Highlight of the trailer is easily Martin Freeman's magnificent mustache. Lowlight is probably the Inception music.
Agreed, regardless of the quality of the rest of the production, all will be well with the glory that is the Freemanstache.
Highlight of the trailer is easily Martin Freeman's magnificent mustache. Lowlight is probably the Inception music.
Agreed, regardless of the quality of the rest of the production, all will be well with the glory that is the Freemanstache.
Its fun that it'll just be a one off set in-period to tide us over until they actually do another… sigh... three episodes.
Here's hoping it takes itself seriously as a drama and doesn't force a bunch of stupid fourth wall breaking herp a derp we're in the Victorian ages see?!? fan shoutout Moffatisms into it.
looks at trailer
Never mind.
Its possible the trailer contains most of the shout outs already.
If its 2 or 3 lines in the course of 90 minutes, its fine. If its much more than that, its a little overkill.
Its possible the trailer contains most of the shout outs already.
If its 2 or 3 lines in the course of 90 minutes, its fine. If its much more than that, its a little overkill.
I agree, here's hoping.
My body is ready..
Well, that was a thing.
! These were the absolute worst tendencies of Moffat condensed into 90 minutes. Zero restraint, control or professionalism.
! Moffat has talent as a writer but he's too clever for his own good. At points in the episode, he might as well came out in front of the audience and started winking and making farting noises. "Teehee, get it, eh eh, I'm so clever!"
! The thing is he's not as smart as he thinks he is, from the moment it started with a woman blowing her brains out, I knew it was going to connect to Present Day Moriarty, silly me I thought he was going to be subtle about it, make an independent story and flash to the end in present day and let the audience draw the parallels between the two cases as a way to easing us into Moriarty being alive with tricks used in the Victorian era case. Nope, turns out this whole thing was one stupid Lynchian dream culminating with some of the stupidest fanfiction I've ever seen. "Hurr hurr Moriarty is putting Holmes down and calling him a loser but Watson is here to save the day! Look Watson kicked Moriarty of the Reicenbach, it's what we all wanted to see right?!" It's basically a seld-parody at this point and a bad one. And it just makes the entire case, the draw of the episode, the freakin' title feel peripheral to boot"
! The whole episode was a tonal mess narratively and visually. For every speck of good drama we get, we get stupid scenes like Watson fucking up sign language, fat Mycroft eating food with the camera zooming into his pudgy mouth, lots of stupid camera zooms and camera swirls and stupid scene transitions and who even cares about the drama? Moffat sure didn't, every speck of interesting drama was negated by the fact that it was all in Holmes's head. Not that the actual resolution of the case was that good, really feminists wearing purple KKK robes (fyi, the orange pips was taken from "the Case of the Five Orange pips, a tool used by the KKK, I know you were trying to be clever with your references Moffat but you basically equated feminism with the KKK)? And the episode does this weird thing of lionizing them even though they're murderers but honestly who cares, Moriarty flat out came in and said who cares, it doesn't make sense, we know what the audience wants to see!
! It's this very not clever fourth wall breaking, eye winking writing that I'm sick to death of. Both in Sherlock and in Doctor Who. That and Moffat constantly fellating their characters without any sort of justification. We're constantly told how they're these wonderful, amazing genius individuals (River Song basically spent half the episode doing that in the Christmas Special) without any demonstration on why they're so amazing. We're simply told they're great but never really prove it in the story. He builds up the legend of the Doctor or Sherlock without actually building it up, we're just supposed to accept it. The writing constantly praises these characters but they never do a goddamn thing to live up to that praise.
! It's just a broken record at this point, Moffat parodied this in the Doctor Who and the three Doctors thing when he was playing with those Doctor Who figurines but at this point, that fiction is closely matching the reality. And the worst part is it's so repetitive and pervasive in all his work now and he shows no sign of changing his ways or doing something new or different. Moffat was great when he had strict control or guidance to temper his talent but left to his own devices, he just makes huge messes of fanfiction story-teling.
! Ugh
! P.S. Thank you Moriarty for demonstrating so aptly why I hate you. Taking a classic Sherlock line about fingering pistols and turning it into a dick joke. The height of clever comedy. Oh and that classic line "Death is the new sexy!"
