Yeah, Conan Doyle's Holmes sometimes gets impatient with Watson and says things like "You see, but you do not observe" when Watson fails to realize what allegedly obvious significant deduction his friend has just come up with. But he generally behaves much less inconsiderately and exploitatively toward him than BBC Sherlock does to his Watson or House does to Wilson.
On the other hand, Conan Doyle's Holmes is consistently rude and insulting to recurring supporting character Inspector Lestrade, whom he openly regards as an idiot. (As a result, I was pleasantly surprised at the mutually respectful relationship between Holmes and Captain(?) Gregson--who I think has the same last name as another Scotland Yard detective Holmes worked with less acrimoniously in some of the later Conan Doyle stories--on "Elementary.") To be fair, after having Holmes solve cases he was clueless about multiple times, Lestrade (who only calls in the consulting detective because his superior officers keep ordering him to) is still mouthing off to the guy's face about how convinced he is that Holmes is just a charlatan with improbably good luck. So Holmes does have a certain amount of provocation.
Holmes is portrayed as somewhat arrogant and less than impeccably polite--especially toward people whom he finds stupid or obstructive--to some degree in just about every version I've seen. However, the idea of Watson specifically as some kind of not-terribly-bright doormat was reportedly introduced at some point in the Basil Rathbone (Holmes)/Nigel Bruce (Watson) series of Sherlock Holmes Hollywood movies. The only one of these I'm sure I saw is "The Hound of the Baskervilles," and I don't recall noticing this tendency in that. But it's been literally decades since I last saw it, and I think the producers supposedly made Watson more of a dopey comic relief character in the later Rathbone movies anyway. So it's possible that Sherlock's asshole tendencies started to be emphasized more as a corollary of that.
Or it might be something that became a major theme in various movies, etc., satirizing Holmes, like the 1960's or '70's one whose title I forget in which the premise was that Watson was the real deductive genius, but he'd hired an actor to front for him as Holmes so people would pester or threaten the actor instead of him. Unfortunately, the actor was an egomaniac who soon became convinced that he actually was the world's greatest detective (Sherlock, not Batman) and went around acting like a condescending jerk to everyone else, including Watson, as a result.
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Re: My dear Watson, I owe you a thousand apologies!
Sat, Dec. 1st, 2012 01:52 pm (UTC)On the other hand, Conan Doyle's Holmes is consistently rude and insulting to recurring supporting character Inspector Lestrade, whom he openly regards as an idiot. (As a result, I was pleasantly surprised at the mutually respectful relationship between Holmes and Captain(?) Gregson--who I think has the same last name as another Scotland Yard detective Holmes worked with less acrimoniously in some of the later Conan Doyle stories--on "Elementary.") To be fair, after having Holmes solve cases he was clueless about multiple times, Lestrade (who only calls in the consulting detective because his superior officers keep ordering him to) is still mouthing off to the guy's face about how convinced he is that Holmes is just a charlatan with improbably good luck. So Holmes does have a certain amount of provocation.
Holmes is portrayed as somewhat arrogant and less than impeccably polite--especially toward people whom he finds stupid or obstructive--to some degree in just about every version I've seen. However, the idea of Watson specifically as some kind of not-terribly-bright doormat was reportedly introduced at some point in the Basil Rathbone (Holmes)/Nigel Bruce (Watson) series of Sherlock Holmes Hollywood movies. The only one of these I'm sure I saw is "The Hound of the Baskervilles," and I don't recall noticing this tendency in that. But it's been literally decades since I last saw it, and I think the producers supposedly made Watson more of a dopey comic relief character in the later Rathbone movies anyway. So it's possible that Sherlock's asshole tendencies started to be emphasized more as a corollary of that.
Or it might be something that became a major theme in various movies, etc., satirizing Holmes, like the 1960's or '70's one whose title I forget in which the premise was that Watson was the real deductive genius, but he'd hired an actor to front for him as Holmes so people would pester or threaten the actor instead of him. Unfortunately, the actor was an egomaniac who soon became convinced that he actually was the world's greatest detective (Sherlock, not Batman) and went around acting like a condescending jerk to everyone else, including Watson, as a result.
Marfisa