That pesky addiction thing.

Why does Sherlock Holmes need to be a drug addict?

During my recent excursion to Southern Illinois Sherlockian climes, a paper was presented by my friend Bill Cochran on the most recent episode of CBS's Elementary. I shan't steal Bill's thunder, should he ever get his blog going and want to reprint it himself, but would like to just spin off one particular point he made, starting with: "I am incensed by the constant references to Holmes's addiction as if it were a prominent theme in the Canon." Bill then went on to explain while out of the sixty original stories of Sherlock Holmes, only two mention drug use. Not addiction. Just recreational use.

Elementary, on the other hand, plays upon its main character's addiction problem with every single episode. He shouldn't go to bars, because he might drink. He needs to push his old dealer friend, a decent-seeming enough fellow, out of his life, because he makes him think of drugs. During the end of the last episode he was seen gluing a phrenological bust back together -- shouldn't Joan Watson have been freaking out that he was sniffing glue during that process? It's how the show usually over-indulges its addiction focus.

Mr. Elementary has his Watson because of his addiction. He lives in New York because of his addiction. The death of Irene Adler was key to his addiction. Why does this show even have crimes every week, when it could just spend more time on Mr. Elementary's beloved addictions? It seems more important to his character than his detective skills, hunting down Moriarty (remember him?), or any of those other things that the real Sherlock Holmes was based around.

Heck, Elementary even gets the drug of choice wrong. Mr. Elementary is a heroin fan. An opiate. A numbing agent. The original Holmes is only ever seen to inject a mild solution of cocaine beneath the skin . . . not even into a vein. My friend Bill reminded us Friday night that Holmes's seven per cent solution of cocaine was actually half the amount they put in the original recipe for Coca-cola. And cocaine, of course, is a stimulant, which the real Holmes used when bored to death for lack of crimes to solve. (Yes, Watson mentions morphine when he calls Holmes out, but the good doctor was plainly pissed off at the time and tossing the additional drug in for effect. Holmes never speaks of, or is seen to use, morphine.) Sherlock's modern day version of Holmes with his liberal use of nicotine patches, is probably much closer to the true counterpart.

And we know Holmes liked his nicotine. That is an absolute fact.

Elementary is not the first to try to portray a drug-addicted Holmes. The Seven Per Cent Solution, from the 1970s was a very clever tour de force in that area, which kept enough of the original Holmes's traits intact to make it an enjoyable tale (and stuck with cocaine, of course). Less successful was a gawdawful TV movie called Case of Evil, where a young Sherlock Holmes who celebrates victories with three-way sex romps and is forced into heroin addiction by Professor Moriarty. And even in that movie, he didn't voluntarily start the heroin. Both movies, it must be admitted, played up the drugs to draw in the audience. Is that what Elementary's plan is?

If Elementary were as truly into the topic of addiction as it pretends to be, it would be a much grimmer, realistic show . . . and have no need of Sherlock Holmes. Its treatment of the subject is much like the way it tosses in serial killers and various naughty ladies . . . just one more cheap ploy to try to rouse the interest of sleepy viewers as they wind their way toward the evening news.

It used to be that Sherlock Holmes and his methods were enough to rouse our interest. In the last episode of Elementary, Mr. Elementary's friend Rhys suggests that Mr. Elementary was probably a better detective when he was on drugs, and from his performance on the case at hand, one wonders if Rhys was right. If that's the case, apparently the drugs were a part of this latest Holmes impersonator's methods.

Mr. Elementary might need to be a drug addict. But as over a century of addiction-free stories have proven, Sherlock Holmes doesn't need to be.

The truth about fans.

When I checked the audio books out for my trip last night, the library's due date printed out as 2/21. That's the sort of thing a fan notices. Fan, of course, is short for "fanatic" and "fanatic" definitely has tinges of "crazy" to it. Whether you're a Twihard, a Trekkie, or a Cumberbunny, you know that fact well. It's the reason some apparently too-sensitive Sherlock Holmes fans consider themselves "elite devotees" and try to salve their egos with a different term.

