B Block Criminology - Yesterday we talked about the tropes of: "Police are Useless"; "The Only One"; and "Bad Cop/Incompetent Cop". In yesterday's episode of Lie to Me, called "Moral Waiver", Dr. Cal Lightman and Ria Torres investigate the case of a female soldier who claims to be the victim of sexual assault by her commanding officer. At the same time, Dr. Gillian Foster and Eli Loker work on the case of a college basketball player who is accused of accepting a bribe from his university. In both cases the Lightman group employees are experts who are hired by authority figures (the US Army or a University Ombudsman) to do the work that they themselves can't quite get done...notice any tropes/themes here?
Today let's continue. We'll watch an episode of Elementary from season one called "The Deductionist". From IMDb.com:
A convicted killer who is supposed to donate a kidney to his sister ends up killing the surgical staff before escaping. Holmes is forced to work with a profiler (whom he can't stand) because she supposedly can predict what he will do next.
The "Great Detective" trope is based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. In this version (Elementary), Sherlock Holmes was a consultant for Scotland Yard in England, before "hitting bottom" and ending up in rehabilitation. Joan Watson has been hired by Holmes' father to be his sober companion, to help him adjust from rehab back to everyday life. Holmes has come up with an interesting post-rehab regimen to keep himself busy-resuming his role as a consultant, this time for the New York police. Watson finds herself coming along for the ride. Of course the BBC did a modern version where Sherlock (Benedict Cumberbatch) solves crimes through sheer intellect and his Sherlock Scan, but is a (self-proclaimed) "high-functioning sociopath" barely kept in check by his friend Dr. John Watson (Martin Freeman).
In both modern versions Holmes has what can only be described as high functioning personality disorders but supreme intellect that assuredly saves the day for the police who clearly can't do their job properly without his help. Hmmm...sound familiar? Remember Dr. Cal Lightman in Lie to Me?
In Elementary,
following the tradition of depictions of Sherlock, his brain literally seems to work differently than other people. He has a lot of common personality traits with Asperger Syndrome - socially awkward and extremely gifted within a certain area (in his case detective work), straightforward and with a lot of brutal honesty, often oblivious to others' feelings but not lacking in empathy. He also has certain physical tics like the way he stands hunched in on himself sometimes, his jerking head movements and the way he grips his hands which are also consistent with someone who has Aspergers or Autism. So he's an insufferably awkward loner of a genius who is "the Only One" who can help the NYPD because "Police are Useless".The people of the Downtown Eastside
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