BBC SHERLOCK

I'm a bit late in the game to be throwing in an opinion about Sherlock. However, I can say that its fandom is alive and cancerous on my college campus to the point where they and the Whovians have become nearly insufferable. 

Strangely, in Vegas, us nerds had learned how to pass unseen among the normies. Out here the nerds have taken over and frankly, I don't much like it. Mostly because, now allowed to run rampant, all I ever hear about is bow ties. 

Anywho, back to the BBCs other hit show, the modernization of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's consulting detective Sherlock Holmes and his assistant, Dr. John Watson.

For the most part the show succeeds quite well, and you don't need me to salivate all over the show like the rest of the internet (damn you Tumblr-girls). The show's cast is fantastic, certainly a step up from the god-awful Guy Ritchie films. I liked Snatch as much as the next man, but seriously, something went very wrong in the making of those films: everything.

Benedict Cumberbatch, despite looking like some kind of mutant badger, wears the dear-stalker well, and his interaction with Martin Freeman's Watson is the highlight of the show, coupled with his dealings with various characters.

The show has several recurring characters from the original stories, ranging from Lestrade to Irene Adler and Moriarty. Each of these characters is finely portrayed, and the show thrives when it is drawing from the source material as much as possible.

This leads me to my biggest gripe with the show, which has also become one of my bigger gripes with Doctor Who since Steven Moffat took over. I'm a clever guy, and fairly proud of my abilities as a writer, part of which is knowing where my strengths lie. Moffat can dish out some damn fun dialogue, but the man is nowhere near the genius that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was, and Sherlock suffers the same fate as any piece of fiction starring a genius character who is being written by people who are not geniuses. 

Moffat sets up elaborate and clever plotlines that only serve to entangle themselves, and the resolution never strikes me as satisfactory. This happens most visually in Doctor Who (each bloody series finale) but it is still readily apparent that he's trying to build on what occurred in the original stories, and embellish them, practically screaming, "Look how clever I am!"

(Also, Benedict Cumberbatch totally can't play violin and it drove me out of my mind).

~ Godzello