We can suffice to say that this is a picture of a show from my past, and feel comfort in the fact that it is indeed a Random Movement Pic. Yay. And such.

Though Fight Clip Club is the only series on Zuko’s Musings with a paywall, the shorter and more personal-essay-ish Random Movement Pic branch of same is free for all. Thank you for your support of Zuko’s Musings and all its serieses(es?), whether it’s with a couple bucks, a few shares and likes, or just your reading and enjoyment.

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I was first cast in a summer children’s show with the Play Ground Theatre back when I was 16 years old. At the time, the directors of the troupe were in college about to graduate from the theatre program I would later enter and graduate from myself a couple years later. They told me at the time they had never (and never imagined they would) cast anyone so young, but they saw potential in my skill level and maturity, especially when it comes to my movement/clowning abilities. I’ll share an RMP about that show at some point too.

Later, as I began my college experience, I joined the Play Ground again, but this time, instead of a scrappy grass roots kids theatre and clowning troupe, they were building an ensemble-created multi-genre performance based on the young adult experience. It was called Given Power, and its theme was: Given power, what would you do to change the world? Several teens involved in the show had a bit that was focused on them, with a smaller ensemble who performed as a sort of chorus or backup. My featured chunk was centered on environmentalism, which at the time wasn’t a particular passion of mine, but which I appreciated enough to to do a good job (according to my acting professor anyway).

20 or so years later, theatre makers would call this sort of performance art ‘derived theatre’ (see my experience with ‘I Miss My MTV’ a couple decades after ‘Given Power’).

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Now that I’m on to Season 4, though? I do not feel like I want to take responsibility for encouraging you to go watch these episodes. So. Just know that there are spoilers throughout these reviews, not just for the episode in question but for the whole season and series. I mean, I watched these again so you wouldn’t have to. I wouldn’t willingly put you through such pain.

In case we forgot that Sherlock is an insufferable, arrogant git (and not particularly smart even), we get reminded immediately at the top of this ep that he’s not a hero, but a “high functioning sociopath.” And if *that* wasn’t clear enough, his goofiness in the face of a VERY serious classified coverup is just…childish. Also stupid. Also: ‘I know exactly what [Moriarty’s] going to do.’ No you don’t. What. is going on?!

I’m getting ahead of myself—what’s the main plot of Season 4 Episode 1, ‘The Six Thatchers?’ 

Um…

The cliffhangers that dangled at the end of the Christmas special (and also at the end of 3.3) get tied up and concluded. ish. (Do NOT get used to this.) Then, Mary has her baby, baptizes it, and then we take the rest of the ep to unspool her sordid past as a vicious mercenary assassin. Then she dies.

That’s it. Oh, and there’s a mystery in the beginning that’s a nod to canon story “Six Napoleons,” about smashing busts to find the Black Pearl of the Borgias. But like, it’s all about Mary in this version. Or something. Oh, and! Watson cheats on Mary. ish. Before she dies.

Okay so when I first saw this episode back when it was broadcast I was in the ass-end of a marriage that was going so badly, we’d opened it for a couple of years, in an attempt to fix it (I don’t need to tell you how well that went). In 2017, when this episode came out, we were slogging through a broke divorce and I’d finally moved out to a place of my own. Even then. Even then!!! I did not buy Watson flirting with the lady on the bus. And the texting her. At all. Did not work. Do not buy it. Watson may have an “experience of women that spans three continents,” but this is not in character for him. 

To be honest, I’m actually more irked by the writers pussy-footing around with this plot point. If they’re going to really have him cheat on his wife, then: a) have him feel bad at the proper level about it, have some consequences or comeuppance, and don’t have Sherlock just be like, Hey don’t worry it was only texting, in a later ep. Maybe have Watson actually need to face his real living wife about what he’s done, not just her made-up ghost, ffs; b) OR have Watson go farther than just texting in his infidelity. Texting can absolutely count as cheating, don’t get me wrong—ask anyone who’s sexted or had a cyber-relationship. But. What the writers have done is make it a sort of naughty thing to do but ehhhh it’s fine. Because it’s Watson, and Watson is an honorable man.* There’s no consequences and nothing really comes of it. He feels kind of bad for a while and that’s it. This is a bold choice: so make the choice. One way or the other, not this cowardly in-between nonsense.

Ugh what a horrible opening mystery. What a terrible situation and terrible death. It’s…awful. YES! Thank you! Can we have more actual crime solving? Even if it has to be haunting like this? Please? These stories are supposed to be murder mysteries (or at least mysteries), for crying out loud. Stuff like this is where the show briefly flares into quality: the whole thing about the car seats and etc.? Good details and good mystery!

Another thing I do not buy: Sherlock is deeply haunted by Moriarty and also has a sudden interest in intuition. And he just…knows things, without any deductions, observations, or analysis. Nope. It’s true that in later canon, Sherlock honors women’s intuition a little bit more than he used to, and discusses moving forward on mere hunches.1 This is different, though—this is more like Smart Person Magic™. 

Related to the Smart Person Magic™ and so also not buyable: this nonsense about Sherlock’s repressed traumatic memory. And the many layers of this repressed memory makes it even worse (though we don't learn about the next layers in this ep). It’s a repression of the memory under the repressed memory and guuhhh just tell the story of the crime. The whole not-remembering-a-trauma thing is okay, sort of, but the way Hollywood (er, BBC) treats it is not really the way memory works, even traumatic memory. Layering another worse trauma under the initial repressed memory here is just… it’s another way that Mofftiss are gilding and then frosting and then putting sprinkles on the lily.

This is the center of my problems with episode 4.1, and, I think we’ll find, all the episodes in Season 4 in particular. There’s too much about Sherlock’s (and Mycroft’s, and to some degree Mary’s) insane cleverness and not nearly enough about actually solving mysteries. It’s over-written, let alone over-shot. Just, yanno. Solve. A. Mystery. That’s it. One per episode. Solve it, showing us the details, and then afterwards, tell us what those details meant, to add up to the conclusion. Not: gratuitous visual effects, gratuitous wit, gratuitous brutality. Speaking of: nobody talks to each other in these stories anymore, it’s all only quips and banter. Is it because now we have Mary here who’s supposed to be just as clever and now we have three super geniuses and so everyone only snarks now? Sigh. I’m so tired.

Sherlock’s prodding of the secretary about jealousy and status and being smarter than everyone has some potential. Doesn’t live up to it but it was a very cool idea—if we’re going to hang everything on high level smarts and what that does to those who are so, then yeah cool. Doesn’t quite get there but I like the idea. If they were to lean more heavily on this concept and put some thought behind it, it would put some pressure on the Smart Person Magic™ thing, which would lead us and some of the characters to question that myth. That’s an interesting idea. But like so many interesting ideas that are never developed in Season 4, this fizzles out quickly. This is the main issue I have with Season 4 especially, and my central plea can be summed up thusly:

Can we please quit masturbating over the special super-genius pretty white boy? Can we please dispel the myth of Smart Person Magic™? Can we do that? And! Lest ye think I’m complaining about a character that was always like this, nope. Canon!Sherlock cares about Watson, he’s polite to his colleagues and inferiors alike. He’s not this arrogant, insulting twat. I’ve written about this before, when I compared him with Columbo.

I’ve bitched a lot about episode 4.1. You might be wondering: Anything good? Well, sure:

• There’s sort of a Sign of Four vibe, with four shady characters sticking together through shady shit. Also sort of a ‘Crooked Man’ scent about it too, with the wounded man escaping enemy torture and coming back years after being betrayed.

• I do like that London is one of the pivotal minor characters in this season. See now, that’s good use of visuals.

• I also quite enjoy the case-montages whenever they appear. Those are always so fun, both with all the canon Easter eggs but also it focuses the story on actual mystery-solving, which often the A-plots don’t.

• Great tease about Sherrinford—this is sort of a private joke for Sherlockians, as Sherrinford is the name Conan Doyle chose before he landed on Sherlock, in his pre-story brainstorming. Some nerds Sherlockians posit that Sherrinford is another Holmes brother. So the name is obviously making us think that Sherrinford is ‘the other one’ that Mycroft has mentioned a couple times now.

• ‘Work is the best antidote to sorrow’ is one of my favorite quotes from canon.2 

• Sherlock using logic with New Baby is actually pretty adorable. I’m not made of stone…

• Martin Freeman is so so so good. That is all.

FINAL THOUGHT:  Know what this reminds me of? All of a sudden everyone’s related, or oh-yeah-there’s-like-wand-lore-now or fucking midichlorians. Harry Potter and Star Wars both did this at the end of their series, now this one’s doing it. Please. Stop. You were telling a good story for like a second there, just. Tell that story. Somebody needs to be a “no-man” for the showrunners. There are too many “yes-men” around them, it seems.

Rating: 1 aquarium shark out of 5

*if you caught this reference, I geekily tip my Shakespearean hat to thee.

EASTER EGGS

I’m just going to list these, and let you figure out where in the canon they come from. This is an incomplete list, and I’m not including the title (and premise) of the whole episode (‘Six Thatchers’ = ‘Six Napoleons’), with its smashed busts and the Black Pearl of the Borgias. Here we go:

• Did you catch the severed thumb? Remember that story?

• An alias: Porlock

• The Canary Trainer is a murderer

• ‘You can’t arrest a jellyfish.’ They kind of did, though, in one late canon story.

• ‘Fresh paint to disguise another smell’—a note that is the premise to another later canon story

• Sherlock notes his client’s right hand is bigger than his left, and therefore he’s done manual labor. Then the client laughs and says, ‘I thought you’d done something clever,’ much to Sherlock’s chagrin.

• Toby the dog! 

• ‘I’m not a very good man, but I think I’m better than you give me credit for.’ That’s an obscure one. Any of my readers recognize that one? Hint: though Watson says it in this episode, it’s not Watson that says it in canon.

If you guess in the comments, I’ll let you know if you’re right. Cheers!

