The Day Sherlock Died

The first 699 people to click this link will get 2 months of Skillshare for just 99c : skl.sh/thecloserlook3
Please Like and Subscribe for more video essays :)
Support me on Patreon: / henryboseley
A massive thank you to my patrons:
Sam reilly
Ryan Dunleavy
Sebastian Chlada
Jaxon Pryer
Pedro Silva
Shemaiah Welch
Kristján Ingi Einarsson
Alara Hearthspire
David Loisel
Max Buckley
Sofie Khumkhet Vala
Jimmy Dinh
Sindiel Taylor
Alexander Greenwood
Daniel Sturman
Robby May-Sylianteng
Evan Block
Hannah Southerland
Hugo Rocha Loures Kosop
David
Amanda Sutrisno
Matthew T Julien
PJ Crabb
All music apart from the Up soundtrack and Sherlock music was provided by epidemic sound.

[@TheCloserLook]

Hey Guys, If you like this content and want to support me in creating it then it would mean the world to me if you could support me on patreon. Any donation no matter the size is hugely appreciated :) My Patreon: www.patreon.()com/henrysharpe (Sorry I had to add brackets to the link. KZbin seems to not approve of links in comments)

[@matthewpeyton2611]

The Closer Look I

[@doxazo5512]

You should look at A Series of Unfortunate Events! Analyze their use of tropes, both TV tropes and self-created ones

[@jamievandersluis7994]

The Closer Look you mentioned the receptionist I’m s4 e1 but your wrong there are a few moments throughout the episode were it leads hints into it being her, great video though ❤️

[@pgvk97vk24]

You brought up a lot of good points. Very good analysis of the differences between earlier and later seasons. But could you maybe change the title? "The Day Sherlock Died" sounds like a typical rant video. A lot of fans of the show may be turned off simply by reading the title which is a shame because the actual video accurately summarised the reasons for the divide in reception of the later seasons without being offensive.

[@TterminusS]

Wait... so you are saying in a good detective story the reader and the detective always need to be on the same page. When - if ever - was this the case in the original Sherlock Holmes novels? I mean on the surface they were maybe on the "same page", but all the lines of thought that lead Sherlock to the solution of each mystery in the novels was always explained AFTER THE FACT by Holmes himself in a grand show (most of the time) when the criminal was already in custody or at the very least identified.

[@jtb8700]

BBC Sherlock Season 3 and onwards was basically "How much more trauma can we put on John Watson?"

[@alexplaysminc.-.5922]

hahaha this really made me laugh after all the darker critics in this comment section xD

[@forestgreenking]

Just watched Sherlock, and you are terribly, heart-wrenching-ly, correct.

[@areeanachowdhury9070]

It hurts how accurate this is.

[@kindabatooni9314]

It’s more like how much trauma can we put on Sherlock.

[@bumblebeeproductions1673]

Poor guy couldn’t catch a break in the entire show

[@Random_Tangent]

Season 5 plot-twist: Mrs Hudson has been solving all the crimes, but was drugging Sherlock's tea and using hypnotic suggestions to give him hints on all the cases. She would interview the people who came in, hypnotise them into forgetting their conversation, relay the info to Sherlock so he could tell them what she learnt, and appear like he had deduced it all. Mrs Hudson also works for MI6 which is why she drives an Aston Martin.

[@emagneticfield]

I like your plot as it unfortunately makes more sense than that given us by BBC Sherlock the series. 💜

[@shockingheaven]

Careful, those two writers could steal your idea

[@jacopolanini3659]

Is it me or it seems you horribly smashed Detective Conan and 007 together?

[@niklas9848]

@@shockingheaven probably J.K.Rowling would do it 😂

[@Apudurangdinya]

basically the plot of detective conan

[@VelociMagi]

I got super annoyed by how John reacted to Mary getting shot. He is a doctor, and it is silly that he did not use any of his training. (aside from a half-hearted attempt at “applying pressure”.) They could have still killed her, but it felt very unrealistic to me that he didn’t make an attempt at first aid. When she passed out, which is the normal response to getting shot, he just instantly started mourning her without even checking to see if she had a pulse or attempting CPR. And it’s not like he isn’t used to working under pressure. I would have been more sad if they actually showed John trying and failing to save her, because I wouldn’t have been pulled out of the moment while yelling at him to check her ABC’s.

[@waitwhat3547]

Well he is under unprecedented distress, it's not his crewmates, it's his wife who got shot, John might've been overwhelmed by emotions due to his loved one getting shot out of no where, he also is cheating on her so there is a feeling of guilt where he doesn't have time to confess and apologise etc.

[@Blirre]

@@waitwhat3547 He's a war doctor. He has the training and experience in working in extremely dangerous and stressful situations. He should be able to compartmentalize or else he's a shit doctor.

[@1995robin]

@@Blirre I think the show constantly forgets John's background. I wished they used that more. I mean when he goes to a job interview (In the Blind Banker I think) he was overqualified and you can see it as his resume is briefly shown. There's was only one time of John being and army doctor in a flashback during the wedding and that's it.

[@Blirre]

@@1995robin True. There's a bit of PTSD in the first season but I guess it gets resolved along with his limp. I guess they were trying to go for the return of his problems after Mary's death but it's just a mess.

[@sagnik3556]

@@waitwhat3547 Everyone is getting it wrong. Mary got shot near her breasts. John Watson deduced that it's unethical to touch his wife's breasts (while trying to save her) on T.V. So that's the reason they killed her.

[@pearsemacintyre1728]

It died when they they were no longer solving crimes. It became a parody and lost all its subleties. It didnt feel like it was set in the real world by the end.

[@svenkobus4356]

So it died the second epsiode?

[@panonymousbloom5405]

@@svenkobus4356, in my opinion, they should do more unrelated episodes like in the book and the big Moriarty boom could have happened as it but at the very end and they both would end up dying for real - no more big scary villains, just one. also would fix the bullshit in the original. as it is, it's very good for popcorn binging but not if you actually want to think about what's happening.

[@svenkobus4356]

@@panonymousbloom5405 I I totally agree with you. I do always think it is funny that they managed to write a season so bad that everybody realized that their entire show was bad.

[@alexpotts6520]

To be honest, if you look across most of the episodes, there isn't an awful lot of crime-solving going on throughout the series. A study in pink: a decent crime to solve, but largely focused on establishing the central characters, appropriate for an opening episode. The blind banker: the episode closest to a traditional Holmes adpatation; also the least ambitious. The great game: a very artificial set-up; Sherlock is still solving problems but he's now solving problems that the criminal has specifically left for him to solve. Scandal in Belgravia: the only mystery Sherlock solves in this episode leaves the country in *more* danger as a result of his solving it. At this point Sherlocks various relationships (with John, Irene, Mycroft & Molly) take up more screen time than crime solving. The hounds of baskerville: the most famous story from the original canon is remade into a horror movie, though there is actually a decent mystery in this one. The reichenbach fall: No crime solving at all in this one. Just Moriarty doing crimes and getting away with them. The empty hearse: a lightweight mystery ripped straight out of V for Vendetta, most of the episode is a metacommentary on fan reactions to the Reichenbach fall, ending with a fairly trollish non-reveal of how Sherlock survived. The sign of three: the most character-driven story, more about Sherlock/John/Mary than anything, but at least the character stuff is satisfying integrated with the mysteries we do get. His last vow: Sherlock just shoots the bad guy at the end. What a copout. The abominable bride: a good mystery story undermined by the "all just a dream" ending, which even primary school kids know is a lousy narrative device. The six thatchers: the actual mystery is okay, but most of the episode is exploring Mary's hidden backstory. The lying detective: I honestly don't remember much about this one except the villain played by Toby Jones. But, if you set up who the villain is at the beginning of the episode, you can't really do a classic whodunnit, can you? The final problem: Sherlock does the crystal maze. The plot contrivance from the great game returns. Thank God this really was as a final as the title suggested.

[@h.plovecat4307]

It never died, it's not alive.

[@Tom-hk2ep]

The problem was the writers going "we need a huge climax! massive plot twist!" etc etc. No you don't. Make Sherlock and Watson solve interesting crimes. That's why we're here

[@resathe6760]

That's my problem with a lot of other crime shows too. The cases they have to solve get more elaborate and more personal each season and I'm starting to lose interest. I just want them solving the case

[@bencarlson4300]

A lot of people interpret “smart” writing as being twisty and tricking the audience, but smart writing is making a story make sense logically through character motivation and consistent themes.

[@BluntsNBeatz]

Not why I'm here. I'm just here for good TV. There are plenty of crime procedural shows that do formulaic case of the week stuff which often ends up being quite bland and boring. Sherlock may not be the greatest detective show, but it's the greatest show about Sherlock Holmes, building on him as a character. I never recall shows like Poirot making me care or even know much about the detective character. They were often just bland and stoic people who "just do the job". Elementary is a good example of what happens when you go that route. You just get "CSI: Sherlock Holmes". Admittedly, Elementary did try to build up some character stuff too, but it was so padded and nowhere near as well-written as Sherlock that it fell pretty flat for me. But hey, everyone has their own opinions. I just think it's wrong to call Sherlock objectively poorly written because it's trying to be something different, rather than doing the same thing every other adaptation has done (and being super predictable as we already know most of the stories and detective tropes from 100 other shows). Maybe you did come for interesting crime solving, but if you have good taste outside of that, you'd stay for some of the best television in recent history. (I do also have mixed feelings on S4, but S4E2 was the standout that I think was one of, if not the best of the series - and while I hated S4E3 at first and still think it's fairly ridiculous, I've warmed to it as a nice way to grow his character for what became the ending to the series).

[@rjofusetsudzin8011]

@@BluntsNBeatz I mean Poirot especially with his arrogant tantrums and constant complaining about English countryside smell is far from stoic. And you have many crime shows that didn't go much personal but were great like Criminal Minds. Furthermore not crime show but basically crime show MD House had both interesting cases to solve and proper personal deep characters. But one aspect never overtaken the other. Problem of Sherlock was that it not only come up with shitty cases but Moriaery turning into goddammit Rasputin, writers pulling out bs sister which is better than Sherlock in everything and had no bas in source material or more convoluted plotinus is problem. Just something is original doesn't mean it's good and tropes exist because they work

[@Jaesee]

Jim Moriarty had 30 seconds of screen time before his reveal, yet his reveal as a villain is one of my favourite scenes in this show.

[@HeyItsNovalee]

yeah but that's because they took care to actually imply something in those 30 seconds. he was clearly suspicious, so there was reason to believe he would be the villain, making the reveal justified. it didn't just come out of left field. if anything, the fact that those 30 seconds were enough to set him up as the villain and it didn't feel like it came out of left field the way the secretary did, is just more proof on how the writing used to be good and went massively downhill.

[@siddharthsahu2101]

Moriarty didn't just have 30 seconds of screen time. His 'presence' was felt throughout the season, and although we didn't actually see him, we learnt a lot about his power and attributes indirectly (e.g. in the last scene of The Blind Banker). In fact, the only time we see his face, we don't actually 'see' Moriarty; we see a facade. Thus, when Moriarty is revealed at the end, he is a fleshed out character; what makes it more surprising, is that we've seen actually seen him before, without realizing it. I, myself, watched the Great Game before the previous two episodes, so the reveal didn't feel that significant. But after watching the first two episodes, I understood and appreciated the significance of that scene.

