Okay, so I understand why people think S4 sucks, and why TFP sucks in particular. I understand how people perceive John and Sherlock and Mary, and the issues people have with their characterization, ‘cause there’s plenty of posts about that. I suppose these are more analytical subjects. I understand why people are disappointed with the plot twists, or with Mary’s narration. I get there are many things that Sherlock fans wish would have happened differently, or just… not happened (say, the beating or Mary’s being rehabilitated by the narrative, etc).
What I’m not clear on, even all this time later, is what’s so *emotionally* painful specifically about TFP in particular (for TJLCers). It seems to go beyond a lack of explicitly canon Johnlock, though maybe I’m wrong. It seems people think TFP is somehow uniquely destructive of the queer reading in general (as well as plot continuity? I guess) in a way I’m not grasping intuitively, and that trumps the extensive levels of angst we’ve had in TST and TLD (not to mention Series 3). That’s what I’d like to have someone help me understand.
Like… TST was painful for me ‘cause Mary was there with them all the time and Sherlock seemed so oblivious to John’s discomfort, and Sherlock joked about how she’s a better partner than John, and then at the end, John told Sherlock to get lost. That’s not to mention Mary’s death scene and John’s growls and wails, which were painful to watch on several levels. John’s sudden rejection of Sherlock afterwards was naturally super painful, not to mention bewildering. Then TLD has John beat up a vulnerable and unresisting Sherlock, only to reject him yet *again* and return the cane as a symbol of how much he means it. TLD also had Sherlock POV angst big-time, with that awful scene where he remembers ASiP!John; then at the Thames with Eurus, he screams when she says ‘anyone’ and he remembers John’s rejection, and later where he says he doesn’t want to die. Then there’s that awful moment John tells Sherlock he only rescued him because of his inner Mary, and he pushes him at Irene with all sincerity, after bemoaning his own lost chances with Mary. Like… I’m traumatized even thinking of these things. The only happy or even private John and Sherlock moment in these two eps was the hug.
In terms of contrast, John and Sherlock get along for all of TFP, Sherlock calls John family and he smiles, they make plans together and basically act like a well-oiled machine. Yes, Sherlock still acts a bit ‘not good’, but again: this is normal for Sherlock, as opposed to walking on eggshells and *still* being brutally rejected, like in TLD. The worst thing I’ve seen people accuse Sherlock of is perhaps ignoring John’s ‘Vatican Cameos’ and/or prioritizing the case in a dangerous situation with Eurus, but that’s Sherlock being efficient and focused on the big picture or the plan, and he’s *always* been like that. Then we have an open ending where they solve cases and raise Rosie together, forever and ever. As opposed to the weirdness and unending emotional torture ever since TEH, it’s TFP that’s traumatized people the most? Why? Any insight appreciated.
I think there’s a different expectation of TFP because it’s the last episode of the series. There are things that people can see as transitory in episodes 1 and 2 of a series that seem a lot more final/shitty in the third episode. (Especially if this is possibly the last episode ever).
There was hype in the media surrounding the show and series 4 about it making history, etc. that set expectations high and so I think people feel a let down about the lack of that uhm climax?
I think there’s a tonal oddness about TFP that makes the whole universe feel like it’s not itself. I think that’s happened at other times but it’s felt by a lot of people more severely in TFP.
Re: the ending, the voiceover, I think for a lot of people, spoils whatever positive things appear onscreen. It creates, again, an odd tone that makes the ending not seem real, seem almost like a parody.
Overall, the plot, for me, was boring, it felt stilted. These set pieces where they go from one room to another just didn’t work for me. I didn’t feel like there was a real threat to them, I didn’t feel tension. Unlike Moriarty’s game in TGG, this game felt very low-stakes and just, fake.
Granted I didn’t love TST or TLD but I felt more invested, and I felt there was more suspense.
I think there’s tons of possible subtext for the idea that John and Sherlock became a couple at the end of TLD and are together in TFP (I first heard that from you, actually) but it just wasn’t what I wanted to see with regards to them being romantically involved. I thought that their romantic entanglement was becoming increasingly clear in the text by series 3 so to have it buried by the end of series 4, felt like an anti-climax.
I think from a Johnlock perspective it was pretty blah and from the perspective of the rest of the plot it felt pretty blah, too. I didn’t think there was enough realism or humanity to Eurus or to the Eurus plot to like grab onto, personally. I’ve felt more invested in like the old woman dying, and she’s a random person, than in what supposedly happened with the third Holmes sibling, unfortunately.
PS by, ‘a lot of people’, I mean me. This is just how I feel and I’m guessing others might feel this, too.
Thanks for this! This isn’t exactly an explanation for *trauma* (more feeling ‘blah’), but I imagine being disappointed or let down enough could itself be traumatizing? I have heard things about hating the voiceover, of course, it’s just… you know, like, of all the awful things that happened on the show (just in TLD and TST alone), that doesn’t really… rank in my mind? It’s not even, you know… angsty. Still, well, I get that it’s the last ep and that makes everything feel super important and final, I guess. So yeah, that helps.
I think it is just because people kept thinking it’d be fixed in the final episode – that everything painful and wrong in the previous episodes wouldn’t be real or would be explained somehow – and then it wasn’t.
That’s probably a lot of it, definitely: people not taking all that stuff at face value and thinking it’d be made better. I myself did think that. I didn’t think it wouldn’t be real (that’s just… not a thought I have… ever), but I suppose I did think it’d be fixed. And of course that didn’t happen. But… I mean… John and Sherlock were ok, so on some level I was cheered up. John was himself again, so was Sherlock. It was over. The first ep in two seasons that they were a team. Anyway, we didn’t get the ‘how’, but I was pleased. Plus I enjoyed the plot and was at the edge of my seat with intense tension throughout. In any case, obviously I’m the weird one here, haha.
I don’t think that feeling blah about something that you’ve been passionate about for years ends up being a blah feeling about TFP. I mean, I’m unlikely to get colourful here but I was most definitely crushed by the end of TFP. To feel like this historical climax was a bland let down, was nothing if not devastating. I would think that the fact that I’m answering this question would imply that I was very upset with the episode without having to reveal any personal details. Please don’t dismiss my response as one of someone who is indifferent to this show or to series 4.
I definitely didn’t feel like John or Sherlock were themselves again by the end. It felt like they were destroyed by the end and its, ‘who you are doesn’t really matter’, theme. If the end shows these characters and they don’t seem like themselves then the effect is devastating. If that’s not really them then who cares if they look happy or not? If the end seems fake and the drama felt superficial then it’s worse than if they’d left us with TLD and its problems as the ending. It feels like there’s no cliffhanger not because everything is okay in the end but rather because everything feels fake by the end which is deeply unsatisfying and upsetting.
I was replying to your previous post as you were writing this, @just-sort-of-happened–yes to all of this as well.
