Beware, Sherlock fans, if you didn't see last night's episode. Spoilers be here!
"SHERLOCK: The Sign of Three" then. What a train wreck. It ill behooves a series, written by two of the cleverest writers in the UK about two of the cleverest brothers ever plus their medical chum, to make schoolboy errors in plotting and pacing. (We know Mark Gatiss IS Mycroft so Steven Moffat must be Sherlock. Does that make Steve Thompson Watson?) Allow me to do a sort of reverse-Watson deconstruction of last night.
I doubt if even Nigel Bruce's bufferish Watson would have been as baffled for as long as Sherlock was but the problems started with Lestrade's subplot. First of all, Chekhov's famous dictum about a gun in act one. If you show brilliant gang getting away with it at the beginning, justice must come at the END. Just hinting that Lestrade's trap had finally worked as he runs to be with Sherlock is weak and confused. Then the leaving itself. Lestrade is a driven copper, a real one in the story. He would never leave the "collar" in his assistant's hands for so little reason. It was a cute gag but the gag was seen coming a mile off, like a weak American sit-com sting.
Then there was the interminable drunk section. First of all, why only two of them? They have enough male friends, especially from John's side, to go on a Stag. Why no Lestrade especially after last week's unexpected big hug? I appreciate we now have two big film stars headlining a series, their fame having grown since the series started. The drunk acting was, consequently, brilliant. A master-class. Very funny. Too LONG. Too self-indulgent. Gattis and Moffat. Kill your babies. This was flabby.
It also padded out a childishly simple plot. Oh my. Who might be the target in a room of wedding guests? If it isn't Holmes and Watson, might it be the battle-scarred soldier with his campaign ribbons whom no-one expected to show up but who gets "more death-threats than even you, Holmes?" Given part of the plot was the almost murder of ANOTHER soldier? Could it possibly be him? Given that, the drunk scene looks like smoke and mirrors to pad the mystery out by clouding Sherlock's intellect.
Finally, the humanisation of Holmes. Don't go there! The love was so palpable at the end I expected the Famous Four (Holmes, Mr. and Mrs Watson and the Watson baby (aaawwwwww) to laugh off the previous days of terror and freeze-frame like POLICE SQUAD.
There was hardly enough plot here for sixty minutes let alone ninety and now we really must address the Elephant in the Room. (See what I did there?)
Benedict Cumberbatch's old sparring partner, Jonny Lee Miller, is playing Sherlock in the American series ELEMENTARY. In that series, what Sherlock is and does has consequences. His Lestrade has suffered for his alliance with a high-functioning sociopath. Another supporting character was shot saving Sherlock and still can't forgive him as his hand is paralysed. His Watson is pulling away from him, growing both as a woman and as a detective.
My point is, Gatiss and Moffat, is that you are acting like Mycroft and Sherlock. You love the puzzles but your grasp of human motivation seems tenuous at best. You go for the easy laugh and expect your talented stars to hold the screen while you work out what to do next. Your brilliant creation is in danger of becoming a Fabergé Egg, scintillating on the surface but empty inside. Time to put Sherlock back into that cold and frightening space that is his and his alone. The operative word is "alone". Time to get serious about your writing.
PS: Yes, I'm aware that the third writer was Steve Thompson, responsible for two of the worst DOCTOR WHO episodes of the modern era but this series has your names above his. You are responsible. Fix it.
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