Sherlock, Series 3 (2014, UK)

[renart]

Yes, this seriously took me seven months to write. Well, in fairness... I wrote like a paragraph or so of my thoughts back in January and then actually started writing the rest of this a few days ago. But I at least thought quite hard about it for half a year.

Series three is so...complicated. I watched it and at first liked it, then hated it, then grew to enjoy it again despite myself. It's clearly a transitional series in a way that series two possibly should have been, but ultimately wasn't. It's hard to say if it's even good or not. But I will, as always, attempt to probe its depths and find out.



(Wasted opportunity to make a 'Confessions of a Dangerous Mind' joke, this series was...)

Before I start with literally anything else, I just have to say... the best and most fascinating scene of the entire series--and maybe even the previous two--is that weird, trippy death sequence we get in episode three. I admit that I'm biased. I feel like there should be more of these scenes in film, where we do that whole frenetic exploration of repressed memories and buried emotions and such. The human mind is such a fascinating place, isn't it? So, Sherlock goes full-on Eternal Sunshine for a span of five or ten minutes while Sherlock is flat-lining, and in this time we learn, crucially, that Sherlock actually has an absolute crippling lack of self-worth. (He's dying and one of his first delusions is that his older brother is dressing him down, calling him stupid, and telling him how much he upsets their parents. Where he was previously standing as an adult in front of his brother, he's now a child again.)

And shortly after, while going into physical shock, he defaults to his most comforting memory.... so, what is it? Something to do with his job, his friend(s), his family...? No, nope. It's his dog. His childhood pet, Redbeard, an Irish setter. In fact, we learn in the same scene that Sherlock hasn't ever really got over having his dog put down, twenty-odd years on. It's fine. Just rip my heart out and tear it to fucking pieces. And anyway, it's a vital scene. Because it takes place entirely within Sherlock's head, it's never talked about or alluded to ever again. Not even John knows that Sherlock is still heartbroken over losing his dog decades ago, or possibly that he even grew up with a pet dog at all. (Assuming it is the death of his dog he's so upset about, rather than something metaphorical or clouded in memory; I've lost many good pets but none have ever had such a lasting emotional impact on me, but I guess it could be the first time he ever really experienced a huge loss in his young life.)

Sherlock returns to being just as confident and egomaniacal as ever, no one being any wiser that, deep down, he's incredibly self-loathing and--in text, if you'll read the script of the very first episode, or just watch the Sign of Three--genuinely struggling with suicidal tendencies. And the show just continues on kind of as usual. Yet we know different, as an audience...just from that small, private, intimate sequence lasting less than ten minutes, in a series with 2,500 minutes of content, give or take. It's a phenomenally important scene. I'm possibly the only one who thinks so--after all, EW voted Sherlock's best man's speech as their top pick from this series on their list of the best TV scenes of the year. It was ranked fifth overall, I think, somehow beating out a much more emotionally powerful exchange from Orange is the New Black. Well, there's no accounting for taste.

And yet...

The problem with Sherlock on the whole, including this series and series two in particular, is that there are three different writers in addition to near a billion different directors, and also some other people who write the official blogs, companion books, et cetera.

And all of this material is loosely meant to be 'canon' despite a lot of the content actually kind of contradicting itself. (In keeping with true Sherlock Holmes fashion, I guess. Suppose we can't be too hard on the show given how little energy Arthur Conan Doyle devoted to consistency within the original novels and serials, but one would imagine that modern-day writers would try to improve on this, not continually exploit it to write whatever the hell they feel like writing on a given day whether it makes sense within continuity or not.)

It's especially galling since Sherlock is a series that's only released every couple of years, literally. They actually have a lot of time to mull over temporal and character-related inconsistencies....and just don't. So the quality of anything happening in Sherlock varies considerably from episode to episode, series to series, and even from five minute blocks of one episode to different five minute blocks in the same episode. Series one is still arguably the best series, and it's because it was the foundation of the show with much less room to fuck up with passages of time and character development. Sure, it certainly had much less interpersonal drama, but it was also just...better written and directed, on the whole. The lack of character development at that point was just a tantalizing promise and we were certain we'd get something good out of our patience for series two, for example. (Heh.) Outside of the obscenely racist and disappointing second episode, it was a genuinely strong series with consistent character direction and in-world logic. It was also a little less full of itself.

