Sherlock (BBC)

[Jay 37,352]

I don't watch Who, but season 1 and 2 are definitely better than seasons 3 and 4, though all seasons have good episodes and bad ones.

[Jay 37,352]

Sherlock Co-Creators: The Final Problem is Just the Beginning

 

Quote

“The reason we [ended with] Rathbone Place is that, actually, if we do come back – and we would love to come back – we could absolutely very easily start with a knock at the door and Sherlock saying to John ‘Do you want to come out and play?’. They have become the two heroes that we always knew them to be.”

 

 

 

“If this was the last time – we’re not planning it, but it might be, it’s possible – we could end it there. We couldn’t have ended it on any of the previous series because they always ended up with whopping great cliffhangers.”

[Sweeping Strings 2,357]

16 hours ago, Jay said:

Oof, that was mostly terrible, with a nice final few minutes though. 

 

God, I hope if they make more episodes, they just have Holmes and Watson solving cases each week, without this endless family drama

 

Yes. This. Like Series 1 and 2. Otherwise, I think I'm done.

 

An absolutely fucking ludicrous finale, which required a suspension of disbelief at a level beyond me ... at least Doctor Who has the excuse of being sci-fi.

 

I got through it by noting the loving homages to/shameless rip-offs of other things (The Ring, Saw, Silence Of The Lambs, The Crystal Maze, Skyfall and SPECTRE ... I know Sherlock has had Bond 'nods' throughout, but these were full-on steals).   

Mrs Hudson turning out to be an Iron Maiden fan was funny, and the building named 'Rathbone Place' at the end was a nice acknowledgement of a previous acclaimed portrayal of Sherlock. But those were about it in terms of highlights for me.  

[Jay 37,352]

Mrs Hudson and Culverton Smith were the highlights of Season 4

[Bilbo 3,709]

I'd like to see them move to one off 2 hour specials ever other year that are self contained cases. I think that could be fun. 

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

Typical Moffat showstopper that trades plausibility and emotional reality for "cleverness", extreme psychoanalysis, plot twist after plot twist after plot twist.

In one way it's incredibly well written, in another it is not.

 

Sherlock very clearly mirrors what Moffat did with Doctor Who. Taken an beloved British icon and essentially microanalysed every single aspect of it. Every single detail from either the Sherlock Holmes stories or classic Who episisodes a potential goldmine for perverting it in some way.

 

In a way Moffat's approach mirrors that of Eurus. Struggling for a context that isnt really there, so finding importance in every single detail.

 

The problem is after a while he doesnt seem to know when it's time to keep piling on the constant references to earlier episodes, age old stories and just do something new and fresh.

 

Parts of the episode feel very similar to Hell Bent, the celebrated Doctor Who episode of the last series. The symbolism, the fortress, the well with bones. A sci-fi/fantasy show however can to a large extent acommodate for such a thing. A show that's supposedly set is our real world makes that a lot harder. That's why Who has always a bit more extreme than Sherlock, untill now.

 

Riviting as it was there really wasnt a single aspect of it thatw as in any way believable in that it coudl actually happen in our real world. But I actually think that was never the point. They werent trying to be realistic, or even plausible. Sherlock has always been about style over substance. Sometimes that's it's biggest strength, somethimes it is not.

 

The very first episode wasnt in any way realistic. Perhaps it now seems that way when compared to the latest series. But it was always high concept, high energy nonsense. Acted to perfection. Directed with a verve very uncommon for the BBC and scored by David Arnold.

 

The Final Problem isnt the best Sherlock episode. But it is brilliant entertainment if you are looking for something geeky, clever, meta and funny.

 

Once again some Bond references. Muskgrave Hall and it's ruins obviously references Skyfall, and Sherringford is clearly styled after Dr. No's hide out.

 

They ran out of time a bit I think because the rescue of John felt a bit rushed. And they clearly werent sure if the show was coming back so dead Mary recorded a message that , again feels straight out of Doctor Who.

 

Such ridiculous nonsense, I can't help but feel entertained and satisfied.

 

I wonder what Marian, long defender of Moffat's style on Who will make of this?

 

 

[Dixon Hill 4,234]

I thought this was cringe inducing, in a good way, and throughly enjoyed it.

[Jay 37,352]

Interesting take - can you elaborate on that?