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AUTHOR’S NOTE: I promised you I’d continue my retro-reviews of BBC’s Sherlock, and I am, I am. But! As I go over my notes (as Dr. Watson would say) on everything Season 4, I notice that I’ve got a heckuva lot of notes on the whole season and the whole series sweepingly, before I even get to specifics of each episode. So here’s what I’m gonna do: Today, I’m sharing with everyone my overall notes on the whole thing. Then, next week, the regular retro-reviews of each episode of Season 4 will resume. Cool? Cool. I’d love to hear all your thoughts on this stuff, too—this rewatch was…well it was quite the journey for me. 

Anyway. Here ‘tis: think of today as a prep session before we take the Season 4 plunge.

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Just before I forked over a precious 9 bucks to buy Sherlock’s Season 4 in order to resume these retro-reviews, I came across what ended up being an EXTREMELY well done video essay called “Sherlock is Garbage and Here’s Why.” [1] The thoughtful analysis and masterful compare/contrast analysis laid out in this video made me go through a whole lot of self-examination and reflection, and made me realize not only why I used to like this show so much (except for Season 4), but why I can’t stand watching any of it now. 

I was an enormous fan of this series until Season 3, when my interest began to flag, and then I became an un-fan once I made it through Season 4. I liked HotSexyClever!Sherlock and though there was that nagging discomfort about Irene Adler in particular (oh and the Yellow Peril nonsense in 1.2), I still loved the show and had fun watching and rewatching all of it, and allowed myself to be taken along for the ride.

I realize now (thanks to the catalyst of ‘Sherlock is Garbage’) that I loved the insufferable beautiful magical genius version of Sherlock Holmes because of where I was in life at the time of this series. I came to it during season 2’s broadcast, so, 2012. My whole life was centered about being that aloof brilliant eccentric that has no friends, only fans. That’s why I loved the Sherlock Sherlock: he corrects a prisoner’s grammar, he insults all the professionals that call on him for help, he shows off constantly, is phenomenally brilliant, and takes the loyalty of his best friend Watson completely for granted. This was me. At least, it was me until my life as it was fell apart into a thousand shards. [2]

I saw myself in the Sherlock version of the character because I was that person. This is why I celebrated the Cumberbatch version of Sherlock Holmes, with all of his scintillations and smart insults and…cheekbones. Watching it again after this personal revelation [3], I can now see how not just Season 4 but the series as a whole are all about worshiping a beautiful, tortured, brilliant eccentric that treats literally everyone around him like shit, which they inexplicably continue to worship him for. I’ve learned. I know better. I’m doing better. I’m a better person. And this series stinks in my nostrils, here* in 2023.

*and in 2026? Honestly, I haven’t watched any of this show for a long time. Actually, probably the last time I watched a full episode was back in 2023 when I prepped for this very series.

HOWEVER.

Regardless of my own personal Cumberbatchian Sherlock flavored assholery at the time this series first came out, I still did have a bad taste in my mouth here and there the whole time (you can catch a little whiff of it in those old retro-reviews from Sherlock’s Home that I’ve shared so far). That’s until I lost interest completely, because disillusioned. This makes sense, of course: when you build a whole series around an illusion (the magic of the jerk genius), dis-illusion will absolutely happen at some point, if you’re allowed to go on too long. Which Mofftiss was.

My disillusionment with this series had its start in the beginning of Season 3, where the huge array of interesting buildups and cliffhangers and the fan conspiracy theories (both in the fictional world and real life), that were so easy to get swept away with and excited about, all went :poof:. 

Season 3 shat the bed in two ways:

1.  It explained nothing about the big plot to kill Sherlock from Season 2. No closure to that cliffhanger. There was no IOU reveal, nothing about Moriarty’s death, his plan, or his assassins. I don’t necessarily mind not knowing how exactly Sherlock rigged his Fall, mainly because of all the fan analysis (fanalysis?) which was hype that could never have been lived up to. BUT, this leads me to my next point:

2. The showrunners/writers insulted their fanbase. The fan club in 3.1 were composed of fat, awkward, goth, and/or unwashed rejects. [4] They knew Sherlock was alive but aren’t they gross and funny and stupid? By making fun of Anderson and other ‘I Believe in Sherlock’ superfans, the showrunners mocked the very people that were giving them all their showrunning money, and incidentally were the only ones left that were loyal to the show and would continue to follow it into Season 4. Fuck you guys.

We can definitely talk about how badly behaved many of the fans and journalists were (#setlock,  erotic fanfic scandals, etc.) but that’s no reason to spend half an entire movie length episode spitting on the very people that care about the show the most. But that’s just Season 3, which isn’t nearly as bad as Season 4.

The main problem with Season 4 is something I’ve already noted about especially Moffat’s Doctor Who: it’s a major writing flaw: basically, there’s all these interesting and gripping buildups and cliffhangers and hints at deeper meanings, that end up leading nowhere. This happens throughout the series, but the biggest example is how Season 3 starts with not only *not* tying up the loose ends from the big death cliffhanger, but sweeping them under the rug (with a big F You to the fans that were diligently trying to figure it out). Season 4, even more than previous seasons, is riddled with these threads that seem like they should be interesting but again, lead nowhere. This is a Moffat thing, we’re all finally realizing, by the time we have made it through seven! years! to Season 4. Too much stuff, not enough story. That ‘Sherlock is Garbage’ video essay goes into this very critique in excellent detail, so for more about what I’m talking about, do watch that as well.

I experienced a similar disillusionment with Star Wars, another franchise I used to hugely fangirl about as a kid. The special editions ruined the old trilogy, the prequels were bloated and plot-less. The new trilogy gave me (a new) hope until it tripped and fell, and then completely unraveled by Episode 9. [5] 

And this is what happens when:

YOU GIVE A CREATOR ALL THE MONEY IN THE UNIVERSE AND HAVE NOBODY THERE TO LIMIT HIM OR TELL HIM A THING ISN’T WORKING, AND IT ALL IMPLODES.

This is the same sickness that Star Wars suffered from—once George Lucas had all the technology and money in the world to do whatever he wanted to without limit, he ceased to tell good stories. He also added unnecessary bloat to the existing work that used to be tight and good. It’s the problem with all of Sherlock, but most egregiously in Season 4.

Overwritten, overshot non-plots. Arrogant and magical genius assholes. Disdain for the fanbase.

Welp. Let’s start with Season 4, Episode 1, shall we? Next week, though—I’m exhausted.

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[1] Go watch this, seriously. He covers not only Sherlock, but Moffat’s tenure at Doctor Who, and even the almost-could-have-been-great series Jekyll, which I think we’ve all forgotten about. It’s a really really good video essay and it’s super clarifying. Especially if you are or were a Sherlockian or a Whovian. It was posted …what, 8 years ago now? and I’d love to see what new thoughts the creator might have about a lot of what he brings up.

[2] Go read my memoir and you’ll find out more. Under Saturday Morning Serial.

[3] Though to be a bit more fair to myself, this genius-worship has been a widespread cultural thing for a while, and it was pretty predominant in 2012-2015 in particular. So I mean, yeah—I’m not willing to let my asshole self of that time off the hook completely, but you can see that there was quite a bit of surrounding cultural muck that fertilized it. And the idea that smart people just magically know things? That’s still a pervasive myth today.

[4] I am not fat-shaming. What I’m doing is showing how 3.1 is so othering to the fans, not only by their casting, but by how these characters are written. The show is fat-shaming. Fan-shaming, really.

[5] This is a whole ‘nother series of retro-reviews, isn’t it? sigh…

Also, about an upcoming choreography gig.

Tiamat is a dragon that’s from mythology so old she’s not really a dragon as we Westerner nerds know them, but more of a slimy worm/reptile thing, very much like the dragonlike wyrm who is the end of fearless warrior Beowulf. A female, lizard-like, spawner of monsters (maybe there’s a little Grendel’s Mother in her, too). Tiamat’s element is sludge and she will lick your ass, whether your name is Beowulf or Ahura Mazda. [edit: autocorrect changed ‘kick’ to ‘lick’ in that above sentence, and I have decided I will allow it.]

Of course, as anyone who knows anything about both dragons and myth is well aware, when Gary Gygax & crew constructed the elaborate role playing game known as Dungeons & Dragons in the 1970s, they scooped all kinds of creatures both to play and to encounter, from ancient mythology and what I call Old Story. And yes, of course Tolkien’s classic peoples of Elves, Dwarves, Men, and Halflings. And wizards. But where do you think the Good Don got those in the first place? Hm? (Don’t ‘at’ me, LOTR fans)…

Of course any game with dragons in the title needs must have plenty of them flying around in its world, and boy does it: Tiamat is one of the biggest baddies one can encounter in D&D. Her sex is the only thing she keeps from her ancient squidgy origins: a five headed dragon in the game, each of her heads is a different color and spews a different element, as though she’s five chromatic dragons in one. Which of she kinda is.

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In popular play She Kills Monsters by Qui Nguyen, Tiamat does indeed have five heads, but in this case it’s (SPOILERS) the embodiment of the five adventurers our protagonist has been journeying with. There are many fights through this whole show, filled with many D&D creatures (a Beholder, several kobolds, a bugbear) and a cheerleader-led dance battle. The Tiamat fight is the final battle, the boss fight and the climax of the dramatic arc of the story.

The final fight is described by the playwright as ‘the most incredible fight scene in history ever to be put on a stage.’ So. No pressure. But I’ve choreographed this show before, over at Red Rocks Community College, back in 2019. My work on this show over at RRCC culminated not as much with my choreography, but with an immense, phenomenal animatronic behemoth conceived & constructed by the college’s robotics department. As I tweaked the fight and guided the actor who’d be fighting the thing, I reassured her that her previous assessment was correct: the audience would be looking at Tiamat, not really at her very much at all. So in this case the most epic dragon battle supposed-to-be ever was more about the machinery than the dance, and that’s just fine. It’s all art. Gorgeous art.

