I Want to Like Houdini and Doyle
May. 19th, 2016 07:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wingedbeastI've seen a few episodes so far and, much like you might be doing with this title, I see a pattern. Only three episodes in, I see this pattern already, because I've seen it before. Much like Lucifer and Forever before it, the pattern seems to be a matter of playing it safe with the story and the characterization. That avoids causing a certain amount of offence, true, but it also keeps things very shallow.
Unlike the previous two times I've done this, the problems spread out over multiple genres and various different yet specific purposes. So, I can't maintain so specific a theme as before. As the French say, "such the life" (transliterated).
Still, the failings are there and they are instructive.
1. Show, Don't Tell.
This isn't new advice. But, damn it, it needs to be repeated. Within the pilot, we have Houdini tell us about himself twice. Both annoy me.
Firstly, he expressly states how the best part of his wealth is giving his mother the lifestyle she deserves. Then, he explains that the reason he has the photos of several believed hoaxes of the supernatural on his wall is that they're his responsibility.
In the first case, with regards to Houdini's love of his mother, this was already expertly shown. He'd held the party, invited the wealthy and the highly educated, and hired an actor to pretend to be the King of England. His first words after explaining that said King was an actor was "don't tell my mother." The reason for the partying lifestyle of a man who, it seems, would derive more satisfaction from debunking claims of the supernatural is, at least in part, a gift for his mother.
This didn't need to be stated out loud. Doing so is an insult to the intellect of an audience that had already figured that out. Okay, this being a very quick scene, some of the audience might not have picked up on that out of that not really being what they're interested in. In that case...
2. Let Us Figure It Out Slowly.
The first, and perhaps only, thing we learn about George Gudgett, the only other recurring Inspector in the show so far, is that he has an antipathy towards Doyle regarding how he makes the police look in his Sherlock Holmes novels. He barely has any lines, beyond that instantaneous character introduction/revelation.
All we really need to know about Inspector Gudgett, at the start of things, is that he is a standardly competent Inspector and, possibly, that he has a dislike for Doyle. We don't even need to see that dislike immediately. He might not like the man, but he can be professional about the job.
A slow reveal would make this more interesting, because it would be more interesting. It would have to be shown and it would have to be put together, action by action. Too much too soon makes this too much a part of his character. I'm not interested in the bundle of antipathy towards Doyle that happens to take the shape of an Inspector. I am interested in the Inspector that happens to have a reasonable dislike of Doyle.
3. Some Empathy For The Hurdles, Please.
Inspector Gudgett has this dislike of Doyle in order to make him a hurdle that Doyle has to leap on a regular basis. That's not a bad thing, that's just the, to borrow a term, Doylist explanation. This is why the writers have his character there. But, that shouldn't be all there is to Gudgett.
Doyle's characterization of incompetent police is not a bad reason for an Inspector at Scotland Yard to dislike Doyle. It must be galling to, every time he starts asking the standard, quite reasonable questions of a witness, have said witness say he knows who did it because of a special kind of track in the dirt of a public road that everybody and their dog has already trod through.
Part of the reason he has to deal with that is a popular set of novels, the Star Wars Franchise of the day, tells everybody and their dog that the police aren't as good at their jobs as some random guy who thinks he can figure out a person's entire life from a few callouses on a hand.
I shouldn't have to be the one that does this writing for the show's writers... You know what, let me correct myself. Readers and viewers often do much of the writing for the writers of the show. That's a part of the experience and a part of the fun.
I shouldn't have to take sides against the writers to give this minimal amount of empathy for a recurring character. He can stay a regular hurdle for Doyle to have to deal with. But, he should also be a person within his world.
4. Make Your Bigots At Least A Little Subtle.
Some of the most egregious telling instead of showing is in the sexism of Horace Merring, the Chief Inspector. After assigning the member of the team that doesn't make it into the show's title, one Adelaide Stratton, he almost immediately informs her that her position is that of babysitting, not a real inspector.
In the second episode, one that deals with the attempted murder of a well known suffragette, the same Chief Inspector openly talks about how, before she was around, he could count on coming home to a ready dinner.
Okay, he's sexist. It's to be expected for the time, so go ahead and make him sexist. I won't claim to know, for a fact, how bigotry manifested back then, but I have some clue as to how it manifests today. The obvious cases are rare, usually either in unguarded moments or behind the anonymity of the internet. Most people, particularly people in positions of power that can be threatened by bad PR, play a game that involves euphemisms, pretend, and the odd token.
I realize that an Inspector that is a woman in the time of the show should have to hurdle through sexism. Speaking as a privileged man who doesn't see all the hurdles of sexism today, I'm okay learning about how the show does in a blog-post or listicle.
5. Make Your Hurdles Competent
Both Gudgett and Merring are hurdles. Due to their justifiable views on the title characters and Merring's unjustified stated sexism towards Inspector Stratton, they can throw in some complications and some bit of authority-in-the-wrong to whom our main characters can thumb their noses. That is why the show has them around.