As the series progresses, we're getting less and less of that because they've written quite a bit and don't seem to be bothered to keep up with silly things like... I don't know, dates. Or linear, realistic interpersonal relationships. Anyway, all of this is objectively very hard to reconcile with the fact that I actually....liked series 3? Kind of? I can kind of take or leave a good three-quarters of it, but the remaining quarter was certainly as good as series one at its peak, if not better. I may know deep inside that it isn't a Good series on the whole, but it's also entertaining and contains an alarmingly high amount of pathos compared with series one and two. Most people I know enjoyed S1 of Sherlock, for example, but I doubt the same would hold for S3.

True, series two was an exercise in emotionalizing Sherlock through different themes of love, fear, and death. Each episode was an entity of its own, exploring these, and they were a little less coherently linked as an entire narrative. But series three is a little more fluid and explores certain themes and narrative strands across all three episodes. It's far more complex, emotionally, than series one and two combined and takes us to places I wasn't honestly expecting until further down the road. I've come to terms with the fact that I like more about what we're given in series 3 without necessarily liking the way in which it's presented. It's more emotionally meaty, and just...leaves me with so many questions about the characters and how they function and what they think and feel, and we really didn't get as much of that in S1 or S2.

The only problem I have with this is that we were starved for these sorts of revelations and deep character introspection pieces in the first two series and now we're being force-fed 5,000 gallons of emotionally traumatic pudding. Where do you even begin with that? Am I more satisfied, am I less satisfied...? I just don't know. It's what I truly wanted throughout S1 and S2 but just never got, and now it feels like it's been shoved into S3 in excess. And compared with S1 and S2, S3 has weaker scripts and isn't quite as good at organically interweaving different plot points together in anything resembling a sensible fashion. It's just a more poorly directed series on the whole in most respects, even if it does have some very good high points. It's just, you know...after watching four and a half hours of television (which I waited two years for), I shouldn't feel like three and a half of those were just kind of "eh", ridiculous, or otherwise not as good as they should have been. I feel as if you combined the better scripts and directing from S1 with the emotional development and overall plot direction of S2 and S3, you'd have something pretty great on the whole.


To break it down, episode by episode...


The Empty Hearse

I have to admit that I found it disappointing, but then again, after two years, it's hard to imagine nearly anything not being a let down. At least Gatiss understood that no actual explanation for Sherlock faking his death would live up to the zany, convoluted plots which the fandom spent years mulling over. So the writers really did the best they could--and probably made the right decision--in keeping it kind of funny and ambiguous. No problems there. But that's not my beef. I found that The Empty Hearse was emotionally lacking because I just can't imagine that John would forgive Sherlock as easily as he did, even if he was clearly desperate to do so. I understand that the writers didn't want to drag it out indefinitely or anything, but some indication that John still isn't truly over it wouldn't be remiss. And I genuinely don't feel as though the scene at the very end of the episode, in which both Sherlock and John are caught up in a bomb scare, is very emotionally believable. I can't imagine John walking away from that just dandy. Don't get me wrong, I'm fully comprehending of the whole "stiff upper lip" sort of thing on which British people pride themselves. But this doesn't strike me as the same sort of "British" situation as, say, Douglas Adams and that one stranger both being too repressed to comment on Adams accidentally eating the other guy's biscuits with his tea.

I'm not saying that you wouldn't eventually get over it, or saying that I'd expect two grown men to cry it out or something. But it does seem to me as incredibly weird, as another sentient being, that someone would just carry on with business as usual when their best friend makes them believe that they're both going to be killed in a few seconds by a bomb, and then laughs about the other believing that they're going to die. (Keep in mind that this same best friend also let John believe that he was dead for two straight years after apparently committing suicide right in front of him.)

