To me, the thought of a female Watson is still an intriguing idea. But Doyle's Watson as portrayed in A Study in Scarlet, a wounded veteran who is kind of caught between being haunted by previous experiences yet missing the adrenaline fix and purpose that life gave him/her, lacking any family or friends and being kind of aimless until a friendship with another oddball loner gives him/her purpose. Taking a character like that, who is strong yet vulnerable and has a background in medicine and the military, and making it a woman would be interesting and even kind of revolutionary for TV. That's what's most disappointing about Lucy Liu's Joan Watson, IMO, is because they took away all that potential and instead just replaced it with a cliched backstory that I feel has been done dozens of times on shows like Grey's Anatomy (female doctor who gets overwhelmed by the emotional toll of being a doctor and can't hack it, doesn't want to shame her parents, still wonders if that nice boyfriend she dumped was for her, etc.).

And probably because she's a woman, but they've made her Watson more a scold/babysitter and not an equal. I want my Holmes and Watson to be FRIENDS and like each other. She reminds me most of Sharona on Monk rather than a true Watson. Or like a later season version of Wilson when he became a big nag/scold all the time (now that they're making Miller's Holmes more like House).