#to be fair that is how most victorian doctors solved like every problem

[pansy-picnics]

grandpa quirin. sighs

[holmesoverture]

Eileen’s Official Nigel Bruce Defense Post

Weeks after first mentioning the possibility of writing this post in my Sink or Ship entry for the Rathbone/Bruce films, allow me to welcome you to my official and way the heck too long Nigel Bruce Defense Post.

I don’t think I need to convince anyone that the reputation of Bruce’s Watson has suffered in the years since he played Sherlock Holmes’ faithful Boswell.  Virtually every time someone wants to praise a Watson, they feel the need to disparage Bruce to do it (“This Watson is great because he’s not a bumbler unlike some people I could mention, ahem, ahem”). James Mason only agreed to play Watson in Murder by Decree if they didn’t write him as an idiot. Edward Hardwicke was more polite about it, but he seems to have felt similarly about Bruce’s Watson’s capabilities.  More recently, of course, Kate Beeton did her famous “Stupid Watson” comic, launching a nickname that seems to have caught on with some people around the interwebs.

And, in fairness, not all of the ire directed at Nigel Bruce is unwarranted. The Rathbone films do have a tendency to go way overboard with the comedy relief, and not even the fact that it was made for World War II audiences who were probably in desperate need of a laugh makes me feel better about it.  This aspect of the movies hasn’t aged well.  I admit that willingly.

But it’s important to note that the comedy relief really is just one aspect of Bruce’s Watson.  For some reason, it’s the only aspect that people seem to remember when really he’s surprisingly multifaceted.  To reduce Nigel Bruce’s interpretation of Watson to a demeaning nickname is unfair in the extreme, and since no one else seems to be willing to waste their time in refuting these gross overgeneralizations, I will heroically step in to fill this void that no one wanted filled.

And if you decide you still don’t like Bruce’s Watson after reading this post, that’s fine.  My goal in writing this is not to push people into liking something that’s not to their tastes.  All I want is to point out some inconsistencies in the Bumbling Oaf trope and maybe make you think about how you feel and why.  (I also want to vent a little—it is the internet, after all.)

Open your minds and join me on this journey, mis amigos.  It’s kind of long, but hopefully my witty insights and that one goofy picture of Batman I included will make it worth it.

Let’s start at the start: 1939’s The Hound of the Baskervilles.  As I’m sure most of you are aware, this story hardly features Holmes at all.  Watson is the one who heads out to Baskerville Hall alone to investigate, which requires him to be at least somewhat decent at investigative work, and he certainly is that.  It’s only when Holmes shows up that he becomes the comedy relief.  Later that year, in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Holmes again sends Watson to investigate alone, and while I wouldn’t say it goes well, it doesn’t go noticeably worse than in any other version.  Plus, a couple of the major humorous moments feature Watson on the winning side of the joke for once.

That’s about all the time I’ll spend on Bruce’s first two outings as Dr. Watson, since they are noticeably different from the B movies which followed.  (The most striking changes, for those who haven’t seen them, are that the stories now take place in the 1940s rather than the Victorian era and also they now have the budget of an office Christmas party.)  It’s here that the quality of the movies starts to waver, and I believe they are what most people are referring to when they complain about Nigel Bruce.  The comedy relief bits are really ramped up here, but just because Watson became more of a punching bag doesn’t mean he necessarily became less intelligent or less interesting.

Before we continue, there’s one point Hardwicke made in that interview I linked to above that I’d like to address.  He basically said that Watson’s training as a doctor means that he couldn’t be stupid.

First of all, Ben Carson.  Second, the entire point of this post is to demonstrate that Watson wasn’t as stupid as everyone thinks, and we’ll get to that in just a second. Third, these movies do remember that Watson is a doctor and give him a few opportunities to show off his medical chops.  In Terror By Night, Watson’s the one who announces the victim died of heart failure.  It’s also him who notices a small pinprick in the dead guy’s neck that suggests said heart failure was induced.  Granted, he didn’t mention the mark right away because he dismissed it as insignificant, but given that Holmes also had a look at the body and didn’t notice the mark at all, I think Watson deserves some props here.