! Ughhhhhhh
! I like this series. Even the third season disappointed some, I still liked it (except the nonsensical ending and Mary).
But this was… to put in one word "ill-conceived".
Acting was over-the-top (unbearably so), the story was uninteresting, solution was preposterous and its link to the original series was just contrived.
! The warning siren went off the roof when Molly Hooper appeared with fake mustache.
After the aptly titled Abominable Bride, here's Season 4 teaser.
How'd people like the season premiere?
Most of the episode was pretty good (if a little overblown) but the big climax was a mess. I'd call it slightly above Season 3's average but still below the quality of the first two seasons.
How'd people like the season premiere?
I thought it was pretty interesting! A lot going on, for sure. More detailed thoughts below that are spoiler-y.
! Mary's past coming back to haunt her was no surprise. Not gonna lie though, while I was expecting her to die at some point this season, I didn't think it'd be in the premiere. I kinda felt during the whole time it was happening like the aquarium scene at the climax was building up to Norbury trying to kill someone, and I literally shrieked out loud when she pulled the trigger, but I have to admit I was hoping it was just gonna badly injure somebody. (I actually sort of expected John to walk in at the last minute and startle her into shooting him by accident or something, because Sherlock getting shot and almost dying is "been there, done that" by this point.) Once it was Mary who was shot, though, it was pretty clear she was a goner. And having it happen by jumping in front of him and taking the bullet? Freakin' ouch. Apparently they're gonna be putting everybody through the ringer this season.
! Sherlock's "vow" being brought up again multiple times this episode also served as heavy-handed foreshadowing, though again, I was figuring it'd come back in a later episode. Guess that's the problem with making promises like that; no matter how brilliant you are, you're still human, and there are some things that are simply out of your control. I was kind of expecting that John was gonna hold it against Sherlock for not being able to fulfill the vow, though I was hoping that wouldn't be the case. Sherlock shooting his mouth off and making Norbury mad was a pretty dumb move, but Mary made the choice to take the bullet for him, he literally did not have the time or ability to physically stop her from doing so, and I have no doubt that he would have stopped her if he could, or done the same for her if the situation had been reversed. He's already shown how far he's willing to go to protect John and Mary. John briefly blaming him out of grief might make sense, since you tend to want to find someone to blame in these kinds of situations, but I really hope it doesn't last all season. The dynamics between Sherlock and John are a major part of what I've always loved about this series, and I don't want to have to go without that for most of the already-limited time we have left. I'm hoping they'll manage to fix things by next episode, and not have to wait until the finale for it.
! Then there was that whole weird thing about John texting that random woman he met on the bus. It was kept kind of ambiguous how far it went, but considering that she said "Miss you" in one of her texts, that seems to imply that they at least saw each other in person again at some point between the two times we saw John with her at the bus stops. Gotta say, I wasn't really a fan of the implied characterization that John might have been cheating on his wife, or at least been getting a little too friendly with someone else, right after they had a child together, and I'm hoping it'll turn out to not be what it looked like. I'm not sure it if was just supposed to be there to give John another reason to feel guilty/horrible about Mary's death, or if the woman is actually gonna be related to a case in one of the next two eps; I hope the latter is the truth, because then at least that whole uncomfortable issue will actually have a real point to it.
! I also noticed at the end when Mycroft called and asked to be put through to Sherrinford. Isn't "Sherrinford Holmes" one of the original planned possible names for Sherlock, and kind of a popular fanon name for a potential older Holmes brother? That's pretty damned interesting. Can't wait to meet him!
All my feels just fell out of me thanks to that episode. GREAT premiere. Really looking forward to the direction this season is going. Sheesh.
Frankly speaking I didn't like the episode much. I know it's getting touchy and personal now which was supposed to be the focus of this season but I watch Sherlock not for the emotional drama it brings so sort of disappointed. Perhaps that drama can be a build up of the actual foes of this season?
