Why Moriarty Sucks

[neadods]

I'm not waiting for the next link roundup to pass this one on because it articulates everything I hate about the Moriarty character, from canon onwards: I'd Prefer Less Moriarty.

It's hard to sample the article and not just copy the entire thing, but here is the meat of it:

"Moriarty is always portrayed as an End Boss, the ultimate mastermind behind whatever the sinister plot is. He’s the baddest badass the Holmes character ever meets, and when he shows up, boy is it on. You know the stakes have risen.

Except that’s not what’s appealing about Sherlock Holmes in the stories (emphasis added). ...

The thing that bothers me about Moriarty, and especially when it came to Sherlock and now Elementary is that not only does he come in as the big bad, he also brings with him the old personal vendetta. He’s not The Napoleon of Crime, he’s The Guy Who Really Effin Hates Sherlock Holmes, and he doesn’t just do crimes, he has it in for Holmes specifically. Once he walks on stage, Holmes stops solving crimes and starts a deadly game of cat and mouse where this time it’s personal. What we tuned in to see is cast aside: we know who the bad guy is (Moriarty) and what the endgame is (defeat Holmes)."

So. Much. This! I LOATHE Moriarty as a character in canon and moreso in spinoffs and pastiches. He warps far more interesting and smart canonical characters into minions, or they're ignored because we're all supposed to be more impressed by and afraid of The Big Badass.

Dave then goes on to nail the heart of the problem with turning detective stories into mano-a-mano thrillers:

"It also bugs me at this point because it turns the plot into exactly the kind of plot I hate, the one where the good guy and the bad guy just have a giant pissing contest around the city and usually a bunch of faceless innocent nobodies get caught in-between. I hate this story. I don’t like it when the hero is in a situation where, honestly, we’d be better off without him."

Moriarty is not only a fairly uninteresting character, he diminishes Holmes. We already KNOW what's going to happen, just like we already KNOW what's going to happen when Superman fights Lex Luthor, Batman fights the Joker, the Doctor fights the Daleks, etc., etc., etc.

This is not interesting storytelling because there is no actual tension in reaching a predetermined outcome!

Moriarty sucks. Moriarty sucks precisely because we already know what's going to happen the moment he shows up. And what's going to happen is not what we signed up for - no deductions, no "singular" cases, no twists. Just the overwhelming stench of ammonia and testosterone.



PS - This is also proof that I can read and rec a pro-Elementary, anti-Sherlock article without bursting into flame. Just in case anyone wondered.

PPS - Yes, I know that the "fic rec sherlock" tag really doesn't have a lot to do with fic these days.

Comments

[wiliqueen.livejournal.com]

I agree with this so, SO much about storytelling in general. Particularly the part about Doing Horrible Things just to get the hero's attention. It comes up in so many forms, all of them infuriating.

And it's very sad that this blogger thinks he's alone.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

He is so, so not alone! I've never liked Moriarty as a character, and I loathe him more these days now that Irene - a character I do like - always ends up subordinate/fridged/threatened by him.

If Holmes had a nemesis worth his intellect, it was Irene.

[kradical.livejournal.com]

Right there with you. I've never understood the need so many post-Doyle Sherlock Holmes writers have had to shoehorn Moriarty into it every single fucking time. He's virtually irrelevant in the canon, having only appeared twice, and the first time was in "The Final Problem," which may be the single worst story in the English language. He was created solely as a vehicle through which Doyle could divest himself of a character he was sick of writing, and it didn't even succeed!

Plus, y'know, all that stuff you said. :)

[neadods.livejournal.com]

I think folks are defaulting to the Hero Must Have Nemesis form of storytelling - which is pretty sloppy storytelling, IMO, but look at how often it shows up. Except this isn't supposed to be a series about a guy locked in mortal combat, it's supposed to be about a guy with a really sharp intellect.

"The Final Problem," which may be the single worst story in the English language.

Seriously! The plot is only 8 words long: "Fuck deductions, I'm killing that bastard's sorry ass."

[badgermirlacca.livejournal.com]

Have you read Kim Newman's Moriarty: The Hound of the D'Urbervilles? This is not so much a Holmes book as a study of Moriarty as, yes, an actual Napoleon of Crime. And it's got guest appearances, too.

Not liking Moriarty in a Holmes story doesn't mean that he can't be a kickass character all on his own.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

I haven't read that one, but I do have a couple of the Kurland Moriarty-as-hero books kicking around from the reviewing days. They're kind of amusing, if you can wrap your brain around the concept of Moriarty as a charming anti-hero and Holmes as that annoying guy with a Moriarty fixation.