So yeah, I'm not really buying that. People constantly bandy out the old "oh, but they're British men!" bit as if that explains everything. And frankly, I think they're mad. No one would behave like that. They're grown men from Britain, not fucking space aliens. It's just eyebrow-raising, although I guess it fits right in with the rest of the episode as being completely ridiculous. Well, you can't win them all. Here is also a good reaction that pretty much sums up everyone's problem; Sherlock and John have to be friends again for the series to continue, but there's no realistic, organic way for the writers to portray that within the mish-mash structure of the episode.


The Sign of Three

Heart-warming, witty, and remarkably...gay. That's almost nearly all I have to say about it. The weird, biologically impossible murder plot in the background was the total opposite of compelling, so no comment there. This series wasn't particularly strong on story, and that's fine. I've made my peace. The most remarkable thing about the second episode is how bizarrely in love Sherlock is with John. I don't know if it's truly romantic or just weirdly possessive just yet, but I defy anyone to come up with another explanation for the last three minutes, with all the dancing metaphors and a jilted Sherlock leaving his best friend's wedding early. (Okay, it's definitely romantic in nature.) People have written some fascinating meta about episode two, which I've immensely enjoyed. There are some in particular on the use of uniforms and military garb as costume and armor and another on homoerotic / phallic imagery and subtext, but I can't for the life of me find them in my bookmarks. Nonetheless, a quick Google search will turn up many other meta-essays of interest.

Certainly, Sherlock's conversation with Sholto as he's close to committing suicide is very fascinating. One of the more interesting scenes left out of the very first episode (perhaps intentionally?) made it textual that Sherlock has at least had suicidal tendencies in the past, and Lestrade knew as much. Same for John, actually. It's not quite as textually evident in the reworking of the series (after the pilot) that both men are suicidally depressed and manage to help each other out of their respective dark pits. It's interesting to see it revisited and still relevant in the series. And it's especially tragic to see that character thread dealt with at the same time that Sherlock also deals with making himself emotionally vulnerable to others in new ways.

Also of note is Sherlock's best man's speech at the reception. I pretty much was open-mouthed through the whole of it, whether from second-hand embarrassment, laughter, or emotional anguish. I'd say it's fittingly memorable and touching, although certain parts had me wondering if Sherlock would end up dead and in the boot of John and Mary's car by the end of the night. I wouldn't really blame them.


His Last Vow

Okay, here we are. Prepare yourselves for a dissertation-length onslaught of Sherlock Holmes opinions.

Arguably the strongest episode of the three (and certainly the only one which remotely deserved the Emmy spot for this series), but I feel like that's not saying all too much given the first two. I was very underwhelmed by the emotionalism of the first episode and very entertained but not blown away by the second (save for a few scenes here and there), so I had high hopes for the third. In many ways I was disappointed and in others I was delighted beyond belief (see: beginning of the entry). On the whole, though, it easily gave me far more to think about than any previous episode of Sherlock, and probably the entire first two series combined. Like...wow.

We experience the inner workings of Sherlock's mind, see some key events in his past that influenced his current obsession with emotional detachment, and deal with his unrequited love. We see the reasons for his past drug addiction and current choice in vocation, and we are shown that he's capable of true moral weakness and self-sacrifice. But before I get into this giant emotional fuckpie, I'd like to address the plot a little.

First of all... Magnussen is a creep and an actual interesting update of Milverton, from CAM. I enjoyed him as a villain and honestly could have stood to have him more present in the series. I think the update from "general asshole blackmailer" to "general asshole blackmailer creep who also runs a media empire" is very...well, it's a bit predictable, but in 2014 it's about the only thing you can do with someone like that. You get the impression that a lot of wealthy media moguls think themselves to be above and beyond the law and with the license to publish pretty much anything if it benefits them in some way, and this guy is no different. In fact, unlike his namesake in the books, he's only partially in it for the money.

He loves being wealthy, I'm sure, but he seems to take greater pleasure in having leverage over people so he can push their buttons and completely violate their boundaries. (IE, licking Lady Smallwood's face, poking John and Janine in their open eyes over and over again, using Sherlock's water glass in a restaurant to clean his hands, pissing in Sherlock's fireplace...the list goes on.) In fact, he so overestimates his own power over people that he neglects to take even the most simple of precautions when inviting Sherlock over to haggle, which results in...Sherlock walking right in through the front door and blowing his brains out. Crime game weak, Magnussen.