[@DarkThomy]

Not to mention his reveal doesn't conclude the plot, but.. transitions?

[@maxentirunos]

@@siddharthsahu2101 More over, the implied idea all along the episode that Watson could be Moriarty is a sublime red herring in the genre

[@brainplot]

@@maxentirunos I don't recall the show hinting at Watson being Moriarty.

[@raeleighwilkinson45]

I would also add that the fourth season of Sherlock felt to me like the creators cared way too much about what fans were speculating on the internet. They focused too much on subverting fan theories and not enough on good writing or stories.

[@djohnson3274]

I agree. I think that was why they wouldn't clarify how Sherlock survived the fall. Too many people had guessed lots of the elements. Martin Freeman was on the One Show when someone guessed all the elements: the bicycle rider, the ball under the armpit to cut off Sherlock's pulse, how John's view of he ground below the jump area was blocked; how all the people keeping John from Sherlock's "body" were in on it. They couldn't stand that people had guessed so they hinted that what Sherlock told Anderson wasn't the truth after all.

[@ahadomer2718]

Exactly. This problem began from season 3

[@the.abhiram.r]

it's funny because that's the same problem the mcu has right now

[@jamesknapp64]

@@djohnson3274 If fans guess the twists: that means you DID GREAT WRITING! you had enough foreshadowing. If no fans predict something, that is horrible writing.

[@MilaraManga]

I dropped the show after Mary's death. While I already disliked the assassin twist, I HATED her death. Did they really try to sell to me that a MOTHER WITH A BABY would catch a bullet for a man SHE HERSELF HAS SHOT BEFORE. You don't sacrifice yourself, make your husband a widow, leave your daughter without a mother to save your husband's best friend. It makes no sense at all. None. Her death showed me that the entire universe and its characters only exist for the character Sherlock. Nobody else mattered.

[@JDWhalby]

Exactly. But it was the same with John in S4.E3. He volunteers to be the one shot, without a word like "watch after my daughter" which a single parent should think about. It's like he has no daughter. But then the scene was about Sherlock and Mycroft, John's role was just to be hanging around until Sherlock could rescue him in the well. I hated that they turned John into a nothing character in the 4th series.

[@leocelente]

My problem with the last episode "The Final Problem" was not the focus on the characters, but the way they transformed intelligence in a super power. It was filled with bad reveals that some character or another was being mind controlled, and we have this Man of Steel moment where two super powerful beings confront each other but we have no clue of their limits.

[@Chowder12345able]

My problem was with the girl on the plane that turned out not to be real. The stakes were raised so high only to find out that it was actually fake

[@kavian9620]

Yes, the whole idea of mega-hyper-smart sister mind controlling people, including even the mighty Moriarty, simply by talking to them, was really dumb and annoying.

[@r.b.4611]

Yeah as if any thug couldn'tve ended the whole story by randomly beating any of these super geniuses to death.

[@bobjones2959]

Yeah, twists aren't satisfying if they are over-the-top ridiculous and come out of nowhere.

[@Orkiperson]

I think everything he said in this essay was true and I didn't enjoy the first two episodes that much but they both paled to the failure of episode 3 for this exact reason. Honestly, they just made her into the man in purple and it was fucking infuriating.

[@JordanSullivanadventures]

Honestly, the reason I didn't enjoy Sherlock Season 4 was that it relied on what I felt were extremely cheap plot twists. Much of it felt like it was straight out of a soap opera: - They have a secret sister who's been imprisoned for life - Sherlock's childhood dog was actually a human boy who was trapped in a well by his secret sister - The person John was having an affair with? Also his therapist! AND SHERLOCK'S SECRET SISTER! I can't get invested if at any moment they're going to pull the rug out from under me with a completely un-foreshadowed twist, solely for shock value.

[@Dark_Voice]

After some time youll realize that your mother was just sected Sherlocks sister all along and just druged you for the entire time :)

[@whodatninja439]

Sherlock's secret Ringu looking sister who CAN MAKE ANYONE DO ANYTHING JUST BY LOOKING AT THEM. They've introduced magic into the show. What the fuck.

[@neuralmute]

SHE MADE MORIARTY STRAIGHT! WTF!?!?

[@mariannerognerud]

neuralmute magic... 😊😱

[@SkerikIsBae]

um excuse me you are correct with most of these things except one, the secret sister was hinted at twice in season 3 and 2 (mightve been 2 and 4 cant remember but doesnt matter) so not cheap, i actually expected it, it was satisfying, so not a cheap twist. good day

[@partlyironic]

i.e what Steven Moffat does to all of his writing when he’s given full reign. Nonsensical plot twists left, right and centre.

[@iceoriental123]

Well I personally think that Moff has done a lot better with Doctor Who than Sherlock, but idk, I've always defended Moff as Who showrunner.

[@outsidefactor]

@@iceoriental123 kzbin.info/www/bejne/gpzSeHWFqJqYma8

[@AnnekeOosterink]

And meaningless deaths, so many 'oh by way of time magic/plot convenience/writer's love this character is now no longer dead/wasn't dead the whole time!

[@tillyhossain1049]

Helen Monaghan I agree, he needs Gratiss with him, otherwise he goes crazy

[@tillyhossain1049]

Naveen Thomas actually, Mark is the better writer out of the two. Look at the episodes he wrote. He writes one episode every season. So it was written mainly by Moffat. Mark has written tHe better episodes of the series. Go and check.

[@srebrnaFH]

Sherlock was always about characters. Specifically, about John Watson, around whom things happen. The issue with Season 4 is that John Watson stopped being John Watson at some point and became an anger-infested, twisted creature who forgives a murderer and beats up his best friend, blaming him for Mary's death. Writing in S4 is shoddy (the whole Eurus twist was nonsensical), the puzzles are weird and Mary's character (again) is put through such weird changes that we can't say if it was planned like that or Moffat just wrote another lousy female plot device into the whole thing and changed his mind too many times.

[@karmen8873]

That's what I was thinking! Throught season 1& 2, one of the things that make us keep watching Sherlock was the relationship between Sherlock and John. I don't even know how to describe their friendship: It's like they were ready to die for each other despite the fact that they have known each other for a very short time. Their connection was undescrible while beatiful. So many dangerous situations happened while they were in together. Even just one dangerous situatin with anybody make you closer with that somebody, imagine what would happen if there was many. Well, Sherlock and John's relationship'd happen. It was one of the reason why they obsessed with each other and we obsessed with them, until season 3 & 4 (season 3 was just a beginning but the whole "fall apart" was in season 4) Especially in season 4, it felt like whole magic disappared.

[@carolthedabbler2105]

On Sherlock Forum, we decided that a good bit of that time it wasn't really John, it was his evil twin Pierre. Which also explains the hair.

[@Kuudere-Kun]

There is a reason most of the original Doyle stories were told exclusively from Watson's point of view. He explicitly did NOT want us always knowing what Holmes was thinking.

[@shinobix4925]

Well said

[@titianarasputin]

THANK YOU.

[@tonycampbell1424]

Uh, no? Watson is constantly asking Holmes how he reached his conclusions, what he's thinking, where his mind is. Watson is the POV character precisely so he can be the audience surrogate and ask the questions in the reader's mind. Go actually read the stories. Crimeny.

[@Kuudere-Kun]

@@tonycampbell1424 WRONG quote taken from TVtropes. "In fact, Watson often doesn't act very much as The Watson (i.e., asking Holmes to explain what's going on throughout the plot) because Holmes usually dislikes explaining his reasoning as he goes - the stories' mystery often hinges on the fact that we (and Watson) have no idea what's going on in Holmes's head. Watson usually either a) picks up on it himself and explains it to the readers via narration or b) wryly notes that Holmes is loathe to explain his conclusions until he's sure he's right, and just follows along patiently waiting for him to solve the puzzle. The "Watson" trope is most likely derived from film adaptations, where Watson's narration in the books understandably needed to be replaced with dialogue, or from the books' various famous prelude scenes in which Holmes drops some near-telepathically-accurate deduction about Watson's personal affairs out of the blue, and an astonished Watson asks him to explain how the hell he knew that. "

[@titianarasputin]

@@tonycampbell1424 What's weird is that you obviously didn't read the stories, or just don't remember them very well. Watson does ask a lot of questions, and never gets a straight answer until the denouement. Watson is as clueless as the reader is. In fact, his questions usually act as distractions to the reader, always pointing us in the wrong direction. I have read every one of the original short stories and novels literally dozens of times. It is by far my favorite book series of all time. OP is 100% correct. And on the rare occasion when Holmes was the narrator of the story, he explicitly said he would follow Watson's dramatic style and not give away the mystery until the end.

[@aishaziz2286]

my problem has always been the characters. John has been established since the first two seasons as a kind man with a nerve of steel and strong moral principles. This fourth season has butchered his character without a thought and I didn't enjoyed it. This is just my shallow opinion, of course. But this is how I feel, watching the fourth season that brings no satisfaction.

[@johnpark4650]

Same with Sherlock. He was shown as a genius detective with sharp mind a clear attitude in the first two seasons. But at the end of the third season he got dragged into an emotional maniac with a "how the hell could that logic work" thinking process. Moffat's choice of adding dark emotions through the end really killed the spirit of what made the series so good from the start.

[@MikeTall88]

But he became another character, he became a father and thus his character evolved. He's not the great man he thought he was, but he's trying even though the circumstances changed.

[@NguyenNguyen-yj4rf]

@@johnpark4650 And I dont know why writers loved to remind Sherlock that he was slow and stupid in almost each episode since HLV

[@djohnson3274]

@@MikeTall88 Since he (Series 4 John Watson) didn't care about his daughter, how can it be described as "evolved". The daughter just offered him an opportunity to cheat on his wife. He never even seemed interested in her (wife or daughter). I never got the idea that Series 1-3 John Watson thought he was a great man. In fact, it seemed the opposite. The look of unexpected joy when he added something to solving a mystery (say when he found the source of the Chinese numerals in Blind Banker) didn't suggest confidence in his greatness. He was always willing to stand in the background and was only slightly irritated when Sherlock would belittle him even in front of others. I was hoping he would gain some sense of his own value in Series 4, but instead the writers decided to make him unsympathetic. I guess we were supposed to suddenly see him as sympathetic because he cried so much after Mary died.

