workout 2014-02-14

[piranha]

just finished watching "sherlock", which was absolutely amazing. i don't think i've ever seen a better interpretation, and cumberbatch is an astonishing actor.

it's a mistake to watch "elementary" right afterwards. it's too american. it's too formulaic. it feels a bit like a hipper remake of "monk". it's probably relatively decent compared to most other episodic crime dramas, but i can't appreciate it much after "sherlock".

but i applaud the choice of a woman as the iconic sidekick, and i like that it's a non-caucasian woman to boot. even though i am torn, because the deep friendship between the two men is also something special and rare, in particular as it is played in "sherlock". i seriously, seriously hope they won't make it romantic in "elementary"; i'd hate that.

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40 days: day 30 (week 5)

workout A

Warmup
2x5 bodyweight squat
5:00 min ATG squat

still not sleeping well, but enough so i don't feel totally wiped when i work out.

Standing Barbell Shoulder Press (OHP)
2x10 @ 45 lb
2x8 @ 55 lb
volume: 1780

weird. even the empty bar felt somewhat heavy today. so i kept the working weight low and did a few more reps.

Barbell Deadlift
2x5 @ 105 lb
2x8 @ 145 lb
volume: 3370

was originally gonna up the working weight today, but since OHP felt heavy, decided to keep it and just up the reps by a few. that was no problem.

Rotational Kettlebell Deadlift
2x10 @ 43 lb
volume: 860

no change.

Two-Arm Kettlebell Swing
2x20 @ 28
volume: 1120

no change.

One-Arm Dumbbell Row
6x10 @ 32 lb
volume: 1920

since i'd been easy on the weight with OHP and DL, i decided to leave the dumbbell at its last 5-3-2 weight and do shorter sets again. i don't know what i don't like about sets of 15; it just feels boring. i'll never be a body builder. ;)


total volume: 9050 lb.
total volume for week 5: 41144 lb.

Comments

[asciident]

I've been meaning to check out Elementary, though I've heard mixed reviews.

I absolutely love BBC's Sherlock, though. Can't wait for series 4.

[zeborah]

I've never watched Sherlock; I've heard enough, and love Elementary enough, to think that comparison between them is probably not useful. They're doing qualitatively different things.

You won't get, say, novelty in storytelling from Elementary. What I appreciate about it is... hmm, call it novelty in the respect it has for its diverse characters, and the respect they have for each other.

i seriously, seriously hope they won't make it romantic in "elementary"; i'd hate that.

Do you want to know, or do you prefer complete unspoiledness?

[piranha]

thanks for asking. i find that i don't care about spoilers in this case, and i would certainly appreciate to find out they are NOT gonna go there. ;)

i do suspect from early hints that they might; the whole "i don't like you in my space but i'm stuck with you while i grudgingly learn to respect you" is an old romance trope. i'd be happy if they broke it. i'd also be glad to know ahead of time to prepare myself for the romance, because the show is good enough for me to keep watching.

just that it needs some distance from "sherlock" so i can appreciate it without comparing so much. glad to hear you love it. when sensible people love something it's bound to at least not suck for me.

i shudder at the thought of sherlock holmes and sexual romance. i'm not a canon purist, but to my mind that's not part of the character at all. not even with irene adler. occasionally, just occasionally, i like a competent character who's not heteronormative, or even normative anything (i'm well aware of the slashy possibilities).

[zeborah]

To the point we're at in the aired episodes, they've not only not gone there, but they've made it clear (possibly even at times explicit) that there is not a direction they're at all interested in even considering. The show's taken that romance trope and actively given it a platonic twist, and it's a continual delight to me to watch a show where the male and female lead have no UST at all.

Can't promise anything about the future of course, but... My sister and another friend were discussing this on Twitter just yesterday too, and I agree with what my sister said, that she doesn't think Lucy Liu would stand for it. :-)

[piranha]

oh, that's excellent. makes me a lot more eager to watch it again after i've given it some distance from "sherlock". it looked to me like they had actually not taken a whole lot more from the source material than sherlock holmes' name and his deductive brilliance (and drug addiction, *snrk*), but i've only watched 3 episodes. which would not be a problem once i get past the appropriation of the name without any faith to the character.

i need a userpic for tv fandom. ;)

[zeborah]

It's taken a bit more from the source material than that - but probably not much more. :-)

I have a userpic for Elementary but it's spoilerific so I can rarely justify using it.