Now I’m not even going to try to defend the rest of Terror By Night because it’s pretty much the epitome of everything people dislike about Bruce’s Watson.  But it does go to show that, even when the Baker Street Dozen was at its silliest, Watson still had his moments.

If we want a really solid example of Watson being competent, however, we must go elsewhere.  Let’s start with The Secret Weapon.  It starts out as one would expect, with Watson being charged with guarding a scientist recently escaped from mainland Europe, only to fall asleep and allow the guy to wander off (YOU HAD ONE JOB).  But later on, the film adapts bits of The Dancing Men, and when Holmes and Watson first encounter the code, it’s Watson who explains its significance to the lady whose missing boyfriend wrote it. He even sits down to decode it, but it’s been slightly altered since their last encounter with it, so it comes out wrong.

Naturally it’s Watson who makes this error while Holmes discovers what the alteration was.  So now Watson looks like a knucklehead even though, again, he apparently learned the Dancing Men code so well that he could use it at a moment’s notice despite not seeing it for years.

But wait, what’s this?  There’s another coded message, this one even more fiendishly difficult than the first?  What to do now?  Holmes and Watson spend the next few hours poring over the code, trying every combination and trick they can think of in their attempts to decode the message.  Oh wait, did I say Holmes and Watson?  I meant Watson by himself while Holmes sulks and makes rude comments.

Not bad for a bumbling oaf.

In the end, it’s an off-hand remark from Watson that flicks on the lightbulb over Holmes’ head, enabling Holmes to swoop in and steal the limelight from poor Watson.  Our detective makes his brilliant game-changing deduction thanks to his conductor of light, who’s been doing the thankless drudge work this whole time.  (This kind of happens a lot, actually—twice in Dressed to Kill alone, a casual remark from Watson enables Holmes to save the day.)

The real problem here isn’t that Watson is stupid; it’s the way the scene is framed.  The movie is so busy focusing on Holmes’ deductions and accomplishments that Watson’s contributions mostly go unacknowledged.  It’s clear from the fact that Watson was deeply involved in the decoding process that he’s perfectly intelligent and that Holmes trusts him to help with even the more difficult aspects of crime-solving.

Something similar occurs in The Woman in Green, which features Moriarty hypnotizing people into committing suicide for reasons that escape me at the moment.  (This isn’t the high point of the Rathbone/Bruce collaborations okay)  Again we have a comedy relief bit, with Watson being hypnotized into taking his shoes off or some nonsense immediately after declaring that hypnotism is BS. It’s the kind of thing you’d see on a ‘60s sitcom.

The movie ends with Watson arriving almost too late to save Holmes from Moriarty because he got stopped by a police officer for speeding.  Yes, haha, silly Watson, can’t do anything right and almost ruined everything.  But let’s reframe this scene for a second. Think about it from Watson’s perspective.  He’s given a task to do by Holmes, who is going to be in mortal danger the entire time. He’s terrified for his friend and knows that his life is in his hands.  Of course he’s going to break every damn speed law in the country to try to protect him.  Just imagine how he felt when he got pulled over, when he had to waste all that time trying to explain the situation to the officer, knowing that every second spent arguing could mean Holmes’ life.

If this were a scene in one of the newer, edgier Sherlock Holmes adaptations, we probably would get to see it from Watson’s perspective, and depending on the version, I’m betting Watson would have just floored it when the police sirens started going.  And even if Watson did stop, he very well might have lost patience halfway through the proceedings and punched out the cop to get to Holmes.

And by “he,” I mean Panin specifically.

Obviously, Bruce’s version could not do that because of the pearl-clutching moral censors.  Or rather, he couldn’t do that on-screen.  It’s never stated how Watson’s interaction with the police ended.  How do we know he didn’t punch the guy?  Because if you think Nigel Bruce’s Watson wasn’t willing and able to kick some ass, allow me to direct your attention to The Spider Woman, in which Holmes fakes his death, then comes back disguised as a postman and makes disparaging remarks about that fakey detective Sherlock Holmes, because Holmes is a dick like that.  Bruce, being one of the more patient Watsons, tolerates it for a while before knocking Mailman Holmes right into a chair.

