i love the way that he said “mingling” like it was some sort of horrible ritual thing that is done only by the most depraved or a sea lion mating ritual. the same way i say it, with a hit of “shudder”.
“You really are a psychopath!”
“High functioning sociopath.”
Having now season the full season, I agree with GovernmentMan’s specific criticisms entirely, while still thinking that the show as a whole is quite entertaining. The rapport and banter and visuals and cheeky twisty fun make the show good, but that’s DESPITE the really indefensible collection of plot holes.
And at least some of them are things that could have been quite easily fixed. Most frustrating was Magnussen (sp?) and/or his security guys not searching John and Sherlock for a gun, after being so paranoid earlier. And it’s super-easily fixed… just have Sherlock kill him with some improvised or cleverly-smuggled weapon rather than “oh, yeah, there’s a gun in Watson’s coat”.
Selected things that made no sense this season:
(1) The blackmail material being all in his mind, and the whole “who needs the truth, I have the press” thing. If that were the case, then he could just make up anything he wanted to begin with. “Do what I say, or I will print a story that you like child porn”. Knowledge without proof is better than no knowledge, but proof, documents, physical evidence, those are what you actually need in order to carry through your threats of blackmail, AND what you need to not have people just kill you
(2) The mayfly. Why was he doing the bizarrely elaborate thing involving finding houses of recently dead people? That makes no sense to begin with (houses of recently dead people are likely to be full of smelly old person stuff, for one thing), and it in fact led to his downfall. If he’d just had one-night-stands with those 5 women at his own house, or their house, or hotel rooms (and how precisely he located them is also questionable) then there would have been no pattern of “ghosts” for anyone to put together, and his plan would have succeeded.
(3) The belt-stabbing. Medically nonsensical. Also I don’t think there are many situations in which you practice murdering someone at a wedding (where people are drunk and not expecting murder) by murdering someone in an elite security force WHILE THEY ARE ON DUTY. If you’re ruthless enough to kill an innocent and need to practice your (impossible) belt-stabbing, just drug a homeless person or something
(4) With regard to Janine letting Sherlock up (already discussed to death) (and it does in fact make no sense), another factor that should have been mentioned is that Magnussen is clearly someone who knows a lot about what’s going on. How was he not aware that his secretary, who he trusts enough to give her carte blanche access to his super-secret office, was a maid of honor at the wedding of Mary Watson, wife-of-friend-of-Sherlock? And any competent investigation would reveal that she was dating Sherlock himself. (For that matter, how did John not know what her job was? Do people who work as executive assistants for media moguls typically keep that hush hush in private life?). Also, the idea that once Sherlock shows up she can’t kill Magnussen despite having spent however much effort to get herself into that position because Watson would become a suspect is pretty ridiculous. Particularly as she’s capable of non-fatally shooting Sherlock, which she did. So do that. How would Watson be a suspect in the near-fatal shooting of his own best friend?
(5) No explanation for how/why Sherlock faked his death. Not a plot hole, just a dick move. Unless the business with the big mobile bag was supposed to be the real answer, in which case, a plot hole.
Like I said, tremendously entertaining TV, but anyone who doesn’t see that it’s riddled with nonsensical and unsupportable twists and turns is fooling him/herself.
They did say why, to dismantle Moriarty’s crime operation, they also said how but for some reason most people simply dismissed it.
Right, that would explain why it has to be faked to the world as a whole (I mean, KIND of, in a universe in which there are “crime networks”), but doesn’t explain why the faking had to be SO focused on Watson specifically, even though something like the carrying-the-big-bag-around would be totally obvious to, gee, I dunno, anyone at any of the hundreds of windows looking out onto the street? Most of whom have mobile phones and twitter and instagram accounts?
I can’t help but think the writers were getting a bit carried away with themselves, typing with one hand as they came up with stuff they thought would be cool without remembering it’s supposed to actually be part of a story that makes sense.
…I haven’t been “fooled”.
I’m not sure what you’re saying.