This time at my beloved Theatre Company of Lafayette, Tiamat is going to be a 5-headed puppet, manipulated by 5 actors we’ve seen through the show as various characters & monsters. It’ll be a good effect, I imagine—sort of like a Wizard of Oz ‘and you were there, and you were there’… And I do have a bunch of scribbled penciled choreography notes left over in a script from that 2019 production, so I’ll have to see if I can salvage and translate any of those cryptic runes, and which bits, if any, are worth repeating for this show, this many years in the future.

(I had a slight tangent planned about Game of Thrones and my history of watching it, not watching it, wanting to read the books and not bothering, etc., but ehhhh. Boobs and dragons are both things I enjoy, but wars of the roses meets soft core rapey porn I’m just not willing to waste my all too short mortality on. I’ve seen the best fight scenes from it, have put in my two gold pieces’ worth, and that’s plenty. And I aver my nerd cred remains intact, thankyouverymuchindeed…)

There are a few more potent (and older) dragons I’d rather revisit. LeGuin’s intimidating and intellectual dragons of Earthsea, Tolkien’s deadly Smaug, and of course the cave-dwelling and treasure-hoarding dragon that’s the boss battle of Beowulf. Whoever s/t/he/y was/ere. And it’s convenient for me, since is doing another Beowulf readalong right now, which I’ve joined. That’s one of the most iconic (and ancient) dragons in myth and literature. Right up there with Tiamat, even though it’s never named. Maybe Beowulf’s bane is Tiamat?

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Back when I was going to school, we had elementary school through 6th grade, junior high 7th through 9th, and then high school was 10th-12th grades. Though 9th grade was attended at junior high, we still were earning high school credits. It worked for me, though by the last year of both those phases of school, I was definitely feeling too old to be there. But I digress.

When a school has a robust theatre program, they usually do a Fall play, and the blockbuster which is the Spring musical. In 9th grade, my last year of junior high, I had undergone lots of education and training in singing and acting, and my young theatrical career culminated in the musical Oliver! I was cast as Fagin. I was cast in this role because, and I quote the drama director, I was the only one in the entire school who could pull it off. And so we transposed a few notes to be a bit higher than the original, and got together the spirit gum, gray hairspray, and gray crepe beard to put my look together. I watched the movie version of the musical over and over, emulating the brilliant Ron Moody’s portrayal of the part. His Fagin was one of those iconic performances that, even if you’re not a young teenager learning by copying the masters, you just have to channel, in order to portray the role at all correctly. Ben Vereen as the Leading Player in Pippin, Joel Grey as the Emcee in Cabaret, Judy Garland as Dorothy in Wizard of Oz, Tim Curry as Frank N Furter in the Rocky Horror Show… what are your icons? Some people just nailed it, and anyone that comes after must follow their footsteps.

I’ve written a little before (in my memoir) about how this role was one of the many ‘Not A Pretty Girl’ parts that would define my castability throughout my young adult and training years. Find more about this role and my personae in high school here in Chapter 3 of Next Time:

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Becasue there’s no rest for the wicked, even when she’s hacking up a lung, I’ve had something of an eventful weekend. Problem is, there have been no fresh Popinations within same. And so what I thought I’d do is to walk you all through the journey of all past Popinations that were included in my world the past few days, as a sort of retrospective. Shall we begin? Let’s do:

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CV Taphouse

Whenever I have a substantial uber ride to go on, I tend to go to my ‘local’ first and get picked up from there. I also often get dropped off there, too, after my trip is concluded, just because it’s a lot easier to drop me there than to navigate my gated apartment complex. Besides, the pub is up the hill and closer to my actual house than the front gate. So this is where I began my weekend, on Friday afternoon. I sipped on a cocktail called the Cigar Box and tried to suppress my cough.

Moxy hotel

Because it’s way more convenient and even a little cheaper to stay in a hotel rather than uber back and forth all the way to and from Boulder, and because I had another show the following night only 15 or so minutes away from Boulder, in Westminster, I stayed at the Moxy on Friday. I arrived in the afternoon and napped and changed into my glitteryness, had a taco and a pint at the hotel bar, and went off to the show. Which took place at:

Junkyard Social Club

We used the indoor stage at Junkyard for our variety show, which was the highlight of the first night of Boulder Arts Week. The audience was loud and happy and they all cheered as they sat in the mismatched chairs set up for them. I walked through the audience as I sang my number (‘Life is a Cabaret’ from Cabaret), and then I told the story of Blue Dime Cabaret’s origins, nine years ago. And then I proceeded to cough the rest of the night, coating my throat with old fashioneds till it was time to pose for pictures and go.

I did a full day of work-from-home (including concocting this very Popination piece) in the comfy lobby of the Moxy, saw my parents, and later got a ride from the other Boulder residents in the show, for the next performance on Saturday night, which was back at:

Odde’s Lounge / Liquor Pie Speakeasy

The endless saga of Blue Dime Cabaret trying to secure ourselves a home venue for our monthly variety shows continues on apace: Odde’s Lounge has been sold. While this doesn’t necessarily mean we won’t be performing there anymore, it does mean things are yet again up in the air for us, venue-wise. Wish us luck and good event planning.

As such, the show on Saturday was bittersweet, and felt a lot like goodbye. But we shall see what we shall see. And next week, expect a fresh pub. We hope.

(Me, attempting to not cough into the microphone, at the Junkyard, 4/3/06. Photo by Will Briggs.)

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…yeah this episode showed plenty of echoes of what was to come in Season 4 of Sherlock, what with the unnecessarily complex Swiss cheese plots, the excessive and insufferable fanservice, and the over-over-overornate…well, everything. Most of us Sherlock followers (even the rabid fans) began to get itchy and doubtful in Season 3, but then gave up on the whole thing after having sat through Season 4. I don’t know that anyone is asking anyone about Season 5 possibilities anymore—really this show should have ended a while before it did, as you’ll see. Since my retro-reviews for the Sherlock’s Home fansite ended after ‘The Abominable Bride,’ I have decided to put myself through the Season 4 ordeal once more, for completion’s and your sake. I do this so you won’t have to. Yer welcome.

Written by Prof. Jenn

As a reminder:  I am writing these as RETROSPECTIVE reviews, so I will be discussing reveals, resolutions of cliffhangers, ends of plots, etc. If you are reading these reviews without having seen the eps, a) what is wrong with you?? Go watch them now! and b) these reviews are not for you till you’ve seen them.

NOTE: This is the last retrospective review I wrote for Sherlock’s Home, and it appeared there in Fall 2016. The site went largely dormant after that, and my own personal fandom hit a definite lull after Season 4 finally came out, and…/shudder/ Well, you’ll see. Lucky you, I’ll be returning to the Retro-Review cycle next week and will be tackling all three Season 4 episodes. Because I’m a glutton for punishment, I suppose. But this retro-review below is still for SH, which is a UK-based site, and so my syntax is more Brit here than it is normally. It has also been adapted and revised a little bit since then. And now, without further ado:

Er, hm. THAT was interesting…

And by interesting, I mean…I don’t even know. Postmodern? Meta? Fanservice upon fanservice upon convoluted bloat? Seriously. I’m exhausted.

Christmas special 2016, aka Episode 4.0, aka ‘The Abominable Bride’, opens much the same way as the Granada series. Actually, nearly exactly like the Granada series, right down to its theme music. We have some lovely Victorian snowy London and some delightful banter between our heroes and beloved Mrs. Hudson, putting us right back in comfy territory as far our characters go, even if the clothing is a little stiffer. Back when Mofftiss announced this special, they declared it would be set in the “proper” era, and would be a fun one-off. When pressed as to why they decided to do a Victorian era episode, they responded that there was no reason for it, that it was just fun, and that it wouldn’t have anything to do with the continuing longer arcs of the plot of the show proper.

Ahem.

Well.

Honestly, if they had kept to that premise, I’d have appreciated it a lot more. The way-too-heavy-handed feminist message notwithstanding, it was charming, if fanservicey, to see the Victorian versions of all the characters we already know and love. Especially original character Molly Hooper, who does not show up in original canon, of course—makes sense how she’d have to finagle things to have the same job she does in the current era, and it was just heaps of fun to see Mary Watson retain her spy-assassin badassery in the older time period. So that’s all well and good. Even Increased!Mycroft, who was, though goofier, a little more like the canon version of the character.

But then…

Really? This is it? This?

Mofftiss, from all the excellent writing you’ve both done, all the nods and all the brilliant new as well as original turns from the three series so far, the best you could come up with is: ‘It was all a drug dream?’ Really?

Okay, sure, argue with me that it was a mind palace trip and not a drug dream, but I submit the appearance of Sherlock’s mind palace and its properties in ep. 3.2, 3.3, and then this. This is not his mind palace, this is …. I don’t even know what this is. Once we meet Moriarty and especially when we’re at the Reichenbach Falls (Victorian version), Watson starts talking about: what’s the other version of me like, blah blah blah…

Just. Stop. And did you have to have Sherlock say ‘Elementary, my dear Watson?’ Did you? Really? Is that good writing? Or is it nothing but a long chain of winks and nudges to your followers instead?

FINAL THOUGHT: Though it’s ridiculous to include if this really is Sherlock’s mind palace (mind palace within the mind palace?), I did muchly enjoy the Victorian version of the mind palace: grabbing all the scraps of paper out of the air. It was a cool effect—very visually pleasing.

EASTER EGG: There are plenty of Easter Eggs in this episode, but one of my favorites is just the title of the episode itself. Ricoletti of the club foot and his abominable wife is mentioned in passing by Watson in the canon, of a case that maybe one day he’d put into print, but never does. It doesn’t look like Mr. Ricoletti had a club foot in this ep, though it is kinda hard to tell…

RATING: 2 murderous proto-feminists out of 5

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Foolery, sir, doth walk about the orb like the sun: it shines everywhere.

~Feste, 12th Night, Shakespeare

I know I’ve shared images from this production before, but I can’t resist sharing more, just because it’s April Fool’s Day and this is my very favorite Fool I’ve ever portrayed. So. I’m a jingle my bells at you again, and you can handle it.

While the Fight Clip Club fight analyses is the only series on Zuko’s Musings that has a paywall, the shorter Random Movement pic version of it remains free to all. For the full experience, upgrade to paid. And thank you so much for reading and sharing and commenting!

