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May. 19th, 2013 09:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretI saw Second Stage Theater's production of The Last 5 Years. Which seems as good a time as any to remind people that I have written fanfic of the show.
"Jamie and Every Shapiro in Washington Heights"
It was a little surprising for me to admit it, because rarely in my prequelfic is it the case, but it appears that this story actually does require appreciation of the show to get, because the one-sided dialogue in imitation of JRB's I'm told is confusing if you're not expecting it.
It was my second time seeing L5Y, anyway, plus my repeated exposure to the original cast recording. This is a show I know quite well. And particularly in the densely punch-lined early songs, this was a problem for me, because the laugh lines that got the audience just brought knowing smiles to my face. I couldn't be surprised by this show anymore.
Yet ultimately the show did make me laugh anyway, especially in Cathy's tour de force "Climbing Uphill", through physical comedy and profoundly emotional acting. For the most part, especially in the later parts of the show, setting aside "Summer in Ohio" and "Shiksa Goddess", L5Y earns its laughs in the right way, by mixing black humor and pathos with an unsettling optimism that everything will turn out okay, when the audience knows it won't.
Both Cathy and Jaime are unattractive people when you look at them as closely as the show does. Jaime truly is the glorious ass I portray in my fic. Cathy lets her insecurities dominate her to the point of hurting the people around her. And yet you can't help rooting for them to figure it out. None of their problems really seems unsurmountable, until suddenly they are.
I have lots of thoughts and feelings about the Elementary finale, but I think what struck me as being most interesting was the way the episode sketched out two different kinds of observational genius and distinguished them. The first is reading details and telling stories from them, as exemplified by Joan identifying the weird paint and by Sherlok identifying the genuine paintings in Irene's garret. When Joan managed the paint identification, Gregson and Bell talked about how Joan had stepped into Sherlock's shoes, which I think is really telling. Sherlock is not always brilliant at actually understanding people, but he is consistently brilliant at observing details that others would miss and seeing the connections to other details. This episode established that this is what Sherlock's training has given to Joan, or at least enhanced.
But the other kind of observational genius is in reading people. Holmes is not terrible at this, contrary to some of the stupider portraysl of Sherlock we've seen in other versions. One of the episode's central, most crucial moments comes when Irene tells Sherlock "You're brilliant at reading people. Am I lying to you?" Irene's affirmation that Sherlock can read her is simultaneous her condemnation of his failure to read her in the past.
In the context of this exchange and the episode's emphasis on this distinction, I don't understand Irene's return in the final scene as implying that Joan saw Irene's love for Sherlock and played up on it, as I've seen some people suggest. Certainly Irene's love for Sherlock, such as it is, is far less biochemical in this episode than in "A Scandal in Belgravia". I don't know why Irene returned, but it could just as easily be a need to gloat, to assert power over Sherlock, as a need to make sure he's still alive. "You need to lose," Joan tells Sherlock, but she could just as easily be telling him that Irene needs to win.
Irene, the artist by definition, but by her own self-definition she is the gameplayer and Sherlock is her supreme nemesis, the competition against which she must measure herself. (Much important 20th century art is about gameplaying in some fashion, and I suspect there is a strong essay in measuring Irene against the Oulipists and Dadaists, for example.) And gameplaying, fundamentally, mixes tactical, observational genius with the art of reading people. Elementary doesn't value one over the other on grounds of usefulness, but it clearly values reading people more on the sheer difficulty of it, and this episode turns on the ability of three observational geniuses to outdo each other in mind-to-mind-to-mind combat.
And though qualitatively speaking, I didn't find Moriarty's schemes particularly convincing as actual crimes, I did find them compelling as over-the-top fiendish schemes. The number of layers they involved, and the necessity of having that many layers in order to achieve them, signaled that Moriarty was a creature who actually was offering a service other criminal masterminds couldn't. There was legitimate, discernable value in Moriarty's circuitous, invisible plans, and similarly there was value in Holmes taking down Moriarty. This makes it, by far, my favorite Moriarty of the recent crop, far better than either Ritchie's tame war profiteer or Moffat's consulting criminal.