(Or at the very least, 'underestimation of how unhinged Sherlock is' strong.)

Yasmine Akram's turn as Janine, Magnussen's PA, is also hilarious, heart-wrenching, and makes you want to strangle Sherlock for stringing her along. Wouldn't it have been hilarious for her to have broken it off with him, for any random reason, before he had a chance to use her to get to Magnussen? I feel like Sherlock thinks he can manipulate his way into and out of most situations with "regular" people without factoring in that all humans are fairly unpredictable. We very rarely get to see them fucking up his plans, most of which aren't even that foolproof. One can dream.

There were a lot of interesting misdirections in episode 3. The use of the empty house as a metaphor for Mary's heavily concealed past and present-day facade (and her new role as assassin), the 'previously unseen female killer' in CAM being the previously unsuspected, 'unseen' Mary, the treasure of Agra (now 'A.G.R.A', Mary's previous initials and link to her former life with the CIA and as a freelancer) being discarded by John in favor of new, unencumbered beginnings with no baggage from the past... part of the reason Sherlock is such an interesting show to watch is because it so often takes advantage of the viewers who are coming in with previous knowledge of what they're pulling their material from. Plenty of Sherlock fans don't care at all for reading ACD's canon stories, of course, and it's just as enjoyable to them, I suppose.

But they actually manage to blend 'The Sign of Four', 'The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton', and 'The Man with the Twisted Lip' together quite seamlessly, which is pretty fascinating given that they're all wildly divergent, unrelated stories. And somehow they were made to work in a single film, which is pretty impressive by anyone's standards. (Especially since their previous attempts to weave together vastly different stories resulted in episodes like 'The Blind Banker', which was...less than good.)

I feel like avid readers of ACD's originals can appreciate the amount of work and plotting that must go into an episode like 'His Last Vow' in a different way. The episode isn't nearly as strong if you're a casual viewer because the writers can't play off your expectations of character and plot developments quite as much. It's far more interesting and tolerable as an entire series when you come into it with previous experience with other Holmes media, because much of Sherlock is simply using and re-purposing previous material in new ways. And that's not limited at all to the original canon. 'A Scandal in Belgravia' falls into the same category; if you have no previous knowledge of 'A Scandal in Bohemia' or 'The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes', it surely must feel much flatter because you lack the context to appreciate how they've used the interpretations of writers and film directors before them to shape the narratives of their own films.

Of course, that's also part of Sherlock's problem--there's a whole lot of characters-driven-by-plot rather than plot-driven-by-characters. And ultimately it should be able to stand on its own and be wildly dramatic and amusing and misleading with no prior media consumption necessary. (It isn't. It's not an easily accessible show in the way it thinks it is. I'm not saying that Sherlock doesn't stand on its own without these things, but it's a less impressive show when you go into it alone because of its reliance on homage. I'm only speaking from my own perspective as a writer and lifetime fan of Sherlock Holmes, of course.)

Also, an interesting difference from the original story:

In CAM, Holmes is hired by a client--Lady Eva Blackwell--to retrieve the incriminating letters in question. Burglary is really the only option here, and given the nature of the villain the audience is expected to find that to be an okay thing to do. (I can't imagine anyone other than strict moral absolutists to care about this; Milverton gets what's coming to him.) Holmes doesn't choose to burgle Milverton in the same way that Sherlock chooses to do the same to Magnussen in the series; rather, Holmes has no other choice if he's meant to bring justice to his client and countless other people.

But things are a bit different in Sherlock. Sherlock is recruited by Lady Smallwood, a government worker, to act as an intermediary to Magnussen, who's a media mogul. He chooses to break into Magnussen's office in Heron tower and steal the letters back himself, when he was hired specifically to negotiate with Magnussen on Lady Smallwood's terms and come to some sort of agreement. Kind of a big difference, and a fascinating look at how Sherlock chooses to operate. Granted, it's entirely possible that Lady Smallwood told Sherlock that he can do whatever he wants or whatever he can to ensure that the letters get back to her, but from what we're shown, we don't know if that's the case. It just seems like it wouldn't be something she'd risk giving him the go-ahead to do, seeing as how she's a significant government figure, even above Mycroft? It's just an interesting modernization from the original story given how state power, media power, and Sherlock's own moral choices come to interact in vastly different ways.

