The Final Curtain: Why Sherlock Failed Me
A couple of hours ago, I watched my first Sherlock AMV since I quit the fandom last year. And I realized something: I was more interested in the music than in the actual video footage. I still care about Sherlock and John as characters, but it felt like meeting a friend that I fell out of contact with. I was mildly interested in knowing how they were doing, but I couldn’t bother to be annoyed about their fate anymore. Nowadays, I feel much closer to other fandoms. At the same moment when I realized this, I also noticed that my head was much clearer than when I wrote my last meta on the show. I was rather unfair to Sherlock back then, and although it’s a distant memory, I would like to pay tribute to the joy the show once has given me.
I came for the quirkiness:
Sherlock was not meant to be such a large production: It was a three-part special, dedicated to the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and as such, the budget did not allow for bombastic special effects like the big explosions and gun fights in the Downey Jr. movies. The closest the show came to “special effects” were some random words floating around mid-air, and this is typical of British adaptations. Around 2010-2012, there was another pseudo detective show of similar down-to-earth character: Dirk Gently. Both shows prove that you do not need giant fireballs hurled at the protagonist to make the audience care for them: It’s the characterization, not the story, that drives these shows forward.
Sherlock aired at a time when detective shows turned extremely dull, because they were competing in gruel depictions rather than in complex protagonists. It is enjoyable to watch two characters have a seemingly pointless conversation over dinner, because this is something that would get cut in more commercially oriented shows. Sherlock defied the formula of “corpse, investigation, solution” by offering multiple cases or telling us the identity of the culprit, but not the reason. Since it was three episodes, they got away with it: People would either watch all or none. There was no need to make it easier for casual viewers to enjoy the show. It is a piece of self-reference and experimentation. Honestly, I doubt this show would have attracted that much attention if it were not for Cumberbatch and Freeman. Dirk Gently also breaks with a lot of traditions, but its leads are not as aesthetically pleasing to the masses, I guess.
Sherlock was quirky. It was essentially British; it was stubbornly refusing to let itself be categorised as a drama or a detective show or a comedy.
The second season had big shoes to fill, especially since there was no true storyline yet. The first season was just as much an iteration of disconnected events as most of the short stories. However, Sherlock seemed to be there to stay, and that is why the writers had the guts to go one step further. In the second season, they would build up towards a full dramatic arc: Moriarty would truly be involved, not just some hinted shadowy figure. This way, the cases would be personal. The focus shifted towards the interpersonal relationships between the characters, and this also explains why Mycroft was suddenly pulled to the front. Any progress, any obstacle during the investigations had to be connected to the human network surrounding the protagonists. There was no room for chance, for some outside force. The second season is built on drama, not on cases. Instead, the characters are pitted against each other.
I fell out of love when the show reoriented itself:
During the great hiatus, I consumed a lot of fanwork, and, admittedly, this raised my expectations of the third season. There had been a lot of predictive meta, a lot of great fan continuations. In truth, Sherlock had no chance to live up to the hype. There was no way they could cram Sherlock’s return, fiendishly difficult cases, a homosexual relationship, a sob-story past for Sherlock, a credible theory for Moriarty’s survival and a drama arc concerning John’s alcoholic sister into three episodes. The average post-s2 story covering these topics is about 150 k words!
No, season three was fated to disappoint, because it could not possibly satisfy all the subgroups of the fandom. Due to the previous multi-facetious approach, there were shippers, there were genuine Holmes fans, there were those that were in for the human drama, and those that simply liked detective shows. Additionally, the show had crossed a lot of borders: The writers were no longer writing for the BBC, but for the world, which means that cultural quirks only work to a certain degree before they become incomprehensible or unacceptable.
And that’s when the writers lost me, somebody who joined the fandom for the original pilot, not the drama of the second season (although it was an added benefit): They decided to reorient the show, to make it more mainstream, more accessible. At the same time, they felt obliged to satisfy the “original” crowd by offering us meaningless references to the past. They attempted to do a little of everything. They would hint at Johnlock, they built up a mastermind villain who fell short at the decisive moment. They gave us a great return drama, but glossed over the emotional upheaval because… time. The off-switch on the bomb, that’s essentially the off-switch to the drama. They had to move on to the next fan wish. Sherlock was hurt badly, which satisfied the whumpers. They tried their best to address all the needs, at the cost of being indecisive, yes, baiting, even. It became virtually impossible to pick a main theme running through the season, because they poured all the ingredients into one giant bowl and mixed them until it the distinctive flavour of the original products is lost.
Season three is not a good example of a homoromantic forerunner of its time, because the Mary arc destroys the message.
It is not a good example of a continuation, because it fails to address the questions left unanswered by its predecessor.
It is not a good example of detective show, because the cases are not presented as the main attraction. It is difficult to guess alongside Sherlock without being given the necessary clues.
It is not a good example of a drama, because the dramatic turns are not addressed in terms of their consequences. Sherlock’s fake death remains without lasting consequences as does Mary’s attempt at murder, and let’s not mention Magnussen’s death.
Season three has so much to offer, but essentially, it fails to find its own theme. The characters and plots are yanked all over the place to fit the new audience’s demographics.
As soon as I sobered up, I quit:
I cannot say much about the fourth season, only having watched the first trailer. However, the interviews and spoilers showed me that the cast were extremely pleased with their previous achievements. I doubt they reflected how much their show had changed, and especially their comment on how they were able to create the show they had wanted to create helped me sober up. By this date, Sherlock had become a highly commercialized, close to mainstream work drama. If this was truly what the writers wanted to create, then season four had nothing to offer to me.
I no longer suffered from the illusion that Sherlock would address the flaws of the third season or return to being about crime solving. At this point, I had turned into a serious Johnlocker. To me, it seemed the only way to save the show from becoming forgettable. If it could not become a legend from an in-story perspective, then it could write history for the depiction of a homoromantic relationship on a large scale. Sherlock attracted a huge audience in countries where such topics are highly problematic. It seemed like such a good idea to use this falling star as a missionary for social awareness. Since Brokeback Mountain, the depiction of gay people in the media has increased, but it is still about stereotypical behavior, and usually, these people don’t experience a lot of happiness. It would have been nice to watch a show that would address the issue in a subversive way. That would have been modestly refreshing.
However, I realized that there would be no grand scheme to put forward a message to the society. No, just another three episodes of mainstream explosions, gun fire, pointless squabbling to create drama, and some backstory that would please the whumpers. Of course, Mary also had to die after giving birth, which satisfies the haters and invites the fluff fans to praise the resolution of the arc.
Sherlock had, essentially, become predictable. And predictable is boring, because it’s exceeding the expectations that makes a show great.
Am I disappointed in Sherlock? Actually, no, I am not. I suppose I had been disappointed last year, but since then, I moved on. I’ve accepted that I am a picky viewer, and that this was just another failure in a long list of forgettable shows that did not live up to my high expectations.
By the way, there’s a Japanese show that recently had the guts to portray a gay couple without a tragic end or defining the characters by their sexuality: Yuri on Ice. The protagonists are professional figure skaters and the show is mostly concerned with their work experiences. It is a well-written and highly popular sports series, in my opinion.
I am somewhat surprised that the very conservative Japanese managed to beat us when it comes to this.
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