Sherlock: The Blind Wanker.

I estimated in the previous post that this Sherlock had about 50 percent of the brain wattage of the real Holmes. This week I am revising that estimate downward by another 50 percent. This Sherlock makes the odd observation when it suits the plot, but when it is auctorially necessary Sherlock is conveniently blind. Three times during the episode Sherlock misses important clues that are right in front of him, in one case literally right in front of his nose. He does not see the jade hairpin in Lukis' PA/lover's hairdo, even though he is looking over her shoulder as she is working at her computer. The real Holmes would have seen and recognized the importance of the pin, especially as Sherlock was already aware that Lukis had been killed for stealing from someone on his most recent trip to China. Sherlock misses the partial translation on the photo of the graffiti. Even more egregious, in a lame PC bow to the "need" to make the female love-interest more than simply a Victorian victim, he is shown up by Sarah, Watson's latest candidate for the next Mrs. Watson, who points it out. And, then, while he is standing not twenty feet from the doorway of 221B, Watson and Sarah are abducted from the flat by Tong members who walked in by the front entrance!

Nothing, however, can compare to the idiocy of the earlier culmination of the search for the elusive witness, Soo Lin, the young Chinese woman who can provide the secret of the cipher. Having stressed the importance of finding her before the agents of the Tong can silence her, Sherlock and Watson track her back to the museum where she has concealed herself. Then, during the vitally important questioning of her about the cipher, they are interrupted by the evident arrival of the assassin. What to do? What to do? WWSHD? Well, the logical thing to do would be to fortify the room and protect their witness. Lure the assassin to them, where he might be trapped. That is what the real Sherlock Holmes would do. So no chance of this Sherlock doing it. Instead, run, run like the northwind out of the room, leaving Watson to hold the unfortified position. And what is Sherlock's plan? To dash around aimlessly while the killer shoots at him. Naturally, the killer is hopeless at shooting. And none of his shots actually cause any damage to the museum or its exhibits. They just make ping-zinging noises. And then, to top off the idiocy, Watson decides that it is more important to "help" Sherlock, by also running out, than to stay and to defend their witness. (Which, after all, is what they came to do.) How is he planning to help? He's a soldier. We have seen him shoot a man. He must have come out armed, right? No, of course not. The real Watson would do that, but this is not the real Watson. He's not even the wooly-headed Nigel Bruce, who always went armed into trouble. Watson's plan is the same as Sherlock's, to dash around aimlessly. It's a consistent plan, to be sure. The natural result is that the witness, alone and unprotected, is murdered. Brilliant! They couldn't have done better to further the plot, the plot of the Tong, that is.

And speaking of the Tong plot, really? They suspect one of three people of stealing the jade pin. So their strategy is to vandalize a museum, a library and a bank, leaving graffiti? Really? They cannot simply grab them, as they did Watson and Sarah? What does the graffiti accomplish, except to expose them to public and official scrutiny? And speaking of grabbing Watson and Sarah, really? They have observed Sherlock and Watson, and they don't know which is which? All Englishmen look alike? The Tong has never heard of the internet? Granted, Google might be censored in China, but Sherlock has a website, and his picture has been in the news online and in print. So, really, they don't know what he looks like? And even assuming that they couldn't do an online search, Moriarty sponsored their entry to the UK. He didn't send them a massive dossier on Sherlock? Really?

We need hardly mention the ludicrous and numerous Clouseau-Kato hand-to-hand battles in which Sherlock engages throughout the episode. The one in the tunnel while Sarah is waiting to be impaled by the Mwahaha villain's (the sham Fu Manchu General Shan) catapult bolt is remarkable for its silliness. (And repetitiveness, being a duplicate of the earlier strangulations.) And the Mwahaha villain's impression of Dr. Evil is spot-on. As Seth Green might say, "Just pop a cap in his ass!" And when she actually tries to shoot Holmes, what is his counter? To tell her that the muzzle velocity of her gun when calculated against the curvature of the walls of the tunnel will likely result in a dangerous ricochet, which might harm one of her henchmen. HUH? It's gibberish. What the hell does the curvature of the walls have to do with the travel of the bullet away from her? And what does one wounded henchman mean in the great Tong scheme of things?

Is this really the 21st Century's best effort at updating Holmes -- a buffoon in a parody of The Pink Panther? Yes, so it appears.

Verdict: Sinking fast.