided that a shift in scenery is the secret to stimulation. (Also, I have this new college laptop, and if, after my studying, I couldn't use it to watch cartoons with Clair, I'd cry.)

But yes. Latin is a tricky business. I'm only just starting it, and I've been made aware that what I've signed up for is essentially a slow broiling in conjugations. I must prepare myself either to become gradually stronger or to experience a premature decline. (Decline! "A, ae, ae, am, a, ae, arum, is, as, is!")

In one of my crazier moments I developed a theory about British accents. In every English book you read, the characters are just about drowning in caffeine. They think it's perfectly reasonable and normal to have tea in bed, then go downstairs and have breakfast with a pitcher of coffee. Imagine drinking one type of caffeine to work your way up to drinking another type. (That's not even mentioning all the stress-induced whiskey-mixing that goes on in Jeeves and Wooster. No wonder this is the civilization that came up with Alice in Wonderland; their solution for everything is to find the right thing to drink.)

Thus I conclude that a British accent is like an app on a phone. Its constant use drains battery life faster, and the only cure is near-constant caffeine.

Taking this as a hypothesis and following it to its logical conclusion, no wonder these books always depict the Romans looking all bulky and muscular. Merely speaking their own language was the world's most efficient workout.

And, just as the bird too weak to crack the egg would surely perish outside the shell, those who can't lift their copy of Wheelock's Latin have no hope whatsoever of surviving the course it suggests.

[By the way, I'd just like my readers to appreciate the fact that I wrote this entire post without once using that cliché old joke about "it killed the Ancient Romans and now it's killing me." I bet it occurred to you, though.]

Tranio, since for the great desire I had

Off to college officially! I mean, today I start classes. Last week was Welcome Week, and did it ever live up to its name. It was just a series of welcomes, one after the other. I understand that today, in addition to kicking off the program, they're going to welcome us yet again. I don't know if I can take all this merriment.

I've had Shakespeare on the brain of late (of always), and the opening of The Taming of the Shrew, featuring Lucentio and his servant Tranio, has been running through my head. Lucentio obviously isn't a commuter (he has to go to Padua University on a boat!), but like me he's heading off to college full of idealism and zeal--maybe a little too much of it. Fortunately the trusty Tranio is around to bring him back down to earth.

Enter LUCENTIO and his man TRANIO

LUCENTIO

Tranio, since for the great desire I had
To see fair Padua, nursery of arts,
I am arrived for fruitful Lombardy,
The pleasant garden of great Italy;
And by my father's love and leave am arm'd
With his good will and thy good company,
My trusty servant, well approved in all,
Here let us breathe and haply institute
A course of learning and ingenious studies.
Pisa renown'd for grave citizens
Gave me my being and my father first,
A merchant of great traffic through the world,
Vincetino, come of the Bentivolii.
Vincetino's son brought up in Florence
It shall become to serve all hopes conceived,
To deck his fortune with his virtuous deeds:
And therefore, Tranio, for the time I study,
Virtue and that part of philosophy
Will I apply that treats of happiness
By virtue specially to be achieved.
Tell me thy mind; for I have Pisa left
And am to Padua come, as he that leaves
A shallow plash to plunge him in the deep
And with satiety seeks to quench his thirst.

TRANIO

Mi perdonato, gentle master mine,
I am in all affected as yourself;
Glad that you thus continue your resolve
To suck the sweets of sweet philosophy.
Only, good master, while we do admire
This virtue and this moral discipline,
Let's be no stoics nor no stocks, I pray;
Or so devote to Aristotle's cheques
As Ovid be an outcast quite abjured:
Balk logic with acquaintance that you have
And practise rhetoric in your common talk;
Music and poesy use to quicken you;
The mathematics and the metaphysics,
Fall to them as you find your stomach serves you;
No profit grows where is no pleasure ta'en:
In brief, sir, study what you most affect.