On switching up Sherlock Holmes

[xparrot]

So I heard the news about the casting of Watson in the new American Sherlock remake, and...

I admit, my first thought upon hearing Lucy Liu was going to be Watson was, Oh great, UST. Because sure, it's fine if fangirls slash any version of Holmes/Watson up one side of London and down the other, but if you're going to turn their epic partnership romantic on actual broadcast TV, you better make sure it's het. >.>

I could be wrong; they might not be going there. On the other hand I can't think of a single TV show in pretty much...ever...that stars a male and female of approximately the same age that doesn't have some kind of major romantic tension between them. X-files gave platonic a good run but surrendered eventually - and if the USA!Sherlock actually tries, I'll give them credit for that; but I don't see it happening. And don't get me wrong, I OTP a lot of those shows - but the thought that they've got to genderswap to make the romance palatable leaves an awful taste in one's mouth.

Even so, putting aside the romance angle, there's some awkwardness with gender roles when it comes to Holmes and Watson, when you have Holmes the rational super-intelligent male and Watson the less-clever, more-emotional female...yeah. I'm not saying it couldn't be done well, but it's tricky ground and I confess to a lack of faith in the ability of the average TV writer to negotiate it. (There are other issues with f!Holmes and m!Watson, though gnine pointed out they already have that show; it's called Bones...)

What I really would love is for them to genderswap both Holmes and Watson! Someday, someday...

Then I was thinking about what else I would like to see - like, this version, if it turns out to be male!asexual!Holmes and female!lesbian!Watson, oh god I will watch the HELL out of that show (platonic m+f soulmates ftw!)

And then, since we're race-changing (I do like Asian!Watson!) - black!Holmes, omg yes??? (In that case I would actually want Holmes to be American. Or else played by Adrian Lester. Or both - by the later seasons of Hustle his American accent is pretty spot-on!)

...So now I want black!male!asexual!Holmes and Asian!lesbian!Watson and can someone be getting on that now, please?

Comments

[nijibug.livejournal.com]

Yes to all of this, yes.

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

*le sigh*!

[tasabian.livejournal.com]

What I really would love is for them to genderswap both Holmes and Watson!
I think Lucy Liu would make a better Holmes - she plays intelligent & eccentric characters very well. Wish they had cast women in both roles.

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

I am not that familiar with Lucy Liu (I've seen her in a few things but not anything memorable?) but she has the 'look' for Holmes! If only, if only...

[naye]

I knowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww. All of this is stuff I've thought myself. D: I mean, just looking at the actors they cast, wouldn't it have been AWESOME if Lucy Liu had been Holmes and Johnny Lee Miller had been Watson?

But, no.

Of course the brilliant, arrogant genius with issues has to be a white male WHO ELSE could have as many issues and as much genius as a white dude? >:I

Don't get me started on the UST. I remember watching NCIS and being so disappointed once they set up buckets of UST all around Ziva and Tony. That's the most recent US show I've seen that had a male and a female character who didn't make eyes at each other, and instead have a really interesting friendship. (I guess Abby and Gibbs don't count quite as much because of the age difference? But I do admit that they have something ADORABLE and non-sexual and that makes me happy!)

Urrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh and I am so pissed at what I perceive as changing an integral part of Watson's character, which is that he is (despite being in awe of the much smarter Holmes) a very capable man, who has done some difficult and dangerous things in his life, and still carries the scars of those experiences. As a matter of fact, if not for those experiences he would never have ended up back in London having to find lodgings at Baker Street in the first place. (And also they're Conan Doyle's own background, so...)

BUT IF SHE'S A WOMAN SHE CAN'T HAVE BEEN AT WAR RIGHT. *facepalm* (Or is it that if she's an American she can't have left the military, and certainly not been damaged by it, because we all know the military is the greatest thing ever and the only war you're allowed to suffer PTSD from on TV is one that ended before 1980.)

