So true! Parts of this fandom made gold out of shit. And when Moffat, Gatiss and Vertue eventually saw what they had provoked by their conspirational secrecey in connection with everything Sherlock - it was too late to backpaddle. They had unleashed a monster.
They had already lied so much that nothing they said was taken serious anymore. Them denying johnlock was seen as proof for it by some (many?) fans, because TPTB had so often lied about stuff or kept secrets (even from their cast), told one thing and then did the opposite… like, for example:
The other one is unimportant / just a red herring Gatiss wrote in
TAB is a stand alone, wholy set in 1895
Moriarty is dead (well, he was, but kept reappearing anyway)
the whole Fall Scenario with encouraging fan theories, then never explaining, even retconning what happened
Why all this secrecy in the first place? Why all the lies? Would it really have spoiled anything if we’d known that parts of TAB were (presumably) set in the present day? Or that Rebeard was connected to something that happened in Sherlock’s childhood? Or that there was another Holmes sibling? Why lead your audience on by filming fake scenes? Why encourage speculations, only to criticise the direction some of those were heading, based on your own writing?
A sibling / TAB being a dream of Sherlock on the plane / a childhood trauma etc. were speculated about anyway. A bit more honesty from the writers / producers, respect and trust in their audience could have dried up the quagmire of lies, red herrings and surprising plot twists that encouraged conspiracy theories to blossom. The smoke would have lifted and fans might have seen the story for what it was - a story about a detective, his blogger, and, from S3 onwards, that bloggers wife. That was apparently the story they wanted to tell - why hide it behind a smokescreen of homoeroticism, lies, insinuations, games and jokes?
If your show can only attract an audience because of encouraging false assumptions, you are running headlong into harm (aka backlash). If the writers had abandoned the ‘will they, won’t they?’ between John and Sherlock after S2, why not openly (and on the show itself) say so? Why keep up the gay ‘jokes’ in S3 (they actually bookend that series, with Mrs Hudson’s ‘live and let live’ in TEH up to the aborted love confession trope applied on the tarmac)? Why not tell your audience ‘We love Mary Watson, they will now be a trio, solving crimes, until all goes to hell, but then Sherlock finds out what happened during his childhood, what made him, so he can heal.’? Why not show this in your show, like, film a real wedding, show John and Mary kissing, show Sherlock coping well, accepting Mary as a friend, put the cases more centre stage, don’t have Mary kill Sherlock etc.?
Then I could have stepped away or at least tuned down my expectations.
But they loved the hype too much. They loved their show being the centre of intense speculation and attention. But, at least within me after having watched S4, all the hype and built-up just left a feeling of disappointment. I feel betrayed. Why show me stuff like Mycroft’s notebook - that meant nothing in the end? Why show me evil Mary - only to make her the hero of the narrative? Why write in all the homoeroticism - and then never resolve the built up tension, not even by Sherlock stating that he’s gay and John saying that he’s not interested? I could go on and on about all those loose threads, all the disappointment - but I’m tired and shut up now.
romaincrisis
kaledo-art
annaxmalina
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