The Three Garridebs

In rereading 3GAR I came across this line:

"I prefer to establish personal touch with those with whom I do business."

Now compare to House, who usually, over half way through the episode, must actually explain who he is when he finally pops round to save Mr or Mrs POTW's life.

What, you thought I'd only post the similarities? Bah, humbug!

Off Topic: New Movie Trailer

Its not very different, just with a couple new snippets woven into the beginning and a spiffy new ending that is almost enough to restore my faith in the film.

Emphasis on the almost.

Here, have a link: Click me! Please, do!

I think that the action-y and Adler-y stuff looks absolutely ridiculous and terrible, and unshaven Holmes? Seriously? What happened there? But, the Holmes/Watson relationship, I think, has been done extremely well.

We shall see if that's enough to salvage the film for me.

Off Topic... ish: Holmes Pastiches

For your viewing enjoyment, I present to you:

The Top Ten Things in Holmes Pastiches that Bother Me the Most* :

In no particular order:

1. Anachronisms: These really are easily avoidable, so when Holmes pastiches use a word that would not have been in usage in Victorian England or make reference to a machine not yet invented, it is quite bothersome.

2. Americanisms: Also a mistake that is incredibly avoidable, and, one would think, hard to commit is using American English rather than British English. Even I, who have never even been to England, know better than to refer to braces as suspenders or call autumn fall.

3. Marrying Off Holmes** : Holmes just isn’t a marrying man. We all know it. He does not like women. It is therefore highly unlikely that he’s going to go get hitched to whoever you shove at him. No, not even to Irene Adler. Which brings me to my next pet peeve…

4. Godfrey Norton Bashing: Look, I know you all want Irene to be happily husband free so that she and Holmes can have lots of sleuthing babies, but nowhere in canon is it ever implied that Godfrey Norton is a cad or a sadist or anything but a man who loves his wife and whose wife loves him. Sorry to burst your bubbles.***

5. Crossovers/Guest Appearances: Yeah, I know that you’re thinking, “Wouldn’t it be awesome if Holmes met insert fictional character or historical figure here” No. No it wouldn’t. It would be stupid.****

6. Referring to Holmes’s Cocaine as “Seven Percent Solution": This seems a bit nitpicky, yes, but it is a massive pet peeve of mine. Watson refers to the cocaine as cocaine and only as cocaine. Holmes mentions once and only once that the cocaine that he happens to be using at the beginning of The Sign of Four is a seven percent solution. That does not mean that all of his cocaine is seven percent solution and that does not mean that is acceptable to think them interchangeable. Because it sounds stupid. Fact.

7. Messing up Dates: Yes, I know that Watson’s chronology is famously bad, so there can be some lee-way. Just try to refrain from saying that a case happened in, say, January of 1892, because at that point Holmes was “dead.” Speaking of which…

8. Hiatus Stories: We are all curious as to what Holmes did during those famous three years. But part of the joy of the Hiatus is that it is a variable, an unknown. I prefer to leave it as such. Also, it doesn’t feel like a real Holmes story if it takes place in Norway and Watson isn’t there. I don’t care how good your writing is, it doesn’t feel like Holmes.

9. Botching Major Canonical Happenings: Don’t just completely disregard canon. It’s annoying, and makes me want to hurl the book at a wall. And, last but in no way least…

10. Going Overboard with Crazy Speculations: This is something that Sherlockians are almost all guilty of. I have read the most outrageous theories (Moriarty was a woman? He married her after Riechenbech? Watson was a woman? After the Hiatus, "Holmes" was just Moriarty in disguise?) about the Holmes canon, or, more specifically what wasn’t told in Holmes canon. Give it a rest. Watson wasn’t completely full of crap.

*Ten biggest pet peeves, but by no means my only ones.

**Yes, Laurie R. King, I am talking to you.

***Yes, Baker Street Irregulars, I am most definitely talking to you.

****This isn’t entirely true. I’m talking about published Holmes pastiche here. Crossovers, in my opinion, are far better suited to online or fanzine fanfiction than they are to published pastiche.

Off Topic: Movie

For all you Holmesians out there...

Guy Ritchie is making a Holmes movie, starring Robert Downey Junior as Holmes, Jude Law as Watson, and Rachel McAdams as Mrs Norton... well, she's Miss Adler in this film, actually...

And lookie! A trailer!

From the point of view of a Sherlockian purist, this looks absolutely horrifyingly canon-killing...
But the part of me that just wants mindless explosions and Jude Law in uniform thinks it's cool!

I'm afraid the first bit is winning out, though...
Eh, but who knows. Maybe it'll be so incredibly terrible that it cycles round to funny...

Quote time!

