NOTE: this post is riddled with MAJOR spoilers, so please don’t read on if you haven’t seen A Scandal in Belgravia, the first episode of BBC1′s three-part Sherlock (2012) yet.

After an intense task of translating a dialogue- and monologue-heavy 24-page comic for VMedia, I decided to watch the second series of Sherlock to wind down. There are three 90-minute episodes in this series, just like the first series.

For what it’s worth, regarding the first series, I liked A Study in Pink (first episode) and The Great Game (third), but not The Blind Banker (second episode). Happily, most reviews agree that The Blind Banker is the weakest, but there’s still an ongoing debate on what makes it so weak. For me, it’s lazy plotting and stereotypical portrayal of Chinese characters that did it in.

To be honest, I was surprised at Sherlock creators and writers Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat - as they’re usually quite good in portraying diversity – until I learnt it was actually Stephen Thompson who penned The Blind Banker. This explains so much. I know I’m breaking a rule here, but he’s truly a mediocre scriptwriter with all his sensibilities still stuck back in the 1970s. Moving on.

The second series consists A Scandal in Belgravia, The Hounds of the Baskerville and The Reichenbach Fall (written by Thompson and surprise surprise, it’s rather crap.).

I want to focus on the first episode, though. I’m talking about A Scandal in Belgravia, a loose and contemporary adaptation of A Scandal in Bohemia. Particularly Gatiss and Moffat’s portrayal of Irene Adler.

I enjoyed the episode. A lot. There are however some aspects that discomforted me quite a bit. Basically, their portrayal of Adler left me feeling an unhappy bunny. Here’s a quick run down of my issues with their portrayal.

1. Irene Adler is American and they turned her into an Englishwoman. 

Creators say they thought British actress – Lara Pulver - was the best choice, so they chose to change the nationality. No biggie, really, but I think it’s reduced the impact of how Sherlock came to view her.

English people were snobbish and rather arrogant, to the point where they saw all non-English people as their inferiors in almost all respects. So to have Sherlock admitting that Adler – an American – had outfoxed him was a huge thing to readers at the time. “What? An American woman has bested an Englishman? And he’s acknowledging that? Oh, my. This Adler woman must be that clever if she could outwit our Sherlock.”

I still think that would work today.

2. She works as an opera singer and they turned her into a high-class dominatrix 

I’m still on the fence with this one. Perhaps writers thought that the best way to show how her job was seen in Conan Doyle’s time, they turned her into a high-class dominatrix.

In the old days — stage actresses, early film actresses, music hall singers and entertainers, and opera singers were generally seen as prostitutes because of the whole patron thing. Of course, and the infamous casting couch. Working in entertainment isn’t so scandalous nowadays (even though there is still contempt for actresses, especially high-profiled attractive ones), hence writers’ decision to make Adler a working dominatrix.

However, I felt it didn’t quite work. Instead of shocking us with her profession and giving us an eventual understanding of how amazing she is to overcome the contempt for her profession to get to where she is now, it’d only portrayed her as an amoral sexual being that even Sherlock – who’s portrayed as asexual – couldn’t resist.

I think I’m also uncomfortable with the idea that the modern Adler’s success and power came from an exclusive sexual practice than from her talents, e.g. her singing, social and diplomatic skills. I wouldn’t be surprised if the original Adler did use her body now and then, but it’s always been her other skills that really got her to where she was.

Yeah, I think that’s the bottom line: I didn’t like the fact that they turned her into a pure sexual being.

There’s nothing wrong with being that, but I think I would have liked it if they had shown she was much more than that.

3. They turned her into a thrill-seeking lesbian who caters to the rich and the powerful, and – this kills me – falls in love with Sherlock. 

Oh, right! Sherlock is so fucking brilliant that even a lesbian falls for him! That’s how awesome Sherlock is(!)

The fuck? Sherlock in the stories admires, respects and acknowledges Adler as his equal, which at the time was the highest possible a compliment he could pay. It’d be so fantastic if the writers had turned it round and make it that she’s the one who admires, respects and acknowledges him as her equal.

Surely this is better than taking her down the ‘omg, Sherlock is so awesome that I want to fuck him on his desk and make him beg for mercy twice, even though I’m a lesbian!” route? I think this just enforces a tired old belief that all a lesbian needs is the right man if not a good roger from a man who knows how to fuck. This really annoys me.

I don’t think I would mind so much if they had made her heterosexual or bisexual, though. I just don’t understand their decision to make her a lesbian if they intended to make her fall for Sherlock. It’s crass. Yeah, yeah – I know all about how some lesbians fell for men, but it’s not that common nor is it the same. It’s no different from some gay men falling for women and blah blah blah.

But lesbian characters in peak-time TV drama and mainstream cinema are a rarity.