[Dixon Hill 4,234]

Well Eurus was monstrous to a degree that I don't think this show's villains have been taken to before.  Uncomfortable stuff - yes, a lot of over the top hokum that this show has become more prone to lately as well, but I can accept that, and that's not what made me cringe, so in my book it's a fine installment.  As a potential ending though, and I hope it's not, it leaves something to be desired in the area of real closure and catharsis.

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

It's quite Nolanesque actually. Very Inception.

[Jay 37,352]

Uncomfortable is a good word, I felt uncomfortable often throughout the episode.

[Mr. Breathmask 555]

1 hour ago, Stefancos said:

They ran out of time a bit I think because the rescue of John felt a bit rushed. 

 

Yes. Throwing a rope down to a main who's chained to the bottom of a well wouldn't really help him, would it?

 

Not to mention how he just hand waved away getting shot at near point blank range at the end of last episode. What the hell was up with that?

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

3 minutes ago, Prerecorded Briefing said:

 As a potential ending though, and I hope it's not, it leaves something to be desired in the area of real closure and catharsis.

 

True. The jump of Eurus as a soulless monster to a younger sister playing with her brother was too abrupt. And afterwards nothing much was done with this. (Would have preferred an extra scene between Sherlock and his sis rather than mummy and daddy Holmes protesting)

 

 

1 minute ago, Mr. Breathmask said:

 

Yes. Throwing a rope down to a main who's chained to the bottom of a well wouldn't really help him, would it?

 

Not to mention how he just hand waved away getting shot at near point blank range at the end of last episode. What the hell was up with that?

 

Tranquilzer dart. Eurus spent some time in the outside world getting to know her brother and his familiars and decided to reveal her existence. 

[Mr. Breathmask 555]

3 minutes ago, Stefancos said:

Tranquilzer dart. Eurus spent some time in the outside world getting to know her brother and his familiars and decided to reveal her existence. 

 

Ugh. Such a cop out.

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

You really expected John to have died?

Of course it's a cop out. Just like Sherlock jumping of a roof and not dying was.

[Mr. Breathmask 555]

Of course not.

 

But at the very least I expected the next episode to follow up on the cliffhanger. You know, show us some aftermath or something. Now it's just a meaningless cliffhanger for the sake of being a cliffhanger.

[Jay 37,352]

Totally agreed Mark - it's just REALLY bad writing to end one episode on a dramatic cliffhanger (such as making it look like your co-main character is shot to death) and then have the cliffhanger waved off and ultimate completely meaningless in the next episode.

 

This review aligns with a lot of my thoughts on this episode

 

http://www.avclub.com/tvclub/frustrating-brilliant-sherlock-stays-frustrating-r-248468

[Marian Schedenig 8,192]

Well, this was crap, wasn't it? It didn't just stretch believability... it didn't make any sense at all. There were almost more plot holes than plot connections. Or I simply completely failed to see the concept. But the only way this can make anything close to sense to me is if it all turns out to be a(nother) drug induced hallucination on Sherlock's part. Which obviously isn't the case. I wasn't happy with the first episode in this series, and at least partly not happy with the second, but this, at least after one viewing, is clearly the worst thing by far I've seen by Moffat.

 

3 hours ago, Stefancos said:

Typical Moffat showstopper that trades plausibility and emotional reality for "cleverness", extreme psychoanalysis, plot twist after plot twist after plot twist.

[...]

I wonder what Marian, long defender of Moffat's style on Who will make of this?

 

We keep disagreeing about this. Specifically, in this case, because it didn't seem clever to me. Bits and pieces were (and bits and pieces were strong), but the thing as a whole was decidedly non-clever in that whenever it would have required a strong connection between plot elements, there was just a whole.

 

So Eurus shot Watson with a tranquilizer dart only to shortly after send a drone bomb to Baker Street which would kill both Holmeses and Watson, only they escape by jumping out of a first floor window unharmed, which is also exactly what Eurus intended, because it's all just a ploy to get them to her, for whatever reason since she can leave anytime anyway? Oh, and she has a superpower an can completely reprogram any human being (except the three heroes) by just talking to them for 5 minutes. Which is why Mycroft arranged a meeting between her and Moriarty. Who then within these five minutes recorded tons of small video messages for her to project in her Sherlock trap maze. But that doesn't work out the way she wanted, so she knocks them out again, transports them to the supposedly burnt down ancestral home, still apparently connected by in ear wireless radio, chains Watson into a well and waits for Sherlock to finally remember his childhood and hug her and then rescue the chained Watson with a rope.

