The State of ‘Sherlock’ After “The Six Thatchers”

Sherlock returned for its fourth season this past weekend and so far the reviews are…mixed. While hardcore fans are always going to revel in a return to Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat‘s reimagined 221b Baker Street, other viewers are a little disappointed.

***SPOILERS FOR SHERLOCK Season 4, Episode 1 “The Six Thatchers” AHEAD***

In case you missed it — and don’t care about being spoiled — “The Six Thatchers” brought us deep into Mary Watson’s (Amanda Abbington) past as a secret agent. She found herself being hunted by a fellow assassin and in the end she wound up taking a bullet for Sherlock Holmes (Benedict Cumberbatch). Her death left John Watson (Martin Freeman) devastated and blaming Sherlock (or is John displacing his own guilt onto Sherlock? Both men broke a vow and it looks like Sherlock is the one who is going to bear the brunt of it because John doesn’t want to fess up to his adultery). Yeesh. 

“The Six Thatchers” was an exciting, action-packed, globe-trotting 90 minutes of television, and yet it only brushed upon the shocking final moments of the Season Three finale. Sherlock is immediately absolved of murdering Magnusson through digital trickery and political conspiracy and we never find out what that Moriarty video is all about. Season Four still has two episodes in which to work these emotional and mental puzzles out, though. So I’ll be generous and assume that a plan is still in play to wrap up these loose ends. That still begs the question: What is the state of Sherlock right now? Is the once shockingly perfect show losing its grip?

What’s still working? Sherlock is still a technically ground-breaking mystery series. When the first season debuted, it established itself as a series that was willing to break the visual mold. Through clever editing, visual effects, and animation, we were able to see how the great Sherlock Holmes’ mind actually worked. Sherlock also gained distinction for being one of the first shows or films to figure out a visually dynamic way to use text messages in concord with dialogue. Thanks to director Rachel Talalay, “The Six Thatchers” continues to push visual boundaries. Special effects, lighting, and framing are all used to enhance the episode’s overwhelming sensation of emotional unease. The acting is also still stellar across the board — just think of Cumberbatch’s virtuoso performance as an emotionally repressed man trying to keep his sorrow contained behind a frayed theatrical curtain or of Freeman’s guttural moan in the aquarium — and Gatiss and Moffat are still capable of spinning an intricate puzzle box of a plot.

The question is does Sherlock the show still care as much about “the game” as Sherlock Holmes does?

It seems to me that Sherlock is no longer about the game as much as it is about the drama. That’s a problem. What originally made the show so exquisite was how it focused almost all of its energy on the mystery at hand. It let the stakes of that mystery reveal the emotional drama percolating underneath. It was elegant and adult. Now the mystery is designed to buttress the outrageous soap opera at hand. Ironically, by devoting more energy to the characters and their relationships, Sherlock seems to be making those characters’ relationships all the more melodramatic and all the less believable.

There’s another problem, too: Sherlock no longer has a real foil. Sometimes I think Sherlock literally pulled the trigger on killing off Moriarty a season or two too soon. His absence has left a void where there should be a strong villain. Next week, we meet Toby Jones’ Culverton Smith, but it’s hard to get jazzed about him when we saw how soundly last season’s villain, Charles Augustus Magnussen was defeated. The scariest specter of the season so far has been James Moriarty’s ghost.

However, there are signs that Sherlock is getting itself back on track. By indulging in a Mary-heavy episode for the character’s last hurrah*, the show may be sending a signal that they have gotten all the secret agent stuff she dredged into the story out of their system. It also means that we are returning to Sherlock‘s purest relationship — that of Sherlock and Watson. No matter how cool they made Mary, she was always going to be the third wheel in a legendary two-some. Going forward, if Gatiss and Moffat focus on “the game” and how it affects Sherlock and Watson’s friendship, we may be able to return to what made Sherlock so engaging in the first place.

The beauty of this modern Sherlock is that it can be constantly reinvented even within itself. Both Cumberbatch and Freeman were rather young for the roles when they were originally cast. That gives them the freedom to press pause on the series for as long as one year to one decade. We can always come back to them at different stages in their lives to see how their dynamic has evolved and how it has stayed the same. As long as there are new mysteries to solve, there can be new Sherlocks. So I’m not as dismayed at how the show has changed since its beginning as I am excited for what may still be in store.

Sherlock, “The Lying Detective” debuts on PBS this Sunday, January 8. 

*I know that some people are complaining that the character was “fridged,” but this was always going to happen. Mary Watson dies fairly soon after marrying Dr. John Watson in the original Sherlock Holmes canon, so I wasn’t as surprised that they killed her off as much as I was impressed that they gave her such a juicily convoluted send off.

Stream 'Sherlock' on PBS