[@belleanndm]

john was literally known as ‘kind and loyal. season 1 / 2 / 3 john would never think of cheating but he did in season 4? and for what? it didn’t work with his character. there’s a difference between doing something or being out of character and going against your morality

[@beethockmtee8565]

Mary Watson was the biggest fail of the show for me. That's where a lot of the problems with the later series come from. John's out of character changes (cheating on his wife, beating Sherlock to a pulp for 'murdering' his wife???), the change in tone from detective stories to espionage spy stories (seriously, what the heck is up with that???), the trivialisation of death. All of them come from Mary Watson. The show's biggest downfall isn't the decline of writing ability with plots or dialogue (The Lying Detective has the sharpest and wittiest dialogue in the whole show, for my money), it's with trying to go big and turn everything into this saga of conspiracy. I don't mind the deep character-driven episodes (A Scandal in Belgravia) and I don't mind canon-altering overarching plot details (John and Mary getting married, etc.), but PLEASE don't turn Mary into some secret spy working freelance for the government, and don't make John cheat on his wife with Sherlock's sister who's a supernatural genius and has tricked everybody into thinking she's all sorts of different people, and don't have Sherlock shooting people and running around with guns. The list goes on and on and on and on.... Can you imagine the Sherlock Holmes of the early seasons running around London shooting spies and terrorists with handguns and all this sort of palaver? No.

[@bomcabedal]

To be fair, the over-reliance on conspiracy marred the show from the very first episode.

[@no.one.a113]

When is Sherlock running around with guns shooting spies and terrorists? Doesn't he just borrow John's gun once to shoot Magnussen?

[@carlene4123]

When Mary turned out to be an assassin, I lost a lot of interest in the show. But when they revealed that Sherlock had a sister? And redbeard was a human? I felt in a way betrayed, and now have very very low expectations for any other episodes.

[@misshope8297]

I watched it this week. The way I was SO damn mad that they made Mary be assassin, like all of that to explain how smart she is? Bcs oh it's really impossible for people outside of detectives or murders to know about certain codes (the message about John being burnt alive) or simply remember a fricking door at the wedding they've spent MONTHS planning??? Like what do they take the viewers then? Pure incompetent idiots? That's how they seem to treat us anyway.

[@o0-0o693]

My biggest problem with the last episode is, Tom Hiddleston was not the third Homes sibling.

[@gasstationbathroominnevada]

I vibe with this

[@alanna4872]

GOD DAMMIT NOW IM MAD ABOUT THAT TOO! I NEVER EVEN REALIZED HOW AWESOME THAT WOULD BE. WHY DID YOU DO THIS TO ME?!!??!

[@TheSaiyanPrincess89]

*Holmes?

[@aurumthebrave3427]

I remember being so hyped up about that....

[@avocadothecat]

Now you gave my Tom hiddelston obsessed friend ideas............. she will never again shut up XD

[@callumg3330]

Season 4 is what made people collectively realise that everything Steven Moffat was teasing throughout the whole series would never come and that it was never going to

[@hanniffydinn6019]

Callum G ultimately when he got past remaking the classic Sherlock stories you could see the bullshit. The only reason why it worked was only the classic sir connan Doyle "DETECTIVE" stories.... Jesus don't mess with the formula that makes it work. Same with most stuff these days they forget what made it famous in the first place.....lol

[@OnyxConflict]

It's the same case with Doctor Who, and guess who happened to be in charge of that when it started its deep descent into despair? Steven Moffat.

[@StefanTravis]

I think we all realised Moffat was nothing but tease long before S4. But we put up with it for a while because the presentation was a pretty light show, the performances were good, and the minimal plots weren't terrible. Until they were.

[@hanniffydinn6019]

Stefan Travis the only saving grace as always is the great British acting chops...Brit thesps make any material watchable.....

[@GummyDinosaursify]

The stupid thing is, he was really clever in showing hints on how Sherlock survived before he jumped (note the ball Sherlock is bouncing- Putting that under your armpit will stop a pulse). But then he decided not to explain? Why? Because Moffat thought being clever was more important than telling a story.

[@PTNLemay]

The final episode felt like something out of Doctor Who. The sister's mental powers border on supernatural, and the way she asserts control over the entire prison/island and schemes with Moriarty through time really makes it feel like she has some alien technology in the basement to back her up.

[@IshtarNike]

It would have actually been more believable if that were the case. I haven't seen the episode but the idea that someone could be "that" smart is just silly.

[@ApequH]

@@IshtarNike And you would really hear that there is no glass when someone is playing the violin. That was just stupid

[@story3877]

The second Watson cheated on Mary I went, what the f...is happening? It should have ended the season before. What a waste.

[@ashkhri]

I know??? That is NOT something watson would do and its just so unnecessary

[@snappysue8981]

He didn't cheat on Mary, dumbasses.

[@belleanndm]

snappy sue he didn’t, but he strongly considered it and ‘normal’ john wouldn’t even consider it

[@sniper_pig]

@@belleanndm because, you know, it may have something to do with Sherlock's sister toying with him.

[@trags2]

How do you know "normal Watson" wouldn't concider it? Watson was under a great amount of stress and confusion, his wife lied to him, his best friend faked his own death and one of his old friends almost died at his wedding.

[@evaweiand310]

I think killing off Moriarty was a big mistake that haunted the show. It deprived them of a great foil to Sherlock and teasing his resurrection but never really bringing him back just showed how much they needed this larger than life figure to inject some much needed life into the show. It simply highlighted how dull the antagonists were for the rest of the run. Then again, after Moffat butchered Doctor Who for me, I wasn't expecting much anymore anyways.

[@Crispman_777]

If I remember correctly it was the same situation in the books. Moriarty died but was then brought back later on.

[@jamesturner6979]

Moreso than just Moriarty, I believe that having "The Reichenbach Falls" in the middle of the show was the greatest setback as after pushing Sherlock to his physical and mental limits up to his apparent death...where else could they go after that? The writing was never able to climb back up to those heights - even when they tried to turn it into a character drama, and thus it should have been saved for the absolute ending of the show to leave off on a high note. Just my two cents.

[@dominict9325]

One of the biggest problems with Sherlock is that Moffat fucking sucks at killing off characters. He refuses to do it on nearly every occasion and when he DOES do it, he does it so ham-fistedly and has such a poor execution that it feels meaningless. As you say, killing Moriarty was a mistake. But it wasn't the biggest mistake of that show - the biggest mistake was teasing that he was still alive for the next two fucking seasons and then revealing in the end that yeah, nope, he died after all. Honestly, Moriarty should have been the villain in season 4. That tease at the end of season 3 was great and Moriarty should have been brought back in the first episode of season 4. Like, if you're going to kill a character off, just fucking kill them off and don't pretend like they might have survived. And if you tease that they might have survived, then you should make it so they ACTUALLY FUCKING SURVIVED. Fucking hell, Steven Moffat makes me mad.

[@mrbubbles6468]

James Turner James Turner There was loads of Sherlock Holmes after Sherlock comes back. And they were good. They could have done loads, the writers of this series just suck.

[@rog2224]

No, he stayed dead in canon Holmes.

[@AnalogFilmDiary]

Basically: Sherlock has stopped being a detective show and has instead become a character drama. Which is fine in theory however it was one of the best detective shows but makes a fairly unimpressive character drama.

[@Bhalias8221]

Hugo Gardner if i may i would like to argue with that. The last season was quite impressive in my opinion, it had more mindblowing moments than the previous ones and i honestly never came out of a season so overwhelmed as I did come out here. I have to admit however that i preferred the previous seasons. The change that i wasn't fully able to put into words, is in fact as you pointed out that this season has been more of a character show than a detective show. My point is that this makes the series even more interesting IF they change it back into a detective show by the next season for three reasons: 1. It made the characters more interesting and deep (can't argue with that) 2. It was a necessary change in the basic style of the show (always the same becomes lame) and 3. It provided mindblowing moments. I agree though that i don't like to see sherlock become a character show so IF they go back to detective now I think it was genious but if they don't it might have crashed the show

[@AnalogFilmDiary]

Bernhard Hilpert I see what you're saying but it's possible to develop characters properly within the standard format. The first seasons managed it pretty well without making it the focus. Look at the way Sherlock's character developed via the introduction of Irene Adler, scandal in Belgravia is still a traditional detective episode but Sherlock comes out changed or at least our perception of him does. Interestingly I think that the show's format (3 near feature lengths episode in a season) may actually be part of this. It's a lot to manage characters, have an overall season arc and keep each episode interesting in 3 episodes. In a more traditional set up of let's say ten- thirty minute episodes it's probably easier to develop characters slowly, and the odd episode focusing on one aspect or character isn't so obvious. Most of the big moments in this season, for me, felt either forced or a cop out. Having said all that I'll still watch the next one, but I just hope we can get back to some good mysteries. I think most of all we need a good antagonist again without either bringing back Moriarty or inventing any more of Sherlock's relatives as both feel cheap and just undermine previous plots.

[@Bhalias8221]

Hugo Gardner i guess i have to give you that one, although I will stay with my opinion that I liked the ambition of a perspective change. But don't you think that the show kept on developing itself since the first episode? Where it only seemed to be an ingenious detevtive series with great single episodes going further and further into an overall story with moriarty. That already was a change of perspective. Clinging to that would have been too little in my opinion (i know that it still would have been possible to go on without making it a character show). Therefore I saw the new episodes more like experimenting around what was possible, because that is what sherlock has always done: pushing it to the limit. Going beyond that limit in the forth season also served to me in a way that i could see more extreme (as I would have expected from the development since the first season and the shows premise to always push the limits) is not always good. That's what I mean when I say if the come back now, it was worth it. When it comes to the characters: i like mycroft as a reference factor for sherlock (like how he serves as a mental stabilizer when sherlock gets shot). Irene Adler on the other hand I found a bit exaggerated and too active (but that might just be my opinion as I absolutely loved her passive role in the books)

[@emmalee3990]

yeah exactly my thoughts😁

[@iHuzza]

Hugo Gardner imo It's actually a kinda shit detective show, really. Like, in every episode we don't even get a chance to really think about the mysteries in any depth before Sherlock pulls an answer from his arse that the audience couldn't have figured out. A good example of this is the 3rd episode (the series 1 finale), where Sherlock solves crimes through mainly off-screen interactions with other characters. I would argue it was always a character drama (as the detective part of the show was not written with any real depth, most of the time), it just became really overt in S3/4.

[@thefearlessshaheen2366]

The death of Sherlock Holmes was a finality but back in the 19th century it led to fans forcing Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to revive him.

[@arkadebmandal6963]

because they loved that version so bad

[@grumpyoldman3458]

At least Doyle brought Holmes back with a believable story.

[@cayreet5992]

@@grumpyoldman3458 It does have some weaknesses, but given that Watson doesn't see Holmes die, the story does work out.

[@lynnerose7891]

But after 10 years not 3 minutes lol

[@kobeh6185]

"Sherlock flirts with death way too much, main character "die" all the time" *laughs in supernatural*

[@rockstarphantom8112]

I love how people think the downfall was S4 when S3 was such a hot self-gratifying mess. The issues with 4 began in 3.

[@godot8694]

Seriously s4 was an improvement over the sheer garbage that was s3

[@paranoir]

The whole show is pretty bad

[@bleach00101]

My parents say the same thing about their kids

[@nikoniortnike]

@@paranoir the first 3 seasons are good, but flawed. Season 4 was a disaster.

[@augustoshella]

@@godot8694 man this was such a good joke

[@havendotcom]

Honestly the entire plot with the sister was completely out of nowhere and just....so bad. So bad. One important thing I think should've been mentioned was Mary's entire character (or lack thereof) and how it just made a muddled and unnecessary side story for an entire 2 seasons

[@She-Devil94]

It was not really out of nowhere because they showed Mycroft earlier using those testwords to check whether Sherlock still doesn't remembers what hppened with his Sister. But I know what you mean. It wasn't really hinted at either.