You know what, I could go on, but I think you get the general I AM HAVING RAGE picture, so I'll just shut up now.

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

Yeah, like I said, while I think a f!Holmes and m!Watson could still fall prey to some gender stereotypes (there's that super-smart super-bitch thing) it would still be more interesting (and while I don't really know Johnny Lee Miller or Lucy Liu as actors, she at least has much more a Holmes look than Watson to me!) (admittedly super-smart asexual Asian woman would be falling into its own set of potholes and uhh I might be overthinking this? but yeah...)

(Actually NCIS has some good het friendship stuff - Ziva & McGee have some super cute moments that have a 0 UST count, in part thanks to the Tony/Ziva. Ensemble shows tend to be better for that, they'll pair off one set but then that will free up relations otherwise. Like Sam & Daniel in SG-1. Or Sheridan & Ivanova! "What am I, chopped flarn? Granted, I have no interest in you, you have no interest in me, but if you're going to come barging in the middle of the night, the least you could say is, 'Nice outfit, Ivanova!' and then go on a tear!")

And Watson not being a war vet...yeeeeeeah, that's kind of a major change to the character, more than the gender. If it were set in the past, it'd be excusable, but in modern times...it's ridiculous. >.>

..erm, which is to say, sorry for fueling your fan-rage? But yes, I am with you...

[naye]

Is super-smart super-bitch really a thing? Is this a Bones reference? Because I can't think of any good examples of it. But it's true that what in a dude passes for arrogance is interpreted as bitchiness in a woman. Double standards, go!

I think you're right in that the ensemble shows are the ones where you also get nice m/f friendships! There are more examples I can think of: Mal and Zoe, for example. (♥♥♥) But in a duo show? How is Bones doing on that? I haven't even seen the pilot! And I can't think of any other m/f pair since Mulder and Scully (and oh god the trainwreck that became).

Oh, don't worry. I am already on the fan-rage train, you didn't sell me tickets!

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

Yes, the arrogant woman = bitch thing is what I was thinking of. I can't think of specific character examples but I know I've seen chars like that - often in shows I don't watch regularly, soap operas and such? The 'ice queen' type of doctor or lawyer or businesswoman, in which an intelligent, ambitious woman who is confident of her competence is shown as being cruel/conniving/evil/otherwise threatening (often sexy as well, since doms are sexy? but rarely heroic in the way male chars with such traits can still be heroic.)(...but the only example coming to mind to me now is Better Off Ted's Veronica, who is a parody of the type and also made of awesome, so...? ^^;)

Bones, like Castle, set up the m/f dynamic as UST pretty much from the start, and I actually really like both pairings - though Castle is getting increasingly absurd in its attempts to prolong the UST without consummation; Bones imo has done more interesting things with it, and apparently now they are together in the latest season (I'm behind.). And Bones does good female chars, too - as an ensemble show with a bunch of women, it passes the Bechdel test pretty much every ep, and Bones herself is super-intelligent and super-arrogant but avoids a more bitchy stereotype by also being extremely and hilariously socially tone-deaf. Her partner Booth often ends up mediating between her and the rest of the world, very much like John with Sherlock; they've got the cute co-dependent partner thing going on, and I like that regardless of gender.

Though to be honest I like Tony/Ziva, too (mainly because that one does a good job of convincing me they're friends beyond the attraction, which tends to be my biggest problem with TV romance.) I won't watch a show just for the het romance (I started watching Bones because I wanted more David Boreanaz, and Castle for Nathan Fillion + promise of cute father-daughter stuff), but I don't have anything against m/f pairings in particular - if the female characters are well-written (which is encouragingly becoming more common on TV, if not in movies) and the show can convince me the chars are cute together, I'll go with it. But I get annoyed when it always has to be (het) romance, when romance is placed as the most important relationship, and the most important part of relationships. And especially in the case of Sherlock Holmes, because I do fall more on the ace!Holmes side, as you know; and also to have 2 recent Holmes versions playing massive gay chicken without actually crossing the line, and then they make a het version? Yeeeeeah... >.<

[rosalui.livejournal.com]

Just butting in to say that you captured my thoughts re: the military thing perfectly.

