Comments | abrynne: Irene Adler's Number Should Come Up

abrynne

Irene Adler's Number Should Come Up

May 10, 2013 09:37

I haven't done television episode reviews in a while. However, last night's dramas warrant some jabbering with spoilers.

Person of Interest "God Mode" i.e. the second season finale.

( Can You Hear Me? )

review, jim caviezel, elementary, person of interest

Comments 3

asatomuraki May 10 2013, 17:59:27 UTC

I agree with all of this except the assertion that the writing has been clever and original. It hasn't been bad, mind you. Better than your average Law & Order, but not any better than, say, The Mentalist, which also focuses on character interplay and development and delivers mildly inventive but believable plots. It's slightly above the average writing for American TV crime shows, though. (I've been completely ruined for detective shows by Endeavor, which is above average for BBC detective shows, a standard by which most are doomed to fail.) I'd put the BBC Sherlock as about average of BBC mysteries for writing, but mostly because their average was blown by one really surprisingly sub-par plot and a couple of average ones. A couple of them were really great.

But both Sherlock and Elementary make up for what they lack. Elementary makes up for it in charm, and Sherlock makes up for it with... whatever the opposite of charm is. :P

abrynne May 10 2013, 18:44:34 UTC

Uh, repugnance? No, that sounds too harsh. He's not repugnant. Stand-offish-ness?

I don't watch The Mentalist because Simon Baker's (That's his name right?) leery face makes me twitch, so I can't really understand that comparison.

That's what I mean though, Elementary is very clever compared to the other stuff we have on TV here. (All of BBC set aside.) It's clever because the humor is different, the relationships were developed believably and still remain complex, which really impressed me actually. It surprised me at times. The crimes, for the most part, tend to be off the wall, and went in the opposite direction of my predictions some of the time.

I haven't gotten into the BBC crime drama circuit yet except for Life on Mars and Foyle's War (Both are freaking amazing by the way. Have you watched Foyle? That was a fabulous few months.) I need to. I want to watch Luther.

But, as far as what I watch on a regular basis, Elementary is one of the better ones. And yeah, I think it also helps that this Sherlock is maybe a little more ( ... )

asatomuraki May 11 2013, 14:41:38 UTC

I haven't seen Foyle, but the BBC has average shows, too. Whitechappel was above average but not top tier. Ripper Street (what I saw of it) was kind of meh. Luthor is also on the high end of middling -- not as much fun as Sherlock, but pretty clever.

I agree that Elementary's Sherlock is much more relatable, vulnerable, even. I like that. It doesn't have the cool production values of Sherlock, but it's solid. I really enjoy it. The thing with The Menatlist is that it's mostly about how clever the Simon Baker character is, how good he is at manipulating people. he's kind of Sherlock Holmes by way of Derren Brown. I find it enjoyable even though I'm not hot for Simon Baker and his very Australian face. He's very personable, but mostly it's a front. His whole purpose for consulting with the CBI is to track down Red John, who killed his wife and daughter after he (at the time a TV mentalist/charlatan) made some pronouncements about Red John on television. It's watchable because SB is really good at showing how broken and soulless he is ( ... )