[@bobjones2959]

Cannot agree more. They should've ended the show with season 2, and made an extra episode in the vein of the first half of season three episode one to tie up the loose ends and celebrate the series. It'd be fine if Sherlock came back and John starts dating Mary, but making Mary a major supportive character in two more seasons was too much. She should only have been there to show that John has his own life and has moved on, much like she was in the books, and that'd be that. We are introduced to Moriarty as Sherlock's antithesis at the end of the first season, and their final confrontation happens at the end of the second, all set in the backdrop of a crime-of-the-week detective story with interesting lead characters. That would've made this show great. Then they came in with the soap opera and bad fanfic-style writing of the third and especially fourth season, and tarnished the show's legacy.

[@nellautumngirl]

Moffat just can't write women, they all end up dead or damsels in distress needing to be rescued (see Irene)

[@Maerahn]

@@bobjones2959 Totally agree! She did die in the books as well, but it happened 'off-screen,' and she was, as you say, purely there to show John moving on with his life - she was never this badass, double-agenting superwoman. And ironically, that's also what made tv Mary's death so anticlimactic and pointless in the end. I mean, I accept, I've never been a badass special forces secret-agent-type, so I don't know what their training typically is, but surely, if she had the foresight and reflexes to jump in front of a bullet for Sherlock - couldn't she have just shoved him out of the way instead? I mean, he'd probably still have got hit, but somewhere less likely to be fatal - and we already knew she knew the difference between fatal and non-fatal bullet wounds from the previous season where she shot him as a 'cover' for her secret-agent-y antics.

[@bobjones2959]

@@Maerahn Yeah exactly. That's what I mean with "fanfic-style" writing, tons of "moments" put in there to increase tension and emotional catharsis, at the expense of things having a proper buildup or making sense.

[@Flareontoast]

Before S4 came out, I was utterly obsessed with Sherlock. I had rewatched it so often but S4 somehow pulled the rug out from under my feet. Something felt so wrong about it really felt like a punch in the gut.

[@lalaairlangga4188]

HONESTLY. It just felt forced 😭😭😭

[@swaroopsubudhi9567]

Okay , I'm late here, and I'm going to point out one of my problems with the series. I must say before hand , I've been reading Sherlock books since I was in 5th grade. The one point the books tried to make, in my humble opinion was: crime doesn't have to be at a grand scale to be an intricately planned crime. There were many cases which were just small cases , but had a very intriguing back story and a genius mind behind it. However , I felt , in this series, each crime is just grand, and they just made every crime(almost every crime) related to Moriarty. This killed this one major point of the books. Crime doesn't have to be grand to be genius. I hope I have made my point clear😕😬🙁

[@AKS-rt3xf]

Same! I loved the Three Garridebs, The Musgrave Ritual as well as the Bruce-Partington Plans! Neither of these were "grand" but they remain the most memorable short stories of Sherlock painted in my head from Doyle because of the bad guy's ingenuity or the intrigue of the mystery >

[@fischeborne9713]

As a boy I didn't have the attention for the original books, but I did have enough attention for the comic books, and even had a few childrens books. The crimes are like you said, not always big, one of the comics, covers the entirety of the two movies with the guy who plays Ironman. One of the other books was just trying to figure out who was hijacking a train.

[@prestonmorris1399]

I think that is an excellent point to bring up, that is very well thought out. I think it’s displayed best in Sherlock’s willingness to take cases just for the sake of the stimulating nature of solving crimes rather than for wealth or fame, causing him to turn away royal clients at times while accepting seamstresses.

[@swaroopsubudhi9567]

@@prestonmorris1399 😁🙏

[@fischeborne9713]

@@prestonmorris1399, that's what I didn't like about this Holmes, he's supposed to be somewhat famous, and not a recluse, or a total dick to Watson; they're supposed to be best friends for Pete's sake!

[@ewwwitscosso2292]

“There is nothing more final then the end of a life” *laughs in marvel/DC/supernatural*

[@Nadia1989]

This comment aged beautifully

[@ewwwitscosso2292]

@@Nadia1989 omg

[@nyxfriedman2169]

the funniest thing is that supernatural gets rid of the finality of death in their show but for some reason when one of the three most important characters in the show dies then all of a sudden death is final and irreversible and none of the characters even try to resurrect him or something

[@cmw3089]

But Marvel etc. were fantasies where characters can be brought back to life. Sherlock was "supposed" to be about real people in the real world. In the real world, people stay dead once they're dead for more than a few seconds.

[@TheIrateBrit]

"It took the focus away from the case and onto the characters." Nailed it. I felt like I was watching a melodramatic soap.

[@Mycatsnameiswednesday]

Aren’t stories ABOUT the characters?

[@elijahosullivan1011]

i love character based story-telling but sherlock didn't even follow through with the characterisations of the characters established, it was so disconnected that the characters felt like new chracters and unlikelable ones overall, with actions or exeriences that didn't feel identifiable for an audience

[@sporesims9303]

yeah, they were totally ooc

[@michaelj7069]

After "His Last Vow" in season 3, I was done. Sherlock kills the main villain because he cannot outsmart him. Wow what the hell was that?

[@FH-zo6tq]

I think that fits perfectly with the character he was set up as. He is after all a sociopath and for him ends justify the means. It might not be the Sherlock from the bioks (I wouldn‘t know) but it‘s certainly the Sherlock from the show.

[@emmaspalkova8146]

I have read all of the original stories and for me personally this is actually a minor issue tbh. Charles Augustus Milverton is a weird story. Spoilers ahead, so skip it if you intend to read it yourself. *SPOILERS START* According to Watson's writings, Holmes' client is being blackmailed my Milverton. There is very little said about her and Watson actually never meets her, which is not usual in the ACD Canon stories. Holmes is basically supposed to get back her letter Milverton has got a hold of and since the negotiation concerning the money fails and there is no one who would be willing to officially speak in court against Milverton, Holmes and Watson break in Miverton's villa. When Holmes cracks the safe and starts looking for the letter, Milverton suddenly appears with Holmes and Watson hiding behind a curtain just in time not to be caught. Out of the blue a mysterious woman walks in and shoots Milverton dead. Her identity is never revealed, but she is supposed to be a well known noblewoman. This prompts a fan theory, which says, that there was never any mysterious woman and that either Holmes or Watson was the one who actually killed Milverton, simply because it seems to be to much of a coincidence. Also when Watson describes the lady, the descriprion actually seems to resemble Holmes. (It was a dark, handsome, clear-cut face which confronted Milverton, a face with a curved nose, strong, dark eyebrows shading hard, glittering eyes, and a straight, thin-lipped mouth set in a dangerous smile.) *SPOILERS END* Reasons given, actually have zero issues with Holmes killing Milverton, especially considering that one of the theories in which Holmes kills Milverton, it is because he is the one being blackmailed and it suggests that the reason for the blackmailing is Holmes' and Watson's love affair. The Canon lore itself is sometimes inconsistent, mainly because Doyle didn't really care about writing Sherlock Holmes. But that really helps with reading Watson as an unreliable narrator, thus allowing more room for reader's headcanons. This has already gotten too long and I don't want to make it any longer, so I just want to say, I am not a fan of the show and I am not trying to defend it. I had actually liked the first two seasons until I have read the canon, but the more I got into the canon (and the Granada series) the worse it got. But yeah. For me the reasons why it sucked had zero to do with Holmes killing Milverton. Also sorry to just write a comment after 5 years, but I just felt the urge to and now after putting too much effort I just can't delete it xd.

[@thedarknazo]

sherlock went from a character with a rational thinking to a character with super plot powers

[@AmandaBee]

Uhh my problem with The Final Problem was not that it focused on the characters, but because the twist at the end was completely bullshit lol

[@RedeemerNDestroyer]

Difficult to find a season of television more divisive than Sherlock season 4, you say? Well, GoT season 8 has you covered.

[@thomasnewton6897]

Ahhhh but everyone agrees that was shit

[@theflashgordon193]

@@thomasnewton6897 well you have many people ok with the ending

[@thomasnewton6897]

@@theflashgordon193 you don't though do you

[@theflashgordon193]

@@thomasnewton6897 I'm not sure to understand you but no I dislike the saison 8

[@talentleesdorito9771]

Got has been trash since 6

[@BarkingCur]

I really like Cumberbatch as an actor, and I think he makes a perfect Sherlock Holmes. However, my issue with Sherlock has always been the writers' complete failure at understanding the reason Doctor Watson is essential to the Sherlock Holmes mysteries. In the originals, Sherlock was always an enigma. You never knew what he was thinking, or fully understood his movements, until the end when he would reveal his brilliance in solving the mystery at hand. This kept Sherlock mysterious and thus fascinating to follow as you tried to guess not only if he would solve the mystery, but how. This was achieved by the audience experiencing the entire story through Watson's eyes. He is our proxy as he voices our confusion and befuddlement until the solution is revealed. In Sherlock, Watson is useless, except as comic relief. He rarely serves any purpose as we always know what Sherlock is thinking almost all the time. Furthermore Sherlock can do everything himself, from deducting to fighting, so Watson has no skills that Sherlock needs to succeed. As a result, Watson just hangs around to be the butt of every joke while Sherlock goes from being a fascinating puzzle within himself, to just another brilliant detective. I am not sure who Cumberbatch is now portraying in these shows, but he stopped being Sherlock Holmes quite a ways back. Oh, and the whole "Sherlock commits suicide," episodes were so poorly handled that I have seen better explanations in Scooby-doo cartoons. THAT was where I started falling away.

[@jelkafabianova2801]

Kaedis Agree so much, the thing that pisses me off the most in Sherlock (even though i love the show) is that Watson is useless and Sherlock even treats him as something which slows him down actually. It is truly sad because we, fans and people who watch the show, are supposed to be like Watson, normal people. We should relate to Watson yet writers treat him (therefore fans) as something unimportant

[@user-gb7ji6xy5d]

It has something to do with how Doyle took the stance of himself being Watson when writing the books, while he viewed Holmes as surrogate to his mentor Dr. Joseph Campbell. Doyle had the humility, and treated Holmes as a figure worth revering and learning from. Moffat on the other hand is leaps and bounds more egotistical than Doyle (while nowhere as talented as Doyle; all the "smart" parts from the show are basically Doyle's brain sweat scooped up by Moffat while all the shortcomings are pretty much due to Moffat's meddling) and thinks of himself as being Holmes when writing the script, and views of the audience as being the morons that Cumberbatch!Holmes so often contemptuously make out of the police officers and Watson (the canon Holmes is never an asshole. Eccentric and conceited yes, but he will never utter something like "You're lowering the average IQ of the whole street" or "What does it feel like to live with such a small brain like yours?" Rather, how he states his observations to be "obvious" implies that he regards Watson to be of the same level of intellect as his--that he instinctively expects Watson to come up with the same conclusions). TL;DR: Moffat's ego and the Western anti-intellectual wave have ruined everything.

