The grandiose madness of Thick As A Brick

So there I was. It was a few weeks back, and I was slouching around behind my computer on a rainy Tuesday night. By all intents and purposes I should, as ever (or so it seems these days) have been working on writing a paper for one of my courses, but, also as ever, I was procrastinating the fuck out of it. So instead, I was absent-mindedly browsing upcoming concert dates for some of my favorite bands. After a bit of looking here and there I arrived at the website of Ian Anderson’s eclectic British rock outfit, Jethro Tull. While they only had a few tour dates for the UK for 2012, they did have one of those countdown boxes at the top of the page, usually used to count down the time left until some big announcement. Wondering what it was for, I decided to bookmark the site and check back when the counter ran out, and went on with what I was doing (which was mostly thinking of more ways to delay writing said paper for a bit longer).

Imagine my surprise when I loaded up the website about a week later and it contained not only an announcement that Ian would soon start touring Tull’s classic 1972 album Thick As A Brick in full for the first time since the year that record was released, but that he’d also be releasing a sequel: Thick As A Brick 2 (not exactly the most creative of titles, but hey, what’re ya gonna do).

Of course, I have to be a bit skeptical about the whole sequel thing; Ian is a talented musician and all ‘round creative guy, but doing a sequel to an established classic is always something of a risk – hell, one’d be tempted to call it a cash-in, but the guy really seems genuinely invested in the project. It’ll be another while before Thick As A Brick 2 hits record store shelves on April 2^nd though, so in the mean time, I thought it’d be a fun exercise to cast our minds back to 1972 or thereabouts and take a look at the album that started it all: Thick As A Brick.

Thick As A Brick is one of those records that comes ‘round once in a blue moon, where no matter what sort of criticism one might level against it there’s something about it that works, something that clicks, a sort of energy and cohesion that truly make it into more than the sum of its parts. That’s not to say it’s a simple album. In fact, it’s exceedingly complex. Of course it is: this is a progressive rock album, a genre that developed at the tail end of the sixties and into the seventies. After The Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper showed the world it could accept rock music as a full-fledged, independent form of modern art, prog rock arrived to take rock to the next level, incorporating incredibly long and complex song structures, intricately poetic and often indecipherable lyrics and, quite often, a range of instruments so diverse it’d have even the Fab Four bow their heads in shame. Thick As A Brick is usually considered one of the early masterpieces of the genre. In true prog fashion, the album is grandiose, majestic and intricate – and, frankly, kind of ridiculous.

It was also made in a basement.  

But let’s back up for a minute or two. Before talking further about Thick As A Brick proper, it’d be interesting to say a few words about the genesis of this album: for it is an interesting one. 

The band in '72, from left to right: John Evan, Jeffrey Hammond, Ian Anderson, Martin Barre and Barriemore Barlow. I hear the baby auditioned to be on bass but didn't make it.

 

It was 1972, and Jethro Tull was basking in the glow of the success of their latest album, Aqualung. A departure from their humble blues-rock beginnings, with Aqualung the band took a turn towards a more heavy and intricate sound, but it paid off, as the album was enthusiastically received. But something was bugging Ian Anderson. The critics seemed to be in agreement that Aqualung was meant as a concept album: a sort of parody on John’s Gospel centered around a straggly hobo named Aqualung who appeared on the album cover. Ian vehemently denied this, stating that the album was just a collection of songs with a few incidental links between them here and there. But no one would have any of that, and interviewers and fans constantly congratulated him on what a terrific concept piece he’d written. This pissed off Mister Anderson to no end – so much so, in fact, that one day he decided to gather up his bandmates in a dank, badly-lit Bermondsy basement that he’d rented from The Rolling Stones (who were probably laughing all the way to the bank) to record an album that would be “a mind-boggler” and “the mother of all concept albums”.

So if this is a concept album, what exactly is the concept? Basically, if this album seems kind of silly and overblown then that is by design, for it’s meant as a parody on the idea of the concept album. It’s also a giant put-on. Ian claimed that the lyrics for Thick As A Brick were an epic poem written by the eight year old Gerald Bostock, who even won an award for it… which was later revoked because psychiatrists found the child’s mind to be unhinged, the poem being a product of an “extremely unwholesome attitude towards life, his God and his Country”. That quote’s not from an interview or anything, by the way. It’s from a newspaper piece in the St Cleve Chronicle & Linwell Advertiser… a periodical that was about as real as little Gerald (read: not at all), but that didn’t stop Ian and his mates from concocting a twelve-page issue of it, complete with a review of the album itself and a rather disconcerting item about a fourteen year old girl who claimed Gerald to be the father of her unborn child. The newspaper served as the record sleeve for the album (one of the more creative ones I’ve seen in my life) and apparently took more time to put together than to record the actual music they laid down on vinyl. It’s only the hors d’ouevre though – it may be funny, sure enough, but the songs, boy do they kick ass.

Wait, my bad, did I say songs? I’m sorry, I meant song, as in singular, for Thick As A Brick contains only one song (named, well, “Thick As A Brick”). 

The record sleeve for Thick As A Brick, a fold-out version of the fictional St. Cleve Chronicle.

 

Of course at about forty minutes long, said song is certainly no slouch. While other prog rock outfits such as Yes had been experimenting with sidelong compositions at the time, to my knowledge Tull was the first to actually come up with (or at least, act on) the crazy idea to fill an entire record with only one track. Well, alright, it’s two tracks covering each side of the vinyl; but they’re acoustically and thematically linked into a continuous whole.

Lyrically, Thick As A Brick is about as intricate as they get – well alright, it’s not as inscrutable as 1973’s sequel A Passion Play or the metaphysical ramblings of Jon Anderson of Yes (no relation) but as far as albums with any kind of concrete message go it’s still pretty far out there. On a whole, it seems to be continuing the societal criticism featured on Aqualung in songs such as “My God”, "Wind Up" and of course that album’s title track, but conveys it in much more abstract terms. The poem being framed as little Gerald Bostock’s attempt to come to terms with the trials and tribulations of growing up in twentieth-century England, Thick As A Brick seems to thematize how modern society shapes its citizens’ lives and personalities through their upbringing (with particular attention to father figures). The singer asks the song to “spin me back to the years and the days of my youth”, recalling his birth and his upbringing through which he was enticed to confirm to societal standards, with even such seemingly spontaneous outbursts such as singing in the rain revealed as being taught as part of the process of instilling conformity:

See there, a son is born

And we pronounce him fit to fight

He’s got blackheads on his shoulders

And he pees himself in the night

We’ll make a man of him, put him to a trade

Teach him to play Monopoly

And how to sing in the rain

The singer is asking the masses, who through this process of brainwashing have become “thick as a brick”, to escape from the vicious cycle in which man has been trapped by society. But to do that, it is imperative that they learn to think for themselves, for as the opening verse goes, “I may make you feel / But I can’t make you think”. The young, in particular, hold the key to bringing about a change for the better, for mending our “rotten ways”, but can only achieve this if they pull their heads out of the sand and break free from the fantasy world they have willingly trapped themselves in. What is the following verse, set to John Evans’ ferocious Hammond Organ and Barriemore Barlow’s roaring percussion (and preceded by an ringing alarm clock, a literal wake-up call), if not a call to arms to bring about a change for the better:

So come all ye young men who are building castles

Can you state the time of the year

And join your voices in a hellish chorus

Mark the precise nature of your fear

See the summer lightning casts its bolts upon you

As the hour of judgment draweth near

Will you be the fool stood in his suit of armor

Or the wiser man who rushes clear

The young are called upon to step forward and take charge, to “rise up from the pages / Of your comic books, your super crooks / And show us all the way”. But any attempt at improving the lot of man in this context seems doomed to failure, for after this bombastic call to arms “Thick As A Brick” ends on a reprisal of the song’s opening lines, the singer informing us in a melancholy tone that despite everything, men still “make all their animal deals” and are still “thick as a brick”.

