Retrospective Reviews Continue
Sherlock Season 4: A prep session
Buckle up, buttercups.
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 (not just paid subscribers) my overall notes on the whole thing. Then, next Wednesday, the regular retro-reviews of each episode for paid peeps only, 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.
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 chops 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 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 my life until that life 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 continue to worship him for. I’ve learned. I know better. I’m doing better. And this series stinks in my nostrils, here in 2023.
HOWEVER.
Regardless of my own personal Cumberbatchian Sherlock flavored assholery at the time, I still had 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 here). 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:
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:
They insulted their fanbase. The fan club in 3.1 were composed of fat, awkward, goth, and/or unwashed outsiders. [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 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 Fuck 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.
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 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.
[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 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 5 years ago, and I’d love to see what new thoughts the creator might have about a lot of what he brings up.
[2] Help me get my memoir published and you’ll find out more. 🙂
[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…