![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
spacemutineer.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
sherlock60Let's talk telly in the discussion post for Granada's TV adaptation of The Golden Pince-Nez. If you haven't seen this episode yet, you can find it at YouTube, Netflix, Amazon Video, and DVD. Follow me behind the jump for my random thoughts and impressions. Please add your own in the comments!
Canon discussion for The Golden Pince-Nez is available in the canon discussion post.
- I have to be honest up front: I kind of hate this episode. That is going to color my discussion here, I'm afraid, but don't let my dislike distort your enjoyment of it. If you loved it, wonderful! Please tell me all about the awesome bits I missed in the comments. That caveat out of the way... oh, man, this episode. At first, I was intrigued. Wow, Charles Gray as Mycroft gets double billing with Jeremy Brett! Sounded interesting, but things went downhill quickly.
- Watson is unavailable, we are told, busy at his practice. In actuality, Edward Hardwicke was away filming a movie. In his place we have Gray as brother Mycroft. The immovable object not only leaves his office, he decides to go out on the investigation trail with Sherlock. Does that seem likely to you? In this universe, does Mycroft assist in cases regularly or is this a one-time deal? What is his relationship really like with his brother? We get some small window into their sibling rivalry in a very strange encounter over their father's magnifying glass. There's a lot of staring involved, not necessarily at anyone.
- Without Watson's warmth and presence, Holmes comes across as harsh to virtually everyone, verging on cruel. He even makes a horrendous remark about Watson's uselessness as a doctor that Mrs. Hudson chalks up to missing the man, but if that really was affection filtered, it was so obscured as to be virtually invisible. Holmes even has an oddly ugly interaction with Mrs. Marker, a conversation Watson specifically mentions in canon to show how well Holmes gets along with women. As a character, Sherlock Holmes can be so dry and deadpan that it can be a matter of interpretation how much gentleness or teasing exists in his voice as opposed to outright disdain. In this episode, Jeremy Brett's Holmes is all disdain. His Holmes, for this moment at least, seems angry and embittered.
- The direction is absurdly over-dramatic in every respect. Camera shots linger through the distortion of water glasses. Lightning flashes on Holmes' face as he considers someone might hold a TERRIBLE SECRET. He physically reaches for the waterfall painting, draping his hand across it as he expels the world's most dramatic sigh. Anna's death is extended and elaborate, involving much moaning and many sweaty closeups. The hyper-intensity of everything could have been turned down from 11 and it would have done the episode much good.
- Speaking of that painting of Reichenbach, why have it hanging at Baker Street at all? It's a strange thing to memorialize the place where you "died". Even if Holmes is proud of the moment as his greatest achievement, isn't it an enormous insult and source of pain to Watson? "Hey, remember where you were gutted when I died and there was nothing you could do to prevent it no matter how much you tried? Well, here's a picture you can use to remember that every day in detail from now until forever." And this Holmes does not seem exactly proud of what happened at the falls anyway -- haunted by it is more like it. So why the painting? Why choose to rub salt into old wounds?
Canon discussion for The Golden Pince-Nez is available in the canon discussion post.
- I have to be honest up front: I kind of hate this episode. That is going to color my discussion here, I'm afraid, but don't let my dislike distort your enjoyment of it. If you loved it, wonderful! Please tell me all about the awesome bits I missed in the comments. That caveat out of the way... oh, man, this episode. At first, I was intrigued. Wow, Charles Gray as Mycroft gets double billing with Jeremy Brett! Sounded interesting, but things went downhill quickly.
- Watson is unavailable, we are told, busy at his practice. In actuality, Edward Hardwicke was away filming a movie. In his place we have Gray as brother Mycroft. The immovable object not only leaves his office, he decides to go out on the investigation trail with Sherlock. Does that seem likely to you? In this universe, does Mycroft assist in cases regularly or is this a one-time deal? What is his relationship really like with his brother? We get some small window into their sibling rivalry in a very strange encounter over their father's magnifying glass. There's a lot of staring involved, not necessarily at anyone.
- Without Watson's warmth and presence, Holmes comes across as harsh to virtually everyone, verging on cruel. He even makes a horrendous remark about Watson's uselessness as a doctor that Mrs. Hudson chalks up to missing the man, but if that really was affection filtered, it was so obscured as to be virtually invisible. Holmes even has an oddly ugly interaction with Mrs. Marker, a conversation Watson specifically mentions in canon to show how well Holmes gets along with women. As a character, Sherlock Holmes can be so dry and deadpan that it can be a matter of interpretation how much gentleness or teasing exists in his voice as opposed to outright disdain. In this episode, Jeremy Brett's Holmes is all disdain. His Holmes, for this moment at least, seems angry and embittered.
- The direction is absurdly over-dramatic in every respect. Camera shots linger through the distortion of water glasses. Lightning flashes on Holmes' face as he considers someone might hold a TERRIBLE SECRET. He physically reaches for the waterfall painting, draping his hand across it as he expels the world's most dramatic sigh. Anna's death is extended and elaborate, involving much moaning and many sweaty closeups. The hyper-intensity of everything could have been turned down from 11 and it would have done the episode much good.
- Speaking of that painting of Reichenbach, why have it hanging at Baker Street at all? It's a strange thing to memorialize the place where you "died". Even if Holmes is proud of the moment as his greatest achievement, isn't it an enormous insult and source of pain to Watson? "Hey, remember where you were gutted when I died and there was nothing you could do to prevent it no matter how much you tried? Well, here's a picture you can use to remember that every day in detail from now until forever." And this Holmes does not seem exactly proud of what happened at the falls anyway -- haunted by it is more like it. So why the painting? Why choose to rub salt into old wounds?
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Sunday, 21 April 2013
Date: 2013-04-21 11:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-04-21 11:38 pm (UTC)Did we have to add a gratuitous slap at women's suffrage to round out the plot? "Oh, teehee, those silly libbers - they just don't know what's good for them, do they?" Oddly enough, one of the episodes of the Ronald Howard 1954 Sherlock Holmes TV series had much the same annoying suffragette subplot.
On the plus side, however, this episode does have a lovely look at Stanley Hopkins in the person of Nigel Planer- one that has been the inspiration for many a fanfic. And then...oh, wait, that's about the only thing good I can say about this episode.
no subject
Date: 2013-04-24 09:06 pm (UTC)