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I always prefer it when a production of 12th Night combines the roles of Feste and Fabian. Honestly, I don’t really see why Fabian is a separate character at all, and I have often hypothesized that maybe originally they weren’t always. But that’s a whole ‘nother essay. Suffice to say I love the role when not only does Feste get to be the sassy satirical smart mouth jester, playing on both Olivia and Orsino’s sides, but also gets a direct hand in the humiliation of Malvolio, besides just portraying Sir Topas the curate. The scene where Malvolio is reading the fake love letter and Feste and company are hiding in the background, watching and mocking, contains some of the funniest comedy moments in all of theatre, ever. That scene is still howl-aloud funny, this many hundreds of years later—it’s both innuendo-laden and physically hilarious.

We were rehearsing the Sir Topas scene one afternoon, and they had said they were still waiting for a false beard to arrive in the mail, so just to improvise for now. Then the actor playing Sir Toby Belch suggested I tie my long hair around my chin to approximate it. What resulted was so funny and ridiculous, we kept that instead of using the beard. As I struggled into the priest robe and tied my hair around my face, spouting Feste’s lines, by the end I’d declare: ‘So I, being Sir Topas, am Sir Topas’ and at that ‘am,’ I revealed the stupid hair beard and the audience would always lose it.

That Sir Topas scene was one of the most scholastically, or intellectually, challenging of all the complex jokes that Feste is constantly quipping in this play (and he does a lot—he’s basically talking continuously). Though the digs against a tyrannical Christianity and mocking a puritanical godliness remains topical and true, many of the specifics were either obsolete, or (I suspect) dismissed by scholars as ‘gibberish.’ I have a feeling that many of the silly names or turns of phrase that he makes up as he fools, aren’t as nonsensical as my research reassures me it is. But then again, I’m not really an expert at the same level. And yet…

I loved my first entrance as Feste for this production—I began up at the back of the ‘house’: that is, at the top of the hill where the audience had their deck chairs and blankets set up, and strode down through the audience to the stage area, Maria chasing and chiding me the whole way down. That scene ended with one of Feste’s best and wisest foolery lines:

Thanks for joining me in my foolery yet again this week! And Happy April Fool’s Day!

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~the Love Song of Jenn Zuko Prufrock

Okay listen: I know that Boulder has become a hub of bigtime tech people, and aligned with such, some of the most famous celebrity chefs and foodies have places here. And I’ve talked about what I call ‘Posh Row’ on the Pearl Street Mall before, too. What I have not done is visit those in said row. But the other day, I went down to my stylist to have a very long and involved salon visit to pop out and extend the natural silver in my hair. I figured, as long as I’m in Boulder, I may as well do a fresh Popination, someplace I hadn’t been yet. So I chose The Kitchen.

As you know, there’s no research allowed in Popinations—they’re meant to be personal essays first and personal impressions of the pubs I go to second. Sometimes one more than the other, but a historical or otherwise researched overview of the place? That’s not a part of these ‘mess’ays. However.

I do wish I had done a little research before I plunked down even the small amount of money into The Kitchen, because it turns out The Kitchen Group of restaurants is co-owned and co-founded by Kimbal Musk. Sigh. I didn’t know, okay? All I had was an old fashioned and a cup of tomato bisque, anyway, so it’s not like I gave them too much money. It was good. The old-fashioned was a little sweet. And I tipped well. That’s it. Please don’t ‘at’ me…

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I was writing last week (or, at least, re-posting) about my own hair, and my unnatural personal obsession with redheads in my life (Red). I chose that one as a placeholder because my actual near-entire Friday was to have been taken up with a hair appointment. Now, I had been going black for many years before very recently, when it suddenly occurred to me that my 50-something complexion can no longer sustain such a harsh contrast (between my very pale skin and the very dark hair). I’m getting too old for that particular Goth shit, in other words. And so my stylist and I planned how I could somehow get down to what’s fast becoming naturally mostly silver. How we handled that was: first we started going lighter and lighter brown, one shade at a time, as the color faded in the intense and continuous Colorado sun. Then, once my roots started looking more silver than brown, I was to grow them out at least 3-4 inches. Which I did. And then this was the culmination of all that patience: i went in at 9am, and my immensely talented stylist proceeded to separate out all the silver and to strip the latent color from the rest of the length of the tresses, leaving the brown as is. Then she overlaid the whole with an ashy/grey color so it didn’t look blond or brassy. By the time 2pm rolled around, I had the most gorgeous, silvery ashy streaks as highlights all down my hip-length hair. It’s lighter than I’ve ever had it, and it looks so cool. More importantly, it looks better on my middle-aged face than the black was beginning to. Dare I say it’s age-appropriate? I don’t know if I like that sentiment, but it is.

But a hair salon is not a pub!

Even though they do have sparkling water, tea, and coffee available for their clients, Voodoo Hair Lounge is still not a pub.

There’s a specific path with a few stops that I always take on foot once I’m done getting my hair done. As my salon is a couple blocks East of the pedestrian part of the Pearl Street Mall, and so whenever I have an appointment there, I take a moderate walk all the way down Pearl until I stop at whatever Popination I’ve chosen for the afternoon. First stop is usually a little record store right kitty-corner from Mountain Sun. Then (whether or not I stop off for an FYIPA), I go to a little crystal hippie-dippie shop that I’ve frequented since I was a teenager, and where I still supply the household with incense from. I also look at their bracelet collection, to see if they have cool stones on offer. After that, Sometimes I’ll go to posh kitchen boutique Peppercorn, especially if anyone needs fancy chocolate or we’ve broken one too many wine glass. After that, this time I popped into Boulder Bookstore, where my book is shelved under Recommended Local Authors. Then, I was hungry. And wanted a cocktail. So I decided to stop off at one of the bars in the restaurants on what I call Posh Row, just a block down from the bookstore.

Outside, The Kitchen looks pretty basic: clean lines, the classic exposed brick of most places on Pearl St. Inside, brick and good wood and red leather and brushed steel. Classy without being too formal, which is totally on brand for Boulder—even more than Denver, nobody in Boulder seems to get that dressed up for anything. Some combination of a hippie thing and a nouveau riche thing, maybe? Or is it old money that’s rougher around the seams? Let me know.

The menu was surprisingly tiny, which I didn’t understand. I thought The Kitchen was known as this very high quality gourmet bistro, not like, a cocktail bar with some limited snacks just to keep you up with your drinking. But the menu was extremely small: a few starters, a couple entrees, soup and salad, but the whole thing didn’t take more than a half-sheet of paper. But maybe that was because I was there at a sort of happy hour time of day, just after lunch and not quite dinnertime. But I don’t know—I didn’t research.

I enjoyed my bisque and my old fashioned, and it was a nice enough ambience, but there was something about it that was boring. The bartender was cordial enough, but there was no warmth in the place. It didn’t quite feel human enough for me to stay for a second drink. Soulless and pretty. It puts forth a presentable front but there’s no depth. I guess that makes a bit of sense, doesn’t it.

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I decided to go wait for my uber over at Post Brewing, and that was such a more comfortable place to wait. Even though just a chicken and beer joint. Though, what do I mean, ‘just,’ anyway? This is a word I’ve been hearing a lot lately, when folks online are discussing things like AI-created art, or the new Harry Potter TV series1: soulless.

People are searching for the soulful these days more than ever: the human, the artisanal, the warm, the slightly flawed, the wabi-sabi, the handcrafted…now more than ever, we humans are craving, well, the human. I’ve talked about wabi-sabi and this concept of an artistic patina or flaw before, in Chapter 8 of my memoir:

The concept of wabi-sabi is one such aesthetic that’s famously hard to define, let alone translate into English and Western culture. The basics of what wabi-sabi means has to do with an appreciation of an imperfect beauty—a beauty that comes from rustic flaws, perfect imperfection, and the patina of the natural passage of time. Art types will talk about the earth tones and sepia palette of a work done with a wabi-sabi sentiment, while sculptors and potters will tout the non-symmetry of works as being the most beautiful. I love the story of what many think was the first iteration of wabi-sabi: that of a gardener to the emperor combing and arranging a zen sand garden to mathematical perfection, and after? he shook the branches of the cherry trees above it, scattering the petals across his finished product haphazardly, making his work even more perfect.

And I went and spent a whole day (and a chunk of change) to make my hair look less slick, new, fake, or polished. I went in and got a meticulous session of wabi-sabi done to my hair, and now my look, though no less punk, is warmer, realer, more human. That’s what The Kitchen didn’t give, and what I strive for in every live show I produce.

And actually, my hair looks a lot prettier this way.

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Written by Prof. Jenn

As a reminder:  I am writing these as RETROSPECTIVE reviews, so I will be discussing reveals, revelations of cliffhangers, ends of plots, etc. If you are reading these reviews without having seen the eps, a) what is wrong with you?? Go watch them now! and b) these reviews are not for you till you’ve seen them.

Another reminder: this, as were the others, was first posted on British fansite Sherlock’s Home, this one in 2016. It’s been changed slightly since then. And in this episode’s rundown, you’ll find a couple interjections from Present Me in answer to Past Me’s questions. I decided to leave those dialogues in, because what’s more fun than reading the rantings of a time-traveling writer?

In the original Conan Doyle canon (‘The Master Blackmailer’), Sherlock Holmes has this to say about Charles Augustus Milverton:

‘Do you feel a creeping, shrinking sensation, Watson, when you stand before the serpents in the Zoo, and see the slithery, gliding, venomous creatures, with their deadly eyes and wicked, flattened faces? Well, that’s how Milverton impresses me. I’ve had to do with fifty murderers in my career, but the worst of them never gave me the repulsion which I have for this fellow. And yet I can’t get out of doing business with him—indeed, he is here at my invitation. … He is the king of all the blackmailers. Heaven help the man, and still more the woman, whose secret and reputation come into the power of Milverton!