TFP had baggage. The problem was MORE than the episode itself. Namely the BFI incident where Moffatt bullied a young fan for asking a ‘relationship’ question and then went on to insist that John DID NOT move back to Baker Street. This incident went online immediately and there was a Twitter reaction from LGBTQ viewers which lasted for several days. People who hadn’t seen the episode were outraged by the online video of Moffatt, some vulnerable LGBTQ fans were in deep distress that the representation they had been hoping for had not only been denied but ridiculed. In the midst of all this we had TFP ep leak. So many people viewed it early, and went into denial. They simply refused to believe an ep so strange was real. The leak felt staged, managed by TPTB, as the tweets to not watch it from Sue brought attention to the fact it existed. When the ep did air, and it was indeed the same as the leaked ep,it was inferior to TLD, and for all the reasons @just-sort-of-happened pointed out. It was even rejected by general viewers and had just over 5 million viewers versus the 8-12 million of other episode.
TJLC community were very attuned to the BFI feedback, the Twitter reaction and the details of the leak. Many tjlcers were banking on a kiss/confirmation since SDCC, as Ben, in his exuberance at working with Martin, was hinting at it, and Amanda had blurted out how groundbreaking and history making the episode was. TFP was just not either of those things and if there was a kiss filmed then they pulled it. Emotions ran very high over all of this, and many leading tjlcers left the fandom in anger and sadness. Many went into the tin-foil-hat battalion and dove into the episodes looking for clues that it was all not real and a Lost Special or s5 will redeem this AU. All in all a huge emotional knock for TJLC. Plus the ‘hate’ and ridicule sent to tjlcers post season end was huge and we felt as if the creators had thrown us to the wolves and then blamed us for putting ourselves in a vulnerable position.
SO when you wonder why TJLC folks were experiencing an emotionally painful reaction to TFP, you have to see the big picture and not just the episode itself. It’s many things, plus the loss of a dream held since TSoT aired.
I now stand firmly corrected in my misassumption that the big reveal would mean we would revisit the entire show in light of the ending and see an intricate plan. An emotional context we the audience were meant to miss. I was right. As were others. Problem was, it was a sister all along. Unfortunately the sister rugpull rather than a romance rug pull is the less convincing story arc. What we got instead was a finale that makes in retrospect much of what preceded it seem nonsensical at surface level if we accept the finale as the “solution” or the definitive story. How did we get that wrong?
I was never a conspiracy fan. It relied on too much “it can only mean one thing” from mountains of data. When the narrative and the claims of creators lying as a benevolent secret keeping was all that was necessary to see a romantic endgame. I opted always for a simple solution. The simplest most probable answer. And that was heavily reliant on my trust in Mofftiss as good storytellers and good show runners. That was for me my biggest error.
If this was not “gay” but “trash”, how did it to get to be *this* trash?
How is it we were so wrong in predicting the endgame across various different theory camps of this fandom? What weaknesses on their part were we overlooking? Or not privy to? Or ignoring. Or not adequately assessing – so that coincidences were ironically a sign of laziness, or clever writing instead turns out to be poor writing – a series of tricks rather than a plan?
Because the end result is simultaneously infuriating and “Meh.” Two things that should not comfortably go together. A rug pull should leave you so impressed you don’t mind being infuriated. You applaud and shout, “oh you tricked me! Well done! How DID you do it?!” And yet, here we are.
Some fans are deciding to keep the faith – hoping for a final rug pull that will show they really were as good as we believed. I’m not there. I am opting to make a deduction and coming to a probable conclusion based on the data we have. No conspiracy. No cruel intentions. Just a series of unfortunate events.
For as much as I am loathe to say this, I think from an executive production point of view, the absence of someone like Steven Thompson means the absence of a critical third voice.
I don’t know why he left but he should have been replaced by *someone*. Mofftiss were clearly given far too much credit and license. Where was the necessary script editing to rein in their now glaringly patent self indulgent natures?
Keeping secrets to the degree they have, and being allowed to, has been proven a big executive error. Because no one was able to say hold on, how will this play out coherently? Virtually every single thing that frustrates the viewer from TEH on right through to the last frame of TFP could have been avoided if they had had a 3rd voice they listened to and who had the authority to thoroughly critique their plans. They were over indulged in all the wrong places.
TAB was a masterpiece but I suspect not for the reasons *they* think it was. They literally do not appear to have seen what it was they were writing. Or they did and defied the results on screen.
Every critique I have, or have seen, comes down in the end to that. Letting them keep secrets from their cast and crew was a glaring warning that there was no one with the authority or the necessary expertise on board to keep them in check and join up the dots.
Moffat and Gatiss have clearly been working without an outside writer’s voice who has authority that they would listen to. Since TEH it has been a problem that only compounds. The errors build on themselves.
It resulted in a finale that many critics and fans are unconvinced by for *multiple different* reasons. It was only at the end that we see just how much they were driving the show haphazardly and possibly the wrong direction.
There’s an analogy that comes to mind. One reason a manager is paid more than their secretary is that if the secretary makes a mistake their errors have less consequences in the grand scheme. You will likely notice their failings very quickly. The manager meanwhile has the ability to make errors that will not only have bigger impact but will not necessarily be immediately obvious. The more power you have the longer it will take for the true and full negative impact of your decisions to be realized. Because as a decision plays out it creates other decisions in a ripple effect that take time to play out. Of course you can offset this by critiquing the decisions before finalizing them, and thinking through what the consequences might be. If you don’t then what will happen? You can only trust the manager. You assume *they* have thought it through and assessed the potential flaws and risks and negative outcomes. That they have a plan to offset any negative consequences or prevent them from happening.
Making sound decisions demands either a high level of self-critique or a system that lets criticism in. To test your plan. To raise the issue of unintended consequences. Not with an intention of blocking success but to *ensure* it.
This show was, I fear, failing at that far earlier than anyone really knew and I don’t think TBTB see it even now. A clear warning flag that many of us picked up on at the time was AA not being told Mary was going to be revealed an assassin. That was an error that not only impacted her performance (think of her as a secretary who realizing an error she didn’t even mean to make or even knew she was making then has to then self-correct on the fly). but it crucially should have signaled a much bigger managerial error that would have a series of far more fundamental negative results. That secrecy meant that no one else got to say, um… are you sure about this plot line? Have you planned any of this out adequately and considered the long term consequences on the narrative? Because if you head down this path you may not be able to undo it. You can’t just make it up as you go. Think this all out. How will this all fit? What ongoing story are you serving here? Where do you want to land?
