My problems with Sherlock Season 4

The fans were consistently told by the cast and crew before the fourth season of Sherlock aired, that this was going to be the best one yet. But after seeing each episode twice, I can honestly say that this is the worst series they've done. And I'm not the only one who thinks so.
I understand that each season has to be different, and that's OK. We were also told that this season would be the darkest one yet. And that's OK too. What I'm not OK with the complete change in certain characters and the incoherence of the storylines and overall arc of the season.

Here are my problems with it:

The thing about Mary

The thing about Mary is that she’s a very interesting character. She started out as the nice new wife of John Watson and Sherlock likes her. Then when Sherlock caught her red handed trying to murder Magnusson, she ruthlessly shot him.

For John’s sake, he doesn’t turn her in and tricks her into confessing what she did.

Sherlock, weirdly, forgives her straight away, while John is absolutely furious and doesn’t speak to her for several months. He decides to forgive her on Christmas day and destroys the USB key containing her past.

In The Six Thatchers, she is integrated as part of the crime solving gang, after she gives birth to a daughter, Rosie.

This is where things start to go wrong. The cast and crew of Sherlock said that the last thing they wanted was for Mary to become a wedge between Sherlock and John. But in this episode, she ends up doing just that.

Sherlock and John hardly interact, with the plot being more and more about Mary than about Sherlock and John’s relationship. Her past comes back to bite her, all the while Sherlock repeatedly states that she is under his protection as part of a “holy vow” to be there for her, John and the baby.

That vow breaks when he antagonizes an old lady named Vivian Norbury, and she shoots him, only for Mary to dive in front of the bullet, and dying of the wounds.

We all knew Mary was going to die. In the ACD books, she dies, but of unknown causes. What I didn’t expect was John would blame Sherlock for her death and cut all contact with him. The heroes lose, and nothing at Baker Street will ever be the same again.

The problem is, despite being dead, she still comes back through silly video tapes, sending Sherlock on a mission to “Save John Watson” by putting himself through drug hell, so that John can save him, thus saving himself.

It would have been so much easier had she been a full-on villain who was jealous of Sherlock and John’s relationship. Her relationship with John was the best thing that ever happened to her and didn’t want anyone coming in the way of that. Even Amanda Abbington, who plays Mary, says she still doesn’t know why she had to shoot Sherlock. Jealously would have been the perfect motivator, but apparently it isn’t. Thus it makes no sense.

The writers wanted so desperately for everyone to like Mary and become one of the “team” that they end up ruining the best relationship in the show.

The tragedy of John Watson

If there is one thing that was always true to the character of John Watson - is that he’s an incredibly loyal and brave man who would do anything for the ones he loves.

All of this changes in season 4. Despite having a new baby and enjoying domestic bliss with his wife and adventures with his best friend, he feels the need to start cheating on his wife with a woman he met on the bus. He’s obviously not happy with Mary. In his Last Vow, he seemed unhappy because he was missing Sherlock. But here, he had no reason whatsoever to start an affair. For the record he only texted her, but he thought about cheating, and that’s enough.

Then when Mary dies in his arms, he is utterly destroyed. Guilt, rage and sorrow seep out all at once. And he blames it all on Sherlock. The worst thing is that he wasn’t even there when Sherlock was egging Mrs Norbury on.

He sends Sherlock a letter, and we are never told what it actually contained.

Here's another writing tip - Chekhov's Gun.

Chekhov's writing tip about unnecessary information is the key to good writing:

"If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter, it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there."

And that's what happens a lot in this new series. I can't list all of them, but the letter is one of them. If they showed it and didn't bother to explain what was written, then why bother showing it?

John in The Lying Detective is a totally different person. He's still obviously upset by the death of Mary, and sees her everywhere. But he also drinks and  neglects his baby.

Sherlock is completely off his tits on drugs, to the point that he might kill himself. But John doesn't want to know. Until Mrs Hudson kidnaps Sherlock and brings him to his house.

I will say if there is one good change about this season, it's Mrs Hudson. She's a total baddass who take no shit from anyone,  and tells people a few home truths . 

Sherlock vows to take down creepy philanthropist Culverton Smith - after spending an evening talking to his daughter Faith. Smith likes to brag about killing people, and then drugging the people he bragged to, so that they forget everything.

