ELEMENTARY: First Thoughts on CBS’ Totally Not Like The BBC’s Sherlock Show At All

Elementary (2012) – Season 1, Episode 1 – “Pilot” – Written by Robert Doherty; Directed by Michael Cuesta – Starring Jonny Lee Miller, Lucy Liu, and Aidan Quinn.

Has there been any show in recent memory where more people had made up their mind before an episode had even aired than CBS’ Sherlock Holmes in New York detective show, ELEMENTARY?

While you were busy decrying the show as a ripoff of the certain-to-be superior SHERLOCK from the BBC, your parents were busy deciding they loved it. It’s a natural fit for CBS to fold the world’s most famous detective into their cop show revue, which is probably why they had discussions with the BBC about adapting their show before they decided to just do their own show. Accusations have been flying from those in and the know and those who simply have an internet connection over how much ELEMENTARY was going to be a ripoff of Sherlock that I’m not sure if it’s more unbelievable that the show is finally here or that a grand total of one episode has been broadcast.

To be clear on where I stand, I am mostly of the feeling that there have been 8 billion Sherlock Holmes adaptations, which makes me initially think the makers of Sherlock should get over it. But the fact that they met with CBS makes me think that the American network is guilty of some creative thievery. I’m not going to go into a point-by-point breakdown of how the two shows compare to one another because that’s for the Beeb and CSI: CBS to fight out in court. All I really care about is this:

Sherlock is one of the best shows on television.

ELEMENTARY is also on television.

But before I get into that, there’s another issue I want to address and that is the overwhelming amount of suckage that is CBS.com. I realize that I’m spoiled by Hulu, but CBS.com is one of the most mindbogglingly inane websites I’ve come across because instead of their playback capabilities marking the site as an alternative to Hulu and Netflix – which is what a network website should be, CBS.com struggles to compare favorably to Daily Motion and their fan-uploaded videos. It’s stunning to me, literally and absolutely stunning to me that CBS.com has such a crappy steaming operation. I don’t have the strongest computer in the world, but I routinely stream shows on Hulu, movies on Netflix, and sports on ESPN3 and I almost never have a pixelated image, yet the strength of the ELEMENTARY stream was constantly changing. If you watch the program full screen, you can not get rid of the timeline at the bottom of the screen. Why do they think I want to look at that blue line creeping from left to right for the entire show? When they go to commercial, they often force you out of your full screen viewing mode to look at a smaller screen, and then KEEP you in the smaller screen when your show restarts, meaning you have to go click the button to go full screen again. Maddening.

And it gets worse.

There are ads during CBS.com streams, which is understandable. There are a LOT of ads during CBS.com streams, which is annoying. But neither of those facts would get me to not watch a show I wanted to watch there. What I don’t understand, what truly drives me bonkers, what clearly demonstrates that CBS.com simply does not give a f*ck about you or their shows is this:

They run commercials IN THE MIDDLE OF SCENES!

Yeah, you’d think they’d simply wait for the, you know, commercial breaks to lay their commercials in, but they don’t. Commercials seem to run on some kind of pre-determined schedule, and if the clock says it’s time to go to commercial, then the stream cuts to commercial, even if the episode is knee deep in a scene.

What the f*ck, CBS?

Honestly, WHAT. THE. F*CK?

What is the point of cutting to commercial right in the middle of a scene? Is that supposed to make me go, “Oh, this sucks, I guess I’ll watch the show on TV, instead?” Stupid. Utterly stupid. Is it this way for every single show they stream? Or is this just a special thing because this is the first episode of a new show and they want to annoy you?

Dear Whomever Runs CBS.com,

You suck at your job.

Signed,
Internet Programmers From 1996

As for ELEMENTARY itself, it’s a highly predictable formula show that almost no one who loves Sherlock is going to turn into every week, yet will probably be a massive hit. Honestly, how many people out there in America Land have ever even seen an episode of Sherlock? And of those, how many will not watch ELEMENTARY simply because PBS runs a British show featuring Sherlock Holmes?

The two big “changes” here are that Watson is a woman and that it takes place in New York, but neither of them amount to anything. The show could be taking place anywhere, and Watson’s switch in gender doesn’t have any immediate effect on the narrative.

What ELEMENTARY does well is operate inside the CBS crime show bubble (and this is a backhanded compliment, if ever there was one), offering a bit of something slightly different yet not really different at all. This is a safe show from start to finish. Oh yeah, sure, they intimate that Sherlock (Jonny Lee Miller) likes his sex BDSM style and they keep saying he had a drug problem, but they don’t show any of it actually happening. Even when Sherlock visits Captain Tobias “Not Lestrade” Gregson (Aidan Quinn) at a bar and leaves Sherlock to watch his coat, there’s no sense that Sherlock might be tempted to down Gregson’s drink. No, Sherlock has said that he’s done with drugs and, apparently, he means it. When Joan Watson (Lucy Liu) gives him a drug test, it’s because he unplugged her alarm clock and not because there’s any actual belief he took something. The audience is never invited to think Holmes might fall back into old habits. In other words, this show decides to tell us that Sherlock had a drug problem severe enough he needs his daddy to hire a babysitter for him, and it does nothing with it. It’s like telling us that Sherlock once had a sandwich for lunch.