(There's also the slight difference in that, in the original story, Holmes just watches Milverton get killed by a stranger and does nothing. Whereas in Sherlock, well...you know.)


It's funny to look back on series two now and see that Sherlock was so much more in control of events and interactions with Moriarty than we expected, given all we knew at the finale. It makes the contrast with series three much more interesting, because now we're given glimpses into how Sherlock deals with loss of control, which we've really not seen on this level until now. At the very least, we've never seen him deal with loss of control in his personal, emotional life on this level. At least with Moriarty, he had a plan. In series 3 he's backed into a corner, and it's....fascinating! He ends up straight up conspiring to murder a man, then going to his home and shooting him in the head! On Christmas day! Wow! I mean, it's wild.

One thing I actually do like about this odd turn of events is that Sherlock isn't made into a hero for it. He has an off-screen tribunal in-series and the actors want to ensure that what he did actually does, you know, make him morally questionable. It's portrayed as an ethical failing on his part, and possibly not something the canonical Sherlock Holmes would have done or found it necessary to do. Oops. But wow, it's so much more complicated than that. The look on Sherlock's face when he shoots Magnussen and is descended on by police....it's tragic. He knows that he's fucked up his own life, but he doesn't mind because he's secured a relatively safe future for John and Mary by pre-meditatively murdering Big M #2.

I'm not under the bizarre illusion that Magnussen is the first person he's ever killed--he's likely killed before, either in self-defense or to take down Moriarty's network of wet-workers. But Magnussen's certainly the most high-profile victim, and the only way in which Sherlock could take him down made him vulnerable in a way that secretly picking off assassins across Eurasia simply wouldn't have. His murdering Magnussen made a bold personal and narrative statement. I certainly agree with many bloggers in their questioning of why Sherlock chose to kill him rather than figure something out, but I think this is largely a writing decision made to further his narrative of personal growth and emotional sacrifice. It's meant to show him acting outside of the normal confines of rationality, because no one--no, not even Sherlock Holmes--is always completely rational when dealing with issues of love and loved ones. It makes him into a murderer, but at the same time, it absolves him of his cold detachment. Remember that whole "love is a much more vicious motivator" quote from episode one, when Sherlock is talking to that cab driver? Yeeeeeeah. We're now seeing the fruits of that from Sherlock's side of things.

Jesus, let's get started on John. What the hell is up with him? John is incredibly fucked up and welcomes people like Sherlock and Mary into his life, and he'll probably never be able to have a normal relationship. That's....a pretty dismal re-interpretation of the faithful, loyal, adventure-seeking Doctor Watson of Doyle's invention. For the first two series we're thinking that he just kind of wants a stable life and tries desperately hard to have it, at least romantically. He's involved with normal women and has a normal workplace and then comes home to Sherlock and busts up smuggling rings, kills people, and breaks into places pretending to be involved with the police. (Obviously that's a less romantic way of looking at what they do, considering they are technically seeking justice in general, but you can't really dispute it.)

Point is, by the end of series three it's revealed that he just can't have a "normal" relationship with these average people. It always ends up failing, he always comes back to Sherlock, and even when he tries to marry and settle down with someone seemingly nice, he's miserable in his dumb suburban home and has to find his happy place by busting into a crack house and beating up a junkie. And then to add insult to injury, Mary and Sherlock pretty much gang up on him and imply that he's incapable of having a relationship with people who aren't as over-the-top and manipulative and odd as they are. They love him more than anyone, and he loves them more than anyone. Are they right, or...? I mean, honestly, this season really goes there for John. I actually feel incredibly sorry for him in a way that I never have for Sherlock, Mary, or anyone else. It's clear that he doesn't necessarily want this in his life, but he's drawn to these people like a moth to flame. I don't believe for even a second that John deserves to be manipulated or lied to on the level that Mary and Sherlock regularly do, of course.

