‘Elementary’s Joan: My Favorite Watson

Written by Robin Hitchcock

Having recently written about my new TV crush Abbie Mills, I feel compelled to sing the praises of another woman of color making television a better place: Lucy Liu as Joan Watson on Elementary.

I, like a lot of television viewers, felt predisposed to dismiss the CBS series as a too-soon, too-similar knockoff of the BBC’s Sherlock. I thought setting it in New York City and casting Lucy Liu as Joan Watson were superficial moves made to solely differentiate the Modern Sherlock TV Adaptations beyond “one came second.”

So when it debuted last year, I wrongly dismissed Elementary. But indifference was not enough for a lot of television fans. The cool kids who are 100 percent fine with 79,481 adaptations featuring the public domain characters Sherlock and Watson, but HOW DARE THOSE SELLOUT HOLLYWOOD BASTARDS MAKE A 79,482nd?

Anglophilia also contributed to BBC Sherlock fans rejecting Elementary, but Anglophilia all too often functions as a flimsy cover for flat-out racism. My Bitch Flicks colleague Janyce Denise Glasper mentioned viewers “boycotting Elementary due to Liu’s Asian background” in a great piece on the actress’s versatility last spring, and I balked, “how can they be so unapologetically racist?”

Because they can hide it behind hipster “I liked this centuries-old character first” and the “Keep Calm and Fetishize Your Former Colonial Oppressors” vogue. And because racist people are often not particularly concerned with how racist they are. Especially with sexism along for a kyriarchical yhatzee!

With that sooooo-2012 background established for behind-the-times people like myself, let’s move on to the important issue: Joan Watson is THE BEST.

I almost wrote, THE BEST WATSON EVER, but I would have to watch and read several thousand more adaptations before I could state that with any statistical confidence. So I’ll just hyperbolically say, as my brain does when I am watching Elementary, that she is The Best.

Joan started off on different footing than many other versions of Watson not only because of her sex and race. One of the most compelling particularities of Elementary as an adaptation is that is centers Holmes’s drug addiction; with Jonny Lee Miller’s Sherlock fresh out of a sixth-month rehab stint at the start of the series, and Liu’s Watson having just signed on as his sober living companion, a career she transitioned into after accidentally causing the death of one of her surgical patients. This initial role gave Watson a real reason for being there, and for putting up with Sherlock’s nonsense, as their relationship formed. Which not only put some slack back into the audience’s suspension of disbelief, but presented an entirely different status balance between this Holmes and Watson, one that is frankly less creepy to watch (particularly with a woman in the role). It also fits perfectly with the compassionate nature essential to Watson’s character, regardless of sex.

But even with a plausible justification for her patience, Watson must still be a master of exasperation, given Sherlock Holmes is one of the all-time annoying weirdos of the literary canon. Good thing Lucy Liu can write a sonnet of frustration with an eye roll and create a symphony of had-enough with the angry clomps of her chic boots storming up the stairs to her room.

After Joan’s tenure as Sherlock’s sober companion ends, she chooses to continue doing detective work with him instead of moving on to her next client. The plot required Watson to stick around for more than a few months, but instead of accomplishing that with some glossed-over contrivance, Joan’s personal satisfaction with her shifting career paths became a major story arc in the first season. We even see her friends and family weigh in out of concern while ultimately respecting her decisions about her own life! I literally got misty-eyed when Joan changed her television-equivalent-of-Facebook work status to “consulting detective.”

While watching Joan’s relationship with Sherlock transition from guardianship to partnership has been a pleasure, it was only through the depiction of Joan herself changing. She got to be a real character instead of a sidekick. That’s more than you can hope for for a lot of female co-leads of a TV series, much less a woman of color cast in a traditionally white male role.