Where this show fails is that it is not very smart, nor can it fake the appearance of being smart. Miller does his best to talk fast and play slightly off-center, but that can’t hide the fact that his big insights aren’t really all that impressive. ELEMENTARY tries to make a big deal out of the fact that he looks at glass on the floor and can instantly tell there’s enough shards there for two glasses, instead of the one glass the cops think has been smashed. Sherlock proves how smart he is by laying down on the floor and looking under the refrigerator and finding the second, unbroken glass bottom.

Thrilling stuff.

He also notices there’s a box missing because the owner of this apartment likes symmetry.

What a f*cking genius.

The only way Sherlock really comes off as particularly smart is due to the cops he’s working with being complete morons. Aidan Quinn’s Gregson just kinda stands around with hunched shoulders, grunting and looking confounded. And his main investigator makes the depiction of security guards at malls look like Detective Frank Pembleton. If the Pilot is any indication, the cases Holmes and Watson will be solving are cases that every other detective on TV would be able to solve in an hour, too. This episode’s mystery of a dead woman and her manipulative husband was as generic as any other mystery you’d find on any other network cop show.

Where ELEMENTARY does have a chance to be mildly entertaining is in the chemistry between Holmes and Watson. It’s not there, yet, but there are moments when Miller and Liu show a spark, such as at the end of the episode when he wants to go to dinner but she wants to watch the end of the Mets game. He does a bit of a “this will happen, then this, then this” routine and stomps off to wait in the hall. The game unfolds exactly as Holmes said it would because of course it would, but what’s important here isn’t that he’s right as much as how it lets the two protagonists interact with one another, and if ELEMENTARY is going to succeed, it’s going to be because Miller and Liu are worth watching. They’re not, yet, but as they find their characters, they might become a fun pair to watch.

ELEMENTARY is not an awful show, but it isn’t a good show, either. like nearly everything CBS puts on the air, it is an entirely forgettable show. CBS makes its bread being the Microwave Dinner Network, the place where you go to watch TV shows because you think you have to watch TV shows and you can’t be bothered to change the channel. Miller and Liu are trying, but they’ve got such a stupid script to work with here that there’s only so much they can do. As it stands, I don’t see any reason why I should come back and watch the next episode, and that’s not even because CBS.com is so overwhelmingly stupid.

PRIME SUSPECT & UNFORGETTABLE: First Thoughts on Great Women Cops Who Still Need a Man to Rescue Them

Unforgettable (2011) – “Pilot” – Starring Poppy Montgomery, Dylan Walsh, Kevin Rankin, and Michael Gaston; Prime Suspect (2011) – “Episode 1″ – Starring Maria Bello, Aidan Quinn, Kirk Acevedo, Brian O’Byrne, and Peter Gerety.

Sometimes these reviews write themselves. I’d decided to watch PRIME SUSPECT and UNFORGETTABLE back to back, not because I thought there would be some great connection but because, well, two lady cops in two semi-interesting looking shows. Made sense to watch them together so I could review them together. They’re both cop shows with female leads who are very good at their job, both are set in New York City (because there’s not enough shows set in New York City), both of them spend the better part of the hour showing that they’ve got issues but are able to overcome them, and then …

… then both confront the killer, get physically beaten up by the male killer, and would be killed themselves if not for a save from one of the male cops on her team.

It’s an interesting parallel between two shows that are filmed in completely different styles and contain completely different attitudes.

PRIME SUSPECT stars Maria Bello as Detective Jane Timoney and the show and its lead both fire with a cocky, aggressive attitude. She’s a relatively new transfer to this Homicide division and she’s torqued because even though her name is top on the board and thus next up for a homicide, the male detectives keep skipping her and leaving her without a case to solve. Director Peter Berg lays the boys club aspect of this division on way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way,way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way too thick.

I would never argue that it’s not tough for women homicide detectives, but PRIME goes out of its way to make this group of male detectives such a He-Man Woman Hater’s Club that it gets in the way of the story. The guys in the squad – they have names but let’s just call them Detective Kirk Acevedo, Lieutenant Aidan Quinn, Detective White Guy Whose Name You Don’t Know But Has Probably Been On Every Cop Show on Television, and Detective That Guy From Monkey Shines – treat the precinct like it’s their private clubhouse, shunning Timoney, gossiping about how her sexual history got her this job, and drink out of cutesy glasses in Lt. Quinn’s office to signify their special bond.

