Sherlock Season 3 Finale Spoilers Ahead
As I see it there are two ways to write a compelling mystery in any medium:
1) You can let the reader try to figure it out along the way. Leave the clues in plain sight and invite them to see if they can connect the dots before the main character does. When done explicitly, this is Encyclopedia Brown style, but a good writer does it organically without even letting you know you have the ability to solve it.
2) Make the clues only meaningful to the main character and dole them out as revelations, but never enough to give a clear answer as to who the murderer or whatever is, so that remains a surprise until the end no matter how well you pay attention. This is pretty much 100% the standard format for any episode of any TV mystery procedural- Bones, Monk, CSI, whatever.
So, having finished the final episode of the third season of Sherlock (finally), they have found a way to do a new kind of mystery:
3) What the hell was the mystery?
Seriously. Okay, there was the whole subplot of Mary. That was not a mystery. You didn't even get a clue that there was a mystery there until the show reveals there's a mystery, at which point you assume "Oh, she's actually a secret agent or assassin or something." And, over the course of the episode it is very slightly revealed that, "Yeah, she's actually a secret agent or assassin or something." Not much else there.
Okay, so there's everything with Magnussen. I guess the mystery there is...what is Appledore? Except we're told what Appledore is so that's not a mystery. Until the twist that Appledore is a red herring, which...I suppose you should've been able to guess. But even then...what's the point? The entire course of the episode is just to lead to Sherlock killing a villain who...wasn't really a threat until Sherlock decided to go after him. I don't know. I don't get it.
I like this show. I like every element of it except the plot falls so deadly short sometimes. Which would be fine if it were a regular TV show. I don't demand perfection. But when you only make 3 episodes every two years, it seems like you can do a little bit better. I'm not saying I didn't enjoy the episode or anything it's just...frustrating in retrospect when a show with such talent behind it doesn't achieve something as good as it seems like it ought to.
Which, I suppose, brings me to the stinger. Moriarty's 'back'. This isn't Doctor Who. Moriarty isn't The Master. He doesn't have infinite lives. It's certainly something far more complicated than him coming back from the dead. Whatever.
Really, I have a lot of whatever for that. If Doctor Who has taught me anything over the last decade, it's that recurring villains do not good stories make. Of the dozen or so appearances of the Daleks since the modern incarnation of Who has started, I'd count maybe three as really, honestly good: Dalek, Doomsday, and Asylum of the Daleks. The rest range from decent to garbage. But the best episodes of Doctor Who: The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances, The Girl in the Fireplace, Human Nature/The Family of Blood, Blink, Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead, Midnight, The Girl Who Waited, The Doctor's Wife. None of these were part of big events, at least they weren't at the time. They weren't about the big reappearance of The Master or The Daleks or The Cybermen. They were honestly creative, compelling episodes that worked beautifully well.
So...whatever. Moriarty. Of course, in a year and a half, when the episode actually happens, I'll be excited as hell because of having been starved for the show. Right now, all I have is apathy, though.
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