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locker_monsterMuch incoherent rambling about this season of Sherlock. I do wish the seasons were longer than three episodes, but Steven Moffat only has so much time in the world and now Martin Freeman and Benedict Cumberbatch are busy being a hobbit and a Star Trek villain, respectively.
"A Scandal in Belgravia"
Since work was really slow after the holidays I was able to read the short story the episode was based on (thank you, public domain!). The basic plot is there, and though it doesn't make up the entire episode, it's still neat that Moffat worked in so much. Royalty needing help, Sherlock dressing up like a priest, using a fight to get into Irene's house, having smoke to flush out Irene's hiding spot, Sherlock calling Irene "The Woman", and his keeping a memento of hers, in this case her camera phone instead of a her photo. Sherlock Holmes fans know the story but at the same time they get some twists, which is the whole point of setting the show in the 21st century.
The resolution to the cliffhanger from season one was all right. I was totally wrong about Sherlock and John jumping into the pool to escape the snipers and/or the explosion. Instead we get Jim's cell phone's ringtone. The choice of songs was a bit ironic (and apt by the end of the season), but aside from that, meh. I guess they didn't want to fork over any money to have explosions or waste time getting the boys wet. :-)
I managed to see Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows and you can't help but draw comparisons between the two, but right off the bat I'll say that Sherlock is ten times better. There's nothing wrong with the movies, but the TV show just handles it better. Mystery is definitely Moffat's forte. Laying out clues that are important later is totally his thing. Just look at his seasons of Doctor Who. The clue laying is executed much better here, I find. On Doctor Who, it's sort of tedious. Here, it's necessary and working it all in is where Moffat excels. At the same time, he does have character moments. This is where the 90 minutes episodes are a boon. There is some time to have quiet scenes, where the characters can do more than just solve mysteries. The little family gathering at Christmas was great. That is Sherlock's family. He insults them, but he loves them in his own way.
I don't have much to say about Irene Adler but I will say that I like Moffat's interpretation of her better than what they have in the movies. You believe that she is crafty enough to outsmart Sherlock. Like the whole naked thing when they meet. It's smart. Sherlock can get a thing off of her if she's not wearing a thing. I saw that there was some uproar over Irene's nakedness being before the 9:00 hour, but it's not like it was full frontal nudity or anything. It was part of the story.
Random: Heh, they got the deerstalker in. Nice. I remember Moffat saying he was going to try. Sherlock wearing a sheet! You know, I'm surprised that Sherlock isn't naked more often. The guy doesn't see much reason in leaving the flat; wouldn't it be the same for putting on clothes? And this has nothing to do with how hot Benedict Cumberbatch looked with nothing on. ;-) I love John's blog. The fact that it's a real blog is great. Everything he was typing in the episode is on the real blog. It's the attention to detail that's so awesome. The passage of time at the beginning of the episode was, for once, a nice use of Moffat's "Let's jump ahead and skip over months!" approach. You get just a hint of how Sherlock and John's lives are being changed by the popularity of the blog, but it also doesn't drag at the same time. Sherlock's no longer just a consulting detective/crank and he actually seems like he's grown as person. I love that he puts up with John's blog. And Doctor Who references! "Christmas is cancelled!" and "When I say 'Run', run!" And I will freely admit that I enjoyed Moffat's New Year's Day Sherlock more than this Christmas Day Doctor Who.
"The Hounds of Baskerville"
I was kind of surprised to find that the original story is actually called "The Hound of the Baskervilles"; I always thought it was "The Hounds of Baskerville". So going in, I thought the story was about dogs roaming the countryside. Then I actually read the original story and it's about a dog hounding a guy named Baskerville. Amazing how adding an "s" and dropping a "the" can change your perception of the story.
Then there's the episode. I don't know why they called it "The Hounds of Baskerville" when there's only one dog. Anyway, the plot's somewhat the same. A guy named Henry (Knight=Sir?) has gone home to moors of Devonshire and he's convinced a bloodthirsty hound is after him. I appreciate that Mark Gatiss tried to keep all of the names of the characters even if the characters aren't strictly the same. Since I had actually read this one, it was fun trying to spot all of the references from the story. He even managed to work in a flashing light in the dark. In the book it was the housekeepers trying to help the wife's brother, an escaped convict. Here, well, it's nothing really important, but it was funny. The vegetarian cook even mentions the prison nearby.
