Nightmare Watson.

The Mary Sunshines of the world continue to beam, “I'm going to give Elementary on CBS a chance!”

And yet, the CBS promotion machine continues to dole out the painful promotional tidbits:

“Following his fall from grace in London and a stint in rehab, eccentric Sherlock escapes to Manhattan where his wealthy father forces him to live with his worst nightmare – a sober companion, Dr. Watson.”

Yes, Watson is now Sherlock Holmes's worst nightmare.

If you google "Sherlock Holmes" and "his worst nightmare," you'll find CBS's promotional blurb . . . and several references to Professor Moriarty, who was a little more qualified as nightmares go. And actually, I'd even dispute that -- Moriarty was Holmes's greatest challenge, and probably a great time from a Holmes-centric point of view. Some inescapable situation of ultimate boredom? That would more likely be Holmes's worst nightmare. But wait!

Later in the promo verbiage, “Watson realizes she has a knack for playing investigator.” And, suddenly, Holmes’s nightmare starts to make sense. The world’s greatest consulting detective, saddled with someone who likes “playing investigator”? Just because Lucy Liu rhymes with “Mary Sue” doesn’t mean it has to be bad pastiche Watsoning. And the actual bits of the show they’re using to promote it look just as terrible as their descriptions.

Elementary’s latest television blurb touts, “Think you know the story? Presume nothing.” Well, if they insist I don’t presume that I’ll like this new kicked-out-of-England Holmes and his nightmare Watson, I guess I can indulge them. I kind of liked the story I knew before, even when it was told with a Cumberbatch and a Freeman. And Martin Freeman is nobody’s nightmare. A great friend met by happy chance? That’s our Watson. And Freeman fit that role like a dream.

My personal nightmare is that CBS’s Elementary is as bad as it looks and is still successful with the general public. The only thing worse than no popular Sherlock Holmes would be a very popular false Sherlock, forcing his existing fans to spend their days going, “But that’s not how he really is!” 

I can only loan out so many copies of the BBC Sherlock.

NU21B

“Here dwell together still, two men of note.”

Starrett wrote in forty-two.

“Dwell,” he said, but here’s my vote:

“Explode!” That is what they do.

Starrett’s world was all awry;

He longed so for the stable past.

But Holmes got a future from that Moffat guy,

And Gatiss . . . Sherlock’s built to last.

Baker Street is now the epicenter

Of a massive shift to bright.

The world explodes! And Sherlock dies.

But he’ll be back tonight.

England is England is England, we’ve all seen,

It’s where Holmes truly lives,

No matter the year, no matter the queen.

London calls its dibs.

Never can say "good-bye."

I never cease to be fascinated by the way Mr. Sherlock Holmes says “good-bye."

One commonly thinks of “good-bye” as the end of a conversation or visit, a parting word on the way out – the capper, the end, finis! But with Holmes, that is hardly ever the case. When you hear Sherlock Holmes say “good-bye,” it’s time to listen just a little bit longer. With Sherlock Holmes, there’s always something more to come.

"Goodbye. I shall drop you a line before I leave.”

"Goodbye, and I trust that we shall have nothing but good news from you.”

"Goodbye, and be brave, for if you will do what I have told you, you may rest assured that we shall soon drive away the dangers that threaten you.”

Sherlock Holmes can hold an entire monologue after his “goodbye.” Why does he do it?

I suspect that Holmes is used to his brain operating at a speed most people can’t keep up with. His “goodbye” is simply an early warning that he is about to leave, as well as clue for his more dozey clients to perk up and hear one last injunction. But he also uses a similar technique on his brother Mycroft, who should be up to speed more than anyone. And more significantly, he also does it to babies, who couldn’t be expected to make heads nor tales of it:  “Good-bye, little man. You have made a strange start in life."

It’s pure Holmes. One last piece of advice before leaving. It has a kindly, almost fatherly, tone to it that defies the opinion of those who consider Holmes a cold, uncaring misogynist.

Personally, I tend to go with “See you later.” But Holmes, perhaps wanting to let his future appearances come as a surprise, gives a sense of continuity to the end of his visit without making any promises. In fact, usually he’s putting any responsibility on the other person. Except in the case of Mycroft, where Holmes is specifically denying any future responsibility: “Goodbye Mycroft. I shall let you have a report before evening, but I warn you in advance that you have little to expect.”

"Goodbye, and . . .” is such a small aspect of Sherlock Holmes, yet a detail that intrigues. Lately I’ve learned that a big part of improv technique is replying with the phrase “Yes, and . . .”  Leave it to Sherlock Holmes to come up with his own purposeful variant of even such a thing as that.

Goodbye, and do stop by the blog again when you get a chance! 

Wanted: Expendable reviewer of Sherlocks.

Today I’m going to knowingly go to see what many would consider a bad movie. The movie is Expendables 2, what I’m sure will be a silly, over-the-top action flick featuring a virtual Cannonball Run of action movie stars, old and new. Not being a movie reviewer, I get to choose what movies I see, and I usually see movies that suit my own particular tastes, for better or worse. I feel the same way about Sherlock Holmes books.

When you’ve had a Sherlock Holmes blog or website out there for a decent amount of time, people really want you to promote their novels about the great detective. Now that Sherlock Peoria has moved to Blogger and allows comments, I even had somebody try to promote their book in the comments of an unrelated post last week . . . a downright sneaky move if ever I saw one. But given what I know about most Sherlock Holmes pastiches from decades of trying to read them, I hold little hope for any novel of Holmes that shows up promoted by the author.