[nightwalker.livejournal.com]

The fact that they changed such a huge part of Watson's background is the thing that pisses me off. Why couldn't Watson be a veteran? Because she's a woman? Fuck you, network executives.

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that change is just weird. I always get surprised when I see something so blatantly sexist...come on, guys, it's the 21st century, aren't we far enough along? >.>

[rosalui.livejournal.com]

I agree with all of this exactly.

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

It's good to not be alone! Now if only the TV execs would see it our way...

[serrende.livejournal.com]

There was an old black and white comic book in the early 90s that was based on the idea of genderswapped Holmes & Watson: Baker Street by Guy Davis and Gary Reed. But the characters had different names - last names too, I mean - and backgrounds from the original: the Holmes, Sharon Ford, was ex-cop turned private detective for punk outcasts in a steampunk 1980s Britain, while the Watson, Susan Prendergast, was an American exchange student of medicine. Their basic personalities were the same, though, and so was most of their dynamics except for an important third character, a woman who was already living with Sharon when Susan moved in.

So it wasn't quite the kind of thing you're thinking of (they were both white), but I'm mentioning it anyway since it was a pretty fresh and memorable comic, though it only ran for a short time - nine or ten issues, I think. The second arc was particularly interesting, delving into some pretty dark stuff with lots of character development.

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, I might have to look that up, it sounds pretty cool!

Years ago I actually started writing a genderswapped Holmes & Watson IN SPACE - same as the Baker Street series, they had different names, but I still meant it to be a direct parallel. It took place on a B5-esque space station, at a convergence point of a bunch of different systems and species. The Watson char was an empath and the Holmes char was an expert on the various different species, though now I can't quite recall why ^^; (it was a long time ago!)

[serrende.livejournal.com]

Holmes and Watson as mystery-solving women on a space station sounds like potential for awesome. Also, I would totally root for a Vorkosigan crossover. ^_^

[beckerbell.livejournal.com]

I agree with all of this. I really, really want to like this show (for Lucy Liu if nothing else, she's the first thing that's really sparked my interest in it at all) and there are some very interesting places they could go with it! And I'm not out and out opposed to shipping it (I don't know that the gender was changed to male the idea of a relationship between them more palatable so much as I suspect it was just that they had to put their own stamp on it somehow--beyond being a US version--and this is what they thought of) and CBS has some really good shows to its name.

It's just... does anyone really trust that this show is going to do any of those potentially good/interesting things? Does anyone believe that, with what we know of how they're changing the Watson character to be a disgraced surgeon rather than an honorated war veteran, this doesn't have a far higher chance of being awful than it does of being good? Sigh.

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

I don't know that the gender was changed to male the idea of a relationship between them more palatable so much as I suspect it was just that they had to put their own stamp on it somehow--beyond being a US version--and this is what they thought of

I am so curious if this is true. Because yeah, to me it smacked of 'let's genderswap to have a proper het romance' but you're totally right that it could've gone the other way - 'let's change things up and make Watson a lady! --Oh, and then we can have romance!' (I am convinced the romance is there somewhere, it's TV, it's how these things work. But I find the latter much less offensive.)