This central message is not remotely as straight-forward as I am here presenting it to be though, for Ian adorns his lyricism with a wealth of poetic imagery that often feels very symbolic, though I’m not always entirely sure what it’s supposed to symbolize exactly – the song even contains several verses driven by vague medieval British imagery a la early Genesis (think “Selling England By The Pound”, which came out after this album, but shut up, that's not the point). Compared to the relatively restrained Aqualung, Ian really let his poetic capacities flow freely on this one, and the casual listener might find himself lost trying to decipher much of his more enigmatic, ponderous poetic ramblings. Still, the imagery is well-constructed, evocative and oftentimes rather beautiful, and if Ian indeed aims to make us “feel” moreso than making us “think” then I would say he accomplishes at least that.

Ian playing an abridged "Thick As A Brick" in 1978: a magnficently fun, energetic performance that has to be seen to be believed.

And hey, I don’t mind an album having some lyrical chaff as long as the music is good. People don’t listen to prog rock to hear what it has to say, they listen to it to be blown away by intricate, rocking arrangements and exquisite musicianship; and musically, Thick As A Brick is no less complex than on the lyrical level... and more importantly, the entire record is just simply damn catchy.

Tull does prog rock tradition proud, as there’s tons of instruments on display here. The main one most of you’ll notice is Ian Anderson’s flute. Ian was one of the first people to really bring the instrument into rock music, and the way he plays it truly is rather unique (check out this seven minute(!) flute solo, it’s the craziest thing I’ve seen in a while). His prowess is on display in several sections of this album, such as the flute-driven marching music of the “So come on ye childhood heroes” section. But apart from the flute and the basics like drum and guitars there’s also harpsichords, pianos, glockenspiels, saxophones, a tambourine and perhaps even more instruments I’ve as of yet been unable to pick out of the mix. The musicianship is, needless to say, immaculate, or at least it sounds pretty excellent to my tone-deaf ear: all that rehearsing in that dank little basement sure did pay off, for the band reportedly finished the actual recording sessions for the album in little over three hours time.

And despair not: the fact that this record contains only a single song doesn’t mean it gets boring, for as the great variety of instruments employed would have you expect, Thick As A Brick is a magnificently varied record. George Starostin mentions that it could have easily worked on a short-song level, as the album’s various segments are quite different from each other and mostly linked through sparring instrumental passages. I’m not sure I’d agree with this assessment entirely: while an album like Quodrophenia by The Who is indeed a collection of quite distinctly separate songs linked together via instrumental bits, the aforementioned “So come all ye young men” bit or the “Poet and the painter” segment feel, despite their differences, like they are each part of a bigger whole. Still, I see what he’s getting at in underlining the record’s diversity this way, and it is indeed easy to pick out your favorite bits to go back and listen to after taking in the album in as a whole. Rather than labeling the “Thick As A Brick” composition as a song it might more accurately be called a suite, which would simultaneously underline its unity and the diversity of its various pieces, and would also be a nice nod to the classical influences displayed by the record and by seventies prog rock in general.

The album contains a wealth of musical ideas that make it simply a joy to listen to. There are tons of different kinds of tunes here that all flow perfectly into one another, each working in unison with the lyrics to underline the intended mood of the moment, be it calm and serene, enchantingly beautiful or energetic and urgent. Some of the more memorable bits include the exquisite folksy acoustic guitar section that starts off the album, with Ian’s flute poking in and out as the lyrics lay down the song’s central thematic premise (“And your wise men don’t know how it feels / To be thick as a brick”). The charming tune quickly turns somewhat dark and ominous, however, as the singer voices the call to be swept back to his childhood - then quickly develops into a fast ‘n furious rocker backing the aforementioned “See there, a son is born” section. The verses dominated by Ian’s medieval imagery are marked by bombastic and complex yet beautiful balladry, and there’s even something that sounds like a nursery rhyme in there, albeit with somewhat twisted lyrics that contrast amusingly with the upbeat tune they’re set to  (“You curl your toes in fun / As you smile at everyone / […] / And you laugh most ruthlessly / As you tell us what not to be”).

To underline the various sections’ underlying cohesiveness as parts of a larger suite of music, a number of tunes pop up several times throughout the record, though often in slightly different ways. After the split between side on and two of the original record, which is marked by a short sound collage reminiscent of some of Frank Zappa’s more abstract moments, a foreboding, howling wind gives way to a flurry of drumbeats and a reprisal of the “See there, a son is born section”, albeit with modified lyrics and set to a much more bombastic, percussion-driven interpretation of the original melody. The upbeat, keyboard-driven “So come on ye childhood heroes” section is featured near the tail end of both sides of the record, with its second appearance eventually followed by the aforementioned reprisal of the song’s opening lines set to a somewhat slower, more melancholy reinterpretation of the charming acoustic ditty that the suite opened with, bringing us full-circle both musically and lyrically.
  

Flyer for the '72 Thick As A Brick tour, the only tour on which the full album was played live.

 

It’s funny that despite its status as an overblown parody of the idea of concept albums in general, Thick As A Brick ends up, in my mind at least, being a lot more interesting, enjoyable and downright listenable than most serious concept albums out there – indeed, apart from Animals and Tommy (and maybe Joe's Garage), I can’t really think of any that come close. Then again, the parody aspect might actually be what salvages this record from seeming too overblown and pretentious for its own good. Sure, the music sounds so bombastic as to occasionally border on the ridiculous, and the vague poetic ramblings of Ian’s lyrics with their rather preachy underlying message (which I do feel is quite sincere and heartfelt) might be a put-off to some people. However, when taking the album as a whole, from the amusing story of its conception to the whole Gerald Bostock hoax and the absurd live shows, which featured set pieces like a guy in a gorilla costume walking on stage to answer the telephone mid-performance, you get the feeling that despite the serious edge to the album and its message a lot of it is part of a big joke that we, the listeners, are in on. 

The year after Thick As A Brick, Tull would repeat the one-song concept album stint with A Passion Play, which, while it did chart high on both sides of the Atlantic, was a rather resounding critical dud. While the album (good as it is - give it a shot some time, it's not as awful as people make it out to be) was simply less musically diverse and interesting than Thick As A Brick, I feel A Passion Play's failure and lack of apparent accessibility also has to with the fact that, while similarly overblown as Tull’s previous effort, this time the idea was executed entirely straight-faced, with no offbeat tongue-in-cheekness to offset Ian’s preachy and now entirely enigmatic lyricism and no upbeat, silly melodies to give any solace on an exceedingly pompous and pretentious seeming album.

