Sherlock finale thread- WARNING SPOILERS

[Allthingsprettyreturns]

Starting the thread in antcipation!

Although BC does smoke and did play the violin at the wedding. Not so different. I may have to pick him instead. Shame.

They haven't made him sexy - our changed society has. "Clever is the new sexy", right? And, I disagree, I have personally always found SH sexy - tall, lean, stunningly clever. It's too subjective a thing to say "He was never sexy". Says who?

ACD's Holmes would not work in the modern world - they have to change the character in order for him to have the impact on our society that he had on Victorian England. He was a man of his time - in advance of his time, actually. So must our Sherlock be. In order for him to be in advance of our time, he still has to be "of" it.

What have they done to "humanise" him - leaving aside the obvious fact that he is already human? He is still careless of people's feelings, except John's, he hasn't had sex and shows no inclination to do so...and so on.

They've done something deliberately different with this - canon has been done brilliantly by Jeremy Brett. This is not a re-telling - it's a re-imagining. If ACD were alive today, would this be his Holmes? Quite possibly, yes.

I do think the purists are being unfair to the writers & missing the point entirely.

Although I get where you're coming from. I remember watching an American made Miss Marple story - and she was sitting at a dinner table smoking . I was scandalised!

He did though.

He saw she was a liar but failed to read her properly in relation to her past. He would have picked up on the fact that she wasn't English, that Mary was a false name, that she had a secret and was a trained assassin. The clues were all there and it showed Holmes noticing them but failing to pick up on them.

That wouldn't have happened.

He would also have known that Magnussen only showed those letters as a Red Herring, that no-one had seen inside the vaults, that no-one had ever seen evidence of his documents, etc.

And if Janine is Moriarty's sister, again he would have seen and deduced that.

He is shown as vulnerable and weak and that was never his character.

Yes, I too love the old-fashioned and traditional Holmes but this first series did get me excited and I loved that someone cared enough to bring Holmes to a whole new audience. I was prepared to hate it, but I loved it. Now after watching this latest series, I'm left gutted. They've ruined it for me.

Oh please don't call me a purist - please

I'm really not.

I did like this changed Holmes as I said.

When I say they 'humanised' him I mean this:

Holmes was, according to Watson, a thinking machine at times. He did not self-analyse. He did not have complex relationships with 'fans' or anyone else. He was not vulnerable. You knew nothing of his background (hence the mystery). He was not competitive. He was not a murderer. He never acted without facts. He was solitary. He was very very rarely wrong.

They have brought in his parents. They have attached a label to explain his personality. They have analysed his childhood. They have made him vulnerable just like the rest of us.

They don't get that the reason why some of us liked him was because he wasn't like the rest of us.

He was different, mysterious and ok Hettie, sexy to some. Sexy because of the mystery right? Take away the mystery and you have just another crime drama.

I'm more annoyed about him not clocking Magnussen's "mind palace" after checking his glasses than I am at him not spotting Mary's background. That to me was a huge mistake, one that Sherlock isn't supposed to make.

Right from the start of Series 1 they were definitely making the human side of Holmes a much bigger part of the story, making a lot more of his relationship with Mycroft, a lot more of his affection for Holmes, the conflict of a person who insists they 'don't have friends' but who goes berserk when someone hurts Mrs Hudson etc.

It all worked though because the writing was so tight - it was all properly balanced and in proportion. If I am being a 'purist' then ironically I am being purist about this new Sherlock, 'purist' about the first 2 series and the brilliant recreation they introduced us to. That's what i've been waiting 2 years for more of and it's a bit gutting after all that time to see this lame approximation.

Right on winterkills

Sorry for calling you a purist. Wasn't meant to be an insult, just a position

I agree about the murder thing - crap solution to the CAM problem. Unless it was a ruse & he's not actually dead, of course! And yes - he was continually wrong in the last episode, which jarred. I'm with you on those.

But the rest of your description could be used to describe BC's Holmes too. I think we can deduce he had parents, so introducing them isn't adding new information, we know he has an older brother and went to university. I don't know anything else about the background of our Holmes - so still in keeping.

They don't get that the reason why some of us liked him was because he wasn't like the rest of us Oh yes they do. Do you know anyone like Sherlock Holmes? Really? He's still nothing like anyone else and inspires admiration & awe in just about everyone.

I did like Billy Wiggins. Is he based on a real character?

Winterkills

Don't you think the original Sherlock would have been angry if someone had hurt the original Mrs Hudson? He may not have ranted, but he wouldn't have shrugged it off.

