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HBomberguy: "Sherlock (the BBC show) Is Garbage, And Here's Why"
- Thread starter Finaj
- Start date
Gonna keep saying it: You've never read Sherlock Holmes, have you?
I have read all of the Sherlock Holmes stories and figured out several before it was laid out to me and actually had the right idea on several I didn't even if I wasn't 100 percent on everything. Hell some are rather simple and straight forward and if anything most readers probably over think the solution.
H. Bomberguy presents here the idea that most works are made better if the creator is forced to cut content and runtime by 10-15%. This forces them to think about what's really important and necessary, and cut out fluff that is irrelevant or self-indulgent. He argues that bloating the length of Sherlock episodes to 90 minutes only harm rather than helps them. Sensible.
Of course, this is a bit rich coming from a guy who just created a 90-minute long video review of Sherlock. How much of what's in here is even necessary? Why is there an extended synopsis/mocking of the TV show Jekyll? H. Bomberguy seems to have a problem editing himself as well.
Of course, this is a bit rich coming from a guy who just created a 90-minute long video review of Sherlock. How much of what's in here is even necessary? Why is there an extended synopsis/mocking of the TV show Jekyll? H. Bomberguy seems to have a problem editing himself as well.
It's not very difficult to guess a lot of the guilty parties or even some methods based on the base description of the crimes, because Conan Doyle's Holmes work laid the ground-work for all mystery stories that followed and you know these patterns.
It's still virtually impossible most of the time to actually follow a clue trail, because Doyle often fails to unpack one for you. The scene in "A Study in Pink" where Holmes deduces a huge line of things from Watson's phone was pulled right from A Study in Scarlett, where he does the same with a pocket watch. Things a reader could not reasonably deduce. This is why Sherlock's method is easily the most faithful I've seen. They don't want you to figure it out because you shouldn't be ahead of Holmes.
Spirit of Jazz
Banned
I've not finished but so far it's more of a matter of Sherlock deducing just about everything after the first episode either off screen, due to things the audience couldn't possibly know before Sherlock deduces them or because of his super powers. His issue with Moriarty was that all crime in the world ties into him and he's a villain with no mortivation beyond him being crazy as well as gay with a huge crush on Sherlock.
firehawk12
Subete no aware
A wild firehawk appears!
(If I'm being trolled by a mod, is it still being trolled? lol)
Sherlock came right at the time before "peak TV" and right at the cusp of when Americans started discovering that British people could make television, so when it hit, it struck like lightning.
But the anemic reaction to the fourth/final season exposes the fact that the show never really had the strength to live up to the prestige status impressed upon it. The fact that people write off about half the episodes in a series with essentially 12 episodes says more than enough about the legacy of the show as a whole.
Morrigan Stark
Arrogant Smirk
Almost 2h? Fuck that noise. Get an editor, guy. There's no way you need that much time to critique anything, and while Sherlock is flawed (the final episode was complete trash, though I overall enjoyed the series) it's not nearly as bad as warranting 2h of ranting over it.
LOL, that's pretty ironic.
There are certain stories that you really aren't going to figure things out before Sherlock but there are several that can be pieced together well ahead of the end. Hell Watson is almost a dead give away when things are important by either noting something and then writing it off or bouncing it off Sherlock only to be rebuffed in some way.
This is a really good take:
But this is the only take that actually matters <3:
But this is the only take that actually matters <3:
Rodney McKay
Member
Like I said, I watch Sherlock because it has a fun pair of main characters and a few fun side characters. The cases themselves were almost never that interesting to me in the show, so if it's faithful to the books in that way, I guess I wouldn't like that aspect of the books either.
I'm not even someone who cares about solving it for myself, either. Watching something like Poirot I rarely even try to figure it out beforehand, but it's enjoyable to watch the investigation take place and see how he solves it with the clues discovered in the episode.
Zelenogorsk
Banned
One of the shows that made me feel like I was too stupid to follow it. It started out simple enough, one mystery per episode, but then things got really meta and hard to follow. Stuff started to feel very retcon-ish (although I'm not saying that's what happened, just felt that way to me). Also the show tried way too hard to replace
, characters like
and
just seemed overpowered.
The last episode was so stupid. Season 4 would have been worthless had it not been for Toby Jones, who was amazing as always.
Moriarty
Magnussen
Eurus
The last episode was so stupid. Season 4 would have been worthless had it not been for Toby Jones, who was amazing as always.
I enjoyed the platonic male and female friendship. It was refreshing
Somebody ask Bronsonlee
Eh they sort of try and retcon it but yeah he's Mycroft in name only and some quirks carried over from the short stories.