But I am a fan of Sherlock Holmes, and let me explain to you exactly where my fanaticism comes from.  Just by reading this blog, you'd probably define me as an Elementary-hating psycho, driven by some unnknown psychological twist in childhood to obsess over my mental image of the Sherlock Holmes archetype. We all have favorite stories, whether in book or movie form, that imprinted upon us in our early teen years. At that age, quality doesn't even matter that much -- our emotions are running high, and what gives us the strongest feelings are those things we'll love forever. But even that sort of well-imprinted fondness isn't what makes a fan.

What makes a fan is what made me drive four hours to eat dinner last night and then drive four hours home again. You might say it was Sherlock Holmes. But I can experience Sherlock any time I care to, here in my safe and snug home. Books, DVDs, audio CDs . . . Sherlock is not hard to find.

No, what I drove a total of eight hours in one evening (Fanatic behavior if ever there was such!) was not Sherlock Holmes himself, but the connections he has brought into my life. Lifelong connections with good friends. And sometimes those connections even go past life-long, as they did last night.

When my friend Bob Burr, "the Rascally Lascar" in BSI and other venues, died last month, he had never been to a single meeting of the Occupants of the Empty House, a Sherlock Holmes society that has amazingly held court in the wilds of Southern Illinois, without a major city as a hub, for thirty five years. Occupants had been to our Peoria club meetings and knew Bob well. And I had tried to drag him along on my occasional trips to see the Occupants. But Bob was a serious homebody and resisted every time.

Until last night. Last night, I decided to drag Bob's ghost to Southern Illinois to a meeting of the Occupants of the Empty House. For some odd reason, Bob left me his Buick LeSabre in his will along with his Sherlock Holmes collection. The car had never been driven on the four hour trip to Du Quoin, or much of anywhere else -- it was twelve years old and had under seventeen thousand miles on it. And since the Occupants were having their two hundredth meeting at Alongi's restaurant in Du Quoin, it seemed just the occasion for the big beast of a car to make the trip.

Driving a ghost to a Sherlock Holmes club meeting four hours away . . . more crazy fan behavior, right?

Well, you could say that, but here's the thing. It wasn't Sherlock Holmes who made me the fan I am today. It isn't Sherlock Holmes who has kept the Occupants of the Empty House meeting every month for thirty five years. And it wasn't Sherlock Holmes who I was driving to Southern Illinois last night.

It was Bob Burr that I drove. And it was Bill Cochran and Gordon Speck, Stan and Debbie Tinsley, Jack Crelling, and Joe Eckrich (along with other old and new members along the way) who have kept the Occupants of the Empty House a place where I have found a friendly welcome for decades.

The real truth about fanatical fans is this: we may come to a fandom like that of Sherlock Holmes due to some quirk in our personality or tween-age fetish. But we stay because of the friendships, the connections, the bonds that it gives us to other human beings.

And if you want to call that crazy, feel free. Because I'm just as nutty as Sonny the Cocoa Puffs cuckoo that way, and so happy to be so. My friends, both inside the Sherlockian world and outside of it, are the  ones I'm truly a fan of, and will always be. They are some amazing people.

To me, Sherlock Holmes and his eternal friendship with Dr. Watson, is the perfect symbol of what I call friendship . . . getting to spend time with someone you admire the heck out of. And am I fanatical about that?

Yes, I am.

And that is the truth about fans. Geek us up all you like, but in the end, we're here for the people, which is healthy, human, and quite wonderful.

(More details on last night will be coming soon, but I just had to get this part blogged. I'm a fanatic, remember?)

Held back at Elementary School.

Despite my fondness for Elementary's wingback chair and not being able to get the theme music out of my head all morning, I have to judge my first exercise at becoming a fan of the CBS crime drama a failure. Comments have been made, the possibilities of the new Sherlockian label "elite devotee" applying to me were again diagnosed, so I have decided to assign myself some remedial reading.