Thick As A Brick itself, however, still stands the test of time on all accounts, and Ian sure has a tough act to follow up on with Thick As A Brick 2. There’ve been some reports here and there that the new album is pretty good on its own terms (the 5.1 surround mix is done by Porcupine Tree frontman Steven Wilson, who seems to be tentatively positive about the whole thing), so while I really can’t bring myself to be excited for it exactly, you can at least color me interested. So yeah, I’ll be there buying on the 2^nd of April, and if old man Ian’ll be so good as to finally post up some tour dates for the Netherlands, I’ll gladly attend to hear his aging vocal chords struggle their way through a live performance of both albums (because really, comparing his old performances to some of his more recent ones I can’t help but wonder if he wouldn’t do well to just retire from singing at live shows). 

 

But whether Thick As A Brick 2’ll be any good or not, we’ll always have the original album to listen to. Don’t let the one-song format or the lyrical and musical complexity scare you away from this one. It might be hard to get into at first, but beat by beat, this is simply one of the coolest albums I’ve ever heard. “Really don’t mind / If you sit this one out” might be what Ian sings in the song’s opening line, but if you were to ask me, sitting this album out would be a dang shame.

The final problem (of Sherlock's second series)

Continuing my trend of bang-up-to-date posts on the BBC’s Sherlock, I’ve finally taken the time to get my ass in gear and type up a word or two (or more) on my opinion of the second series’ finale, “The Fall of Reichenbach”.  It’s four weeks ago since the thing aired on British television, but hey, better late than never – and I’m sure you’ve all been clamoring to hear this, right? …right? Don’t give me those dejected looks! Hey, anybody want to hire me to write timely reviews of prime time television shows for their magazine or website? I don’t have a problem with deadlines, no siree! I can be punctual with this stuff, I swear!

In my defense, I’m a busy man (those academic papers don’t write themselves, or so I hear) and I needed some time to mull this one over – because like it or not, you can’t deny this is an episode that left an impact. A word of warning, there’s going to be heavy spoilers around the bend, as it’s kind of impossible to discuss this episode without ‘em – so if you haven’t seen it yet and aren’t just reading this to enjoy my immaculate ability at writing criticism (haha, as if), I strongly urge you to go and give it a watch. Go on, I have a Game Boy and my trusty Tetris cartridge, I’ll be alright.

What, back already? Shit, I haven’t even scored enough points to see the rocket ship blast off! Well, I guess there’s more important things than Russian puzzle games from the 80’s – like silly British detective drama, for instance, so away we go!

While in television land it’s only been a week since we last saw our heroes (and yes, only a month on this blog, shut up), it’s obvious more time has passed in the Sherlockverse, for Mr Holmes and Mr Watson have been doing a good amount of legwork. After recovering a famous painting of the German Reichenbach Falls (the case referred to in the episode title, but I’ll get to that in a bit), Sherlock’s fame in Britain has steadily been rising. This is making it harder and harder for the dynamic duo to operate successfully, as reporters swarm the pavement outside their Baker Street apartment, ready to catalogue their every move. And that isn’t the only thing breaking the great detective’s balls this time around: for James Moriarty, Sherlock Holmes’ arch-nemesis, is on the move again. After a series and a half of predominantly lurking in the shadows, Jim Moriarty finally takes center stage to solve the problem of his rivalry with Sherlock once and for all: their ‘final problem’, as he calls it, referencing the similarly named Arthur Conan Doyle story depicting the last struggle between the criminal mastermind and the illustrious detective. 

  

There's a smilie face in there though, so his intentions can't be that bad. 

 

In “The Reichenbach Fall”, Moriarty has gotten his hands on a string of computer code that’ll let him hack into any computer system in the world – say, kind of like the Konami code, only instead of getting thirty extra guys on Contra so you can finally beat the game and move on with your life, you get to do things like steal classified information, fire off nuclear missiles and break into any security system simply at the click of a button. Using his new toy, Jim sets out to rob the Bank of England, unlock each cell at Pentonville Prison and stage a one-man heist of the British Crown Jewels all at the same time (you know how it is: buy yourself a barbecue and you need to throw a few parties to convince yourself it wasn’t a waste of cash; be a self-styled master criminal in the UK and you gotta make a grab at the Crown Jewels sooner or later). He gets caught and jailed right away, and is subsequently put on trial: but Jimmy-boy was merely showing off, and he effortlessly bribes the jury and walks out with a not-guilty verdict without presenting a single shred of evidence or witness. Turns this was meant as a prelude to his real plan to crush his rival once and for all. Jimmy’s scheme is to turn the very press that has been singing Sherlock’s praises against him. Through spreading misinformation about the great detective, Moriarty has everyone believe that Sherlock has been staging crimes and pretending to solve them, and that he simply invented the Moriarty character to give himself a supposed rival and further bolster his reputation – in short, Moriarty sets out to "expose" Sherlock to the public as a fraud.

The rivalry between Sherlock and Moriarty is, as I assume you’ve figured out by now, at the forefront of the plot, and it’s what makes this one imminently watchable to me. Much of it has to do with Andrew Scott’s superb portrayal of the dastardly Jim Moriarty, without doubt the highlight of the episode. Initially, when Scott’s Moriarty showed up during the last few minutes of the previous series’ “The Great Game”, I wasn’t sure if I was gonna like him in the role. I was all fired up that the great James Moriarty was finally going to reveal himself, and then after all the build-up suddenly there was this scrawny-looking, tiny little guy, over half a head shorter than his nemesis, standing there slinging insults at the great detective’s face and walking around like he owned the place. He seemed not a year older than twenty, and his goofy, camp gay-ish mannerisms made it hard for me to take him all that seriously. A weird choice for the modern-day rendition of Doyle’s criminal mastermind. Of course, by now, my opinion on him’s pretty much done a one-eighty, though maybe he just needed an episode to himself to really get a chance to shine and have all the little nuances of his performance sink in. Andrew Scott’s Moriarty in “The Reichenbach Fall” is, in a word, simply terrifying – and that despite his slight frame, youthful appearance and goofy mannerisms, or, I’d venture, maybe even because of it. His faux-comical modus aperandi belies a volatile, malicious and downright nasty inner nature. Scott’s portrayal of Moriarty is magnificently disconcerting. After the unusualness of the performance wears off he quickly stops being silly and starts becoming, well, frankly kind of scary. His high, goofy voice is at the same time laced with venomous anger, and his creepy stares and sudden bursts of rage all underline how much of a complete and utter psychopath he really is. He's kind of like a ticking time bomb, with no one ever sure what exactly he's going to say or do next - he's got a lot of screen presence, and unless Cumberbatch is in the frame with him it's generally hard to look anywhere else.

And man, just look at all that bling. Hail to king Jim, baby!