 

Seriously, it still seems like a bad parody. I don't understand how and why something like this happens. With some reasonable explanations you can turn it into a decent Doctor Who episode, but the whole point of Sherlock is that is has to make sense in the (mostly) real world.

[Jay 37,352]

Yea, I basically agree with you here, @Marian.  I didn't think this episode had anything clever in it either, and kinda felt like a first draft that they just filmed instead of ironing out all the (many) kinks and plot holes (or absurdities or whatever you want to call them).

[Mr. Breathmask 555]

It was the first time I checked my watch during an episode of Sherlock. Ever.

 

It was all mildly entertaining as it went along, but the whole thing falls completely apart if you think about it for more than two seconds.

[Incanus 5,714]

Well I stopped watching the Final Problem soon after the nonsensical opening. What the hell happened Moffat?!!!

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

He lost the plot and kinda forgot that Sherlock has to be grounded in somesort of reality, as preposterous as the show always was.

 

Or he figured it might be the last one and simply didnt care about keeping it real.

[Richard Penna 3,686]

19 hours ago, Mr. Breathmask said:

It was the first time I checked my watch during an episode of Sherlock. Ever.

 

It was all mildly entertaining as it went along, but the whole thing falls completely apart if you think about it for more than two seconds.

 

I was gripped (far from checking my watch), but yes, it rather falls apart if you think properly about it. I thought the plane thing was a letdown - the idea of Sherlock having to solve two challenges at once was really cool, but it didn't go anywhere. And that gravestone thing... wtf?

 

It has definitely lost any grounding in reality. Maybe that goes with the final message from Mary, that it's about the adventures they go through to solve the unsolvable. I just miss the case-by-case nature of the first few seasons.

[Marian Schedenig 8,192]

18 minutes ago, Richard Penna said:

I was gripped (far from checking my watch), but yes, it rather falls apart if you think properly about it. I thought the plane thing was a letdown - the idea of Sherlock having to solve two challenges at once was really cool, but it didn't go anywhere.

 

I don't think I ever expected the plane thing to be real. Or if real, at least very different from how it seemed. Only I didn't even understand the resolution.

 

18 minutes ago, Richard Penna said:

And that gravestone thing... wtf?

 

True, that too. Eurus faked the gravestones when they were still children, long enough before murdering her brother so that Sherlock remembers the inscriptions even though he severely changed most of his other childhood memories related to her? Not to mention that Mycroft conveniently mentions the plot critical tombstones early in the episode, when they don't really have any relevance at that point at all.

 

It just all so extremely surreal. Thinking about any aspect of it logically leads straight to the conclusion that it has to be a dream. I'd even applaud them if they followed it up with another series that reveals it was just that (and gives it a deeper meaning). But that's just wishful thinking.

[Jay 37,352]

I think the years on the tombstones were fake, and Eurus juts used the numbers to code her message into her song.  Sherlock didn't have to "remember" the numbers, the tombstones were all still there

[Richard Penna 3,686]

That was a pretty stupid part of the plot. The only real 'mystery' was that she was the girl on the plane. In the space of less than a minute, I went from sheer exhilaration from watching Sherlock solve two simultaneous crises, to.... that.

 

On the massive plus side, the soundtrack has been on Spotify since midnight on Monday. That's a pretty astounding marketing achievement - to have the score we've just heard available 90 minutes after broadcast. I've preordered the CD.

[Jay 37,352]

Is There A Secret Fourth Episode of Sherlock Series 4?

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

Sherlock is just like modern news. It might be true, it might not be! Who knows?

[Sweeping Strings 2,357]

Oh FFS ... if they were so keen to keep Moriarty in it, then maybe they shouldn't have killed him off (like idiots) at the end of Season 2.  

[Sir Hilary Bray 235]

Mind boggles really.

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

Brilliant isnt it!

[Bilbo 3,709]

It sounds exactly like something the show would do to be fair but I doubt there's any truth to it. 

 

Moffat is probably kicking himself for not thinking of it first. 

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

Who says this isn't exactly what will happen in the first episode of series 5?

