Why was s4 like that. It could have been gay and beautiful with good storyline and would win every award. If not explicitly gay, at least a decent storyline. Something which everyone understands. Don’t get me wrong. I love and adore all the metas my friends here have come up with. But we could have clean text. That would benefit all.
Totally agree. It’s sad that when TAB won I screamed and started jumping for joy and tonight I didn’t care it lost.
It’s sad to think that it could have been so different if they had made subtext text and or even had come up with decent storylines. What a wasted opportunity.
what’s been crushing to ME is the shattering of the illusion that i’d found a community of people who wanted to think critically and appreciate probably the smartest tv show that will ever grace our screens but threw up their hands when the exact solution they imagined didn’t come neatly wrapped up with a bow and a cookie on the schedule that nobody had established but themselves
No no, that’s okay! I actually thought a similar thing.
It was the make up, I think is what the general consensus about it all ended up being. I’d hate to speak ill of the work because in the past it’s been fantastic, but the make up in S4 was atrocious. Like, yet ANOTHER reason I think it was fake, because what the HELL did they do to the makeup in this season? EVERYTHING just looks like they cut corners. Sherlock looks jaundiced as all fuck in TFP, and just the lighting is SO unattractive on all the characters; Mary and Sherlock especially look like they’ve aged about 20 years, and just. Eh. Usually they focus so much on making Sherlock look ethereal but… I dunno.
No it’s not you, Lovely. I think a lot of us think it was the caking on of all the makeup and the poor lighting of TFP especially. It didn’t do the camera any favours, that’s for sure.
Don’t forget how orange Sherlock looked in TST. Idk why the makeup suddenly was so horrible. The age argument actually does not come into this. They still look attractive af but somehow in s4 they all looked off.
yeah i think it was that and also i think they might have focused more on the lighting to create the mood of the scene and didn’t take into account how it would make the actors look which is…stupid. although i’m pretty sure they had a new head of film this year so maybe it was that??
johnlockismyreligion said: You’re not the only one to think that. I also think that Ben and Martin’s actiong in TFP was a bit… off, like they were tired and didn’t like what they were doing.
holmesianscholar added: Makeup and lighting can do wonderful or despicable things on camera – it’s definitely not the actors. Unfortunate.
inevitably-johnlocked added: I just want to clarify that I don’t think they look unattractive all the time, since there seems to be some passive aggressive posts that coincidentally came about after I posted this ask… Constructive critiques aren’t the same as hating on the characters and the way they look; they’re just simple observations on the choices that were apparently deliberately made for the season. Ben, Martin and Amanda are lovely people, but the way some scenes light them just don’t do them any favours.
There are some scenes that were filmed beautifully and the lighting was superb (TLD and the aquarium scenes in T6T were especially filmed very well). But just some angles and lighting REALLY accentuate the poor makeup, especially in T6T since a lot of the colours were already really washed out with the browns and yellows and it just accentuated how yellow Sherlock looked and how sunken Mary’s face looked, and then again in TFP it just made everyone look very sickly. I liked the looks of the promo photos, love them in fact, but either someone got nuts on the colour correct in post or the makeup was weird. *shrugs* I dunno.
mollydot said: I assumed the looking bad was because Sherlock hadn’t been looking after himself.
cabelinhodemangajapones added: Agree! I thought I was being mean in my own head when I thought Sherlock looked like he’d been hit by a truck pretty much all the way through s4. I know there were a lot of drugs, especially in TLD, but he still looks so much older in the beginning of T6T compared to the end of s3/TAB. And Benedict looks fine in other recent movies and interviews, so I didn’t think it was just him aging either. I think the lighting resembles a “gritty Sherlock reboot” in s4 and that doesn’t help at all.
murphysmom67 said: It was my understanding too that during TLD Ben had pneumonia.
Thanks all for your additions! @murphysmom67 Oh yes, I think you are right…. somehow that is twigging something in my brain.
And yeah, I suppose it was also to showcase the drugged nature of Sherlock, but that still doesn’t explain everyone else’s poor makeup (Myc’s and John’s looked off in places too, just not as much as Mary and Sherlock’s). Bah, I’m not sure what to think anymore, LOL.