Again, this scene is played for laughs, but from Watson’s perspective, it’s about as unfunny as you can get.  The man was unable to stop the death of his closest and dearest friend.  He’s just had a hard day of packing up Holmes’ things for a museum, then some asshole postman shows up and starts insulting his recently deceased best friend for no reason.  It’s little surprise that he snapped.  So yeah, Bruce’s Watson was 100% down with decking people when placed under sufficient emotional strain, which he may well have been in The Woman in Green.

I think I’ve gotten away from my point here, but it basically boils down to the fact that Watson was not an idiot at the end of The Woman in Green; the way the scene is framed just makes him look like one.

There are also times when Bruce’s Watson doesn’t seem to do much of anything, which may be misconstrued as stupidity.  Let’s look at Dressed to Kill.  Now towards the end, Watson does get A Scandal in Bohemia-ed pretty bad, but that comes right after Holmes walks right into the bad guy’s trap like a knucklehead, so they’re roughly even on that front.  The only real difference is that Holmes solves his problem on his own, while Watson needs Holmes to figure out the solution to his dilemma for him.

But aside from that and a couple of minor silly incidents, all Watson really does is act as a sounding board for Holmes. Some people may interpret this as his being useless, but this is what Holmes used to want in a partner.  Quoth Sherlock Holmes in The Blanched Soldier, “A confederate who foresees your conclusions and course of action is always dangerous, but one to whom each development comes as a perpetual surprise, and to whom the future is always a closed book, is indeed an ideal helpmate.”

This line demonstrates two things: one, wow, Holmes, gush some more why don’t you.  Two, however the characters have evolved in recent years, the original Holmes didn’t want someone like Liu, who ends up becoming proficient enough to start her own detective agency.  He wanted someone more like Bruce, who didn’t have nearly the same capacity for deductive reasoning but who had the curiosity and inquisitiveness to make, according to Canon Holmes, “an ideal helpmate.”

There are plenty of the original stories in which Watson does little more than narrate—in The Beryl Coronet, for example, I’m pretty sure that the only thing Watson really does is point out their future client in the street.  I think we’ve gotten so used to Watson being an action hero or a detective in his (or her) own right that we forget his original primary role was as the storyteller.  (That is literally where the nickname Boswell comes from.)  Being most definitively a sidekick doesn’t make Nigel Bruce useless or stupid; it means he’s fulfilling the role originally set out for his character.

The comedy relief business is, of course, largely an invention of the Rathbone/Bruce films.  But honestly, I think the problem with Bruce’s Watson isn’t so much him as it is the filmmakers’ obsession with building up Holmes to be inhumanly perfect.  The Spider Woman has a perfect example of this: there’s one scene that adapts that bit from The Devil’s Foot where Holmes and Watson are almost killed by poisonous gas and Watson has to save them both.  Here, however, it’s Holmes who does the rescuing, because of course he does.  Can’t have Watson grabbing any glory, now can we?

In fact, basically everyone who isn’t Holmes—and arguably Moriarty, though he sure did fall hard for the Brer Rabbit routine in The Secret Weapon, to say nothing of his ignoble demise in The Woman in Green—is depicted as a little lacking in the brain department. Lestrade and company are dim enough that Watson frequently calls them out for being boneheads.  Holmes’ clients almost inevitably doubt Holmes’ abilities despite his great reputation, and Watson just loves rubbing their noses in how smart Holmes really is.

(That’s another thing people seem to dislike about Nigel Bruce for some reason.  I’ve heard complaints about how he’s a suck-up who mindlessly admires Holmes despite how rude Holmes is to him.  Again, this is an oversimplification.  I already covered this in Sink or Ship, so I won’t belabor the point here, but I view Watson’s admiring comments less like sucking up and more like pride in his friend and his work.  Not only that, Watson doesn’t always passively accept impoliteness.  He flat out tells Holmes to stop being cranky in The Secret Weapon, and he gets quite huffy when he thinks Holmes is trying to make a fool of him in Terror by Night.  Plus, Bruce is not even the only Watson to have stars in his eyes every time he looks at Holmes—Burke in particular puts up with quite a lot [see The Solitary Cyclist for a great example], and he starts looking murdery whenever someone fails to recognize his brilliant detective buddy.)

