on platonic m/f and fun TV
Apr. 26th, 2013 03:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xparrotSo right now is a great time for platonic m/f friendship on TV, much to my joy!
In the last couple weeks we watched all that's out of Elementary - highly recommended! It does a lot of remarkable things effortlessly and unselfconsciously. Lucy Liu's Joan Watson is amazing and awesome, not the least of which for being a relatable, recognizable human being who also happens to be an Asian-American woman. While when the show was first announced I was disappointed by the changes they'd made to Watson's character (ex-doctor and not ex-military), in the context of the show and the version of Sherlock Holmes they're telling, it makes sense. And she is still absolutely Watson, long-suffering and loyal, if a bit snarkier about it than some.
But then that's par for the course - one of the things that makes Elementary's Sherlock so great is because everyone actually calls him on his shit. And he actually listens (sometimes, to some people), and he tries (even if he doesn't always succeed). Jonny Lee Miller's Sherlock is downright adorable at times and delightful always. He's more vulnerable than most takes on Holmes but still has edge enough to be convincing. And he and Watson have fantastic (platonic!) chemistry, and I love what the show's doing with their professional relationship.Holmes actually formally training his Watson to be an investigator is something I've never seen before, and that Watson is good at it - and that Sherlock is actually a fair teacher, at least for this Watson, who does better under pressure and with absurdly high expectations - eeeee so marvelous!
I also love the cases - they are completely ridiculous and absurd and unbelievable, and really creative and different - I've watched a lot of procedurals and mysteries, and they keep doing things I haven't seen before. I could see how it would turn off people who want realism (no human beings would plan homicides this esoterically complicated) but that's the last thing I'm going to Sherlock Holmes for, so yes, love it.
I am very curious about the upcoming finale. I have no particular spoilers but![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
joonscribble happened to voice a wish that Irene Adler actually is Moriarty, which I don't think is where the show is going but ever since I heard it I can't help but hope for it, maaaan it would be so amazing. I'd also really love if they switched up Reichenbach and had Watson be presumed-dead instead of Holmes. (He would fall apart so beautifully...) Though I admit to being very curious about seeing this Watson taking Sherlock being presumed-dead - she's so very independent, I think it might surprise even her how much it would affect her. And she'd struggle to even explain her loss, because Sherlock isn't family and isn't her lover and people have a hard time understanding what a man can be to a woman, if not those...would be fascinating to see. (Though she knows Sherlock well enough by now, I'm not sure how to convince her Sherlock is really dead, as opposed to playing a long con...)
We've also started watching SyFy's Warehouse 13, and while that isn't what I'd call good TV - oh my god it is so frigging cute it's almost painful. It's not for everyone - it's corny and shallow and obvious, but if you like cute made-family teams being cute together while dealing with unabashedly implausible scifi artifacts, you owe it to yourself to watch this show.
It does have a couple other points to recommend it. Not only does it have more major female characters than male for a good part of the show, but the central partnership is a male and a female agent, both young and white and attractive, who bicker but love working together and love each other and have ABSOLUTELY ZERO UST. Their relationship is sibling-esque all the way without any hint of romance; they're genuinely happy and supportive for their partner whenever they find romance elsewhere. Meanwhile to make up for the lack of sexual chemistry there, it is positively bubbling between the female agent and H.G. Wells. Who is a (canonically bi) woman. Played by the preternaturally gorgeous Jaime Murray of Hustle. (She's also kind of an arch-villain, sometimes, depending, which tension only ups the femslashiness (very deliberate femslash; at her introduction she was briefly paired with Pete, but since then it's Myka who she has all the intense interactions with.))(And while I don't think that 'ship has actually gone canon, H.G./Myka is the most popular pairing in the fandom by an order of magnitude...)
But mostly it's just adorable action-comedy with lots of hugs and goofy scifi peril to the characters in every episode (I swear, every single ep has at least a moment of h/c or worry with someone). It reminds me more of SFC's old Invisible Man than perhaps any other show I can think of; it's a show that knows exactly what it is, and is very happy to be that, with no ambitions to take itself more seriously. And since I adored I-man, and am a sucker for cute teamy h/c, yeah, am enjoying the heck out of W13!
