The people around him, even John, ultimately seem to exist only as extras in his world, showing up when needed to lecture, scold, or spurn him into a renewed sense of purpose or a showing of human decency. The trouble with Mary Oh, Mary, we hardly knew you.Īmanda Abbington’s arrival as Mary Morstan at the start of Sherlock season three seemed to accompany a shift in the show’s overall direction away from crime solving and toward a rhetorical plot cycle in which John attempts to swap his dysfunctional relationship with Sherlock for something healthier, only to fail because in the world of Sherlock, all roads and all people ultimately lead back to the title character himself. None of these cases lead him to Moriarty, however instead, they plunk him down into the rabbit hole introduced in the tumultuous season three finale: the truth about Mary’s murky past as a mercenary assassin. His rudeness extends to texting obliviously through the christening ceremony for John and Mary’s newborn daughter, Rosie, but they ask him to be her godfather anyway, because every human being in Sherlock’s life ultimately decides that his general horribleness is worth tolerating because it’s his noble commitment to detective work that makes him act that way, or something.Ĭase in point: In “The Six Thatchers,” all the people around him patiently endure as he ravenously takes on case after quickly solved case, hoping to figure out the maddening-to-many season three turn that brought back the very-dead Moriarty ( Andrew Scott) as a spectral presence in Sherlock’s life.
In “The Six Thatchers,” Sherlock is more Sherlockian than ever his drug addiction seems more serious, and his determination in solving cases has translated into a constant obsession with his cellphone. Showrunners Steven Moffat and Gatiss (who also plays Sherlock’s brother, Mycroft) are quite fond of gleefully showcasing Sherlock’s brilliance alongside his rudeness and interminable unconcern for social mores.
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The “Thatchers” in the title cheekily refer to a series of destroyed busts of Margaret Thatcher in the original story, the busts are the center of a giant mystery, but in the updated version, they’re side jokes in an episode full of misdirections and side excursions into mini cases, montages, and flashbacks that serve no purpose other than to illuminate the frustrating genius of one Sherlock Holmes. Written by series co-creator Mark Gatiss and directed by Rachel Talalay ( Tank Girl), the episode title “The Six Thatchers” pays homage, like the titles of all of Sherlock’s previous episodes, to an original story from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Victorian Sherlock Holmes canon (in this case, “The Six Napoleons”). Frustratingly, the only real reason for Mary's demise predictably seems to be to examine its impact on Sherlock and John. Sunday's episode dropped a major character death - that of John's wife, Mary - into the middle of an already messy series of plot complications.
“The Six Thatchers” starts off feeling like one of Sherlock’s manic drug trips before settling into a story about the past Sherlock’s forever-escalating drug addiction is just one of his problems in season four.
whatever the show has up its sleeve next.īut will the major change in plot direction the show sprung on us in this episode be worth it? Unfortunately, the season four premiere has revealed that Sherlock’s most promising and divisive element in the wake of the season three finale - the evolving three-way relationship between Sherlock ( Benedict Cumberbatch), John Watson ( Martin Freeman), and John’s mysterious wife, Mary ( Amanda Abbington) - is little more than a giant distraction, a red herring for.