Monkey Shines dies and Timoney wants his job, which makes all the men hate her even more. But then she shows their case was complete horsesh*t and goes out and solves it for them. They track the killer – first going to the wrong address – and Timoney chases him down and then he proceeds to put an ass-whooping on her. The guy just beats the sh*t out of her, nearly choking her to death before one of her male colleagues arrives and saves her.

Despite these missteps, PRIME largely works thanks to both Bello’s performance and the sheer force of Berg’s direction. Starting with PRIME SUSPECT in bold letters as the Black Keys play behind the opening action, PRIME immediately declares that, if nothing else, this isn’t going to be CSI. These cops are going to bang on doors to solve crimes, not rely largely on science. It’s a promising start.

UNFORGETTABLE, on the other hand, is pure CBS crime drama with it’s lack of grittiness and gimmick. Poppy Montgomery is Carrie Wells, who can remember everything. Easily the most interesting thing about the opening episode is that I learned that Marilu Henner is a consultant on the show. Yep, that’s right, Marilu Henner. What’s she doing serving as an advisor for a cop show about a woman who can remember absolutely everything that’s ever happened to her? Well, it turns out Henner has hyperthymesia, too.

Thanks, internet.

UNFORGETTABLE takes place in New York City, too, but the vibe here isn’t one of big city drama but deep-seated personal issues. Carrie has one memory she can’t access and it has to deal with the murder of her sister when they were wee little lasses. So, yeah, it’s one of those shows, where the one thing you want is the one thing you can’t have and we’ll be sure to see lots of deeply pained looks on Montgomery’s face all season long.

There’s a lot of “super power shots” we see Carrie reliving her past experience in the hopes of finding out extra clues. It gets a bit old – I’m already sick of seeing these stylistic shots with the past playing out as Carrie “walks” through them. The show itself is largely harmless but not the least bit gripping. Dylan Walsh plays the lead detective and he and Carrie have a romantic past; they broke up when she thought he stopped investigating her sister’s death and blah blah blah. She figures out the case, but gets it wrong, then figures out she was wrong and goes after the real killer, who then proceeds to choke her. She’d likely die if it wasn’t for Dylan Walsh to show up and save her.

It’s unfortunate that both shows allow their female leads to crack the case but then assert that they might have the brains but they need a man to rescue them.

Like I said, harmless but not gripping. I can’t imagine I’ll be back next week, but maybe someday I’ll sit down and watch 10 episodes in a row and enjoy it well enough. I will be back for PRIME SUSPECT, though. UNFORGETTABLE is a show that plays for a single, but PRIME is a show that plays for a home run. It’s more flawed at this point, but the ceiling is higher.

JONAH HEX: The Rest of Him Was Too Fat for My Horse

Jonah Hex (2010) – Adapted from DC Comics; Directed by Jimmy Hayward – Starring Josh Brolin, Megan Fox, John Malcovich, Michael Fassbender, Lance Reddick, Will Arnett, Aidan Quinn, Tom Wopat, Wes Bentley, and Jeffrey Dean Morgan.

Yeah, Tom F*cking Wopat. Still alive, still acting, still playing a Confederate.

This is going to be one of those reviews where I just look for ways to tell this movie is terrible. So if that’s all you wanted, there it is – JONAH HEX is terrible. Josh Brolin is pretty good in a really bad movie, but the rest of this too-slick, too-stupid western is just barely passable entertainment.

Have you ever been caught in a situation where you had to do something and knew you were terrible at it, so you just tried to get through it as quickly as possible? Because that’s what JONAH HEX tries to do. It literally plays out like it’s embarrassed by what it is, so it just tries to get through it as fast as it can so neither you or it has to make the experience anymore awkward.

It’s kinda like running into that girl you randomly hooked up with last year when you were both smashed and she just wanted to forget about her loser ex-boyfriend and you just wanted to kill some time before you sobered up enough to remember your own name, and now you run into each other at a Target and she’s standing there with the still-a-loser but no-longer-ex boyfriend and you’ve got on sweatpants and a too-big sweatshirt so you can pretend you’re water bloated and not fat and you’re like, “How’s it going?” and she’s like, “Oh my gawd, I haven’t seen you since-” and then she stops because she just remembered and you just remembered that you haven’t seen each other since you told her to “please stop f*cking crying and help me find my missing sock,” and maybe you could laugh about it, but the boyfriend is standing there chuckling like he should get punched in the face, so you go through the motions of catching up as quickly as possible so you can both go back to shopping.

Or a close proximity of that if, you know, you haven’t had that exact experience.

