What Geek Media Do You Refuse To Partake In?

[cbwjm]

I haven't read any of the original Holmes books, but in all the media I have seen, he comes across as a bit of a dick.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Um, Actually... They sent him to jail for the car crash. The mental hospital was the season before, IIRC. But, yes, the series was spiraling hard by then. At least Lin Manuel Miranda and Andre Braugher made the mental hospital episodes entertaining.

Oh yeah that was season 6. Basically they should have skipped most of S6 and S7 and certainly should have ended the show on the car crash. S8 was totally pointless.

I disagree re entertaining, Braugher and Miranda tried but only S8 dragged harder than the mental hospital one (which I see now is S6).

 

[Thomas Shey]

I haven't read any of the original Holmes books, but in all the media I have seen, he comes across as a bit of a dick.

Modern media depictions of Holmes tend to emphasize his more abrasive traits for whatever reason.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Quite true, but House doesn’t even work as a homage to Holmes. Holmes is generally courteous, thoughtful, empathic, and kind, especially to his clients, especially for someone with a regular cocaine habit - he only tends to be impatient and sarcastic with pompous fools, especially people who think they know better than he does, and occasionally with Watson when he’s holding the idiot ball for longer than usual. House is condescending and self-destructively hostile to almost everyone, which is quite unlike Holmes and far from ideal for any doctor.

Holmes in the original stories is most assuredly not courteous, empathic and kind as a rule - at times he is all of those things, re selected people and situations, but he is frequently none of them and it's not always towards people who deserve it, indeed his treatment of Watson is downright shoddy.

Further I think at this point we must accept Conan Doyle was not hugely consistent in his portrayal of Holmes and at this point, the character has been used by so many other writers across so many mediums that "Sherlock Holmes" has become a composite concept, almost a palimpsest, and his level of brusqueness, contempt and decency is highly variable. As is the Watson figure's capability and intelligence. So I think he works fine unless you're a purist, in which case most Sherlock Holmes based media is out.

As for "far from ideal for any doctor", obviously but have you met doctors? I would say a full 20% of doctors (GPs, specialists, etc) I have met have personalities and behaviours very unideal for their profession, whether they're rude/contemptuous, sexist, racist, bullies, incapable of listening, totally tactless, dismissive of serious issues, or all of the above and more. I would say fewer doctors have the mein of a saint than a jerk (though the saints do exist!). Obviously House is towards the worse end, but he's not as badly behaved as you can be and still have a job as a doctor, at least on the earlier seasons. The later ones push credulity a tad. He is at least typically interested in solving problems which makes him better than some percentage of doctors.

 

[Reynard]

Modern media depictions of Holmes tend to emphasize his more abrasive traits for whatever reason.

Probably because they are his only real character traits. The original stories are interesting mysteries but Holmes is essentially a cypher in them.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Probably because they are his only real character traits. The original stories are interesting mysteries but Holmes is essentially a cypher in them.

I don't think that's entirely true, but I can see him coming across as a pretty flat character if his abrasiveness was downplayed.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Holmes in the original stories is most assuredly not courteous, empathic and kind as a rule - at times he is all of those things, re selected people and situations, but he is frequently none of them and it's not always towards people who deserve it, indeed his treatment of Watson is downright shoddy.

I've commented that the most recent media versions of Holmes I've seen generally have him treat Watson better than the stories do (of course those versions also treated Watson himself with more respect and as more capable than Doyle sometimes did).

Further I think at this point we must accept Conan Doyle was not hugely consistent in his portrayal of Holmes and at this point, the character has been used by so many other writers across so many mediums that "Sherlock Holmes" has become a composite concept, almost a palimpsest, and his level of brusqueness, contempt and decency is highly variable. As is the Watson figure's capability and intelligence. So I think he works fine unless you're a purist, in which case most Sherlock Holmes based media is out.

Yeah, that's all probably fair. Modern depictions of Holmes are likely influenced as much or more by older--but still modern--media depictions as by the stories themselves.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Probably because they are his only real character traits. The original stories are interesting mysteries but Holmes is essentially a cypher in them.

Yeah I think this combined with a general late 2000s-era fad for "he's a jerk but he's right!" characters who were curiously almost always about well-educated white men about the same age as their showrunners (I wonder why) and a slightly earlier and less awful trend of "flawed detective" characters (who were more diverse), which might trace back to things like Homicide: Life on the Street (the TV series being fiction based on true crime, I note) and NYPD Blue, but really goes back further.