‘…With a smiling face and a heart of marble, he will squeeze and squeeze until he has drained them dry. The fellow is a genius in his way, and would have made his mark in some more savoury trade. His method is as follows: He allows it to be known that he is prepared to pay very high sums for letters which compromise people of wealth and position. He receives these wares not only from treacherous valets or maids, but frequently from genteel ruffians, who have gained the confidence and affection of trusting women. … I happen to know that he paid seven hundred pounds to a footman for a note two lines in length, and that the ruin of a noble family was the result. Everything which is in the market goes to Milverton, and there are hundreds in this great city who turn white at his name. No one knows where his grip may fall, for he is far too rich and far too cunning to work from hand to mouth. He will hold a card back for years in order to play it at the moment when the stake is best worth winning. I have said that he is the worst man in London, and I would ask you how could one compare the ruffian, who in hot blood bludgeons his mate, with this man, who methodically and at his leisure tortures the soul and wrings the nerves in order to add to his already swollen money-bags?’

Charles Augustus Magnussen, the counterpart to Milverton in this show, is much less subtle than Milverton. His audacious claims that he owns people, his declaration that he doesn’t need facts, and the melodramatic, way over-the-top actions he takes—like licking Lady Smallwood’s face, pissing in the fireplace of 221B, or flicking Watson’s eyeball like a 12-year-old schoolyard bully—are ostentatious, almost ridiculously nasty.

I was musing about this fact, when I read the above description of the original character again, and I realised that this is exactly what was needed to create a character which would engender that kind of visceral repulsion in a modern audience. Watson, in the original adventure, says that ‘[he] had seldom heard [his] friend speak with such intensity of feeling,’ when describing Milverton, and it takes a lot to depict the sort of man who would cause such an intense reaction in a modern-day setting, where we’ve seen it all, and it’s nigh impossible to shock anyone anymore. So I’m now prepared to forgive what could be construed as an over-the-top character, in that he needs to be so, in order to be this repulsive. This, plus his announcement that ‘I don’t have to prove it; I just have to print it,’ shows the dangerous insidiousness of this updated villain for current viewers, and makes his murder that much more necessary.

We begin (after a prologue scene where we first see and are perhaps fooled by Magnussen’s glasses/reading about people bit) with an opening scene straight out of ‘The Man With the Twisted Lip’: Kate Whitney comes over to John and Mary’s house, upset that Isaac Whitney, her son, has been away for days at a crack house. In the original, it’s Isa Whitney, her husband, at an opium den, but the scene unfolds in just the same way, with Watson going to fetch him and finding not only him but Sherlock there too. There’s a cute bit where John sleepily asks, ‘Husband?’ and Mary corrects, ‘Son,’ which is no doubt a nod directly for us readers who know the story well.

Also directly taken from canon is the scheme that Sherlock comes up with to break into Magnussen’s office (in the original, it’s to break into Milverton’s house, also called Appledore): he becomes engaged to Magnussen’s PA (in the original it’s Milverton’s scullery maid). In the original, poor Agatha is never heard of again, but here, Janine gets her revenge in a gloriously Easter-Eggy way: she has sold enough lies about Sherlock to the tabloids that she is retiring to a cottage near the Sussex Downs (they’ve got beehives but she’s getting rid of them). This is a clear reference to Holmes’ Sussex beekeeping retirement in the books.

Speaking of Easter Eggs, there are SO MANY in this episode it’s frankly ridiculous, so I will close by listing just a few of them for you:

• Billy Wiggins is a composite name from two of the boys from Holmes’ Baker Street Irregulars that he particularly uses for assistance and special cases. Actually Billy becomes his page, and we get the idea that Billy in the show will be recurring in this sort of capacity too.

• The knocked-out bodyguard has five pips tattooed on his hand. After seeing this, Sherlock declares he’s a white supremacist. The Five Orange Pips were a murderous sign left by the KKK in canon.

• The thumb drive with Mary’s past written on it is marked A.G.R.A., which she says is her initials. In The Sign of Four, the original novel wherein Mary Morstan and John Watson get together, the Agra treasure is the sought after fortune of which Mary is owed a portion, and which is lost in the Thames during the climactic boat chase.

• William Sherlock Scott Holmes is widely thought by Sherlockian scholars to be Holmes’ full name.

• There’s a recurring threat Mycroft gives Sherlock: ‘There’s an East Wind coming.’ In the show, it’s described as a sort of childhood story thing.* In the original ‘His Last Bow’ (named nearly identically to this ep), it’s an apprehensive phrase Holmes remarks to Watson at the conclusion of the mystery, referring to the onset of WWI.

CLOSING THOUGHT: I dunno, but I thought the cute Christmas scene at the Holmes’ with Mum and Dad was a bit too cute and private-jokey for my tastes. Just me? Yeah, I didn’t think so. It’s over-egging the pudding, especially since we know that the actors portraying the Holmes parents are Benedict Cumberbatch’s actual parents irl. Nepotism, thy name is fanservice Sherlock…

CLOSING QUESTION: Who on earth is ‘the other one’???*

*Like I said: do I really need to rewatch Season 4? I kinda do, don’t I. Sigh…

~Past Me: Yes, you do. And you did. And it was glorious. Or, at least, it was an adventure. Signed, Present Me.

RATING: 2.5 flicks to the eyeball out of 5

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I’ve only had red hair once in my life; it was for a large and spectacular role in a play I was in: I had to look like the other lead’s sister, and she was a redhead. The director wanted me to be a redhead too. So I got hold of a cheap box of bright orange, and went ginger. My hair was long then, too—about as long as it is again now—so it actually took two and a half boxes of dye to get it all. This was the mid-‘90s, just before my stint with the swordfighting boys at RenFaire and just after college. O wait, actually—I think this must have been my penultimate semester still in college, because I remember having pissed off the school’s powers that be by getting this part in a professional show and not a school one. I’ll explain:

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I was the victim of what I call the ‘Not A Pretty Girl’ syndrome in theatre. Even within my school experiences, which are supposed to be places to learn and train and not be type-cast because not professional, I was still too big and smart and weird to get any lead roles most of the time. I’d get saucy maids or old lady neighbors or nothing at all, but usually no big meaty leads.1 This penultimate semester, I was about to graduate with a BFA in Acting and a BA in English, and I knew I deserved something better before I tossed up my mortar board. 

So, I decided to do something different, to take my education and my CV into my own hands. A graduate student I knew was putting on a professional production of Landscape of the Body at a local theatre and wanted me to take on a large lead. This was a much different type of part than I’d regularly been getting at school, and looked challenging—it involved narration, breaking the fourth wall, and singing several songs. The play is a bizarrely surreal John Guare piece, centering around the death of a teenager and the life of his mother, presented in fragmented flashbacks including narrative songs, a harsh detective, a man in a gold lamé dress, a severed head, some beautifully poetic monologues... and the whole thing is, cabaret-like, narrated by a dead porn star. This last part was offered to me. The director said I was the only one he knew who could pull this difficult role off—I had the required skill set and the ability to tackle a role of that large size, unlike pretty much every other actress he knew. And I could sing.

I mean, holy cow; that sounded great! Finally a part that my weird and wide talent deserved. And I’d get to be pretty! One big obstacle stood in my way: we weren’t allowed to do any shows outside of school productions whilst enrolled in the BFA program. Something about not wanting to taint our training with work that’s done in a different way. At least that was the claim. Morosely, I poised myself to turn down this exciting, strange, professional play for the one I was required to audition for at school. But when I saw what part in what school play I’d be refusing to audition for in favor of this? I decided to break that rule. The school play was Irish drama Dancing at Lughnasa. The role? The oldest sister, mother figure for the rest of the characters. At the time, especially when compared to the glitzy, bloody, and oddly dark Landscape, Dancing just sounded dreary, dull, and depressing. And to play yet another poignant and sad Someone’s Mom? No thank you. I was 22 years old; I was sick of old lady neighbors, mothers, and maids. I was tired of painting lines on my face. I was sick of gray hair color—this professional part would require me to dye my hair bright red.

I took the Landscape role gladly, school policies and rules be darned. And anyway, it was only an audition for the sad gray part—what if I didn’t end up getting cast? The spectacular, singing, lingerie-wearing, sparkly dead pornstar narrator was a sure thing. He was pre-casting me, not merely auditioning me. It really wasn’t a choice, once I thought about it.

The theatre department’s reaction to me taking a professional role over their typical part they’d expected me to fill was similar to that of an abusive partner when his victim calls him out, or stands up for herself. I explained the situation, the role, the choice I had made and why. Their initial reaction was to play the classic narcissist’s how-could-you-do-this-to-me card. When I wouldn’t budge, they switched to veiled threats: I wasn’t supposed to break out of school and do community theatre; it’s a bad influence on the training they were providing for me, this might affect my castability later, in my last semester… 

Well, I figured, if I can get cast outside of school, in big professional parts, and if the only parts school is willing to give me are old ladies and maids, then gee, maybe not being cast by school anymore ain’t the devastating thing they’re trying to convince me it is...

I knew this was the right choice, and that bowing to their harsh and what felt like arbitrary rules would undercut my growth as a performer. 

I shone as this new challenging part, in Landscape. At only 22 years old, I got great reviews from the local critics who touted me as a highlight of the show, and I learned a lot in this part that stretched me to my limits. My school did end up grudgingly making an exception to the no-pro-show rule for me, since the director was one of their own grad students. They cast a very lovely and talented junior in what would have been my part, and she did a great job.

I made new deep friends, including the music director from whom I’d go on to continue voice lessons with afterwards (also a redhead), and one intense, emotional, friendship with a member of the cast. But that’s a story for another post. Or actually probably not. Was I being influenced by my orange tresses? Sassier and brassier? Maybe. Or maybe I was growing up, taking power for myself for the first time. Maybe being a temporary redhead opened up my attitude a bit in that direction.