But the manager was trusted rather than questioned. The only negative consequence was thought to be its impact on Amanda. No biggie. She’s a professional. She can recalibrate to accommodate the performance errors she unwittingly made. Tiny errors that Mofftiss assumed were no big deal, having incorrectly assumed that it would be a better surprise reveal if she was acting blind of what was to come. But that meant she was serving a different story than them. She had no choice but to. It put emphases in potentially the wrong places. Her fellow actors are in turn then reacting to her acting choices and she is reacting to them. But that notion that if they don’t know anything, or, “just assume your character knows nothing because it doesn’t matter”, is not how acting works. They didn’t trust her. I suspect they were doing this all along to their actors. Not actually trusting their skills or adequately hearing their own unfolding insights from inside the characters. So that the cast were acting repeatedly on false sets of assumptions. So too probably were the directors and crew. As a result, what shows up on screen is not what they all think they are making. They all think they are making a slightly different show.
And the widest gap is between what Mofftiss had in their heads and what was on screen. Next down the pecking order is what Martin and Ben thought they were doing. In light of TFP there are acting choices and editing choices over which take of a scene to use (going by the commentaries) that suggest there was no 3rd party with the authority to hear their conversations and say, have you considered that the actors understand the characters better than you do? If that’s true, how might they see the path they are on? Do you realize that if you use this take you are placing an emphasis you should then follow through on.
And no one had the power to point it out and not be shrugged off. So in retrospect, there are scenes that now seem totally overplayed or emotionally on the wrong foot. And the problem is, which ones were out of character in light of TFP? Because I think that’s up for debate.
This was a show attempting to be very clever and yet apparently was very much NOT thought through. The fundamental fan error was assuming stuff could not possibly be coincidence. Others went further and assumed not just endgame narrative but an incredibly intricate conspiracy that they were hiding in plain sight so the fans could guess what the end game was.
But that was never the only option. The one thing that kept getting sidelined was the possibility that they thought they all knew what they were doing but didn’t. That their plans were flawed. And that it wasn’t that they were intentionally writing a narrative that fans could subtextually read. Rather the creators could not see it. Which produced a ton of unintended coincidences. They wrote it and acted it and designed around it and scored it and could not see the wood for the trees. Because what Mofftiss said ultimately ruled at the end.
And that is paradoxically *why* the love story works. Why there are so many coincidences. Because the story we read fitted the rules of storytelling even while Mofftiss tried to defy those very rules. To insist they weren’t telling it.
They simply ignored what many others could see – the story they were telling in spite of themselves. They assumed their intent was more powerful a force. And in that burned the heart out of their own show. So that the finale focused on Sherlock and Eurus in a self indulgent Bond meets gothic horror genre fantasy when in fact this was always meant to be about Sherlock and John. Even platonically, they failed in TFP to deliver on that adequately. They shoved it to the side so it was virtually a subplot. The wrote the wrong kind of ending for a story they were all unconsciously writing, acting, directing, designing, scoring. The very heart of ACD’s stories. The bond between the 2 heroes. A love story, even if one that was limited in its physical or sexual expression.
They tried to refocus at the end on John and Sherlock and in their fast cut blink and you miss it montage they made yet another massive error. A huge one.
They gave Mary the voice that rightly belonged to go back to John – the Boswell, the blogger, the original storyteller. So he could explain what he and Sherlock are. They did it in TAB. Sherlock understood that in TAB. That John’s public narrative is not the truth. That there is an emotional story the public doesn’t see. An emotional Sherlock the Strand reading or blog reading public doesn’t see. They should have let Sherlock’s intuition and unconscious insight be proven right in real life in the 21st century. They should have replayed that aspect of TAB in the real world. Instead, confusingly, they did the exact opposite – so much so John couldn’t tell if Sherlock was faking his own self destruction.
He couldn’t tell the story if he tried. He needed a second opinion. A big clue that they had made a mistake – the same mistake that led them to introduce Mary’s DVD messages:
Mary was never the storyteller. But they tried to make her one. It was a very flawed decision. One of so many. All interlinked. And all ultimately as result of not thinking it through. They stopped serving the core story and served themselves on a personal fan boy level. They tried to be clever and completely missed the emotional context which they claimed was what this show was supposed to all be about. At a surface textual level. And a brief montage of the future feels like a rushed and inadequate pay off to that original intent. With the wrong narrator – with Mary as our intermediary – we are now inexplicably kept more at a distance from them than we were at the start. After going through hell with them.
I suspect that around TRF they began to lose the plot. They began to think details don’t matter. Even though they then discovered fans were weaving intricate explanations for how sherlock lived they persisted in letting details go. Waving it all off to please themselves and evade scrutiny. Mistake.
All the contradictions in cast and crew commentaries and interviews point to that. And fans, me included, assumed they were smarter than that. We kept trying correct the story to make it make sense by assuming they must be telling a different story. Problem was we didn’t give enough air time to imagining a trash ending and looking for clues of what it might be. We wrote far too generous meta. We gave them way more credit than they were due. They really weren’t the storytellers we thought they were. They were just fan boys amusing themselves for a rug pull that was in the end not very interesting or as original as they think. And certainly not groundbreaking.
Rather than correcting what everyone else got wrong, they hatched up an inadequate plan and made poor decisions. Everyone else put far too much trust in them as writers. And it all culminated in an ending that throws up huge retrospective questions about swathes of what preceded it. It potentially breaks the story so that a rewatch will not make sense.
I see little or no reason to come to any other conclusion. It fits all the rules of probability. They just weren’t good enough writers. They put ego before the heart of the narrative and were indulged by too many others.
There may be other probable conclusions. But the least generous is the most sense making one to my mind right now. It requires no leaps of logic.
This is a wonderful editorial on the failings of Moftiss. The hubris, the nepotism, the lack of an outside monitor of the process, the inability to properly access what was actually happening on the screen despite their intents….excellent. Have you considered giving this a little “punch-up” (for the lay Sherlockians) and shopping it to online and/or print publications?
There’s something really troubling to me about the way Moffat wrote Mary and Eurus, and I can’t quite articulate what it is. Why does it bother me so much that Mary shot someone in the chest and this gets excused as “surgery” and Eurus can literally murder children and she gets a hug and dueling violins with big brother???
I need to understand what is going on in Moffat’s head so I can pin point the exact brand of misogyny that created this trope that appears repeatedly in his work.
I’ve actually been thinking about this because of S4 gif sets that somehow ended up on my dash this afternoon…
I honestly think that Moffat thinks that abusive = strong. Also, that a woman who is dom in unhealthy ways is sexy. Moffat’s ultimate wank fantasy was his Irene Adler who was literally a dominatrix who drugged the protag against his will, broke into his flat twice, once to return his coat and kiss him while he was drugged, and a second time to sleep in his bed and wear his clothes without his permission, but the audience were meant to read that those actions as evidence of cleverness, strength, and love for Sherlock (and yes, I’ve heard all the arguments against that reading, but given Moffat’s track record writing women, I do really think that was writer intent).