"Jamie and Every Shapiro in Washington Heights"
It was a little surprising for me to admit it, because rarely in my prequelfic is it the case, but it appears that this story actually does require appreciation of the show to get, because the one-sided dialogue in imitation of JRB's I'm told is confusing if you're not expecting it.
It was my second time seeing L5Y, anyway, plus my repeated exposure to the original cast recording. This is a show I know quite well. And particularly in the densely punch-lined early songs, this was a problem for me, because the laugh lines that got the audience just brought knowing smiles to my face. I couldn't be surprised by this show anymore.
Yet ultimately the show did make me laugh anyway, especially in Cathy's tour de force "Climbing Uphill", through physical comedy and profoundly emotional acting. For the most part, especially in the later parts of the show, setting aside "Summer in Ohio" and "Shiksa Goddess", L5Y earns its laughs in the right way, by mixing black humor and pathos with an unsettling optimism that everything will turn out okay, when the audience knows it won't.
Both Cathy and Jaime are unattractive people when you look at them as closely as the show does. Jaime truly is the glorious ass I portray in my fic. Cathy lets her insecurities dominate her to the point of hurting the people around her. And yet you can't help rooting for them to figure it out. None of their problems really seems unsurmountable, until suddenly they are.
I have lots of thoughts and feelings about the Elementary finale, but I think what struck me as being most interesting was the way the episode sketched out two different kinds of observational genius and distinguished them. The first is reading details and telling stories from them, as exemplified by Joan identifying the weird paint and by Sherlok identifying the genuine paintings in Irene's garret. When Joan managed the paint identification, Gregson and Bell talked about how Joan had stepped into Sherlock's shoes, which I think is really telling. Sherlock is not always brilliant at actually understanding people, but he is consistently brilliant at observing details that others would miss and seeing the connections to other details. This episode established that this is what Sherlock's training has given to Joan, or at least enhanced.
But the other kind of observational genius is in reading people. Holmes is not terrible at this, contrary to some of the stupider portraysl of Sherlock we've seen in other versions. One of the episode's central, most crucial moments comes when Irene tells Sherlock "You're brilliant at reading people. Am I lying to you?" Irene's affirmation that Sherlock can read her is simultaneous her condemnation of his failure to read her in the past.
In the context of this exchange and the episode's emphasis on this distinction, I don't understand Irene's return in the final scene as implying that Joan saw Irene's love for Sherlock and played up on it, as I've seen some people suggest. Certainly Irene's love for Sherlock, such as it is, is far less biochemical in this episode than in "A Scandal in Belgravia". I don't know why Irene returned, but it could just as easily be a need to gloat, to assert power over Sherlock, as a need to make sure he's still alive. "You need to lose," Joan tells Sherlock, but she could just as easily be telling him that Irene needs to win.
Irene, the artist by definition, but by her own self-definition she is the gameplayer and Sherlock is her supreme nemesis, the competition against which she must measure herself. (Much important 20th century art is about gameplaying in some fashion, and I suspect there is a strong essay in measuring Irene against the Oulipists and Dadaists, for example.) And gameplaying, fundamentally, mixes tactical, observational genius with the art of reading people. Elementary doesn't value one over the other on grounds of usefulness, but it clearly values reading people more on the sheer difficulty of it, and this episode turns on the ability of three observational geniuses to outdo each other in mind-to-mind-to-mind combat.
And though qualitatively speaking, I didn't find Moriarty's schemes particularly convincing as actual crimes, I did find them compelling as over-the-top fiendish schemes. The number of layers they involved, and the necessity of having that many layers in order to achieve them, signaled that Moriarty was a creature who actually was offering a service other criminal masterminds couldn't. There was legitimate, discernable value in Moriarty's circuitous, invisible plans, and similarly there was value in Holmes taking down Moriarty. This makes it, by far, my favorite Moriarty of the recent crop, far better than either Ritchie's tame war profiteer or Moffat's consulting criminal.