Saw "Elementary" on German TV

[wiseheart]

Yeah, the American version of Sherlock. God, it was dull. And while they apparently thought that female!Watson was a strike of genius, well, it wasn't. Not to mention that Lucy Liu didn't age gracefully, the fact that neither actor has more than one single expression doesn't make it a captivating programme.

Comments

[sammydragoncat]

I tried to watch it twice, when it first started - it just wasn't good. I was so disappointed.

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

I didn't *expect* it to be any good, so I wasn't particularly disappointed - just bored. For me, Sherlock Holmes is something inherently British, so an "American" version is a contradiction in itself. Yeah, I know, I'm a snob.

What bothered me in particular was all that "running around shirtless so that people can see my manly muscles and my cool tattoo" part. *And* the sentences that seemed to come directly from Sherlock (although they might have come from the original), like "I can give you 2 minutes" and stuff.

[sammydragoncat]

I didn't hold out much hope for it. I could have lived with it being in NY (although I agree, it should be British), but to make Watson female gave me doubts about it in the beginning. But the whole thing is so far off from what Sherlock should be that it should not have even had it's name in the title.

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

Every time someone can't come up with anything really creative, they reverrt to gender-bending. And usually, it leads to lots of gratutious semi-nudity and lots of totally pointelss sex. I shiver by the mere idea of Lucy Liu and whatshisface who plays buff!Holmes doing the dirty eventually. Or them pining after each other.

That's why I refused to watch the so-called "reimagined" BSG, because really, Starbuck as a woman? And Boomer as not only a female but as an evil female robot? Oh, please!

[sammydragoncat]

I agree - a talented writer could have made something great, instead get a show where I could care less about the characters and a badly written plot. It's disappointing because all they had to do was modernize it and set it NY, everything else was already done for them - the characters, their motivations plots all already done for them.

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

The problem is that the whole modernizing thing has already been done by Moffat and Gatiss, and considering how brillianmt BBC's Sherlock is, they didn't have a rat's chance to top it. A female Watson wouldn't have been enough for that, even if they'd done it right. Which they didn't.

The whole thing is so hideously boring, I could shoot the wall like Sherlock did in "The Great Game".

[stevie-carroll.livejournal.com]

I'm supposed to be sitting on a panel about it next month, without having seen any episodes so far. It's interesting to read your thoughts: my main one is that the gender switch they've done just plays into the common trope of a brilliant/difficult man rebelling against his more conservative/sensible female superior (or authority figure of some sort). Now, making Holmes female as well/instead could have been interesting...

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

I'm probably prejudiced because I don't think Lucy Liu could really act; and I found the guy who played holmes boring and annoying at the same time.

You're right, though - a female Holmes, or makingthem both female would have been more interesting. This is a bit of a rip-off of the Mulder/Scully dynamic... only that I actually liked Mulder and Scully. At least in the beginning, when it was al about the monster of the week. I found the government conspiracy plotline increasingly boring and stopped watching the X-Files entirely.