…I’m saying what I said. I didn’t see the series full of riddled with nonsensical and unsupportable twists: and I disagree with a lot of what you said. That doesn’t mean, as you’ve stated, that I’ve been “fooled.” I simply have a different take on what happened, thats all.
To be fair, Doyle never explained how Holmes lived when he killed him off in The Final Problem. The non-explanation (even though two (or more?) were given during the show) just continues from that.
A lot of the stuff that shows up out of the blue in the series and has no real explanation are from, I’m told, the original series of books and stories. (I’ve onlyt read one or two, and that was years ago, but my stepdaughter is currently working through them again) Such as Holmes’s ‘engagement’ in “The Final Vow” episode. That was directly lifted from the beginning of The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton.
I’m just starting to watch this show, but it seems to me that a large part of the fun of the show lies in seeing how they ‘work in’ elements from the original stories. In short, that it is more fun to watch if you are already familiar with the original Sherlock Holmes stories.
I have to concur with GovernmentMan and MaxTheVool.
I also don’t accept as an excuse the fact that a lack of explanation for Holmes’ survival is cannon. I would accept that if this was a slavish translation from the page to the screen, but it obviously is not. When adapting source material, the point is to keep the strengths of the material while fixing as many of the weaknesses as possible.
Series One and Two were mostly good, although I disliked nearly everything about Moriarty. He was far too over-the-top ridiculous. He went past “larger than life” well into “cartoon”. Series Three was weak all the way through.
I see your point, but obviously Moffat and Gatiss see things differently. I just wonder how they are (not) going to explain the return of Moriarty next series.
Except that it’s not just a case of “well, he survived, and we’re not going to tell you how”. If it was just left forever as a mystery, chalked up to “Sherlock Holmes is Sherlock f***ing Holmes, he’s smarter than all of us” that would be one thing. But instead it’s something like “hey, we gave you all these clues as to what happened! It’s so obvious! But wow, you guys who spend so much time actually being fans of ours and caring and speculating are really idiots to not see the obvious! So we’ll make fun of all your stupid theories! And then never tell you the truth anyhow, because you don’t deserve to have it, plus it’s really obvious. Morons.”.
Obviously being a bit hyperbolic there, but I don’t think I’m making that up out of thin air.
So can you give a coherent explanation for The Mayfly?
I think this show suffers particularly acutely from something that afflicts lots of shows with plot twists (24 was a particular offender), which is that they present you with some information, so you think X, then they present you with new information, so you think Y, then new information, so you think Z, etc. And even if each individual step kind of makes sense (ie, Y plus the new information does lead to Z) they never really stop to check if where you end up is consistent with the information you had way back at the beginning.
And, again, I really enjoy the show, and look forward to each new season as it comes out, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be objective about whether the plots make coherent sense.
No repercussions from Sherlock killing Magnusson? Mycroft had said the guy was basically harmless.
Are we supposed to believe that the dangerous Mideast assignment was Sherlock’s punishment?
Or is it okay because they wanted him dead?
And what’s Appledor? I assume it’s a real place. Is it someone’s house?
…well you consider my opinion foolish, so why should I bother giving you an explanation? And if I gave you an explanation which is coherent and consistent with the information you had way back at the beginning, would it matter? And if I’m happy with the explanation I give, and you are not, does that still make my opinion foolish?
He used houses of the recently deceased so he wouldn’t leave a trace: and if he had stayed at a hotel or taken them to his house (two things that you suggest) the “footprint” he would have left behind would have been huge. Doing so would have been foolish. The only reason the plan failed (and it probably wouldn’t have failed in real life) is that Sherlock is extraordinarily brilliant (something that if you can’t accept, then you will never be able to enjoy the programme): and managed to make connections that no-one else would have been able to make. Do you think anyone else in the world would come up with the “pattern of ghosts?” If Sherlock hadn’t been on the case it would have been the perfect, untraceable murder.
So what part of Mayfly did you not understand?
Because there might be an angle I missed. I mean, why ever tell anyone on the internet anything?
Except that it DID leave a trace. He left women who had gone on a one-night-stand with him, liked him, and then wondered what happened, and then realized that they had been at the house of a dead person. That was something odd enough for them that they started posting about it on ghost message boards and whatnot.