This extends to Mary, who constantly belittles both John and Sherlock, low key turns them against one another while trying to build up her own individual alliances, shoots Sherlock when he offers to help her, threatens him while he’s still barely conscious in the hospital, threatens to kill him again in the empty house, compares her husband to a dog, calls Sherlock a pig, drugs Sherlock when he offers to help her, denies her husband any say in naming their child and then gives their baby the name she was known by when she was up to no good, essentially painting a target on her baby’s back, runs out on her husband and baby rather than stay and accept help from two men who are pretty qualified to offer it. She does all this and it’s meant to be ‘cute’, the strong, sassy assassin, who is Sherlock’s pal, and John’s angel wife who makes him and Sherlock want to be better men (even though John openly admitted that he barely liked her when they finally caught up with her in TST, so inconsistent much?!).
You see this in milder ways with Sarah Sawyer in TGG and Mrs. Hudson in TFP. The women offering to do something nice and then withholding which is meant to be ‘cute’, or somehow demonstrates they are a strong woman with boundaries. So you have Sarah asking John if he’d like breakfast, and when he says yes, telling him he’ll have to get it himself, or Mrs. Hudson in TFP offering a clearly shaken Mycroft tea, and when he says he would like some, she says ‘teapot’s over there’. That’s cute to Moffat. To me it just reads as rude. Mrs. Hudson’s ‘Not your Housekeeper’ in ASiP was more what I would consider healthy boundary setting. And both actresses sort of managed to salvage it from coming off as really awful with their delivery, but yeah–not really ‘cute’.
Eurus was a bit of a different thing. A wild, feral, damaged creature who needed to be tamed by the love, forgiveness and acceptance of the male protag. She was the mad girl in the attic. She murdered Sherlock’s childhood best friend, tortured Sherlock as a child, drove a wedge in the family dynamic, burnt the family home down, put Sherlock through years of torment as an adult, as it seems she was behind some of Moriarty’s machinations (and was apparently a murderous rapist to boot). But in her case it was because she was just born bad. She deserves pity because she was born too intelligent for her own good, so smart she was wholly without empathy, and totally mad (don’t even get me started on the ableism here, that’s a post for another day). And she existed only to be the catalyst to Sherlock’s emotional growth. He must forgive her, and love her back to life.
I mean all of these are pretty common misogynistic traits. Moffat’s writing is essentially a misogyny grab-bag. Pick your misogynistic trope. If it exists, you’ll probably find it somewhere in his writing history.
I think what bothers me, specifically, is that this aspect of Mary and eurus in particular makes them feel like props rather than people.
I’d be hard pressed to find a male character who could kill as many people as eurus did and come out the other side as simply misunderstood – but with the ladies of Sherlock moffat is just interested in getting from point A to point D. Need to have Sherlock dying in an ambulance in his mind palace for dramatic effect? Have Mary shoot him! But she’s still good ol’ Mary in the end, of course, because women don’t have internal lives and therefore don’t get character arcs.
The idea of this being a wank fantasy of moffat’s seems pretty on the money tho.
The writers modelled the inner lives of their female characters after male behaviour patterns. It seems they thought: “Well, a real man would say ‘I take my wife home’, therefore a feminist woman will say ‘I take my husband home’ (like Marydid in TAB).” But exchanging the gender of the character uttering those lines doesn’t turn male oppressive patriarchal machismo into feminist self-assertion. That is a mistake many male writers make: They think, in short that, a strong woman will act like an alpha male. Except we don’t.
For example, a truly self-confident feminist character in the TAB graveyard scene could have said. “I don’t want to watch Sherlock do these things I find strange and disturbing. I decide to go home. No one has to take me. But he’s your friend, John, and obviously needs you, so I propose you stay and help him. You don’t need me for this, and I don’t need you to take me home.” How about something like that – if Mary was to be presented as a strong, funny, confident, feminist hero (with flaws to make her more interesting)?
But I have come to the conclusion that many male writers just can’t fathom how biased they are by their own gender. They think they can write strong women, because they somewhat see them as strong men with tits and a bit more emotions. Sorry, that’s not how it works.
Same goes for all the violence applied to solve problems – all those shootings, explosions and killings. A very male kind of conflict resolution. Just because a woman shoots a man that doesn’t make her strong or feminist – it just makes her a killer.
Perhaps a female co-writer could have helped… but that’s unheard of at Sherlock.
Some of the S4 meta out there is wildly complex, and very impressive in regards to how deeply it digs into, and transforms the text to find meaning. But here’s the thing–Moffat and Gatiss aren’t that clever. Take a look at some of their other work. A lot of it is equally mediocre.
That’s my major hang-up with trying to make sense of S4. The meta writers are far more clever than the writers. Mark and Steven just don’t think that deeply, and all the problems with the writing in S4, are problems that also occur in their other work.
Furthermore, the reason Mark and Steven aren’t really defending bad press and fan opinions of S4, isn’t because they know they still have something brilliant up their sleeve that is going to blow the world away with it’s cleverness and political impact, but because they are arrogant and sheltered enough to actually think that what they wrote for Season 4 was good. Just look at Steven’s comment here on tumblr during the Pre-S4 Question Time session, when he said that he thought TFP was the best thing he had ever written, and he hoped fans felt the same. Yikes.
They live in a bubble of yes men, especially in regards to Sherlock which was their pet project, funded by family and nepotistically cast. They could pretty much do what they wanted there with no checks and balances. Season 4 was the result.
Mark is a really good actor but his work as a writer in Doctor Who leaves a lot to be desired most of the time, oscillating in quality. I think that he’s given Sherlock his best work because both TGG and THoB were brilliant (I don’t like TEH despite its johnlock moments).
Steven has clever ideas and he’s rather gifted, he’s written fabulous TV episodes many times (I even was a Press Gang fan when I was a kid, it was a fantastic show) but he seems unable to acknowledge his weak spots… He loves drawn-out and convoluted story arcs yet he never knows how to complete them; he loves big dramatic moments but he has no idea what to do with them; he’s become very lazy when dealing with character development. Maybe giving himself some rest will be good for him, as well as for all of us lol
I agree with you that they’re too self-absorbed to contemplate that viewers might be right and also very possessive when it comes to Sherlock.
He loves drawn-out and convoluted story arcs yet he never knows how to complete them; he loves big dramatic moments but he has no idea what to do with them; he’s become very lazy when dealing with character development.
Yes! Those are exactly all the bones I have to pick with his writing, and why I stopped watching Dr. Who, actually. I feel like Steven needs to retire. The quality of his writing has been getting progressively worse over the last few years. Or, as you say, perhaps he just needs to go on a rather long hiatus to refuel.
Though, his handling of female characters has always been weak and cliched, imo.
Yes, his female characters are terrible despite sometimes promising starts. When they’re not reduced to wife/mother, they seem content to let their whole world and identity revolve around the male hero. I’m sure he believes that he’s written feminist-friendly characters a few times in recent years, but feminist re/viewers have been thrashing his depictions of women since he’s been the showrunner in DW, because of the glaring difference between the way RTD used to deal with the female companions (keeping their family connections, their agency, their world without the Doctor and their original personality, while allowing character growth of course), and the way he’s been doing it (the opposite of it all)
Let’s talk about the inexplicable ‘Sherlock’ subplot where John Watson sexts a random woman he met on the bus.