It’s a a combo of the color grading and what makeup they used. It probably looked fine in real life but with whatever editing they used it made everyone look orange. And for some reason no one thought to change the levels or something idk
the sheer fucking audacity of mary leaving sherlock instructions on how to save john when he’s literally been saving john watson since the moment they met
People can’t stand the idea of Holmes and Watson being in love because it’s not in the books but they sure damn love assassin wife, crazy sister in shutter island, Redbeard is not a dog god dammit, jumping off a bulding without injuries, solving crime Bond style, Watson beating the fuck out of Holmes bc it totally happened in the books right ?
For clarification : My mom is a super casual viewer but she knows I ship Johnlock. After we rewatched S 1-TAB she low key ships them, too. (but she doesn’t know about tjlc) She doesn’t speak English so we watched it in german. Everything in this post is translated.
The six thatchers
Sherlock pretends he doesn’t know Thatcher:
Mom (suspicious): Why is he pretending?
Car seat boy:
Mom: Is this real? That’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen.
Me (in my head): just wait until you’ve watched everything…
Sherlock tells Mary how he found her:
Mom: couldn’t they have found her sooner. What did they do the whole time? Were they busy kissing?
Mary gets shot:
Mom: WHAT? Lets watch this scene again.
We watched it again:
Mom: Tell mevwhat really happened!
Me: This is what happened.
Mom: NO!
Mary dies
Mom: This was obviously staged. It looked like a play.
End of the episode:
Mom: Why wasn’t John in this one? The show isn’t called ‘Mary’
The lying detective
Mary appears on screen:
Mom: Not her again…
“but he’s our monster”
Mom: No Mary, you’re the monster!
“Is cup of tea a code?”
Mom: It is a code, isn’t it? Why should they mention it if it’s not?
Me: *dies*
John beating up Sherlock:
Mom (stops episode): John would never do that. Did Sherlock take that strange memory drug?
After the hug:
Mom: Did I miss something? Did they kiss? It looks like it…
End of the episode:
Mom: The child is dead.
Me: WHAT? WHY?
Mom: John imagines his dead wife and now his cjild conveniently disappeares when he’s busy?! The cild is dead.
The final problem:
“Welcome to the final problem”
Mom: It’s already satire.
Umbrella-sword-gun:
Mom: So when does the real episode start?
Patience granade:
Mom: The show is over. Either they’re dead or the show got so unbelievable they should just stop.
Mycroft reveals his captain disguise:
Mom: That’s too much!
Mom: *stops episode and walks away*
(She came back with cookies)
Every time Eurus is on screen:
Mom: I don’t get it.
Me: me neither.
(By the end of the episode it was an inside joke)
Sherlock hugs Eurus:
Mom: Why didn’t Sherlock ‘magical hug’ John, after Mary died. The whole second episode could have been avoided.
As I said yesterday about Sherlock, I’ve definitely observed that a lot of people think that the last book or the last season in a series is often… problematic. If you’ve been in enough fandoms, you’ll see this is a very common phenomenon. It’s also very common for people who’re particularly attached to a pairing or a character to feel ‘cheated’ and rant irrationally at the creators (unfortunately). As I said, this is just what fans and fandoms are *like*. I literally– literally!– cannot remember the last time a final season or book truly pleased most diehard fans, or there was a lack of wank at that point at least. Being a diehard fan means being unreasonable to some degree, and when you translate this to the way most people act on the Internet, it’s a matter of trolling waiting to happen. My point is that there’s certainly plenty of pure wank, and this is what people who’re frustrated with the discourse often focus on. As for me, I’m more concerned with the fact that most of the more thoughtful metas aren’t really… that much better, in terms of the depth or closeness of analysis being performed.
In general, I’ve been thinking that fans are often most frustrated when they feel that things didn’t change enough, so the writers actually kept going with their MO in ways they’d hoped *would* change, while adding new stuff they feel unprepared for. That type of rug pull or ‘gut punch moment’ Moffat said he likes so much is actually something many fans tend to hate, especially when they’re simultaneously confronted by the fact that many of the undesirable aspects of the style remained. This was a huge problem one could see with the overwhelmingly negative critical and fan response to the ‘transgressive’ approach Gatiss took with ‘The Final Problem’, as I’ve written about recently. Of course, this is also precisely what happened with Moffat and Gatiss’s clear, consistent interest in queer subtext (largely remaining just that). It *feels* like a bait and switch, leading to claims of the lack of character progress combined precariously with criticism of the apparent inconsistencies.