ShinySylvee
Member
Yeah I didn't really care for his Dark Souls 2 or BB video that much either. He seems to have massive fixations on minor details that don't have much influence on things, and the way he presents his opinions works when he's targeting indefensible targets but when he's talking about more nuanced stuff his tendency to state his opinions as "this is my opinion and if you disagree you're wrong" is fairly off-putting. Haven't seen this vid yet though.
I never liked Sherlock and I have very similar problems with it as I do the last few seasons of Doctor Who.
Lots of hand waving and having the main character and people around in the episode going "ooooh he's so amazing and smart and not to be messed with" and not so much of the character actually doing anything amazing.
Lots of hand waving and having the main character and people around in the episode going "ooooh he's so amazing and smart and not to be messed with" and not so much of the character actually doing anything amazing.
NotTheGuyYouKill
Member
Hbomberguy made a two hour video about this?
Color me intrigued.
Color me intrigued.
This doesn't seem to be that controversial of an opinion. I was always under the impression that Sherlock was viewed rather unfavorably by TV critics, but still had a legion of fans, much like The Walking Dead. It's a nice looking show with good acting, but has awful storytelling. I watched 3 seasons of it, and the third season was particularly bad. It seemed far more concerned with how smart it thought it was, than it did putting together a strong plot
TL;DR: Sherlock has the same problems as Most Who. Sherlock/The Doctor are the most awesomest smartest important people ever. While the difference with Sherlock is that it throws the mystery part of Sherlock Holmes out the window to just be clever and for gotcha moments. And every character outside of Sherlock revolves around Sherlock, and are shit compared to the original material.
The funny thing is that I actually enjoyed his critique of Moffat's run on Doctor Who....the neverending mysteries and hints towards a larger unkown backstory were bad enough. But then even when all the clues are revealed, the payoff was generally garbage. I stoppped watching shortly after Peter Capaldi took over as the Doctor.
Steven Moffat truly is Britain's Damon Lindelof.
That said, none of these digressions are really helping the critique of Sherlock at all. H. Bomberguy clearly can't help but fixate on minutiae that are irrelevant. Why do you need to point out sound/ADR problems in Sherlock? What is the purpose of discussing poor editing in Jekyll? Why are there extended comparisons of S1 Who versus S4-6 Who? All of this could have been summarized rather than giving us a littany of examples. The only thing it convinces me of is Bomberguy's deep hatred of Sherlock/Moffat, because he seems completely unable to restrain himself. He has to take every potshot he can, even if it's not really that relevant.
Steven Moffat truly is Britain's Damon Lindelof.
That said, none of these digressions are really helping the critique of Sherlock at all. H. Bomberguy clearly can't help but fixate on minutiae that are irrelevant. Why do you need to point out sound/ADR problems in Sherlock? What is the purpose of discussing poor editing in Jekyll? Why are there extended comparisons of S1 Who versus S4-6 Who? All of this could have been summarized rather than giving us a littany of examples. The only thing it convinces me of is Bomberguy's deep hatred of Sherlock/Moffat, because he seems completely unable to restrain himself. He has to take every potshot he can, even if it's not really that relevant.
Lucky Seven
Banned
Usually I tend to dislike anybody who uses garbage as an adjective. Can't be helped but be reminded of an angry 14 year old bitching over chat in a video game. But, I do remember having a few issues with the show that led me to drop it. Clearly, it was worse than I thought.
Ehhh that's most of his videos. Guy really needs an editor. His Souls videos are particularly terrible.
TDLink
Member
The first two seasons were okay. The latter two have been awful and the show very much has gone up its own ass. Overall it's nothing to write home about. The popularity it's received has been a bit odd. I think both Cumberbatch and Freeman are great actors though and I'm glad it's allowed them to go on to do other things.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
I'm almost finished now. This is masterful
hydrophilic attack
Member
I like the series
MegaManTrigger
Banned
"Garbage" seems like rather obvious bait to get the views. I think Elementary is pretty decent but the writing doesn't do the cast justice. S2 Sherlock was the peak of the show before going downhill with odd writing choices.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
But the Guy Ritchie films are actually good and Elementary is a better Holmes adaptation than Sherlock
Actually the video explains my opinions on this pretty well
fallengorn
Bitches love smiley faces
Two hours dissecting Sherlock? Uh... no thanks.
Does it even warrant that much time? It's just a fun, light show.
Does it even warrant that much time? It's just a fun, light show.
KernelPanic
Member
Guy Ritchie films are bad. Stylized Hollywood shit with only the slightest reference to the characters. That stupid boxing scene in the first movie almost had me turn it off. Admittedly RDJ is entertaining to watch but it's NOT Sherlock.
BBC series was a great modern take on the stories although it went downhill after S2. Cumberbatch killed it. Haven't seen S4 yet. They got away from actual mysteries and it became more of a Sherlock and Watson family drama.
BBC series was a great modern take on the stories although it went downhill after S2. Cumberbatch killed it. Haven't seen S4 yet. They got away from actual mysteries and it became more of a Sherlock and Watson family drama.