[@Statalyzer]

"He rarely serves any purpose as we always know what Sherlock is thinking almost all the time. " I wish. Part of the problem for me was how many Adam West Batman style "guesses out of nowhere that were perfectly right with no explanation" Sherlock made without us every finding out the process of how he got it.

[@Grace-ez2ot]

I find it interesting how Watson interpretations are even more varied than Sherlock interpretations. We have the BBC Watson as you described, and then CBS Watson who is Sherlock’s equal and partner.

[@backfire3017]

that was exactly what i thought about throughout the show: "watson is useless". good to know im not the only one.

[@theshyguitarist4536]

The finale of season 4 was so chock full of problems that it demands a whole video essay itself. I've never been so frustrated watching a piece of television in all my life

[@SharatS]

The Shy Guitarist Watched hbomberguy's video?

[@theshyguitarist4536]

Sharat Sachin I did do a while ago but I can't remember all the details, however I remember it being very well made like all his videos are. I recall the crux of the argument (although correct me if I'm wrong) was something along the lines of after series 1 the show was no longer a "detective" show but rather a show about the life of a detective, and that from that point the show was heading towards a downward spiral. If I haven't misinterpreted anything from my admittedly poor memory, then I agree with most but not all of his analysis. He was correct in that after season 1 the majority of detective elements from the show were replaced with a focus on other aspects. Although I personally really enjoyed season 2, and on balance is probably my favourite season. It clearly took a slightly different approach from season 1 but I appreciated it for what it was. Season 3 was the first moment where alarm bells were ringing as I began to notice some bad habits that the writers were picking up (too much self-parady and and a heavier emphasis on how goofy Sherlock can be with his social inadequacies). It was a noticeable downgrade from previous seasons although I still found some enjoyment out of it. The Victorian special can be summed up as the greatest waste of so much potential I've ever seen, reduced to nothing more than irrelevant filler and that's really all I have to say about it. Series 4 was a mixed bag of mostly poor writing. First episode was meh; very poor by the show's past standards. The second episode was actually something of a return to form in my opinion (although I accept that having seen this KZbin video that it has its problems). The finale (as per my previous comment) makes me want to scream in anger. It is deserving of a long video analysis describing how much it damaged the show's prestige. To me it's most unforgivable error was how Moriarty's cameo actually reduced the brilliance of past episodes, specifically the reichenback fall. How can I watch the season 2 finale ever again and feel the same stakes on top of that building when I know that moriarty has made a deal with the messed up sister to put Sherlock through some Saw rip off series of challenges. So did moriarty intend to have Sherlock die on that rooftop like the master criminal he is supposed to be (wasting all that prep work on the sister's ridiculous prison island) or was that just for giggles? I just don't buy it. Killing and destroying the reputation of Sherlock was supposed to be the ultimate final challenge for him to accomplish and satisfy his boredom. The reichenback fall was a great piece of television at the time of broadcast and was ruined by the same writers who crafted it. It still annoys me to this day This message got a little out of hand 😅 apologies, had to vent out a lot of frustration. But I always enjoy discussion and the analysis videos

[@harry426]

@@theshyguitarist4536 Not all of them are well-made, far from it, but his Sherlock video was pretty spot-on.

[@Olegusar777]

And here we are after GoT finale...

[@danielhenze8182]

It was a cartoon

[@hugecowpatty5724]

For me, this show died when the moral compass, John Watson, stopped being the moral compass. Sherlock murders in cold blood the (very obviously based on) Rupert Murdoch character at the end of Season 3 and suffers absolutely no consequences, not even in the form of Watson being upset with him. Three episodes later, the Holmes sister brutally murders or is at least responsible for the brutal murder of several innocent people but it's ok because "childhood trauma" and once again, no consequences. In fact, she is rewarded for her behavior. Holmes was always an amoral character. But Watson had morals and principles that were completely abandoned because "reasons" that are completely outside his character. I don't care if the writing improves with a season 5. You can't just write that away without completely retconning the S3 finale and all of S4.

[@armintargaryen9216]

Yeah I mean, if a friend of mine killed a bigot media tycoon I would at least congratulate them

[@Mikimarux]

You realise Watson was a soldier right? He believes killing people can be justified, hell he did it in episode one! I think you've misinterpreted his character.

[@kindabatooni9314]

Sherlock should be thanked for killing Magnesen. He’s not just a blackmailer, he literally kills people by calling their enemies on them. He kidnaps and coheres people into doing things they don’t want to do. There was no stopping him because everything is in his brain. No one stood up to him. Sherlock literally self sacrificed to save both his friends and brother. He was ready to pay the price and was sent to his death on that plane. The fact they calked him back because they need him didn’t change the fact that he was willing to pay the price of saving everyone else from a terrible man like Magnesen who was left to do what he wants. It’s not killing in “cold blood” when that person kidnaps your best friend, threatens you, literally harassed you in your hospital bed, blackmailed you, was going after your brother and friends, and tried to frame you. That’s killing in defense of the people you care about. John is a soldier and killed that Taxi driver in the very first episode by the way. Sherlock just saved his life and his wife’s life. He has no right to point fingers specially after Mary almost killed Sherlock.

[@userthatuses8394]

Bruh season four really tried to sell us Sherlock's long lost mind-controlling sister.

[@Statalyzer]

Seriously. Her offscreen "genius" was so overpowered and utterly unbelievable that it would have made MORE sense to say she was a demigoddess who had magic mind powers. But when onscreen she never does anything particularly clever.

[@cayreet5992]

I've always thought that going with her being a sociopath (which, if we're being honest here, would make sense, given her brothers are sociopaths, too) would have worked had she been less of a genius. Let her be Mycroft's secret weapon - the amoral killer he sends out when he needs to remove someone. Introduce her in the last episode of season three and have her kill that guy instead. Then make season four about Mycroft losing control of her and sending Sherlock after her - either ending it with Sherlock bringing her in or with her outsmarting her brothers and disappear.

[@kirasussane1556]

The four season is so nonsensical that is hard to believe no one realized how bad it was while they were writing it.

[@kallistoindrani5689]

What killed the show for me was John beating the crap out of Sherlock in that one scene. That just ruined it for me and even now I can't forgive the writers/creators for doing that.

[@mariaj7549]

Yes! So true. That was horrifying.

[@zain4019]

Kallisto Indrani I hated that so much. And (SPOILER) John cheating on Mary as well was almost unbelievable. A character so honest and integral was totally shattered, though I understand that as storytelling, it works. Humanizing and revealing flaws of a character, something everyone has, molds a character into someone more real and believable. It just hurt a lot to see John stoop so low.

[@anon-hj8dg]

@@zain4019 he didn't cheat, he just.. sexted. he thought it was cheating because he felt so bad. and, fact of the matter: john is more loyal to sherlock than anyone else. i do think that after season 4 episode 2 is just a coma dream.

[@user-uo9gg2zc6j]

When did this happen? When he returned?

[@viennacheng3912]

@@user-uo9gg2zc6j no it was s4 episode 2, when they were in that creepy guy's "favorite room" (the morgue) and Sherlock had a scalpel in his hand and he was so high on drugs and was trying to stab the creepy guy so John beat him up

[@AmazingStevenman]

6:16 I thought there was a hint where Mary said a receptionist can possess so much information in the middle of the episode

[@taliaricher710]

for me it was the fact that they pulled the secret sibling move twice in one episode

[@agataradzioch2109]

I laughed when he Said ”next season” at 14:16 because you know DAMN well it Will take 187382 years for it to come out

[@AnonymousFreakYT]

To me, the main problem with "The Final Problem" is that the "clues" it gives you have *ZERO* meaning until you look at them in hindsight after later details are revealed. Every other episode gives you at least the _possibility_ of figuring "it" out ahead of time. Not The Final Problem. Then there's the narrative cheat of actually *showing* "the girl on the airplane." (Uh, spoilers, although if you've watched the whole video and are reading the comments, you have either already seen it or don't care about spoilers at this point... But, just to make sure, I'm adding this so the rest of my comment drops below a "Read more" link...) . There, good? . Good. Definitely below the link now. For those that HAVEN'T seen it (yup, here the real spoilers begin,) the premise of The Final Problem is that Sherlock Holmes long-lost sister has imprisoned Sherlock, their brother, and Dr. Watson, and is running them through various "tests" - the reasoning being that there is a girl on an airliner where everyone else on the airplane is either dead or asleep. The girl is on the phone, and Sherlock's sister "allows" the "good guys" to talk to the girl occasionally by speakerphone when they "do good" in her sadistic tests. When they talk to the girl on the plane - ANY of the characters on their own, not just Sherlock - the video goes to actually show the girl on the plane. She's pleading for help, that the people are "asleep," (we see them,) and the plane seems to be heading "toward lights" and is "getting lower." Obviously leading the characters, and the audience, to believe that this airliner is heading toward a city and will probably crash, killing everyone on the plane (including the awake girl,) and many people on the ground. The problem is that it shows the girl on the plane - _even when no lead character is interacting with her_. This is a cheat bit of misdirection to the audience only, plain and simple. There is *ZERO* way for the audience to know the truth of the situation. . Last spoiler warning! There is no girl. There is no plane. It's Sherlock's sister doing a voice over the phone. In the end, Sherlock has to figure it out, and find where his sister really is hiding, and "talk her down" from being "the girl on the plane." If the show never actually showed the girl on the plane, or showed her only during one of Sherlock's "picturing what's going on" segments that have been done many previous episodes, I'd have accepted it. But to lie directly to the audience, and *_ONLY_* to the audience, by showing the girl when she isn't interacting with the characters at all, is where I lost the remaining shred of faith I had in the show. If a fifth series gets produced, I'll wait for reviews before watching.

[@AnonymousFreakYT]

You just summarized my 27 paragraph analysis in one sentence. :-P

[@vaneharris8947]

They added plane sounds and another character talking to the girl (which is impossible once you know all the circumstances.) It was total cheating.

[@side-fish]

What I found absurd about the girl and the phone on the plane, is that that's not a satellite phone. It's a regular cellphone. It's been a long time, though If I recall, they were on the sea initially. How the hell do you get signal on a plane tens of thousands of feet up in the air and on the sea at that. And the funniest part is how Sherlock doesn't even raise an eyebrow as to why a phone is working in a dead plane tens of thousands of feet up in the air.

[@AnonymousFreakYT]

Sherlock would have no way of knowing it isn't just the AirPhone on the plane. Or a purposefully planted satellite phone. To him, his sister planted a phone on the plane to call to have the girl answer. That's not a "plot hole" to me at all, easily explainable. The visual of it is solely for the audience - and the visual of what kind of phone it is is irrelevant.

[@side-fish]

Maybe, but it ruins suspension of disbelief. It's a television show afterall. It's kinda like the last Jason Bourne movie where Julia Stiles' character pours water over the keyboard and the computer shorts. I suppose she did that so that the CIA can't track her after she accessed a gov't flashdrive? On a plot perspective, that would be irrelevant, but come on, it looks stupid.

