verushka70

Well, since there is so much room in my TV viewing schedule (not, lol, at least based on my queues), I'll add The Player. I'll probably wind up liking it... and then it'll probably get canceled, since that seems to happen to me and TV shows I like a lot. Argh.

tbh, I'm not sure TPTB can regain Elementary's freshness at this point. At the end of S3 it was made clear that Holmes' father is threatening to oust them from the brownstone due to Holmes using heroin, the one major stipulation. By that point of course Watson had moved back and more or less settled in again, but in her own space in the basement unit. So the setup for them to re-solidify the partnership was at least there in the season-ending loose ends.

Now in the S4 premiere that threat to their ousting from the brownstone is compounded by (SPOILER) NYPD deciding that Holmes must be made an example of (because of his heroin use, albeit just the once, and his beating Oscar to near-death for which he may be convicted/sentenced to prison). So NYPD ends the use of consultants like Holmes/Watson and now they are effectively unemployed except for taking on the cases of private citizens, and the implication of "how/where will they live?" if they do pro bono work is made clear.

The one scene where they frankly discuss the quandary facing them results in Holmes essentially saying he'll pave the way for Joan to continue working on her own, and her replying that she'll only work with her partner -- Sherlock -- because she and they work best together. So there is that re-commitment. But that was the scene I'd like to tell the writers was a day late and a dollar short. It just made all the obstruction and interruption of their partnership last season seem that much more gratuitous and manipulative to me. Like, why couldn't we have had further solidification of their partnership, with all the requisite snarking between them, all last season -- if this was how it was going to end up anyway? Just made that obstruction seem even more pointless and unnecessary.

Maybe that's just me, but it felt very much like, "Oh, noes! Here we go again, yet another uphill battle for our consulting detectives to stay partners, continue fighting the good fight, and triumph over evil... how will they do it? Tune in next week! same Bat time, same Bat channel!" in a very ho-hum way.

At this point I think it would take a lot of solid "Holmes and Watson unify against/triumph over threats like Holmes Sr. and take on/solve tricky new (private) cases" (part of Conan Doyle canon, anyway), spread across 4-5 more episodes. But when I say solid, I mean solid -- with no more fucking around with the partnership itself and their commitment to it and each other (other than their inherent snarkiness with each other, of course).

Then, too, Elementary started with some fresh takes on things from jump -- John Watson becoming Joan, and Irene Adler being Moriarty. More of such inspired twists on canonical Conan Doyle stuff would be awesome.

The dynamic between Joan and Sherlock got all fucked up last season, thanks to tied up loose ends of S2, to the introduction of the Kitty/Sherlock partnership/dynamic/pseudo-rivalry with Joan/Sherlock (and then the writers really blew all that potential and went totally predictable with it, imo), and to Joan's relationship with Andrew (who, though nice enough, just felt very 'meh' to me, the relationship lacking in chemistry and believability, which made his death less of an impact than it should have been, despite being caused by Elana March -- and now since she's served her narrative purpose, I guess we won't be seeing more of Gina Gershon, which is kind of a bummer).

We got the expositional re-commitment to the partnership from both of them and even some selfless "my prospects may be ruined, but yours shouldn't be" from Sherlock, so what remains is to execute it across a few or several solid eps while whatever dramatic xternal maelstrom whirls around them.

Speculating wildly and even going so far as *gasp* a wish list, I'd love to see Moriarty and Mycroft return. There was a brief reference in 4x1 to Sherlock's ongoing correspondence with Moriarty. I'm really hoping that was dropped in for a reason, considering that Moriarty's people are still all out there. And I just want to see more of her and the development of that Moriarty-Irene/Sherlock dynamic, because in a way they are two sides of a similar coin and she's just kind of fascinating to me. (Although I kind of liked BBC Sherlock's take on Moriarty and the slashy aspects, he ended up being more loose canon and less sinister than he should have been -- whereas Elementary's Moriarty being Irene ended up being more sinister, so the emotional double whammy of his arch nemesis being the only woman he ever loved, and Joan being the one who outsmarted her, leads me to much prefer CBS's Moriarty over BBC's.)

Considering all that happened in S1-S3, I felt the Mycroft/Joan thing had more chemistry and plausibility than Joan/Andrew. And the way Joan/Mycroft messed with Sherlock was amusing, entertaining, and revealing to watch. He and Mycroft seemed to have come to some sort of brotherly detente in their own sibling dynamic, so it would be nice to see Sherlock achieve a level of maturity about Joan and Mycroft maybe getting it on again. I liked the "you're available, I'm available, we enjoy each others company, let's snog" smexin' of Mycroft/Joan. Given Sherlock's canonical practicality regarding commitment-free sexual release, and his development wrt some of his own issues (like recovery, backsliding, and re-committing to recovery), it'd be nice to see Sherlock come to understand that Joan and Mycroft can have a thing that is non-committal and caring, and has nothing to do with him.

And if Kitty came back, too, that'd be awesome, although I'm not sure how she could because isn't she still technically wanted by NYPD for burning the face of her captor/torturer? Maybe she could come back as one of the Irregulars or with Everyone. More of Sherlock's Irregulars, more Ms. Hudson (what happened to her? she should be more prominent!), more Marcus, more Alfredo -- this is what I want. I doubt I'll get it, but -- I can dream.

Off the top of my head, I would say that the writers can't go wrong by looking to the source material but putting their own spin on it, like they did in S1. That worked beautifully and gave Elementary a lot of its freshness (at least for people like me who like the original Conan Doyle stuff but like the 21st century updates -- but I think it worked okay for people who just came for Lucy Liu &/or Johnny Lee Miller, because it wouldn't necessarily have been noticeable, it just added resonance if you already knew the canon). The greatness of its execution was that that writing then relied on the ensemble of actors and guest stars doing their talented things, which they did. But then the writers got carried away with their own cleverness in S3 and it ended up being a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing, with little of the emotional gravity, the resonance, or the freshness of the first two seasons. (I don't even know if the writing teams were the same from S1 to S2 to S3 -- if they weren't, then maybe that was part of the problem.)