It's clear that he has a thirst for adventure and excitement. In the world of Sherlock--more or less exactly like our own but with laxer gun control laws in the UK, apparently--that pretty much means he's getting involved with crime and vigilantism. He's a veteran who felt needed and satisfied being stationed in Afghanistan. I don't think that John enjoys war, chaos, or violence for its own sake. He seems to be an honest, morally driven person and he doesn't do things or get involved in terrible things because he enjoys suffering or destruction. He always has some sort of heroic role or role on the 'good' or 'helpful' side of things. So naturally he's drawn to people who enable him to continue living like he's in an action film, and they're all just straight up off it.

This spills over into his home life and emotional attachments to loved ones, too, and it pretty much means that he's doomed to be around people who love him deeply but do not always have healthy, acceptable ways of showing it because of their own fucked up inner lives. (Hey, possibly that's why they're drawn to danger!) It's really a stunning portrayal of almost any relationship with abusive qualities. You never question that Sherlock (and Mary? big question mark there) love John to the ends of the Earth. But you do question why and how they manage to be the ones in his life who take advantage of him in ways that would be considered unacceptable by anyone else. All of these characters are obviously mentally ill and have bad coping mechanisms, and when you put them all together it's trauma city. (Not that I think anyone's behavior should be excused away because of that, but at the very least it's a realistic portrayal of how fucked up people can be towards their loved ones, even with the best of intentions in mind.)

I actually do quite enjoy that this is addressed by the creators and actors, and that they do mean for people to analyze this and talk about John's clear resentment of his position in all of this. It's a difficult situation to be in, to acknowledge that the people you love the most and who make you the happiest are also the ones who hurt you the most and cause you the most emotional pain. I don't believe that John is self-loathing or believes that he deserves it--he acts out and literally screams at Sherlock and Mary, demanding to know why 'everything is his fault' when it's clear that they've done unquestionably bad things to him, even if they thought it was for his best interest. I think he's probably just resigned to the fact that in order to feel a deep sort of fulfillment he'll have to put up with this bullshit over and over again and just come to accept it as the price meant to be paid. He obviously loves them, as well, but it must be tiring. Especially to be accused of 'choosing' it by both Sherlock and Mary. And this isn't just my interpretation of events; Freeman himself has said as much about his portrayal of John in S3, so I expect that this resentment and emotional difficulty will pop back up in the next series.

I must admit, I do like Mary a lot as a character. I don't know that we're especially meant to after the events of 'His Last Vow', but I still do. I think she's just someone who's self-centered in her desires and genuinely is trying to break away from her (frankly disturbing) past, but can't. And not for any reasons related to Magnussen blackmailing her, necessarily. I think she craves violence as well and is simply more tightly controlled than Sherlock. She'll probably never be able to escape her darker urges, and I think Sherlock probably recognizes that in himself, as well, though clearly Mary isn't morally driven like Sherlock is. She's also more of a master manipulator and seems to be in better control of her emotions and her socially unacceptable tendencies. She went freelance after working for the CIA, so it's obvious that she has few moral qualms about killing. (Sherlock, for all his insistence of being detached, is actually affected by it.) Mary is someone who controls every aspect of her life--her accent, her emotional reactions, even her own identity. She doesn't ever lose it, which is pretty fascinating. Even when she's backed into a corner by Sherlock, it's pretty clear that she has her mind made up about what step to take next to maintain her control over her new life with John and control over John's knowledge of her past.

Everything is about easily maintained control with Mary, so she makes a fascinating foil to Sherlock, who's sort of the exact opposite. The writers have described Sherlock as a capped volcano, ready to blow. He maintains an outer layer of control, but it's forced in a way that Mary's doesn't really seem to be. With Mary, it's effortless, and with Sherlock...not so much. The scene where he's dying and struggling with the pain of the bullet wound is fascinating, because inside of his own head, he's shouting "control, control, control!" as a mantra to himself.