[@YisYtruth]

Notes on the video: 1. Foreshadow the twist 2. Death is sacred 3. Every scene needs to be relevant 4. Don't alienate your viewers by going against their expectations

[@shneancy220]

do go against their expectations but foreshadow that so they don't feel cheated when you exclaim "The butler did it!"

[@Dimafear]

In summation, Moffat did what he does with every series he touches. After he gets comfortable, he changes the main focus to the main character for some reason. He did the same in Doctor Who.

[@josh420masterB]

First series was awesome Second series was the best Third series was still good, despite starting to get high on its own popularity Fourth series was an epic fail

[@Sam-hv7kj]

Agree.

[@HikariMichi42]

The Final Problem was just terrible. There isn't just one issue with it, I think there is barely anything good about that episode. Long story short, Eurus should never have been written into the show. In The Lying Detective I had no issue with her since we knew nothing about her, but in The Final Problem they made her into a bad and unrealistic horror movie villain who apparently can manipulate anyone to do whatever she wants (with no explanation) and is so intelligent that she can figure out impossible things (also with no explanation). Not only that, but they also say she did something in Sherlock's childhood that has shaped him for his entire life although he repressed his memories of her and the event, which is questionable psychology and also bad writing since you can't introduce a character completely out of nowhere and then say that character is the reason behind every decision another character has made on the show up to that point. The episode also barely had any structure and nothing about the conclusion makes sense, it only leaves you more confused. They briefly make us believe Moriarty is still alive, then reveal it's just a flashback. Then they say Moriarty and Eurus planned his death together but also created a game for Sherlock to play later on, which is incredibly difficult to believe, and despite his role in planning this event Moriarty basically just has a cameo appearance and doesn't affect the plot in the slightest. When I compare this episode to the first one (A Study in Pink) which impressed me so much with how everything tied together and how well-thought out the story was, as well as how it was easy it was to follow, I feel so sad. There is such a difference in quality, I can't help but wonder what happened. It will be such a shame if The Final Problem turns out to be the last Sherlock episode ever because that was the opposite of a satisfying conclusion. If they do make more episodes, they should make them more story-driven, not take too many liberties, and stick to what the show started out as: Modern retellings of Conan Doyle's stories. It should go back to what it was like during the first season and much of the second season.

[@harrysecombegroupie]

Putting Eurus into the show was like hammering a toaster into a grandfather clock: pointless and unnecessary and the clock ended up a broken mess.

[@HikariMichi42]

Well said.

[@singenstattatmen5096]

I can tell you exactly what happened: Moffat did. He did the exact same thing to Doctor Who and it's annoying the hell out of me - DW used to be about great adventures and great emotions, usually a monster of the week with some meaningful two-episoders from time to time. Then Moffat took charge and started getting tino writing this season-encompassing, enormous ark that just took screen time away from the actual adventures, were very confusing and more than dissatisfactory in their 'pay-off'. Moffat is great as a story writer when that is all he gets, a story for one or two episode. Once he's in charge of everything, he tries to make everything much too interconnected and larger than life, you can't just have the Doctor saving one planet or Sherlock solving one case, it also must be connected to a much bigger ark with many many turns and twists - even when binge watching in can be very hard to follow and it doesn't feel nearly as important as Moffat thinks it does. God I could go on and on about Moffat and his God-complex for his main characters and much more... It's just sad when a show one loves has to suffer for Moffat's ego. :/

[@-Zikade-]

I haven't even watched S4 but I must say... this Eurus girl sounds like fanfiction. Really, bad fanfic writers love to create OCs just like her.

[@jamieadams3459]

Quite honestly that's exactly how it feels when watching S4. It's almost like a poorly executed fanfic with a villan too over the top it's frankly comedy, and no sense of plot as the writer makes it up on the spot. I, personally, preferred the circulating rumour of a third Holmes brother working for MI6, that way developing the relationship between the three, allowing more chance for witty, slightly humourous dialogue, and a chance to learn more about Mary rather than the Deus ex machina seen throughout the first episode of S4, and consequently the rest of the series. I hope that Moffat wisens up and takes Sherlock back to the format of S1 and 2, since they were better at focussing on the acutal case at hand.

[@denissalim2909]

I distinctly remember Mary saying in the first episode that "Receptionists hear everything". I remember thinking, "ah, it's that older lady"

[@TheCloserLook]

Still god awful foreshadowing though :/

[@TwelvetreeZ]

It's still really stupid

[@hewad378]

Jim Moriarty was the best villain I didn't want him to die.

[@averyjackblack7420]

He should have been the final problem

[@crabbieappleton]

The actor was fine, but the actual character didn't seem to be a criminal mastermind. He was, in the words of Dana Barrett, "more like a game show host."

[@msaad8053]

Magnussen was the best

[@Statalyzer]

@@crabbieappleton Really? I thought Andrew Scott was horrid. He just seems to think being weird is a substitute for quality acting. he's not even in the same league as Jared Harris' version.

[@arunkumargupta4564]

@@Statalyzer Oh god. Jared Harris was the best Moriarty (after Eric Porter). He was calm and collected and that made him so terrifying. I stan Andrew Scott's Moriarty, but Jared Harris' Moriarty was someone to be terrified of. Downey's Holmes was not as good as Cumberbatch's (of season 1 & 2), but Moriarty and Watson and Mary of Ritchieverse were better than BBC's. And they had Moran too! That was a treat.

[@schwulianmariatatutata2997]

I think there's so much more wrong with S4/Ep.2 than Deus ex machina. Yes they could have planted a hint at the recording device halfway through the episode, but that wouldn't have been enough to make the ending believable. It's enjoyable to realise that Sherlock DID have a greater plan in mind all along, but it didn't only rely on the device to function (how could he have made sure that it definitely ends up in his hospital room btw?). For his plan to work out, Sherlock needed John to come in EXACTLY the moment he came and not half a minute longer. Imagine John and the police had come in mere seconds later. The villain could still be exposed if somebody magically had the idea of opening the stick, but even then Sherlock would be dead, choked to death, end of the show. And that's a lot of coincidence to rely on, which even a drugged-out-of-his-mind Sherlock would never come up with.

[@Cunnysmythe]

It used to be great when Sherlock made deductions; he'd do the Sherlock scan and pick things out about people and situations as he went along. Now especially with the smaller cases he'll solve it and explain it after the fact as if the audience is stupid for not knowing what it couldn't have known. Money made them lazy, they started blowing serious cash on special effects instead of working on the story.

[@cosmicostrich3657]

In defense, a lot of the original stories were written like that, with the last page being Sherlock explaining to Watson how he deduced everything after catching he villain.

[@AshDemonYoung]

@@cosmicostrich3657 But that was because they were books ONLY from Watson's point of view. The whole point of some of those first stories was Watson being amazed with Holmes and not believing he could actually deduce the things he does. We weren't meant to understand Sherlock, we were meant to be just as amazed and impressed as Watson once Sherlock revealed how he did it.

[@Haliesenka]

There are definitely many viewers that were turned off by Sherlock apparently "suddenly becoming" a character-driven story instead of a plot-driven story, but there were also viewers that had always seen Sherlock as a story about the DETECTIVE, not the mysteries. And they still hated season 4. The reason was the especially shoddy writing, god-complex-y navel-gazing, and plot inconsistencies that happen any time Moffat gets his hands on a property for too long. Things we were starting to see in seasons 2 and 3, but were exploded into the open in the dumpster fire that was season 4. Things like Mary's death in s4e1-in the Sherlock universe, apparently Mary has the ability to slow down time and jump in front of a speeding bullet, flying backwards once it hits her. Things we were told explicitly in s3e3 (ONE CHRONOLOGICAL EPISODE EARLIER) only happened "in the movies." The mysteries were always window-dressing for the characters-or rather, Moffat's insufferable power-trip about how much more """clever""" he/Sherlock was than the viewers. Sherlock is the "thinking man's show." Except if you take time to think about it, you're an idiot for trying. Spend any time wondering about how Sherlock survived the Reichenbach Fall? Moffat spends an entire episode mocking you for it. Trying to pick up on subtle clues to solve the mysteries in season 4? Fuck you, it's his secret sister who killed his double-secret childhood friend who Sherlock reimagined as a fucking dog for some reason and also she and Moriarty orchestrated however-many-years of messing with Sherlock in 10 minutes of glass sex. Because they're SUPER-GENIUSES. Doctor Who's the same. In essence "plot" became increasingly outrageous and convoluted "reveals" that no one, not even Moffat, saw coming but the Doctor knew all along because fuck you he's the Doctor and he's """""""clever""""""". Moffat works best under tight supervision with limited resources (see Blink). Stop giving him full and total control over massive intellectual properties and iconic characters because he will always drive them into the ground. Oh, they just gave him Dracula? fml

[@singenstattatmen5096]

hales Amen to all you said, couldn't have put it better myself.

[@sanna9062]

You're right. I absolutely loved Sherlock with all my heart and have watched the first three series multiple times as it was one of my favourite shows. I loved how it was about Sherlock and John. It's been two years since series 4 four aired and I haven't rewatched it because I just cant. It feels like a different show. I still can't believe how shitty the finale of series 4 was.

[@DarthRushy]

million bucks says that Dracula's a misunderstood clever genius, whose need for blood is just a quirk they'll make fun of, and Van Helsing's the villain

[@collectorduck9061]

"The mysteries were always window-dressing for the characters-or rather, Moffat's insufferable power-trip about how much more """clever""" he/Sherlock was than the viewers. Sherlock is the "thinking man's show." Except if you take time to think about it, you're an idiot for trying." That pretty much sums it up right there. Looking back at earlier episodes of the show I'm embarrassed I ever liked it. It's like a 14 year old boy trying to sound clever. I'm literally ashamed that I got roped in for a while.

[@GeoffreyHammy16]

Sherlock season 4 transformed the show from smart, complex and thrilling, to a silly soap opera

[@AlexMcMonnies]

I can't believe how you literally took the words out of my mouth on the final point. The first two seasons of Sherlock are absolute top quality TV but after that it slowly loses focus on what type of show it truly is and like you say by the end, the investigation of the crime becomes minimal and overshadowed in the fourth season. Rewatch season 4 episode 1 again, how much actual investigating is there? We have that case with the exploding car at the start, Sherlock walks straight into that house already knowing what has happened and does no investigating whatsoever and we the viewer have absolutely no idea until much later. And then thats it. The whole focus then shifts to the Thatcher busts and Mary's backstory and tbh its just boring. The flirting with Moriarty's return for two whole seasons was appalling also. If it could find a way to return to simple investigations for the entirety of the episode rather than all this interweaving unnecessary drama, it could still be restored to its former greatness

[@TheDarkBrethren]

I definitely think that you're right in that a big problem with Season 4 is the introduction of things we had no previous idea about at important moments. It feels cheap when you reveal that the big baddie of the season is his 'long lost sister'. It's the equivalent of the idea that the case could be explained if there is a 'hidden twin' (something that Sherlock himself claims is stupid in Season 3 Episode 4).

[@She-Devil94]

But isn't that mention of the "hidden twin" a genious hint at the whole Sister plot together with Mycroft using those testwords to check if Sherlock still doesn't remember? I believe it wasn't comletely out of nowhere.