They are usually portrayed as one of these two types:

a) women with a lot of personal issues, heavy emotional baggage and a degree of neediness. They tend to be on the edge of breaking up with their partners. They might have a little child or two children. They are overworked, underpaid and “aggressive”, and usually work in a public service field – social worker, fire-fighter, police officer, government employee, etc. – or a medical field. Occasionally, in a legal field. They tend to be in interracial relationships, too. LGBT and POC! -> two birds with one stone, see?

b) villainous lesbians with sadomasochistic tendencies and a willingness to seduce men to get their way. And they always fall for male protagonists. Pussy Galore, anyone? To jog your memory, Pussy Galore is a lesbian – who has black hair, “exotically dusky-skinned body” and violet-blue eyes, but a blue-eyed blonde in the film version – with a long string of female lovers, she still falls for James Bond, the only man she’s allowed to shag her (she hasn’t had sex with a man since her father or uncle raped her when she was a young girl).

Guess which camp Sherlock writers put Adler in. Right. B)

I wasn’t bothered that they had portrayed Sherlock as asexual and aromantic and yet made him to fall for Adler as well. Only because Sherlock hadn’t labelled himself as anything. It’s always the others who tried to label him – gay, virgin, cold, asexual, etc. – and he’d never acknowledged those labels directly.

Whereas with Adler? She did tell Watson she was a lesbian. Hence my annoyance with the direction they took.

4. She’s pretty much Sherlock’s counterpart and she wasn’t quite that in this episode

In the stories, she’s cool, aloof, mildly amused and rather detached. They did make the modern Adler this way, which thrilled me. But the last half hour? Gah.

5. She’s the only one in Sherlock’s entire career who had managed to foil him and successfully avoided being captured. In this episode, Sherlock helped her out twice, won the game, had her captured, got her showing emotions and saved her soon-to-be-beheaded arse. 

I still can’t even wrap my head around this. Why would they do this? Why did they cut her legs off like this? I need a cuppa and a moment to get over the shock.

Yeah, writers thought it was clever to show she had fooled everyone that she died again, but she didn’t achieve this without Sherlock’s help. Both times, actually! It was always Adler alone in the stories, but in this episode, Sherlock was her rescuer in almost every way possible.

6. She’s always fully clothed, but in this episode, she was naked, skimpily dressed, in a dressing gown (three different ones including Sherlock’s own) or in fuck-me outfits in 99.9% of her screen appearance. The 00.1% had her in a black outfit with a hijab.

Gah. I couldn’t help but laugh when I saw her in that black outfit with a hijab. Oh, look! A quick dig at blood-thirsty Islamic fundamentalists!

7. In the story, Irene’s been portrayed as a very clever woman who knows how to plan, scheme and outfox the best including Sherlock himself, but in this episode? The modern Irene’s planning wasn’t hers all along. It was a certain villain who did all the thinking.

My head exploded at this revelation. I don’t mind admitting that I actually shouted “Fuck that!” at the screen. I rarely swear in my own house, but I couldn’t stop myself from swearing at the screen. I felt they were saying that Adler was basically a sexual being who allowed a certain villain to use her as a weapon against Sherlock.

I actually don’t remember why she agreed to do this, which shows a lot. I think I would have liked it more if writers chose to let her saying that she used the certain villain to get what she wanted. I do see Adler as a person who likes to be in control, so I think I was bothered by writers’ suggestion that in this episode, Adler was only showing to be in control when all along, she was just a puppet who ultimately got a bit out of her depth that she had Sherlock saving her.

It’s interesting to note that throughout the episode, Adler repeatedly used certain words to stress the vulnerability of her position, e.g. protection (“That’s my protection”, “She’s in a witness protection scheme”, “I need your protection”, etc.) and need. And her hair! Every time they needed her to look vulnerable, her hair was down and her body in a dressing gown.

It felt as if she was a villain who somehow became a damsel in distress.  So yeah, I’m disappointed in Gatiss and Moffat for erasing everything that makes Adler so memorable and special.

The Original Irene Adler and the Modern Irene Alder – who’s stronger, cleverer, more independent, more special and a force of life?

The Original Irene Adler. All the way. Even though she’d made her first appearance in 1891.

Oh, the irony.

And in this episode, Adler wasn’t the shiniest spanner in a box. None of them were, I think. Her life depended on this certain device, right? Sorry, but what stopped her from duplicating copies and putting them at various secret locations around the world? That’s what I would do. And the moment this device falls into a wrong pair of hands, I’d use a remote to explode it and then use a different copy to keep me alive.

I wouldn’t have all in one place, either. Not something so vulnerable like that device. I would ‘break’ a collective of info apart and put pieces all over the world, in real life or online. And the only person who knows where all those are would be me. I’d arrange it so that if I was killed, the info at all those locations would be released to the public at same time. So they would need me to stay alive. I’d still worry because of a possibility I’d be tortured for the details of those locations. That would be my motive for going to Sherlock. That makes much more sense than this device.

OK, it’s a MacGuffin, but even so.

Heh! Technology has to be both a blessing and a curse for writers. I feel sorry for them. I mean, when your character is trapped in a high-rise building with a killer prowling around looking for you, you know that everyone will say to the character: “Use your mobile phone to call for help, silly!”

What should you do to make it so that your character can’t use the phone? Flat battery? It’s been done many times! Shattered when he dropped it earlier? What a cheap phone! Left it in his car or on work desk? Who would go anywhere without their mobile phone these days? And on it goes. You have to think of a way that readers or viewers can’t predict or expect.

Authors and scriptwriters 20 years ago didn’t have to think about details like this, did they? Poor souls, those authors and scriptwriters today.