selenak

Rewatching the second season has certainly improved my opinion of it as a whole, except for the last few episodes, where my rewatch opinion is pretty much identical to my original broadcast opinion (I just checked). Though this time around, I'm also ready to offer a theory about why Mycroft, and to a lesser degree Lestrade, didn't work as characters in the same way Kitty would in s3. It's the good old showing over telling.

Let's start with Lestrade - who as a character per se works, also as a take on the ACD original (especially since the existence of Gregson and Bell insures we don't see him as a narrative statement about policemen being unable to do without Sherlock etc.), and the pay off in his last episode - - he solves a case on his own, thinks it's too easy, therefore set up by Holmes, and gets the necessesary boost of confidence that enables him to move on from being able to see through a Sherlockian ploy, and Sherlock confirms it to him, only for the reveal after Lestrade's departure to follow that it hadn't been a set up at all, Lestrade had solved a case, and Sherlock had only confirmed the assumption because he'd realised this, not the case solving, was the confidence booster needed - - was well done. Lestrade's attitude towards Joan, a mixture between gratitude (for her help) and jealous resentment (because she's the partner in crime solving now and far better at it than he was), was very believable . Where the problem comes in is that the last episode also has a scene earlier where Joan (in the form of an exasparated pep talk) points out that Sherlock during Bell's arc has gone through a great number of highly competent police detectives whom he couldn't work with, yet worked with Lestrade and only Lestrade for years, therefore must have seen something special in him. You get the feeling this is also an authorial statement. The problem here is that we haven't seen anything on screen to justify believing in a mutual emotional connection. Doesn't matter in the season opener, because there Sherlock's main motivation to help Lestrade is guilt. But in the later half of s2, we're supposed to believe in fondness beneath the exasparation, and the show gives us no reason to believe in fondness scene wise (except for the last one), nor do the actors sell it. This isn't a matter of lacking screentime. The s2 Rhys episode managed to sell me completely with just a few scenes on the idea that Sherlock does care about Rhys, enough to risk having him in his house, and enough to forgive him after their argument. It also helps that John Hannah manages to exude likeability in the role. Sean Pertwee is good as Lestrade, but he's certainly not charming, so this as an explanation for Holmes & Watson letting him stay for weeks is out, let alone for Holmes working with him for years. Moreover, Johnny Lee Miller plays Holmes so consistently cooly disdainful in Lestrade's presence in the later two Lestrade eps that I have a hard time believing in that regard Joan's pep talk implies.

To me, one of the key problems with Mycroft is similar: again, tell versus show. The later relationship with Joan is actually the minor issue here, though it does fall into this category; when Mycroft shows up in New York again at the start of the last quartet of episodes, we're informed that he and Joan have kept in touch since his last New York visit (when they had been friendly but, the London one night stand aside, hardly intimate) and now she's ready to consider his proposal of a serious romantic relationship. This is off screen relationship development, which may work if we're talking about Joan & minor supporting character like Andrew, but Mycroft in this season isn't minor, and so it would have been necessary to see them get from A to B to C instead of jumping from A to D. . But that's a side issue, imo, like I said: the far bigger problem is the Sherlock & Mycroft relationship. Because given how the plot works out, what the show is theoretically going for is the type of dysfunctional brotherliness that's usually described as "can't live with, can't live without", siblings who are rivals and bicker but come through for each other when it counts (which usually is catnip to me). However, if you want to sell that dynamic you have to convey affection underneath the constant verbal digs. And/or the memory of past good times to contrast with the present bad ones. Whereas what we actually see on screen in all the s2 episodes featuring Mycroft is completely one sided; it doesn't come across as a love/hate relationship, it comes across, at best, as Mycroft mysteriously caring despite unrelenting hostility from Sherlock (long before the Paint it Black plot gives him a good reason for Mycroft directed anger). It's especially glaring since this is the same season which has no trouble convincing me during the Bell arc that Sherlock cares very deeply for Bell, even and especially when he's yelling at him (leading at last to Bell voicing his anger), no matter how blustery he gets. Considering the relationship between the brothers Holmes is what's supposed to drive the finale, this is a big black hole sucking believability out of the final four.

Now, the writers evidently learned from this, because with Kitty s3 it's show, not tell. We actually see her relationship with Joan develop on screen from a hostile start to a cautious approaching to a genuine friendship. While the start and foundation of her relationship with Sherlock is withheld until The One Who Got Away (to great effect), we see it in practice throughout her arc. There is no clumsy "This is how Sherlock feels about Kitty" dialogue necessary, because we see it demonstrated. And just compare two reveals: the s2 finale needs to let a minor character (the dead victim's ex wife) inform Joan of a key piece of Mycroft and Sherlock backstory; Joan goes to Mycroft and they exposition the confirming information at each other; later, Joan during an argument tells Sherlock; who in turn brings it up to Mycroft and, verbally going back to the opening episode, reminds us of the seasonal theme of making amends as a step of the recovery program. All via "he/you did it because..." type of dialogue. Meanwhile, the mid s3 climax of the Kitty arc, The One Who Got Away, juxtaposes Kitty in the present (where she's confronting her big backstory trauma and has to decide how far she'll go) with the flashbacks to how she became Sherlock's student. The key information re: why this relationship became so important to him in turn (if you like, the equivalent to what Joan finds out about Mycroft from the murder victim's ex) is conveyed to the audience via a scene with mininum dialogue and via actions (and non-actions) instead, Sherlock's and Kitty's. And because it fits with what we've been before via Sherlock's and Kitty's present day interactions, it feels entirely organic.