An article posted to the Baker Street Blog back in December, "Six Cases Which I Have Added To My Notes" [BLUE] by James C. O'Leary, was recommended as an answer to my query as to why a person would like Elementary. At the time it first came out, I dismissed it as a desperate attempt to plead the show's innocence to the court of the internet, but given my new quest to learn to like the show, I thought I'd give it a closer look.

The author starts with a very reasonable premise: "Indeed, an unshaven, tattooed, sexually active, drug addicted, and tantrum throwing Holmes dependent on the largesse of his father seems like no Holmes at all. As Jonny Lee Miller’s Sherlock Holmes has reached the end of his probationary six-week sobriety period under Joan Watson’s (Lucy Liu) care, now would be a good time to assess those first six cases through a Sherlockian eyes."

He then matches seven quotes from Elementary with seven quotes from the Canon of Holmes, adds six or seven details from the original stories used in one way or another by the show, but then goes on to cite the more obvious places where Elementary wanders off course. As I had watched all of the above, and still hated the show, I needed more, and the hard-working O'Leary was willing to supply more.

The chemistry between Jonny Lee Miller and Lucy Liu. The drug history. Jonny Lee Miller's tattoos?

Mr. Elementary's relationship with women. His relationship with father. Citing the problems with other adaptations of Sherlock Holmes . . . .

The problem with using details from Elementary to try to convince an Elementary hater to like the show is that it's just throwing gas on the fire. By the time I got to the final section of the article, I felt like I had just been given a retrospective tour of everything I hated about the show when I originally watched it.

James C. O'Reilly's concluding paragraphs are as insulting to those who find fault with Elementary as anything I've written here, so they didn't really help me find the path to liking the show any more than what came before.

So I went searching for some older reading material in my quest to find some way to love, or even like, this new pretender to the 221B throne. In a piece entitled, "The Implicit Sherlock Holmes," Sherlockian giant Edgar Smith began with the now-familiar question, "What is it that we love about Sherlock Holmes?" A classic question, very pertinent to finding a thread of enjoyment in any Holmes, to be sure.  Among his answers, I found this passage:

"Not only there and then, but here and now, he stands before us as a symbol -- a symbol, if you please, of all that we are not, but ever would be. His figure is sufficiently remote to make our secret aspirations for transference seem unshameful, yet close enough to give them plausibility. We see him as the fine expression of our urge to trample evil and set aright the wrongs with which the world is plagued. He is Galahad and Socrates, bring high adventure to our dull existences and calm, judicial logic to our biased minds. He is the success of all our failures; the bold escape from our imprisonment . . . . For it is not Sherlock Holmes who sits in Baker Street, comfortable, confident, and self-assured; it is we ourselves who are there, full of a tremendous capacity for wisdom, complacent in the presence of our humble Watson, conscious of a warm well-being and a timeless, imperishable content."

Perhaps the language is a bit fancy for the average modern, but the gist is still plain to see. And the being Smith speaks of is very hard to see in that shirtless wannabe rock star, twitching and sniping his way around New York City at the center of Elementary. If anyone out there sees themselves in Jonny Lee Miller's character with the same name as Sherlock Holmes, I can respect that. But to me, Mr. Elementary is something else . . . a freakish parody that, instead of inspiring, makes the common man feel better about being less bright than Holmes by making him a damaged, diagnosable mess. Instead of looking at a symbol to aspire to, modern audiences would rather look at reality show train wrecks like Honey Boo-boo and feel better about their current state. Personally, I see Mr. E. as a result of that culture. Mr. Elementary and Honey Boo-boo do get the ratings, but what do they say about us?

As much as I may seem to have insulted fans of Elementary in this blog, I fear the show itself insults them more. So I'm afraid I have to drop out of "Elementary school," my attempt to find some reason to like the show. I just can't. It goes against everything I love about Sherlock Holmes. But as James O'Leary concludes in his article, "Love it or hate it, Elementary is a permanent presence in the Sherlockian world." It won't, and can't, be ignored.

So it's just going to have to be dealt with. And that, I have no problem with. 

Stay tuned. Or should I simply shout, "WOLVERINES!"

Elementary School, the the first grade.

