lizzledpink:

And no, this isn’t hatred, nor is this BBC-Sherlock-is-superior babbling. Up until now I’ve been willing to give it a chance, and when it does air, I’m still going to give it one last shot to impress me with its first episode. But I now know that unless they pull off some crazy switcheroo, I’m going to be disappointed. (I’m not even going to mention the NYC setting, either.)

I do like Lucy Liu playing such a fantastic character, don’t get me wrong. But there are only two ways this can go now and neither of them are remotely palatable.

Romantic:

If CBS chooses to have a romance develop between Sherlock Holmes and Joan Watson (or whatever her name is), then their goal is fairly clear: let’s make the Holmes/Watson relationship more palatable to audiences by making it heterosexual. 

Do they even realize how erasing that is? Now, if you swapped both Sherlock and John’s sexes, maybe then it’d be bearable. Quasi-lesbian detective and doctor/medical/cop whatever in NYC? I could deal. That’d be fairly cool. But to change one character, and only one character, means you’re doing the single-gender for one of only two reasons:

Either you’re intending to build a relationship, or you’re throwing in a beautiful woman to attract the male viewers. Normally, these motives are fine, but when you’re dealing with characters who are both already known to the viewers and are consistently noted for their unique relationship as two male characters, even in Victorian London? No. Neither is acceptable, even remotely. To do so insults the memory and bond between those characters. Where we once had an incredibly close pair of men, so close that reading between the lines of Dr. Watson’s prose might suggest a relationship carried out behind the scenes, we now have your typical woman falling for a very smart man. Whoop. De. Doo.

But maybe you’re gonna make John Watson a trans man and emphasize that it’s a queer relationship despite his perceived gend - oh wait, that would be one of those things that only happens in my fantasy worlds; my apologies.

Platonic:

If you go the platonic route, then yes, you avoid my queer-erasing rage. No gay-ignoring for you! Good job!

But the problem is, then you probably still won’t hit upon the relationship between Holmes and Watson. Whatever else can be said about their relationship, romantic in the very much gay sense or not, they do have a deep, profound love for each other. To deny that would be very wrong.

In our society, on our televisions, those bonds don’t exist. We’d like them to, maybe, but they don’t. Males and females can’t have that deep a bond without being romantic, television tells us. So if you come even close to the reality of Watson and Holmes’ bond, it’s still going to be perceived as romantic despite platonic intentions, and we loop around to the first problem all over.

The only other option is to deeply tone down their partnership in the midst of the show, and suddenly what you’ve got is no longer that fascinating show about two intensely interesting characters and the mysteries they solve. It’s just another cops and robbers type show, one in a million, and in no way identifiable with the timeless beauty of ACD’s tales.

And either way:

Additionally, making Watson the female character has some potentially painful sexist implications. Watson is generally - and in my mind, falsely - attributed as the “sidekick” character to Holmes. He is a doctor and a soldier at once.

(I read somewhere that she’s going to be a former NYPD medical examiner? Could play either way, but I’m inclined to give it a thumbs-down. Watson is a man who takes orders and gets shot for it, not a woman who failed on the job once and got kicked out. Um. But I don’t have the source for this, I lost it somewhere, so if somebody could confirm that’d be great.)

So, somebody decided somewhere that between the risk-taking, caustic, determined detective and the kind-hearted, steadfast, background character doctor, that the female role should go to the latter. Really? If they make her character powerful and solid enough, there’s a chance that it could fly, but it’s unlikely. Gender stereotyping has itself stamped all over this.

If they’re very clever, they’ll make Joan Watson the main character of the show rather than Holmes - that’ll put a kick in the expectations, while remaining true to ACD, won’t it just? But I highly doubt it. And that’s sad. 

Congrats on the multiracial casting, CBS, but negative points just about everywhere else.

^This sums up my entire feelings on the whole thing.