It’s fashionable nowadays to make Watson almost as smart as Holmes, which only amplifies the perceived stupidity of Nigel Bruce’s Watson.  But in the original stories, Watson isn’t a deducing genius.  That’s the whole point.  He is basically the reader stand-in, the average Joe thrust into Holmes’ world and continually dazzled by it (and him).  Now if you prefer the more current trends, that’s one thing.  But to condemn Bruce for not magically predicting and following said trends is about as fair as criticizing Adam West’s Batman for not being serious enough, completely ignoring the fact that at the time Batman was less “I Am The Night” and more “Robin got temporary amnesia and super-strength from a bolt of lightning and now wants to fight Batman because a white guy pretending to be a native told him to.”

Would I lie to you about a thing like that?

And it’s not as though Bruce is the only Watson who bungles things.  During Solomin’s tenure as the good doctor, he got whacked in the head when trying to sleuth on his own, got his dirty footprints all over Charles Augustus Milverton’s house (which Holmes then forced him to clean up), and completely and hilariously failed to disguise himself as a priest.  That’s saying nothing of the first half of the pilot, where Watson assumes Holmes is a criminal mastermind and conducts his own wildly misguided, eminently goofy investigation that culminates in Holmes knocking him out during a boxing match.  And yet no one ever accuses Solomin of being a bumbler (not that they should).  I’m not sure why people are willing to excuse him and not Bruce.  Is it because Solomin is young and cute?

Maybe it’s because his dumbassery led to the infamous Cuddling in the Carriage scene.

Or maybe everyone’s problem is not just Bruce himself, but the fact that his performance had such a major influence on Watsons everywhere for literal decades.  In the 1950s Sherlock Holmes TV show, Marion-Crawford’s Watson clearly borrows a lot from Bruce in terms of turning the comedy relief aspect up to eleven.  (I would argue Marion-Crawford is actually worse in this regard.)  Dr. Dawson in The Great Mouse Detective physically resembles Bruce, as does Ric Spiegal in those Wishbone episodes, even though both of them were supposed to be adapting books and shouldn’t have had anything to do with the Rathbone/Bruce films.  I guess some folks got resentful that Bruce Watson was overshadowing Canon Watson?

But it’s important to remember here that Nigel Bruce was one of the first film Watsons with any discernible personality traits.  If you’ve seen any of the Sherlock Holmes silent films, you know what I mean.  If not, you haven’t heard of any of their Watsons for good reason.

To start with, Watson doesn’t even appear in 1900’s Sherlock Holmes Baffled (which is only a minute long) or in 1912’s The Copper Beeches (which is so ridiculous that I may have to give it its own post).  Then came Hubert Willis in the Eille Norwood series of early ‘20s shorts.  They’re rather hyper-focused on the casework here, so no one gets any characterization (at least not in the two I’ve seen). And Roland Young in 1922’s Sherlock Holmes was onscreen for maybe 10 minutes and did almost nothing.  I didn’t even remember he was in the dang movie until I recently rewatched it for Sink or Ship.

This is his only conversation with Holmes in like the whole movie.  So much for being intimate companions.

And I’m sure there are other examples.  So even if you don’t necessarily like what Bruce did (and/or was told to do) with the character, he some deserves respect for effort and originality. I also think it’s a little unfair that people keep dinging him for not being A+ perfect at doing something no one else (with the possible exception of Ian Fleming in the Wontner films) had ever tried before, i.e. making Screen Watson interesting. Dude didn’t become The Watson for no reason, after all.

To conclude this post, we can return to my Batman analogy.  I feel like modern public attitude towards Nigel Bruce is comparable to how some people get all upset about Adam West because that’s not the real Batman!  The real Batman is grim and gritty and for ADULTS, not some Batusi-dancing weirdo! No joke: the first time I went to a comic book shop, the guy who worked there said that Adam West—my first Batman, the guy who got me into superheroes and therefore the main reason I was in that shop in the first place—wasn’t a real Batman.