! There never really was anything in this episode. Everything was just aptly built up to make Mary die. Yes the conspiracy about her whole mission and the person behind it etc was a big mystery which ended with being yet another case solved by Holmes but however, at the end, it just ended up with turning on the emotional feels with Mary's death. The foreshadowing of Moriarty's haunting words and actions might amount to something later on of course but that's the only part which was more "Sherlock" and puzzling rather than a blatant attempt at squeezing the emotions out of a self proclaimed sociopath. Perhaps Mary's death could have been an effect initiated by the foreshadowed villain and not just an emotional blockade giving Sherlock more of a challenge to reach the end point of the much awaited game.
Goddamit this episode is awful . . . .
Goddamit this episode is awful . . . .
Phew. I thought I was the only one who hated this episode looking at the past coupla posts o_O
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The group of people I was with while watching absolutely lambasted the ending. It was certainly fun to listen to :p
Put me as another who thought this sucked. It's so sad to see a show that had such potential for intrigue and deep mystery settle for this melodramatic soap opera crap. it just feels so…small.
SPOILERS BELOW
! The writers went out of their way to rehash the Mary was a secret assassin subplot, a mystery I personally never cared for and it fettered out to be nothing more than an excusr to inject emotional angst between Holmes and Watson. Because that's why I fell in love with the books, for the emotional drama between Holmes and his bff Watson, oh my god like are they gonna kiss or not? And I feel sorry for any Mary fans given how they threw her so hard into the fridge all for the sake of the development of the MALE characters. For a case that was supposed to revolve around her, her feelings on the matter sure meant very little. Even after death, she was telling Sherlock to save Watson, making HER death about THEM.
! Also God, was Sherlock stupid in this. And I don't wanna hear anything about how he's feeling suicidal or conflicted, he was just plain retarded. Hey there's this guy going around breaking busts of Thatcher, he's killed people over this. Let me just confront him by myself instead of setting up an ambush (like in the books). Hey, I found out the secretary was leaking government secrets, let's confront her instead of telling the police to arrest her and while I'm at it let me goad her into shooting me while she's holding a gun. Whoops, Mary died…well that totally wasn't avoidable!
! Also the mystery sucked, hey the culprit was this one random character who you only saw for five minutes! Might as well called her Old Man Jenkins.
! Also I guess we're just going to handwave away any emotional or physical consequence to Holmes murdering a man in cold blood, k.
This episode sucked, tt wasn't as obnoxiously bad as some of the season 3 episodes but it was pretty mediocre.
! Well Mary did died in the book so I more or less expected this to happen…
She was always the unwanted third wheel, unfortunately...
At least the fans who HATED Mary will be happy she is gone so Sherlock and Watson can finally be together!:getlost:
I have seen fans bitching that Mary ruin their otp and seem like the writer agree in some way….It's the Sherlock and Watson show afterall...
! The thing is I don't have anything against character dying to create angst for another character PROVIDED it's done right. This rarely happen. Most of the time, it's to create unnecessary drama or the writer just wanted to get rid of the character (usually female love interest).
Oh man reading some of your non spoiler comments makes me a little afraid to finally start watching season 4. ^^ I hope I wont be disappointed, but I won't be surprised as well, since they had started to fail here and there more often with later seasons.
! with sherlock death being fake, moriatys death is full of controversy, i dont care much about characters being suposedly death or alive, so i dont care mary is death. the case was kind of boring aswell. dint feel invested at all at the second part of the episode
! with sherlock death being fake, moriatys death is full of controversy, i dont care much about characters being suposedly death or alive, so i dont care mary is death. the case was kind of boring aswell. dint feel invested at all at the second part of the episode
! The friends I was watching it with and I definitely joked thatary would walk about from behind a tree at the end of the episode just like Sherlock at the end of season 2. Would have cheapened death for the rest of the season but at least she wouldn't have been fridged six feet under.
New episode
! That wasn't all that bad but the hype the episode's villain got kind of had a pretty awkward anti climax. But much better than the first episode of course. I liked how they tried to make, with great difficulty, both Sherlock and Watson emotionally similar although being altruistically far off which was sort of the given from the start of the series.
! The big reveal was pretty cool. Was the whole Moriarty hype a plan to save Sherlock from ending up in jail? I remember Mycroft saying "The east wind is coming" end of episode last season so technically he might be directly referring to their sister's return.