Self-promoted Sherlock novels always make me wonder if anyone else has read the thing yet. I don’t want to be the first canary in that coal mine, outside of the author’s friends and family . . . who are obviously used to the mental atmosphere of the writer . . . to see if the fictional air is breathable. And new writers really don’t want to take their chances with a cranky old Sherlockian like me reading their stuff.

The mistake made by most neophyte writers of Sherlock stuff is that any fan of Sherlock Holmes is going to feel excited to read their personal version of a Holmes tale. Yes, I like Sherlock Holmes. A lot. But I can enjoy a silly movie like Expendables 2 with lower expectations because I really don’t have standards for how well Sylvester Stallone’s latest character shoots people. With Sherlock Holmes, I expect better. And even if a book is that one-in-a-thousand great read, it still has to find a way to stand apart from the nine hundred and ninety-nine other first-time Holmes novels people are trying to push on me every single day.

I’m always trying to find something fresh to put in the blog, yes, but there are some sacrifices I am just not willing to make. There is definitely a great opening for an experienced Sherlockian willing to give honest opinions about every single story of Sherlock Holmes published these days.  The task will require a bit of spending money, a very rapid reading speed, and a very strong will. I doubt many happy volunteers for that post exist.

But it definitely won’t be me reading Sherlock Holmes and the Cumberbatch Castle Mystery. I’d rather go see Expendables 2.

Operation: Holy Water.

Who knows what alchemy causes the mind to wander where it does. And in this day of so much so much interaction between our mental software and the machine code sort, who knows at what point one starts to influence the other. I’ve been working with a program that uses “completion matching” of late, where typing the first three letters of a first and last name will fill in the remaining parts. And then, for some reason, I thought of holy water.

Holy water.

Hol(y) Wat(er).

Holmes(y) Watson(er).

Holy Water = Holmes and Watson.

Holy water destroys vampires. Holmes and Watson destroy the very idea of a vampire in “The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire.”

If Mycroft Holmes ever wanted to use a code name for sending his brother and his doctor friend on a mission to ferret out smugglers based in the Carpathian mountains, he could have picked a worse name than Operation: Holy Water. And as much as pasticheurs like to combine Sherlock Holmes and Dracula in a tale, I fear that any true-to-Holmes account of same would have  a result much like that in Sussex, turning a superstitious legend to dust with the cold light of truth.

Holmes and Watson equal holy water? In a way, they certainly do.

Diagnosis: Best and wisest.

It is a glorious thing to see something good spread across the internet. A simple line like “I believe in Sherlock Holmes” going viral, that’s pretty cool. Something a little more substantial, like an article . . . and a very good article at that . . . glorious.

“Stop Calling Sherlock a Sociopath! Thanks, a Psychologist” by Maria Konnikova first appeared on criminalelement.com on August 8, at 9:30 A.M.  Three days later, it was being reprinted, with permission, at i09.com. The next afternoon it was being excerpted by Alanna Bennet at themarysue.com . And this afternoon, it showed up on my Google news feed.

Do a Google search and you’ll find this article blowing up all over the fan world. And well it should.

The writer’s point is to dispute a quip in the first episode of Sherlock, in which Holmes says that he is a “high-functioning sociopath,” not the psychopath that Sgt. Sally Donovan claims him to be. He’s making a joke, and as a psychologist, Maria Konnikova explains exactly why he isn’t a sociopath or a psychopath.

I love Maria Konnikova. She gets Sherlock Holmes. And her article is being read all over the place.

The one place it’s not being read is in The Baker Street Journal, where the last issue featured an article by Lisa Sanders strongly suggesting that Holmes had Asperger’s Syndrome. Lisa Sanders is a doctor, and yet there is a feeling in the article that she’s twisting facts to fit theories. She wants a diagnosis of Holmes, or else she doesn’t have an article. She might even be cherry-picking her Holmes facts from a hundred years too late, with a touch of that “Holmes was SO mean to Watson” bias some folks seem to have.

So who do I believe, Konnikova the psychologist or Sanders the medical doctor?

Well, I’m leaning toward Konnikova, but let me tell you who I really believe. There was this doctor who had actually met Sherlock Holmes and spent a substantial amount of time with him. You know his name. He’s a doctor I’ve trusted since the day I first met him.

And he pronounced Sherlock Holmes “the best and wisest man whom I have ever known.” No qualifiers. No theories.

“Best and wisest.”

Go, British guy.

Well, the 2012 London Olympics are finally over.

And my hopes to see England take home the gold in at least one of Sherlock Holmes’s sports was finally realized on Thursday (even though I missed it then), by a thirty-year-old English boxer named Nicola Adams. Adams, a boxer since age thirteen, took home the gold medal in the flyweight division.

What’s really cool is that Nicola Adams won the first gold medal for women’s boxing in history, as women didn’t compete in boxing at the Olympics before this year. And she did it in Sherlock’s own sport, for Sherlock’s own country, and in Sherlock’s own metropolis of London. If, by some strange twist of fate, I ever find myself directing the Nicola Adams story for the movies, you know the ghost of Sherlock is going to be in there somewhere, giving her a nod of approval. (Or, if I’m particularly loopy at that point, actually training her in an empty house, ala the ghost of Bruce Lee in the movie No Retreat, No Surrender.)

I have to admit, though, that I would have forgotten to check up on Great Britain’s Olympic stats this morning, were it not for Pat Ward’s Facebook post, “I found myself yelling ‘Go British guy!’ at the TV during the Men’s 5000 meters race tonight.” Pat has been an active, well written Sherlockian for many years, but I think she has found the catch phrase that will now put her in the great hall of legendary Sherlockians, if she keeps it up.

Because isn’t that the core emotion at the heart of our love of Sherlock Holmes?

Go, British guy! Whether you’re Sherlock Holmes, or a female boxer named Nicola Adams, you go, you British person, you!