It’s not new, of course, this flagrant use of smoke-and-mirrors plotting and nonsense resolutions. Think of that great study in audience abuse, Lost, which began with a plane crash and then added twist upon twist, surprise after surprise, always dangling the possibility of everything coming together and making sense in next week’s episode. It never did. The script heaped up implausibilities and non sequiturs until nothing could finally account for what the show had actually been about. Lost was an object lesson in the financial reality of television whose job is to keep viewers hooked for as long as possible, and then, when they (and the advertisers) have lost interest, vanish, whether the story is wrapped up or not.
So we get extended and increasingly incoherent narrative arcs that leave fans scratching their heads (Battlestar Galactica, anyone?) because we are doing what readers are hardwired to do. We try to find coherence, unity, and meaning whether there is any or not. We assume that the ending was somehow planned from the beginning, though we should know by now that that is not how television is made. TV—unless it’s conceived as a self-contained mini-season—doesn’t begin with a macro idea which they then break into as many episodes or seasons as they have to fill. Generally, they start small and add to the end, extending and extending with no final end game in sight. We shouldn’t be surprised that it doesn’t finally make sense. All those plot twists and surprises we thought were complex revelations of some master plan were just new bits tacked on, each one taking the story in a direction no one (including the writers) had foreseen when they penned Episode 1.
The fact that they name-dropped LOST and BSG feels like a personal shout-out to me.
It’s funny, I don’t normally agree with critics but most of them have been spot on in their critiques of TFP. This one in particular is right on the money.
Another great critique to come out today, with added discussions on how TFP failed autistic people who identified with the show as well as women and the LGBTQ+ community. And it mentions #Norbury.
My husband and I talked about what this meant for autistic Sherlock the night we watched it. I haven’t written about it because I am holding on to hope for ep4 fixing everything. But not only as this article mentions does it make female autistics into monsters that must be locked away while male autistics are heroes, but I felt that it made the evolution of Sherlock (to whom I very much relate), from great to good man actually be from autistic savant to being “cured” of his autism somehow.
I kind of immediately got caught up in the tin hatting on episode four, but it is quite possible that a fourth episode will fix the queerbaiting without fixing the negating of autistic representation that this episode represented.
“If this is the end, then it leaves the people who loved the show for its celebration of difference with a troubling message: that difference makes you a hero if you’re a white man, and an aberration if you’re anyone else.”
A saving grace? The show’s loyal fans. Whether from respect or kindness, some have actually theorized that this implosion of quality was really a self-inflicted, conscious sabotage to make a point; others suggest that there is a magical fourth episode waiting in the wings that will allow all of us to climb successfully out of the massive plot sinkholes. That is how much the audience cares about the show and respects its team: it looks for ways to bail them out, to pick them up when they seem to stumble. And it’s a good thing. If not for that dedication, Sherlock could figuratively suffer far worse than that decapitation in the sand.
the seemingly dismissal of the fans by the creators is little irritating. You can’t bait the audience and then get mad when they don’t get what they were expecting. There is a reason Sherlock Holmes books and this show are at the center of queer media critique, and there should be a level of respect for that type of decades-long scholarship.
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Kudos for this writer, and her comprehensive review of the so many faults in this episode and season. Plz thank the writer on her twitter account:
this is (imho) a really terrific review of the last episode.
it’s honest and direct about what didn’t work, but it also picks out a lot of lovely details from the mess. I
basically agree with every word of it, though my opinions on this
episode are changing from minute to minute.
This quote in particular: “Speaking of: It’s really disappointing that only Mrs. Hudson is the only female character to make it out of Sherlock without being completely defined by her relationship to the “Boys of Baker Street.” It’s even more disappointing that such a promising villain was somehow not enough for Gatiss and Moffat. Andrew Scott is great, but his tick-tock routine could never have been scarier than Sian Brooke’s flat voice and dead-eyed scare. Why exactly did they think she needed backup?”
“Why did the Joey spinoff from Friends never work? Why was Top Gear imminently watchable while The Grand Tour is imminently dire? Because just having a great character isn’t enough. You need to give them boundaries – try to make them work within a set of rules that rub up against them. It’s the mundanity of everyday life that makes Sherlock so fun: if you take him out of Baker Street and put him in this almost imaginary world, it just doesn’t work as well.”
Sherlock Fandom Archive 