The Palace of Funk

aka “Why Won’t You Let Irene Adler Be Great?”

[Spoilers for Sherlock]

I really want to know why people continue to take an amazing character like Irene Adler, do so many things right with her, and then consistently miss her most central characteristic: she gets the last word. She wins. Against Sherlock-Fucking-Holmes.  Make her a love interest if you want (it can be done well without making her sentiment her downfall). But the point of her character and why she remained on Sherlock’s “hard drive” long after so many other people had been deleted was that she bested him at the end. When a character’s canon is that they were able to outwit Sherlock Holmes, I would think that would be the one defining characteristic you would want to keep intact. 

On another note, while I like the idea of a love triangle between a self-identitifying lesbian, straight man, and a (probably) asexual/aromantic man, the handling of it was sorta….unbalanced. The sexual fluidity in one direction with Irene was actually great for me until the narrative told us that Irene lost because of she let her emotions get the best of her. Wow. Original. And though John and Irene share that whole “our sexualities are incompatible with him but we both care for Sherlock” conversation, the more safe, heteronormative-side of Irene/Sherlock gets explored in detail, while John’s side is comparatively lacking, with the exception of a few sidebars about it ruining his romantic relationships. I just felt if that conversation was going to address the idea of sexuality fluidity wrt Sherlock and draw that parallel, it wouldn’t be so obvious about disregarding it later on.

Despite my criticisms I actually really liked the episode, particularly because of Irene Adler when she does get the upper hand on Sherlock, and a slew of other things (Mrs. Hudson, Sherlock/John in Buckingham, my dear sweet Molly). But both the conclusion to Irene’s story and the reason behind her downfall miss the entire point of her character. In the original story, Irene’s love for her new husband is played as a strength, her motivation for besting Sherlock. In this, her emotion/feelings are the reason she doesn’t get the last word. By the last time we see her, she’s almost completely defanged in the most painfully on-the-nose sort of way: we start with a dominatrix in lingerie brandishing a riding crop. We end with the same woman on her knees, in a burqa, with a man holding a sword over her head.

Okay.