[synecdochic]

See, I liked series 1 of Sherlock, but each subsequent series has made me more and more convinced that ... hrm, in an attempt to avoid harshing your squee, let's just say that with every new episode I'm more and more convinced that some things I thought were being done deliberately and as a character choice are instead being done accidentally and authorially, and while I can cope with those things as a deliberate character choice I can't handle them as an overall and unremarked thing.

Hence why I love Elementary so incandescently, because it's the first procedural I've seen in a long time, if ever, that doesn't do those things (most TV does those things, on a sliding scale, but this is why I do not watch most TV -- I can overlook them sometimes and tolerate them other times but I find Sherlock an egregious example) and it's a very nice change. Elementary is not a whodunit detective show like Sherlock is, it's a procedural, but I'm okay with that.

Which is not to say I'm not watching Sherlock, because I think it is doing some interesting things and there's some very good acting craft (Martin Freeman's performance at the end of The Reichenbach Fall is a masterclass in 2 minutes), but I have to steel myself to watch it, and I kind of teeter in and out of hatewatching it. :/

[piranha]

you're not gonna harsh my squee, because my squee is not uncritical by any means; there are a number of things i didn't like in series 2 and 3, and i wouldn't be surprised if we agreed on some of the things that bother you, though obviously they didn't bother me as much. i was just bowled over by the force of the acting while marathoning the entire thing. and yes, freeman at the end of reichenbach falls just stunned me. even knowing the story did nothing to ameliorate the impact.

did you write anywhere about it and can point me to it? if not, if you have time, i would like to hear what bothers you.

i'm gonna put off watching "elementary" for now so i can give it a fairer chance.

[synecdochic]

i haven't written it down, no!

the biggest thing that annoys me about BBC Sherlock is that Sherlock is still the same abusive asshole after three series (and, in-show, something like 4 years), and how he doesn't respect John in the least. I can deal with the asshole part, but the way the text is telling us that John is his only friend, John is someone he cares about, John is someone he respects, etc, while Sherlock's actions are showing the exact opposite, just drives me up the twist. Sherlock's clearly capable of having emotions and empathy for other people (I do not believe the oft-repeated 'high-functioning sociopath' in the least; it's not at all supported), he just doesn't bother. The show alternates between wanting you to believe that's a deliberate choice to protect himself and something he can turn off when he thinks it's important enough, and wanting you to believe that it's something he just can't help and John is teaching him to be (or at least pretend to be) a better person, but neither reading is supported by Sherlock's actual actions; the show is aiming for "Sherlock is a misunderstood genius who can't function in the world because he is a robot space alien, and John is his long-suffering prosthetic emotions", and instead they hit "Sherlock is an abusive, petulant man-child who actively sabotages everything and everyone around him and John keeps allowing it to happen, if not actively enabling it, because he's terrified of losing his only friend". (With the 'again' tacked on to series 3.)

I don't find that admirable in the least and I want the show to stop telling me I should admire it. I want the show to stop excusing Sherlock's emotional abuse of the people around him. I want there to be actual, functional consequences for Sherlock and the shit he pulls, and I want John to either stop being so goddamn enabling or at least have someone point out that's what's going on. It's an incredibly ugly dynamic. Sherlock's active sabotage of every other human relationship John has or could possibly form is the way abusers isolate and prepare their victims. Even Mary: John could not form that relationship until Sherlock was out of the picture, and literally the first thing Sherlock did when he came back was try to disrupt it. (And the 'Sherlock was retroactively justified in trying to get in between John and Mary' thing from 3.03 is an example of what I mean by the show wanting you to admire it.)

I could put up with that if I thought they were doing it deliberately or if I thought there would ever be consequences, but the show is too in love with Sherlock to ever be willing to point out the abuse. We're expected to think he's a Misunderstood Hero instead, because the showrunners do not know they are writing something that edges towards an abuser and an abusive relationship, and I cannot deal with the dissonance.

