Retrospective Review #13
Episode 4.3: THE FINAL PROBLEM
It’s The Final Problem. Thanks be to God…
(Spoilers and such and the like. You know the drill.)
This episode was….a lot. So much so that I hereby have made SECTION HEADINGS IN ALL CAPS IN AN ATTEMPT TO COPE. Ahem.
Here we go:
BASIC PLOT:
I…hm…..
Let’s see. We begin with a little girl waking up on a plane that’s filled with a bunch of people that are asleep (or dead?) and the girl can’t wake anyone up. It’s a sort of callback to both the flight of the dead scheme from ep 2.1 and the little endangered kid tearfully calling Sherlock for help from 1.3. It’s not jiving exactly, well I mean it doesn’t jive when it’s revealed later that she’s not really…okay I’m getting ahead of myself.
Then we’ve got a total Hammer Horror scene with Mycroft being all scared of clowns and shit, which is a way that his brother has decided to get his attention I guess. He admits, after Watson is like HOW COME YOUR SISTER IS MY THERAPIST AND ALSO IMPERSONATING WHATSISNAME’S DAUGHTER and Mycroft is like yeah, about that. We have a sister and she’s super secret because imprisoned because evil levels of genius or something.
Then we go visit Crazy Smart Dangerous sister Eurus in Arkham Asylum, er, James Bond villain lair, er, high security prison called Sherrinford (aha!!) and there it’s revealed that she’s hypnotizing everyone and that Moriarty was one of her evil pawns and we get plunged into a Saw sequel, basically. Eurus dangles the plane in danger over the threesome and puts them through a bunch of tests, because, I dunno, experiment? Because we all need to hear Sherlock’s twisted psychological trauma backstory and why it’s all her fault? Because so-intelligent-she’s-a-sociopathic-killer? Anyway this series of tests she puts them through is stupid and an evil genius stereotype and then Sherlock passes the test ultimately with …the power of love. I think.
And then everything’s fine—suddenly afterwards Eurus can’t speak except through music and is actually locked up for reals now I guess and John & Sherlock get to cutely co-parent ever after and MY GOD IS IT OVER YET
But wait! It’s not! There’s more! It’s…another DVD of Mary monologuing? Do we have to? What is this, a curtain call? Yes, yes it is. Why?! She gets a closing speech, which is basically: Here’s a reminder why you should love Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. Annnnnd: action freezeframe. And curtain. Yeah, you shouldn’t have reminded me—I have to go watch Jeremy Brett now. Or read the books again. Yeesh.
MAJOR (FINAL) PROBLEM(S):
I talked about this a little bit in previous Season 4 reviews, and it’s even more prominent here in the finale: this whole series worships genius in a way that I’m just now trying to shake off from my own Talented & Gifted childhood for my own mental health, if not sanity. These stories and especially character development treat superintelligence as a kind of magic, or superpower. Which is a very very damaging thing to claim. Also it’s nonsense.
And what’s the message? All genius is magic, but if you get smart enough it’s too much and you go insane and become a killer? And also: the more elevated the intelligence, the fewer emotions, empathy, and functionality you have? All people on the autism spectrum are savants and have no interpersonal capability which means they’ll kill you if given half a chance? And they don’t feel pain? Which is just as nonsensical and more than a bit ableist, too, right?
Dude, if Eurus was so good at …I dunno, what is she even doing? Hypnotizing?…everyone? Then surely Mycroft would’ve known. And! I still don’t get how she’s both in prison and was getting out regularly. Makes no sense. And why did we have to get in disguise and sneak onto the island if Mycroft is in charge? Why couldn’t we just, go there? Sigh…
Another major problem obliquely related to the smarts-worship issue: There are no stakes to this plot because it’s so convoluted and the villain is so stereotypically evil. We don’t care about any of the people in danger. We barely meet the Sherrinford governor, and as good an actor as this guy is, we don’t get enough time with his character to care about him enough to not want him dead instead of the others. We know nothing about the girl on the plane or any of those sleeping people, if they’re already dead or what’s happening. Until we are told it all, lectured to by Our Favorite Genius, and then it’s the most Fuck You of all copouts I can imagine. And after the last two seasons, I can imagine quite a bit.
My point is, there are no stakes to any of this and therefore no tension. At one point, I actually lost interest in whether even our main characters were going to get offed or not, which is supposed to be the only reason I’m watching this show anymore.
One possible near-exception: the Molly Might Be Going Boom Any Moment sequence is the only one in this whole obstacle course of silly doom that has an iota of tension. Why? Because there are actual stakes there. Plus, she’s just so so good at acting this. They did Molly wrong in Season 4 in particular, but then we can’t have nice things from Mofftiss, like well-written female characters.
