Boton

But what if all of that is her disguise, Gerry? Or, as she might prefer to put it, her protection.

It's fine with me, as long as she comes out OK. What makes me kind of sigh about it is that kidnapping Rosie is at once predictable and unavoidable. It's not a terribly creative plot, and yet it has to be exploited as one of John's "pressure points."

I personally think the Moffat-era female characters on Dr. Who were well done in the aggregate. There were a lot of different strengths, weaknesses, and quirks shown, and, to me, they came across as just as nuanced as the men. I agree with this. When you try to write every woman as "empowered," then the characters start becoming one-dimensional.

It hasn't been too bad, Carol. We got a couple of inches Friday night and then a couple more last night. The roads have been intermittently slick, but not as bad as they could be. Yeah, luckily not as bad as it coule have been.

We are getting an ice storm. Our weathermen have completely given up. I actually saw one just now that said that we could get anywhere between 0 inches and 2 feet of snow.

Genteel is good. It is almost time for my annual language clean-up anyway, which is when I give up swearing for Lent. The past couple of years, things have been stressful enough that I usually have lots of clean-up to do.

He needs to see them oscillate on the pavement so he knows whether to take their case.

Yeah, when things focus on the younger kids, it reminds me of that 80s movie The Goonies or something like that. But I think there's just enough of the adults to hold my interest.

Hubs and I are watching Stranger Things. Given that I don't like supernatural mysteries or teenage-centered storylines all that much, I'm surprisingly addicted to it.

How much of Mycroft's life has really been his own at this point? Is he projecting when he told Sherlock that everything he [sherlock] was was due to Eurus? Is that really Mycroft's assessment of himself? Here's a young boy who saw his entire family ripped apart: his sister commits murder, his brother loses it enough to repress memories and substitute new ones, and his parents may well have been mired in grief and worry. And then you have Uncle Rudy coming along and incarcerating Eurus and sooner or later telling Mycroft what happened and enlisting his help in keeping the secret. Who knows what Mycroft would have liked his life to have been without these burdens?

Yeah, same. It sounded very much like they were in school together, but you're right about the accent.

You don’t see the ILY call maybe pushing Molly to confront this about her own life especially since she didn’t seem like she believed Sherlock? The only time we know Molly has been in a serious relationship is when Sherlock was gone for two years. I can see her getting to that point, but not with that phone call. Not unless she had just happened to spend the whole day contemplating breaking ties with Sherlock (which clearly she later didn’t) and then the phone call came at the exact right time. That’s a string of events that seems unlikely to assume the audience would put together. Honestly, I expected Molly to get frustrated and say she wasn’t going to play his little game for a case or an experiment or whatever was going on, and that the only way he’d ever hear those words were if he said them himself to her face and meant it. And then I guess either Eurus’s bluff would be called or she really would have had the kitchen booby trapped or something. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Actually, didn't it seem like there was more profanity in S4 than we've ever had before? Nonetheless, yeah, we'd better dial it back.

That's hard to explain if you haven't been hopelessly in love with someone the way Molly is with Sherlock. All I can say is I have been and the scene rings true to me. It's like he's toying with her feelings, does that make sense? And she can't know that he doesn't want to, that he isn't being cruel out of his usual callous thoughtlessness. I wish I could explain this better. Give me another chance in the morning when I am caffeinated. I also wish I could think of an elegant way to get back to The Great Game from here. Actually, I have been hopelessly in love with someone like that. So much so that I would accidentally say "I love you" once in a while when I meant "I love that" or whatever. So much that I eventually had to say that if we weren't going to marry, I couldn't be his friend any more, because I wouldn't be able to fall in love with anyone else if he were popping up occasionally in my life. But it the scene still doesn't do it for me. [shrugs] I can understand that it might line up better with someone else's experience or perspective. So, TGG then? :)

Oh, "shitty parenting" is all Toby's work. I'm just borrowing it. :D

Hikari, I see where you are coming from. Of all the Holmeses, this one is probably one of the farthest from the original, and the more of a purist you are, the more this one is bound to grate. I totally get that. As for the tattoos and prostitutes, well. Personally, I just like tattoos. I don't have any, but I think well-done ink can be very attractive and a fun way to express oneself. It makes sense to me that this would fit with this particular Sherlock. The prostitutes are another manner. I like them in this case because I like the idea that this Sherlock handles matters of the transport by simply buying anything he needs. They are no different than food or water; a biological urge that he can satisfy with cash rather than risk an emotional distraction. I'm not personally a huge fan of prostitution, but it works for me here. In fact, this portrayal is the one that convinced me that our Mycroft probably makes use of a similar service made available through the Diogenes, with very circumspect professionals providing the service. Maybe that's even how he met Irene.

I actually agree. Most of what I don't like about Elementary is the way that the other characters (specifically Watson) are written, and the fact that so many episodes seem to veer into "CSI: Baker Street" territory, in that they feel more like an American police procedural rather than a Sherlock Holmes portrayal. It makes sense, because this is an American show, but I just have never liked that genre. Heresy time here: I think, at many points, JLM is a better actor than BC. He handles the material in Elementary in a sensitive and nuanced way, and then he can turn around and do something like Frankenstein. I know BC essentially did the same, but I think JLM introduced elements to Holmes's character that make him sympathetic even though he is scarred and battle hardened. (And, FWIW, I like both the tattoos and the prostitutes. It's just another way of making Holmes bohemian in the modern era; there's only so much shock value we can really get from someone hanging out in his dressing gown all day like we would in the Victorian era.)