In the Raven Cycle fandom, I’ve noticed the more mature sounding, analytical drive-by critiques of ‘The Raven King’ saying that the characters didn’t grow enough, at least aside from Ronan and Adam. That is, the others’ arcs didn’t *resolve* enough. This is definitely a common refrain for the last book or season of a show, when people come into the story with a lot of preset expectations and projections onto the text. In the case of the last book in The Raven Cycle, it’s common to see people say that Noah in particular just disappeared, somehow. And this critique is always presented as being somehow more hard-hitting than pure squee about the books, a sign the person is thinking deeply and critically about the text. In fact, it’s generally a sign that they didn’t pay enough attention to the story.
Do many narratives actually go off the rails at the last minute? Sure, yeah. But it seems to me that if your critique is primarily that things about the characters didn’t change *enough*, or they changed in the *wrong way*, then that warrants a second look. It’s a sign there were certain expectations being applied, certain standards as to what sort of thing qualified as a ‘resolution’ as well as what *needed* an explicitly textual resolution to start with. And unlike these fans’ implicit assumptions, there’s no rules about what a writer would *have* to address explicitly in terms of characterization and what they can leave to be inferred or simply understood by connecting the dots of related events.
Both John and Sherlock began the BBC AU keeping secrets from the writers:
Secrets Sherlock kept from the writers:
He was ALWAYS a GOOD MAN
He knew and accepted his sexual identity. He didn’t need anyone to help him on that journey. He is on the demisexual scale and was content to wait for the person that would spark his interest. He wasn’t a volcano, or a late developer, or a man who choose celibacy. And his sexuality was not a game to exploit
His heart cannot die, be burned out of him, it just suffers eternally, always in the hope of finding a safe harbour someday with John Watson
At the end of the BBC AU, he knew that the writers had betrayed him. They had used his John as the weapon and given his enemies, Moriarty and Morstan, a free pass to write his story.
He knew the game, his game, his raison d’etre, was compromised and over by the time TLD began. He was in fact a dying detective yet again
Secrets John kept from the writers:
He IS the wisest man
He was gay, just in the closet. Always has been since he was created
He never wanted a child, or a wife. All he ever wanted was Sherlock Holmes
He loved being the narrator, he NEEDED to be the narrator
John’s reactions to tedious and annoying things about Sherlock, the words and responses created for him by the writer, missed the point that he adored every single thing Sherlock said or did. He never was an apologist, he was always a devotee
He knew he was killed in the BBC AU at the end of HIV. [TAB just a glorious moment during the throws of death] The John of s4 was the vestige regret, anger and sorrow, not directed at Sherlock, but at the creators for failing once again
It was HIS heart that got burned to a crisp, not by Moriarty, but by the writers
He ALWAYS knows far more than the creators writing the story. Sadly he knew the mistakes being made in the BBC AU and the inevitable outcome
He and Sherlock running out of Rathbone Place was in fact them running as fast as they could from this mess of an AU called BBC Sherlock
Maybe in future incarnations the characters will find justice, resolution and ultimate happiness.
in light of series 4 and how a lot of us felt about it, i’ve been asked a couple of times if i was leaving the sherlock/johnlock fandom and my answer is no. a lot of people, myself included, have been anxious about the radical changes, though, and the fact that followers and friends and people we admired are jumping ship and sometimes it feels like posting that content is not a good idea because now that s4 disappointed us, the show has proven itself to be “bad” and continuing to love it/the characters reflects your poor taste/willingness to be queerbaited by the creators. other people are worried about their own changing tastes and their resulting declining follower counts. i just want to say that you should post what makes you happy, do what makes you happy and love what makes you happy. don’t bow down to pressure from anybody, least of all someone on the other end of the screen. at the end of the day, you’ll only have yourself to blame if you choose to post anything based on what would make other people happy. don’t feel bad about loving what you love. find more people who love it and make connections if you want to. just keep moving forward and having a good time
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