Nussbaum's article actually made me glad I have never watched this series. Never mind the (frequent?) gay innuendo, the thought balloons--or whatever it was that Nussbaum calls them--would have really put me off.
It really isn't off putting though, Jeff. And it's a shame because it's one of the best series out on TV these days.
Remember, this is the 21st century.
Sherlock makes a lot of rapid deductions about people and places in his head and he is up on the latest gadgets. The "thought balloons" - and they are actually just floating words or statements - are showing
the audience what he deduces about people and events without him actually SAYING it and they spell out what the phone displays are showing without the camera having to cut to the display of a monitor or phone. You follow his thought processes without all the verbal exposition, so the pace of the episode keeps at a high level and it's really quite interesting.
The gay innuendo is not frequent. But it's mentioned at least once every other episode.
Remember, 21st century?
Two single men, living together, who spend all their time together, one of which never had any friends until he met the other and now wants him around all the time and defends him with his life, the other writes about his flatmate in his blog with great admiration, defends him publicly and with his life and one doesn't date at all and the other dates only sporadically.
What would a 21st century populace, that doesn't know them, make of their intimate closeness and utter devotion? Their relationship IS unusual.
To infer a more intimate relationship between the two men is a reasonable assumption in this day and age as it wasn't in the Victorian era. The creators are just going along with canon and what would modern audiences would think of them.
They also have implied from time to time that Sherlock is autistic in some way. Again, what wasn't questioned in Victorian era, is a logical thing for a modern audience to infer.