Sherlock megapost
I have Warmed Up to Sherlock now. The show, I mean. I still don’t quite like Benedict Cumberbatch’s interpretation. He’s a great character but he’s not my Holmes, if you know what I mean. And Martin Freeman isn’t my Watson. But I did finally feel the friendship between them in this episode, and it was so sad. Especially when they were sort of reaching out to each other and not touching, when Sherlock was on the roof. Wibble.
Also: Jen from The IT Crowd was in this episode! <3 Which brings me neatly into what I really wanted to talk about, which is the women of Sherlock. I know that A Scandal In Begravia was accused of being sexist because Irene failed to beat Sherlock, as she did in the original. Instead, he guessed her password, defeated her and saved her life. I've only seen it once, so I doubt I'm qualified to talk about if it was sexist or not. But…Irene dies in the original stories. By the time Watson starts writing A Scandal In Bohemia, she’s now ‘the late Irene Adler’. Assuming that there’s not that long between the story taking place and Watson writing it, Irene died young. So in the original, she dies. In the new one, she lives. That sounds good to me. Everything else (her role as dominatrix, her being saved by a man…) I’ll let smarter people go over.
And then there’s Molly. I LOVE HER. I even hastily made an icon of her so I could use it on this post. Her role in The Reichenbach Fall was so quiet but so, so important- Sherlock disregarded her for so long, but she persisted on being his friend, on trying to help. Moriarty thought he’d targeted all Sherlock’s friends, but that one girl, that one lovely compassionate clever girl, she slipped under his radar and she was the key to the whole thing. Moriarty used her, and then ignored her, and that was a bad mistake. I’ma gonna point you towards Molly’s entry on the official Sherlock site- “…she’s good at her job and, in some ways, far more perceptive about the real Sherlock than he is himself.” Irene Adler might have been the only woman to know who Sherlock was, but Molly knew the man he could grow to be.
I love her okay? I could write PAGES about her. She’s great. Anyway-
One more woman to discuss: Sally Donovan. I hate that everyone seems to hate her so much…and calling her a ‘whore’, or a ‘cunt’, I really hate that.
She’s a cop. She weighed up the evidence as she saw it and came to a not unreasonable conclusion. And- as unpopular as this opinion might be- I can easily see why she would distrust and dislike Sherlock. Don’t forget, she’s a black woman in a profession still dominated by white men. She’s probably worked all her life to get away from people like him.
I LIKE HER OKAY.
January 17, 2012 @ 4:03 pm
By the time Watson starts writing A Scandal In Bohemia, she’s now ‘the late Irene Adler’. I haven’t read the story in a while, but AFAIR Watson’s using “late” there in the “late of this parish” sense, to mean “formerly”; having married, her name is no longer Adler. (ETA: although her being dead possibly makes more sense, since if she isn’t surely Watson’s slandering her all over the place…) I love Molly too! And I like Donovan, and fandom’s reaction to her peeves me very much.
January 17, 2012 @ 9:47 pm
Oh SHOOT. Good point. I want a spin-off where Donovan and Molly (and possibly Kitty) solve crimes. And I also want people on Tumblr to stop calling her names. :(
January 20, 2012 @ 9:02 am
Here via a variety of other websites… I just wanted to say, THIS! I get sick to death with the hate the female characters in Sherlock get. I wasn’t keen on the way Molly was written in S01 (undignified, no self esteem, no redeeming professional/social competence shown) but TRF has mended that a little. Donovan – I’d be happier if I could see a concrete reason why she has such a personal dislike of Sherlock BUT she stands up for herself, has, as you point out, valid reasons for a degree of distrust, acts with professionalism and does what her Boss won’t. In any reasonable world Sherlock would have been a suspect – even if only to rule him out so that the defence can’t drive a truck through the prosecution’s case. For this we hate her? For being angry that Sherlock indulges his anti-social behaviour at everyone else’s expense? I wonder whether Donovan is angry that Sherlock, as a white man, gets away with behaving like that when, as a black woman she must constantly behave in a manner considered appropriate by the white male organisation she works in?
January 25, 2012 @ 9:28 pm
I wonder whether Donovan is angry that Sherlock, as a white man, gets away with behaving like that when, as a black woman she must constantly behave in a manner considered appropriate by the white male organisation she works in? Very probably! I hate fandom’s reaction to her. Especially since the other cops, like Anderson, joined in with the Sherlock-bashing but he doesn’t get nearly as much hate… I need to watch Series 1 again so I can see how Molly was written. I’m just so glad they made her into a competent and important character in Series Two. :D