In a morgue, Smith's "favorite room", Sherlock confronts Smith about his crimes, and about why Faith was so afraid of her father. When she comes in, however, she is not the same woman he met a couple of weeks ago - realizing she may have been a simple drug hallucination.

Completely devastated at once again failing badly, and suffering from drug withdrawal, he turns violent and brandishes a scalpel. John subdues him, and hits him, and hits him and hits him. He is left bleeding and crying on the floor, but assures security that John is entitled to do what he wants since he "killed his wife."

"Yes you did." John replies coldly.

This is the two of them at their very rock bottom. But the real tragedy of this is how little John cares about Sherlock at this point. 

The morgue scene is intertwined with John talking to Lestrade (criminally under-used in this season) about the incident. At one point he confesses that Sherlock killed Magnusson, and that "we should have known what to expect because of that."

What??? The first scene of TST involved the government covering up the murder so that no one else could know about it! And John, Sherlock's once most trusted friend is now telling a police officer that he killed a man. 

After the beating, he visits him in hospital, but instead of staying with him, he decides to once again cut him out of his life completely and offers him a parting gift: the walking stick last seen in A Study in Pink.

This is so far removed from the John Watson we know and love that he's hardly recognizable any more.

Although to be fair, and people seem to forget this, Sherlock has treated John pretty appallingly in the past. Not the least of which is disappearing for two years, pretending to be dead and show up out of the blue without an ounce of compassion. Or locking him in a lab and terrifying the crap out of him for an experiment in The Hounds of Baskerville. 

Smith shows up in the hospital room and proceeds to smother him to death. But all it took for John to realize he wasn't faking and that Smith was indeed a killer, was a video taped message from Mary. All of his antics, including picking on a bad guy, and "going to hell" was all part of Mary's "plan" to save "the man we both love": John Watson. 

Again it defeats the early incarnation of John believing in Sherlock even when the whole world was against him (see The Reichenbach Fall) and the fact that he needed his dead wife to tell him and Sherlock what to do is just dumb. 

He goes back to the hospital and restrains Smith just in time. Sherlock has recorded him confessing his crimes and he is thrown in jail.

At Baker Street, John apologizes of sorts by telling him that Mary's death was not his fault. Sherlock still hates himself for what happened.

John talks to Mary (the one he's been seeing in his head. So he's basically just talking to himself) and tearfully confesses he was not the man she thought he was. He then breaks down sobbing and Sherlock embraces him softly. 

"It's not OK. But it is what it is"

It's a truly lovely, emotional moment. But it doesn't last. 

At one point, and again this is another one of Chekhov's guns, Sherlock gets a text from Irene Adler. And John encourages him forcefully to take a chance with her and text her back. 

Here we go again with a character arc U Turn. John never liked Irene Adler because she was a dangerous sociopath (or was it jealousy?). Why is he telling him to go after a woman while at the same time saying she's no good for him?

John boldly states that a romantic entanglement with a woman would complete Sherlock as a human being. No it wouldn’t! He didn't have to before, in all the other adaptations, so why should he have to now?

All in all, I believe the sacrifice of John's good characteristics in exchange for angst was desperate and at worst, weak.

The problem of Eurus 

Eurus Holmes, the secret Holmes sibling, has more than a few problems. 

First of which: she was not something that was in the minds of Mofftiss from the beginning. She came about during the filming of His Last Vow. She was basically just a fun addition the writers decided to do at the last minute.

She reveals herself at the end TLD, to John. She disguised herself as three different people: the red haired girl who flirted with John on the bus. Faith Smith, who was not a hallucination as Sherlock thought. And John's German psychiatrist. The moment she divulges herself, she is shown to be both mad and dangerous. After having killed and stuffed John's other psychiatrist in a cupboard (and no one is bothering to look for her?) she shoots John in the face. 

With a dart gun, it's revealed in the final episode - named The Final Problem.

I can't even begin to start with how many problems this episode has.

But let's start with Eurus. First of all, she's not a believable character. She is without a doubt a female version of Hannibal Lecter. Her powers seem so far out there - in terms of manipulating people - getting inside their heads and controlling the whole prison in which she is interred - that they borderline on the supernatural. It would have made a lot more sense if it was sci-fi, but it's not. 