[@TheDarkBrethren]

Yannic Held I'd really like to think it was a genius and cleverly thought out move. It just feels a bit cheap if you highlight how ridiculous something is, and then immediately go and use it. It's like when movies use the phrase "You can't do that. It's suicide." when the hero has to do something and then they survive. If you say something is suicide and then go and complete it anyway, it ruins the tension and buildup as it feels like a cheap line. Just my opinion though

[@natalie7851]

Here’s the thing. Season four sucked, largely (in my opinion) because it tried to come up with its own material. Moffatt and Gatiss’s flaw is hubris: they believe they can write bigger villains and better mysteries than Doyle, and gave up the adaptation formula in favor of their own plots. And it sucked. It sucked real bad. But-based on the teaser at the end of the last episode of season four-a potential season five seems much simpler. Without Mary to worry about, its back to Sherlock and John being dudes and solving crimes (which, whether you romantically pair them or not, is objectively better than any of the Mary-related stories). This allows to Gatiss and Moffat to come to terms with their faults and return to the idea that gave Sherlock its popularity in the first place-modern adaptations of classic stories. God knows they have plenty of material to work with. tl;dr version: season four was bad. season five might be better. maybe. god, I hope.

[@202cardline]

I agree, I am a huge fan of Doyle and Moffat and Gatiss were definitely devoted fans themselves, I enjoyed all the details they put into their adaption. It's strongly believed the Holmes brothers in the written stories would have had a third sibling...but they definitely cooked up something more convoluted than it should have been :/

[@majumder456]

Mary is the worst part about the show.

[@ozymandias6817]

@@majumder456 ikr!!!

[@godot8694]

I disagree. They never thought they're better than Doyle. In fact the reason why they did what they did is to not go against his canon. If they went johnlock or brought back Moriarty like many people wanted then they'd think they're better than doyle

[@allyli1718]

godot I disagree, I kinda think the way they scoff at the source material and instead make it outlandish illustrates the way they see it as boring or tired. For instance, Irene Adler wasn’t a lesbian sex dominatrix who somehow fell for a man (Sherlock), but instead a normal woman who manages to outsmart Sherlock. I think their need to make everything extreme almost unbelievable versions of themselves illustrates their belief that what they’re doing is better, more interesting storytelling. Also, at this point, why not just bring Moriarty back? They made a straight Irene Adler woman gay, then bi, as well as an evil sex dominatrix. They made Mary a secret super spy win the ability to hide from Sherlock. They made Sherlock have a secret sister with the power to manipulate anyone with 1 conversation. At this point, they’re not avoiding it because it would disrespect the source material. We’re way past that. Johnlock and Moriarty’s resurrection aren’t a thing, because they think the fans are dumb for wanting them/theorizing about them.

[@n0brainjustvibes]

Honestly, season 4 felt more like Riverdale than Sherlock.

[@AlexB-dg9vv]

The best description of Sherlock in the TV show I've seen is 'someone who isn't very intelligent writing what they imagine intelligence to be'. You end up with the weird intelligence as a superpower portrayal that becomes more prominent as they move away from the original stories. Mystery and detective stories work because you can see all or most of the facts but the detective either infers something you have missed or sees a key fact in a different light that changes the whole nature of the problem. When the truth is pointed out it seems incredibly obvious suddenly and you can easily see and understand all the steps of deduction. Sherlock often skips this because the writers can't do it themselves, so Sherlock just comes across as finding the answer 'just because'. It's a magic trick, not a sequence of deductions coming to an unexpected conclusion. GOT later seasons suffer from the same thing with characters being written by people less intelligent than them so all their complex scheming goes out the window.

[@ravenwolf2220]

For me the Final problem's problem was the absolute bull that they pulled at the end with Redbeard. It was so cluttered and confused and the twist had no foreshadowing as well as being magicked up from nowhere. I found it extremely frustrating and it felt like terrible writing.

[@Killua2001]

I kinda feel this missed some of the larger genuine structural problems with s4 and s4 episodes. Take s4e2, yeah yeah they should have teased the cane, and yeah they should have spent 'more time on the case', but the bigger problem is that in its quest for "interesting twists" the show keeps rendering the premise they set up entirely hollow. s4e2 just made it more painfully obvious that this has been going on for a while. And episode 3 was... really an astounding waste of a budget. When they pointed out that "Sherlock hallucinated the person" they threw out the premise they set up, because "it wasn't real". Which is fine, you can use that to show "sherlock is going insane", but you *can't* then undermine that twist *again* by pointing out "no, Sherlock planned this whole thing out from the start" because it means that when he was "going insane" he was *lying to the viewer*. We were supposed to believe his act, but we weren't let in on it in any way. A cane wouldn't fix that if we're supposed to believe Sherlock hallucinated the whole thing. But then it turned out he *didn't* hallucinate. It was all real. But... it was some other person who happened to know about the killings and happened to have the confessional paper but Sherlock never caught onto this. Instead he thought he was hallucinating. Except this was just a ruse to both catch a bad guy and 'save john'. Which he set up from the start. What? S4E3 decided to go even more extreme. By having 'repressed memories' we're not really let in on and it turns out the entire premise at the start of the show was, once again, fake. That's less deus ex and more 'undermining your premise', you can't get payoff when you decide to undermine the setup of the show because it means the setup never means *anything*. The show never did provide proper payoff for the premises, even the first episode of the second season was a kinda idiotic way to end the cliffhanger they set up just before. And then the constant Moriarty nonsense after he died where they kept building something and then pulling the rug out from under. But at least there they were able to stretch out the 'lack of payoff' that Moffett is so god damn good at by now with tighter individual episodes, and goodwill that 'something good will happen', because Moffett is excellent at setup. (Insert JJ Abrams reference) He just never learned how to really deliver. The forth season made that painfully transparent. But the problems existed long before.

[@thatmadchick815]

You're so right! I couldn't agree more.

[@Yesica1993]

I've blocked so much of the final season out of my brain. I can't stand what they did with the characters of John & Mary.

[@TheFrodoBaggins33]

The audience feeling alienated during season 4 is a running problem throughout the show that really became apparent in seasons 3 and 4. The writers seemed to want to parody sherlock and make fun of the fans, thanks again moffat

[@somebody5114]

If I recall correctly my readings of all the sherlock holmes' books, you as a reader never know what is going on in sherlocks' head, because they are "written" by Watson, and I don't consider those books bad detective fiction...

[@Statalyzer]

Part of the fun is seeing how Sherlock connects the tiny details and obscure facts together. When he just goes "poof I magically solved it because I'm brilliant" it's less interesting. E.g. in Scandal in Bohemia, he knows the "messenger" is really the King. How does he know this? It never says. That violates show-don't-tell (which is ok to do at times, but it makes this part uninteresting). Like, as a reader I'm already thinking "Oh watch that's gonna be the King", so the twist doesn't do it for me by itself. Knowing what clued Sherlock into being so sure of that fact in-universe (since he doesn't have my out of universe knowledge that this is a common cliche to expect) would have been far better. Like when he notices Watson's posture/bearing and tanned skinned and guesses he's a military guy who was deployed to a sunny area. Far superior of a revelation.

[@NelsonStJames]

I thought the show was cancelled? Both Cumberbatch and Freeman are now A-list actors at Marvel. When would either have time now to do a series, even one with as short a season as Sherlock?

[@iHuzza]

Sherlock isn't really short, when you think about it. 1 episode is enough to qualify as a feature length film, so getting 3 of those with 2 very well known actors starring in it is sort of ridiculous, financially. Besides, the ending of series 4 was pretty conclusive, so I really doubt they'd dredge the show up from the mud again for another series.

[@dawnriddler]

well we do wait for years for a new season, so there's plenty of time

[@iHuzza]

dawnriddler It almost definitely won't happen even in something like 5 years tho - Moffat and Gatiss are working on different projects, and Benedict Cumberbatch is now part of the MCU. Combine that with the aforementioned conclusive ending, and I don't rate the chances of a return very highly.

[@MrJturner74]

still waiting for Dr. Strange to meet Everett Ross

[@sallyatticum]

You know Cumberbatch has done two tv movies and a tv series just this year, and has at least four more movies announced.... ?

[@msaad8053]

The story of Sherlock's sister was next level cringe. It's Sherlock effing Holmes so many mysteries solved by him yet they chose the most cringiest one to show.

[@davidpiepgrass743]

8:54 and also a number of people in the audience are wondering why no one is calling 911 for Mary

[@wendyn9780]

999

[@isaacjones6323]

I started hating sherlock as soon as it was revealed that Mary was a spy.

[@antonissampanis5255]

I can't believe you didn't mention Sherlock's sister having superpowers, that for me was the biggest WTF moment in a season full of WTF moments

[@icecreamguru7584]

one of the biggest sins of this season was ruining one of the best things they had at their disposal: Moriarty. The Final Problem completely obliterated his agency with the reveal that Sherlock's sister was behind everything that he ever did, and played clips of him on screen as a mockery of his character and a kick in the face to the audience who loved him.

[@marbleramirez6809]

I feel as though the whole "Total Surprise to the viewer but Sherlock was always in control" Was something that was done throughout the entire series. Even in the Hounds of Baskerville, Sherlock just Guesses that its childhood trauma misrepresenting his memory within 15 minutes. The Whole Boomerang scene in Irene Adler's episode too, we dont see how he figured it out until we're Allowed to see it.

[@joelmole3157]

I actually think Sherlock died in season 3 when it stopped focusing on mysteries and started focusing on human drama. His Last Vow was especially when the show went off the rails because it featured Mary as an assassin and a villain that a) hardly shows up despite the build-up and b) Is able to blackmail people because he has his own mind palace? Where does he get the info from and what weight does he have against his victims when he has no tangible proof? And the less said about The Abominable Bride the better...

[@subashchandra9557]

"You would be hard pressed to find a season of television more divisive than Sherlock Season 4" This comment aged like dornish wine

[@imouttie1833]

A long long time ago, I can still remember how Sherlock used to make me smile And I knew if I had my chance, I'd watch every episode with my friends and maybe they'd be happy for a while But season 4 made me shiver With every episode delivered A show ruined step by step I couldn't watch one more ep I can't remember if I cried when I compared it to season 2 side by side But something touched me deep inside, *The day Sherlock died*

[@babsgalv6556]

And I started singing... and went to watch The Boys instead.

[@MagikarpPoop]

The euphoria in detective stories comes from having all the puzzle pieces in front of you, and piecing them together. After season 1, the series took more interest in Sherlock as a character than the mysteries he was trying to solve. We were withheld information just so Sherlock could slam it on the table and we could be impressed by that big brain of his, leaving us out of the mystery altogether.

[@pagatryx5451]

To be fair, detective fiction can do that to some extent. Edgar Allen Poe's detective stories were usually impossible to solve. In 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue', an orangutan is the murderer for example. Obviously, nobody is gonna think an ape is the killer unless they knew there was one nearby, and we only learn of that being the case when the detective was describing how he discovered the perpetrator. Technically detective fiction doesn't have to be solvable. We just need to see that the answer wasn't pulled entirely out of a hat.

