There are Sherlockian obsessions, and then there are Sherlockian obsessions.
We have our collectors, of course. We have our chronologists, as well. We have the diehard fans of Mister Jeremy Brett. We have those who hold tight to the notion that Mycroft Holmes and G. Lestrade were sweet on each other. And then we have that most niche obsession of all: someone who won’t let go of the greatest Sherlock Holmes movie of 2018, Holmes and Watson.
You may have forgotten that Will Ferrell vehicle existed by now, either on purpose or just because you never bothered to see it. And you might be happy with that. But to the truly obsessed fan of Holmes and Watson, the obsession never ends.
Someone out there may have been watching Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story on Netflix, looking at Lizzie’s mother Abby, played with such vexation by Rebecca Hall, and going “HEY! That’s Doctor Watson’s American lover!” The mind whirls and takes Abby Borden’s death date of August 4, 1892 into a Watsonian timeline, and goes, “Hmm. That could work . . .”
Yes, John Watson had an American lover played by Rebecca Hall in Holmes & Watson.
But the obsession doesn’t stop there.
Our theoretical obsessed fan out there could also have been watching Stuart Fails To Save The Universe on HBO Max and seen actress and comedian Lauren Lapkus as one of the dimension-hopping quartet whose very beings change as they go from reality to reality. Would it be that far-fetched to say her character of Denise wound up named Millicent and having been raised-by-feral-cats in a universe that looked a lot like the one in Holmes & Watson.
(Oh, by the way Irene Adler fans and Johnlock shippers, Millicent is Sherlock Holmes’s one true love. Watch better movies, heathen.)
Wow. I don’t know where that parenthetical came from. I’m just speaking of some hypothetical, theoretical, possibly heretical fan of the movie Holmes & Watson here.
I mean, a person like that could watch about any TV show and just come up with some way that it ties into their obsession. Just pick one at random, like the current HBO Sunday night mainstay Lanterns. Set in Superman’s comic book universe, where the Green Lantern is one of his fellow superheroes, surely that can’t be . . .
THE SHERIFF IS MRS. HUDSON.
Noooo, the sheriff of Rushville, Nebraska, a woman that came from Gotham City and has the same last name as Batwoman, can’t be Mrs. Hudson.
Unless, of course, she was living in a town where aliens seem to have human duplication abilities and the character looks a lot like Kelly Macdonald who was not just Mrs. Hudson, but Professor Moriarty’s daughter who was seemingly exploded, just like one of the aliens was seemingly exploded in Lanterns. And the show’s final episode hasn’t run yet, so she could be an incredibly long-lived alien who was both landlady to Sherlock Holmes and sheriff to Rushville, Nebraska.
And that’s just one week of television in the life of one theoretical fan of the movie Holmes & Watson. If you’ve somehow never watched it, this could be you one day. We’ve long had those folks among us that followed the actors and actresses from Basil Rathbone’s movie series into other roles. Did they start creating fanfiction premises that verged on becoming their headcanon? (And if they did, would they have known what “fanfiction” or “headcanon” even meant?) Such obsessions have been a part of Sherlockiana as long as there has been Sherlockiana, so you just never know.
There’s a line in “Copper Beeches” about Jephro Rucastle hiring Violet Hunter “in order to get rid of the disagreeable persistence of Mr. Fowler.” Rucastle’s ploy fails, because Mr. Fowler is kind, generous, persevering, and, above all that, a man in love. Fowler is the spirit animal of those of us that find ourselves in love with the most niche of Sherlockian obsessions. And like Fowler did with Mrs. Toller, the dedicated obsessionist will always hope “in convincing you that your interests were the same as his.”
Maybe not so much that you’d have someone in your family name a new baby “Jack Riley” after the actor who played one of the newskids in the movie Holmes & Watson. Because that would just be crazy if that somehow happened the same week as a theoretical obsessed fan watched all of those TV shows in a universe that’s totally NOT a simulation. But still . . .
Do the Baker Street Irregulars have a Section 8 discharge available to them? Asking for a friend.
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