 

While I wouldn’t say Moriarty and Sherlock are as similar as the dialogue sometimes makes them out to be (Sherlock has shown himself to be capable of empathy on more than one occasion, while Jim pretty much demonstrates total disregard for human life, for one thing), one can’t deny these two guys are in some ways shockingly alike: both have genius-level intellects paired with a general disregard for social conventions, two big kids who like to consider the world their own private playground. But while Sherlock is, as Moriarty sneeringly accuses him, “on the side of the angels”, Jim feels no such moral obligations holding him back, wreaking havoc wherever he sees fit for the sheer fun of it. While I jokingly referred to Holmes and Watson as the ‘dynamic duo’ earlier, I think we can actually draw some pretty profound Batman parallels here, for Holmes and Moriarty’s rivalry smacks of some serious Batman versus Joker overtones in this one. Two exceptional individuals with self-styled careers in respectively crime-fighting and criminal activity, operating according to their own moral compass and engaged in a battle of wits from opposite ends of the law, one with an overbearingly serious attitude and the other with a rather warped sense of humor? Gee, I wonder where I’ve heard that one before (hell, Batman is usually described as being more of a costumed detective in his operating methods than anything else). But unlike ol’ Bats and uncle Joker, who’re usually portrayed as being doomed to play their cat ‘n mouse (or bat and, uh, psychotic man in clown makeup, I guess) game for all eternity, the rivalry between Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty did, surprisingly, end up getting resolved at the end of this episode… and in a way that I think I can confidently say no one really saw coming.

 

If you’re scanning this thing to get an idea of the episode without ruining too much of it, this is the point where you should probably stop reading, ‘cause I’m pretty much going to spoil the entire thing from here on. After Moriarty’s plan to disgrace Sherlock and make him seem a fraud pretty much succeeds, the two meet on the rooftop of a London hospital. Here, Jim reveals that he has several assassins following Sherlock’s closest friends around the city, and unless Sherlock wants them all to bite the bullet, he’s going to have to admit his defeat at Moriarty’s hands… by jumping off the roof to his death. The two banter for a bit, with Sherlock convincing Moriarty that he hasn’t lost yet, and that he can convince Moriarty to call off the hitmen. Shockingly, Jim agrees – and at this point I can only assume writer Steven Thompson had just about downed his sixth or seventh whiskey of that particular writing session, for Moriarty proceeds to pull out a gun and shoot himself in the face. This leaves Sherlock with no other alternative than to make the jump, which will signal the hitmen to abandon their posts. Sherlock calls up Watson on his cell phone and bids him farewell – a spectacular bit of acting by Benedict Cumberbatch, who really shows the asocial, so unused to emotion Sherlock struggling to tell his only real friend goodbye – and jumps. He plummets to the pavement, cracks open his skull, and lies there. Dead.

…OR IS HE?

Well, no. No, of course he isn’t. Don’t be silly.

To be fair, at first I wasn’t sure either. It seemed clear-cut enough. He dropped down at least four stories, with no apparent way to escape or switch the body, and that head-wound seemed nasty and real enough. Sure was a lotta blood. There’s this bit at the end where John is walking away from the grave and the camera swivels to show Sherlock standing at the foot of the tombstone, but I figured that was just symbolic or something. Of course, I was just being silly and got swept up in the moment. I figured this might be the show’s ending (y’know, British brevity being what it is and all), but when I read later that evening that Sherlock got renewed for a third series all doubt about the situation evaporated from my mind within a day or two. He tricked his way out of it somehow, of course he did. There’re some pretty brilliant fan theories about the incident floating around the net, for sure. John, who is at the scene of Sherlock’s jump, rushes across the street towards the body but gets hit by a cyclist and arrives dazed to find his friend dead – perhaps Sherlock somehow switched the body or pulled some other kind of trick in the meantime, and Watson didn’t notice due to the blow? A garbage truck is seen to go by at the same time, perhaps that has something to do with it? Maybe corpse-wizard Molly Hooper, a girl with a crush on Sherlock who works at the city morgue, had something to do with it? Earlier in the episode Sherlock’s shown to be absent-mindedly bouncing a rubber ball back and forth against a wall: apparently if you jam one of those things under your arm tightly enough it’ll stop the blood flowing towards your arm, making you seemingly without a pulse, dead.

 'tis But a scratch! ...what, that joke is worn out? Screw you, writing original material is hard!

At this point I could digress into an analysis of the ins and outs of the situation and try to come up with my own theory - but frankly, I’m not particularly interested in that for the purposes of this blog. I like to play the guessing game as much as the next twenty-something white guy who spends a lot of time on the internet, but I’m content waiting for the Grand Moff and company to unveil how shit actually went down when the show goes back on for its third season somewhere next year (as much of a fucking wait as that’s gonna be – c’mon, Moffat ol’ boy, you’re killing us!). What I’m here for is to give you my personal opinion and a critical analysis on the episode: I’m interested in the quality of the script, in the way the entire thing is built up on a narratological level, in whether I was properly able to suspend my disbelief and all that jazz. Basically, my ‘final problem’ is figuring out whether this episode worked for me or not and why.

So, did it work?

Well, yes and no – or rather, a fairly resounding yes, though with a few notable caveats.

While watching the episode for the first time and when considering it in its direct aftermath, I was quite positive about it. It certainly is a thrilling little piece of television if nothing else. It keeps a brisk pace through the entire ninety-odd minutes of run-time, and I’m actually kind of impressed with how much they managed to jam in there without making the thing seem bloated. If nothing else, this was an episode that certainly wasn’t at a loss for ideas. The whole “expose Sherlock as a fraud” part of the plot, while perhaps a bit trite (it reminded me in part of films like Face/Off and The Fugitive, with the whole unjustly accused man running from the law thing) was in my opinion very well executed. It raises issues of media misguidance and corruption and public perception, and underscores some of the validity of Sherlock’s paranoia about publicity and about interaction with other people in general: “alone is what I have, alone protects me”, he snidely says to John at a certain point, and in some points, indeed, it’s not hard to see why he’d prefer to fake his own death so he can go back to operating under the radar. Moriarty’s plan is of course all the more genius because it allows people to believe something they want to believe, namely that the brilliant, pompous Sherlock Holmes really isn’t possessing of such super-human intelligence after all. Moriarty is using Sherlock’s tendency to lord his superior intellect over his fellow human beings as part of his plan to bring down the great detective, and in this it’s actually a pretty clever and fitting plot idea for a Holmes story.

There are several great moments scattered throughout that I’m not going to forget any time soon. Both the rooftop showdown between Jim and Sherlock and an earlier scene in which Moriarty visits the great detective at his Baker Street apartment to gloat about his not-guilty verdict are fantastic. Cumberbatch and Scott have a great deal of acting chemistry together, with the tension as the two engage in their various verbal duels often being thick enough to cut with a broadsword. I once read a review of Quentin Tarrantino’s Inglorious Bastards that said that while making a thrilling action sequence that really manages to grip an audience and keep them glued to the screen is impressive in its own right, crafting a scene that evokes a similar level of excitement, tension and engagement by just having a few people sitting around talking to each other is infinitely more admirable. I’d like to think that at several points, this episode of Sherlock does exactly that. There’s also a hilariously bombastic montage near the start of the episode, with scenes of Moriarty’s break-in attempt at the tower of London interspersed with scenes of police rushing to the scene, all overlaid with the overture from Gioachino Rossini's Lagazza ladra which comes to its crescendo as Jim takes a few ballet steps and theatrically breaks the glass of the cabinet containing the Crown Jewels. Another montage, of the events leading up to Moriarty’s trial, is set to Nina Simone’s rendition of American jazz standard Sinnerman, which’d be a great theme song for everyone’s favorite master criminal. So yeah, plenty of fun to be had in this episode, for sure.

