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My feeling after watching the three new episodes was – "they left us dangling for years and THIS was the best they could come up with??" From sleuthing, wisecracking and kicking ass, Sherlock & friends seem to have descended into soap opera realm:
Episode 01 – Mary has disturbed past which ultimately causes her death. Episode 02 – Sherlock risks getting himself killed (various styles) in order to fall back into John's good graces. Archvillain is only a plot device. Episode 03 – There is a Holmes sister!! A madwoman in the attic!!! (And an incendiary to boost, Jane Eyre rolls eyeballs)
And granted, tongue-in-cheek is hard to keep up when there's so much personal drama all around you. The game is not on, life's become much too bitter for that. Perhaps that's why Sherlock's stoned most of the time.
The characters are there, the camaraderie is there, but the clever deductions and the suspense are not. No mystery. The greatest enigma about Culverton, for me, was – how come a British billionaire must have these rotten teeth? From the onset, Sherlock knew he was a bad guy (who would not know, I mean, with those TEETH??) No deductive process necessary. Everything is a bit too heavy in self-referencing. To me, Mary's death was completely pointless and needless, even though she did die in Doyle's original material. But there she wasn't really a key character, was she? A mother of a toddler jumps in front of a bullet to save her husband's best friend?? Even if said mother is a highly trained agent whose superpower instincts just kicked in that second, credibility is heavily strained here.
Most of all, Moriarty is video recording telepathically controlled by a prisoner?? (That's the closes I came to understanding it.) After all that cliffhanger stuff at the end of season three, (brilliant footage and after-credits!) - Sherlock was brought back because Moriarty is back but then he isn't? Continuity gods, where are you??
Like most fans, I'd been waiting for a LONG time. I think we deserved more. There must be better sources of inspiration in the Doyle canon. Conclusion: c'mon BBC, you owe us the fifth season to make up for this weak stuff. And take a look at Star Trek, the original series: personal relationships, including Kirk & Spock bromance, was always there, but it was never an excuse for lack of plot. Not in more than one episode per season anyhow.
And please don't tell me that Mary's death was Mycroft-staged. She in hiding while her family and friends suffer relentlessly would make me stop liking her.
score 6/10
leschonski 13 April 2017
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw3683939/ |
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22-11-2019 09:00:25
