Sherlock 1x02: A bit not good
Aug. 12th, 2010 10:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
adelagiaAs usual I'm horribly behind everybody with shows; just managed to watch the first ep of Sherlock a few days ago, and I LOVED it. Exciting, funny and charming, and while I don't usually pay a lot of attention to soundtracks -- at least, not to the point where I need to download the score from that cabbie chase scene immediately (link, anyone?) -- I think the music is delightful.
Episode 2, however. I'm pinning this episode!fail entirely on the writer here. If my Who-vian memory serves (and feel free to tell me it doesn't, because that is actually probably the case), Moffat/Gatiss' hit:miss ratio tends to favour the former, and I don't know who Stephen Thompson is, but somebody please confiscate and burn his My First Book of Cultural Stereotypes. Why is it so impossible for any show to write Chinese characters without involving a) triads, b) Chinatown, c) cheongsams, and d) atrocious accents? But I suppose possibly that first, completely incongruous swordfight in the flat might have tipped me off to what kind of episode this was going to be. Barf.
Also, the pacing was uneven, and there was way too much -- frankly boring -- exposition and not enough character development. The richness of the characterizations set up last episode were completely lost here; one-note performances all around -- Watson: harried, Holmes: rude, Sarah: ... I don't know, pretty?
And why, if the ciphers require looking up a book to decode, would all three victims immediately recognize the 15-1 code as a death threat? Are they all made to memorize that particular code upon induction so they may one day have the wherewithal to wet themselves in fear on the spot, rather than having to go home and look up the code and then freak out?
Someone please tell me ep 3 gets much better?
Episode 2, however. I'm pinning this episode!fail entirely on the writer here. If my Who-vian memory serves (and feel free to tell me it doesn't, because that is actually probably the case), Moffat/Gatiss' hit:miss ratio tends to favour the former, and I don't know who Stephen Thompson is, but somebody please confiscate and burn his My First Book of Cultural Stereotypes. Why is it so impossible for any show to write Chinese characters without involving a) triads, b) Chinatown, c) cheongsams, and d) atrocious accents? But I suppose possibly that first, completely incongruous swordfight in the flat might have tipped me off to what kind of episode this was going to be. Barf.
Also, the pacing was uneven, and there was way too much -- frankly boring -- exposition and not enough character development. The richness of the characterizations set up last episode were completely lost here; one-note performances all around -- Watson: harried, Holmes: rude, Sarah: ... I don't know, pretty?
And why, if the ciphers require looking up a book to decode, would all three victims immediately recognize the 15-1 code as a death threat? Are they all made to memorize that particular code upon induction so they may one day have the wherewithal to wet themselves in fear on the spot, rather than having to go home and look up the code and then freak out?
Someone please tell me ep 3 gets much better?
