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Cake day: September 11th, 2023

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  • To be fair, I’ve never read any of the original Arthur Conan Doyle novels so I’ll take your word on it. I’ve heard that he famously hated the character of Sherlock Holmes and didn’t understand why people found him so fascinating, to the point of trying to kill him off just so he could move on. So I can see the angle there.

    But the thing about BBC Sherlock is, it’s presented as a classic mystery story. They show Sherlock gathering clues, they give you some peeks into his thought process and what catches his attention, as if to say, “you should be paying attention too, this is potentially really important!”

    Then later they go, “actually, the solution all hinges on this thing we just now revealed and that you couldn’t have possibly predicted. Hope you enjoyed being taken for a ride, dipshit!”

    And it’s not really enjoyable to re-watch, knowing the solution and trying to spot the clues and foreshadowing; because in the end, what little foreshadowed there was adds up to fuck-all.

    I’m on my Nth re-watch of House, which is really interesting by comparison because it was inspired by the same real-life person that was the inspiration for Sherlock. In spite of any other criticism that it deserves, I think it actually handles this aspect pretty well.

    The viewer isn’t supposed to actually understand the medicine, but the resolution of the case almost always leans on something that was mentioned by the patient, or just shown in passing, during the first act. Knowing the solution actually makes it more fun to re-watch, because you can spot exactly when this happens, and it’s brilliant.


  • I fell out of love with Doctor Who when I realized all the sci-fi bits were complete made-up bullshit. Kinda the same reason I don’t much care for Star Wars.

    Star Trek is at least plausible if far-fetched, and Stargate actually tries to make the technobabble compatible with theoretical physics, which is a major reason I’ve come to adore it.

    And I came to hate the writing of Doctor Who because it has the same problem as BBC’s Sherlock (which makes sense as they shared showrunners and writing staff): they make the main character seem clever by figuring out the mystery before the viewer, but only because they deliberately hide or obfuscate key details until they’re ready for the big reveal. So the solution feels less like a brilliant show of deduction and more like a batshit insane ex Machina.