Needless to say, I have little use for snobbery in any fandom.  So I am going to say now about Nigel Bruce what I should have said then about Adam West: if you don’t like the goofy version, don’t watch the goofy version.  There are literally hundreds of versions of this character out there; not every single one is going to cater to your tastes, nor should they.  This fact should not detract from your enjoyment of the versions you do like, and it doesn’t make the versions you dislike less legit.  The old has at least as much basis in canon as the new, and even if it’s parts of canon you’d rather ignore, other people feel differently, so don’t be a jerkweed about it.

But before you make up your mind about Nigel Bruce, maybe take a sec and give him another chance.  “Stupid Watson” is a reductive label that focuses only on the worst the Rathbone films had to offer and does not give due credit to a genuinely groundbreaking character with more depth than I’ve ever seen anyone acknowledge.  Do some of the movies portray him better than others?  Sure, but you can say that of every episodic Sherlock Holmes adaptation.  For the most part, it’s not nearly as bad as people seem to think.  And even when it is that bad, it’s still a combination of canon compliance and original character development that was entirely unique at the time and that deserves to be looked upon with, if nothing else, gratitude for paving the way for interesting Watsons everywhere.

[ramblesandmumblesofanerd]

Rambling Reviews: Sherlock Hound

Warning: Lengthy Post Which Contains Minor Spoilers

When people are reminded of the name Hayao Miyazaki, one tends to remember his career in cinematic Japanese animations. This man has quite a lengthy resume of films, including Ponyo, Porco Roso, Nausica, The Cat Returns, Howl’s Moving Castle, Princess Mononoke, and my all time favorite of his films Spirited Away. But beneath the piles of films that have made their way to the US, there is one lesser known project Miyazaki worked on that I have come to enjoy immensely. From 1984, created from the combined efforts of Hayao Miyazaki and Kyouske Mikuriya, I present to you the Italian-Japanese animated series “Sherlock Hound”.

Now, from the title alone, this sounds like a silly idea. I mean, come on, it is literally Sherlock Holmes, the iconic detective of nineteenth century London made by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as a dog. It sounds like it is going to be a silly cartoon with tons of elements to appeal to kids. And to be fair, you wouldn’t be blamed for thinking so, but you would be only partially right. While it is true that this series does feature a cast of anthropomorphic characters, all of whom are some breed of dog, it is surprisingly not that distracting and doesn’t take center stage. They don’t have Sherlock sniffing the ground for clues like a dog normally would, but they do utilize his heightened sense of smell whenever the story requires it. They have legitimate mysteries in each episode, but they also have goofy bad guys with gadgets. The characters use actual guns with actual bullets, but no one gets hurt. So, what I’m saying is while this show does have a child friendly concept with colorful imagery, it finds a way to balance things out by having more mature elements like thought provoking mysteries and memorable characters.

Speaking of, let’s get acquainted with those characters, shall we? We first have the titular Sherlock Hound, voiced by Larry Moss (the Elder from “Happy Feet”). Unlike his human counterpart from BBC’s Sherlock, Hound is a bit more warm and caring in spite of his eccentricities. He enjoys the company of his friends and colleagues, such as the headstrong Doctor Watson (voiced by the late Lewis Arquette) and the sweet Mrs. Marie Hudson (voiced by Patricia Paris, aka Kanga from Winnie the Pooh), and can even tolerate children, playing along with most of their games. Also, you won’t find him in his a depressed demeanor, unlike his namesake, nor will you find him partaking in drugs unless you count the tobacco pipe constantly in his mouth. However, in spite of these changes, he remains the ever dedicated detective capable of solving any mystery that comes his way either by the request of the bumbling Detective Inspector Lestrade (voiced again by Lewis Arquette) or by sheer chance.

