alright i had to stop at this point in this genius gifset and just stomp around my room because reading this felt like a vertebra clicking into place in my spine
“romantic entanglements” is such a specific phrase and it appears in these incredibly climactic scenes. both of these emotionally charged conversations are prompted by john’s searching questions.
let’s say i did believe that mark and steven’s “insane wish fulfillment” idea they had since the beginning was to give sherlock holmes’s personality the context of his long lost sister killing his best friend. then these two scenes — specific, repetitive, and obvious dramatic parallels — would make zero sense. the fact that they make zero sense would bother me less if these scenes didn’t matter so goddamn much in their respective episodes. even as a casual viewer, you know there is a breakthrough on the horizon during these moments.
sherlock’s confessions are always are aborted; by the case in TAB and by john’s self-loathing in TLD. the confession is aborted, yes, but THIS WHOLE CONVERSATION is interrupted, unresolved. (and don’t get me started on HLV’s aborted love confession). it cannot be resolved by sherlock having a conversation with someone else, it has to be a scene exactly like this — man-to-man, alone with john.
i have to tell you, some days i waver and think, “maybe they’re just terrible asshole writers. maybe they think people wouldn’t notice. maybe they’re counting on people not thinking this hard about this story.” but then someone like @afishlearningpoetry will lay all the evidence out like this and i’m just like. “of course. of course they’re going to be together.”
there will be a third conversation. and there will be a kiss at the end.
I had the same epiphany.
I am not big on predictive argumentation because people have been hurt and disappointed in this exact context before, but for real, these two scenes represent the first two beats of a three-part structure. In a classic three-beat, the first establishes the pattern (John makes intrusive statements; Sherlock talks about romantic entanglements in a negative way; they are interrupted); the second expands on that pattern (same dynamic, but this time it’s clear it is about them: John makes intrusive statements; Sherlock talks about romantic entanglements in a negative way but tries to make the conversation about his feelings for John; John blurts his confession about himself, interrupting).
The third beat (if there were to be one), repeats the pattern and inverts it. Maybe Sherlock will make the intrusive statements; maybe he will tell John he’s been lying to himself about romantic entanglements; most definitely, there will be no interruption this time.
This is a tried and true structure so ingrained, we can hardly fail to expect it. A writer who withholds the third beat is letting down their audience. I personally can’t imagine mofftiss suddenly being *this* absolutely terrible at their craft. We’ll see? We’ll see.
Considering the true Holmesians got Reichenbached for 8 years… lmao, I am in pain.
But yeah, I can see the 2-3 year gap… like, even Sherlock himself had to be absolved in the papers before he came back, so that is also what could happen to get public attention again shortly before they air the next series.
Guess we’ll see what’s gonna happen today/tomorrow.
2 years is too long. The show’s legacy will be ruined by then.
The only reason this didn’t harm ACD the first time is because it wasn’t a case of the author destroying the validity, credibility and character of his stories. He just killed off the character. It wasn’t done unfairly, it was just tragic and sad and people still loved Sherlock Holmes and wanted him back.
What Mofftiss have done with their own ‘Reichenbach’ is make their audience not want any more Sherlock, because they’ve utterly gutted everything that was good about it.
In 2 years, people won’t be chomping at the bit for series 5, they’ll be dreading it.
^^^^^^THIS.
This is true and it genuinely concerns me. The Reichenbach scenario seems more likely than them just leaving it as it is, but the fact that they haven’t done any advertising for the 4th episode at all means that even if they did release it tomorrow, viewership would be low for their big reveal to the public–and they’re the ones they want to see it, not us tin-hat conspirators who’ve already bought in.
And people are willing to wait for quality content, but the average viewer, who has not been “minding the subtext,” is likely to assume that the show just went downhill. Because, I mean…the sad reality is that most shows do, eventually.
I’ve no doubt another episode is coming and that it’ll explain things, but I really hope they’ve factored interest-over-time into their plans, and don’t mess things up for themselves trying to be edgy.
John Watson will wait and forgive, but that’s what makes him so amazing. The general public does not extend the same courtesy.
Sherlock S5E1: someone’s been playing a very long game. we’ve been dropping hints that John’s mentally ill super-intelligent evil bisexual great grand-uncle Belthazor has escaped from a high-security facility in Nevada after secretly taking over the institution and turning it into a meth lab while also infiltrating Dunkin Donuts to use it as a money laundering scheme. his daughter Grief has shown up disguised as Soo Lin Yao in the episode The Blind Banker. John’s walking cane is actually Belthazor’s that he gave him as a parting gift when he was institutionalized by MI6 agent Harry Watson who was 4 at the time. You were told but you didn’t listen. Tune in to witness our heroes get trapped in a house on Elm Street as Belthazor chases them through their dreams. He has knife hands btw. this might be our best episode so far.
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.
btw does anyone actually know anything? do we have a list of facts we know?
like 1203458 people have said there’s a fourth one and do we actually have facts about this, or even semi-facts, or even almost-semi-facts,
facts abt s5? like is it real?
Can’t link cause I’m on mobile, but there is quote from either mark or Steven saying they plotted out s5 when they did s4. That’s all we got. Nothing official commissioned by the BBC at all though.
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