Why does Scotland Yard have them around?
If we can't take the hurdles seriously, seeing a character clear the hurdle is meaningless. So far, we can't take these characters seriously, because they're not serious. They only exist as hurdles.
Yes, Merring is a bigot, at least as far as sexism is concerned. Either one of them may also be a bigot as far as any other matter is concerned. For the time, it wouldn't be surprising. And, yes, it's a risky move to show that the person who is a bigot has otherwise positive characteristics. But, as risky as it is, it's also true to life.
Aside from being true to life, it also makes these hurdles real, rather than a joke.
6. Challenge the Trope.
In this case, there's a recurring theme of Skepticism versus Faith. And, in so far as the show tackles that debate, I see a debate composed entirely of well-worn tropes. The stereotypes of skeptics and atheists as blindly antagonistic of religion, as secret believers, and as blindly skeptical are all present and... well... I suppose they might anger me less if people didn't think they all represented me.
I suppose that TVTropes.com is right. Tropes aren't bad. Human imagination builds off of what has come before and does quite a bit of borrowing. I should expect old tropes to recur.
I should not, however, expect old tropes to recur without the slightest bit of deconstruction.
In the latest aired episode (the third as of this past Monday), faith healing was the target of investigation. Doyle took the believing position and Houdini the skeptical. But, during the episode, Houdini took ill with a serious illness. It caused large boils to form on his skin and hallucinations. At the end of the show, it's suggested that he went to the (only minutes later proven false) healer.
Of course, as the trope goes, Houdini pretends not to have done so. But, every time I see this trope repeated, it's treated as some victory for faith.
In an episode where Marge and Lisa come to heads over an alleged angel skeleton, at the end the skeleton rises and speaks with a booming voice. Lisa, being a child, seeing this, and hearing this along with the rest of the town, holds tightly to her mother in fear. At the very end of the episode, Marge will use that to say that Lisa isn't the skeptic she claims to be.
That isn't what skepticism is. It isn't a faith in the wrongness of something. (That's why you're not really an evolution-skeptic or a global warming-skeptic, you're just somebody refusing to accept the evidence at hand.) It's faith that says that holding to the chosen conclusion regardless of other concerns is a virtue, not skepticism.
Desperation, immediate evidence (even if it turns out to be false as in the case of the Simpsons episode), fear. These might not be based in reason. But, they're not proof of any failing of skepticism or atheism as concepts.
Yet, time and again, this trope happens and it's treated as a victory of the faithful over the skeptic. Tropes are useful. We can no more create a brand new story, whole cloth, of completely repeated elements any more than we can invent a new device completely independent of ideas from previous machines. But, they need to be challenged, deconstructed, and tested.
This is especially true when they're used in the primary theme of the series.
Unlike the previous two times I've done this, the problems spread out over multiple genres and various different yet specific purposes. So, I can't maintain so specific a theme as before. As the French say, "such the life" (transliterated).
Still, the failings are there and they are instructive.
1. Show, Don't Tell.
This isn't new advice. But, damn it, it needs to be repeated. Within the pilot, we have Houdini tell us about himself twice. Both annoy me.
Firstly, he expressly states how the best part of his wealth is giving his mother the lifestyle she deserves. Then, he explains that the reason he has the photos of several believed hoaxes of the supernatural on his wall is that they're his responsibility.
In the first case, with regards to Houdini's love of his mother, this was already expertly shown. He'd held the party, invited the wealthy and the highly educated, and hired an actor to pretend to be the King of England. His first words after explaining that said King was an actor was "don't tell my mother." The reason for the partying lifestyle of a man who, it seems, would derive more satisfaction from debunking claims of the supernatural is, at least in part, a gift for his mother.
This didn't need to be stated out loud. Doing so is an insult to the intellect of an audience that had already figured that out. Okay, this being a very quick scene, some of the audience might not have picked up on that out of that not really being what they're interested in. In that case...
2. Let Us Figure It Out Slowly.
The first, and perhaps only, thing we learn about George Gudgett, the only other recurring Inspector in the show so far, is that he has an antipathy towards Doyle regarding how he makes the police look in his Sherlock Holmes novels. He barely has any lines, beyond that instantaneous character introduction/revelation.
All we really need to know about Inspector Gudgett, at the start of things, is that he is a standardly competent Inspector and, possibly, that he has a dislike for Doyle. We don't even need to see that dislike immediately. He might not like the man, but he can be professional about the job.
A slow reveal would make this more interesting, because it would be more interesting. It would have to be shown and it would have to be put together, action by action. Too much too soon makes this too much a part of his character. I'm not interested in the bundle of antipathy towards Doyle that happens to take the shape of an Inspector. I am interested in the Inspector that happens to have a reasonable dislike of Doyle.
3. Some Empathy For The Hurdles, Please.
Inspector Gudgett has this dislike of Doyle in order to make him a hurdle that Doyle has to leap on a regular basis. That's not a bad thing, that's just the, to borrow a term, Doylist explanation. This is why the writers have his character there. But, that shouldn't be all there is to Gudgett.
