December Blogging Meme Topic #8:

[ajodasso]

What are your thoughts about Sherlock series 3 and/or series 4?
-alltoseekI fear that my answer on this score is brief, and probably not terribly engaging. I didn't like Season 3 much at all, and I know absolutely nothing about Season 4. I love Seasons 1 and 2, still, and that's about where the scope of what I count as canon ends. The screenwriting

Comments

[vaysh]

You are echoing almost to the dot my feelings about Sherlock season 3. I still don't understand what happened but I was rarely that disappointed with a show I was so engaged with in the previous seasons.

[ajodasso]

Unless Season 4 is a miraculous turn-around in the extreme, I see no reason why I'd ever go back to it. Nothing puts me off more than when canon goes OOC/otherwise off the rails. If you can't rely on canon to stay true to the compass you thought it had set, what use is canon?

[alltoseek]

Exactly.

[ajodasso]

Solidarity, friend.

[thistle_verse]

I was disappointed with Season 3, too. And I was so excited for it. The writing felt really sloppy and it just felt like it lacked something that made the show intrinsically itself. The only time I thought it came close to being back to form was the last episode.

[ajodasso]

The only time I thought it came close to being back to form was the last episode.

Ugh, accurate. And that hurt a great deal.

[alltoseek]

What distressed me most about the last ep was

a) Mary's plotline and character making absolutely no sense whatsoever;

b) betraying the concept of Sherlock Holmes in having him "solve" the case through violence - the whole point of SH is to solve problems intellectually - anyone can shoot somebody :P (coulda just had Mary do it with her mad sekrit sniper skillz);

c) bringing Moriarty back, which is 1) trolling fandom yet again, and 2) shows utter lack of imagination. And how desperate they are for actual writing. Just ugh ugh ugh.

[thistle_verse]

Oh yeah, I agree with your points. It was still a fucking mess, plot-wise, in my opinion. But I guess it felt more like the older seasons to me in how John and Sherlock were relating to each other? Like, as much as a small part of me loved the idea of how mushy Sherlock got at the weddding, that was a small fanfic part of me and it felt weird and OOC as canon. And the return! I love John's anger, and I don't mind a little humor about it, but the episode played it like it was all just a fucking laugh, and it wasn't. But the last episode felt more fraught between them, with all of those big feelings there below the surface without breaking through into ridiculousness, and that's what I love about that relationship, and that's what felt like it was getting better in the last episode

[kalypso_v]

I loved the third season (apart from the final minute). There was no single episode as good as A Study in Pink (which remains the best), but there was no dud like The Blind Banker (which appeared to have wandered in from a completely different show), nothing that made me as uneasy as the treatment of Irene Adler in A Scandal in Belgravia, and no rather dull one like The Hounds of Baskerville. As a season, it had an integrated story arc, which they'd never managed before; they did great things with Mary, Molly and Janine; they made Anderson interesting, and brought in Bill Wiggins, whom I adore; and we got a genuinely frightening villain in Magnussen. The last minute with its threat of the really boring villain made me fear for the future, but at least if they muck that up they've already given me the third season, which I will treasure.

[ajodasso]

I agree that ASiP is excellent, although I actually rather liked Baskerville where you did not. Anderson-made-interesting was one of the few other things I appreciated about S3; I also enjoyed Mycroft, because I nearly always do.