Sherlock – Season Four
The final season of Sherlock, so far. Not terribly sure we’ll get another season, since Martin Freeman and Benedict Cumberbatch are both busy with other projects. This is not my favorite season, but I guess the ending is somewhat satisfying. The Six Thatchers picks up where season three ended, Sherlock is back in England to solve the final Moriarty mystery. In the meantime, while he waits for clues, he continues to solve cases. And Mary and John’s baby arrives, a little girl they name Rosamund Mary, “Rosie.” I adore the scene where Sherlock is minding Rosie and speaks in eloquent sentences that boil down to: “If you’d like to keep the rattle, than don’t throw the rattle.” To which Rosie promptly responds by throwing the rattle back in Sherlock’s face!
Sherlock is put on the case of the mysterious death of a young man in a parked car in England when he was supposedly on vacation a week prior. Turns out, he wasn’t gone, he had hoped to surprise his father at his birthday the week prior, but had suffered some sort of stroke or something and died in the midst of the surprise and wasn’t discovered for a week. But what fascinates Sherlock is a smashed plaster bust of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. A slew of alike busts end up smashed. He stakes out the final bust and confronts the criminal, thinking it’s connected to Moriarty. It’s not, it goes back to Mary and her past as an agent. Her team was betrayed on their last mission and the only other survivor thinks it was Mary’s fault. it wasn’t, but Mary doesn’t want to put John and Rosie in danger, so she sneaks away, using her old skill set. Sherlock and John track her down and the old teammate dies when the police interrupt their discussion.
Sherlock promises to keep Mary safe and they all return to England. Sherlock first suspects Lady Smallwood, then realizes it was her secretary. He confronts her, as does Mary. The woman essentially did it for money, pulls a gun on Sherlock and Mary and hopes they will let her go if she promises to stop. Sherlock annoys her, but Mary jumps in front of the bullet. Mycroft, Lestrade, and John are on the scene. Mary apologizes to Sherlock for shooting him last year; they’re even now. She dies in John’s arms. John’s anger and grief are a bit hard to watch (meaning wonderful acting).
At home, there is a disc that arrived for Sherlock, labeled “Miss Me?” We all think it’s from Moriarty. No, Mary, getting Sherlock’s attention. She has one last case for Sherlock, save John Watson. Except, John doesn’t want to see Sherlock.
This carries over to The Lying Detective. John has gone to another therapist and during his session, a fancy red car shows up. Then we jump to Culverton Smith (played by Toby Jones; we’ve seen him in Ever After, Amazing Grace, The Hunger Games and the Captain America movies as Dr. Arnim Zola. He was the Dream Lord in an episode of Doctor Who during Matt Smith’s stint as the Doctor; he has also voiced Dobby in Harry Potter) hosting a gathering of his friends; he wants to confess something. Honestly, he creeps me out from the start. From there we see that Sherlock is not doing well separated from John. Smith’s daughter approaches him; she wants Sherlock to stop her father, he wants to kill someone. But Sherlock is off his game, he’s not able to keep up with his brain. Though he comes around in time to stop the woman from killing herself with the gun in her purse; and gives an excellent message (still reeling himself from Mary’s death):
Taking your own life. Interesting expression, taking it from who? Once it’s over, it’s not you who’ll miss it. Your own death happens to everyone else. Your life is not your own, keep your hands off it.
And Sherlock, well, Benedict, is rather impressive quoting Henry V‘s “once more unto the breech” speech. At that point, Mrs. Hudson coerces Sherlock into the trunk of her red sports car and drives to John, bringing us back to the start of the episode. Then they meet Culverton Smith and follow his day to a hospital, where the man creeps everyone out asking about serial killers (Sherlock had accused him of such on Twitter earlier). Sherlock hopes that Smith’s daughter will help put the nail in the coffin of his accusation, then it turns out the woman he met was not Smith’s daughter. Sherlock is very high at the moment. Smith won’t press charges, but he’ll take care of Sherlock.
