isitandwonder:The only episode that remotely worked in S4 was TLD, because, eventually, there was...

isitandwonder:

The only episode that remotely worked in S4 was TLD, because, eventually, there was no (living) women beween Sherlock and John.

I remember that, after watching TST, I felt zero Johnlock vibes. The whole episode was just centred around Mary and getting rid of her. We were only told that John and Sherlock chased Mary together, but we never saw it. Instead, we got scenes with Mary alone, or between Mary and John, and Mary and Sherlock, or all three of them - but not one single scene just between John and Sherlock - there were always Greg or clients or whoever present. But it were those scenes just between Sherlock and John that, in previous episodes, were the most intense, intimate and touching moments.

I don’t really have to talk about zero Johnlock in TFP, have I? John saying vatican cameos and Sherlock biding his time; Sherlock trying to shoot himself and John looking on. Even the ‘John is family’ scene played out in the presence of Mycroft; it sounded more like John being a brother. And during the final scenes, we had Mary’s voiceover.

So, Mofftiss tried really hard to eliminate the Johnlock moments i S4 - and it killed their show. All characters seemed OOC, it got boring, there was no real character development, no motivation, TST and TFP seemed filled with meaningless rug pull scenes just for the sake of it, not even Mary dying has left a lasting impression or was particularly touching.

But then, in TLD, there once again was the feasible chemistry between Sherlock and John; they interacted, they touched, they talked. True, ghost!Mary was present during some of those scenes - but she couldn’t interfere, couldn’t interact with them - and the show thrived. The acting got better, the punch lines hit home, the timing worked. It once again was hilarious, funny, moving, sad, even clever. True, it might have been because even the format was more traditional Sherlock - with a case, a villain, a plan to take him down that again threatened to fail spectacularly - but it all worked beautifully. You could see that this was how the show should be - the two of them against the rest of the world, facing an external enemy (Culverton Smith) as well as their inner demons (John’s guilt and self-loathing, culminating painfully in the scene in which he beats up Sherlock, who lets him; Sherlock’s drug addiction because he had lost everything when John sent him away without even talking to him face to face at the end of TST).

And it all culminated in a scene in which they for once declared their special kind of love for one another without the need to define it (it is what it is). They were raw, honest, they interacted, they opened up. This is such a beautiful, intense, honest scene, superb acting, you can see a whole character study in just a small gesture - this is what made Sherlock the biggest show on earth. Not James Bond analogies or the killer sister from Saw crossbred with The Ring mocking ACD canon (3 Garridebs!).

Sherlock did not need all of this beefing up. It was and is at its best when you just let John and Sherlock be together.

But I fear, in their attempt to get rid of each and every Johnlock vibe, Mofftiss simply killed the show. They couldn’t or wouldn’t see that this relationship was the heart of their show - and in suppressing it, they burnt its heart out.

I still don’t understand why. But it shows to me that we didn’t halucinate these vibes, the subtext, the chemistry. It was there - perhaps only to be acknowledged even by the casual viewers when it was gone.

Something felt wrong, amiss, in TST and TFP. It felt like a whole different show. I think, in a way, it’s a case of ‘you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone’.  Which, in reverse, proves the presence and importance of Johnlock for the quality the show once was so proud to deliver.