When you write about bad movies, you can usually say things like, “It seemed to go on forever. I mean, it felt like it went on for three hours.” You can’t really say that with JONAH HEX because they’re in such a hurry to get to the end. It’s just scene, scene, scene, scene with little build-up or pay-off.

Everything looks too slick, too. When watching a Western, I want to feel the sun and dirt, but HEX sanitizes everything to the point where they might as well have filmed everything on a sound stage.

It’s perfectly okay for a movie not to conform to the expectations of a genre, but it’s usually best if you follow through on it. For instance, there’s an early scene where Hex has killed a bunch of men wanted by a town. He shows up with three bodies. The town leaders, who are rendered so over-the-top that they are caricatures of caricatures tell him they’re not inclined to pay because the deal was for four men, not three. Hex tosses them a bag with the fourth man’s head in it.

“He was too fat for my horse,” Hex grumbles.

Funny. Almost overcomes the lameness of the town leaders.

Then the leaders announce they want Hex dead, and we realize that we’re going to see the payoff for this classic western set-up of our lone hero versus a mass of armed men who want him dead. Let’s see what they do with it, shall we? Let’s see Hex’s amazing gunfighting skills or maybe some of that spooky stuff with the crows. Whatcha got for me, JONAH HEX?

Machine guns.

F*cking machine guns. Or whatever the hell those big rotating guns are officially called up there on the poster. Hex has them loaded on the side of his horse and he opens fire, slaughtering all the bad guys.

Dumb.

There’s a bunch of high-tech (relative to the time) throughout HEX, but they don’t really do anything with it. When he attacks the bad guy stronghold later on with dynamite pistols (they’re guns … that shoot dynamite … that is honestly awesome) no one is like, “Holy f*ck! Jonah Hex is shooting at us with dynamite pistols!!! Where the f*ck did he get them? Get me the f*ck out of here!!!” Instead, they just all stand around and die in big explosions.

Becaue tech plays such a big role in the film, you’d expect the filmmakers to do something with it, but they don’t. Hex also has this whole American Indian, magical medicine thing going on, which, I don’t know, would maybe set up a nice contrast with the guns, but they don’t do anything with that, either.

Look, I understand someone in power probably went, “You know what, guys? Nice try and all, but this movie you gave us totally blows. Seriously, it makes me feel a little better about Miller’s Spirit movie. So let’s not make anyone have to sit through 98 minutes. Cut it down to 82 and we’ll run another 5 trailers before the movie.” Short movies can work fine – especially if the setting and tone is familiar, especially if you’re doing a formulaic genre piece - but when you’re presenting a film like HEX that attempts to twist genres, you need to get us to believe in this world. That can take time. HEX doesn’t want to bother with that. It just wants to be over as much as you want it to be over.

There’s an entirely pointless near-death-experience sequence where Hex fantasizes about killing John Malovich and they try to pair it with the actual experience. I mean, what the stupid is that? Why do I want to watch a pretend fight when I can watch the real fight? And why are you blending the pretend fight and the real fight together? We can see he’s winning the real fight, so why do we need to know he’s winning the pretend fight, too? Why is this film so stupid?

The character of Hex is poorly conceived and executed inside this film. He had a family that got killed by Malkovich as revenge for Hex turning against his Civil War regiment because he didn’t want them killing kids. So you empathize with him for his family, but then as he’s doing this he’s also hooking up with a whore that he might like, might even like like, but he’s not going to commit to her or anything silly like that.

Is this supposed to represent how far he’s fallen? That he doesn’t feel right about loving a “clean” woman so he hooks up with a “dirty” one? Why am I asking these questions when the filmmakers either didn’t ask them or didn’t answer them?

Other than Brolin, the casting here is pretty awful, too. Megan Fox is what she is. I don’t find her attractive but her trashiness almost works here. Almost. Will Arnett shows up in a serious role, but it’s gimmick casting I don’t care about. Aidan Quinn plays President Ulysses S. Grant, Lance Reddick plays Q-Smith, Jeffrey Dean Morgan plays Jeb, and they all do so professionally but the words that come out of their mouths are so silly they’re performances are rendered pointless. Well, the Morgan/Brolin scene is pretty good, I’ll give the film that.

John Malkovich plays the bad guy, but after 45 minutes of trying, he almost can’t be bothered to finish the movie out. He just looks like a guy who wants to go home.

JONAH HEX completely fails to deliver the proper atmosphere or mood. Westerns often work by slow-cooking the plot; you introduce ideas and characters and let things stew and then punctuate that with big, dramatic action scenes. HEX doesn’t bother with that. Director Jimmy Haywood (who directed the wonderful HORTON HEARS A WHO! last year) just moves from one scene to the next like he’s connecting the dots. The action sequences are mostly pretty limp, too, and lacking imagination or proper execution.

This is just a bad movie, and no matter how effective Josh Brolin’s grunting is, that’s not going to change.