This morning I posed a query to the universe about why those people who actually enjoy CBS's Elementary find it so pleasurable . . . a facility that I do not, at present, seem to possess . . . and the answers immediately started pouring in. Not just from those answering my query, of course, as many seem to be in a stated of enjoyment handicap very similar to my own when it comes to Jonny Lee Miller's taking the name "Sherlock Holmes." So as a public service, both to myself, and the legions of Sherlockians who are also enjoyment deprived where Elementary is concerned, I have decided to undertake a quest.

A quest to actually enjoy the show that is to Sherlock Holmes what Budweiser is to beer.

Esteemed Minneapolis Sherlockian Dick Sveum laid the first stepping stone in my path with today's comments, saying that Elementary follows the Knoxian formula for the Sherlock Holmes story. Knox's scheme, first proposed in 1911, before all of the original stories were even written. is that a proper Sherlock Holmes tale is composed of eleven definite parts. So how does our most modern attempt at Sherlock hold up when matched with that oldest of criteria?

Let's see, by looking at Sunday night's episode, "The Deductionist."

Part one of a Sherlock Holmes story, the Prooimium, "a homely Baker Street scene, with invaluable personal touches, and sometimes a demonstration by the detective." In "The Deductionist" (or DEDU as we'll call it in a faux Finley Christ abbreviation), our supposed Sherlock is home at Baker Street, sitting shirtless in a chair while two strippers who aren't shirtless dance around for him, then ask him if he's ready for more. When they handcuff him to a chair and prepare to rob him, we get the demonstration -- he has police hiding in the next room. Watson is not present to go "Amazing, Holmes!" at this demonstration, but turns up the next morning to complain of stripper smell.

Part two of our Knoxian analysis is Exegesis kata ton diokonta, the client's statment of the case. In the case of "The Deductionist," we are treated to the actual scene of the crime being committed, as a serial killer massacres an operating room full of medical folk. 

Part three is the Ichneusis, or "personal investigation, often including the infamous floor-walk on hands and knees." Jonny Lee Miller walks around the crime scene, and he does bend over slightly at one point -- no floor-walk this time.

Part four, the Anaskeue, is a "refutation on its own merits of the official theory of Scotland Yard." As Inspector Gregson doesn't seem to want to theorize much in Jonny Lee Miller's presence, so instead we are treated to Mr. Elementary pompously debunking the entire field of criminal profiling and specifically cutting down the profiler on the case, Kathryn Drummond.

Part five, the first Promenusis, in which Holmes used to give a few stray hints to the police, doesn't happen here, unless you count Miller openly spouting his every observation at the crime scene. Miller doesn't hint. He spouts. I'm trying to be fair here, but I'd bet part five has yet to happen in any episodes of Elementary.

Part six, the second Promenusis, in which Sherlock Holmes normally explains the true course of the case to Dr. Watson, has a new wrinkle in "The Deductionist." Watson first has to tell Mr. Elementary about her apartment being used for pornography, but he eventually gets around to telling her what he's doing on the serial killer case . . . as well as the fact that he used to have sex with Miss Drummond, the profiler.

Part seven, the Exetasis, is typically Holmes questioning the people of the case and visiting necessary offices, etc. In "The Deductionist," we get more of Watson investigating her apartment being used for porno filming. A curious side note: Mr. Elementary uses the word "modicum" in this episode. Sherlock Holmes never used the word in the original Canon, but Roger Moore did use it as Sherlock Holmes in the movie Sherlock Holmes in New York.

Part eight, the Anagnorisis, is when the criminal is usually exposed by Sherlock Holmes. But since Elementary already showed us the criminal from square one, and the police know who he is from square one, for this we must substitute the scene where the serial killer makes contact via telephone with Gregson, Drummond, and "the Deductionist," as Drummond named Jonny Lee Miller in a write-up about him.

Part nine, the second Exegesis, is the criminal's confession. But in any modern serial killer TV show, the confession is something of a moot point. In this episode, it certainly is.