In the last couple weeks we watched all that's out of Elementary - highly recommended! It does a lot of remarkable things effortlessly and unselfconsciously. Lucy Liu's Joan Watson is amazing and awesome, not the least of which for being a relatable, recognizable human being who also happens to be an Asian-American woman. While when the show was first announced I was disappointed by the changes they'd made to Watson's character (ex-doctor and not ex-military), in the context of the show and the version of Sherlock Holmes they're telling, it makes sense. And she is still absolutely Watson, long-suffering and loyal, if a bit snarkier about it than some.
But then that's par for the course - one of the things that makes Elementary's Sherlock so great is because everyone actually calls him on his shit. And he actually listens (sometimes, to some people), and he tries (even if he doesn't always succeed). Jonny Lee Miller's Sherlock is downright adorable at times and delightful always. He's more vulnerable than most takes on Holmes but still has edge enough to be convincing. And he and Watson have fantastic (platonic!) chemistry, and I love what the show's doing with their professional relationship.
I also love the cases - they are completely ridiculous and absurd and unbelievable, and really creative and different - I've watched a lot of procedurals and mysteries, and they keep doing things I haven't seen before. I could see how it would turn off people who want realism (no human beings would plan homicides this esoterically complicated) but that's the last thing I'm going to Sherlock Holmes for, so yes, love it.
I am very curious about the upcoming finale. I have no particular spoilers but
joonscribble happened to voice a wish that Irene Adler actually is Moriarty, which I don't think is where the show is going but ever since I heard it I can't help but hope for it, maaaan it would be so amazing. I'd also really love if they switched up Reichenbach and had Watson be presumed-dead instead of Holmes. (He would fall apart so beautifully...) Though I admit to being very curious about seeing this Watson taking Sherlock being presumed-dead - she's so very independent, I think it might surprise even her how much it would affect her. And she'd struggle to even explain her loss, because Sherlock isn't family and isn't her lover and people have a hard time understanding what a man can be to a woman, if not those...would be fascinating to see. (Though she knows Sherlock well enough by now, I'm not sure how to convince her Sherlock is really dead, as opposed to playing a long con...)We've also started watching SyFy's Warehouse 13, and while that isn't what I'd call good TV - oh my god it is so frigging cute it's almost painful. It's not for everyone - it's corny and shallow and obvious, but if you like cute made-family teams being cute together while dealing with unabashedly implausible scifi artifacts, you owe it to yourself to watch this show.
It does have a couple other points to recommend it. Not only does it have more major female characters than male for a good part of the show, but the central partnership is a male and a female agent, both young and white and attractive, who bicker but love working together and love each other and have ABSOLUTELY ZERO UST. Their relationship is sibling-esque all the way without any hint of romance; they're genuinely happy and supportive for their partner whenever they find romance elsewhere. Meanwhile to make up for the lack of sexual chemistry there, it is positively bubbling between the female agent and H.G. Wells. Who is a (canonically bi) woman. Played by the preternaturally gorgeous Jaime Murray of Hustle. (She's also kind of an arch-villain, sometimes, depending, which tension only ups the femslashiness (very deliberate femslash; at her introduction she was briefly paired with Pete, but since then it's Myka who she has all the intense interactions with.))(And while I don't think that 'ship has actually gone canon, H.G./Myka is the most popular pairing in the fandom by an order of magnitude...)
But mostly it's just adorable action-comedy with lots of hugs and goofy scifi peril to the characters in every episode (I swear, every single ep has at least a moment of h/c or worry with someone). It reminds me more of SFC's old Invisible Man than perhaps any other show I can think of; it's a show that knows exactly what it is, and is very happy to be that, with no ambitions to take itself more seriously. And since I adored I-man, and am a sucker for cute teamy h/c, yeah, am enjoying the heck out of W13!
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Date: 2013-04-27 01:37 am (UTC)I very much love Lucy Liu as Watson. I must admit I'm not a Sherlock fan. I didn't get into it with Robert Downy Jr. version and haven't tried with anyone else. What I love about the show is how Lucy Liu is so unapologetic about what she does. She helps addicts recover, and it never feels like she feels that she's downgraded in her place in life. At the same time, she's finding this new part of herself dealing and helping Sherlock.
And I love that despite everything, Watson is not inferior to Sherlock in any way. Sherlock is smart, yes, but Watson's contributions are important. She's not a sidekick. I love that.
And of course, there is the relationship between them. There's nothing sexual in it, but at the same time it's a friendship in the making. They're not family, and they don't need to be. Which is a very hard thing to write and have work as well as it does. As you can tell, I really love this show. I love female characters that defy stereotype. Real people. We don't see enough of that and it's a shame.
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