As a dreary story about an unpleasant man having a midlife crisis, it’s perfectly typical: a tired, middle-aged father strikes up a text-based relationship with a younger woman, but ultimately decides not to follow through. But as an addition to John Watson’s characterization in ‘Sherlock,’ it’s catastrophically inappropriate.
It’s hard not to see this subplot as a transparent example of middle-aged male wish-fulfilment. Apparently seduced by the sheer animal magnetism of a 45-year-old man who embodies the word “average,” an attractive young woman approaches John Watson on the bus and gives him her phone number. While not impossible, this scenario is a thoughtlessly bizarre role-reversal of the sexual harassment women experience on public transport. Then, there’s the fact that John is actually receptive to her advances, texting another woman while he lies in bed with his wife. We’re left with a thoroughly unlikable version of Watson, who will spend the next two episodes stewing with guilt about his not-quite affair.
I was just thinking about this with the gifset about John and his ongoing misunderstanding or projection onto Sherlock, which came to an end in TLD (well, it’s more like it crashed and burned violently, really). And just as John thought Sherlock wasn’t ‘like that’, many viewers thought John wasn’t like that either, in a different way. As the article says, he’s ‘not that kind of dick’.
I realize I just answered the question of why Eurus had to text John recently, but it occurs to me that the real issue most people have is why John had to text Eurus. Of course, John has that issue himself, and John was doing the soul-searching and angsting himself– so he realizes it’s ‘out of character’, or the character he’d like to be– and surely, the whole point is just that he’s human. Sherlock is also human. That’s the whole point. The purely, absolutely loyal John Watson was never the reality.
This is clearly something that the fans have a really hard time with. I can empathize. We all have our hard limits, things we can and cannot accept about others. Perhaps it’s impossible to truly rationalize it, even in fiction, or perhaps especially in fiction. Like, for example, I can accept John no matter what, but I have more of a hard time with Mary and sometimes with Sherlock’s reactions. As I told Ivy recently, his absolute acceptance of the blame John heaps upon him after Mary’s death (and his acceptance of the shooting earlier) is really hard for me to accept or even fully understand. Clearly, I mean, Sherlock has really different standards of what he can accept from the people he really loves.
Maybe it’s just that Sherlock (unlike Mary, unlike John, unlike fandom) sees John truly, and isn’t surprised. That’s why he’s not angry or resentful after John rejects him so radically in TST: as @ivyblossomtold me earlier, Sherlock accepts and understands John just that much, that deeply, that radically. To Sherlock, John is a ‘loaded gun’, and he knows exactly how far John can go and exactly how much John can hurt him. How much John has hurt him in the past. So he simply makes the decision that John is worthwhile. He even agrees with John that he deserves it in the morgue scene, which I don’t agree with, but my point is that Sherlock is always with John even during the time that John isn’t with him. He knows that it’s not John’s loyalty that broke but John himself.
Fan (especially female fans’) reaction to John’s texting affair takes it a bit personally, I think, and treats the situation a bit like John had betrayed them, or their own image of him. This is definitely why I still disagree with @unreconstructedfangirl’s insistence that there’s no evidence Mary idealized John. It seems to me that everyone but Sherlock (including John!) has idealized John, maybe without even realizing it. Not in an extreme, obvious way. More of a well-meaning, admiring way. No one said John was absolutely extraordinary like they’d imagine Sherlock to be (except maybe Sherlock, actually), but he’s loyal, he’s a good man, he does love Mary– stuff like that. Of course, even people who could see what a disaster Mary and John’s marriage was tried to justify John and Mary continuing with it, either by saying John had a plan or Mary’s just waiting for John to wake up and smell the coffee. In reality, it was a case of both of them deluding themselves. It’s not really surprising that John snapped. No one could be perfectly loyal to a partner who’s already betrayed them, after being pregnant with a child neither wanted, and having to go back and try again after adding the caveat that one is still angry. The frustration has to go somewhere. He can’t even complain, because Sherlock is Mary’s friend too, and encouraged him to go back to her right after revealing it was Mary who shot him. ‘Mixed messages’, indeed. Repressing all that– anyone would crack. John is human, isn’t he?
Likability, of course, is a tricky affair. I was just talking about this in regards to Mary’s storyline: in my opinion, the way the narrative unfolded with Mary– primarily the lack of obvious consequences for her (excepting her relationship with John, which isn’t narratively acknowledged as being Mary’s fault), and the use of her as a constant mirror and conduit– made her character ultimately unlikable. But at the same time, that’s just my opinion, my response. Obviously, this isn’t the intended response, and nor is the response of plenty of people who see canon Johnlock. This is just an issue of expectations and needs, which has a complicated relationship to the actual story. As I said, I’m aware we’re supposed to like Mary, and I enjoyed a lot about her character, but I can’t fully overcome the issues I have with the portrayal. That’s a valid response to John, too, even if I didn’t have any issues relating to him or accepting him, and you could even argue John didn’t face enough consequences from Sherlock, either. So there’s a similarity there. You could argue there’s no actual reason to accept John’s humanity in TST but resent Mary’s portrayal in the same episode. You’d probably be right. In the end, though, just like the characters– we’re all only human.
What exactly was this about? Because this is exactly what we do NOT see in S4 which is meant to be a direct continuation of the last modern scene of TAB.
Remember our speculations about Mycroft being in mortal danger, of his imminent death, passing on the responsibility for Sherlock on to John? And what did we get? Nothing. The only time in all of S4 Mycroft might have been in serious danger comes in TFP when Eurus makes Sherlock choose between best friend and brother. But Mycroft could not foresee this in TAB. And the way he behaves at the beginning of TST does not reflect in any way on this either.
Same goes for John. I am not going to discuss his issues in this post but it is a fact that John is not looking after Sherlock in TST and most of TLD. What we see, however, is Sherlock trying to protect John, Mary, and Rosie, calmly accepting John’s anger, going to hell for John, comforting John, calling him his family, and saving him from drowning in a well.
This raises the question to me…is S4 maybe the exact opposite to what the story should have been? Do we see a negative of the picture? The other side of the coin? I don’t know why they would do that… but you are right… actually we don’t see continuation of the modern time scenes in S4!!!
@loveismyrevolution: Yes, this is an interesting question. And I had a similar idea – not wishing to be predictable, delivering twists that unexpected, not going down the route we thought they would. I love the image of the photo negative. Question is – was it all real? And, if yes, was it worth it? Because doing the unexpected does not necessarily mean that what you do is good or logical or makes sense. (As you know, I do not think that it was all real but one should at least allow the possibility).
