Sherlock

noobcubed

noobcubed

So, as far as I'm concerned, this is by far and away the best current show on British television, and a contender for the greatest of all time. That good, people. As such it practically demands a thread here.

For those who don't know (and I don't really know how big the show is in the rest of the world), Sherlock is a 21st-century update of the classic Sherlock Holmes detective stories, starring Benedict Cumberbatch (the villain from Star Trek: Into Darkness) and Martin Freeman (The Hobbit), and written by Stephen Moffat and Mark Gatiss (who both work on Doctor Who). It has the somewhat unusual structure of three feature-length episodes per series.

Anyway, I considered creating this thread a few weeks ago until I remembered that the third series wasn't airing in America until later, and I didn't want to give away spoilers. However, now the first episode has aired in America I think that it is fair game to discuss without being too spoiler-y.

So, thoughts? Were people satisfied with the resolution of how Sherlock survived? Could you even argue that the writers didn't give a proper resolution? And what were people's responses to the Sherlock/Moriarty moment?

Oh, and for those of you watching in America, keep an eye out for Mary Mortsan. She has some secrets...
 
This season did a lot right and did a lot wrong. Most of this is rambling and is completely opinion, so I'm going to put it in hide tags so not all of you have to suffer through it.

Things I liked:

- Amanda Abbington was excellent as Mary Morstan; I loved her portrayal of the character and the chemistry with Martin Freeman (which obviously translates from their real-life marriage). I loved Mary's character and the way she was developed, and I think Amanda did an amazing job playing her.
- The entire "mind palace" sequence in Episode 3 after Sherlock gets shot is one of the finest scenes that this show has done to date - I really liked that Molly was the one yelling at him for being an idiot and telling him what to do, and I liked that we got to see into Sherlock's childhood. Oh, and young Sherlock is apparently played by Moffat's son, so that's cute.
- Lars Mikkelsen absolutely killing it as Magnussen in Episode 3. Fantastically creepy and absolutely infuriating to watch.

Things I didn't like:

- This season completely lacked the impact that the other two seasons had; the entire first two episodes were more or less fanservice and didn't have any "wow" moments in them at all. Episode 1 was more about the Sherlock - John relationship, which I understand, but at least come up with a better ending than "the bomb has an off switch". Episode 2 was centered around the wedding, but felt disjointed with the attempted murder victim (John's former commanding officer) being obvious from the get-go. Episode 3 was clearly much better, but something about the simplicity of Sherlock just shooting Magnussen at the end was off; in the Series 2 finale, we understood why Sherlock was so distressed on the rooftop; we understood his reasons for doing things and how badly (seemingly) Moriarty had outsmarted him. This season didn't have any of that.
- The explanation for how Sherlock survived - it was one of many theories that were developed just weeks after Series 2 ended and was not at all what I would consider "clever". One of my particular favorite fan theories involved the Grimm's Fairy Tales book, as well as the code that Moriarty was tapping out. Many fans don't consider his explanation to Anderson to be the real explanation of how he survived; they believe that he was lying and that how he actually did it was more in-depth.
- Bringing Moriarty back at the end - now, of course, we don't actually know if Moriarty is back or not, but I would much rather prefer that he stays dead and buried. I don't want this show turning into Doctor Who, where nobody ever seems to die. It's very plausible that Mycroft or Mary or Sherlock himself planted the video to prevent him from getting exiled, or that some other villain is using Moriarty as a front to lure Sherlock back to London. I would rather any of these explanations be true than "Oh, Moriarty faked his death too and stood idly by while Sherlock destroyed his organization for two years".

Apart from the above, Sherlock is plagued by some of the same problems it's always had (but especially this season) like recycled plot / dialogue and a generally poor or outright offensive commentary on women and LGBT people.

I didn't dislike the season. I thought it was quite good, though far from perfect. Some of my friends feel the same way; some of my friends absolutely loved every episode, which is about what you'd expect out of a TV show like this. Still, with almost unanimous positive reception for the first two seasons, it's a little worrying how even the fanbase is split on Season 3.
 
Yeah, so now with the season over in America:

- It's true that this series was more character-driven than plot driven. In series one and two, Sherlock and John bickered with each other as they solved cases, whereas here the cases were just window-dressing for the various relationships. Some people like that but a lot of people didn't and I think we'll be getting back to more crime-solving next series.

- Mary was brilliant, although I personally wasn't at all surprised by the revelations about her because the first two episodes felt very much as though the were building up for a surprise, and since Mary was the new character it was probably related to her. But yes, her acting was very natural, as I suppose can be expected.

- Magnusson was good but he wasn't as fun as Moriarty was. He had a very different energy, cold and calculating, and obsessed with demonstrating his complete power over everyone. But that at the same time made him pretty unlikeable, whereas you couldn't dislike Moriarty, even though he was evil, because he was having so much fun.

- I was personally highly satisfied with the writers' explanation (if you can call it that) of Sherlock's survival. In hindsight I cannot believe I was still convinced of the story shown at the beginning of the episode, even though it was carefully constructed to appear more and more ridiculous as the scene progressed. I think Moffat and Gatiss know the fans better than we know ourselves. It was great that near the end of the episode the writers said "Yeah, here's an explanation, but if you don't like it you can make up your own one and that's fine". At one point in the episode John shouted "I don't care how you did it", and by the end of the episode I realised that I agreed with him.

- Developing secondary characters (Mrs Hudson, Molly and Mycroft in particular) was great news. I really struggle to believe Mrs Hudson's backstory but, I think it is meant to be humorous coming from a woman of her age and mild manners. I love that Molly was going out with a man who dressed like Sherlock (either a massive fan, or more likely he wears the coat because Molly likes it). Mycroft was more of a mixed bag - he went from being a generic arsehole in previous seasons to a superhumanly intelligent arsehole, and I'm not sure that's an improvement. Lestrade didn't get any development though, but I guess you can only fit so much into three episodes.

- The mind palace is awesome. The extended mind palace scene in the third episode was my highlight of the series too: I think I watched it four times on iPlayer just to make sure I hadn't missed anything.

- I actually liked all three episodes, even though as you say the plots of the episodes were quite thin. The first one probably wasn't the best Sherlock episode, but that still gives it a lot of room to be better than 99% of the stuff on TV, and in any case I was just so glad to see the detective back. I liked the second episode too - there were some pretty unsubtle clues lurking around in it but the episode threw so many jokes at me that I was laughing too hard to actually concentrate on piecing them together.

- Moriarty is a great character, but I agree that the show might lose its integrity somewhat if he comes back, because it will be more fan service and I'd begin to question who is actually running the show - the writers or the fans? (Though to be fair, even in the original stories Conan Doyle intended to kill off Sherlock and Moriarty permanently and pressure from the fans forced him to revive them.) Moriarty can still live on in the mind palace though, and I'd love to see that because he's just so unhinged.

- I am swearing off any speculation about how he survived, because, like for Sherlock, ultimately how he did it doesn't really matter.
 
Never watched the show, but if you consider the source material, Mycroft Holmes is smarter than Sherlock by many leagues. Unless they're unrelated in this version.
 
No, I believe one of the subjects discussed briefly in the first episode is that Mycroft was always smarter than Sherlock as a child and that that rivalry has continued as they grew up.
 
The Moriarty we saw was likely not the true Moriarty. He is considered a dark and mysterious character; he would never go to the levels he did to actually do what he did (plus I believe that he was not a professor). That means the man we consider Moriarty is actually just a facade used by the real one, making it so the actual story of him continues while remaining true to the books (which have been fairly accurate thus far).

That's the only logical conclusion aside from blood packet nonsense and that's not going to fly.
 
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