But how would you even get emotionally hung up on that phone call? I mean, she knows that she has a crush on Sherlock Holmes (if she even still does); he's not exactly known for avoiding weird or random actions. He calls her up and says (paraphrase): Can you do something for me, without asking me why? Say I love you. How does she even get from that to an emotional response? Even though she says it is actually true, she knows it is some sort of stunt. Why wouldn't she just say it or not say it and not be that affected by the whole thing?

:lol2: I suspect that attitude originates when the kids are at the age when sex is icky, and they can't believe that their parents would do anything that revolting. That phase passes pretty damn quickly, of course, but only as applied to oneself and one's peers. Also, the way a lot of parents act when their kids are around, you'd think they never heard of sex. That may be changing, but I don't believe I ever saw my father and mother do anything more passionate than kiss each other rather perfunctorily on the cheek. Yep. I didn't know what sex was until I was told about it, and I remember there was a lag time between being told how human beings reproduce and realizing that meant that my parents must do it. And then there were about 6 months of sleepless nights where I listened until they sounded like they were asleep, trying to catch them doing this bizarre thing. And it wasn't that my parents were against sex or thinking it was something to be ashamed of. They just kept it private. I think I've seen my parents kiss on the lips fewer than two dozen times in my life. That's for them, not for me. What I *have* seen is them flirt with other people. They both are terrible, wonderful flirts, and they would sit at events and flirt their butts off, sitting side by side with one another. I once asked my mom about that, and she scoffed and said, "I know your Dad's coming home with me, and he knows I'm coming home with him, so it's just fun." Now, onto Molly. I'm on the side that thinks that "she'd just shag someone else" was meant as a joke and doesn't look all that good in print. I think SM meant "Well, Molly is resilient enough that she can find someone else and put Sherlock in her rearview mirror; she's not going to carry a torch her entire life." But it didn't sound like that, unfortunately.

You're right, it wasn't in a holster. She's an idiot. (Or really careless; it should either be in your hand, in a case, or in a holster.) Then again, when have the Holmes kids ever handled a firearm properly? The smell of gun oil though. Yes, that I like. That I like a lot. It's distinctive, and it is something Sherlock would recognize from his exposure to John's gun, and the whole picture could come together on the basis of that. Head canon accepted!

You should definitely watch all of House sometime. There are some really bad episodes (out of 177), but there are some that count as some of my favorite bits of television of all time.

I don't have time to look it up right now, but there is some interesting research out there about baby-naming patterns. A name will become popular with the "aristocracy" and, a generation or so later, it will have drifted down to the lower classes. For example, since William and Harry have a little girl Charlotte, I would expect Charlotte to be a lower-mid to lower class name in the next generation.

Well, just for discussion, JP, I'm going to say a 2 pound gun of that type is just not that heavy. I don't know what your database showed, but Faith's looks to be approximately in the neighborhood of John's, so maybe a 9mm or a .45, which is sometimes used as an everyday carry (EDC) gun. The *carrier*, at least, shouldn't be all that aware of it in a purse if she's used to it. Now, I think the best I'm willing to give Sherlock is that he made a WAG (wild-a$$ guess) that it was a gun based on the fact that a laptop cord or something similar of one piece is unlikely. He might also have been tipped off by how she carried the bag, if she weren't used to carrying a purse with a gun in it and behaved uncomfortably. But given that he throws the bag at her and then "stops it" mid-air and balances it on his finger (which almost certainly didn't really happen), all he knows is that a two-pound object is sliding around in the bottom of that purse. And if Eurus/Faith is carrying a gun without it being secured by a pocket, a purse holster, or another kind of holster secured where it would hold the gun still, she's an idiot, which we know she is not. :)

Someone else who knows more industry gossip than I can fill in the blanks, but I think after BC and JLM were in Frankenstein together, the Elementary team sought permission to do an Americanized Sherlock - kind of an adaptation of an adaptation. The Sherlock side were pretty emphatic that they'd better not see their intellectual property reinterpreted. So, if Elementary feels like someone trying very hard to not remake Sherlock, that's apparently because that's what it is. That said, what I will give JLM and his Sherlock Holmes is his unparalleled ability to delivery relatively long ACD quotes and make them sound like they belong in modern American conversation. There is one episode where Sherlock is at an NA meeting, and he delivers his story using the "give me problems, give me work" speech. I was absolutely floored. I had never before heard that speech as anything but a mixture of admiration and frustration for Sherlock's own rapid cognitive abilities, but JLM delivered it with such remorse. That Sherlock rued the fact that he was fine as long as he was distracted, but his own mind was his enemy, solving problems so quickly that he couldn't distract himself fast enough to stay away from heroin. For me, that is my favorite interpretation of that ACD scene amongst all of the Sherlock Holmes iterations I've seen. I also liked JLM's delivery of the intro Irene Adler speech: "To [me], she was always The Woman..." He is explaining the draw of Irene to Watson, and with only a few minor changes, he gives the ACD speech with great elevation, and then stops and says, "And the *sex*, Watson! The things I learned!"

I think most people do. It's just funny to me, because you grow up largely thinking of your parents as asexual, and then one day you realize they've been enjoying the view for years.