Here's another rule the writers blatantly missed. When you're telling a story and you're introducing that world to your audience: you have keep on going with that idea. If you stray too far away from what people loved about it in the first place, you'll end up losing your fans and audience. And that's exactly what happened here.

It feels less like a Sherlock Holmes inspired episode and more like a crappy retelling of Silence of the Lambs.

Critics said this episode was "the most sexist" the show. Indeed, apart from Mrs Hudson, all the women in the episode are portrayed as whiny and weepy females who's only characteristics serve as a mirror or a challenge for Sherlock. It seems Moftiss just don't know how to write women well.

But then again, neither do I, according to some. Despite me being a feminist and gay rights activist, my work has been criticized for being "anti-feminist" just because one of my main characters is a bit of a misogynist (he's a 17 year old kid with a troubled background).

Plus the ACD stories were written during Victorian times, so they were always going to be a bit on the rough side when it came to female characters. 

It is revealed that Redbeard, Sherlock's beloved dog was actually a little boy called Victor Trevor, Sherlock's best friend when they were kids. Eurus threw him in a well and left him to die because she felt left out of Sherlock's affection. 

It's a heartbreaking revelation, and unlike a lot of other stuff in this episode, it does make sense. As there are such things as repressed memories - when the memory is too traumatic. 

But the way Sherlock manages to get him and John out of his sister's dangerous traps is yet another let down.

All it took for him was to just simply give her a hug. And that’s it! The danger is over!

I understand that the message is “empathy wins”, but not at this price.

In conclusion – the whole thing falls apart for a very specific reason :Nobody cares about Eurus. She’s a new, thinly layered character that you simply can’t warm up to.

The absence of consequences

The writers explained that season 4’s theme would revolve around the consequences of what Sherlock and John had been doing.

What consequences exactly?

In the very first scene of The Six Thatchers, as I mentioned before, the consequences of Sherlock shooting Magnusson in the head in front of dozens of policemen are completely erased with manipulated video footage. Even though Mycroft was willing to send him off to his own death a while back.

The only real consequences we get is the shooting of Mary after Sherlock goads Vivian Norbury on, and Sherlock’s drug abuse that leads to his meltdown in the morgue.

But other than that, there are no lasting repercussions to the actions of John or the Holmes family. No mention of any of the families of the victims Eurus killed (especially Victor Trevor, who was such a huge part of Sherlock’s life). No media backlash against Sherlock and John as there was in The Reichenbach Fall. No exploration of the trauma of the supporting characters – namely Molly.

In The Final Problem, Sherlock is forced by Eurus to trick Molly into saying “I love you.” to him, or else she’ll be blown up. She can’t because she really does love him, and demands that he say it first. He does, twice. The second time, it sounds a lot more genuine. But it’s never explained whether he truly does love her as she does him, or if he’s just saying it to save her life.

In the end, Eurus revealed that Molly was never in danger.  Sherlock is so distraught that he destroys a coffin with his bare hands.

It’s once again another cheap move to install terror into the scene. They could have at least had an extra scene with Sherlock and Molly reconciling, other than writer Steven Moffat just sneering “Oh she just gets over it!”

People don’t just get over stuff, Moffat! 

In conclusion, this is why the “happy” ending isn’t satisfactory. There doesn’t seem to be any real sacrifice. The flat on Baker-Street was destroyed by one of Eurus’s drones, but the boys quickly fix it again and happily continue to solve crimes, while Mary needlessly narrates how great her “Baker Street Boys “ are.

It doesn’t feel like a happy ending to me.  I feel cheated and taken advantaged of. 

If the show does return, I will watch it for Ben and Martin’s performances, but my expectations will be considerably lowered.

Moftiss was right. Ben and Martin do not need this show to boost their careers – because they are glowing perfectly well without it.  They’re both in the Marvel Cinematic Universe: with Martin playing Everett Ross, and Benedict is now Doctor Strange. Neither one of them have been as GOOD as they have been in season four. They just get better and better each time.

But if the show never comes back (I don’t think that’s the case) it’s a very, very poor send off.