lemcy-clueing-for-looks:

hudders-and-hiddles:

I understand where you’re coming from, nonny, and if you want more, then please, absolutely keep hope that there will be a series 5 and that it will be everything you dream it will be. ❤

For me though, at this point I would very much like for this to be the end, if this is how they’ve chosen to proceed. I won’t deny that the show they have given us through TAB has been beautiful and well-crafted, and I would have loved to see more of that show. I don’t know what happened with this series, but all of that seems to have gone out the window. Here we get plot holes so large you could drive a freight train through them. And yes there have always been plot holes–even small ones crop up in the most carefully crafted of stories–but there are so many nonsensical things done here or plot lines that start and then go nowhere or are waved away again with a single line of exposition that it’s sometimes hard to see the threads of story that remain around them. 

What I find most unforgivable though is the drastic 180 in characterization for almost everyone. We get Mary being repeatedly tied to actions Sherlock believes to be related to Moriarty and drugging people and running off to do whatever the fuck she wants even though it means continuing to lie to and gaslight the husband she’s supposedly trying to protect, and then apparently some kind of wildly over-the-top, sacrificial death is supposed to redeem her completely. We get Molly who was given the chance to finally move on and get over Sherlock in s3, and then she’s just been dragged kicking and screaming back into s1-style pining hell for the purpose of… actually I’m still not even really sure what the purpose of that scene was other than emotional cruelty to everyone involved. We get Mycroft who was so concerned about protecting Sherlock that he apparently ensured his baby sister remained locked away in a secret prison facility for her entire life, and then he still brings James Moriarty to have a fun little chat with her, despite knowing that Eurus wants him there entirely because he wants to fuck with Sherlock. We get John promising to look after Sherlock at the end of TAB, and then he does nothing of the sort anywhere in s4–ignoring his growing drug abuse problems, beating the shit out of him, going so far as to barely even protest when Sherlock threatens to actually kill himself to end Eurus’ game. (I honestly have a ton more complaints about what was done with John this series, but I’ll stop there for now.) 

Sherlock is the only character who hasn’t really done some kind of ridiculous flip-flopping here, but what they put him through in TFP in particular was entirely unnecessary. He has repeatedly sacrificed everything for John, has again and again shown his heart in how he treats his friends and his clients, particularly with [the woman he thought was] Faith Smith who he spent all night with just to keep her from killing herself, and the writers here decided that for whatever bizarre reason he really just needed to hug his rapist, murderer sister, who he didn’t even know existed before this episode, in order to be fully humanized. But he already was. He already was. The real highlight of this series has been that they showed that off so well–Sherlock was incandescently human throughout all three episodes–but really he’s been so human for so, so long now. Since the moment that he stepped off of a rooftop to save three lives. Hell, since the moment he asked a suicidal army doctor to move in with him and took him out on a case because he thought it would give that man a purpose again. Sherlock’s beautiful heart has always been on display. TFP wasn’t at all necessary to show us that. We could all see it–all of us except Mark and Steven, I guess. 

Admittedly, yes, there are parts of this series that I have liked, in all three episodes. There are parts I have even loved, including the majority of TLD where both Ben and Martin’s talents were given so much beautiful room to play. But Moftiss have made egregious, unforgivable missteps here, sacrificing so much of their previously careful storytelling and characterization at the altar of the “cleverness” of the Eurus puzzle. And the sad part is that it wasn’t even really a puzzle. The thing about puzzles is that there have to be clues there to help you figure them out along the way. When Mary was revealed in CAM Tower in HLV, there had been clues throughout TEH and TSOT that she wasn’t perhaps the woman she seemed. There were no clues within the story that pointed to Eurus being the woman John was texting or being Faith Smith (and what even was the purpose of her doing either of those things anyway? yet another thing that was never addressed). There were no clues that Moriarty’s “final problem” that he referenced way back in TRF was ever going to turn out to be a jigsaw prison game with Sherlock’s unknown, psychopath sister. This wasn’t a puzzle. It was a mess, and they went all in on it, reshaping their characters and outright ignoring the show’s history to cram this series into a Eurus-shaped tin. And it didn’t work. It didn’t work, and I don’t want to see more of this version of the show.

agreed