The deerstalker hat makes its triumphant return to the papers.

Thing is, however, that after seeing the thing on its air date I couldn’t help but wonder how well it’d really hold up under scrutiny, and how much sense some of it actually made – and after rewatching it and thinking it through a bit more, I did start noticing a few problems here and there.

One of the major ones has to do with Moriarty’s computer code that hacks into any computer system in the world. It’s initially presented as being the manner by which he managed to break into three highly secured institutions at the same time, and also the reason that Sherlock’s brother Mycroft held ol’ Jim prisoner for what was apparently several months on end before the start of the episode, as he wished to obtain the code to ensure it couldn’t be used to do any wrong. However, during the rooftop confrontation, Jim reveals to Sherlock that it was all a sham, and that the code doesn’t actually exist – moreover, that it couldn’t even exist in the first place. “You don’t think a couple of lines of computer code are gonna crash the world around, do you?”, he snaps, ridiculing Sherlock’s tendency to wish for everything to be clever. A cute little illustration of one of the great detective’s intellectual blind spots, but honestly, I have all sorts of problems with this. If the code was so obviously nonexistent, why did not just Sherlock, but everyone else buy into the idea? Surely Mycroft, with the combined intelligence of the entire British government backing him, wouldn’t spend many fruitless months interrogating Moriarty to obtain a code that, apparently, obviously doesn’t exist? And where did the idea that he had it come from anyway? After walking out of the trial of the century scot-free, Moriarty visits Sherlock and makes him guess how he managed to break into the Tower, Pentonville Prison and the Bank of England all at once, and Sherlock comes to the magical computer code conclusion all by himself. How did Sherlock arrive at the idea? How did Moriarty know he was going to draw that conclusion? I’m sorry, but as one of the main elements that drives the plot, this just seems a little wonky to me.

Also, while I’ve been praising the final rooftop confrontation between Moriarty and Sherlock, parts of it and of the conclusion did feel kind of artificial. Apart from the fact that I have to wonder why Inspector Lestrade gets to make Sherlock’s BFF shortlist as one of the three friends Moriarty’s hitmen are pointing a sniper riffle at (last episode he didn’t even know the man’s first name),  I really have to ask what the fuck was up with Moriarty blowing his own head off after Sherlock somehow convinced him that he hadn’t been beaten yet. What the shit exactly did he convince him of? Sherlock seems to be implying that he can get Moriarty to stop the assassins, but what’s he gonna do, torture him? Jim survived months of being big brother Mycroft’s personal whipping-boy, so I kind of fail to see what Sherlock could do to him that’d suddenly break him within those four or five minutes before the triggers’re pulled. He was obviously not afraid to die, with him blowing his own brains out ‘n all: if he had to go, why not force Sherlock to drop him off the rooftop himself, making the man into a murderer as well as a fraud while he’s at it? I get that it’s supposed to show us that Moriarty was going to stop at nothing in his quest to get the better of Mr Holmes, but it just feels like a very illogical decision to make. Moreover, it seems a waste of a great character. I don’t know what was going on behind the scenes: maybe Andrew Scott wanted out and they had to figure out a way to write him out of the show, but it just felt very forced to me. Also, while Sherlock’s “death” leaves lots of wiggle room for the writers to ninja him out of the ordeal, Moriarty’s death is presented to us in no such ambiguous terms: unless the man is somehow possessing of a bullet-proof brain, I doubt we’ll be seeing the consulting criminal make any more cameo appearances any time soon, and I find that a real shame.  

Speaking of Sherlock’s death, while a lot of the fan theories floating around the internet about how he managed to cheat his way out of it are quite brilliant, I really am keeping my fingers crossed that the official version of events’ll make as much sense as some of those do. It’s not that I don’t have any faith in the Grand Moff and company (Moffat hasn’t particularly let me down yet, though I’ll give that the way he wrapped up the last series of Who did feel a bit sloppy to me), but this is really a high-wire act they’re engaging in if you ask me. If it ends up being resolved satisfactorily it’ll be a pretty grand achievement, but if the solution to the problem is lacking then that’ll be a severe downer. And to give one more small nitpick concerning the final scene: did we really need a full-on shot of Sherlock standing beside his own grave, eliminating any doubt that he had faked his own death? In my opinion it would’ve been more fun if they hadn’t included that bit, maybe only shown a hand resting on the tombstone or a pair of shoes walking up from behind the tree, and, I don’t know, kept the fact that the show was picked up for a third series under wraps for a while. Woulda made it more ambigious and all that, y'know.

It was in the opening credits all along though, so maybe he just watched the DVD beforehand.

 

Lastly, while I argued earlier that despite its wealth of ideas the episode did not end up feeling bloated, certain bits of the plot did end up feeling a bit overly fast-paced. Some of this stuff I’d have actually liked to see more of, such as Sherlock’s run from the law and his attempts to figure out how the hell’s he’s going to beat Moriarty. Somewhere around the one-hour mark of the episode Holmes and Watson run into Moriarty in the house of a reporter, where Jim claims to be an actor hired by Sherlock to play the villain’s role, and he shows them his website and television programs he’s appeared in and everything. The scene almost borders on the surreal and existential, where not only does John starts to somewhat question Sherlock’s authenticity, but even Sherlock himself seems to go through a split second of wondering if he’s going out of his mind. It reminded me of the episode “The Schizoid Man” of The Prisoner (a show which everyone should watch right now – in fact, stop reading this and go watch The Prisoner, then come back) and might’ve been milked for a bit more, but alas, no time, gotta keep moving! The bit where it’s revealed that Mycroft actually had Moriarty in prison for rather a while also made me wonder how the shit they managed to capture the guy in the first place, and why exactly they let what Mycroft calls “the most dangerous criminal mind the world has ever known” back on the street. But again, no time to explore that. This isn’t severe criticism per se: in fact, saying I’d have liked to see more of certain things can be taken as praise in a certain way, but that was how I experienced it, 's all.

You know, to come back to the Batman comparison I made earlier, this episode kind of felt like The Dark Knight in more ways than one. Apart from the parallels that can be drawn between the Jim contra Sherlock and the Bats contra Joker rivalry, watching the episode itself is kind of like watching that movie. It’s one hell of a ride that sweeps you up and generally moves along at breakneck pace, leaving you thrilled and excited most of the way through – but if you start to consider it more intimately afterwards a few problems do start to show themselves. That’s not to say it’s bad, however. I love The Dark Knight and, conversely, I thought this was a fun episode. While parts of it don’t entirely make sense in hindsight and we’ll have to wait and see how much the gamble really paid off, it sure was a gutsy series finale.

Really, my main concern here is if they’ll be able to top the impact of this episode. Part of me thinks that after going as balls out as this there’s no way to go but down, especially if the next series ends up restoring the status quo that “The Fall of Reichenbach” so decidedly shattered. The more I consider it, the more I think that I would really be able to love this episode like no other if only it’d been the last episode of Sherlock, as I thought it might be before reading there was going to be a series three. It would be such a magnificently bittersweet ending. Now that would’ve been taken some guts. But the show must go on, so we’ll just have to wait and see where the BBC’s Sherlock is going to take us next year.

