recentlyfolded:

random-nexus:

vulgarweed:

destinationtoast:

shinysherlock:

Is this The End for Sherlock? It certainly feels like it. That ending, while lovely in so many ways, felt a little tacked on and there were so many circles that they attempted to close that I would be surprised if this was *not* the last episode ever.

Was it a great episode?

No.

Did I expect a great episode?

No.

I’m afraid this show broke my storyteller heart back in The Empty Hearse. The shift in tone from TRF to TEH, the utterly disappointing reunion of John and Sherlock, the ridiculous non-explanation we got for how Sherlock survived the fall, the “fan service” that came a little too close to mocking–all that made me feel betrayed and unsure. “Betrayed” sounds like overstating, and s1 and s2 were not 100% absolute perfection, of course, but truly, I no longer trusted the writers to do right by the characterization and story they had set up in the first two series.

I tried to have hope. And TSOT was lovely. So many great things in there, Sherlock learning how to navigate his heart, and, at that point, I was all for Mary.

Then HLV happened.

When Mary shot Sherlock I thought–well, I thought many things, but after I calmed down, I thought, “Oh. So that’s what’s more important then. Things don’t need to make sense. Things just need to get Big Reactions.”

This is not my favorite kind of storytelling. But this continued through s4. Plot over character. Hell, not even plot, just Big Scenes. Some of the Big Scenes were great and I loved them. Some of them didn’t make a lick of sense.

So, since TEH, I feel like I have completely lowered my expectations and just looked for bits to like. This line here. This scene there. Because I had no belief that it would all hold together, that the narrative and characterization would be consistent.

This is a sad little way to approach something I used to love. Like going from whole milk to 2% or something, idk. I kept compromising. “Well, if there’s just one scene that could be interpreted this way” or “if they just don’t kill the baby then that’ll be okay.”

So, in TFP, when John and Sherlock jumped out from a second-story window and there was no mention of injuries sustained, I rolled with it.

When they retconned the entire series from the beginning by having Moriarty meet Euros five years ago, I rolled with it.

When they threw a rope down to a man *chained* to the bottom of a well, I rolled with it.

When they chose to have Eurus force these three to go through all her complicated tests rather than just have her “hypnotize” or “reprogram” John, to whom she had TONS of access, I rolled with it.

When they tacked on the cheesy Mary narration over the ending montage, I rolled with it.

When they…. Well. I could go on and on. But the reason I rolled with it all? Because my expectations were so low. I had been trained to overlook a lot by this point, to sift through a lot of dirt to find a tiny gem or two.

And they did actually do a few things I truly enjoyed in TFP.

John and Sherlock working as a team again–the trust, the banter, the love, the adventure. I had missed that terribly. Mycroft, so much Mycroft insight and development. The scenes with Moriarty (but not the reaction gif bits) just because I did miss him, damn it. And Sherlock’s great big heart being as much an asset as his great big brain.

And one more very important thing, a thing that makes it possible for me to keep writing in this particular Sherlock Holmes universe–

They left the door open. Lots of doors, actually. So we can keep on filling in the gaps, fixing the parts that need fixing, and making our own meaning.

Yes to so much of this!  TEH broke a lot of my expectations about what kinds of rules Moftiss’s storytelling would follow (or break).  And I’ve been adjusting and readjusting my expectations ever since.  And finding the joy in the bits and pieces that I do love, of which there are many, rather than hoping for a brilliant whole.  I know many fans flat out love S3 and/or S4 – and that’s awesome!  I’m delighted and eager to share their squee about many things.  But in reflecting on the balance of probability my own emotional responses, TEH is where things started to fall apart for me, and it’s been a slow descent from there (with a few exceptions – loved TSoT!).  

Eurus’s (I still don’t know how to spell her name – online research suggests both spellings are acceptable for the Greek god, but I’m finding more “Eurus” and I’m tired of just calling her “the other one” all the time) brainwashing powers still irritate me more than everything else as a whole other level of rule breaking.  But yeah.  Mostly, This wasn’t far off from what I predicted, in terms of amount of sense it made, or what the authors chose to highlight.  And I’m trying to just make “it is what it is” my motto and continue finding squee in all the good stuff, and reading/writing fic as needed. As you said, there are so many doors open! 🙂 

TEH is still my least favorite episode. I dislike it way more than anything this series, for pretty much exactly those reasons.

So much agreement with both of you lovelies, and I think – if nothing else – maybe their ‘It is what it is’ was a good thing to give us right now, because that’s what we’re having to say about all of this, since we have no other choices that are easy to live with.  Since it’s been full of the really awesome and, unfortunately lately, the really disappointing. 

It is what it is. 

*sigh/headshake*

Me too, yeah, all of that. The things I enjoyed in s3 and increasingly through s4 were reduced to snippets. “Here’s a good bit” became the best I could think as the show lost all narrative coherence. 

Even with the actors this happened. I loved, early on, how BC embodied Sherlock. But along the way in TEH it became “oh look, here he’s doing his French waiter bit” or “look, here he’s doing that drunk staggery bit that they cut when they remade the pilot into SIP” and finally every time he talked with baby!Eurus “oh great, here he is doing his Martin Creiff.” I can’t help but feel that to keep him, the writers had to keep giving him more and more of what he wanted, which, as much as I can put together from things he’s said, was to go on playing Christopher Tietjens in everything…with a side helping of his scrunch-faced action Khan. 

Part of me wants to snark and say look, the fans finally got their Doctor Who/Sherlock crossover with a magic godlike creature of unlimited power working magic. Another part wants to boggle at what sort of miserable twisted fucks think that torture is the way to conduct psychotherapy and…heal people? At the very least, the rug pull was that they changed genres of the whole show to horror and we failed to notice. 

I do think that going to the DW model of a wholly different crew on each ep was instrumental in eroding our sense of watching one cohesive show. Basically, the early consistency, especially in Paul McGuigan as director, gave us a false sense of coherence, especially in cinematographic style. In fact, which one of the directors was it who admitted that their focus was to remake the show into something of their own? Can’t remember but the comment stuck with me as one of my fears and one that turned out to be realized. In any case, I think this sense of oneupmanship did nothing to help out the second half of the show eps and simply magnified the writers’ fascination with Big Moments as opposed to well-crafted storytelling. 

In the end, I think that we bent over backwards to try to stay engaged with the increasingly bombastic and pretentious twaddle that they were feeding us. At this point, I can only look at what appears to be the end of the show with a sigh of relief. Maybe now someone will be able to get the backing to make a Sherlock Holmes modernization.