But I really didn't enjoy this one too much. It was certainly entertaining, but it wasn't as good as Gatiss' episode from last season. I can't really place my finger on why. I think Sherlock needs to be solving crimes in the city, not trying to hunt down gigantic hounds in the countryside. I did find it amusing that they hired Russell Tovey to play Henry. I don't know if they intended it as an in-joke, since Tovey's character on Being Human is a werewolf and here he's being plagued by a rabid dog.
There were cute things I did like. Like, how excited Sherlock and John got at the prospect of a client. I sort of get the feeling that Sherlock is enjoying what he does, instead of it just being a way to keep his hyperactive mind busy. But he's still Sherlock, too, mocking the disappearance of Bluebell. There's also an "aw" moment when Sherlock admits he has no friends, just one friend (though that's not true by the end of the season). John's comment about Sherlock's coat made me laugh. The poor guy is going to have to wear it for the rest of his life now; it's the character's signature look. His outfit looked weird without the scarf, but I assume they were filming during the summer, so poor Benedict was stuck wearing this heavy coat. Got to compromise somewhere.
Random: I'm surprised that Sherlock can drive. I thought for sure it would have been John driving the jeep. Moffat, or possibly Gatiss, suggested in one of the commentaries that Sherlock probably doesn't know how to drive because it's another useless thing that he doesn't need cluttering up his head. And even if he does know how to drive, I can see Sherlock saying to John "You drive. I need to think." But whatever. At one point, when John's running through the forest, there's one particular shot of him and I couldn't help but think, "He's running like a hobbit." I think it matched a shot of Martin Freeman from The Hobbit trailer, so that's probably why, but maybe he still had some of Bilbo in him from filming. ;-) John calls Sherlock "Spock" at one point and that made me laugh, too. Obviously the episode was written way before Benedict Cumberbatch was cast in the new Star Trek movie, but it's still funny.
"The Reichenbach Fall"
I guess it's third time's the charm for Steve Thompson. He wrote the weakest episode from last season and his episode of Doctor Who wasn't that great. This was pretty good. Moved along at a good clip and I wasn't bored at any point, but maybe it's because there is no time to be bored. Every scene counts. It was the same with last season's finale. There's a momentum that doesn't stop until the very end.
Ah, the end. If you know the stories, well, you saw it coming. The movie had the same problem. The second you have Moriarty and Reichenbach Falls, you know that the story is going to end with Sherlock's "death". It's the why that becomes the exciting part. Instead of Sherlock and John just running off the Switzerland, like in the short story, you have something completely different. The spirit of the story is the same, though, and I liked that. If you're going to adapt one of the more well known stories, you have to change things. It can't be the same. So, we get Moriarty discrediting Sherlock. That was fun. He stripped away everything that was Sherlock until he had nothing left and it really forced him to be clever. I wouldn't have minded seeing more of Sherlock and John on the run. Having the two of them handcuffed together, running around London, would have been funny, though I suppose it might have gotten old quick.
For a second, I was convinced that maybe Moriarty wasn't Moriarty. That he was just a guy playing a part and that the real Moriarty was off somewhere else. Maybe that's still true, you never know. If you can kill off Sherlock and bring him back, why not Moriarty, too. We'll see. Moriarty only appeared once in the stories, but he's still a big part of the Sherlock Holmes mythos.
And speaking of mythos, I'm glad that they showed that Sherlock was still alive instead of leaving it ambiguous. It's not cheap because that's how it happened in the books. Holmes faked his death and then came back. I like to think that it was the first "comic book death" in literature. ;-) But then now you have a problem. How will Sherlock tell John that he's alive? In the short story he just showed up in disguise at John's practice, but I don't think that would work here. And then there are the trust issues. Sherlock couldn't even tell John, his best friend, that he was faking his death. But I can see why he didn't; it was to protect John, and everyone else, in the end. So we'll see how that plays out, probably a year from now or whenever Martin Freeman is done filming The Hobbit.