The hounds of what now?

As you will recall (and if not all y'gotta do is scroll down, it's in the post directly below this one) I was very positive about the opening episode for series two of the BBC's Sherlock, calling it a thrillingly entertaining bit of television and all that sort of shlock. My laziness being what it is, by the time of this writing the third and final episode of said series has already aired. But we're not going to talk about that one just yet, as first I'd like to say a few words on the previous week's offering, "The Hounds of Baskerville", written by big brother Mycroft Holmes, beter known in the real world as Mark Gattis. Yes, I know I'm late to the party, but this is my blog, I can write about stuff whenever the bloody hell I want! Don't like it, go back to reading the opinion pages in the newspaper or something. Go on. Get out. We don't need your kind here. 

Is he gone? Good, I hate that guy. Alright, so, "The Hounds of Baskerville". What did I think of it? Well, compared to last week's offering: an outing of perfectly average quality. Perhaps even disapointingly average. Why was it less good than "A Scandal in Belgravia", you ask? Well, I sorely lamented the lack of naked chicks compared to that episode, for one thing. That's right, nothing to see here people, move along. These aren't the hounds you're looking for. 

...or are they, though? "Less good" in this context certainly doesn't imply awful. There were things to like about this episode, and as they say, one must take the good with the bad - so let's see how the various elements hold up. 

Problem #1: these dogs aren't scary at all! Hounds my ass, what do you take me for?

 

The episode is, of course, based on the Arthur Conan Doyle classic The Hound of the Baskervilles. I've not read it yet myself and don't expect you guys to have either, but as its one of the Holmes adventures most often adapted and referenced in other media I'm sure the title alone will give all you pop culture pundits an idea of what we're in for. That's right, this is The One With The Big Dog™, in which everyone's favourite jackass detective is called in to investigate reports of a monstrous hound terrorizing a village in the English countryside. Of course as this series' premise is basically Sherlock Holmes IN SPACE THE PRESENT DAY (wouldn't Sherlock in space be awesome though? ...what're you looking at me like that for?) the tale gets the obligatory modern upgrades. The main of these is that the titular Baskerville isn't the name of a wealthy family propagating the myth of the hellish hound, but a government research institute implied to be running all sorts of shady experiments, including among others, you guessed it, illicit animal testing, with popular belief around the village being that this practice spawned the creature. 

And with that I suppose we might as well get to the bad without further ado, as the plot is where the episode kind of falls off a bridge in my oh so humble opinion. I'm going to go into spoiler territory here, so if you haven't seen the episode, tread carefully throughout the next two paragraphs - though, to be frank, it's nothing you couldn't have deduced (haha) on your own. 

Yes, I saw the twist coming, if you can even call it one. There was no hound. Of course there wasn't. There are hints to its existence here and there, with even the ever-rational Sherlock at some point believing that he saw the creature, but it's all a sham. As it turns out, the countryside outside the village and near the Baskerville institution is strewn with pressure-sensitive pads that release a hallucinatory chemical when stepped on, which, mixing with the ever-present fog in the region, makes people very susceptible to hallucinations, to seeing what they expect to see; in this case, a monstrous dog waiting to tear them limb from limb. There was bound to be a rational explanation of course - that's not what I'm complaining about. It should be clear to anyone who's seen as much as half an episode of Sherlock that this series is not gonna do supernatural stuff, and while the hound being created in some sort of mad science experiment is hinted at, even that's obviously too much of a stretch - this show is just too rooted in down-to-earth realism to incorporate an element like that.

In all fairness, the fluorescent bunny does make for some bonus points.

My problem with this is the fact that they hint at the possible existence of the creature so strongly, while it's just so obvious it's all going to be explained away near the end: they didn't need Sherlock Holmes for this case, the Hardy Boys could've polished this one off in between lunch breaks. Hell, stupid old me even saw it coming a mile away. The fact that drugs of some kind were involved was fairly obvious from the parallels between Sherlock's twitchy state after believing he'd seen the hound, and the nicotine withdrawal-fueled rage we see him fly into at the start of the episode. While it's not a bad thing per se to have an obvious solution to a mystery, it is a bad thing when you write your characters as being unaware of said solution much longer than your audience will likely be - especially if one of said characters is Sherlock Holmes, the genius detective. It stops the show from being interesting and exciting and turns it into a waiting game, the viewer waiting for Sherlock and crew to figure out what's already obvious. 

Of course the plot of "A Scandal in Belgravia" wasn't particularly strong either, as I said in my discussion of that episode. Sure, in "Scandal" the plot mattered, but there it was mostly a means to an end, a way to plop down sets of characters in a situation so we can watch them play off of each other - and it was a very loose plot, a story spanning across several months. "The Hounds of Baskerville" however is different, for this is a proper adventure, a much more plot-focused outing. It comes close to fulfilling the classical unities of action, place and time. It's obviously conceived as a much tighter narrative than "A Scandal in Belgravia", and thus the fact that the story just feels kind of weak and mundane becomes harder to overlook. 

But perhaps I'm being overly harsh. I'm making it sound as if this was a terrible episode but it really wasn't - while watching it I did find it enjoyable enough. Of course most of the enjoyment has to do with our lead actors, who, (and I'm sorry if I'm sounding like a broken record) once again do a marvellous job at portraying their characters. Benedict Cumberbatch remains amazing as Sherlock, continuing to play the great detective as a right bastard with no sort of social graces whatsoever. For a while it seems he's continuing the slightly less asocial trend witnessed the previous week, when we saw him apologizing to Molly for scolding her and seemingly somewhat opening up to Irene Adler. In this episode, after crudely ignoring the findings of Martin Freeman's Watson and pushing him out of the investigation into the Baskerville case, Sherlock runs up behind him and apologizes. He states that indeed, like he told Watson, the great detective Sherlock Holmes doesn't have any friends... emphasizing the plural: he just has one. A touching moment, indeed - which ends up being kind of subverted at the end of the episode, when we find out Sherlock used Watson as an unwitting guinea pig in one of Baskerville labs to determine the cause of the hound hallucinations. What a pal! 

Clearly a man you can trust with your life.

Speaking of John Watson, I have to say it's good to see Martin Freeman got a lot more screentime in this episode as compared to "A Scandal in Belgravia". There he got kind of sidelined in favor of Miss Irine Adler (as he himself at a few points wryly observed), but this week he's much more a part of the action, showing his worth to Sherlock through his medical expertise and his clear intellect, offering a few clever deductions of his own. He is ever the voice of reason to Sherlock's manic tendencies, the ying to his yang, and Martin Freeman once more puts a lot of sympathy and tenderness into his performance. 

Of course one of the reasons "A Scandal in Belgravia" worked so well was that although the plot was somewhat inconsequential, with Steven Moffat at the wheel you got all those wonderful little character moments he's shown himself to be so apt at writing. And perhaps big brother Mark's been using Moffat's writing as a cheat sheet (or maybe they collaborated, or maybe Gattis is just quite good on his own - I'm just cracking jokes here), for while said character moments might be less bountiful and less good than the previous week they're still certainly here. I've described Sherlock and Watson's rather touching friendship moment, but there were a few others. One that really got me was the following exchange, when John and Sherlock run into a holidaying Inspector Lestrade at a local pub. Sherlock accuses Lestrade of spying on him, blurting out that "that's the reason you're using the name Greg, isn't it?" Watson soothingly tells Sherlock that that's the man's actual first name, to which Sherlock replies: "...it is?", seeming so genuinely dumbfounded that it made me laugh out loud and miss the next couple of lines. 

