An Elementary Disappointment

If you create an alternate-universe television series, imagining if Sherlock Holmes lived in modern times, this gives you plenty of latitude to put words in the mouth of the 21st-century Holmes. The reputation for genius of the original Holmes character means that _anything_ you want to tell your audience, once placed in the mouth of _your_ Holmes, can be made to seem brilliant and indisputable. But if you are a bootlicking lackey of the politically-correct pop culture, you won't try to provide any _actual_ wisdom to the viewers; instead, you'll use your Holmes-bot as a flattery device for leftwing urban audiences. You'll program him to tell those yuppies that whatever they wanted to believe anyway, is the peak of sophisticated insight.


 Several episodes ago, the p.c. Sherlock in the series "Elementary" did the bidding of his p.c. scriptwriters, trying to make sure that the expression "intellectually bankrupt" would mean what the viewers wanted it to mean. It isn't hard these days to find authentic examples of intellectual bankruptcy: it can be found co-existing with _moral_ bankruptcy. There are men, for instance, who display their intellectual and moral bankruptcy by saying a woman is worthless unless she is "hot," who _define_ "hotness" in ways that real-world women can scarcely manage to live up to, and who meanwhile don't even TRY to be pleasing to the women in return. There are women who display their intellectual and moral bankruptcy by proclaiming how all-important "freedom to choose" is when they want to kill their babies, but who refuse to see ANY importance in "freedom to choose" when abortion is forced on Chinese women who _didn't_ want to kill their babies. And of course, millions of American men and women display their intellectual and moral bankruptcy by insisting that our government should be able to distribute unlimited welfare giveaways to countless people for endless time, and by pretending that anyone who contradicts this fantasy must be a racist. There's no end of genuine idiots to point to. But whom did the revisionist Sherlock Holmes identify in dialogue as being "philosopher-in-chief to the intellectually bankrupt"? He identified Ayn Rand, author of "Atlas Shrugged."


 Ayn Rand contradicted the fundamental delusion of welfare-state thinkers. The viewing audience of "Elementary" includes limousine liberals who perpetuate that same delusion. Surprise surprise, Revisionist Sherlock was made to side with the limousine liberals. Ayn Rand had to be the one who was intellectually bankrupt, so that the elite crowds of the east and west coasts could continue patting themselves on the back for being hip and progressive.


 That much was bad enough. But then came the "Elementary" episode broadcast on Halloween night. In it, they showed Lieutenant Gregson's wife deciding that she was tired of him and wanted to shop around. This kind of thing has become the _norm_ for detective shows, with either spouse equally likely to break the vows; but in this instance, it set up the opportunity for Sherlock Holmes to flatter the leftwing audience again. He told the female Doctor Watson that Gregson would do _better_ as a detective without a wife, because MARRIAGE ITSELF was unnatural and unhealthy. This, to please the crowd that goes for frivolous divorce, shack-ups and one-night stands.


 The way this plot thread was handled had an additional purpose: using ambiguous talk about "partnerships" as a way to serve notice to the audience that it _would_ be possible for Sherlock's relationship with Joan Watson to become a romantic one someday.... only, it MUST NOT AND WOULD NOT ever, ever, ever be a matter of that yucky, outmoded custom called marriage.  


Funny thing about the female Watson: I was never a fan of Lucy Liu before, but she does such a _superb_ acting job as Joan Watson that now I am a fan of hers. It is really _only_ for her sake that I still watch the series. Between her skilled portrayal of a smart lady with a likeable personality (unlike the abrasive shrew she portrayed in "Ally McBeal"), and her simply spectacular physical attractiveness, she provides a female-lead character whom any unattached male-lead character _ought_ to fall in love with. But for the sake of gratifying the chic-nightclub set and the campus-hookup set, the writers of "Elementary" have installed their own kind of glass ceiling: a ceiling intended to prevent any Sherlock-and-Joan affection from rising to the level of -- oh, _merely_ the sacred life-commitment on which civilization was built.


 Ironically, Ayn Rand was _also_ not a champion of Biblical marriage, or of Biblical faith. But as I have remarked before now, the hard left in the United States has its own version of setting high standards. You're not allowed to agree with the left merely on _some_ things; unless you fall into lockstep with the left on _every_ subject without exception, you remain vulnerable to being accused of hate speech, greed -- or intellectual bankruptcy. Miss Rand opposed socialism, so she fails inspection just like that. Readers of Miss Rand's books need not marvel at this; after all, you're not even allowed to be Sherlock Holmes anymore unless you conform to the hard left.