[Mr. Breathmask 555]

Steven Moffat kicking himself?

[Bilbo 3,709]

3 minutes ago, Mr. Breathmask said:

Steven Moffat kicking himself?

 

Does this expression not exist outside Ireland? 

[Mr. Breathmask 555]

Of course it does.

 

I was asking if series 5 will have a scene of Steven Moffat physically kicking himself.

 

It would be a whole new level of meta!

[Bilbo 3,709]

Ah I get you now. 

 

That might signal the junping of the shark tbh. Going to far .

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

Going too far would be to actually have the Sherlock/Who spin off certain fans desperately want!

 

Ignoring that, anything goes now...apparently 

[Mr. Breathmask 555]

9 minutes ago, Bilbo Skywalker said:

That might signal the junping of the shark tbh. Going to far .

 

That would be this scene, actually:

 

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

Really? That seems quite arbitrary Marc!

[Bilbo 3,709]

5 minutes ago, Stefancos said:

Going too far would be to actually have the Sherlock/Who spin off certain fans desperately want!

 

Ignoring that, anything goes now...apparently 

 

Do not want. 

[Mr. Breathmask 555]

 

3 minutes ago, Stefancos said:

Really? That seems quite arbitrary Marc!

 

Nope.

 

To me, it's the moment the show completely bought into its own hype and started flaunting it. It became too self-aware for its own good. Before that point, Sherlock was the one being smart and telling us he knew it. Suddenly, the writers were trying to pull the same trick and it just became obnoxious (much like Sherlock to his friends).

 

It's also from the episode that started the trend of season-long arcs where events from the first episode wouldn't be resolved until the third, breaking with the tradition of three separate stories. From here on out, each season was no longer a collection of great stand-alones, but another Grand Scheme you had to watch from start to finish.

 

Although the show wasn't without its good moments (or even good episodes), it's still the point where the show took a turn for the worse and never recovered.

[Jay 37,352]

Hmmm, you bring up some convincing points!

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

I would not entirely disagree, though I can't say the show jumped the shark or nuked the fridge there.

 

The show was always meta, and it was always preposterous in a way. The enormous hype and the generous two year wait after Sherlocks presumed death reinforced that, yes. But not dramatically so. 

 

Is you see Moriarty in the first two seasons he's essentially a Joss Whedon-like villain who knows he's a villain. 

Irene Adler is almost a carbon copy of River Song, just with a whip. A intelligent, independent woman who's the equal of the main character in every way...almost. Moffat would repeat that with Mary Morstan/Watson. 

 

This supposed "groundedness" of the first two series is very overstated in my opinion. The show was always high concept, incredibly clever, never very realistic or plausible. Thats why I don't have a huge problem with things going super ridiculous in The Final Problem. 

 

Three potential murderers suddenly lowered in front on a window of a Bond like fortress hide out, for the sole reason of a murder puzzle/ethical dilemma for Sherlock?

I don't see anything incongruous about that considering the previous entries of the show. It's unrealistic, it's not trying to be, it was never supposed to be.

 

I hope they do a series 5!

[Luke Skywalker 1,795]

Well a few days ago i saw the season 4 with my girlfriend and she loved it. We are now watching seasons 1, 2, and 3.... So the season works in some way We were still a little WTF? with the cliffhanger from episode 2 to 3, though.

 

I also liked the family drama. The final chapter was a little weird but fun and tense.

 

So the airplane thing was something fake, like a recording or eurus impersonating the girl's voice (she could impersonate a behind-the-wall microphone voice...)?

 

Oh and Mrs Hudson has great taste in cars ;). And i loved they ended with a sense of closing the series, just in case.

 

I would hate an unresolved ending for a final season...

[Jay 37,352]

9 minutes ago, Luke Skywalker said:

So the airplane thing was something fake

 

Yes

 

9 minutes ago, Luke Skywalker said:

, like a recording

 

No

 

9 minutes ago, Luke Skywalker said:

or eurus impersonating the girl's voice (she could impersonate a behind-the-wall microphone voice...)?

 

Yes

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

A positive review! Who can believe it!

[BloodBoal 7,538]

[Jay 37,352]

Are you joking?  It was plain and obvious the entire time that was a flashback.  Were you drunk while watching?

[BloodBoal 7,538]

How was it obvious?