I also have to mention that the story being set in a small village in the English countryside is actually a rather nice change of pace compared to the busy urban jungle of central London in which we usually find our heroes. There are some lovely shots of  the sprawling green English hills and the picturesque little village where much of the action takes place. Several reviewers have noted the similarities between a shot of Sherlock looking out over the landscape from atop a rocky mound and Caspar Friedrich's famous painting Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer, or Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog. The shot certainly gives off much the same feel of wonder and adventurousness. I wonder if the similarity was deliberate? Either way, I think we could've done with a few more of these landscape shots: they provide a nice parallel to the stark, sterile lab environment of the Baskerville installation, really drawing you into the surroundings and making you enamoured with this tranquil landscape that is being threatened by the big bad Baskerville science guys.

Speaking of the visuals, however, I do have to bring up one more thing that bugged me, namely the terrible CGI hound that shows up near the end. For while the creature is indeed not real the episode still decides to show us a representation of the dog Sherlock and the others are imagining - and boy does it look horrible alright, but probably not in the way intended. Maybe I'm nitpicky, but for me... eh, it just didn’t work. I'm against the use of CGI in general unless it's absolutely necessary, and while I can stomach it in shows like Doctor Who where it happens all the time, here it just felt out of place. It really took me out of the experience. 

The 90's called, they want their special effects team back.

But yeah, that’s “The Hounds of Baskerville” for ya. In all fairness it wasn’t a bad episode by any means. More likely my being underwhelmed by it stems from its status as being the middle child of this season, being neither the opening episode that really has to go all out to draw the audience in nor the series finale that has to wrap up the proceedings in a spectacular blaze of glory and excitement. The previous series' “The Blind Banker” faced a similar problem, being entertaining enough in its own right but seeming kind of unremarkable in comparison to the tightly plotted opener “A Study in Pink” and the fast-paced and exciting finale “The Great Game”. In all honesty though, I didn’t go into it expecting to be blown away or anything along those lines: I always force myself to be critical about things in hindsight, but I was certainly entertained by this episode. If you don’t expect too much of it, there's a good chance you will be too.

"This episode was pretty much detective sex."

Yup. “Pretty much detective sex.” At least, that’s the way a friend described “A Scandal in Belgravia”, the first episode of the second series of Sherlock, when I lamented it was airing a full week before I thought it would. Yes, remembering air dates isn’t always my strong suit. I get scatterbrained. Shut up.  

Either way, having now seen the episode, I gotta say it’s a rather astute description. “Pretty much detective sex”. In a few words, yes, that’s more or less what it boils down to. But of course, the point of this blog is to give me the opportunity to not just stop at a few words when voicing and developing my opinion… so let’s see what we can add to that, shall we?

So, did the series two premiere meet with the high expectations set by the by and large extremely entertaining series one? Why, how very kind of you to ask! To give you my answer, yes, I would certainly say it did. For the full hour and a half I found myself glued to the screen. I felt engaged, thrilled and intrigued, I often laughed and I think I even applauded at one or two points (hey, don’t look at me like that, I get overly enthusiastic about stuff some times). It had everything that made the first season fun and more – but I realize I’m not being very specific with that, so let’s go through some of the episode’s more interesting elements one step at a time.

The great hope of the British nation. No, I don’t know why he refuses to wear pants. 

In my bit about the show’s previous season I remarked that the main thing that makes Sherlock a good time is generally the characters, and in keeping with that, the thing most people’re likely to be talking about with this series’ premiere is the introduction of the character of Miss Irene Adler. While I haven’t read “A Scandal in Bohemia” and thus don’t have much tabs on her original portrayal, I’m told she’s kind of like the Boba Fett of the original Holmes stories: someone who really isn’t in the actual canon all that much but is by fans nonetheless considered a pretty Big Deal™. Here she’s cast as a sort of con woman, a dominatrix who tricks her clients into providing her with incriminating photographs and information. Sherlock and Watson are sent after her by Sherlock’s brother Mycroft to recover a number of incriminating photos of a person of rather high social standing indeed, though it soon becomes clear that Miss Adler is safeguarding data much more volatile than simply a bunch of dirty pictures for her nefarious purposes. She’s quite convincingly played by up- and coming actress Lara Pulver, who portrays her with that particular combination of sexiness, confidence and an air of danger typical to the femme fatale archetype, obviously the characterization Moffat and company were shooting for. She quickly has the dynamic duo of Holmes and Watson running around in circles, proving a capable foil to Holmes’ genius and even seeming for a while to be able to inspire some sort of extra-professional interest in the usually extremely asexual detective.

Apparently there’ve been some complaints from the feminist camp that the portrayal of Irene Adler as a sort of sexual predator, a female character relying more on her charm and seductiveness than her wits to get by is a step backward, that there’re some misogynistic undertones to the whole affair. Honestly, I’m not really seeing it. The femme fatale is indeed a rather old archetype that’s certainly not always used to portray female characters at their most compassionate or likeable, but I say that in and on itself it’s much more of an empowering than a demeaning way to portray women. Irene’s method of controlling people through her sexual prowess is, lest we forget, spearheaded and supplanted by her intelligence rather than some sort of basic instinct. The fact that (mild spoiler warning) Jim Moriarty turns out to’ve masterminded part of the plot by which she outwits the Holmes brothers might have something to do with the complaints, but I say that nonetheless she comes off as anything but dumb and helpless. Moreover, she’s a much more three-dimensional character than that. Despite her tough as nails exterior she does in the end show a certain amount of emotion and vulnerability, which some might say paints her as a weak little girl but in my opinion rather helps flesh her out as a person. And guys, let’s not forget we’re talking a piece of genre fiction here. This is pop culture entertainment, it’s not particularly serious business. If some of the aspects of her portrayal were a bit questionable I think it can be excused. Let’s not go overboard, it’s not like the Holmes brothers told her to get her ass in the kitchen and she obligingly scuttled off to make them a sandwich. I think she’s a rather strong and interesting character, and I wouldn’t mind seeing her make a second appearance if possible.

Then again, maybe the reason she’s getting all this attention is simply because she spent about ten minutes of the episode walking around butt-nekid. Or am I the only one who took special note of that? 

“A Scandal in Belgravia” sounds fine, but I have an alternative title: “Fanservice: The Episode”.