Honestly I think the worst of them was the BBC Sherlock in many ways because it was one of the most perfect cases of writers having near total contempt for their fans and also of people trying to write genius problem solving but who were totally disinterested in actually doing that. However I will leave that argument to Hbomberguy, who can explicate it infinitely better than me.

 

[jian]

Holmes in the original stories is most assuredly not courteous, empathic and kind as a rule - at times he is all of those things, re selected people and situations, but he is frequently none of them and it's not always towards people who deserve it, indeed his treatment of Watson is downright shoddy.

Further I think at this point we must accept Conan Doyle was not hugely consistent in his portrayal of Holmes and at this point, the character has been used by so many other writers across so many mediums that "Sherlock Holmes" has become a composite concept, almost a palimpsest, and his level of brusqueness, contempt and decency is highly variable. As is the Watson figure's capability and intelligence. So I think he works fine unless you're a purist, in which case most Sherlock Holmes based media is out.

As for "far from ideal for any doctor", obviously but have you met doctors? I would say a full 20% of doctors (GPs, specialists, etc) I have met have personalities and behaviours very unideal for their profession, whether they're rude/contemptuous, sexist, racist, bullies, incapable of listening, totally tactless, dismissive of serious issues, or all of the above and more. I would say fewer doctors have the mein of a saint than a jerk (though the saints do exist!). Obviously House is towards the worse end, but he's not as badly behaved as you can be and still have a job as a doctor, at least on the earlier seasons. The later ones push credulity a tad. He is at least typically interested in solving problems which makes him better than some percentage of doctors.

I have indeed met hundreds of doctors, being one myself, but have not met them often as a patient (half a dozen times, maybe) and have sat in on hundreds of GP consultations in my training and afterwards. Most doctors do their best in the short time they have with a patient and try not to be any of the things you describe, but sometimes fail.

(Full disclosure - I’m U.K. trained and have been a doctor for 23 years and a GP for 17 years. I’ve worked as a GP in England, NZ, and Canada.)

UK GPs especially have had dozens of hours of training in building rapport, non-confrontation, cultural communication, and other elements of consultation and communication - more so than most other specialities - and yes, it doesn’t always take or work, and especially these days doctors are often very stressed and pressed for time.

Being a patient is often awful enough without the doctor making it worse - you can feel helpless, put on the spot, unable to articulate what you exactly want or need, unable to deal with a system that is entirely non-transparent, and of course you’re in physical and mental pain, and there are usually many other stressors such as being at risk of losing your job because of taking time off work. A well trained doctor should know all that and at least know what the basic bounds of professional behaviour are. I’m very sorry if you’ve dealt with many doctors who haven’t appeared to understand this.

House, from the dozen episodes or so I’ve watched, is quite a bad doctor in a number of ways that frankly offend me professionally, even within the bounds of dramatic license and narrative TV tropes. He’s rude to everyone, including admin staff (which is close to unpardonable* in actual medical circles), and he frequently punches down with patients who know less than him (which is most people) - he humiliates and mocks the people in his clinic regularly for cheap laughs. In doing so, he often fails to elicit actual useful information or build a rapport which means they might actually comply with his treatment plan (which of course is handed down from on high and not explained or mutually agreed, oh no, why would House care what a mere patient thinks?). He’s often nicer and more empathic to the patient of the week - presumably because he spends more time with them - but he still often regards them as a puzzle rather than a person**.

*Seriously, a doctor who is regularly mean to receptionists or secretaries is an effing idiot and can expect to never see their letters sent on time.

**As for doctors being interested in solving problems, they’re always interested in that - that’s what they’re there for - but the question is whether they’re interested in finding out and helping with what the patient’s problem is rather than identifying and solving the clinical puzzle. It’s certainly been hammered into me in my training that my job is to do the former.

 

[Pale Violet Light]

For me, it is LitRPG. Nope. I love Portal Fantasy, and Guardians of the Flame (a portal fantasy where they traveled to the world of the game they played) was foundational for me since I discovered it as a (way to young for the subject matter) kid. But I have exactly no interest in LitRPG or "isekai" (sp?) stories of people in their games with characters talking about spell slots and health bars or whatever.

Pretty much the same for me. I don’t mind a show or a book based on an RPG, but I don’t want to see the mechanics.

Isekai is one of my least favourite framing devices for a story. The “visitor from another world” never seems to add much. I understand why they do it - gives a good justification for having an outside perspective - but it doesn’t work for me.