It's kind of interesting how this season of Sherlock and the sixth season of Doctor Who were sort of the same. You have the main character faking his own death and tricking his friends into believing that he's dead. It's probably just a coincidence, but both Sherlock and the Doctor were getting too "noisy". Dying was the only way to get to a quieter life. And I wonder if Moffat and Gatiss were a little miffed with the latest movie. They both ended the same way, more or less. Sherlock's was obviously better. :-)
Random: Toby Haynes is awesome. No wonder Moffat chose him to come direct for the show. I like that he embraced the HUD thing that the other director started. That didn't happen last season and I think that's why "The Blind Banker" kind of sucked. Ah, the deerstalker. Sherlock's like the opposite of the Doctor. He doesn't like hats at all. :-) I'm glad he got to wear it again; now we can have proper icons of him wearing it. There were a few things from the story that they kept, like Sherlock and Moriarty's confrontation at the flat and the fake medical crisis that pulls John away. And of course Molly helped Sherlock fake his death. Were we really meant to think that he went to see her to have, um, well, a night with her? I kept seeing Doctor Who filming locations. The police station is Gwen's police station; is that the only one in Cardiff? Being Human filmed there, too. And was the private school the orphanage from "Day of the Moon"? The hallway looked the same. It would be kind of ironic if it was since Toby Haynes shot that episode, too. And, oh Sherlock. You fake your own death and you don't even bother to change out of your signature coat. You're supposed to be dead. Incognito.
Oh, I saw something online asking about how did Sherlock fake his death. Somebody mentioned a laundry truck during the rooftop scene. It is there, but for Sherlock to have landed on it, it would have had to been right under him. I suppose that could have been possible. You see it driving off just before John reaches the scene. Obviously the cyclist was meant to knock him down to gain a few seconds. So Sherlock landed on the laundry bags and paid help rolled out a dead look alike? Another theory also suggests that Sherlock's coat helped to slow his fall. Um, what? The second his coat becomes a important plot point, I'm going to stop watching...
This might be hard, since the boys are so busy filming other things, but I'd love to see Martin Freeman and Benedict Cumberbatch on Doctor Who. Not as John and Sherlock, mind you, but as similar characters. Then they could all have an adventure with the Doctor without it turning into a crossover (I think they've referenced Sherlock Holmes on Doctor Who. Yes/no?). Maybe that's a little too far-fetched, but at least we'd be able to get in more Sherlock. ;-)
"A Scandal in Belgravia"
Since work was really slow after the holidays I was able to read the short story the episode was based on (thank you, public domain!). The basic plot is there, and though it doesn't make up the entire episode, it's still neat that Moffat worked in so much. Royalty needing help, Sherlock dressing up like a priest, using a fight to get into Irene's house, having smoke to flush out Irene's hiding spot, Sherlock calling Irene "The Woman", and his keeping a memento of hers, in this case her camera phone instead of a her photo. Sherlock Holmes fans know the story but at the same time they get some twists, which is the whole point of setting the show in the 21st century.
The resolution to the cliffhanger from season one was all right. I was totally wrong about Sherlock and John jumping into the pool to escape the snipers and/or the explosion. Instead we get Jim's cell phone's ringtone. The choice of songs was a bit ironic (and apt by the end of the season), but aside from that, meh. I guess they didn't want to fork over any money to have explosions or waste time getting the boys wet. :-)
I managed to see Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows and you can't help but draw comparisons between the two, but right off the bat I'll say that Sherlock is ten times better. There's nothing wrong with the movies, but the TV show just handles it better. Mystery is definitely Moffat's forte. Laying out clues that are important later is totally his thing. Just look at his seasons of Doctor Who. The clue laying is executed much better here, I find. On Doctor Who, it's sort of tedious. Here, it's necessary and working it all in is where Moffat excels. At the same time, he does have character moments. This is where the 90 minutes episodes are a boon. There is some time to have quiet scenes, where the characters can do more than just solve mysteries. The little family gathering at Christmas was great. That is Sherlock's family. He insults them, but he loves them in his own way.
I don't have much to say about Irene Adler but I will say that I like Moffat's interpretation of her better than what they have in the movies. You believe that she is crafty enough to outsmart Sherlock. Like the whole naked thing when they meet. It's smart. Sherlock can get a thing off of her if she's not wearing a thing. I saw that there was some uproar over Irene's nakedness being before the 9:00 hour, but it's not like it was full frontal nudity or anything. It was part of the story.
