giving us a whole season that is revealed to be the blog in s5 works because it immediately begs the in-narrative questions “what is the truth?” and, more importantly, “why did john lie about it??” why john lied about how his wife died and what really happened with that is going to narratively fuel ALL OF S5
giving us a whole season (or more…) that is revealed to be a dream in s5 fails narratively because it doesn’t set up anything, it only begs the extra-narrative question of “why have my time and attention been squandered in such a manner”
Sorry in advance to be a bit of a downer, but I promise there’s a silver lining on my musings.
Regardless of what one thinks about S4, those of us still in the Sherlock fandom can agree that this is a wonderful fandom to be in. The main reason is the baffling amount of talented people in it, whether they’re creating art, writing fanfiction or conjecturing metas. One may ship this or that couple, arguments do arise but all in all? Pretty cool place to hang out.
But a not small reason at all is also the richness within the show itself. Begrudgingly, I will let Mofftiss take some of the credit for weaving the show; gladly, I will let Ben and Martin take most of the credit due to their marvelous on-screen chemistry and talent.
Every series has shaken the fandom in different ways. If S3 was a bit of an earthquake, S4 was damn near apocalyptic. What can we expect from S5?
I will not re-hash meta and theories for S5, but as a johnlocker and ex-tjlcer I can’t help but wonder how the cleaved relationship between Sherlock and John will mend. And although I don’t believe TPTB to make johnlock endgame, even if they do, my question will be…
So what?
If Mofftiss write a S5 where Sherlock and John become a romantic couple, this may very well complete a story arc, their long-term plan, and scratch more than one itch. But it will be so out of time. The time to have done this is so past. We are in 2018, when cinema and television is finally turning LGTBQIA+ stories mainstream and, more importantly, normalised. It’s not a finished process, but it’s well on its way, thankfully. Sherlock’s timing to do this will be off, because it will be one more in the current instead of the shockwave it could have created.
And if S5 sees johnlock happening… how can it topple the worlds already created by the fandom, the theories, the art, the love? How will any johnlock on S5 feel fresh and groundbreaking? How will it heal the fandom after S4?
Personally, I would be happy to see johnlock happening (even if I don’t think it will). Salty as I may be, I will not deny that it would make me happy. But the more time slips away from past series, the less relevant the outcome becomes, whatever that may be. It’s been eight years!!!
Thankfully, we’re still here, and you can pry my love for this show from my cold, dead hands.
PS: the silver lining is what we as a fandom create out of this mess. Do not ever forget that.
Anything they do now is going to be too little too late for a lot of people. Including myself.
S4 at face value to me is bad. S4 as some kind of coma/dream to me is bad. I don’t know what their plan is, but a smarter plan would have been to just make S4 good 🤷🏻♀️
At the cocktail party our group talked to Steven Moffat and apparently
he is writing a play at the moment! He has no idea if it will ever see
the light of day, but he’d never written a play before so decided to
before him n Mark start properly writing Dracula to hone his writing a
bit and just to give it a go. Sue said she’d read the first half and
said it was good and really enjoyed it, but Steven of course played that
down by saying ‘she’s my wife! Of course she has to say it’s good! !’
The crazy thing is that this would make so much sense in the context of what they did in S4.
I’m trying to imagine how badly Moffat would want to out-subtext Jeremy Paul’s The Secret of Sherlock Holmes, and… it’s a lot.
@devoursjohnlock yeah we were talking about that with @waitedforgarridebs! Imagine Ben channeling Jeremy. And this is a perfect thing for them to do in this moment of the narrative. The possibilities for that plot! And the sheer chance to witness the johnlock dynamic live onstage would be A LOT.
@marcespot Seriously, so many possibilities! If they decided to do this, I bet it would be in the style of Paul’s one-off: deep, deep subtext, a parallel recap of events. It might answer all of our timeline questions. And, as always, 99% of the audience would remain completely unaware of what they just watched.
@marcespot@devoursjohnlock it would be such a logical reason for why the end Montage of TFP was the actual set crew creating a stage from scratch in front of all of us.
Diagram from John Yorke’s ’Into the Woods’ (classic book about narrative structure).
I’ve read a lot of excellent analysis of Sherlock, but none that explicitly addresses narrative structure in terms of acts. If we assume each act is a series, and each episode is one step within each act, this does seem to fit with Sherlock falling in love with John. (The use of ‘problem’ is unfortunate terminology in this case, but if we consider that Sherlock sees emotion as abhorrent, then it is a ‘problem’ in that sense. Bear with me.) I’m not suggesting that the writers have deliberately explicitly followed this structure (Moffat has said he hates discussing structure and just tells the story), but that (as Yorke explains) good writers cannot help following this structure because THIS IS HOW STORIES WORK.
Anyway.
Act/series one: from no knowledge of what love feels like to a knowledge of it as he and John meet and become close, saving each other’s lives.
Act/series two: from a refusal to acknowledge that he loves John (separating himself from him physically frequently in ASiB, eg the hitchhiker scene, Battersea Power Station where he is present but unseen), to an acknowledgement of it (TRF).
Act/series three: Experimenting with the knowledge – testing out John’s feelings (eg in the tube carriage in TEH), key knowledge about John (take your pick from everything in TSoT), and experimenting with key knowledge of problem (making sacrifices for John and Mary).
Act/series four: Consequences. Fear. Anxiety. (All of which fits with what we’ve been told.) Full knowledge (an actual confession of love?). The worst point (Mary-related? Moriarty? Mycroft? All of them? Gaaaahh).
BUT…
Act/series five: Final choice (John vs some major aspect of The Work?), final battle (Moriarty/another antagonist kidnaps John, perhaps?), then mastery of knowledge (canon Johnlock relationship, throwing of confetti, uncorking of champagne, much merriment throughout the land).
If anyone has more on this idea I’d love to read it.
Tagging a couple of excellent people below for your thoughts if you’re interested.
That is the most struggling article I’ve ever seen, which kind of befits its paltry content. Here is the extent of Moffat’s enthusiasm for the notion (all quotes from the linked article; emphasis added):
“I sort of assume we will. I sort of assume we’ll come back.”
You want to keep it fresh and stuff like that,“ he said.
he would be ”fine“ if there was no more Sherlock.
I mean “stuff”? And “assume”? Pardon me for engaging with subtext, but that reads an awful lot like “no” and “I’m not particularly interested” and “I’ve got mine so who cares?”
Me @ Moffat
*heavy sigh*
Shove it, Moffat!
By “fine”, does he mean “so long as Dracula is a hit”?
I can’t help feeling that if it’s not, they’ll come running back to Sherlock like it’s a fallback girlfriend. On the other hand, I feel like if Dracula is a hit, Sherlock will be gone for good.
Which – I’m not gonna lie – makes me hope that Dracula lands poorly. And that stinks, because I’d actually watch a vampire show by Mofftiss, happily, but not if Sherlock must be sacrificed in order to make it happen.
I don’t think that s4 is last because Moffat confirmed in January 2014 that Sherlock will return for a fifth series.
p.s. but i’m
astonished
because 4 series looks like really end of story
I think Mofftiss combined their plans for S4 and S5 into one series, probably because they thought they might not get a chance to make S5 – for obvious reasons – and they didn’t want to leave the story unfinished. I think that explains why E1 and E3 seem rushed and a bit disjointed. IMHO, of course.
E2 was probably intended as the finale of S4, with that big cliffhanger, the revelation of Eurus’s existence.
S5 would have been the resolution of that cliffie, done at a much more leisurely pace, and culminating in the reconciliation of the Holmes family and the rebuilding of 221B.
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