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kaberettEssay title is a lyric by acoustic punk band Onsind. This post contains discussion of all of season 1.
I'm currently on my third Elementary rewatch, partly because season 2 starts next week but mostly because I have some writing that needs doing and it scares me. (To quote Onsind, again, I'm learning how to practice self control/it's the latest essay followed by the latest episode...) But also because: I am thinking a lot, at the moment, about trust and fear and loyalty, and it is probably for this reason that I am noticing now that Elementary is many different people learning the same lessons in their own personal contexts.
We've got Sherlock, of course. Of course. Sherlock, who is a recovering drug addict; who snarls about his father; who regularly hurts but never says.
... and then there is Joan. There is Joan, who asks Sherlock if he thinks he's unwittingly shutting himself off as penance: You always know it, Watson. If you didn't, it wouldn't be penance.
Joan, who looks at him and tells him that seeing the puzzle in everyone seems like a lonely way to live.
Joan, who has, after all, always seen the puzzle in people: as machines, as a surgeon; but also a sober companion, trying to find the things that will click into place -- and who doesn't date, doesn't see much of her friends, has an adversarial relationship with her family, and does as much as she can to avoid talking about her past.
And so they try to solve each other: Holmes, through abrasive questioning and invading her privacy, and Watson through... abrasive questioning and, well, invading his privacy. She pokes at his head and she pokes around his cupboards and she pokes around his past, and she hands to him a violin and she hands to him his letters and she tells him what the people in his life are really like, and sometimes she is right but often she is wrong.
They're different styles of abrasive questioning, of course, and to be honest I'm not sure that Holmes even notices that she shows up and treats him as a puzzle. Or does he? As I say, I'm not sure: certainly he finds her infuriating to begin with, but whether that's because he thinks she's a rank amateur or because he's so unused to people daring to try that he's completely oblivious, I'm not sure.
So. They are both lonely. They are both prone to trying to solve puzzles, to fix things. And they are thrown together by circumstance, and they try to solve each other, and in so doing they rub each other up entirely the wrong way and step on boundaries left, right and centre.
And then somehow they muddle through and they are better for it: not just in terms of being less alone, but also in being more whole.
(I think - I think this is true for Marcus Bell, as well: who is torn, sometimes, between his family and his job, and who stares down both sides of the law and perhaps feels himself at least a little alien in both, and in the misfits that are Holmes and Watson maybe, just maybe, finds somewhere to just be. He starts out unconvinced by them, of course, and some of the trust is forced by necessity (yes, that episode), but - they build something together, these people do, through being thrown together and made to work. I'm not sure it's a family, but it's definitely something.)
I'm currently on my third Elementary rewatch, partly because season 2 starts next week but mostly because I have some writing that needs doing and it scares me. (To quote Onsind, again, I'm learning how to practice self control/it's the latest essay followed by the latest episode...) But also because: I am thinking a lot, at the moment, about trust and fear and loyalty, and it is probably for this reason that I am noticing now that Elementary is many different people learning the same lessons in their own personal contexts.
We've got Sherlock, of course. Of course. Sherlock, who is a recovering drug addict; who snarls about his father; who regularly hurts but never says.
... and then there is Joan. There is Joan, who asks Sherlock if he thinks he's unwittingly shutting himself off as penance: You always know it, Watson. If you didn't, it wouldn't be penance.
Joan, who looks at him and tells him that seeing the puzzle in everyone seems like a lonely way to live.
Joan, who has, after all, always seen the puzzle in people: as machines, as a surgeon; but also a sober companion, trying to find the things that will click into place -- and who doesn't date, doesn't see much of her friends, has an adversarial relationship with her family, and does as much as she can to avoid talking about her past.
And so they try to solve each other: Holmes, through abrasive questioning and invading her privacy, and Watson through... abrasive questioning and, well, invading his privacy. She pokes at his head and she pokes around his cupboards and she pokes around his past, and she hands to him a violin and she hands to him his letters and she tells him what the people in his life are really like, and sometimes she is right but often she is wrong.
They're different styles of abrasive questioning, of course, and to be honest I'm not sure that Holmes even notices that she shows up and treats him as a puzzle. Or does he? As I say, I'm not sure: certainly he finds her infuriating to begin with, but whether that's because he thinks she's a rank amateur or because he's so unused to people daring to try that he's completely oblivious, I'm not sure.
So. They are both lonely. They are both prone to trying to solve puzzles, to fix things. And they are thrown together by circumstance, and they try to solve each other, and in so doing they rub each other up entirely the wrong way and step on boundaries left, right and centre.
And then somehow they muddle through and they are better for it: not just in terms of being less alone, but also in being more whole.
(I think - I think this is true for Marcus Bell, as well: who is torn, sometimes, between his family and his job, and who stares down both sides of the law and perhaps feels himself at least a little alien in both, and in the misfits that are Holmes and Watson maybe, just maybe, finds somewhere to just be. He starts out unconvinced by them, of course, and some of the trust is forced by necessity (yes, that episode), but - they build something together, these people do, through being thrown together and made to work. I'm not sure it's a family, but it's definitely something.)