Random: Heh, they got the deerstalker in. Nice. I remember Moffat saying he was going to try. Sherlock wearing a sheet! You know, I'm surprised that Sherlock isn't naked more often. The guy doesn't see much reason in leaving the flat; wouldn't it be the same for putting on clothes? And this has nothing to do with how hot Benedict Cumberbatch looked with nothing on. ;-) I love John's blog. The fact that it's a real blog is great. Everything he was typing in the episode is on the real blog. It's the attention to detail that's so awesome. The passage of time at the beginning of the episode was, for once, a nice use of Moffat's "Let's jump ahead and skip over months!" approach. You get just a hint of how Sherlock and John's lives are being changed by the popularity of the blog, but it also doesn't drag at the same time. Sherlock's no longer just a consulting detective/crank and he actually seems like he's grown as person. I love that he puts up with John's blog. And Doctor Who references! "Christmas is cancelled!" and "When I say 'Run', run!" And I will freely admit that I enjoyed Moffat's New Year's Day Sherlock more than this Christmas Day Doctor Who.
"The Hounds of Baskerville"
I was kind of surprised to find that the original story is actually called "The Hound of the Baskervilles"; I always thought it was "The Hounds of Baskerville". So going in, I thought the story was about dogs roaming the countryside. Then I actually read the original story and it's about a dog hounding a guy named Baskerville. Amazing how adding an "s" and dropping a "the" can change your perception of the story.
Then there's the episode. I don't know why they called it "The Hounds of Baskerville" when there's only one dog. Anyway, the plot's somewhat the same. A guy named Henry (Knight=Sir?) has gone home to moors of Devonshire and he's convinced a bloodthirsty hound is after him. I appreciate that Mark Gatiss tried to keep all of the names of the characters even if the characters aren't strictly the same. Since I had actually read this one, it was fun trying to spot all of the references from the story. He even managed to work in a flashing light in the dark. In the book it was the housekeepers trying to help the wife's brother, an escaped convict. Here, well, it's nothing really important, but it was funny. The vegetarian cook even mentions the prison nearby.
But I really didn't enjoy this one too much. It was certainly entertaining, but it wasn't as good as Gatiss' episode from last season. I can't really place my finger on why. I think Sherlock needs to be solving crimes in the city, not trying to hunt down gigantic hounds in the countryside. I did find it amusing that they hired Russell Tovey to play Henry. I don't know if they intended it as an in-joke, since Tovey's character on Being Human is a werewolf and here he's being plagued by a rabid dog.
There were cute things I did like. Like, how excited Sherlock and John got at the prospect of a client. I sort of get the feeling that Sherlock is enjoying what he does, instead of it just being a way to keep his hyperactive mind busy. But he's still Sherlock, too, mocking the disappearance of Bluebell. There's also an "aw" moment when Sherlock admits he has no friends, just one friend (though that's not true by the end of the season). John's comment about Sherlock's coat made me laugh. The poor guy is going to have to wear it for the rest of his life now; it's the character's signature look. His outfit looked weird without the scarf, but I assume they were filming during the summer, so poor Benedict was stuck wearing this heavy coat. Got to compromise somewhere.
Random: I'm surprised that Sherlock can drive. I thought for sure it would have been John driving the jeep. Moffat, or possibly Gatiss, suggested in one of the commentaries that Sherlock probably doesn't know how to drive because it's another useless thing that he doesn't need cluttering up his head. And even if he does know how to drive, I can see Sherlock saying to John "You drive. I need to think." But whatever. At one point, when John's running through the forest, there's one particular shot of him and I couldn't help but think, "He's running like a hobbit." I think it matched a shot of Martin Freeman from The Hobbit trailer, so that's probably why, but maybe he still had some of Bilbo in him from filming. ;-) John calls Sherlock "Spock" at one point and that made me laugh, too. Obviously the episode was written way before Benedict Cumberbatch was cast in the new Star Trek movie, but it's still funny.
"The Reichenbach Fall"
I guess it's third time's the charm for Steve Thompson. He wrote the weakest episode from last season and his episode of Doctor Who wasn't that great. This was pretty good. Moved along at a good clip and I wasn't bored at any point, but maybe it's because there is no time to be bored. Every scene counts. It was the same with last season's finale. There's a momentum that doesn't stop until the very end.
