Being Geek Chic is a blog for stylish geeks, sophisticated nerds and people who enjoy the musings of a complete dork. Join us as we dream of driving the TARDIS, cuddle with our eBooks and test out an iPad sleeve. It's written by Elizabeth Giorgi and a team of brilliant lady nerds. Meet the team.
So the last episode of the first season of Orphan Black airs in a little less than an hour here and I can honestly say it’s been the biggest entertainment surprise of 2013 so far. Indeed, BBC America knew what they were doing when they came up with Supernatural Saturday. I can’t even believe I am writing this right now, but by the fourth week of their regularly scheduled sci-fi spree, I started looking forward to seeing Sarah, Felix and the clone crew a bit more than the Doctor. I know. I know. But it’s true.
Here’s five very good reasons why:
1. Tatiana Moslany: I know I am not the only person making this prediction, but Moslany is on the verge of being absolutely huge. She manages to bring out the most subtle emotions in each of the clones she plays and the way she uses her eyes as a central identifier between characters is so delicate and genius that I want to scream “Emmy! Emmy! Emmy!” every time I see that right eyebrow arch for Sarah or those lids blink rapidly for Alison. She truly makes the show what it is.
When we were first introduced to this Sherlock Holmes and Watson months ago, we knew two distinct things about the show: the first and most obvious being that Watson was a woman. The second was that Sherlock was a recovering opiate addict. These two choices could have meant nothing to the series in the long run, but it was clearer than ever this week that these changes are the very things that make Elementary worth watching.
Jonny Lee Miller was exceptional in his own way and that’s no easy task with so many prominent variations of the famous detective available for comparison. I appreciated the way he strove for balance between the pain and struggle of addiction with the electricity of possessing such a fire-cracking mind. Liu brought a sense of presence to the show, which allowed Holmes to be more vulnerable, more raw. In the end, I’m just so darned pleased this adaption gave us a male/female friendship that didn’t devolve into petty flirtations and focused instead on the power of helping someone who can’t always help themselves.
Spoilers from here on out.
I would like to make a new Who rule. Neil Gaiman must write an episode for every season of Doctor Who from now until his fingers can no longer form a proper fist around a pencil.
The fact is he’s a genius. But this week, he really proved it.
From this point on, it’s all spoilers.
He revived the Cybermen, both for the sake of the story and the sake of the series.
He gave Matt Smith the most incredible scenario to play out - bringing out all of Smith’s best qualities as an actor and truly giving him the kind of opportunity to play in a way he often doesn’t get to when he has to serve as the “explainer” like most episodes.
He let someone else save the day. And that someone is totally awesome in real-life and on screen. So let’s talk about how that happened.
This is spoilery right from the get go. You’ve been warned.
Moriarty may have finally revealed himself last week, but he’s still just a disembodied voice on a cell phone. So no Moriarty face yet, but we did finally see one very important face: Irene Adler’s.
There’s quite a few things in this week’s episode that are classic Doyle references. When describing Adler to Watson, Holmes refers to her as “THE woman” and even goes so far as to lift a line straight out of Scandal in Bohemia. He says, “she predominates the whole of her gender,” at one point. The original text used “sex” in place of “gender,” but this is CBS.
The Crimson Horror isn’t your average time travel adventure. Why? Because it’s adventure with my favorite Victorian trio: Strax, Jenny and Vastra. I’m so glad they’re back.
We find the crime frighting team at Sweetland, a residence that takes in the sick, sad and apparently naive. It’s a borderline religious cult, borderline utopian country club. Their goal? To build a better world. Yeah, sounds like a great place to invest in a time share.
This is your spoiler alert. Do not keep reading if you don’t want to be spoiled.
The Moriarty mystery finally picks back up where it left off this week and with it came momentum, excitement and one of the best scenes in Elementary yet.
This Moriarty mystery episode is all spoilers from here on out, my fellow Sherlockians.
We begin this week when we meet a man with a pacemaker who’s being tortured by a man with a mysterious piece of software that seems to simulate a heart attack. After using this dangerous tool to convince the rich fellow to vote to remove the historical marker designation for a former speakeasy, our newest murderer kills the guy with his space bar. That’s some serious programming power.
But the real action begins when Sebastian Moran beckons Sherlock to the prison to alert him to a heart attack that he believes to be a murder. Moran, for those that can’t remember, is the Arsenal fan who Sherlock had mistaken for Moriarty earlier in the season. A reluctant Sherlock follows up for one reason: to find Moriarty.