! Or is she the absolute sociopathic evil that the show never replaced after Moriarty left? Would be interesting to see.
Apparently this is the best second episode so far. Don't know why I'm not just making time to watch these episodes but haven't (technically still haven't seen the 4th season 3 episode either)
! Everybody and their mother is talking about the Saville and
Cheeto BenitoTrump (!) parallels in Culverton Smith but I'm surprised how relatively few people aren't getting Harold Shipman vibes.
! Actually that's kind of genius innit; when the fictional villains start running out - look to real life for the source.
! Also lol to Mycroft denying "another Holmes brother" Moffat ya sneaky arsehole
First episode was kind of meh, just all over the place. The second was much better, but Toby Jones is pretty awesome in general. I kind of want the episodes to just go back to being cool mystery stories and not all drama between Sherlock and Watson, though.
First episode was kind of meh, just all over the place. The second was much better, but Toby Jones is pretty awesome in general. I kind of want the episodes to just go back to being cool mystery stories and not all drama between Sherlock and Watson, though.
i am getting tired of stuff happining at gunpoint, its over used and for a show that revolves around smart people, there are a lot of dumb gun involved. i want the show to get back to talking and thoughts instead of guns, drugs and action
First episode was kind of meh, just all over the place. The second was much better, but Toby Jones is pretty awesome in general. I kind of want the episodes to just go back to being cool mystery stories and not all drama between Sherlock and Watson, though.
Wonder if that's intentional though m. I mean, it is obviously, and I admittedly don't know about Moffat as a director, but in seasons 1-2, the second episode which were just primarily mystery stories, were the episodes poorly viewed comparatively to the other episodes.
Wonder if that's intentional though m. I mean, it is obviously, and I admittedly don't know about Moffat as a director, but in seasons 1-2, the second episode which were just primarily mystery stories, were the episodes poorly viewed comparatively to the other episodes.
It probably is. But I don't know if correlation implies causation in that case.
Ah, just realized I never wrote up my review for this. S'pose I should do that.
! Unlike many others, I did like the previous episode (though I agree it was all over the place), but I definitely liked "The Lying Detective" better. In all of the previous seasons, the second episode was my least favorite of the three, so I was very happy that Series 4 bucked the trend.
! There were still a few things I wasn't fully on board with. I feel like the "hallucinating a dead person talking to you" trope is a bit overused, though I did appreciate that at least John's vision of Mary was straight-up pointing out that she wasn't real. Also, Sherlock tripping out on drugs got a little too weird sometimes, to the point that I wondered more than once if the entire episode was just gonna be a giant Sherlock drug fest. Then there was the fact that Sherlock declaring that Culverton Smith was the "most horrible, foul enemy he's ever faced and he considers it his life's mission to bring him down" (paraphrased) was already more-or-less exactly what he said about Magnussen last season, and was heavily implied to be his feelings towards Moriarty as well. By now it's getting a bit worn out. Lastly, Mary's tape about "saving John" felt a little too contrived in some places, considering that she wouldn't have had any way of knowing that Sherlock would be considered at fault for her death and that he and John would have a falling out that needed to be reconciled at all. The whole line of "Go and pick a fight with a bad guy, put yourself at risk" felt especially weird to me for some reason…maybe because he already pretty much does that for his work? Dunno, something about some of that stuff felt kind of off. I guess the text from Irene coming right as John is leaving, and fact that it happens to be Sherlock's birthday that day, are kind of contrived too, but since I really liked that scene overall, maybe that's why I don't mind it as much.
! Honestly, though, those things are pretty much just small nitpicks, and other than that, I loved the ep. It was one of those ones where a lot of stuff seems weird or doesn't make sense as it's happening, but once you reach the end and it's all tied up, you're like "Ohhhhh, nice!" Even though I complained about Sherlock re-using the whole "worst villain I've ever faced" monologue, Smith was an appropriately foul and menacing villain, probably my second-favorite (in an "interesting bad guy that you love to hate" kind of way) after Moriarty, and was brought down in an awesome way that leaves you cheering. Sherlock did a lot of great planning ahead in this episode, and even after suffering a setback when it turned out the "Faith" he met was fake, he still managed to make things work out excellently in his favor, to the point that his plan for Culverton's downfall still would have worked even if Smith actually had managed to kill him. The fact that Sherlock survived was partially luck of John getting there in time, but the way it happened was because of Sherlock putting his trust in John and Mary, and it working out perfectly for him, so I have no complaints there.