• "I am the most incurably lazy devil that ever stood in shoe leather — that is, when the fit is on me, for I can be spry enough at times," says Holmes in STUD. This is the same sort of principle that dictates House's principle of working when he has a case, then playing gameboy and watching soaps rather than go anywhere near the clinic.

Side note: About the soap operas and video games: a guilty pleasure somewhat out of character for a genius, am I right?
Well, Holmes read the agony columns in the newspapers!

• "Viewing the matter as an abstract problem, I had forgotten how personal and painful a thing it might be to you," (from SIGN) this almost seems like something House would say, if not for the fact that it is an apology! House often harries parents/friends/everyone grieving over their dying family member, with no regard for their personal feelings.

• Stamford, who introduces Holmes and Watson and promptly disappears, never to be seen again, says this of Holmes, "He is not a man that is easy to draw out, though he can be communicative enough when the fancy seizes him." In other words, he won't talk unless it's about something he's interested in. Like Cuddy's brea--LIKE CASES! Yep, meant to say cases...

• "There was a world of sarcasm in his voice as he spoke." Tee hee! Poor, long-suffering Watson

221B

In the episode Hunting, we are able to clearly see (over Wilson's shoulder) that House's address is 221B. Needless to say, I squeeeed with joy after seeing that episode. We are not, however, treated with a street name for the good doctor. But I'm thinking Baker Street. Is anyone else thinking Baker Street? Yeah, that's what I thought. The Holmes picture over there is from Granada's delightful series with the wonderful Jeremy Brett. If you haven't seen it, I'd check it out. Holmesians have a sort of love-hate relationship with Jeremy's Holmes, in that they either love him to bits or hate his guts... And yeah, that was very off topic.

House-Holmes

House & Holmes:
Both Dr. House and Mr. Holmes (I always thought they should've knighted him, Mister sounds so anticlimactic for a master detective...) are bad-tempered geniuses (or is it genuii?) with a penchant for logic. Sherlock played the violin and indulged in cocaine, while Gregory favours piano and vicodin. Both are quick to deny addiction to their drugs of choice; Holmes maintains that he is merely escaping all encompassing ennui and House's excuse is his pain.

Both of their jobs involve solving the puzzle that no one else can solve, catching the culprit, seeing what no one else can see, or rather, what everyone else "sees, but does not observe (SCAN)." They both are unbelievably arrogant and both call even their closest friends by their last names.

Both can be witty, condescending and sometimes outright rude, and both are loathe to speak of personal feelings or personal/family relationships.
They can tell an awful lot about someone from merely a glance, and they both love to toss out this information in a great deluge of should-be-unknown information, baffling the subject of their deductions.

House, a doctor, is based on Holmes who, in turn, is based on Doctor Joseph Bell.

They are also both shameless exhibitionists:
House prefers to confront patients with showy accusations, claim sudden epiphanies, and utilize wildly unnecessary diagnostic techniques rather than share his chain of logic with his team.
Holmes never confides to Watson his thoughts on cases, preferring to solve them amid great drama and mystery and wait until later to sort out the minutia of how he reached his conclusions. In fact, he vouches in NAVA that, "Watson here will tell you that I never can resist a touch of the dramatic."

They both also dislike the rich:
House doesn't like big donors to the hospital, because House doesn't like the rich.
He is always more contemptuous and mocking of the rich (especially Chase).

Much like Holmes:
Holmes believed that, "Some of you rich men have to be taught that all the world cannot be bribed into condoning your offenses (THOR)."
In SCAN, he is dismissive and contemptuous to the King of Bohemia, and NOBL he is downright rude to Lord St. Simon.

Characters

So first thing to do is set up which character represents which.

• House is, obviously, Holmes. Holmes and Homes are homophones and a House is certainly a type of Home.
• In a friendly, emotional way, Wilson is Watson: House's only friend, who lectures about his health and pays for his food.
• However, in a purely professional way, House's team (Cameron, Chase, Foreman, Thirteen, Taub, Kutner) is Watson: they are there to provide okay hypothesis so that he can find a great one.
• I like to think the team is his Irregulars, though, cause its cuter.
  
• Cuddy is Lestrade, or Scotland Yard in general. She always wants to do things the conventional way, she is as close to authority as House has.
  
• Actually, the whole hospital is sort of Scotland Yard in that it does things the normal way and need the aid of House to use his unconventional methods to solve the cases that stump them. In fact, I have always thought that part of what makes Holmes so successful is that he can do the unconventional and not get held up with bureaucracy and the need for warrants. The same goes for House: the hospital lets him do whatever he wants because that freedom, combined with his genius, allows him to do the things that no other doctor can.
  

That's just about everyone!