Here’s a sentence that’ll sound straight out of 2011: There’s a lot to be said about the newest season of "Sherlock."
Premiering in 2010, BBC’s golden child exploded into a world phenomenon that helped cast Martin Freeman (John Watson) in blockbuster roles and made Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock Holmes) into a pretty hard-to-spell household name. It was an interesting, clever, modern take on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic characters that spun viewers around creative, high-energy, and most crucially, believable mysteries. It was delightful— until it wasn’t.
Over time, and especially in the newest fourth season, the show became a parody of itself— plot holes nearly outnumbered loose ends and nothing ever added up, and for what? A few witty quips and writing “risks” to try to stay relevant and edgy? Showrunners Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat haven’t had a good track record with writing well-received plot lines— be it queer-baiting audiences for years or using female characters to merely prop up male ones— but at least it was possible to just barely keep up with the famous detective’s deductions. And for a while, Sherlock and co.’s flighty shenanigans and general zaniness was enough to entertain. Then hubris set in, just as it always plagued Sherlock, and scripts became increasingly self-indulgent (Moffat plays Sherlock’s older brother, Mycroft, who never fails to mention that he is the smarter Holmes brother) and convoluted.
Take the season finale: The episode opens with a child finding herself to be the only conscious person on an airplane that’s doomed to crash. Cut to Mycroft enjoying his night at his Victorian mansion home until he is suddenly terrorized by a killer clown, ghost girl, and bleeding paintings. Turns out, the horror-movie cliche was a ploy to force him to come clean about the secret third Holmes sibling—a younger sister named Eurus who has been institutionalized since childhood for being an animal-killing arsonist. As he explains that Sherlock “rewrote” his own memories to forget about the sister who left his dog, Redbird, to drown in a well, a grenade mounted on a drone detonates and destroys the 221B apartment. Sherlock, John, and Mycroft escape unscathed and immediately commandeer a boat to easily break into the maximum security island prison Azkaban/Alcatraz, here called Sherrinford.
In order to save the girl on the airplane, the trio then embarks on a series of Saw-like mind games that Eurus managed to painstakingly set up by brainwashing all prison staff through speaking to them, until Sherlock outsmarts her by threatening to shoot himself. Eurus quickly tranquilizes all three and somehow teleports them to different areas, taking time to chain John to the bottom of a well unless Sherlock can solve the riddle that led to Redbeard’s— revealed to actually be his childhood best friend Victor, not a dog— death all those years ago. In the end, Sherlock surmises that the girl in the plane is actually a metaphor of Eurus’ subconscious crying for help, and the whole ordeal that began in childhood and left six people dead is solved by giving Eurus a hug in her childhood bedroom.
Viewers are left with too many very valid questions and concerns, primarily: what the heck? Was a glorified "Saw" movie really the way to possibly end what was such a celebrated, award winning show? Why was there a Redbird dog bowl at the Holmes house if Redbeard was never a dog? A rope was thrown down to save John from drowning, but what about the unlocking the chain around his leg? Why would they allow Eurus to return to the same prison she broke out of in the first place? Why wasn’t she able to get her older brother to play with her, the reason behind for this whole mess, if she has brainwashing enslavement powers?
But the writers say to read children’s books instead if you notice that there’s something wrong with having two plus two equal five.
Clever writing made "Sherlock" so popular to begin with, and immature writing is making it painful to watch. Even "The Abominable Bride," the weirdly feminist, Victorian, drug-fueled whirlwind bonus episode that took a poignant stab at the #haters that rightfully criticized the show’s handling of female characters, was handled with more tact. Moffat and Gatiss are aware of it, but women in "Sherlock" are still used as fodder to advance the character development of the men in their lives. Mary Watson, who is supposed to be a frighteningly skilled ninja-assassin-superspy, was ungracefully fridged in order to drive John and Sherlock apart, then later shows up in a pre-recorded DVD to encourage the reconciliation of the Baker Street Boys’ bromance. Eurus herself admits to being Moriarty’s revenge on Sherlock, distilling her arc into a middleman for two dudes to continue their intellectual dueling even beyond the grave. Even the Watsons' infant daughter is very conveniently shuffled off-stage without comment to free up screen time for detective adventures.
A twee montage of those adventures ended "The Final Problem," leaving John’s status as a widowed father or the emotional fallout between Molly and Sherlock as a result of one of Eurus’ games completely unaddressed, as if nothing in the past two seasons even happened. At this point, it would be better if they hadn’t.