Yes, of course there is the possibility…but do we really count that in @gosherlocked?
What would Sherlock say “if you eliminate the impossible….” you know 😉 … is it even possible that any of S4 could be real? Okay we are also told that “of course it makes no sense, because it’s not real”. That was Moriarty, Sherlock’s other side of the coin…but whom do we trust and whom do we follow? I’m going for Sherlock!!! This can’t be real!!
But joke aside… why would Mofftiss do this? Why suddenly try to change plans, why suddenly going for the unexpected? What would be the purpose? Why now? What changed now? They never did that before? Even S3 wasn’t that unexpected….not even villains-Mary was quite shocking, was it?
What happened to Mofftiss and with that to Sherlock too?
@loveismyrevolution: Agreed in all points. 😉 You want to know my personal idea why S4 was unexpected and S3 was not? Because in S3 they basically kept to Canon, at least up to a certain point (I will come to that again). In spite of the pregnancy and Mary being a villain, Sherlock returned, John got married, there was the Milverton/Magnussen case, Moriarty remained dead (yes, there was the video but this was not a confirmation of him being alive). All major plot points that were known from Canon.
For me the turning point has always been the Watson domestic resp. John staying with Mary and Sherlock shooting an unarmed man. And with S4 we left Canon definitely behind. Even in TLD which IMO is closest to Canon we are very far from the original story – which is fine because it is more dramatic and Sherlock for a change does not fake anything. But as for TFP – well. There is no substantial Canon connection apart from the title. And I think that this explains why S4 feels so off to many people. And accounts for all the EMP meta as well.
I think s4 didn’t work because they abruptly shifted the morality of their fictional universe right at the climax. We are repeatedly shown how disturbing and distressing Sherlock finds the death of innocents.
Then all through s4, the show keeps telling us that both Sherlock and John have been formed by the influence of these murderesses. Apparently John is a good man because he strives to rise to Mary’s standards? I mean he’s only known her two years and she shot his best friend in the chest but okay. And Sherlock was formed by the influence of a five year old girl whom he has no conscious memory of. Of course the audience rejects that! It isn’t in keeping with what the show has already shown us! John was a good man before he ever laid eyes on Mary Morstan or Sherlock Holmes for that matter. And Eurus. Well. Just. No. They confessed that they didn’t even have the idea for her until after they’d written s3, so uh. Her influence was not apparent, even after her existence was revealed.
But what’s more important than plot holes is character holes! John and Sherlock accept and acknowledge the supposed influence of these cold blooded murderers? They aren’t repelled and disgusted by disregard for human life? Since when? Is it just because these people are women? How insulting!
You can’t just move your moral goalposts at the last second because you’ve written yourself into a corner! That’s cheating! It’s cheap and pathetic, and it doesn’t work.
Very true. Just look at Soo Lin’s and Franklin’s death in THoB. They did care a lot for their lives, as did the audience, because their death was shown as a tragic event, supported by the cinematography and music.
So like, It occurs to me that the appearance of tjlc directly corresponds with season 3 hiatus. Before that, I think, most people didn’t think they would make johnlock canon even if they did see all the romantic tropes quite plainly.
It was just a fun show that toyed with homoeroticism and had no intention of canonizing the ship.
But then when season three happened suddenly it seemed like maybe they were building towards something. It seemed like the cases didn’t matter like we thought they did. It seemed like they were more interested in the disastrous effect Sherlock’s death had on John’s life; it seemed like they were more interested in Sherlock’s heartfelt and heartbreaking best man’s speech at John’s wedding; more interested in Watching Sherlock and john collapse on themselves after spending a month apart…
And in retrospect I see now that what was really happening is that the writers were losing control of their story.
So much of what we thought was a shift in focus from the mysteries onto the romance turned out to be a combination of lazily written puzzles, queer-baiting, and convoluted plots with ever unresolved story threads.
This reminds me of when I was in college and my neighbor, who was getting his masters in philosophy, was telling me a bit about some of the concepts he was writing about – he told us he was fascinated by the human brain’s ability to create meaning out of nonsense. “I could say to you ‘pink, wire, chicken’ which doesn’t mean anything, but your brain is already filling in the blanks to instinctively create sense out of that.”
I think this is what began to happened in season 3, and why it, and tab, created such ample fodder for meta and interpretation.
They said “queerbait, meat dagger, gun surgery” and we built worlds out of steven moffat and Mark Gatiss’ lazy, badly written trash.
It wasn’t our fault. It was just the worst possible, most unfortunate combination of terrible writing and queerbaiting I could possibly imagine – we couldn’t help trying to fill in the gaps in the input
So true! Parts of this fandom made gold out of shit. And when Moffat, Gatiss and Vertue eventually saw what they had provoked by their conspirational secrecey in connection with everything Sherlock – it was too late to backpaddle. They had unleashed a monster.
They had already lied so much that nothing they said was taken serious anymore. Them denying johnlock was seen as proof for it by some (many?) fans, because TPTB had so often lied about stuff or kept secrets (even from their cast), told one thing and then did the opposite… like, for example:
The other one is unimportant / just a red herring Gatiss wrote in
Redbeard is just a dog
TAB is a stand alone, wholy set in 1895
Moriarty is dead (well, he was, but kept reappearing anyway)
the whole Fall Scenario with encouraging fan theories, then never explaining, even retconning what happened
Why all this secrecy in the first place? Why all the lies? Would it really have spoiled anything if we’d known that parts of TAB were (presumably) set in the present day? Or that Rebeard was connected to something that happened in Sherlock’s childhood? Or that there was another Holmes sibling? Why lead your audience on by filming fake scenes? Why encourage speculations, only to criticise the direction some of those were heading, based on your own writing?
A sibling / TAB being a dream of Sherlock on the plane / a childhood trauma etc. were speculated about anyway. A bit more honesty from the writers / producers, respect and trust in their audience could have dried up the quagmire of lies, red herrings and surprising plot twists that encouraged conspiracy theories to blossom. The smoke would have lifted and fans might have seen the story for what it was – a story about a detective, his blogger, and, from S3 onwards, that bloggers wife. That was apparently the story they wanted to tell – why hide it behind a smokescreen of homoeroticism, lies, insinuations, games and jokes?
If your show can only attract an audience because of encouraging false assumptions, you are running headlong into harm (aka backlash). If the writers had abandoned the ‘will they, won’t they?’ between John and Sherlock after S2, why not openly (and on the show itself) say so? Why keep up the gay ‘jokes’ in S3 (they actually bookend that series, with Mrs Hudson’s ‘live and let live’ in TEH up to the aborted love confession trope applied on the tarmac)? Why not tell your audience ‘We love Mary Watson, they will now be a trio, solving crimes, until all goes to hell, but then Sherlock finds out what happened during his childhood, what made him, so he can heal.’? Why not show this in your show, like, film a real wedding, show John and Mary kissing, show Sherlock coping well, accepting Mary as a friend, put the cases more centre stage, don’t have Mary kill Sherlock etc.?