On the other hand, if he’d just gone to a hotel room with them and then never called, each individual woman might have been a bit put out, but it would have been an utterly mundane occurrence which happens to zillions of people every day, and there’s no reason to think that they would have formed a support group for women who were wooed and then abandoned, or contacted a detective, or anything of that sort.
Furthermore, tresspassing into the houses of recently dead people is itself a crime, and a potentially very complicated one. Each time he wanted to put this little scheme into action he had to find a recently dead person, verify that their house was unguarded and unoccupied, verify that their house was nice and clean and hadn’t had its stuff moved out and wasn’t full of the kind of supplies and paraphernalia that would normally accompany someone having died (ie, hospital beds). He’d then have to gain entry into that house, and he’d also have to remove all traces of having been there the next morning lest there be a rash of reports of “hey, someone clearly came in and had sex on grand-dad’s bed”. How is any of that in any way superior, as far as not-being-found-out, to renting a room at a nice hotel and paying in cash?
It’s a cutesy little contrived twist that leads to some interesting TV, but it’s absolutely implausible in real-life this-is-what-an-intelligent-criminal-would-actually-do terms.
And heck, if you what you enjoy is interesting little twists that can be enjoyed for their own sake, then that type of plot might lead to far more entertaining TV than one which is more mundane. And if so, more power to you… as long as you recognize it for what it is and don’t try to argue that it makes actual-real-world-sense.
(And all of that is focusing only on a single part of his plan: where he spends the night with these one-night-stand-women, and ignoring all the other parts, including how he found out who they were in the first place; how he arranged to meet them; how he found out during a one-night-stand about a wedding invitation that one of them had seen; how he had the expertise to invent a new-to-medical-and-criminal-science type of stabbing; why he decided to practice that stabbing on an active-duty member of an elite military security force; why, if he was able to get close enough to physical stab the victim but didn’t want to be immediately apprehended he did not instead use a slow-acting poison or drug of some sort rather than do something which was going to cause his test run to be an immensely fascinating and unique and thus attention-grabbing crime itself; and how he got himself hired as the wedding photographer.)
oh yes, it is someone’s house, and no, apparently it is too ostentatious to live in.
i wouldn’t mind a weekend here or there, but i wouldn’t want to live in it either. too much glass.
…I’m confused. Are you calling everyone who disagrees with you fools or not? Am I foolish for disagreeing with you?
Of course it left a trace! That is how Sherlock found him!
Hundreds of women posted on ghost message boards. How many of them were actually related to the case? The point of the scene where Sherlock eliminated the various woman in the room was to show that “ghost boyfriends” in the Sherlock universe was not an entirely strange phenomena.
If he had gone to a hotel room he would have left some sort of a trace. I can’t book a hotel room without a credit card. The woman obviously went looking for the photographer and couldn’t find him. If he had used a hotel room: tracing him would be easier.
And you keep forgetting: there were hundreds of people in the support group. Ghost dates are apparently not that uncommon.
When was the last time you were able to pay cash for a hotel room? Not possible where I live I’m afraid. And I have no problem imagining someone doing as you suggest: the guy is planning a murder after all: and murderers have done stranger things.
Sherlock doesn’t and can’t exist in the real world: don’t be silly. Did you see the first twenty minutes of the pilot? Do you think that anyone in the real world could do the things he does?
The “twists” were all supported “in story.” And they were fantastical and achievable in universe, but not, IMHO, nonsensical.
What I love about Sherlock: and what makes it different to almost every show on TV right now: is that it doesn’t go out of the way to answer the questions you ask. Because answering the questions you asked would have made for a boring, unfunny television show full of exposition that is just like every other programme on TV. I personally think that its fantastic to have a series on television that has faith in its audience to fill in the gaps and allows us simply to enjoy being in the company of a fantastic group of characters. I don’t need someone to hand hold me through a story and I don’t need every question answered: my imagination works quite fine thank you very much.
I really don’t want to watch your version of Sherlock and I’m glad I don’t have to.