But every Sherlock cannot function for long without their personal Moriarty, the criminal who discovered personal freedom by rejecting societal norms. But how does Sherlock Hound handle the iconic villain? Well, I will say that if you are looking for a Victorian criminal mastermind, you will not find him here, sadly. What you will find, however, is an amusing if not cheesy display made by the late Hamilton Camp, a veteran voice actor/songwriter/composer. Clad in an all white get up consisting of a three piece suit, cape, top hat, cane and monocle, he is the epitome of campy bad guys, proclaiming his genius at the beginning of every episode only to be defeated in a variety of embarrassing ways. With the questionable help of his bumbling henchmen Smiley and Todd (voiced by Larry Moss and Lewis Arquette again), he plans to steal whatever riches he can get his gloved hands on through the power of gadgets and trickery. I do have to admit, this is an amusing interpretation of the character, in spite of him being a polar opposite of his original counterpart. He is always so sure of himself, and, to be fair, he is quite brilliant in his brand of villainy as he does get away with a lot of crimes right from under the nose of the inept Scotland Yard until Sherlock Hound inevitably corners him.

Which reminds me, there is one aspect of the show that might seem formulaic at first glance. Most of the episodes seem to follow a similar flow of events: Moriarty commits a crime, Scotland Yard is too incompetent to catch him, Sherlock follows the clues to the inevitable encounter between him and the villain, and a defeated Moriarty runs away with Scotland Yard at his tail. While this may seem a tad repetitive, the real content comes from the mystery and build-up to it’s conclusion. Each mystery is different, with some not even having Moriarty as the main villain (though these episodes are admittedly somewhat rare). My two favorite episodes which break the conventional mold are “Mrs. Hudson is Taken Hostage”, which features Moriarty obviously taking Sherlock’s housekeeper as leverage, and “The Bell of Big Ben”, a Moriarty focused episode featuring the Professor trying to prove to all of London that he has indeed stolen the bell straight from the iconic clock-tower. Sure some pieces of the formula are still present, but the occasional divergence certainly livens up the show from time to time.

But a cartoon is nothing without cohesive, proper animation, and Sherlock Hound is no exception. I must say that the animation done by Tokyo Movie Shinsha is pretty well done for the time Sherlock Hound was released. The characters are colorful, yet the palette is not so bright that the audience is blinded. The animation feels solid and less rubbery than most modern day cartoons. The backgrounds range from lush and warm to dark and terrifying whenever the story demands it. The only nitpicky complaint I would have to make would be the sometimes dodgy lip-syncing seen in the English Dub. Sometimes random noises will come out of character’s mouth when there was undoubtedly dialogue in the original Japanese Dub, but I’m willing to overlook this due to the time when this anime was dubbed.

Speaking of which, how is the dub? Well...it’s hit and miss to me personally. While I do enjoy the voice acting of the main characters, a lot of the background characters sound a tad awkward, and I believe I know the reason why. Sadly, it seems that the studio only had a few voice actors, and thus numerous background characters will have the same voice actor as Sherlock or Moriarty. While this is not too much of a problem for characters like Todd and Smiley (again voiced by Sherlock and Watson’s voice actors), other minor characters have voices that are too similar to the main cast to ignore. However, I feel that the sheer campiness of the dialogue, especially from Moriarty, makes up for this admittedly minuscule complaint. There is also the fact that the equipment used to record all of the voice acting at the time pales in comparison to modern day technology, but this doesn’t bother me too much personally either.

All in all, as a fan of Sherlock Holmes and anime, I cannot recommend this show enough. While some features may feel a tad dated in comparison to modern day cartoons, the antiquity actually helps in making this show feel like a genuinely unique viewing experience. The basic premise of Sherlock Holmes as a dog goes from being a silly idea to a well executed concept within the first episode. The characters are fun to watch, the villain is riot, the mysteries (while not complex) are amusing, the animation is spot on for the time period, and the voice acting is, for the most part, passably enjoyable. If you want to watch Sherlock Hound, you can watch it for free at the TMS Entertainment YouTube channel (though, for some reason, the episodes are out of order, as you can see on the official Wikipedia page).

But in the meantime, never stop rambling, TM

Thanks to @sherlysthougths, a massive fan of Sherlock Holmes, for introducing me to this show.

Reblogs are always appreciated. YouTube version: Yet to be made.