BBC's Sherlock, My Naughty Secret

So … I kind of love BBC’s Sherlock.

The acting is top shelf, the directing is fantastic, and I just adore details like the text indicating what Sherlock is seeing when he’s focused.

And no, it’s not just Benedict Cumberbatch’s cut-your-hand-if-you-slap-him cheekbones that I’m hooked on.

Not that there’s anything wrong with his cheekbones, mind you.

Rawr.

Wait, wait!

Right, no wait, I actually had a post planned.

And unfortunately, it’s about the things I DON’T like about Sherlock. Some of which, by the way, I expect to hear a bit of disagreement in the comments about.

That’s the beauty of opinions.

That’s also my secret. It’s not often you see folks bad-mouthing something as popular as Sherlock. I can love it … while still not-so-secretly seething about the things that bother me.

Spoilers Ahoy

Some things I want to discuss will naturally include spoilers. Warning delivered. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Because I did. In italics, even, so you know I mean it.

Moriarty

Number one problem? Moriarty.

I didn’t like the way he was written or portrayed.

To back up — I don’t think that the actor did a poor job. As a matter of fact, I’d say he did a stellar job.

Professor Moriarty (traditional Moriarty) was a brilliant mathematician and a criminal mastermind. He hid in the shadows and orchestrated the efforts of lesser criminals, though he did not eschew personally chasing Holmes when necessary.

An excerpt:

But in calling Moriarty a criminal you are uttering libel in the eyes of the law — and there lie the glory and the wonder of it! The greatest schemer of all time, the organizer of every deviltry, the controlling brain of the underworld, a brain which might have made or marred the destiny of nations — that’s the man! But so aloof is he from general suspicion, so immune from criticism, so admirable in his management and self-effacement, that for those very words that you have uttered he could hale you to a court and emerge with your year’s pension as a solatium for his wounded character. Is he not the celebrated author of The Dynamics of an Asteroid, a book which ascends to such rarefied heights of pure mathematics that it is said that there was no man in the scientific press capable of criticizing it? Is this a man to traduce? Foulmouthed doctor and slandered professor — such would be your respective roles! That’s genius, Watson.
—Holmes, The Valley of Fear

The Moriarty from the TV show, on the other hand?

Oh, we were TOLD he was a mastermind. By Holmes himself, no less. He even had a lovely set-up, with being named as the brain behind the pill-and-cabbie trick (which was FANTASTIC). However, in subsequent episodes, it becomes clear that everyone tells the viewer how brilliant he is, but his actual activities are little more than those of a clever, bullying madman.

Emphasis on the “bullying”, and wrinkled nose at the “madman”.

He’s behind The Woman, we’re told … and yet we see him on the phone, threatening to turn someone into shoes (I laughed) and the next thing we see, he’s using Sherlock to decode a message (in 8 seconds) that Moriarty couldn’t decode for months?

Consider the final episode.

Fantastic build-up, and oh-so-theatrical … but we find out that his artistry was nonexistent. He never wrote “the code” (which, as a programmer, I scoffed at from the start). He simply bribed people to do his bidding, then threatened an entire jury. Then? He simply points guns at Sherlock’s friends and laughs as he gabbles about how bored he is before he offs himself.

This is a criminal mastermind?

I was SEVERELY underwhelmed.

(on the flip side, the bit with Sherlock finding the kids? BRILLIANT.)

The closest thing to “mastermind” I saw was the bit about pretending to be an actor hired by Sherlock … and there were so many holes in THAT particular plot point, it made me want to cry.

“How could he come up with this identity, with so much detail?” Um. Criminal. They do that. Especially on TV, where it’s apparently as easy as microwave burritos. You just hit the “passport” button on your local paper man and DING!
“He gleaned all of this information out of Mycroft!” really? Really. They brought him in to question him about … nothing. Tortured him a bit. Somehow found out that childhood stories about Sherlock got him to open up. Got NOTHING OUT OF HIM. Released him back into the wild despite obvious crazyman “Sherlock” scribbles all over his cell. This is your big plan. (Side note? Mycroft is the saddest character on the show. I want to hug him, but I know he’d find the entire “hugging” experience to be dreadful.)
Crazy reporter lady got a full-on taste of Sherlock’s abilities in the bathroom, yet still buys the actor story and believes that Sherlock isn’t brilliant. Okay, this one COULD get a pass, assuming I am to believe she’s 100% ugly on the inside. I wanted to buy that she was just driven. She’d have made a good bad/good guy character.
EVERYONE is willing to believe that Sherlock isn’t brilliant enough to do the things THEY HAVE SEEN HIM DO (I’m looking at you, police force), yet they’re perfectly happy believing he’s brilliant enough to have invented Moriarty and all of the crimes he “pretends” to have solved. Really?

The Problem

The problem is that everyone TOLD us how delightfully wicked and fantastic Moriarty was, but every time he was on screen, his actions told a different story.

As writers, we need to avoid this.

As a writer, it scares the bejeebus out of me that I might one day need to write characters far more intelligent and clever than I am.

This is a PROBLEM, and a very real one. How, one wonders, do you write a criminal mastermind if you yourself can’t think of criminals existing outside a tidy little box labeled “Thug”?

Write a clever character solving a charming puzzle with pizzazz … and then have a reader write in and point out a perfectly logical thing — which your super-smart character would never in a million years have missed! — and suddenly the whole thing crumbles.

My favorite example kind of ruins the movie Inception. Click at your own risk.

New Can Be New

Don’t get me wrong. Just because Professor Moriarty was a cultured gentleman scholar, there’s no reason Sherlock’s Moriarty needed to be cut from the same cloth.

Take The Woman, for example. Gorgeous re-definition of the Irene Adler character.

That being said, they TOLD us how devious Moriarty was, yet very few of his ploys rose above “bully” and his final scene just screamed “mental problems”.

Aside from that? You’re building the arch-villain for Sherlock Holmes here.

You take Holmes and you either flip him upside down, or you put him in a mirror and change little bits of him. You build your villain to suit your hero. You can make a villain that represents everything a hero hates about himself, or who has none of the hero’s “weaknesses” or … whatever. There are thousands of great recipes for villains.

Sherlock seems to have chosen “Crazy” and that makes me a sad panda because it doesn’t highlight anything in Sherlock’s character.

Your thoughts

Now that I”ve nattered on for ages about the subject … any Sherlock fans out there? Anyone with me?

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