(The dissonance thing is the thing I mean when I say "most TV does this". I apparently have serious values dissonance with a lot of TV, and I cannot take being presented someone who is a shitty excuse for a human being and being told I'm supposed to like them. There are shows that do present flawed or asshole protagonists without being apologetics for their flaws or treating them as the hero, but they are very, very few and far between. I blame, ultimately, Watchmen->the late 80s/mid 90s in comics, since that was the formative era for a lot of today's showrunners.)

And that is why I love, love, love Elementary, because the Sherlock in Elementary respects the fuck out of Joan, treats her as an equal both intellectually and emotionally, and is actively encouraging her development as a detective and an equal partner in their enterprise. Joan, meanwhile, is occasionally exasperated with him (he's occasionally exasperating!) and they have frequent clashes of "what is the right thing to do here", but both of their opinions and approaches are validated by the text, and they work out compromises together. The text is very clear about how both of their approaches stem from their life histories, and usually avoids presenting either of them as 'right' or 'wrong'. And they're generally both trying to make the other's life a bit better and both trying to make the other happy, even when they get the details of how to make the other happy totally wrong. It takes a few episodes to get there -- the really lovely bits of the relationship between them don't start to bloom until the second half of season 1 -- but I even like that too, because it means they've shown their work.

The relationship between BBC Sherlock and John is about disrespect, frequent trampling of boundaries, forcible isolation of someone who was already vulnerable, and apologetics, and the relationship between Elementary Sherlock and Joan is about mutual respect and cooperation, and that alone would make Elementary something I liked better even if the writers and directors of BBC Sherlock didn't want me to believe that the disrespect, frequent trampling of boundaries, and forcible isolation was something to admire.

Like I said, I'm still watching BBC Sherlock, partially because it is very good acting, partially because I want to see what the next trainwreck will be, and partially because I want to see if the unthinkable happens and the show realizes it's glorifying an abuser, but I have to brace myself really fucking hard to be able to handle it without twitching.

(This does not even get into the massive, epic, titanic problem BBC Sherlock -- the show itself, not the character -- has with women, but that's another rant.)

[piranha]

hm. yeah, i see what you mean, and i concur ... to a degree.

first off, what bothers me most, and gratingly so, is the misogyny. it's ever-present in the source material, but i expect better from a reimagining in the present day. the show does give a few nods there, by making mary have much more of a role than original-mary (who was a bland, boring cardboard cutout of "dutiful wife"), and by making irene adler a much stronger character as well, but they're still failing massively (molly is just a sad addition with her perpetual bad choice in men and crush on sherlock, and while mrs hudson has a couple moments she never even gets in the stories, they're both just props).

i agree sherlock is abusive. but i do buy the "high-functioning sociopath" line, mainly because the way i define sociopathy it's not a point, but a spectrum, and sherlock fits in the corner of the spectrum where some true empathy and feelings for others exist. i do think he feels about as much love as he can feel for john. but in general he doesn't much care for people; he's a misanthropist in general and in specific a misogynist, and sees no particular reason to change his mind; if anything, his chosen profession brings him in contact with more of the dregs than most. and we're supposed to adore him because he's so brilliant, and we're supposed to forgive exceptional men for their "boys will be boys" shortcomings. i don't buy that. the last part. i do buy why sherlock behaves like he does, but i don't adore him for it, instead i think it's tragic, because i don't think he can change a whole lot, and he IS responsible for his own loneliness, and i'm ashamed for his abuse of john.

i actually don't see him sabotaging john's other relationships. you make it sound like john has no agency, but exactly why is sherlock his only friend? sherlock is not isolating him. he isolates himself. there are long periods of time when they're not together; john could be making other friends, but he doesn't. sherlock is a bit of a prat to some of john's dates, but there is never even a glimmer of "dump them or i'll stop being your friend". he just doesn't see the point of them. and when it comes to mary, who is clearly something special, he doesn't try to come between them -- which he very easily could, even before mary does what she does.

i also don't agree that sherlock doesn't change. he certainly develops strong feelings for john, and the end of reichenbach falls is FOR john (and to a lesser degree for the others sherlock cares about whom moriarty targets). that's a pretty damn big sacrifice for a sociopath. yes, it also turns out to be abusive and i think he makes some very bad choices there, but he doesn't do it for himself, he sacrifices everything that matters to him for john.

i haven't thought much about series 3 yet; i think i watched it too quickly and didn't pay enough attention because i was also sleep-deprived and otherwise distracted; i just let it wash over me.