One thing that I actually do agree with Moffat on is that Sherlock Holmes has to strive to maintain said control over his emotions and physical needs. Because he does; if nothing got to him, he would have no need to deny himself things like creature comforts, romantic relationships, or even physical intimacy. I don't necessarily feel as though these are 'alien' to him. He's someone who is quite clearly desperate for contact with others and he practically oozes loneliness in the first episode of the first series. It fits pretty flawlessly in with his narrative as a former addict and as someone who must keep things at arm's length to avoid having them interfere with his thinking and reasoning capabilities. I imagine that Mary's reveal is nothing more than the proof in the pudding to him--when you open yourself up to love, your judgment is clouded. No one ever wants to admit it, but people are biased towards those that we like and care about. How perfect of a character Mary is to blindside someone like Sherlock.

At the very least, the writers are making an effort with Sherlock's ability to let people into his life. Because he doesn't become guarded again. If anything, Mary has opened the floodgates...just a tad. Why else risk your life and freedom and life's calling--everything that you'd previously defined yourself by--to kill someone threatening the people you love?

At the beginning of series one, people had their issues with Sherlock because it seemed that, despite having something like lawful or good intentions overall, he didn't care enough about people and easily disregarded their lives or well-beings for his own means, even if it was for the 'greater good'. (See: leaving a blind elderly woman covered in semtex for several extra hours to get an edge on Moriarty and help anticipate and prevent his next bombing victim.) Now people have much of the same concern-- I recall a fan saying that they were disappointed in Sherlock murdering Magnussen because it seemed as though he was humanized over S2 and S3, and then it felt like a wash in the end. To which Moffat replied with something like, 'isn't the act of murder incredibly human?' And in a way, he's right.

Sherlock didn't kill Magnussen because of his client, Lady Smallwood, or because he was simply an asshole who had it coming. He killed him because Magnussen had the capability of and the incentive to leak Mary's location and personal information to former family members/associates of victims who would love to see her dead--and they probably wouldn't mind taking John and their baby with her, which I'm sure he's more concerned with. It would probably destroy Sherlock to know that such a scenario existed as a possibility and that any sense of happiness or security they could have would forever be threatened for the rest of their lives...or at least, the rest of Magnussen's life. And what does he have to lose, really? He can either kill a man and have his life ruined or let him live and...also have his life ruined, potentially, at some undefinable future point. It's a fascinating choice, because it suggests that Sherlock would rather let himself suffer in the isolation of prison than suffer in the isolation of having John (and his family) murdered. So now we've done a 180--Sherlock is doing morally questionable or downright immoral things, but not because he's disregarding people. Actually, quite the opposite. He will really do anything in particular for John. It's a fascinating evolution.

Slightly on a tangent, but one thing that kind of struck me is Sherlock's own admittance to using his work solving crimes as an alternative to getting high on coke. I seem to recall Gatiss and Moffat dismissing the whole 'drugs' thing when it's made into a major plot point in Sherlock Holmes adaptations. They've insisted that there are more references to Holmes laughing, for example, than shooting up. And they aren't wrong, it's certainly relied upon pretty heavily as a quick way to grimdark-up the Holmes stories. So why, then, make it Sherlock's MO in the last episode? Funny, that... if you're going to take some sort of bizarre high ground with your writing and character narratives, at least stick with it. Or maybe they're just lying liars and always intended this to be the case, who knows.

But yeah, back to Mary and Sherlock. It's no wonder that Mary can so easily see through and manipulate Sherlock; compared with her enigmatic mind and past, he's about as transparent as a glass house and she probably can sense that he's someone who fundamentally has to struggle for emotional restraint. We as an audience understand what makes Sherlock tick at a basic level, even if he's a confusing or misleading character sometimes. With Mary, who has any idea?

The bad part is that the episode ends with us still having no idea. We're not exactly privy to any arduous emotional reconciliation all of these characters hopefully must have had in the meantime between Sherlock shooting Magnussen and the end scene at the air field, because the writers pulled a time skip. It's assumed that some of this must have been resolved or confronted in a very uncomfortable way...but we're not shown it! Realistically I have no problem with time skips; not even time skips that veil some sort of narrative or implied character progress that needs to happen to push things along. It's cool; it's not like every episode of a TV series can be four or five hours long, and sometimes ambiguity is interesting. (Rarely is it ever useful and anything but a symptom of bad writing in Sherlock, but I digress.)

