Rainy Holidays

What a week! I worked through Christmas, but that's fine. I'm not Christian and I need the holiday pay. I'll get together with my family this weekend. But it's been raining a lot lately and I feel I'm getting another cold. So annoying. Maybe I should get a flu vaccine?

Anyway, I finally listened to the first 2 cases of the Sherlock & Co podcast and am greatly disappointed. It's not at all like the Bert Coules Radio dramas I like. I don't mind the modern setting but the whole "I'm a podcaster who carries my microphone everywhere" premise is stupid. Like seriously, he was going to bring his podcast to his date in the Criterion bar? Why? And the scenes are so disjointed. If Watson just actually functioned as a narrator, saying, "And then later that day" or, "I volunteered in Ukraine, even though it's illegal" that would help a lot. But he doesn't narrate and he doesn't edit his podcast for clarity. He just throws random scenes at you and he doesn't describe visuals that we need to be imagining. I seriously did not understand what was happening and had to check the Fandom page to clarify the plot. Holmes is even worse, interrupting a conversation with a third person so that he can deduce why Mary stood up John on his date due to a medical emergency. Why the fuck do you use that moment to explain that to him? And in general, he doesn't even explain the logic of many of his deductions, so they come off like arrogant opinions based on magic. I also hate that Watson apparently left his medical training at Sandhurst early (no explanation given) and Holmes teases him for not being a real doctor. That's apocryphal based on Conan Doyle flubbing the medical history in a parody short story. In the actual first novel he makes clear that Watson got his full Doctor of Medicine degree. It's Sherlock who left school without a degree because his studies are so eclectic. They fucking did Watson wrong.

I'm also disappointed that the first episode entirely ignores the Study in Scarlet mystery, and then the second episode rushes to the "Illustrious Client" so they can use the enormous amount of money to set up a business. I mean I know the Mormon backstory in Study in Scarlet is problematic, but at least modernize the "Brixton mystery" part of it so we can meet Lestrade and/or Gregson maybe. In the "Illustrious Client" I don't understand why the client thinks John is in business with Sherlock based on one previous podcast he released where he didn't even accompany Sherlock on the Brixton mystery. It makes no fucking sense! I mean, maybe I'll continue with other mysteries just to see how they modernize the plots, but if it wasn't free with advertising, I wouldn't even bother. And they are clearly liars when they say they will cover all canon stories, because they fucking biffed the first story.