Why Steven Moffat should not let other people write his stuff
Dear Steven Moffat,
Please don't let other people write your stuff anymore. Or at least, become friends with people who can write as well as you can. All things being equal between episodes one and two of Sherlock (acting talent, production, directing), the average suckitude of episode two just depressed me.
It wasn't bad. No, it wasn't bad. But it was boring. Where was the brilliant Sherlock of episode one? The one who knew every street in London, the one who can tell a software designer by his tie and an airline pilot by his thumb. The one who relished revealing the "obvious" to normally perceptive people. Where was the fun CGI and the technology-based crimesolving and the actual SET UP of a mystery? The dialogue and the zippy one-liners?
Instead, we get a methodical crime drama with a dumbed down Sherlock who asked more questions than he answered. Cheap exposition by Soo Lin. Cheap tropes like a stupid cop who refuses to see the obvious, and the Watson's random date who POINTS OUT the obvious to Sherlock himself. The pace of the episode dragged and dragged, with me getting impatient and going, "are we getting to a breakthrough soon?"
The story wasn't terrible, but the execution was uninspiring at the least. Moffat would have written that the reason Sherlock took ages to come to the A to Z guide to London was because he knew every street anyway. He would set up clues about Shan so that Sherlock would actually realize what was going on when someone paints over the symbols Watson finds. There would AT LEAST be a cutaway shot to the hairpin the personal assistant was wearing in the first ten minutes of the episode.
Also, Sherlock, when you are trying to rescue a bound woman while being garrotted, and you know there will be a knife aimed at her gut as per the circus demonstration ten minutes before, KICK THE CHAIR OVER instead of fumbling with the rope tied around her hands.
I like television with consistency. It's not worth watching unless every episode is brilliant. And if I have to understand plot details from less-than-stellar episodes in order to watch the stellar ones, I will get someone to tell me instead of sitting through slog. I know I have a weird relationship with television, but not even Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman could keep me engaged in The Blind Banker. They did as good as a job as they could have with their boring script.
Which brings me back to the fact that writing is everything. It was a strategic decision, of course, to get Moffat to write the first episode.
I still love you though.
Signed,
Off to watch old eps of Coupling
Please don't let other people write your stuff anymore. Or at least, become friends with people who can write as well as you can. All things being equal between episodes one and two of Sherlock (acting talent, production, directing), the average suckitude of episode two just depressed me.
It wasn't bad. No, it wasn't bad. But it was boring. Where was the brilliant Sherlock of episode one? The one who knew every street in London, the one who can tell a software designer by his tie and an airline pilot by his thumb. The one who relished revealing the "obvious" to normally perceptive people. Where was the fun CGI and the technology-based crimesolving and the actual SET UP of a mystery? The dialogue and the zippy one-liners?
Instead, we get a methodical crime drama with a dumbed down Sherlock who asked more questions than he answered. Cheap exposition by Soo Lin. Cheap tropes like a stupid cop who refuses to see the obvious, and the Watson's random date who POINTS OUT the obvious to Sherlock himself. The pace of the episode dragged and dragged, with me getting impatient and going, "are we getting to a breakthrough soon?"
The story wasn't terrible, but the execution was uninspiring at the least. Moffat would have written that the reason Sherlock took ages to come to the A to Z guide to London was because he knew every street anyway. He would set up clues about Shan so that Sherlock would actually realize what was going on when someone paints over the symbols Watson finds. There would AT LEAST be a cutaway shot to the hairpin the personal assistant was wearing in the first ten minutes of the episode.
Also, Sherlock, when you are trying to rescue a bound woman while being garrotted, and you know there will be a knife aimed at her gut as per the circus demonstration ten minutes before, KICK THE CHAIR OVER instead of fumbling with the rope tied around her hands.
I like television with consistency. It's not worth watching unless every episode is brilliant. And if I have to understand plot details from less-than-stellar episodes in order to watch the stellar ones, I will get someone to tell me instead of sitting through slog. I know I have a weird relationship with television, but not even Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman could keep me engaged in The Blind Banker. They did as good as a job as they could have with their boring script.
Which brings me back to the fact that writing is everything. It was a strategic decision, of course, to get Moffat to write the first episode.
I still love you though.
Signed,
Off to watch old eps of Coupling