Moffat and Gatiss seem to have this bizarre idea that anything remotely procedural or time-intensive or expository is "boring" and they therefore are fine in skipping over it to get to the "good stuff". Which is okay sometimes. But not remotely in this case, because it robs the audience of their ability to even make sense of the characters and their interactions with each other by the end scenes of the series. Everything is left so ambiguous that it's almost not worth analysis, because we have literally no way of knowing where some people--like Sherlock and Mary--truly stand with one another now.

Mary probably intended to kill Sherlock. And briefly, she did. The scene in the operating room is very important because we know that the doctors have given up on reviving him. The surgeons turning around and noticing that his finger twitches is very important imagery, because it shows that Sherlock only lived through sheer mental willpower and concern for John. It's not like any sharp-shooter or sniper of any skill level could have predicted that Sherlock's big, gay, undying love for John would have brought him back from the veil of death. She meant to kill him, and Sherlock is so desperate to like her (and not feel that he was wrong in misreading her, most likely,) that he overlooks this fact because he knows that she makes John happy, and Sherlock is so enamored with John that he wants to have that happen at any expense. He also likely relates to her on some level, too, and the rarity of that happening probably means that he's willing to give her a ridiculous amount of leeway.

It's actually sad and it makes me wonder how Sherlock and Mary came to reconcile, because it's incredibly important for the future of the series. We don't even know if they did. Clearly they "like" each other, but how far can that extend once someone murders you in cold blood and you manage to unexpectedly recover from it? I can't imagine that being an easy thing to come to terms with. The only thing keeping these two dysfunctional people together in harmony is that they both love John.

How many emotionally unhealthy, manipulative people can John bear at one time? At least two, as we've previously established. In the end, they're all okay with it, or seem to accept that they all have a fucked up relationship with each other and decide to try to be happy together despite all that. It's mostly why it feels like cheating to rob the audience of that sort of development. This is the good stuff that the writers are skipping over. How do they all come to that consensus? Does John truly forgive Mary? Do Mary and Sherlock get along just the same as they did before? How does this affect how Sherlock feels about John, when John and Mary decide to make things work? Sure, Sherlock seems to want it...but does he, really? Really really? And does Mary really really want Sherlock in the picture, as well? I have a feeling there's a big unspoken 'no' underneath this charade somewhere.

It seems like we as an audience were deprived of some massive conflict resolution bits. I can understand why Moffat and Gatiss would choose not to devote a whole lot of time to legal procedural scenes that should come about because Sherlock killed a very high-profile man. This gap in believable narrative structure would even be okay if we were treated to a more personal reflection or display of the toll that pre-meditatively killing someone who wasn't an immediate threat to his life would have on Sherlock's psyche. Clearly it wasn't a decision he made flippantly and the look on his face when it happens shows as much. He knew exactly what killing Magnussen would do to him, and he clearly went to his house with the intention to do just that if necessary. It's just a shame that we got neither before the end of the episode. Sherlock just doesn't probe as emotionally deep as it should, for as much time as we were treated to character development over plot this series. 'His Last Vow' should have lasted at least 30 more minutes.

With all that in mind, it seems as though the ambiguity must be purposeful. I mean, I hope so. Because otherwise, what the fuck? Generally they give the audience a cliffhanger to think on or obsessively analyze with each series finale, and maybe this is it for the third run. Maybe the audience is meant to spend the next two years agonizing over how Sherlock, John, and Mary can possibly just continue on as normal (whatever that is) after all of the weird shit that went down in the third episode. We have two years to torture ourselves over the fact that the main cast is together, everyone's alive, and everyone's...maybe okay with each other. I guess we'll see on that one. It's very odd. As far as I'm concerned, the Moriarty bit at the end is just not all that interesting in comparison. The real mystery to chew over is how these three can possibly have even a dysfunctional relationship, or one at all. I'm a bit guardedly excited to see how this is resolved in the next one.

Perhaps a quote by Marianne Williamson is appropriate here:

"Until we have seen someone’s darkness, we don’t really know who they are. Until we have forgiven someone’s darkness, we don’t really know what love is."