Dinhternet

There have been a lot of claims to that title over the years. Per­haps the orig­i­nal was Sher­lock Holmes. Bat­man also devel­oped that rep­u­ta­tion. And the list doesn’t end there…

Recently, I watched all of House. I had seen part of the first sea­son, but didn’t really get into it, and then I watched sea­son four. Being the com­pul­sive per­son that I am, I had to go back and watch every­thing in between, too. The resem­blance between him and Sher­lock is uncanny. He’s aloof and frank, his atten­tion to detail is unsur­passed, he has assis­tants who he mostly has do busy work and then explains every­thing to, and he even uses drugs despite the mis­giv­ings of his assis­tants. The twist is that he’s solv­ing med­ical prob­lems, not chas­ing down criminals.

Then, I started up Monk. He’s even more like Sher­lock, at least in a superficial/circumstantial way. He’s a pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor with an assis­tant who fre­quently helps the police with dif­fi­cult cases. Again, he’s got the amaz­ing atten­tion to detail. In fact, his twist is that his atten­tion to detail is so strong, it bleeds into every aspect of his life and crip­ples him. The assis­tant thing seems to be a must. Almost as if it was a way for the genius char­ac­ter to explain things directly to the audi­ence. Damn lit­er­ary devices! Note to self… if I ever write a mys­tery, must include like-able but slow char­ac­ter to explain every­thing to.

But I guess my point is that every­one enjoys a good mys­tery. They want to “coa­lesce the vapors of human exis­tence into a viable and mean­ing­ful com­pre­hen­sion” and solve the prob­lem, whether it’s the mean­ing of life, global hunger, or a murder.

Oh, and on a related note, I’ve been play­ing Phoenix Wright, too. The game is fun, but also frus­trat­ing. Often, I’ve fig­ured out the case with­out get­ting all the clues yet, but I still need to do every­thing in the proper steps to get a win. Why can’t I present the “deci­sive evi­dence” at the start?!