John (after he beats up Sherlock a bit, Sherlock is fine with he, he did kill Mary) meets up with Mycroft in Sherlock’s flat. Mrs. Hudson takes control of the situation; she understands Sherlock where the other two men do not. Sherlock is emotional; that’s why he shoots the wall and stabs a problem. There is another disc, waiting for John. She orders Mycroft’s team out, and even Mycroft Holmes himself: “Get out of my house, you reptile.” John watches her message to Sherlock (he’s been seeing her ever since her death. It’s rather funny when “Mary” points out what Sherlock is doing to John and that what she is saying is John’s own brain). For Sherlock to save John, he must go to Hell; John will save him and in saving Sherlock, will save himself.
Back at the hospital, Culverton Smith has snuck into Sherlock’s room. Sherlock reveals that he wants Culverton to help kill him; increase the dosage on the drugs. But that takes too long for Culverton; smothering will be quicker. John bursts in at that point. Sherlock has managed to capture Smith’s confession in a listening device in John’s cane. Once in Baker Street again, “Mary” urges John to remain with Sherlock. Emotions come out and are dealt with. John reveals that he was cheating on Mary; he was texting a woman from the bus. It never went farther, but he wanted it to. And John urges Sherlock to respond to Irene Adler because he knows there is no guarantee how long you have with someone. John breaks down and Sherlock hugs his friend.
Things are better. Sherlock and John solve cases, Sherlock wears the hat. There may be a “thing” between Smallwood and Mycroft, interesting. John visits his new therapist again. She brings up the secret Holmes sibling that has been hinted at for years. Turns out the therapist was the woman that Sherlock met and talked out of suicide and she was the woman from the bus that was texting John. She is Eurus (the East Wind), the Holmes’ sister. The episode ends with her holding a gun on John.
The Final Problem is Eurus. Sherlock gives his elder brother a fright in his own home in order to make deductions (part of that may have been influenced by John). Though we do discover that inside Mycroft’s famous umbrella is a sword! Then a pistol! (Though, why is there a clown?) Mycroft reports to Baker Street the next day and finally reveals that Eurus is indeed the youngest of the Holmes’ siblings. But Sherlock doesn’t remember her. Childhood trauma, Mycroft explains. Sherlock blocked it. Eurus is a quantifiable genius, but she didn’t process things the same way as most people. She locked up Redbeard and wouldn’t tell anyone. Then she set fire to the family home. She had to be locked away. Mycroft eventually told his parents that she started another fire and died. Instead, she’s in Sherrenford, a maximum security prison. A drone flies into the flat with a motion sensor grenade. The three men wait until Mrs. Hudson is out of danger, Sherlock even brings up the possibility of John calling his daughter but there is no chance, then they move. Sherlock and John leap out a window and Mycroft is to make for the stairs.
Sherlock gets to be a pirate for a moment and commandeer a boat to get to Sherrenford. John is taken into Sherreford with a sea captain, who turns out to be Mycroft. Sherlock is already disguised as a guard and makes his way down to meet his sister. Mycroft berates the governor of the prison for the compromise in security; obviously Eurus made it out of the prison against his orders. And there was a psychiatric exam against his orders as well. Eurus can reprogram people, never to good results. This unfortunately includes the governor of the prison. And there is no glass on Eurus’s cell. She attacks Sherlock.
Mycroft’s Christmas gift is revealed to have been an unsupervised five minute conversation with Moriarty. Moriarty recorded lots of things for Eurus. (Yeah, not a good idea to put the two most dangerous psychopaths in the same room, especially when they both have a vendetta against Sherlock.) Eurus is now in control of the facility and has a series of tests lined up for her brothers and John. She is testing Sherlock’s emotions and logic First, either Mycroft or John will have to shoot the governor in order to save his wife. Mycroft refuses. John accepts, but ultimately can’t do it. The governor does it for them, but that breaks the parameters and Eurus shoots his wife anyway. Next, Sherlock is to solve a case with little information and pass judgment on three brothers for a murder. Eurus in due course kills all three, not understanding the hesitancy to take someone else’s life. Next, Eurus has wired explosives in Molly Hooper’s flat. Sherlock has three minutes to get Molly to say “I love you.” Poor Molly. It’s true, she has always loved Sherlock. Molly asks Sherlock to say it and mean it first. And he does. Molly whispers it in return. Turns out, there were no explosives; she just put her brother and a dear friend through emotional turmoil for nothing. Sherlock smashes the coffin in the room. All three men need hugs. But they must solider on.
