Encounter with the Grimpen Mire

I’ve been reading The Hound of the Baskerville aloud to my younger one.  We’re up to the first encounter with the Grimpen Mire and the low terrifying bay of the hound.  Sherlock, the man of reason is appears to be faced with the powers of the supernatural. 

She returned the favor by suggesting we watch the current joint BBC / WGBH production: ‘Sherlock’, with Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman.  I don’t watch much TV, OK, I don't watch any TV, but we had Saturday afternoon together without much beyond more work to do.  I spent the first ten minutes staring at Freeman, knowing I’d seen him somewhere, knowing that with my limited viewing there couldn't be many possibilities.  If I just stare longer, I’ll get it.  Where could it have been?  Ah yes, "The Hobbit."  Freeman had played Bilbo.  And as he was regularly perplexed by the Dwarves, and by Golem and Gandalf, now we have him constantly doing double takes with Mr. Holmes. 

I settled in to the first episode and found that I was enjoying myself, quite a bit.  Cumberbatch mind is flying about, catching and stitching random data points into theories that are immediately plausible.  It’s a good pairing and a good bit more plausible than powers of belief suspension required to believe that Robert Downey Junior and Jude Law were in fact the great detective pair. 

Sunday night the older one was back home and after dinner I suggested we watch the next ninety-minute episode.  I rarely ever suggest such a thing, and it was immediately decided that this was a fine idea.  Now this next episode in Series One was called: “The Blind Banker.”  I had a harder time with this one as the bad guys were a Chinese gang, who used "Ancient Chinese Numerology" to announce their crimes. 

Must any scene that involves China suddenly become mysterious?  Must we have an erhu play every time we view Chinese characters.  Does the nice girl who works with ancient teapots in the museum have to live over Chinese restaurant in Chinatown?  Can’t the Chinese gang just shoot someone without having an ancient slow moving, drama intensifying, arrow shooting contraption to do the deed?  Can’t Sherlock Holmes with all his Aspergery brilliance figure out that “Zhou” is pronounced “jo” and no “zo?”   No.  Even for the hippest of “new” television, China must remain mysterious, sinister, evil.  I relapsed, I’m afraid back into the boorish baba I usually am with TV.  I couldn’t help but say “very mysterious” with an affected Chinese accent every time the Chinese bad guys or bad gals made their appearance.  I tried to get my girls to engage in discussing the stereotypes, but they preferred to watch, instead of talk as normal people do.

There is a future episode apparently entitled “A Scandal in Bohemia.”  Let’s see if the Czech stereotypes render that nation with similar simplicity, of if I can sit back and relax when someone else is being made two-dimensional.

Monday, 01/23/17