Part ten, the Metamenusis, features Sherlock Holmes describing what clues he found and how he followed them. Where Elementary is concerned, the main character seems to be doing that constantly. It's kind of his version of Tourette syndrome.

And the last part, the Epilogos, is a conclusion that comes in sometimes a single sentence. A quote, a last line from Holmes. In this episode it's Miller giving Lucy Liu a spatula and a toothbrush. 

In attempting to apply Knox's formula to "The Deductionist," I ran out of everything but the Epilogos before the show was two-thirds over. The reason for this is that Knox was analyzing the single-mystery pattern of the classic Sherlock Holmes story.  The modern CBS murder drama moves from little drama point to little drama point in a cycle that demands more shock or twist moments than the almost leisurely seeming classic tale, where Holmes saves his big dramatic moment for the climax. Elementary seems a little more insecure to me, like a child craving attention, going:

"Hey, look! Strippers!" 

"Hey, look! A mass murder!"

"Hey, look! A porno movie!"

"Hey, look! Someone else being killed!"

"Hey, look! Jonny Lee Miller had sex with that woman!"

"Hey, look! That woman is getting stabbed!"

And like a child craving attention, it can get rather annoying. There's a certain A.D.D. aspect to the show, and I'm not talking about the main character's personality traits.

I don't know if Knox's principles apply to Elementary is because the show is true to Sherlock, or because Knox's guides are so flexible. Rewatching "The Deductionist" with Father Ronald Knox's principles from "Studies in the Literature of Sherlock Holmes" didn't really help me find enjoyment in the show, but I'll give you this, Elementary fans: I'm starting to grow fond of that wingback chair he sits in. They use it a lot in promo photos, and with good reason. It is a beautiful chair. And unlike Clyde the turtle, it gets to appear in more than one episode.

And that, apparently is first grade in my Elementary schooling. I've got another teacher lined up for grade two. Stay tuned.

Why?

There has been talk of a debate over the worthiness of CBS's Elementary, but after watching last night's  big post-Super Bowl episode (at least until I couldn't take it any more), I'm less concerned about anyone putting forth a reasonable argument that this lazy knock-off is Sherlock Holmes and more interested in something I have yet to see: why they actually like it.

I've seen a number of people, Sherlockians included, say "But I enjoy Elementary!" But I have yet to see anyone explain just why, other than some cuteness factor involving any of the three leads. All TV shows have cute actors and actresses on them. That's the nature of television. But having enjoyed a lot of good television over the years, and having seen what makes a good show (continuity, sympathetic attachment to even the most unlikable characters, whip-smart plotting, etc.), I would not even recommend this show if the faux-Sherlock factor wasn't so annoying.

Because that isn't the only annoying thing about the show. How many times can they bring in promising characters with potential for development whose interplay might even develop Jonny Lee Miller's character or make him more sympathetic . . . and then drop then after a few moments in one episode. The AA sponsor Watson recruited was especially memorable as he drew Mr. Elementary out with his car and displayed a charming ability to work with the show's main character. There at the end of one episode, and never to be seen again.

Last night we got a criminal profiler whom Mr. Elementary had once taken as an apprentice, who then betrayed him and used what he taught her to further her own career. The concept was actually interesting and had some potential, but when she was murdered by the serial killer's sister (Yes, serial killer's sisters are apparently someone to watch out for as well.) she quickly became another dead end plot device.

One could have seen this coming when they made Irene Adler a corpse from the start, foolishly wasting the potential of that great character by making her a cheap excuse for Mr. Elementary's drug use. It was such a waste.

And that it probably the biggest thing that annoys me about Elementary. The waste.

All that money being thrown at a character pretending to be Sherlock Holmes. All those eyeballs watching someone who will never be Sherlock Holmes no matter how many references like "Oh, look a singlestick!" get tossed in by people who don't seem to have read the sixty stories, just an encyclopedia article about the sixty stories. One could even have titled the series Wasted Potential instead of Elementary.

So someone please sit down and explain to me exactly why you enjoy this show. I am just not getting it.

The wailing of the Elementary fans.

