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-Shudders- Bad images...bad...

I guess it was implied. He was more of the sort to be considered (Nowadays) as an 'emo'. You know, playing his violin in melancholy situations, shooting up morphine and cocaine, smoking opium, solving...um...mysteries...

Okay, it was a stretch. I tried.

And as for the intellectual break-dance, Erik, you ought to check out this link. Ignore the ugly URL:

The Founding Fathers of Funk:

http://www.jibjab.com/originals/originals/jibjab/movieid/31

Brilliance! I wish I remember more of the song I created last Thursday morning... Pigeon was playing his guitar, but he wouldn't play a song that I knew so I could sing along, so I made my own song. It was about how he can't tell the difference between a bird and a plastic bag and how he makes a really good woman. (He was a nurse for Halloween... and the lipstick looked damn good on him, too.) It was good, darnit.

I wonder if there was a hue and cry when Basil and Nigel first appeared. Rathbone WAS Sherlock Holmes until Jeremy Brett came along. I suspect that many of us saw those old Sherlock Holmes movies before we ever read the books...which meant we had to overcome Watson-miscasting. I'm just wondering if people who knew the stories before the movies were made took a look at how Watson was portrayed and thought, "What happened here!?" eek

I had no idea that Holmes and Watson had been made into comic characters early in the 20th century. eek It makes the Nigel Bruce portrayal of Watson more understandable if a large segment of the public was used to seeing him as bumbling.

In a semi-off-the-topic comparison...I feel like most of the James Bond movies have done a similar thing to the character as originally written by Ian Fleming. The Bond of the books was a serious character.

Oh, poor Doctor Watson! You do tend to miss the obvious, though...

Yes, but the problem is, too often they make him into a bumbling MORON. The Granada series is good about making him an intelligent man though not a genius like Holmes. You can believe he is a doctor, and sometimes he makes quiet little common-sense observations that Holmes hasn't picked up on yet while he's in Crime Mode or something.
Someone made an animated icon at LJ from such a moment in the series, as Holmes is trying to decide what branch of royalty the Shoscombe Prince is, and Watson quietly says, "It's a HORSE"--because he follows the racing news in the papers. lol Yay, Watson! xd

I would have thought you, of all people, would have described him as "thick as a planck!"

Once I got beyond Nigel Bruce and read the complete works, I was delighted to find that Holmes truly valued Watson. When he sent Watson off to Baskerville Hall, he really trusted him to play an important role in the solution of the mystery. In a way, that fledgling trust sets the stage for the Holmes & Russell partnership. I'm going to have to reread Laurie King's series (may there be more!) to refresh my memory on how she treated Watson.