Another big plot problem: what is Evil Sister doing again? An experiment? Like, why? We get nothing about for what reason Eurus is so obsessed with watching Sherlock think. Or feel, or whatever. If she had given us a reason, maybe it might have been slightly tense. And don’t tell me “it’s because she always wanted him to play with her as a kid and he never did” because that’s not enough. Even if she’s a comically psychotic arsonist. She says she needs to see some “emotional context”? What the fuck does that mean? What is she doing, and why?
The plane thing with the little girl is so vague we don’t get the tension we should, we don’t get the vital nature of it for these clever men to NEED TO solve the plane puzzle. We can maybe take a moment and, if we’re reasonably well read, pinpoint the Train Track Crash Conundrum trying to surface from drowning here, but it’s…like it’s not even that.
And then at the end? How…how did we get all the way to Musgrave? From Sherrinford? I’m confused as to how we all got here. Also, where are we though, really? Are we there? Or here? What’s there?
MAJOR MORIARTY MUCKUP:
Moriarty has ZERO place in this story. None. Zip. Nada. What is he doing here? Answer: fanservicing, that’s what. The fans think he’s hot and the fans miss him. The bigger fish gets eaten by an even bigger fish and etc. This show can’t stop masturbating to their kooky queer-coded villain with the hooting voice and at this point it’s just embarrassing.
Longish said it beautifully in their review of this episode, back when it was first broadcast: “A show obsessed with itself cannot be sustained.” Word.
SOME SORT-OF-OKAY BITS IF THEY WERE DONE BETTER:
Lovely that Mycroft loves film noir so much; it’s a nice little window into his character that’s actually well done and welcome, for a change. And the haunted house sequence is full of delicious tropes in the best way. And I’m a sucker for a sword cane.
Gahhh I love it when people just come to 221B, sit down, and just fucking talk. More please? Oh nevermind, it’s over… Oh and speaking of just talking: I do also love the chatty planning around the active grenade but I do not buy that they were able to get out in time to not be pulverized.
Were there some Batman nods, when Sherlock jumps off the boat with his coat opening in the breeze? And the music? And John as Robin, quipping? The dark trilogy movies and the wonderful games were popular at this time. I’m gonna say yes, and also that I’m here for it. Batman was The Detective of superhero comics, after all.
THEMES. OR SOMETHING:
We get a sort of theme through the series as a whole that having love, emotions, sentiment, is a good thing. But like… what is this Saw movie supposed to be teaching us about this theme? Is it just…hey crazy sister I love you anyway even though you are a fucking psycho killer and you killed my childhood friend and all these other innocent people and burned our house down and almost also killed my current friend. In the same way as the childhood friend. But love conquers all, right?
So like, now that she can’t speak, Eurus is …saved? Safe? Or? And I know she’s supposedly in prison for reals now (is she though?) but like: we’re all cool now? Sherlock plays violin with her and we’re all fine? We trust Sherrinford’s security now because she can’t talk? Do we know for sure she can’t talk? How?
Rating: ½ of a convoluted death puzzle out of 5
EASTER EGGS
There they are: the 3 Garridebs. Nothing to do with canon, other than the name.
An old sea captain (Captain Basil) was a disguise of Holmes often in canon (Sherlock, not Mycroft).
Moriarty’s brother was a station master => this is an obscure canon nerd reference, to the very small tidbits we ever get about Moriarty’s back story.
The coffin bit feels like a nod to canon story “The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax,” which is a tense and spooky story that I wish somebody would adapt.
Holmes’ first case in canon was indeed “The Musgrave Ritual,” but actually Victor Trevor was his friend as a very young man and could be said to be the source of his proto-first case before that one, “The Gloria Scott.”
“The best and wisest m[e]n I’ve ever known” comes from canon “Final Problem.” It appears in the very beginning, in Watson’s narration, as he introduces the last story ever. (Spoiler alert: no it wasn’t but Conan Doyle really wanted it to be. His fans weren’t having it though, which tells you something about the history of Sherlock Holmes’ pushy fanbase since his inception.)
SEASON 4 CONCLUSIVE REMARKS AND WRAPUP
It was Moffat’s favorite season to write. So. Anyway. Tells you something. It is what it is, as they repeated ad nauseam in the 4th season. Take that into account. Oh, just a weird thing of mine, might only be me: Everyone keeps pronouncing it “you-ross” even in the documentaries. What is it: Euros or Eurus?
But ehhhh…Such sexist and homophobic stuff throughout (as it was in the beginning, now and ever shall be). Classic tropes in this vein: women are either dead or in charge of the baby. Our queer-coded villain. Oh and ableist too, as I’ve mentioned: Evil Eurus is written to be some kind of neurodivergent, and is the most dangerous and unfeelingly evil character in this series. I don’t know what we’re supposed to have learned from her arc, if you can call it that.
LAST THOUGHTS:
Over-produced, over-written. Bloated. Over.