Back to season 2. With the negative out of the way, here's why my opinion of the season as a whole still has improved via the rewatch, second half as well as first half. There's development and good continuity here; early in the season, you have Sherlock solving a case one of the NYPD detectives has given Joan unasked and, after she pointed out to him how patronising unhelpful that was, made up for it by giving her his own cold cases, the crimes he could never solve. Later in the season, you have Joan solving just such a case. Moreover, Joan's surgeon past continues to matter; the episode where she thinks that a former superior may have let a patient die deliberately because it was a murderer also turns into a look at Joan's psyche; she's wrong about her former superior's actions - if Elementary didn't let Joan, too, be wrong occasionally, she wouldn't be the human character she is -, and was projecting her own wish on him while feeling guilty afterwards, which also affirms to her she made the right choice to walk away from her surgeon profession. Conversely, Joan operates on one of her kidnappers without hesitation in Paint it Black (which was her offer, not their demand); she's no longer unable to do this, it's her decision not to. S2 offered us also more about Joan's background familywise - the information about her biological father being a homeless man suffering from schizophrenia. (The episode in question also contains some favourite Joan and Sherlock friendship scenes while avoiding a cheap pay off like Joan finding her father and getting him back on medication.) The Mafia episode may end the Holmes and Bell enstrangement, but the real emotional pay off comes a few episodes later, when Marcus can't bring himself to enter the pub where his fully restored shooting ability is celebrated yet, and Sherlock keeps him company outside (and then in a coffee shop). Randy the sponsee shows up on only one more episode after he got introduced (and I still wish there'd been a line in s3 about what became of him), but in terms of later events it's significant that he falls of the wagon in said episode, though it ends on a conciliatory note, with Sherlock offering to go to a meeting together. And then there's the Alistair/Philip Seymour Hofmann episode. Which still breaks my heart. And is another opposite to the Mycroft eps in that we learn a great deal about Alistair - and about Sherlock's relationship with him - in a short screen time, and have no trouble believing it. Including Sherlock's final statement to Head!Alistair at the graveside - "I loved you very much" - which upon this rewatch seems to me the only time he actually says something like this to someone (and of course it's a dead person). Elsewhere, he uses the term "love" for Irene/Moriarty, but as a noun and in a flippant fashion, something like "and the love of my life is a murdering sociopath", but when he tries to verbalize what he feels for Joan, he usually sticks to other terms and circumscriptions. (Mycroft, of course, says "I think she's who you love more than anyone else in the world" about them.) Joan, interestingly enough for someone far more prone to talk about emotions, never to my recollection uses the term "love" at all, neither in connection with Sherlock nor with anyone else (be it past exes like Ty or Liam or current day prospects like Andrew, or, for that matter, Mycroft. Kitty uses it once, in her goodbye phonecall. Elementary in general shows restraint with the term (not counting cases of the week), which makes the few times it is used by a main character all the more memorable, Sherlock's words to Alistair being a case in point. The episode doesn't lose its power during rewatch, i.e. when you already know what's going on with Alistair the first time we hear his voice, on the teaching tape Sherlock listens to in the teaser scene. Checking the Elementary section at A03 tells me no one seems to have written a big Alistair story yet, despite all the new information the story offered. (Ian, Jeremy...) I wish someone would. (And while we're at s2 inspired fanfiction wish lists, I wish someone would bring back Graham and/or Abigail/Ann.) (Oh, and C, the fabulous old lady who is Sherlock's erotic letters correspondant.) (Sidenote: when Joan in episode 2.20 says re: her having kept in touch with Mycroft, in reply to Sherlock's "so you corresponded" question "we exchanged emails - nobody corresponds these days", she's ignoring her partner, who seems to be into old fashioned letter writing big time, between Moriarty, Alistair (their relationship started as a fan letter after a BBC radio drama), Abigail (they become pen pals at age 15) and C (see above.)

One annoyance the s2 finale originally left me with - the fear we'd next get a plot about Sherlock the spy, which is so not what I want from this show - was immediately settled by s3's opener (which made it clear we wouldn't), so upon rewatch I could appreciate more the way the final four episodes handled the Holmes/Watson temporary breakup. Because it's made very clear that Mycroft isn't the cause, just the trigger for Joan's decision to move out (and that she wants this independently from whether or not she'll get involved with him). Sherlock's response - from denial and thinking it's just abduction trauma speaking to anger to point blank pleading for Joan to stay culminates in his promise to change if she stays, and paradoxically, I think that's why on both a Doylist and Watsonian (ha!) level the show made the right call to let her move out and let her remain so for the next half season. Not because he's unable to change; he actually does change and becomes far better at understanding Joan's boundaries in s3. Because if he'd done that to keep her living with him, it wouldn't have been character growth, it would have been bribery. Whereas him doing so after he doesn't expect her to move back any longer, and respond when she does move back a year later by making sure she still keeps an alternative, IS character growth.

In conclusion: its flaws not withstanding, the rewatch has left me considerably fonder of s2 than I used to be. How many more months till season 4?