In the next room, Sherlock is to choose which man to kill; only he and one other can continue on. Interspersed is a phone call with a scared little girl in a plane about to crash. Sherlock can be remarkable with children. Mycroft first tells Sherlock to shoot John, which John agrees. But Sherlock realizes that Mycroft is trying to goad him into killing his older brother. He cannot choose; both men are important to him. They are tranquilized. Sherlock wakes up in the burnt out family home, Musgrave Hall. Now, he has to find where John is trapped; the same place as Redbeard. Though there was one detail that Mycroft never told Sherlock. Redbeard was never a dog. “Redbeard” was Sherlock’s childhood best friend. They played pirates together. And Eurus had wanted to join, but boys being boys, they didn’t let her, so she chained the boy to the bottom of a well and let him drown. The little song she sang comes into play, along with the mismatched dates on the gravestones. Sherlock finds Eurus and figures out there was no actual plane that was about to crash; it was Eurus being scared and confused all her life.
A change comes to Sherlock and his family (which includes John). Sherlock now supports Mycroft, especially when the elder has to explain all that has happened to their parents. Sherlock visits Eurus and they play violin duets; she can never rejoin society, not after all she’s done. There is a sweet scene of Sherlock playing with John and Rosie. The parting words are Mary’s; she has always known what her men are. In the end, it’s all about the legend, the stories, and the adventures of the detective and his doctor. Her Baker Street Boys.
One element that I do like about this season is it humanizes the characters, particularly Mycroft and Sherlock. Sherlock admits that he can get full of himself. He is willing to kill himself to save John, even though he really doesn’t want to die (oh my goodness, whoever has to listen to that recording and hear Sherlock almost in tears saying “I don’t want to die…”) He truly views John and Mary as family. He lets Mrs. Hudson handcuff him to take him to John. And Mycroft is revealed to have always cared for Sherlock, and not just in passing. He protected him from the truth of what their little sister did (I can’t scrounge up too much sympathy for a person who knowingly and willingly let another child die, then wished the same upon their brother). As Lestrade says at the end, Sherlock Holmes is a good man.
The Eurus spin doesn’t quite sit well with me. The reveal of Mary’s old team seemed rushed. And Culverton, while extremely creepy, also seems contrived.
Now, for my favorite part of Sherlock…the fandom!
The Hillywood Show has done a parody video. I’m personally not familiar with the song they parodied, but the video is quite excellent. And check out the behind the scenes videos and video diaries; they filmed on the same location as scenes in the show, to the confusion of some British fans (their make-up is spot on). And Percy Weasley from Harry Potter guests stars at their Mycroft and Osric Chau (Kevin Tran from Supernatural and he has worked with the Hillywood girls before) is their Moriarty. There is a whole slew of other parodies; I started with the two Supernatural videos.
The fans already thought that there was another Holmes sibling long before Season Four, though it was a younger brother. Notice the new, young “Q” in Skyfall? (This is the theory I abide with) Could “Q” stand for Quentin, keeping with the unusual names? Ktwontwo has a whole series written about this family. Another fanfiction author, A Wandering Minstrel, suggests Trevalyan.
And then there is the whole “Superwholock” crossover deal. It’s a combination of Supernatural with Doctor Who and Sherlock. It’s funny, though I don’t quite understand how all three get squashed together. Maybe it’s angels? Sherlock states he’s not one of them, Doctor Who has the Weeping Angels, and Castiel is an angel. Ultimately it may boil down to they were the three most popular shows at the same time for a while.
After the Holidays: We’ll get back to some other historically based movies, starting with Master and Commander
Dreamer in the Mirror 