All the big romantic or pivotal relationships in my life are all redheads: My best friend from 5th grade on is a beautiful willowy redhead who speaks French and can sing. My first husband had a long strawberry plait held back with a Celtic knot, and a red goatee like a pirate. My good friend Christina looks like a Raphaelite painting, and was a rigger for Cirque du Soleil. Not even counting my life partner right now, who I met at 15 years old in the back of a science classroom, bright red mullet gloriously declaring his metalheadedness. He’s since shaved his red head in his middle age, but I still see him as a ginger. It’s a state of mind almost more than it is just a hair color, isn’t it. I’ve always made jokes that they all come from the same alien planet, but in fact I don’t think I’m really that far off. And why I seem to attract them into my life, I’m not sure. I’m not complaining, but. It seems weird. Why have they accepted me as their one human ally?

But another big thing that this means is that I have not been allowed to go redhead myself very often at all. Why? It’s my hair, right? I can do what I want with it, and with green eyes and pale skin, how cool does ginger look on me? Yeah, but natural redheads get pretty bent out of shape if someone not from that mothership does it artificially. Though it’s funny—I’ve had more than one person tell me they think of me as a natural redhead. My erstwhile hair stylist was one of them. I’m not a redhead! I protested, gobsmacked. Sure you are, the sweet little psychic born-again stylist assured me. I shook my (brown-haired) head.

That one time I went dark mahogany brown, it turned out with too much burgundy in the mix. This was in the early aughts, when burgundy was pretty trendy and so I didn’t care. But my redheaded first husband (the narcissistic gaslighter) kept looking at me sidelong after I emerged from the salon, until he finally had to admit he didn’t like it, at all. Burgundy went great with my complexion and my eyes, but nope. Too red for the redhead.

In fact, the very first time I ever dyed my hair—I was 16—the only reason I got the balls to do it was that my best friend and bosom buddy, that bestie from 5th grade that I’ve mentioned, threatened me. See, we were both in this mod-moving-into-proto-goth style, fashionable, angular and elegant, and pretty serious about alternative fashion. She declared, “If you don’t dye your hair black? I will!”

Gaaaah okay okay!

Anyway, my hair loves dye: it soaks it right up and doesn’t grow back awkwardly. That fateful day at age 16, it was a black and burgundy wedge cut. I’ve been going dark about yearly ever since (except that few months in Landscape as a burnished ginger). And for goth prom back in the Before Times, I discovered my hair especially likes blue, much to the trauma of my stylist at the time. But I don’t mind. Until very recently my hair was blue-black, and very long but with a high undercut. Sort of an echo of the wedge cut the first time I went black. But now, as you’re reading this ‘mess’ay, I am in the stylist chair getting my natural silver streaks enhanced and punk-ified. I’m very excited to see the results—I’ll post pictures as soon as I can.

Back to the Landscape of the Body days: only a couple days after the boxes of orange met my tresses, I was standing at the bus stop on my way to rehearsal. A woman stopped me and exclaimed that I looked like a Celtic goddess with my height and my hair! I didn’t have the heart to tell her it wasn’t my natural color, or that Irish women of the time period she was talking about would’ve been half my size. And probably brunette. I just took the praise. And plugged my show.

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NOTE: this musing is a cobbling-together of two other pieces: an old personal essay on a pen-named blog, and a small section from Chapter 4 in my memoir, Next Time. In the book, I trace the triad gaslighting abuse of my careers in adjuncting and theatre, and my narcissistic first husband. It’s a read that catches fire, if I do say so myself. Flames like a redhead. I have published said memoir in my Substack chapter by chapter along with a GLOSS on each, under the Saturday Morning Serial tab. Share and enjoy.

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I’m a huge Sherlock Holmes nerd, as you’ve noticed if you’ve been reading my ramblings for a while. And of course, stage combat being a vital part of my field/s of expertise, I’m always interested in watching anything Guy Ritchie is involved in. I’m one of the very rare Sherlockians who actually enjoyed his Sherlock Holmes movies (though they don’t hold a candle to Jeremy Brett), and so when I heard he was producing a new series about Young Sherlock Holmes, I was psyched. And I’m fully okay with messing with canon, making it steampunky and inserting (ahem) a soupcon of homoeroticism between Moriarty and Holmes (who we don’t meet till much later in canon), and adding more strong women than just the fleeting presence of Irene Adler. I like how we’ve got a delinquent if not criminal young man in Holmes, and an angry and brilliant Irishman in Moriarty. I like Mycroft’s stuffiness as he tries to corral his family’s chaos. I like their beautiful and mad mother (or is she)? I like the steampunkish technology. The asshole professors. The actual mystery! When was the last time the BBC Sherlock series actually *solved a fricking mystery* after all?

Suffice to say, I’m having a lovely time watching this series, and the fantastic fight scenes are only one small factor in said enjoyment. Let’s look at the one full fight scene I was able to glean from ze interwebz, shall we? Follow me behind the paywall. The game is afoot!

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As a reminder:  I am writing these as RETROSPECTIVE reviews, so I will be discussing reveals, revelations of cliffhangers, ends of plots, etc. If you are reading these reviews without having seen the eps, a) what is wrong with you?? Go watch them now! and b) these reviews are not for you till you’ve seen them.

Another reminder: this was originally posted on Sherlock’s Home in 2016, UK based website, revised slightly since then, I’m Prof. Jenn, yadda yadda yadda…

Ah, the Wedding Episode. What can one say about it which hasn’t already been said?

According to DVD documentary Sherlock Uncovered: The Women, the premise of this episode (beyond the novel that is its near-namesake) is the chortle-inducing idea that, of course, Sherlock Holmes would have to have been Dr. Watson’s best man. What would that best man speech have been like?

Before we get there, though, we open with a lovely build-up of a sequence of which the climax is Sherlock freaking out about writing that very speech. We get a lot of the wonderful rapport between Donovan and Lestrade (though I was left lacking, again, as far as the consequences of Donovan’s actions from Series Two on her job today. There’s certainly no marked change like there is in Anderson, but also no… well, no anything. For this character, it’s as though it never happened. Which strikes me as odd because she was so anti-Sherlock in Series One and Two), and we see as Lestrade rushes to Sherlock’s aid, how much he cares for him, potentially putting his career on the line for him.

This idea of sentimentality as a virtue is a running theme throughout this hectic, choppy episode: the conclusion of each problem is care. Care for one’s fellow humans is paramount through all the varying shenanigans in this mad rush toward John and Mary’s wedding. It ends in an almost melodramatic way, as Mrs. Hudson’s early line, ‘Who leaves a wedding early?’ is echoed in Sherlock’s exit, the wedding song he composed for his best friend blending into the theme music.

As far as the episode’s structure, writing-wise: this one is nearly all told in flashbacks and the vast complex that is Sherlock’s mind palace. As such, it does jump around quite a bit: sometimes to good effect (the peals of laughter universally at the prospect of Sherlock’s speech), sometimes to confusion or ridiculousness (sorry, but the way too far extended speech as Sherlock gets lost in his deduction is just too much. Actually, I’m not sorry).

There are plenty of references to The Sign of Four, though, as well as nods to other works from the original canon:

• Major Sholto appears here, though quite different than any Sholto in the book

• A dwarf shooting a blowpipe at them is a climactic bit of the novel, though it’s merely a reference to an earlier case in the ep

• “Oscillation on the pavement usually means an affaire de coeur” is from canon (‘A Case of Identity’)

• Hey everybody: Sherlock is finally wearing the mouse-colored dressing gown!

• The decathlete and the mysterious matchbox is also a brief nod to an unwritten case in canon. In the original, it’s a duelist.

• When Sherlock declares to John, ‘I cannot congratulate you’ re: his marriage, it’s nearly verbatim from the end of Sign of Four.

• Catching the murderer (also named Jonathan Small) by luring him near and handcuffing him to some luggage actually happens to Jefferson Hope (the cabbie in both Sherlock and canon) in A Study in Scarlet.

• It’s not a Sherlockian reference1 but stellar US series Lie To Me also has an episode which features a wedding photographer as a murderer. In fact, the premises are eerily similar…

CLOSING THOUGHT: Drunk Sherlock is the best thing ever. That is all. And, boy do I feel them being too exhausted and drunk to be out past 6pm, seriously…

EASTER EGG: You noticed the cloud that passed over Mary’s face as one of the telegrams was read, yes? Yeah, we all did, and so did John. The reason? That particular greeting to her specifically was signed “Cam.” Or: CAM. Translation: Charles Augustus Magnussen. Dun-dun-DUNNNNN!

RATING: 3 carefully measured milliliters of booze out of 5

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A couple weeks ago, on a Tuesday, I competed in the inaugural Drop your Shorts comedy contest event, which took place at Meow Wolf in Denver, in their lovely little performance space. I say ‘little,’ but it’s actually a nice mid-size—pretty sure there were about 200 people in that audience, including the participants. I had submitted 2 of my 10-minute plays I’d written for erstwhile 24-hr theatre festivals and one of them was accepted as a finalist, to be produced at Drop Your Shorts to hopefully win one of three prizes.

And so, once selected, it was up to me to figure out a way to cast, direct, and dress it in a way that it would show up as a well-produced short, worthy of competition amid many well-known Colorado talents when the time came.1 And so I took the directing task on myself, cast myself as one of the two characters, and a friend as the other, held a couple rehearsals at The Clocktower and one full dress rehearsal as part of our March Blue Dime Cabaret show. We found appropriate costumes in our own closets and a park bench on my co-actor’s own porch, and the rest was history. Er, theatre. You know what I mean.

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But Meow Wolf is not a pub!

Well, no, but it has some little bars. They’re concession stands, sure, but I’ve counted concession stands as Popinations before: here, and here to name a couple.

But. Why Meow Wolf? Why not the Clocktower again?

One of my 10 minute one-act plays was selected to compete in the inaugural ‘Drop Your Shorts’ play festival which will take place in March over at the stage space in Denver’s Meow Wolf museum. What does this have to do with the Clocktower? The showrunners for Drop Your Shorts are its owners. I guess they had originally wanted to host Drop Your Shorts in the Clocktower, but wanted to have a bigger audience than the snug speakeasy can contain. And so we met, playwrights, actors, directors, and showrunners, to Q & A, chat logistics, plan rehearsals, and all around get to know each other.

