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It looks like some the Missus and I could watch together. I was going to give it a shot.
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There are⌠problems with Sherlock.
I was really disappointed by the last season, but okay the rest of the show. Then I watched this (Warning: LONG):
Now, some of it isnât fair (the canon Holmes stories are just as guilty of having Holmes pull the solution directly out of his ass without giving the audience/reader a chance to solve it themselves as the show is).
But it makes a lot of really good points.
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I just read that Tom Holland wants to be cast as James Bond.
Wouldnât that be kind of cool? Like Bond as a youth, being tested and selected for HMSS, and stopping some calamity about to happen?
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That âruleâ of mysteries was invented decades after Doyle write the Holmes stories â and doesnât even hold true today.
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Jesus, whoâs got two hours to watch this guy complain? Iâd much rather be watching the very worst episode of Sherlock.
Can a Cliffâs Notes summary be found anywhere? Iâd love to know what it is that bugs him so much, but I am nowhere near bored enough to sit and watch his screed for that long.
I havenât watched series 4 yet, but I unreservedly loved all the rest of the episodes.
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Did you end up getting it for him? I found it astonishingly good. But it can be an emotional rollercoaster. I found myself with soggy cheeks on four separate occasions at least.
In other newsâŚ
Nobody here seems to have mentioned Godless yet. My wife and I are loving it. Iâd watch it just because itâs a Western, but the more I read about it, the more I figured sheâd like it, so we started watching it last week. Weâve seen four of the seven episodes so far, and itâs sooo good. Reminiscent of Deadwood without the pretension, and the occasional moment of gratudity is pretty funny. Plus, who knew Lady Mary Crawley shoots first and asks questions later, and also digs her own well by hand?
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You arenât the only one. Even series 3 had some preposterous elements, but series 4 was a notable shift in audience attraction if not a calculated attempt to abandon some audience members. I am not spending 110 minutes of my life watching that video.
Iâm watching the DVD box set of the US television series âEllery Queenâ (1975-6) which is entertaining not only for the cavalcade of guest stars, including occasional John Hillerman appearances, but because the audience is invited to solve along with Ellery. Some plot areas are nonsensical to the point where one thinks it really doesnât take much brains to be a police inspector, but only one so far of the 22 episodes seems to be an unfair âEllery saw something you didnâtâ, and that episode didnât even invite the viewer to match wits.
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The last cycle was the weakest, but considering how terrible most tv shows are these days, Iâm willing to forgive a lot from one of the better ones.
I agree with Mr Peterson that 2 hours is a long time to spend bitching and complaining about something if youâre not getting paid to do it. And watching someone else bitch and complain for that long is out of the question.
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That is the sort of person who likes to hit themself in the head with a hammer because it feels better when they stop.
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Have fun.
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Running down the list of what I remember:
- Every case ties back to Moriarty, Watson, Mary, or Sherlock himself. The problem isnât that thereâs an overarching plot, itâs that thereâs nothing but an overarching plot. Past the first two episodes, you canât just watch one episode out-of-sequence, the way you could pick up any of the Doyle stories without having read any of the others.
- Moffat has a problem where he never really pays off what he sets up, a problem that shows up in other shows he works on as well. The best example in Sherlock would be the end of The Reichenbach Fall: the show acknowledges that the story told by Sherlock of how he survived wasnât consistent with all of the evidence, but then shrugs and has Sherlock walk away without providing any further explanation.
- Irene Adler is supposed to win against Sherlock. Thatâs her defining characteristic in the books, what makes her âTheâ woman to him. The ending of her episode is about as far away from that as possible.
- The show seems to regard its actual fans with contempt. Anderson, the stand-in for fans of the show, is treated as comic relief, and actively derided for trying to figure out what happened to Sherlock when he âdied.â
- The âboomerangâ scene is lambasted in earnest.
- The show doesnât spend enough time actually solving mysteries, instead spending that time establishing character beats that just as easily could be established while doing the âsolving mysteriesâ scenes.
- And then Season Four.
I like examining storytelling choices in-depth, which is why I enjoy both reading Film Crit Hulkâs essays and watching videos like this. But yeah, I can see why someone might not want to spend two hours watching this.
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Iâm not going to watch the summary either, but those are all valid points. And the constant snide jokes about Holmes and Watson being a gay couple annoys the hell out of me. Really? In this day and age?
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This is the biggest one for me, and is definitely a Moffat trait (come on down Doctor Who). Any criticism of his work at all leads to a revenge sub plot where he craps on fan favourites by saying âhere you goâ and then creating something horrible that, point by point, supposedly fulfills fan expectations. See the Victoriana nonsense with the proto-suffragettes in the crypt.
From where Iâm sitting this started as early as Season 2, until it got to the absurd lengths of Season 4.
Iâd also add that Moffatâs persistent apologia for sociopaths (both Holmes and the Doctor call themselves this and make it out to be a good thing) is tiresome at best and dangerous at worst. Furthermore, sticking to Holmes, itâs most definitely not canon. Holmes keeps his intellectual detachment through conscious effort. Sure, heâs not the most sociable type, but he does care about doing his clients good.
Calling Anderson the on-screen fan stand-in is rather insulting, though.
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Thatâs the main reason Iâm glad Moffat isnât the showrunner for Doctor Who anymore.
As far as Iâm concerned, no adaptation to any screen has gotten the character of Irene Adler right yet; not even Rachel McAdamsâ offering in the RDJ films.
Agreed; dude is projecting his own issues there, methinks.
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Blatantly stolen from The Beast Must Die:
This is genuinely possible, as TBMD came out just a year before Ellery Queen premiered.
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Earlier seasons of Mr. Robot made me grumpy because (among other reasons) although the series famously depicted hacking and computer security in a relatively realistic way, its treatment of multiple personality disorder was a cartoonish cut+paste from a certain David Fincher film.
Well, for whatever reason, early Season 3 (as far as Iâve caught up) is a big improvement. Elliotâs symptoms are a lot more consistent with what I saw and heard spending time with people who actually have (or claimed to have) that particular problem.
Maybe the writers are responding to criticism from people like me, or maybe since the story has caught up with the end of Fight Club they no longer feel the need to follow their source material so closely 
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