! And of course, it wasn't just Sherlock who was amazing this ep, either. Mrs. Hudson had some ridiculously badass moments like her crazy driving in a sweet car, successfully out-deducing Mycroft about his own brother, and coming up with a way to get Sherlock's gun away from him and then forcing him into the car at gunpoint. John–on his own and through his Mary-projection--also had some good deductions, like figuring out on his own how Sherlock guessed whom John would choose for a therapist before John had decided himself. I did appreciate that at least John came to terms with texting the lady from the bus (and that said lady did indeed have more of a purpose than just a guilt plot device, see below), and that the relationship was ultimately nothing more than texting. I was also really glad that they did indeed patch up their friendship in this episode, as I hoped they would. The end of that scene, where John broke down crying after making his confession and Sherlock hugged him and did his best to comfort him, actually had me tearing up a little.
! But above all, that ending, yo. The end of the last episode left me wanting more, but not in a way that made it hard to wait until the next week to see the next piece. This time, though…it's like, Sunday cannot come soon enough. It was brilliant--the way they kept mentioning Sherrinford, only to have that not turn out to actually be the third sibling? The way it turned out the be a sister instead of a brother? ("Sherlock's not your only brother, there's another one, isn't there?" "No." It's the truth!) The way they tied in that "east wind" stuff we kept hearing about at the end of last season by making that the sister's name, Eurus? But above all…the fact that the same actress was able to play three different characters--John's bus lady, the fake "Faith Smith", and the therapist--but be disguised so well that you still don't notice that it's the same person until the show explicitly tells you so? Hats off to the makeup department, they did a great job. I mean, maybe some other people watching the episode did noticed, but I watched it multiple times, with two different friends, and none of the three of us spotted it on our first watch-throughs. It makes it so much more believable that the characters themselves could have been taken in by it, considering we saw this lady more than any one of them did, but were still fooled. One of those "fair play whodunnits" where it was right there in front of you, but well-hidden enough that it's hard to spot. Truly, I was very impressed.
! And with a cliffhanger like that, I'm extremely eager for the finale in a couple of days. We've been seeing flashback snips of Sherlock, his dog, and possibly other kids playing in the water, so I'm guessing that'll almost certainly turn out to be a memory of the Holmes children (all three of them, or at least Sherlock and Eurus together). Very interested to see that full scene. The only thing I'm not looking forward to is it being done already. The seasons of this show really are too short!
Still haven't gotten to the new episodes yet. Running my wife through the series first, and we've been taking our time on it. (Had planned to be caught up by the time the new season started, but its hard to hunker down for the free time to really focus on it.)
Just got to the season 2 ender/season 3 opener. It's the first time I've watched that cliffhanger since the solution was given in season 3, and the first time I've watched the season 3 episode.
So its been 2 and 4 years since I last watched these episodes. They flow together much better and the solution seems much fairer and actually planned this time around. And all the cheekiness of playing with the fan expectations after a 2 year gap feel more lighthearted and fun, rather than snarky and mean. Interesting how that works when its just back to back and without the huge gap in there.
Two more episodes and the special to go… then onto the new stuff!
Finally managed to catch up with the fourth season. (really, too busy these days. I miss being online at Arlongpark all day)
The first episode is one of the worst episode in the entirety of this show.
The over-acting was cringey (mostly from Mary), the plot was incoherent and while I didn't like the character of Mary to begin with, her character goes through rather idiotic and pointless scenes.
The second episode The Lying Detective, however, is one of the very best of Sherlock episodes.
Toby Jones is delightfully hideous and his over-acting works very well with his character.
Dizzyingly fast-paced, genuinely creepy villain, I enjoyed it very much.
The final episode of this season was pretty good.
I thought it was so ridiculous, so far-fetched and made Mycroft look like an idiot but hey it was fun.
One day I'm going to let go of my petty vindictiveness against Moffat after what happened with Season 4 but today is not that day: