Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Crappy Super Bowl Episode. When good shows pander for Super Bowl viewers.

My mother used to say that every time she would recommend a television show to friends or family members, the next episode to air would inevitably be terrible.  It would seem that said curse has passed down to her son in a manner of speaking.  It's no secret that I've become a genuine fan of CBS's Elementary, finding to be not only much better than expected but arguably about as good as BBC's Sherlock in its own specific way.  No, Johnny Lee Miller doesn't have the raw magnetism of Benedict Cumberbatch, but nor is his version of Sherlock Holmes supposed to be a tall and striking creature of pure sexual charisma.  They are two very different shows, and they both mostly succeed on their own respective goals and intentions.  Elementary is akin to USA's Monk, albeit without the painfully cornball humor and (so far) without a main character who has no idea how civilization functions at any given moment.  So last night CBS gifted the show with a prime post-Super Bowl episode, surely a perfect way to hook the masses on this surprisingly good show, right?  Well... no.  Last night's episode was easily the worst episode of Elementary yet aired by a healthy margin.  Of course that shouldn't be surprising, since it was the latest show to fall victim to the Curse of the Super Bowl.

God help me, I'm actually enjoying Elementary...

Despite my best efforts to stay above the fray, I must now admit that I'm actually becoming a fan of CBS's new 'Sherlock Holmes in New York' crime drama Elementary.  I know I'm supposed to take pot-shots at the show and blab about how it's a shameless attempt to cash in on the success of BBC's Sherlock.  But the show has, if anything, gone out of its way to differentiate itself from the brooding series that turned Benedict Cumberbatch into a mega-star/sex-symbol.  I remarked back when the first extended trailer appeared that the show felt less like a riff on Sherlock and more like a rip-off of Tony Shalhoub's Monk.  That's still the case, but it's quickly become an arguably superior version of the briefly great but mostly terrible USA comedy.  Loyal viewers will recall that the show's first two seasons were delightful until the writers/producers amped up the farce and started treating Monk like a man-child who was completely unfamiliar with how the outside world actually functions.  The key to the show's appeal is two things it shares with the title character: a genuine intelligence and a general lack of unnecessary sentiment.

CBS's Elementary gets a trailer. It's not Sherlock, it's Monk!

By familiar, I don't mean that it looks like a carbon-copy of the BBC modern day Sherlock Holmes drama Sherlock.  The good news is that this looks and feels quite different from the currently airing series.  The bad news is that everything about this feels like a concerted effort to water-down the original and make it 'more palpable' to alleged audience sensibilities.  The tinkering seems primarily intended to make Johnny Lee Miller's Holmes more 'sympathetic'.  This Holmes actually gives a damn about the dastardly doings that villains do, rather than treating the 'great game' as just that.  He lashes out at suspects and expresses regret at having to witness violence.  And of course, because Watson is now played by a woman, Lucy Lu is seen looking away at the gore, because all women are inherently squeamish.  The core difference between the two shows appears to be an attempt to make Jonny Lee Miller's Holmes less cold, clinical, and stand off-ish than Benedict Cumberbatch.  In short, CBS is trying for a more 'relatable' Sherlock Holmes.