Stopped watching after S3 indicated it was going to be appealing to the shipping crowd. Andrew Scott's Moriarty was clearly inspired by TDK's Joker but going that route makes no sense for the character.
Eh, H. Bomberguy's videos in general are pretty good. Not sure if this one justifies the length of 2 hours, but I've enjoyed his 30-45 minute rants. Decent background noise.
Eh, H. Bomberguy's videos in general are pretty good. Not sure if this one justifies the length of 2 hours, but I've enjoyed his 30-45 minute rants. Decent background noise.
lol.
Even Watson is barely a character in the source material. Any version that's treated him with any self-respect or dignity, or granted him any intelligence or backbone is strongly iterating on him. There was never a great friendship there until it was adapted by others. Virtually everyone else was just a name, beyond like Milverton and Adler in their one-offs. Moriarty never had one line of dialogue because the narrator never met him.
It's such a problem that when BBC dramatized his work and made radio plays of the whole thing, they had writers flesh it out with more interaction between Holmes and Watson to resemble the dynamic that evolved in later works.
Discotheque
Banned
I couldn't even bother with the fourth series after how awful the third was.
I had a lot of fun with the first two series though, so I'm not with collectively throwing the whole show in the trash. However, it could have benefited from being more focused on the mystery.
The Conan Doyle stories are still the GOAT for me. Would have liked to have seen somebody make a proper gothic horror mystery movie out of the Hound of the Baskervilles.
I had a lot of fun with the first two series though, so I'm not with collectively throwing the whole show in the trash. However, it could have benefited from being more focused on the mystery.
The Conan Doyle stories are still the GOAT for me. Would have liked to have seen somebody make a proper gothic horror mystery movie out of the Hound of the Baskervilles.
It's a bit hard to sell people on that, because by design, your star character is not in it for like 80% of the story.
I find sherlock holmes much more interesting when it's very obvious that the friendship is one sided and sherlock holmes has very obvious psychological problems despite his genious. He is not the good person he is often portrayed as.
Sibersk Esto
Banned
The Jeremy Brett 1984 series is still the best.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
I haven't seen series 4 but if the summary in this video is accurate its fucking bonkers, and not in a good way
Discotheque
Banned
One day I'll go through that Brett series, I've seen a few episodes and its more what I'm looking for in this character right now than the adventure movies of Ritchie (that I did enjoy) and the cornball tumblr shit of Cumberbatch's show.
right. but I don't think that would scare away indie distributors tbh. it wouldn't require a high budget or hype behind it.
a nice 2 part bbc miniseries or something would be cool as well.
right. but I don't think that would scare away indie distributors tbh. it wouldn't require a high budget or hype behind it.
a nice 2 part bbc miniseries or something would be cool as well.
SoundPulse
Banned
I enjoyed Sherlock (although, in retrospect, a lot of that was probably wanting to like it), but I can't really find myself disagreeing with much that he says about it. Especially regarding the editing tricks that are pretty much just there to look cool.
Probably could have done without the Jekyll stuff, especially after the point about editing, but hey.
Probably could have done without the Jekyll stuff, especially after the point about editing, but hey.
Well, the first 4 or 5 episodes of Sherlock is likely the closest a modern series has come to adapting that.
It does go WELL off that reservation by Season 3, though. No doubt.
BBC Sherlock was terrible. The creative team had no ability to write an intelligent, perceptive, insightful, evaluative investigator. It's all so lazy and unearned.
"I'm a high functioning sociopath. Also I know everything. Did I mention I'm a high functioning sociopath? Let me tell you all your darkest secrets; we'll pretend it has something to do with my powers of perception and deductive reasoning but it doesn't. Here are some scenes of me being a dick to people for an hour and not telling anyone anything about my thought processes and then walking to where the mystery is and solving it. And being a dick to everyone again. Because I'm a high functioning sociopath."
Guy Ritchie Sherlock is a completely different take, and much more of an action-adventure tale, but it at least shows Sherlock's point of view and reasonably justifies its outcomes, so even as an action vehicle it still manages to be a better detective procedural than the BBC one.
"I'm a high functioning sociopath. Also I know everything. Did I mention I'm a high functioning sociopath? Let me tell you all your darkest secrets; we'll pretend it has something to do with my powers of perception and deductive reasoning but it doesn't. Here are some scenes of me being a dick to people for an hour and not telling anyone anything about my thought processes and then walking to where the mystery is and solving it. And being a dick to everyone again. Because I'm a high functioning sociopath."
Guy Ritchie Sherlock is a completely different take, and much more of an action-adventure tale, but it at least shows Sherlock's point of view and reasonably justifies its outcomes, so even as an action vehicle it still manages to be a better detective procedural than the BBC one.