When it came time to perform for realsies, I was more excited than nervous, though it’s true that the addition of it being not just a one-act festival but a competition did sort of hone an extra edge on my anticipation. Seeing Colorado regulars of the theatre biz made me both reassured I belonged there as one of the great local talents myself, and also a little pressured. My roles as casting director for my variety show as well as in charge of this play mostly, made me forget a bit how many of my peers are just as good at some of this stuff as me.

And so, having sound-and-light-checked, and learning that our play was going up 4th which was right after a 10-minute intermission, I decided to take my audience seat with a (hopefully) relaxing pint until it was time for me to change and get into places.

Theatre? I hardly know her.

Each play I was able to see (and even the one I peeped from the backstage monitor) was fantastic. There were no duds, no weak offerings, though one or two did fall slightly short of the rest. But none were anything but wildly entertaining.

Which made me perplexed as to my continued impostor syndrome, which did flare up ever so slightly, halfway through: WHY DO I HAVE THIS SYNDROME AT AGE 53, AND WITH MY RESUME? HMM?! WHY???

I won’t go further into this, as I have written about my journey in and (almost) through impostor syndrome in the ‘mess’ays below, though I must say that I’ve gotten so very much better about it, even since the progress I relate in these Musings:

There’s something magical about the feeling of standing just in the wings, positioned for a stage entrance. Lighting is dim to nil, costume is donned, stage action sounds echo through the air…2 It’s one of those limbic states where the world hangs suspended in time, and anticipation becomes breathless euphoria. I remember one evening at CSF3, in the wings of the outdoor stage (‘Shakespeare under the stars…’), breathing in the summer air, scoping the lighting truss, I scanned as much of the audience as I could see through the crack in the flats, and I thought, ‘There is nothing like this. I will never forget this.’ And I haven’t. That moment appears in varying versions in my dreams pretty often, too.

Today’s Blue Dime Cabaret stage is so exposed that I don’t really have those moments anymore; more of a motherly love for the acts I cast and watch from the audience. There’s no real backstage space to speak of, certainly no beautifully dim wings to wait in. But that’s fine too—those shows are indeed a different sort of monster and my multiple roles in them require my onstage and offstage presence to be much more malleable and liquid and nearly simultaneous.

My basic impressions of Meow Wolf? Ehh. Not sure. I’m not interested at all in trying to experience the museum part, that’s for sure: it smacks of over-stimulation to me, big time. Not that I’m neurodivergent (that I know of), but maybe it’s just an age thing, that I’d much rather spend quiet time with classical art or sparkly natural history, more than a moving and digitally neon immersive warehouse of intrusive actors and too-bright light. Yeah, I guess I really am too old for this shit, aren’t I.

I can appreciate, though, the premise, even though it’s not for me. And as far as immersive theatre goes, I do hear that it’s a pretty decent place to get a paying job as a performer: many of my former theatre students from [UNIVERSITY NAME REDACTED] ended up getting cast as several walkaround actors, and seemed to be making some decent cash at it. And yet again, I have also heard rumors that said performers had been shorted their pay, or fired, or any number of such things that happen to performers who dare to ask for pay for their work. So. /shrug/

It’s funny—I’ve been Musing personally upon the ‘immersive’ theatre trend that’s been so big the past few years, and wondering why I don’t dig gigs like that. Mainly because it takes real serious talent and often sky-high levels of tech to actually pull off a compelling ‘experience’ like that. Like, it needs to be brilliantly written and acted if a found environment is used, or it needs that plus phenomenal (and expensive) tech to build the world competently, let alone completely.

Why immersive experiences instead of plays? And why a pageantlike ‘experience’ instead of a variety show? Why immersive theatre instead of, say, Cirque du Soleil? Do audiences have such big heads that they need to be part of the show, not just an observer of it? Actually, in this day and age, where everyone on social media is required to be an influencer, I wonder whether I haven’t hit on something. It’s no longer the Age of Aquarius, it’s the Age of the Entitled. (Okay now I really sound old…)

More importantly: is immersive theatre dead yet? And almost as I type this, the Onstage Colorado podcast is asking some of the same questions, so I guess my cynicism isn’t really cynicism after all, but a veteran artist’s seasoned observation. At least I’d like it to be that and not Old Person Shakes Fist At Cloud…

All in all, it was a win just to get in,4 and though we won nothing but a banana as a consolation prize, it was still a huge treat to be a part of Drop Your Shorts. Plus, Will is a filmmaker and wants to make a short film out of my play. We’re planning on shooting it in April. Should be great—I’ll keep you informed.

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If you’re not fortunate enough to have heard Kottke’s music before, or to have seen him live, I’ll leave that up to you to correct. Suffice to say that he’s a phenomenal musician and a storyteller with the driest wryest tone of humor, which put together, makes for a fantastic night of mind-calming entertainment. Little did I know, though, that one little thing he said would rock the trajectory of my life (and that of my life partner). Here’s how it went down:

It began when Kottke started a fresh song. He played for a couple seconds, then stopped, said, ‘Hmm. That’s not working quite right, is it? Let’s try that again.’ And then he restarted the song. As his take two proceeded, he murmured with his soft genial voice, ‘That’s more like it.’ And then finished the song. Now this amazing quiet moment of grace and genius made my and my husband’s jaw hit the floor, which we discussed together later over red wine in plastic cups at intermission. ‘Wait, what? You can…you can just DO that??’ we exclaimed.

That was one of two creativity-shattering moments for us, though. The other was an anecdote he told, in his soft-spoken, folksy way, as he intricately strummed and restrung and retuned his instrument. It was unclear to us if this story was a personal observation or a story made from an oral tale passed down, but it felt real regardless. This story took place in the roughest part of town in Minneapolis, as Kottke was just getting his start in the music biz, playing little venues and being broke and such. He related that the powers that be had just enacted something called ‘daylight laws’ which restricted many things on the streets, including the public display of affection. So young Kottke is walking along the street on his way to or from a venue, and he sees a couple kissing against a wall. Then a police officer comes up and puts the couple at gunpoint, as per the ‘daylight laws.’ At this effrontery, the kissing guy proceeds to grab the gun out of the policeman’s hand, and beat him in the head with it.

Kottke’s response to this scene? ‘Great!’

This of course made the hundreds of mellow audience members burst into laughter. But then he explained why he reacted with ‘Great!’: This is a place where it’s okay to mess up. If I make a mistake here, it’ll be okay. Great!

That repetition of the soft-spoken exclamation of ‘Great!’ reverberated through the rest of the evening. And it has popped up many many times in the years since, but it has especially bounced about and amid us hard this year. It has become our mantra and our motto for 2026.

‘Great!’

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Not About Frosted Flakes

This week I just concluded teaching a creativity class at the University of Denver, where I’ve been adjuncting since the early aughts. Creativity & Innovation, it’s called. It goes over some brain/neuroscience theory when it comes to creative thinking, and traces creative practices and ideas across different fields (not just artistic ones, but business and science too). It’s a class mainly meant for the Leadership and other business-centered majors in that Professional Studies department. And, though I do receive too much ‘student’ work that’s obviously made by AI, it does feed my inquisitive mind in a few ways too. Though it would be a lot more fun for me if I were ever allowed to create my own class materials anymore…

But some things I’ve been contemplating as this course curriculum swirls around me (and as I prep for an upcoming Art Interpretation course) are adding up to an interesting series of questions. What does it mean to experiment, to think outside the box? I mean really truly and in practice? What does trial and error work do to the ego? Can you have a massive ego and still innovate? If you can’t fit failure into your self-narrative, can you be an innovator, a creator? And also:

What level of trained artist do you have to be in order to get away with Kottke’s restart, or his ‘great!’? Or am I asking the wrong question? Is that the point?

I’ve written about this concept before a few times, most notably in my re-published article about a very important step in creative endeavors: the Fuck It Moment™:

And so. Our word and theme and motto for 2026 has been just this: Great! and it’s been a welcome echo and a good reminder, more than once as the year goes forward, enough that I’ve kind of made it into a sort of combination of New Year’s resolution and Lent-ish type thing. Lots of changes and tectonic life shifts, and we’ve begun to react to each one with that soft upturned tone at each: ‘great!’

Virtuoso Leo Kottke gave us all permission with that one word. He gave us permission to try, fail, and try again as a means of productive progress. Of innovation. Of Creativity.

How great!

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Fight Clip Club is the only series on Zuko’s Musings with a paywall. The exception is the shorter Random Movement Pic pieces. For the full FCC experience, upgrade to paid. And thank you so much for being here.

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We joked at that DUWF event that they had paired the largest model of the night (me) with the smallest (I don’t recall my runway partner’s name, sorry). And actually? I think they literally did. Like, on purpose. I remember this runway wound through a restaurant’s back room and then did two loops around the patio, like, outside. And so I not only had to hustle and rush to get around the long loop in time (in those heels), but my enormous skirt kept getting caught in stacks of chairs as I circulated backstage.

This dress design was one of the neatest I got to wear: the designer was a little girl age 11, and she didn’t upcycle existing clothing, she started from scratch with only measurements of her models. She took meticulous measurements, and then put her constructions on us and made finesse changes at a second fitting. Then she made (for each of her 4 models) an identical dress for a teddy bear that we carried with us down the runway. And the coolest part? She let me keep that soft drapey thing that was made jut for me. I still have it in my drawer—I’ve worn it on a Blue Dime Cabaret show before; I should bring it out again.

For the last year of the DUWF, I once again got to walk for Misfit Missy, who hand-selected her favorite models to showcase her last collection ever for DUWF. She gifted us the outfits she designed for us, including the glasses and devil horns.1 This outfit, as I recall, was made for me specifically because of my long hair. But it also kind of makes me look like a Polish folk princess, right?