Doyle's characterization of incompetent police is not a bad reason for an Inspector at Scotland Yard to dislike Doyle. It must be galling to, every time he starts asking the standard, quite reasonable questions of a witness, have said witness say he knows who did it because of a special kind of track in the dirt of a public road that everybody and their dog has already trod through.
Part of the reason he has to deal with that is a popular set of novels, the Star Wars Franchise of the day, tells everybody and their dog that the police aren't as good at their jobs as some random guy who thinks he can figure out a person's entire life from a few callouses on a hand.
I shouldn't have to be the one that does this writing for the show's writers... You know what, let me correct myself. Readers and viewers often do much of the writing for the writers of the show. That's a part of the experience and a part of the fun.
I shouldn't have to take sides against the writers to give this minimal amount of empathy for a recurring character. He can stay a regular hurdle for Doyle to have to deal with. But, he should also be a person within his world.
4. Make Your Bigots At Least A Little Subtle.
Some of the most egregious telling instead of showing is in the sexism of Horace Merring, the Chief Inspector. After assigning the member of the team that doesn't make it into the show's title, one Adelaide Stratton, he almost immediately informs her that her position is that of babysitting, not a real inspector.
In the second episode, one that deals with the attempted murder of a well known suffragette, the same Chief Inspector openly talks about how, before she was around, he could count on coming home to a ready dinner.
Okay, he's sexist. It's to be expected for the time, so go ahead and make him sexist. I won't claim to know, for a fact, how bigotry manifested back then, but I have some clue as to how it manifests today. The obvious cases are rare, usually either in unguarded moments or behind the anonymity of the internet. Most people, particularly people in positions of power that can be threatened by bad PR, play a game that involves euphemisms, pretend, and the odd token.
I realize that an Inspector that is a woman in the time of the show should have to hurdle through sexism. Speaking as a privileged man who doesn't see all the hurdles of sexism today, I'm okay learning about how the show does in a blog-post or listicle.
5. Make Your Hurdles Competent
Both Gudgett and Merring are hurdles. Due to their justifiable views on the title characters and Merring's unjustified stated sexism towards Inspector Stratton, they can throw in some complications and some bit of authority-in-the-wrong to whom our main characters can thumb their noses. That is why the show has them around.
Why does Scotland Yard have them around?
If we can't take the hurdles seriously, seeing a character clear the hurdle is meaningless. So far, we can't take these characters seriously, because they're not serious. They only exist as hurdles.
Yes, Merring is a bigot, at least as far as sexism is concerned. Either one of them may also be a bigot as far as any other matter is concerned. For the time, it wouldn't be surprising. And, yes, it's a risky move to show that the person who is a bigot has otherwise positive characteristics. But, as risky as it is, it's also true to life.
Aside from being true to life, it also makes these hurdles real, rather than a joke.
6. Challenge the Trope.
In this case, there's a recurring theme of Skepticism versus Faith. And, in so far as the show tackles that debate, I see a debate composed entirely of well-worn tropes. The stereotypes of skeptics and atheists as blindly antagonistic of religion, as secret believers, and as blindly skeptical are all present and... well... I suppose they might anger me less if people didn't think they all represented me.
I suppose that TVTropes.com is right. Tropes aren't bad. Human imagination builds off of what has come before and does quite a bit of borrowing. I should expect old tropes to recur.
I should not, however, expect old tropes to recur without the slightest bit of deconstruction.
In the latest aired episode (the third as of this past Monday), faith healing was the target of investigation. Doyle took the believing position and Houdini the skeptical. But, during the episode, Houdini took ill with a serious illness. It caused large boils to form on his skin and hallucinations. At the end of the show, it's suggested that he went to the (only minutes later proven false) healer.
Of course, as the trope goes, Houdini pretends not to have done so. But, every time I see this trope repeated, it's treated as some victory for faith.
In an episode where Marge and Lisa come to heads over an alleged angel skeleton, at the end the skeleton rises and speaks with a booming voice. Lisa, being a child, seeing this, and hearing this along with the rest of the town, holds tightly to her mother in fear. At the very end of the episode, Marge will use that to say that Lisa isn't the skeptic she claims to be.
That isn't what skepticism is. It isn't a faith in the wrongness of something. (That's why you're not really an evolution-skeptic or a global warming-skeptic, you're just somebody refusing to accept the evidence at hand.) It's faith that says that holding to the chosen conclusion regardless of other concerns is a virtue, not skepticism.
Desperation, immediate evidence (even if it turns out to be false as in the case of the Simpsons episode), fear. These might not be based in reason. But, they're not proof of any failing of skepticism or atheism as concepts.
Yet, time and again, this trope happens and it's treated as a victory of the faithful over the skeptic. Tropes are useful. We can no more create a brand new story, whole cloth, of completely repeated elements any more than we can invent a new device completely independent of ideas from previous machines. But, they need to be challenged, deconstructed, and tested.
This is especially true when they're used in the primary theme of the series.