[@RebootedGaming]

I have to disagree regarding the Hounds of Baskerville scene being bad because "we don't know Sherlock's thoughts" That scene was put in there to convey the same emotions that John felt. Fear. Isolation. Paranoia. If we would've seen what made Sherlock decide to use Watson as his labrat and would have seen the process of how he came to the conclusion the hounds were fake, that scene would've had no impact. Like at all. It'd be boring to watch because all you'd see is Sherlock looking at the monitors throughout at John, probably having a laugh silently for his genius working out. People need to understand context more. In a detective story it's important to have the same puzzle pieces as the detective, sure, I can agree to that, but that is not an absolute rule that needs to be followed at all times. Sometimes there's different context as to what a scene is supposed to do. In the Hounds of Baskerville lab scene, it's to instill fear and paranoia in both John and the viewer and they did that expertly. Now sure, if you have read the source material I'm sure it's no surprise that the hounds are fake, but to someone like me, who has never read anything Sherlock and just enjoys the BBC iteration, that scene was truly tense and I feared for John's health (not his life specifically as I did not think they'd kill him off) All scenes within a movie or film or series need to have purpose. This scene had purpose and it fulfilled that purpose. Making it a good scene.

[@anoinks6511]

Just a small note on the labrat John thing, I was actually more scared since in the book the giant dog is actually real

[@wynngwynn]

Nah, what Sherlock did and started doing more in later episodes is hold info from the audience so you couldn't figure it out by the time you were getting towards the end of the story. Letting the viewer in on the clues what made the books good and the show just didn't understand that aspect, holding nearly all info back from everyone (not just John) so it took all reason for getting engaged in the clues since they were always revealed AFTER the shit was solved. Not satisfying.

[@djohnson3274]

One of things that bothered me so much is that John didn't mind so much that Sherlock had done it. He shook it off. "Just don't do it again". We see nothing that suggests that, in addition to poisoning him, that Sherlock had sat and enjoyed seeing John panic, so he'd have no reason to suspect that. The writers seemed to enjoy John being held captive, since they used it so often in series 3 and 4. They even had a character ridicule John as Sherlock's "damsel in distress".

[@fiddlewheelx]

I feel the story lost me because of how "messiah" like Sherlock became at the end.

[@simonunger2599]

I felt like the show started to lose its identity around season 3. After that a lot of the episodes didn’t feel like Sherlock so much as they felt like Sherlock fan fiction. Everything focuses on the characters thrown into random situations and we just watch them react to them.

[@kornilious]

BBC Sherlock died when Sherlock “died” in season 2.

[@pranavflame]

Haha yeah, and that's poetic in the worst way possible

[@chairuldewantoro9128]

wel personally the sign of three was quiet good imo

[@painslut]

That's what I thought.

[@shounakganguly5441]

I think the last installment of BBC Sherlock (season 4 i.e.) was utter bollocks.

[@umang3269]

Sherlock faded after season 3 because of Mary Watson and a lots of over the top drama rather than deductions.. It was god tier till season 2....

[@s66s46]

Season 2 was the best

[@UnsightlyThinker]

After Series 2, Sherlock became a drama series titled “The Mary Show With Added Trauma”

[@kakuka25]

I feel, recently, while Sherlock has experimented successfully with cinematic form, it's lost its way in terms of story content. Also, I feel that Game of Thrones' initial narrative, which emphasized the significance of death and its potential proximity to the main characters, has been diluted as the show goes off the rails from GRRM's masterful story. This is because the grey characters are giving way to a traditional good vs bad, black and white narrative where death is - like in Sherlock - trivialized or considered non-existent to characters who must survive to set up the climax.

[@GummyDinosaursify]

You lost me at 'Masterful Story'.

[@Dark_Voice]

I think GoT should be only about the war of five kings and end it there. The rest to me seems like additional milking while you can.

[@OCinneide]

GOT became dumb when John woke up after being stabbed.

[@OCinneide]

Get Jinxed Tyrion feels like the only reason he’s around still is because he’s popular. Game of thrones lost its edge that made it stand out.

[@MrBean8100]

Someone needs to keep Moffat in check. When there's nobody to tell him "no." he inevitably screws up at some point.

[@Luwi1996]

The "death" of Irene Adler and the end of season 3, where Sherlock is send into "exile" where also points that showed, that nothing is final in this show.

[@kyleparsons145]

The problem with Sherlock was the writers tried to be clever and wrote stuff thinking they were clever, when actually was just stupid, baffling and made little to no sense

[@Darkdaej]

About the deus ex machina with the recording device and the receptionist... Have you ever read Sherlock Holmes? In most Holmes stories, there is zero foreshadowing. Given that the stories are basically told from Watson's point of view, we only know what Watson notices, which is often not a whole lot, and then Holmes starts commenting on the type of tobacco the culprit smoked due to the pattern of the ashes and this tells him the man must be a sailor or something... Sherlock Holmes stories have never been about figuring out "whodunit", but rather be impressed by his incredible deductive skills without being given a chance to try and figure it out for yourself.

[@TheCloserLook]

Thats not an excuse. Those books were written when people had different standards for storytelling, standards change and those who adapt old work must change that work along with them.

[@Darkdaej]

I'd say it was simply a different writing style. Agatha Christie had a very different way of handling mystery than Arthur Conan Doyle and she began writing only about 15 years after Doyle finished with Holmes. To be perfectly honest, while I agree with you to an extent, you have to admit that those two examples you gave were pretty much done the same way Doyle himself wrote his stories...

[@Darkdaej]

But on the other hand, I don't think works adapted to modern audiences should necessarily change. The Lord of the Rings movies were very good, and while some things were changed, the way the movie is presented is quite similar to how the book was, with grand sweeping shots of nature echoing how Tolkien described nature around the characters. Hell, the movies even kept the veiled anti-industrialism message the books had.

[@captainufo4587]

The recording device critique is in fact pretty out of the mark, as it was the ONLY part of season 4 which still was faithful to the original tales. That's the Adventure of the dying detective, and it was solve almost exactly in the same way (well, except that we're in victorian times, so no miniaturized recorder, it's Watson himself who listens to the confession). If there's something to criticize about that episode, it's the whole stupid "hallucinating the client" plotline.

[@ezziba8240]

Didn't actually hallucinate; it was his sister attempting(not attempting because she knew the future, of course) to help him get his friend back so she can kill his best friend again. I have to say I love S4 and I love Eurus, but she was simply too smart without being smart enough.

[@coolcatkim22]

6:05 Lots of mystery shows do that. They introduce a character within the first half of the story, that really doesn't do anything yet they get to speak, and then it turns out they're the killer. They did the same thing in The Great Game with Jim from I.T.

[@sohaibsanaan4139]

Sherlocks series 2 is one of the best pieces of television ever

[@MaxIronsThird]

This show jumped the shark really hard at the S2 finale, and it's almost like they noticed and just stopped giving any fucks about the writing for the subsequent episodes/seasons.

[@cwossy9345]

I don't think this was a very well-thought video, either because you don't seem to have any context to why people hate series 4, or because you didn't think it through deeply enough before cranking out the script. Sherlock series 4 is loathed because not only are the mysteries traded out for "characterization", the "characterization" skips around, jumping through HUGE chunks of what should be incredibly valuable character-building moments -- like Literally The Entirety Of John's Home Life -- in favour of useless fluff that pretends to be a mystery, usually to accentuate how amazing Sherlock is, not to mention the frankly absurd hook of episode 1 where he became obsessed with a bust Just Because. The entire season was completely meaningless, feeling like things only happened because they had an idea for a scene rather than an idea for a story. It's an incomprehensible mess full of "oh, by the way, forgot to mentions" on both the character and the detective front. Not to mention when there ARE high-impact moments, they're ultimately non-entities in the narrative, like Mary dying yet remaining a strong presence in the story to the point that her death becomes narratively meaningless. Not because we expect her to come back, but because it affects NOTHING. The final episode was just the cherry on top where people realize that the plot wasn't clipping through what should be valuable character scenes because it was building a sense of uncertainty and vagueness, it was just terrible writing. A character with the entire setup being "oh she's Sherlock but perfect-er", except she's never used as a device to comment on Sherlock's personality? And she's so smart she's essentially just a psychic? Despite series 2 ending in a fantastic bait-and-switch of "there's no such thing as a control-all, I just used a particular skill set that was repeatedly foreshadowed in the other episodes"? These are really obvious problems, and waiting for you to point out what a mess the writing was only for you to go "oh, viewers don't like change" felt like...well, watching series 4.

[@vampbat]

Just wanted to say that reading the gap about the whole of John's home life made me sit and nod for a good long while before I could keep going on and reading. I really thought we'd see something of Harry in s4, since she was such a strong presence on that officially-ran real-life blog of John's. And Mary's death being narratively useless! Exactly correct!!

[@bobjones2959]

All of the "characterisation" that happened in the season 4 finale emplyed stupid plot twists that weren't foreshadowed properly and undercut everything we knew about the show and the main character. It was cheap and lazy, of course people would hate it,

[@ItsaGiftAndACurse03]

But while talking about The lying detective you must consider the story that it is based on ,,The Adventure of the Dying Detective,, and that is the story where Sherlock pretends to be dying arrest Culverton Smith for the murder of his nephew. Smith points out that his word is as good as Holmes’s in court, but Holmes then calls for Watson to emerge from behind the screen, to present himself as another witness to the conversation. I thing the Sherlock episode was a clever twist of that plot.

[@elbraymundo]

"You would be hardpressed to find a season of television more divisive by Sherlock Season 4." Game of Thrones: Hold my beer.

[@attackofthecopyrightbots]

2021 and doesnt look like therell be another season good

[@scrumptiousbisquitz1140]

Bruv got to give it to you The change to the sponsorship part was SMOOOTH

[@Rg-fp2vg]

AFaysE _7 I thought it was part of the video tbh

[@fodsaks]

For me, the show showed it was going wrong in the Watson wedding story. A needle in the back of a belt buckle that was so thin you wouldn't feel it piercing your skin and injecting poison into you... While going though several layers of thick military uniform and not breaking, by the way.

[@mr.phillips]

0:34 "Many agree this episode, the hounds of baskerville, is one of the shows best" For real?

[@godot8694]

No in fact most people consider it to be just good. Not bad but not great either

[@jeremytewari3346]

Yeah I was pretty sure most people thought it was pretty average. Like a completely fun, passable episode

[@rosstaylor4049]

It was just lazy too, they couldn’t think of a way to tie it all together at the end so they just had Sherlock think REALLY hard until the answer just popped into his head, so annoying

[@viennacheng3912]

@@rosstaylor4049 well we can't have all the episodes be epic, I think Netflix would explode from sheer awesomeness lol. Besides, the episode was just fun to watch.

[@ramothyreal]

Yeah there are plenty better episodes in my opinion :/

[@dhruv9744]

The problem with the audience is that they think they're watching the show from the perspective of Sherlock, when infact we're watching it from the perspective of John Watson. Only season 4 episode 1 and 3 is shown from the perspective of Sherlock in the entire show ( and ig The Abominable Bride aswell). You can maybe stretch that argument to season 3 episode 1 as well.