Now, I know I've been cruel to fans of CBS's Elementary on occasion in this blog. But I don't think I did them nearly the damage that CBS and the Super Bowl did to them tonight.

The idea at first, had to delight them. Their favorite show in a slot where more people would see it, and hopefully come to their point of view. A special episode, one that hopefully, had the showrunners doing their best for such a showcase timeslot. But what did Elementary fans get?

A long evening of being forced to watch football when they only wanted to see their favorite show.

It's 10:44 Eastern time as I write this and the game just got over, with the post-game show still to come. That means fans in Mr. Elementary's home city will probably be up until midnight or later to see their hero's big show. And they're not happy.

In the last hour, the #ELEMENTARY hashtag on Twitter has been flooded with tweets from the shows faithful, and there has been no love for the Super Bowl, to be sure. And if the length of a normal football game wasn't bad enough, a huge power outage added another half hour to the game. (Indy Sherlockian Pat Ward actually accused us Elementary haters of causing the outage. We're pleading the fifth.) There is no joy in "meh"ville tonight.

And now East coast fans of Elementary will be groggy at work in the morning, forgetting to ask people if they want hash browns with their Egg McMuffins . . . aw, I'm just kidding, you crazy kids. On the upside, at least it was a pretty exciting game. And if you're a true Sherlock Holmes fan, you had to be for the Baltimore Ravens, just for the Poe connection, and, hey, they won! Go, Poe!

And now, for that very special Elementary. I'm sure it will be the best Elementary ever. (Maybe Gregson will punch Mr. Elementary two times this week!)

Writing smart. Or not.

Now, look away little Elementary fans, you ain't a gonna want to see this.

The good Carter was watching Monk when I came upstairs for supper this evening. Monk, that closest-thing-we-had-to-Sherlock-on-TV we had for a while. It was an episode that I'd seen before, but its cleverness, its happy timing, its lovable female Watson . . . it all drew me in as if it was new. There was a reason we loved Monk. If the show's creators had wanted to do a modern Sherlock Holmes in America show instead of Monk, I have no doubt they could have pulled it off.

Which brings me to last night, and a new episode of Elementary dropped on the viewing audience, "The Red Team."

I could go on about all the usual problems with Elementary, from its very concept to the throwaway character point of the week. But this week's episode serves as a classic example of one of the hallmarks of bad Sherlock Holmes writing: writers who aren't half clever enough to write a smart person, so they try to cheat.

At the climactic point of this week's episode, Mr. Elementary (supposed smart person) goes in to talk a hostage-taker (another supposed smart person) out of killing his hostages. How does Mr. E do it?

He explains to the other supposed smart person that his own genius has figured out the brilliant plan the other supposed smart person has been dealing with at the core of his crimes. Only Mr. Elementary does it completely off-screen, and we're just supposed to accept all the brilliance flying around sight unseen. No actual cleverness is ever demonstrated. It was the most blatant demonstration of what has been wrong with Elementary from day one. One of the basics of writing any fiction is "show, don't tell."

Unfortunately, Elementary likes to tell us more about how smart its main character is than show us. Unless you count the parts where he just says obvious things faster than anyone else in the room and monopolizes conversations, which is Elementary's standard way of portraying intelligence. If you're the only one talking most of the time, of course you sound smarter than anyone.

Watching Monk tonight, I found the quiet moment so refreshing. Mr. Monk would actually look at things. And then he would relate an observation that was actually clever. Just like our old friend, real Sherlock Holmes. I understand that people like to shut their brains off, zone out, and watch some television. But Sherlock Holmes was never meant for that. Holmes has always been a character with which a clever writer can dazzle us with wit, charm, and the gracefully played moments of a man of brillance scintillating.

Geniuses like Sherlock Holmes aren't just in fiction, you know. That's the key to how Sherlock Holmes has seemed so real to readers and audiences for generations -- he seems like someone who actually could exist. Someone we might even meet someday. And occasionally we do run into someone of an Sherlock-like level of brilliance, if we're lucky. But I'll tell you one place we won't be running into one of those folks anytime soon:

Writing for Elementary.