Then I could have stepped away or at least tuned down my expectations.
But they loved the hype too much. They loved their show being the centre of intense speculation and attention. But, at least within me after having watched S4, all the hype and built-up just left a feeling of disappointment. I feel betrayed. Why show me stuff like Mycroft’s notebook – that meant nothing in the end? Why show me evil Mary – only to make her the hero of the narrative? Why write in all the homoeroticism – and then never resolve the built up tension, not even by Sherlock stating that he’s gay and John saying that he’s not interested? I could go on and on about all those loose threads, all the disappointment – but I’m tired and shut up now.
There are so many great points in this addition, but I just want to bold and italicize this point, because I’ve literally been screaming about this for a couple months:
“film a real wedding, show John and Mary kissing, show Sherlock coping well, accepting Mary as a friend, put the cases more centre stage, don’t have Mary kill Sherlock etc.?”
Show the wedding, show us that John and Mary LIKE each other, don’t have John chomping at the bit to get away from Mary and his wedding planning, don’t have him sitting there looking devastated the night he’s planning to propose to her,
Hell, don’t let Sherlock ruin that night for him if she’s so much more important to John than Sherlock is! Don’t show John pacing around his living room like a caged animal because he hasn’t seen Sherlock for a month. Don’t don’t don’t show sherlock being a miserable sad sack because his friend is getting married!!!!!! It just makes him look like a spoiled man-baby without Johnlock!
Don’t write stupid and implausible mysteries that make no sense and call it a day! Jesus Christ???? Don’t give us a missing train car that just can’t be in a secret tunnel but then actually is; don’t give us a murderer who just can’t be working his way up a specific employers pecking order but then actually is; Don’t give us delay action stabbings, and secretaries that give people conflicting information. Focus on writing good mysteries if you want people to take them seriously, for god’s sake.
And, perhaps most importantly, Don’t have Mary kill Sherlock! What the hell was Moffat thinking we would think after including something like that???
Johnlock and villian mary are all part of a much better story that they didn’t seem to realize they were writing. We did not weave this narrative out of whole cloth, and it’s frankly unreasonable and insulting that anyone would think we had.
I, for the life of me, can’t understand why they wrote S3 the way they did. I really can’t.
After watching S2 I thought there was somethin’ between John and Sherlock but honestly, I wasn’t expecting Johnlock to become canon anytime soon. But jeez.. I vividly remember jumping on my seat while watching TSOT and HLV. Like, what the hell? John willing to get drunk on his stag night,
the way Sherlock and John looked at each other when he told him and Mary
that they were gonna have a real baby and they didn’t need him around, Sherlock leaving the wedding early.. I mean,what? I understand that they wanted to show a bittersweet episode, to make everyone realize that was the end of an era, but c’mon. At least show us that Mary and John at least LIKE each other. Show us that they’re in love. Show us WHY they’re in love. They skipped it all, they were like: he’s a man, she’s a woman, they’re getting married. End of the story. Whatever. They didn’t want to us to get invested in their story. Why?
Not only that, but they made us see how unhappy John was at the beginning of HLV and how miserable Sherlock was without him. For what purpose? And for the love of God, why make Mary a villain if they didn’t have any interest in making her an antagonist in the first place? She could have been the sweet innocent Mary they showed us in TEH and no one would have questioned a damn thing about her. And she could have died anyway in S4; in fact John’s reaction to her death would have been way more believable and heartbreaking if Mary were a lovely wife and mother instead of..you know.. an assassin who also shot the main character in the chest. And TAB? I really would like to know from Moftiss what was the meaning behind TAB. Like, they ended it at the waterfall, with John saving Sherlock from Moriarty, then Sherlock woke up saying that he knew what Moriarty was gonna do next but… in S4 he had NO FREAKING IDEA of what Moriarty was gonna do? I mean, what purpose did TAB have? To make him realize that he needed John by his side, maybe? Well, in S4 Sherlock and John were more apart than ever and when John was drowning in TFP, Sherlock was too busy with Sister Edgelord to even care, so…? What? I’m tired.
I’m not trying to hijack this post, but it somehow got me thinking. What went wrong with S3 and the introduction of Mary. Here’s one possible solution to make you care about John and Mary’s relationship and put an end to Johnlock. First of all and this goes for all episodes: no gay jokes, no ambiguity concerning John and Sherlock’s feelings, no sad pining!
TEH My first problem with Mary? Even though we’re meant to like her in the beginning, I was annoyed by her (and that before I shipped Johnlock) because of her “I agree. I’m the best thing that could have happened to you.” Instead, make her at least a bit humble while John struggles to propose to her. It’s fine to let Sherlock interrupt this moment, delay this emotional scene. Cut at least one of the fake theories, give us one plausible solution after all, and save some time to let Sherlock and John resolve the issues concerning the fall. When John is kidnapped, let Sherlock figure out where he is, but let Mary dive headfirst into the fire to save John. In the end of the episode give us a proper proposal. The set up was perfect, all their friends were around, let John fall to his knees, let Mary cry, and let Sherlock smile in the background, because he knew all along that John would propose in this exact moment.
TSOT We should be happy about the marriage right? You still want to make the episode bitter sweet? Fine. Spend the first third with Sherlock sulking, talking with Hudders about losing close friends, show him being not interested in the planning and instead being miserable/delving into cases. Now give us a proper wedding ceremony, vows, tears and kisses. Show us exactly (!) how Mary improved John’s life and the other way around. Cut to best man speech, this is the turning point for Sherlock, while he talks about their friendship and stag night something switches. He realizes that John will always be his best friend and that he found a new friend in Mary. Everyone’s happy, Sherlock and John share a hug, John and Mary a passionate kiss, and off they go to save a life. Now to the final, Sherlock deduces that Mary’s pregnant and this should be the happiest moment of the episode, give it some comedic relief with Mary panicking and let them all dance for the rest of the night in perfect bliss.
HLV We won’t strip Mary of her past entirely, let’s try to make her into a flawed character, not a psychopathic villain. First of all, show us how happy John and Mary are, let them be affectionate. Now, Mary tries to reveal her past to John (she did some shady jobs for the government, no freelance killing for fun and money) but eventually she chickens out and tries to resolve it on her own, because (and this should be made clear) she wants to save her beloved husband and her dear friend Sherlock. Good intentions, that’s important. Of course her plan backfires, Sherlock walks in on her and Magnussen, offers his help and just as she is about to to accept his help, Magnussen grabs her from behind, they struggle, she shoots. It’s a tragic accident, Sherlock collapses. She knocks Magnussen out. The reason Sherlock survives is that she actually saves his life by performing first aid. She reveals her secrets to John, it puts a strain on their relationship, John blames her for Sherlock’s state, but after all she saved Sherlock’s life, this time for real. She shows remorse, apologizes over and over, no lies, no threats. In the end they come up with a plan to bring down Magnussen, it all goes to hell, Sherlock has to shoot him. On the Tarmac we have a long and intimate talk between John and Sherlock, no innuendos, just an honest depiction of an outstanding friendship, we end with Mary coming up to Sherlock, hugging him, holding him for just a bit too long and hear her whisper a quiet ‘thank you’ to his ear.