Well, whichever way you slice it, it’s pretty clear ze sexy plays a pretty big thematic role in this episode, if you’ll forgive me a bit more analytical wanking (and I just realised I might’ve done well to choose another verb there than wank). Of course as we’ve seen most of it revolves around Irene Adler, who I’ve already said does seem to stir some sort of attraction in Cumberbatch’s extremely asexual Sherlock. Of course what exactly it is he sees in her is anyone’s guess, for it being any real sort of sexual attraction still seems rather unlikely: if it’s there, the rather stoic Sherlock certainly isn’t betraying any of it. Still, there is a clear amount of tension in the air whenever the two are in the same frame. Lara Pulver and Benedict Cumberbatch have some great acting chemistry together, really making you believe that whatever is going on here, there certainly is something between these two people – which, incidentally, twice leads John Watson to butt in with a demure yet annoyed “don’t forget I’m in the room as well, guys” type of reply, two great little moments from Martin Freeman. Likely Sherlock simply holds some sort of intellectual respect for this woman who seems to be just barely outwitting him at every turn. After all, as Irene says to Sherlock, “smart is the new sexy”, and if that is so then both of them certainly have that in spades.

And while we’re on the subject of sexy, at this point I should probably mention the proverbial pink elephant in the room (Jesus, Buddha, SpongeBob, forgive me for that horrible turn of phrase), especially since I glossed over it in my remarks on last season. I’m talking of course about the John and Sherlock bromance, the bromance to end all bromances. The whole heterosexual life partners thing is rather ubiquitous if we’re talking a Sherlock Holmes adaptation, but here it's often really blatant: hell, Martin Freeman himself describes Sherlock as, and I quote, “the gayest story in the history of television”. If that’s not really your sort of thing I’d just advise you to ignore it, though I give in this case it could be kind of tricky: but come on children, this is the twenty-second century we’re living in (or is it the twenty-fifth? I lose count so easily these days). Either way it doesn’t bother me. At times I actually find it kind of endearing, and Sherlock tends to lay it on so thick that it’s often just completely hilarious. Irene Adler certainly seems to believe the two to be a couple, which of course prompts a fervent denial from Watson. And indeed, dear John had just earlier been reassured by his girl that he’s really a sweet boyfriend… to Sherlock that is, after which she promptly dumped Watson’s ass, so make of that what you will.

“Pretty much detective sex”, indeed. 

Whoops, my bad. These two clearly aren’t into each other at all. 

But look at me talking about characters and sexuality and bromance and all that sorta thing when I’ve barely discussed the episode’s plot in any sort of detail! Well, to be honest I might’ve been dancing around the issue, because this is where the episode at times falls a tiny bit flat. The situation I described earlier, in which Holmes and Watson are sent after Irene Adler to recover a number of incriminating photographs, pretty much kicks off the main plot of the episode. This soon develops into something a tad more complicated, in which the earlier so confident and in control Miss Adler ends up on the run, because some of the information to which she is privy is key to preventing a terrorist attack on British soil, or to simulating such an attack, or to fooling the terrorists which are planning said attack, or… something. Maybe I’m just dim-witted or wasn’t paying good enough attention all the way through, but I did feel that near the end of the episode things ended up getting a wee bit convoluted. Luckily it doesn’t end up being much of a problem, as this is a series very much about the characters and the way they interact, with the case-related happenings often simply functioning to get people from point A to point B. If you’re not entirely sure what part of the mystery we’re at, you can always wait for Sherlock to make another motor mouth deduction speech to pinpoint the moment things’re all solved and done with.

And hey, who cares about the plot being somewhat on the vague and convoluted side when there’s so many great moments in the episode, so many fun little discoveries to be made? Both of our leads are at the top of their game, turning in a smashing performance with lots of little nuances and subtleties. I’ll have to give another spoiler warning here, but near the end of the episode there’s a fantastic scene where John comes into Sherlock’s study having been given the information that Irene Adler has been executed, yet telling Sherlock she has moved to America and taken on a false identity, making it unlikely he’ll ever see her again. Sherlock however sees through the act, and as he holds out his hand, asking for her cellphone as a memorandum, he seems unusually shaken. His hand trembles and his voice momentarily yet noticeably cracks when requesting the phone, in a manner that is uncharacteristic for the usually aloof Sherlock yet so subtle and seemingly unintentional that it can't be anything but genuine. Soon afterwards, however, we find out he knew that she’s not dead at all, and that he was just playing along: it wasn’t Benedict Cumberbatch, but Sherlock Holmes who was acting in that situation! 
 

  

To conceal his face, Sherlock dons a cap with bow amusingly similar to Holmes' classic headgear. 

 

Indeed, watching the episode it becomes immediately clear that we have Stevan Moffat writing the script, because as with the previous Doctor Who Christmas special barely five minutes ever go by without a fantastic little character moment and at least one excellently quotable line. Probably my favourite one of these is when a CIA agent breaks into Sherlock’s apartment and holds his landlady, a terrified Mrs. Hudson, hostage. The man threatens to blow her brains out unless Sherlock cooperates and hands over Irene Adler’s stolen data, but Sherlock promptly kicks the shit out of him and drops him out of the second story window. When Watson declares Mrs. Hudson to be in shock and recommends her a short vacation, we find out she was in cahoots with Sherlock and was simply playing scared. “Mrs. Hudson, leave Baker Street?”, Sherlock exclaims bombastically: “England would fall!” 

On a cinematographical level (sorry if I’m being a snob by using that word all the time, can't let that quick course in film analysis go to waste I guess) there're once again some fun little things to be found in this episode. The parallel montage of Holmes and Irene Adler getting ready to meet each other comes to mind as being especially noticeable. First we have shots of Sherlock looking through a pile of photographs of Irene in full dominatrix gear interchanged with shots of Irene looking at photo’s of Sherlock wearing nothing more than a bed sheet, taken when he was suddenly picked up at his house against his well to go see Mycroft. Then we have shots of Irene seemingly busy picking out a dress interchanged with shots of Sherlock trying on different blazers and dress shirts. And finally we have shots of Irene applying makeup and lipstick interchanged with shots of Holmes and Watson roughing each other up in an alleyway (no, not like that) to make it appear as if Sherlock just got mugged as part of their ploy to get into her house. This seems to be emphasizing there being some sort of similarity, some sort of match between Irene and Sherlock before the two even meet, as if the two are simply meant to be friendly rivals of each other. I also liked the scenes in which Sherlock is giving Irene a lesson in deductive reasoning (or showing off his lightning-speed investigative skills to her, more likely) in which the two are suddenly transported to the scene of an unsolved crime, with Sherlock showing Miss Adler the various facets of the mystery as time stands still all around them. Perhaps a representation of Sherlock’s vivid way of describing the scene to her? Clever stuff at any rate, and quite effective.

And this doesn’t really have much to do with anything, but did anyone catch the location cameo of the Battersea Power Station, made famous by the cover for Pink Floyd’s Animals? Because I know I certainly did!

 

Useless trivia like this is one of the advantages of being a classic rock fan. Or something.

As if you couldn't have deduced it from all of the above (see what I did there?), let me tell you in no uncertain terms that "A Scandal in Belgravia" is a fantastic piece of television, carrying on the legacy of Sherlock's first series without missing a beat. I can only hope that the next two episodes, sadly not written by Steven Moffat (I know Mark Gattis and Steve Thompson're capable writers, but the previous season's Moffat episode was probably the best of the bunch) can hold to the same high standard of quality. I’m not sure if I’ll be blogging about both upcoming episodes separately or if I’ll just look back on the series as a whole some time after it finishes airing - that kind of depends on my schedule and if I find myself motivated to write or not. What is certain though is that I will be watching, and I hope you will too!