And yes, I don't get why they had to change Watson's backstory. It sounded like Holmes's is getting changed too - and I do wonder if they wanted to drop the war vet thing to avoid controversy? - but Watson in the original was always a competent doctor (...if not always an actively practicing one...) and why they'd take that away...doesn't bode well for their treatment of her character. :/

[sholio]

ADRIAN LESTER, YESSSSS. (Adrian Lester should play everything. <--is not at all biased XD)

But ... yeah. A number of shows, at least, have decent platonic relationships among the secondary cast; actually it's one of the things I like about White Collar -- yes, it's your typical straight-white-guy buddy show, but there are lots of male-female platonic pairs among the whole ensemble, who get nice relationship scenes and everything. And now that we're watching Burn Notice, I'm finding Fiona and Sam hilarious (they have an awesome blend of accidental partnership and more-or-less genuine hate). But a show where the primary protagonists are a man and woman who don't get involved ... yeaaaaahhhhh, not so much. If Elementary does it, it'll be ... well, not a first, I'm sure, but very unusual and definitely bucking the trend.

Even leaving that aside, though, my first thought when I heard that Watson was going to be female and Holmes male -- and this was even before I started reading details about the rest of it -- was discomfort with the idea of Watson ending up in, basically, a Girl Friday role. This is ironic because I actually have a huuuuuge and slightly guilty weakness for that particular trope in general -- helpful Girl Friday plus older/more experienced/higher-in-the-chain-of-command man (like Roy Mustang and Riza Hawkeye in FMA, or the old Jimmy Steward movie "Rear Window", or "Jane Eyre" - my id, like most people's, is not very progressive at times). But it frustrates me because this is one of those unfortunate situations where genderswapping the role actually runs a huge risk of making it even less progressive than the original -- and this is leaving aside the issues of how they're choosing to set up Watson's character, which make me even more worried. :/ And, also, there is a general trend that when they genderswap or raceswap a character in a popular franchise, it's always the supporting, sidekick, or assistant-type character, rather than the central, iconic, "cool" character. It's a black Ford Prefect, not a black Arthur Dent; a female Christopher Robin, not a female Winnie the Pooh.

I've seen quite a bit of squee for the idea of a female Watson around my corner of the Internets, so I don't want to rain on anyone's parade. But ... I don't know, I just feel like there's so much potential "do not want" that I'm having a hard time feel optimistic about it.

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

(Adrian Lester should play everything.

TRU FAX, THIS. (*also not biased in the slightest*) But especially Holmes - he's got the height and the high brow and the melting brown eyes and umm, yes, please?

And yeah, there are some fantastic m-f platonic relationships among supporting cast in various shows (oh my yes Sam + Fi are at least 75% of Burn Notice's charm :D) but not main chars. The only show that might've bucked this that I can think of was the old Doctor Who - but the age differences there were pretty extreme even if the actors weren't, and also New Who thoroughly destroyed that wall anyway, so...

I share your guilty weakness (oh, Jane Eyre, you were embedded in my fangirl soul at too young an age to ever be excised <3) so know what you mean - but this, this is one of those unfortunate situations where genderswapping the role actually runs a huge risk of making it even less progressive than the original, yes that's it, exactly.

I really wish they'd have gone all the way and genderswapped 'em both...so much potential for awesome there that it actually would've been difficult to screw it up. But this...it's going to take some amazing writing to handle this properly, and I'm not sure they're up for it...

[alasen.livejournal.com]

On the other hand I can't think of a single TV show in pretty much...ever...that stars a male and female of approximately the same age that doesn't have some kind of major romantic tension between them.
I'm watching my way through Warehouse 13, which was pimped me to me on the fact that the two leads (although it's really more ensemble-y) had no romantic chemistry. The two (spoilery!) points that I was specifically told about were (though i haven't encountered the second yet):
a) male character knew that female character was possessed because she kissed him, and she would never kiss him even to save their lives
b) they wake up in the same bed naked with no memory of the night before, and realise that they've put themselves in this situation so they'll know to investigate, because they'd never sleep together.

i enjoy the show - the friendship between them is great, they develop a cute brother/sister vibe, no romance with each other whatsoever.

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

Hmmmm, you intrigue me! I caught a random ep of W13 which...didn't impress me; but platonic m-f partnership is so very much one of my kinks, and those scenarios sound delightful! Maybe after NZ I'll check it out... ^^