Quote:
Originally Posted by CrossedWires
I really liked the Baskerville episode, and Reichenbach falls.
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This is where I would strongly start to disagree with you.
Ya see, while its 100% true that these stories are original, they sort of rely on Holmes verse as a sort of an attempt to bring some meaning to it, they even attempt to use it to bring deeper meaning altogether (but screw it up in every way possible).
If they named the detective something else, lets call him Larry, then the whole thing would fall apart instantly.
Setting aside Baskervilles, which made sense in plot but absolutely screwed with the characters far past breaking point and plausability went out the window, Reichenback Falls was one of the worst things ever made by a Human.
Its
Star Wars: Attack of the Clones bad.
In fact, its
Clones + 'The Force is Midichlorians' Scene Bad.
Notwithstanding that the episode had no plot at all, because each 'plot twist' essentially counteracted and retconned the previous ten minutes of episode, the whole thing culminated with
Larry jumping off a roof and faking his own death.
Why?
What did he do it for?
The whole thing was totally hollow and by the end I didn't even know why Larry was even listening to any of it.
It relied largely on drawing from the original Reichenback Concept that Moriarty and Holmes both die (except that on twitter Moffat said Moriarty isn't dead either) to give it a deeper connectivity with the verse.
Except they totally failed.
Sherlock didn't fake his death, nor did he do it to save Watson.
He was willing to die to stop Moriarty because there was no other way. Moriarty wasn't smarter than Holmes, he was his equal, his opposite. The worst that Holmes could do was foil his plans, he was never able to Trap Moriarty in the same way Moriarty wasn't able to successfully assassinate Holmes...
Ultimately it concluded with Sherlock chosing to instead Negate them both and cancel each other out.
It was the most important part in the stories, the concept that Holmes had to sacrifice himself to defeat his nemesis - and the idea of the hero and villain dying together is one that has been pervasive ever since.
Larry's whole plot-arc didn't make any sense. There were assassins protecting him from harm, even at the cost of their own lives, except that they were going to kill Watson unless Holmes died? Shouldn't they have been preventing him from dying?
Why were the assassins protecting him, not protecting him from Moriarty's assassins if indeed they weren't the same people as Moriarty later claimed?
What possible plan did Moriarty have from the start of the episode? None of it made any sense and the internal contridictions sucked any purpose out of his motivations.
The writers clearly hadn't the faintest idea of what they were doing and were filling desperately to try and make out that moriarty is some kind of genius without him demonstrating any of it since the instant he did something clever the plot-twists retconned it.
It reminds me of the fight scene at the end of
Sith, it didn't need to be an hour long in a volcano, the overall point is that Anakin loses. The whole of season1 set up Moriarty as a criminal mastermind, they didn't need to reiterate it badly.
I felt absolutely nothing watching Cumberbatch-as-Larry leaping off the roof. I knew he wasn't going to die and I wasn't sure precisely how Moriarty had 'trapped' him so 'cleverly' at the end. The whole thing was as meaningless as it could be.
I could talk for another ten pages about the crown-jewels robbery scene or how baffling the segement where he claims to be an actor Larry 'made up' was or how it doesn't work but I actually can't stomach it.
It wouldn't bother me if it wasn't for the writers desperately using Holmes Nostalga imagery to create a deeper meaning to their stuff that isn't there. Larry jumping off the roof wouldn't have any meaning if it wasn't tagentially related to Holmes at the Falls.
Surfice to say, I recomend
Elementary over Season2 of
Larry's Colourful Adventures.