Wasn’t too hard, right? That way I would have actually cared about her death in TST.
If the intentions of the show were this clean, this clearly drawn, s4 would have still been WTF City, but at least some of the plot points wouldn’t have seemed so mystifying.
Reblogging because this post with additions is a master class in plot doctoring.
No, seriously, did we imagine all those interviews where almost all the cast and writers talked about how; “It’s not a detective show, it’s a show about a detective?” When Martin said; “It’s a love story between these two men who need each other.”? When Amanda defended the plot of TAB by saying; “In the end it will always be about those two men and their relationship.”?
What was that? Why did we get all of that when their relationship was ripped to pieces and very poorly put together only to be pushed to the background in these last two series? This isn’t even about Johnlock. I keep reading Jeremy Brett’s post about why they didn’t have Watson marry Mary because Holmes is the true love of Watson’s life. Series 4 showed that wasn’t the case with this version. John was prepared to let Sherlock die because he was so cut up over Mary’s death and treated him like shit. I can see Brett watching S4 and shaking his head along with us.
The show was no longer about this great relationship, platonic or otherwise. Or at least it wasn’t about showing why this is apparently “the greatest friendship in literature”. Wasn’t that always supposed to be the point? What happened? Did Mofftiss just develop ACD syndrome and grew to hate these characters and didn’t care enough to give them and their relationship a decent resolution?
This will haunt me. I just want to know why.
They would have been free to stop with the series.They could have simply said it was too difficult to schedule… I know it’s a big cash cow but seriously, if they hated it so much, they could have stopped. They didn’t invent the characters like ACD did. Doyle was much more closely tied to Holmes and Watson than Mofftiss. And Mofftiss say they are fan boys. They are fans of Sherlock Holmes and still did S4 to him.
I have no idea why they thought Sherlock Holmes / John Watson relationship in the stories needed the addition of a central female character. I have no idea why they thought it a good idea to make Mary Morstan that upgraded female character. Why not Irene, who traditionally, if not canon compliant, takes this role? Or Molly, their own invention? They could have made Lestarde female ffs! Or made Mycroft a sister. Or even made Sherlock and John female, if they wanted a feminist version!
And even when they decided on making Mary Morstan a / the central character on the show from S3 onwards – why like this, with this nonsensical character arc? What was Mary’s arc actually? Mary was a different person in every episode she was in, and that is bad story telling!
Why not make her the baddie? A great, evil, female baddie! She could still have had input on John’s and Sherlock’s lives, John could still have grieved for her, could even have raised her child with Sherlock. Her betrayel could have shaken Sherlock to the core, could have made him question some of his choices, could have changed him if that was what Mofftiss went for. But Sherlock and John could have defeated her TOGETHER! Because these stories are always about Sherlock Holmes and John Watson! There’s the heart and soul of the stories, that’s why every story starts or ends with Holmes and Watson together, talking about a case or life in general (apart from maybe 2 or 3 stories, in which Holmes nevertheless bemoans Watson’s absence).
And speeking of nonsensically employed female characters out of nowhere: There was no need for Eurus, no need for this kind of crazy, farcical back story. What they wanted to tell us with that (that Sherlock has feelings but that he suppresses them, why he does so and that it has to end, for him to become a whole person, that he has to accept himself the way he is to love and be loved etc) could have better been achieved by employing characters and arcs already set up during S1-3 and TAB. Why, prey tell, was the insane wishfulfilment Mofftiss wanted to realise in S4, especially in TFP, to give us Eurus Holmes?
I will never neither accept nor understand this! The most important person in the life of Sherlock Holmes isn’t a murderous, omnipotent sister or John’s (dead) wife, it is and always has been John Watson! Mycroft features in three original stories. There are no parents in canon. And no other siblings. There is no Molly. Irene Adler is a clever, happily married opera singer who meets Holmes once. Mary Morstan features by name in one story and vanishes during hiatus. Even Moriarty is only in three or four stories! Go read the books, Mofftiss!
Mary Morstan embracing Mary Watson as the life that was worth living is akin to Amy Pond becoming Amy Williams, for all intents and purposes, in Doctor Who. Also Mrs. Holmes herself, the genius scientist who gave it all up for her children.Moffat has a serious boner for strong, independent women (?) who end up giving up their lives and identities to become wives and mothers.
Eurus’ role, if someone was going to be Jim’s puppeteer, would have been much better if Mary had filled it, because we actually cared about Mary: some people hated her, some loved her, but we knew her? She had some weight as a character, she had a mysterious past. If you want an effective plot twist, for god’s sake don’t use a NEW CHARACTER WE DON’T GIVE A FUCK ABOUT BECAUSE WE’VE ONLY JUST MET HER.
Bravo @isitandwonder this is exactly my feelings. Unless series four is the entire rug pull (for which I would still have mixed feelings about) this will go down as one of the worst debacles ever. So sad because what they had was beautiful. Flawed yes, but the chemistry between John and Sherlock – you just cannot find that anywhere. What a wasted opportunity.
I just had a polite discussion with someone about Mary and we disagreed as expected.
Mary Morstan embracing Mary Watson as the life that was worth living is akin to Amy Pond becoming Amy Williams, for all intents and purposes, in Doctor Who…..if someone was going to be Jim’s puppeteer, would have been much better if Mary had filled it, because we actually cared about Mary: some people hated her, some loved her, but we knew her? She had some weight as a character, she had a mysterious past.”
My point is they did a great job at butchering the heroes, the villains…leaving some confusing characterisation which made no sense. Thank you again @isitandwonder for writing down my thoughts exactly.
I will forever mourn this.
I saw a post the other day (that was unfortunately tl;dr at the time) that suggested that BBC Sherlock is original fiction. And right now I feel like there’s a point to it? It’s just a tragedy and a travesty that they used these names and characters as groundwork and then created whatever THIS IS. Guess no one would have cared had they named it Detective #57 and his “I can barely type” Blogger, no, we gotta call it Sherlock Holmes and then butcher the characters and the original references to pieces.
Even a ‘’nuisance’ threat could be expensive and time consuming. It’s worth keeping all this in mind when we look for answers. Note: THE THREE GARRIDEBS IS STILL UNDER COPYRIGHT.
Throw a plethora of other films/books at the plot and make it all so unrecognisable that it confuses all who watch it. Sum it all up by placing Holmes and Watson right back where they have always been; who you are doesn’t matter. It is what it is, and it’s shit. Sounds like a pissed off statement to me.
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