isitandwonder:

gosherlocked:

So I am to believe that a whole family played along with a man in his late thirties still believing that his childhood friend who was drowned in a well by a mentally ill sister in truth was a dog who had to be put down? And his brother not only going along with it but even encouraging him? Using “potential trigger words” to
“update” himself as to his brother’s mental condition? Preferably in a situation when he could be expected to be upset anyway – “Do you remember Redbeard?” This is just cruel. 

I really don’t know what Mycroft (was it Mycroft who erased the memory of Victor and re-programmed Sherlock with those trigger words?) actually did. NLP? Did he somehow brainwash Sherlock? Or did Sherlock do this all by himself? But then, where would those trigger words come from?

And their parents – when Sherlock’s substance abuse went havoc with their line dancing, as it seems to have repeatedly been the case? They did nothing? Didn’t seek help for their son? Honestly, where would have been the harm if they’d told an adult Sherlock that he had a best friend as a child who’d vanished. (Because the parents can’t have known that Victor had been killed by Eurus, as his bones still remained in that well… I’m sure the dead child would have been exhumed if the parents had known where he had been). They even could have told Sherlock that he once had a sister, who burned down their house and died in a psychiatric clinic (btw, why isn’t Sherlock afraid of fire, only of water?) – as they believed was true. Sherlock deals with crime and death all his adult life – I’m sure he would have coped with discovering that he had had a friend called Victor as a child. And a sister. Perhaps he would have searched for Victor’s remains. But wouldn’t that have been way better than have Sherlock drift off into addiciton and suicidal thoughts?

And even Mycroft, who seemingly wanted to protect Sherlock from the drugs – why didn’t he insist on therapy when Sherlock was old enough to suffer from the suppression of his childhood memories and became a drug addict, because something was clearly missing in his life yet he didn’t know what exactly?

Ok, perhaps Mofftiss wanted to built towards the hero Holmes and only used the addiciton, like ACD did, to give Sherlock some kind of flawed past to overcome (though for ACD it was more the touch of the bohemian, showing him as something else than the calculating machine, to give the personality more depth)?

Perhaps to explore all those issues – trauma, drug addiciton, mental health, NLP, loss of a friend and sibling – would have been too much for a 90 minute story?

BUT WHY CHOOSE THIS STORY LINE IN THE FIRST PLACE IF THERE WAS NO ROOM TO EXPLORE IT IN DEPTH?

No one forced their hand.

There would have been so much potential if Mofftiss had decided to explore all this a bit more. But if you are just after the next shocking rug pull, emotional depth and making sense of a story can get in your way. Done like this, however, the climax felt half-baked, superficial and badly executed.