Ah, the end. If you know the stories, well, you saw it coming. The movie had the same problem. The second you have Moriarty and Reichenbach Falls, you know that the story is going to end with Sherlock's "death". It's the why that becomes the exciting part. Instead of Sherlock and John just running off the Switzerland, like in the short story, you have something completely different. The spirit of the story is the same, though, and I liked that. If you're going to adapt one of the more well known stories, you have to change things. It can't be the same. So, we get Moriarty discrediting Sherlock. That was fun. He stripped away everything that was Sherlock until he had nothing left and it really forced him to be clever. I wouldn't have minded seeing more of Sherlock and John on the run. Having the two of them handcuffed together, running around London, would have been funny, though I suppose it might have gotten old quick.
For a second, I was convinced that maybe Moriarty wasn't Moriarty. That he was just a guy playing a part and that the real Moriarty was off somewhere else. Maybe that's still true, you never know. If you can kill off Sherlock and bring him back, why not Moriarty, too. We'll see. Moriarty only appeared once in the stories, but he's still a big part of the Sherlock Holmes mythos.
And speaking of mythos, I'm glad that they showed that Sherlock was still alive instead of leaving it ambiguous. It's not cheap because that's how it happened in the books. Holmes faked his death and then came back. I like to think that it was the first "comic book death" in literature. ;-) But then now you have a problem. How will Sherlock tell John that he's alive? In the short story he just showed up in disguise at John's practice, but I don't think that would work here. And then there are the trust issues. Sherlock couldn't even tell John, his best friend, that he was faking his death. But I can see why he didn't; it was to protect John, and everyone else, in the end. So we'll see how that plays out, probably a year from now or whenever Martin Freeman is done filming The Hobbit.
It's kind of interesting how this season of Sherlock and the sixth season of Doctor Who were sort of the same. You have the main character faking his own death and tricking his friends into believing that he's dead. It's probably just a coincidence, but both Sherlock and the Doctor were getting too "noisy". Dying was the only way to get to a quieter life. And I wonder if Moffat and Gatiss were a little miffed with the latest movie. They both ended the same way, more or less. Sherlock's was obviously better. :-)
Random: Toby Haynes is awesome. No wonder Moffat chose him to come direct for the show. I like that he embraced the HUD thing that the other director started. That didn't happen last season and I think that's why "The Blind Banker" kind of sucked. Ah, the deerstalker. Sherlock's like the opposite of the Doctor. He doesn't like hats at all. :-) I'm glad he got to wear it again; now we can have proper icons of him wearing it. There were a few things from the story that they kept, like Sherlock and Moriarty's confrontation at the flat and the fake medical crisis that pulls John away. And of course Molly helped Sherlock fake his death. Were we really meant to think that he went to see her to have, um, well, a night with her? I kept seeing Doctor Who filming locations. The police station is Gwen's police station; is that the only one in Cardiff? Being Human filmed there, too. And was the private school the orphanage from "Day of the Moon"? The hallway looked the same. It would be kind of ironic if it was since Toby Haynes shot that episode, too. And, oh Sherlock. You fake your own death and you don't even bother to change out of your signature coat. You're supposed to be dead. Incognito.
Oh, I saw something online asking about how did Sherlock fake his death. Somebody mentioned a laundry truck during the rooftop scene. It is there, but for Sherlock to have landed on it, it would have had to been right under him. I suppose that could have been possible. You see it driving off just before John reaches the scene. Obviously the cyclist was meant to knock him down to gain a few seconds. So Sherlock landed on the laundry bags and paid help rolled out a dead look alike? Another theory also suggests that Sherlock's coat helped to slow his fall. Um, what? The second his coat becomes a important plot point, I'm going to stop watching...
This might be hard, since the boys are so busy filming other things, but I'd love to see Martin Freeman and Benedict Cumberbatch on Doctor Who. Not as John and Sherlock, mind you, but as similar characters. Then they could all have an adventure with the Doctor without it turning into a crossover (I think they've referenced Sherlock Holmes on Doctor Who. Yes/no?). Maybe that's a little too far-fetched, but at least we'd be able to get in more Sherlock. ;-)