I remember that outfit felt so good and I thought I was pretty spectacular, but then I saw the photos and I didn’t at all like how fat I think I looked. But then I snapped out of it. Or at least, I rethought that attitude and what the DUWF was supposed to be all about. I’ve written about this before, most notably in Textures:2

So seeing these pics from the glorious finale of DUWF made me knee-jerk react by thinking I looked too fat for my own personal aesthetic tastes. But then it struck me that that attitude is antithetic to everything the DUWF was about. And that the designer made this with my big body in mind. I looked at them again and saw the beauty. It’s never going to be easy for me, but I do know how much happier I am in this bigger body; how much more stage time I get to display its wonders. So. Here’s this big beautiful devil here to tempt you in the wilderness. Just in time for Lent.

Thank you for coming down memory lane with me these past two weeks about DUWF. And stay tuned next week for (I’m pretty sure) what will be a new full fight analysis.

I know, I know— I’m supposed to have a piece ready for you about the latest fresh Popination I did last weekend, but hear me out:

I went to the ballet yesterday, and the reason I decided to go was severalfold: Normally, I wouldn’t bother with seeing a nonverbal version of a Shakespeare play, as I love the language of the Shakespeare so why on earth would I want to see a version without it? Well…

I heard that this production was using all the classic Mendelssohn music. Hm. Then I heard that this particular choreography was specially done for the Colorado Ballet. Okay, I’m listening…and then it came out that the costume and set designers were doing something extra special, and so that tore it. I bought myself a single seat in the parterre section and proceeded to let my Shakespeare-nerd mind open to the experience.

But first, I went to church, and then lunch at Corner Office bar.

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But the ballet is not a pub!

Though we do recall that the Ellie Caulkins Opera House does have a bunch of bars as concession stands, as I wrote about in my oldie-but-goodie multiplex of essays about impostor syndrome at the opera: Popination Impersonation. And that’s well and good and all, but it’s not a place to go to lunch.

Before going to this production, I needed a place to have a nice lunch, as the show was a matinee and I had just been in church for a couple hours, and as I always say, the Eucharist does not a meal make. So I went over to Corner Office, and enjoyed a negroni and some avocado toast with such a ridiculously copious amount of arugula on top that it actually made me laugh. But it was a nice environment and a tasty lunch, and it wasn’t very crowded at all so it was a laid back atmosphere.

Here’s more about the Corner Office, from my visit there before the Henry Awards of 2023 (and also more about my personal impostor syndrome, whattya know):

But what about the ballet though?

Again, I was pretty iffy about going to a ballet version of a Shakespeare play, especially as it’s one that I basically have memorized from curtain to curtain. Midsummer is pretty easy to get stuck in your head like that—it’s nearly all in verse, and said verse is some of Shakespeare’s bounciest and most regular. But I was determined to experience this ballet with an open mind, and I have to say…I had a fabulous time!

I talked about how much I enjoy it when a contemporary ballet subverts or plays with the standard structure of the pas de deux, when I went to Stout St. Social Club and the CO Ballet’s production of Dracula. Their Midsummer also had some delightfully comedic versions of a classic pas de deux, especially between hapless Helena and spurning Demetrius. As the original verse has her saying things like, ‘I’ll follow thee, and make a heaven of hell / to die upon the hand I love so well…’ and ‘Use me as your dog: spurn me, strike me, neglect me, lose me…’ and the way they choreographed her literally flinging herself at him was so adorably funny. One running gag between the two of them was her literally hanging off his back, and him attempting to run away, dragging her behind him as he ran. It is a really fun and interesting thing, choreography-wise: how do you choreograph a pas de deux where the man despises the woman? It was really well done, and often laugh-out-loud funny: he’d be trying to push her away and instead end up lifting her (as she’s also climbing all over him). Her delight in being actually lifted by her love was an adorable bit of breaking the 4th wall, and when he realized he was doing so, he tried to drop her, causing her to catch on to him with her straddling legs.

The costumes were great in general, including Bottom’s ass-head, and as the costumes of the young lovers had no fluffy tulle under the skirts but just opaque tights, there ended up being some really cute exposed-butt humor throughout.

I did have one minor issue with the costumes, and that was that Titania didn’t look different enough from her fairy minions, that sometimes it was hard to tell her apart. But that was a small issue, and I don’t really mind it.

Oh, and the fights! The fights were really good! I can’t find a separate credit for the fights, so I’m going to assume the dance choreographer was the guy who did the fights too. That’s Christopher Wheeldon, who also directed. And if his dance choreography says anything, if the fights are his too then yep. Something delightful about the sound of a ballet audience’s gasp at the sound of a ‘real’ slap onstage…

More about performing arts and impostor syndrome and theatrical nemeses and a new-to-me concession area that’s technically a bar, next week. I was a busy little artistic bee last week, what can I say…

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Written by Prof. Jenn

As a reminder: I am writing these as RETROSPECTIVE reviews, so I will be discussing reveals, resolutions of cliffhangers, ends of plots, etc. If you are reading these reviews without having seen the eps, a) what is wrong with you?? Go watch them now! and b) these reviews are not for you till you’ve seen them.

NOTE: as per uzh, I wrote this originally for Sherlock’s Home, which is a UK-based site. My spelling and etc. will reflect that. Usually. Ahem. This retro-review appeared there in June of 2016, and has been slightly altered since, especially to reflect on the fandom rollercoaster and debacle that was Season 4 since then.

It’s rare that the makers of a TV series have such intense interactions with their fanbase, and also unusual to find shows with the level of rabid fans that Sherlock boasted.1 From erotic fanfiction to conspiracy theories to #setlock on Twitter and Tumblr, the fans of this show had their own ways they wanted things to go, and spared no word count (or technology) to express it. This can be positive, as is seen to an extent in this episode, because the fans feel like a part of the creative process of making the thing (more than being mere passive spoon-fed consumers). It can also be negative, as invasive requests of fanfic readings and disruptive #setlock fans make for roadblocks in the very making of the thing they love. I mean, Moffat felt the need to quit Twitter because of it.

After the end of ‘The Reichenbach Fall’, the theories abounded as to how Sherlock managed to stage his death so convincingly. YouTube was rife with lectures accompanied by freeze frames, attempting to pinpoint the physical setup, and the screenplay was analysed minutely to attempt to find a vestige of a clue. Anderson, in ‘The Empty Hearse’, is a character who embodies the Crazed Sherlock Uber-Fan that happened globally irl, and in the most meta of moves on the part of Mark Gatiss (this ep’s writer), forms a fan club of others of his same ilk. What Gatiss does so brilliantly here, is begins the episode with a behind-the-scenes detailed look at The Fall, then pulls the rug out from under us, revealing it’s actually Anderson’s latest fan theory of how Sherlock did it.

We get a couple more scenes like this throughout: one by a club member which is abruptly interrupted before it turns into a piece of fanfic erotica, and then one at the very end, by Sherlock himself (or, was it? It probably actually wasn’t). These conspiracy theories are both an homage to the fans and a mocking of them, but what works is that we never find out the details of the real story. We think that Sherlock has told Anderson the truth at the end of the ep, but then, like Anderson himself, we second guess ourselves whether that could actually be the case. And that last shot makes it look as though Sherlock wasn’t really there in the room with Anderson after all, as it seemed, but was probably yet another figment of Anderson’s fervent imagination. Which is perfect, because any ‘real’ story Mofftiss could have concocted wouldn’t be nearly good enough for its fans, after all the incredible hype leading up to it. Which reminds me:

I mentioned in my ‘Reichenbach’ review that I felt Moriarty’s elaborate scheme didn’t make a whole lot of sense. But after watching that one, and especially seeing the in-between short ‘Many Happy Returns’, I was excited to see, not so much the How Sherlock Lived bit, but the How Moriarty Is Defeated concept instead. Remember, not only has Sherlock’s reputation been indelibly ruined, but the echoes of IOU rebound in Moriarty’s suicide. I was ready to find out how the public would react to Sherlock’s return, how the whole Richard Brook conspiracy would be brought to light, and what on earth IOU was all about.

I was disappointed. To put it mildly.

All we get is a brief montage of TV news stories, boiling down to: yep, Moriarty was real; nope, Sherlock wasn’t to blame; too bad we all figured this out now he’s dead, but anyway, on to the weather…

Where’s Kitty Riley? Where’s Sgt. Donovan? What the heck was IOU all about? If the snipers were hired to kill Sherlock’s friends with or without Moriarty, whatever happened to them? Poof, into thin air? Everybody’s fine now, and Moriarty is dead?His deep, complex, well-constructed takedown of Sherlock is just….whoopsied away?2

It feels to me as though the explanation of all that complex plot buildup was rushed in order to make room for all the fan service theories of the Fall, and for the reappearance of Sherlock to his old friends. Albeit it’s a well-done return: in the original Conan Doyle story (‘The Adventure of the Empty House’), Watson just says, Sure I’m back in the game, ‘When you like, and where you like.’ This series’ John, however, is understandably hurt, upset, and angry at his former friend. Attached to this and also well done is the re-acclimation of Sherlock to life as it was, realizing it can never be ‘just like old times.’3

FINAL THOUGHT: I like Amanda Abbington’s portrayal of Mary Morstan very much. She’s an effortlessly natural actor, and an intelligent one, so she fits right in with the smarts and quirks of the established characters. Was it shameless nepotism, to cast her, who was Martin Freeman’s real life partner, as his Watson’s wife? Ehhh… maybe. Casting Cumberbatch’s actual parents as the Holmes parents was a much worse example of this, IMO. It helps that Abbington is so good. Some critics hate the whole Mary-Morstan-As-Super-Spy thing, but I dunno—I kinda liked it, in that it gave the character an extra equality in footing to the two male main characters. But I understand the complaint, too—maybe it’s just because we see the Sherlock pudding get so very over-egged in future eps that this one doesn’t seem so bad to me. But. YMMV.

EASTER EGG(S): The lord in charge of the planned bombing is named Moran, and is said in this ep to be on Sherlock’s list of ‘rats.’ Sebastian Moran is the big baddie in Conan Doyle’s ‘The Empty House’ (see the similarities of this ep’s name, as well). The fact that the bombs are underground near Sumatra Street makes me convinced the ‘Giant Rat of Sumatra’ unwritten story mention in canon tale ‘The Sussex Vampire’ is being nodded to here.

RATING: 2 ridiculous fan theories out of 5

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