[scott-lynch.livejournal.com]

I can't universally agree, but I can readily admit the importance and persuasiveness of the argument (and I do concur that the dear Prof had all the place in the canon he deserved; Holmes inhabited a vibrant world with human stories around every corner, and the urge to tie them all together with "ZOMG MORIARTY WAS BEHIND IT ALL!" is both a) not as startling as people would seem to think, and b) a diminishment of the canon rather than an enhancement).

I could live with the slight enhancement of Moriarty's role the Brett series made use of, because they didn't make it intrusive or glaringly obvious. "The Red-Headed League" was still allowed to be "The Red-Headed League," for example.

And you're right, it is very little fun watching the unfolding of a "case' in which our hero could directly save lives simply by leaving town for a couple of weeks.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Y'know, I'm always surprised to see who comments on what - I figured you'd stopped reading this journal years ago!

I could live with the slight enhancement of Moriarty in Brett too - what I wish I didn't have to live with is his omnipresence in the Ritchie movies *and* BBC *and* now CBS. I just about cheered when Andrew Scott stuck that gun in his mouth, not that I have a thing against Andrew Scott.

it is very little fun watching the unfolding of a "case' in which our hero could directly save lives simply by leaving town for a couple of weeks

Seriously!

[redpanda13.livejournal.com]

Well, I did enjoy John Gardner's The Return of Moriarty and The Revenge of Moriarty, which came close to ignoring Holmes-- at least the first book-- and presented Moriarty as an East End version of the Godfather. If you like that sort of thing, it was quite well done.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Moriarty *on his own* doesn't annoy me a quarter as much as Moriarty in a Holmes story. It's perfectly fair game, IMO, to take a canonical character and explore their life outside their storyline - Carole Nelson Douglas got a lot of life out of Irene Adler.

But when it's Moriarty and Holmes facing off... well, if I want to watch a pissing contest, I'll watch Lethal Weapon or something. Not a detective show. (I've gotten to the point in the Great Detectives audios that I stop listening the moment someone says the M name.)

[persiflage-1.livejournal.com]

The Master is also the Moriarty character in Doctor Who. Moreso, I'd suggest, than the Daleks.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

I agree. But what I was going with there is that no matter how frightening the daleks are supposed to be, we KNOW that in the end, the Doctor will triumph. It may be a Pyrrhic victory, but the Doctor *will* win. And it's the same with Holmes - no matter how bad the bitchfight is between him and Moriarty, it is going to inevitably end with a Holmes victory.

The Master, on the other hand, has been more sparingly used, at least in new Who, and he's been able to really seriously hinder and hurt the Doctor. We also know more about his motivations (again, at least in new Who). It makes him more three dimensional in my eyes.

[persiflage-1.livejournal.com]

Ah. I was thinking of Classic Who, where the moment the Master shows up, the Doctor's totally diverted by him...

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'd overlooked that. Good point.

[persiflage-1.livejournal.com]

Thanks.

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

I feel exactly the same way about Irene Adler, to be honest.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

I agree totally! In every single one of the reboots and new adventures she's just wedged in where she doesn't fit -- her story is one of the ones that really doesn't modernize at all -- so that the makers can tick another famous name off the list. As I am fond of the canonical character, it really grits my teeth to see her subordinated, played, and usually fridged to boot.

(About the only way that one could update the story of "I'm going to politically blackmail you with the proof that we've had sex" is if the King was an American televangelist or Deep Southern elected official and Irene was renamed Irving.)

[chapbook.livejournal.com]

Have you read KatieForsythe's canon fanfic Birds to a Lighthouse (http://katieforsythe.livejournal.com/15024.html)? If you haven't, I don't want to spoil it for you, but it does address the issue of staying in London vs. leaving the city very successfully I found. In fact, I found that story a vast improvement over Doyle. However, good as it is, Moriarty still comes across as a cipher, effective, but nowhere as richly human a character as Holmes, Watson, Lestrade, and Mycroft.

[yaseen101.livejournal.com]

I'm indifferent to Moriarty, I've heard of him through pop cultural osmosis but when I read him in the stories, he was a total disappointment. He's basically the Doomsday to Sherlock's Superman; a walking deus ex machina brought in to kill the hero.

My personal favorite Sherlock villain is you-know-who from 'The Hound of Baskerville'. That's one villain that *needs* to be in an adaptation.

[tavella.livejournal.com]

Very late, but -- I especially hate hate HATE the way that Irene Adler is always turned into a minion of Moriarty's, when the entire point of her story is that she has her own plans for her lie and is sufficiently determined and capable enough that no king, thug, or even Sherlock Holmes will get in the way.

[tavella.livejournal.com]

That, and he nails one of my criticism of BBC Sherlock -- that far, far fewer people would have died if only Watson had let Sherlock poison himself in the very first episode.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Furthermore, Irene Adler won handily against Holmes. Moriarty at best manages a draw. The wrong character is ending up as the minion!