Nothing wrong with being a purist at all, by the way - just that I think (personally) it misses the point here.

Hettie - I think you missed my point.

I really like the actor who played Billy Wiggins, he was in Poirot the other day being equally excellent.

Yes Wiggins is a Baker Street Irregular, one of Holmes' favourites.

Yes all of that jarred with me too and I just don't like that they have to analyse him. Why not just accept that he is different and leave his background as a mystery? Now we know that he has wacky parents, had a dog who was put down, suffered childhood trauma, was taunted for being the stupid one, etc.

I don't want to understand why Holmes is the way he is, I just love him for who he is.

I guess I am quite protective of my childhood and now adulthood hero

CAM is set up as the villain who the law cannot touch, and who can only be killed. Inventing a solution which captures him without killing him wouldn't be true to the spirit of the books.

Yes but it didn't have to be Holmes who killed him!

In the book Holmes and Watson see the murder but decide not to intervene. In any case they couldn't have saved him and Holmes stops Watson from calling the police saying that justice had been served.

For Sherlock to turn around, wish him a Happy Christmas and then shoot him is completely out of character. Utterly.

Holmes never shot or killed anyone and never would.

Have you noticed that the character in the book has become Holmes whilst BC has become Sherlock?

Winter

Yes, I think I did a bit. Sorry.

Why not just accept that he is different and leave his background as a mystery? Because that wouldn't be very entertaining anymore. A new Sherlock means more Sherlock - otherwise it's not very new.

Oi - no blushing. It's fine to be protective of something that means a lot to you.

That the shooting was so out of character makes me wonder if all is as it seems.

If CAM is really dead, a sniper in the helicopter should have shot him.

Depends on what you mean by entertaining I guess.

I find the whole crime and deduction thing more entertaining than finding out about his background and sticking labels on him.

The Doyle stories were little crime dramas and each one revolved around the crime and how Holmes managed to solve it. Some weren't crimes but mysteries, like the Yellow Face. Each one was unique and the deduction was what made them highly entertaining and fascinating.

Yes it was nice to get glimpses into the character of Holmes from time to time but Doyle knew to keep readers guessing and wanting more which is why he never expanded on any of his characters - not Holmes, or Watson or Mrs Hudson. We never even knew the first name of Lestrade, just that it began with a G hence all the jokes about Sherlock getting his name wrong.

Doyle focused on the crimes and mysteries, he would never have left his characters open for analysing, it just wasn't his style.

I truly believe that he would be the same today and would frown upon all this relationship nonsense, telling critics that they were missing the point. As Holmes said to Watson, they are romanticising what could have been fascinating insights into the art of deduction.

It's a feature of Gatiss and Moffat that they expand on the characters and start to analyse and explore them more than they ought to, frustrating the viewer. Certainly the kids have noticed this with Doctor Who, they said it was boring without the monsters and they hate his 'wife'.

I can't help being nerdy over Holmes!

You see I really do think the Holmes of the book would have killed CAM to protect Watson. He was very protective of Watson, he says that he would kill to avenge Watson if it came to it, and he thought CAM was a blot on the face of the earth better off dead. It's a very specific situation,

I think you've hit the nail on the head, Rhubarb.

When Doyle wrote them they were crime stories. No question.

But Moffat has said over and over this isn't a detective story, it's a story about a detective. The focus has changed - deliberately. And this simply wouldn't be possible if they stuck to the Holmes as Doyle wrote him and didn't add anything.

I gave up on Doctor Who ages ago. I have not the vaguest idea what's going on in any of the episodes.

I think Sherlock did know about the mind palace, that's why he checked Watson had the gun. He shot CAM in front of witnesses so Watson wasn't suspected and he did it because there was no other way to stop him - no archives to torch and no way of proving anything.

Though it would have been truer to the books if a sniper had shot CAM out of loyalty to someone who he'd blackmailed.

By proving anything I meant proving CAM had committed a crime.

I think he knew too, and that the look on his face when the 'vault' was just a chair in a room was not disappointment at being outwitted, but fear and resignation and what he knew he would have to do.

I think he knew when he looked at the glasses.

A number of times in the books, he didn't figure the case out in 30 seconds, there's a line in one of the stories which is something like, "if I was the perfect reasoning machine you are so fond of depicting, Watson, that one phrase would have told me everything."

I think "The Dynamics of Combustion" was to prove that Holmes's mother wasn't the "simple good hearted woman" she's been shown as till then. Plus an excuse for that naff "hot" joke from Holmes's father.