First day of Sherlocked LA, and lots of interesting tidbits! Got to do one of those meet and greet over wine deals, where we got to ask questions. I asked Mark if he was going for an “unreliable narrator” thing with the set things changing within episodes, e.g. The 221 hallway light. He was surprised and said he hadn’t noticed it, and no it was just a mistake. He said any differences were just mistakes. Someone asked him about the lighting if the skull picture, and he said it was a lightbox behind the pic, and that in some scenes it was just too bright so they dimmed it in post. So absolutely no meaning behind it, and he seemed quite sincere about that and even commented that people read too much into things like that, and that they don’t aim for that (meaning subtle meta meanings). Later I brought the same thing up to Arwen, and he said one of the lights had gotten broken and they couldn’t find an identical one, so they just threw a similar one up. Then he explained that there were 2 sets for the stairs, split by the landing, so that’s why you see both different lights in the same scene. Really kind of sad about all the meta we make up that is absolutely not there at all.
The saddest thing is that they don’t care about continuity at all? I mean meta or not, even if you don’t hide stuff in your background PLEASE make it look coherent and the same set even if it isn’t. Good lord.
Remember the comment Moffat made about “Hell mend you” if you didn’t catch the clues in Series Three? Remember him repeating Sherlock’s line “You see but you do not observe” when asked about possible hints or holes?
EVERY TIME, and I do mean every time, a new meta piece was highly circulated, it hurt my heart. I stopped reading meta, and I stopped believing in anything like tj*c very soon after S3.
That’s not because I thought the theories were impossible, but because I suspected Mofftiss were either cowards or not as talented as we thought, or both.
Remember, this was a detective show about the powers of acute observation.
You don’t produce sloppy continuity mistakes like that in this kind of show, just as you don’t have characters using 21st century slang or showing obvious Velcro closures in Downton Abbey.
And it may have started as their own little AU fanfic, but is became a very well-paid, long-term, highly-promoted source of income for a lot of people at a major television network.
Can’t find that prop lamp again? You have TWO YEARS between each series – you could MAKE one that looks enough like it to be passable.
Can’t find your way out of the corner you’ve written yourself into into? GET AN OUTSIDE OPINION OR THREE.
As always, I’m on the periphery of conversation, but I overhear that Moffatt described Mary as having shot Sherlock nicely. That’s a relief, because I thought it was a savage, cold blood attempt on his life. But it was nice, so I worried needlessly.
I wonder if that is a consideration in sentencing a convicted nice shooter? “Your Honour, she shot him at close range and blasted his hepatic artery open, but she was pregnant, and she was very polite about it, and she wore this really interesting black beanie, so it was a nice shooting. I recommend a suspended sentence and some booties for the new baby.”
It opens up a whole new genre of assault and homicide, doesn’t it?
To shoot someone nicely.
To stab someone nicely.
To run over someone nicely.
To burn someone’s house down nicely.
To throw someone under a bus nicely.
Or have I misunderstood? Is shooting someone nicely subtext for we forgot what happened in the other series, so we just took a guess and filled the rest in with approximations?
John beat and kicked the shit out of Sherlock nicely.
Our round table with Sue was like 6 of us, so we really could talk about whatever we wanted. And yes, I went there. I respectfully said “you know that some people are very upset that the series didn’t end …. gayer. With John and Sherlock together.” She replied that she never meant to make that show, they always knew the direction of the show: that the key line is in episode one when Mrs. Hudson asks if they’ll be needing two rooms, they answer that of course they’ll need two rooms (indicating they are straight). They make the show for the world, for the 99.something percent that watch that aren’t even aware of the controversy. If people need to vent and be angry, that’s fine, she’s okay with that, although she doesn’t read it as much as she used to. However, she doesn’t like when people DEMAND answers to questions, which is like bullying.
She was charming and smart, we also talked about being a woman in the industry, how she got her start, just general stuff. She’s extremely likable.
Just had the “Meet the Makers” panel with Mofftiss and Sue, which was kinda….anti-climactic? They were a bit more subdued, maybe because they took LIVE QUESTIONS randomly from the audience. They were aware that people suspected the questions were vetted to be softballs, so they went back to live, which yay them, I think it was brave. I’m not snarky here, I love and respect them for making Sherlock.
The only answers which were illuminating were 1) that season 4 was always going to be about Mary’s death, because John being a widower is an important part of canon, so she has to go. Thus the series became about grief. How John handled it, how Sherlock handled it. paraphrasing here, because they loved Mary so much.
Two, as Steven put it, you shine a light where you want it, you don’t paint the whole backdrop. Meaning, what they left out of the story doesn’t matter. This arose when a girl asked what happened after John got shot by Euros, and Steven made it into a bit of a joke … oh well Sherlock called the police, and followed the tracker he put behind John’s left ear, etc. etc. So there’s your answer for a lot of things like, how do they survive huge explosions, or what’s on that note? Doesn’t matter, blank background.
Three, all three of them together have a project greenlighted at BBC that has nothing to do with Sherlock but could be considered a, quote, stablemate. A later answer implied that it was updating a classic.
Someone asked about Garridebs, which I had personally also asked Steven about, and he gave the same reply again, that the important part of it was the personal moment when John is shot, BUT, we don’t need to see that from our John and Sherlock because everyone knows Sherlock would be upset. So he just used the name cuz he had three bodies to drop into the sea, why not call them that? Umm, ok.
Four, the decision to make Redbeard a child was made during TAB filming. According to them, It had become something of a joke, Sherlock mourning a dog so much, but what if it was a child? And they named him Victor Trevor from the canon.
I know some people are convinced they are lying liars who lie, but in person they are very genuine. Of course they are going to leave some loopholes open in case they need to come back to them, but I RRREEEAAALLLLYYY think they love Mary, think she’s not evil, and she’s dead.
We are told that there are “no coincidences” in Sherlock and that we should regard the subtext – then we are told that nothing means anything and that “fans are reading too much into this”.
We are told that the show is the “Sherlock and John show” and that it’s all about them and their relationship – then the show is about Mary and Eurus.
We are told that the fourth season is “tv history”, “groundbreaking” and that we are “part of making history” *snort* – then we get a ridiculous finale which is leaked twice before airing on television and which is nothing like “tv history”. (More like a crossover with Saw and The Ring)
And? I’m honestly not surprised at all by what they’ve said. They’re saying conflating things with what we’ve see on screen in season 4. Have they ever been straightforward with us? In interviews? No, they haven’t for the most part. There’s always half truths, lies, and sarcastic nonanswers.
By no means does this confirm or deny anything about the show. It does tell us that how TPTB treat us, the hardcore fans, will not change and that we need to take everything with a grain of salt. I know that what they say still angers some people and that’s okay (I really suggest taking a break from con stuff if that’s the case because having a avalanche of TPTB quotes may not be the best thing for a short fuse).
But yeah. All of this is nothing new. And we can expect more of the same in October.
If anyone wants to see the low attendance numbers for themselves at the LA Sherlock con, notice that this is the main stage and the talk occurring right now is with Mark, Steven, and Sue. This is nothing like the London event last year.
Karma.
there are more notes on this post than people attending.
Kind of weird to think my blog has an exceptionally larger fan reach online than this con does in person. The same can be said for many other people attending. I wonder if TPTB know this. That we’re all connected and all stick up for each other here. That we cross-reference information at lightning speed. That our reach collectively is more powerful than theirs at this brief moment.
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