Warning: This article contains major spoilers for Sherlock season four.
Sherlockstarted out with so much promise.
It knew what it was: a drama about two men and their respective emotional baggage.
This has undermined the very element of this show that initially made it great.
The romance of reason.
He does this not by traditional genre means (i.e.
by using fantasy or science fiction), but by using reason in extraordinary ways.
I think modern viewers might be able to find something they can relate to in this particular anxiety.
This is an attractive idea, right?
They need to believe that modernity hasnt just brought about climate change and fractured nation-states.
They need to believe that the tools of modernity can also be used to save us.
This subtle thematic foundation ofSherlockwas present in the first two seasons of the show.
No one season ofSherlockhas been without its delights.
The superhero genre tends to prioritize competency over all else.
Charles Magnussen not with his brain, but with a bullet.
I have never been more disappointed with this show than in this moment.
The Abominable Bride: the meta period piece.
Sherlock season 4: the spy drama/psychological horror.
It was a classic example of the specific storytelling elementSherlockhas prioritized in the last few seasons: The Twist.
Circling back around to where we started… No gravity-defying superhero antics.
No psychopathic supervillain sisters.
Just plain old-fashioned reason, with what a healthy dash of family melodrama mixed in for flavor.
Embracing the depth of the real, modern world.
The show didnt need fantastical elements to make the world strange or scary or wonderful.
We would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence.
We never neededSherlockto be a superhero story or a spy drama.
A story that recognizes there are stakes and wonders enough within the boundaries of the real world.
