Sherlock Sunday: The Empty Hearse by Mark Gatiss

The topic for today is The Dickhead Protagonist.

The Dickhead Protagonist is without charm or wit, so there’s nothing to alleviate the cruelty and selfishness of what he does. The Dickhead is so convinced of his own worth and so consumed by his own amusement that he fails to see the emotional damage he inflicts on those around him; his lack of empathy only handicaps him further. The Dickhead is usually committed by writers who have fallen in love with their protagonists and can’t see his flaws, just as a fawning mother will excuse any atrocity her little snowflake commits. Nothing can destroy a story faster than a Dickhead Protagonist (applies to both genders) although a fragmented, unfocused plot that exists merely to showcase how clever the Dickhead is runs a close second.

And now, let us examine “The Empty Hearse.”

In this episode, the writer has taken one of the most appealing protagonists of all time and emphasized his weaknesses while eliminating his strengths to create A Fathead of Epic Proportions, a man we cheer to see hit repeatedly by his best friend. But the worst of the failings here is the abysmal story structure. Of approximately eight-five minutes of story, about twenty are given to the underground bomber plot, the only mystery in the episode. Okay, fine, so maybe the bomb plot is a subplot. Then what’s the main plot? It’s evidently got to do something with Sherlock’s sadistic sense of humor because that’s what keeps cropping up. This is one of the most mean-spirited stories I’ve ever watched.

The first three minutes is a Gotcha, fooling the reader into thinking that it’s the real explanation only to reveal at the end that it’s Anderson’s latest theory and not what really happened. I’m assuming this is supposed to be funny, the writer putting one over on us, but really? Just annoying.

The next four minute are the capture and torture of Sherlock by the last of Moriarty’s people, at the end of which an equally sadistic Mycroft tells Sherlock he’s needed back home because an underground terrorist group is going to blow up London. Why we had to watch Sherlock be tortured is unclear; the information needed about the plot is elaborated on later in Mycroft’s office, so this is a complete waste of story real estate.

Then eight minutes of back story info dump of Sherlock and Mycroft telling each things and John and Mrs. Hudson catching up, followed by eleven minutes of John hitting Sherlock, followed by thirty seconds of Sherlock telling Molly and Lestrade he’s back, followed by another Gotcha, this time a fan explanation that ends with the news that Sherlock is back made public. Then a bunch of vignettes of Sherlock muttering at maps and John and Mary working at his office, followed by Sherlock and Mycroft CHATTING while they play Operation. At this point, I was so confused and so bitter about being yanked around, that if this had been the pilot for the series, I’d have left. Thirty-seven minutes in, there’s a plot to blow up London, and Mycroft is saying, “I’m not lonely.” WTF? That’s followed by nine minutes of Sherlock and Molly doing miscellaneous detection, finishing up with the videos of the trains which is FINALLY the bomb plot, the ONLY plot in this episode so far.

So forty-six minutes in, half way through the story, and we know there’s a terrorist group planning to bomb London, something we knew at the four-minute mark. Look, I know they had a lot to set up here, all of Sherlock’s homecoming stuff, but they could have cut about thirty-five minutes of the sadistic jokes, info dump, and miscellany and made his homecoming part of his attempts to solve the bomb plot. As it is, this was forty minute wasted on the writer being clever and Sherlock being a dick. This isn’t Sherlock reverting to who he was in the pilot episode, that Sherlock was detached, but he had dignity. He didn’t play sadistic jokes and he wasn’t this overtly arrogant. He was QUIETLY arrogant. This Sherlock is blowhard, a clown, unpleasant to watch, all of which is clearly demonstrated in the forty minutes of unnecessary garbage they front loaded this episode with.

Then forty-six minutes in, John gets kidnapped. Why? Damned if I know. I can’t see any way that it interacted with the bomb plot. Was it supposed to distract Sherlock from defusing the bomb? Then why plan it early enough that he can do both? But Sherlock and Mary rush to the scene on a motorcycle and save John the Victim, who deserves better.

Nine minutes later we meet Sherlock’s parents, who are very normal boring people, and I don’t believe it. Nice chatty people like that would not have raised two emotionally damaged sociopaths like Mycroft and Sherlock. It makes no sense. But, hey, it’s a JOKE!. Then John asks Sherlock why he was kidnapped, and Sherlock says, “I don’t know,” but then BAZINGA he suddenly understands that “underground terrorist attack” means that terrorists are going to attack the underground! And it’s only taken our genius detective ONE HOUR to figure that out. Two-thirds of the show.

During the next sixteen minutes, they spring into action, running through a lot of subway tunnels (you can tell Gatiss wrote this), finding the bomb which Sherlock cannot defuse, so John, at the point of death, tells Sherlock that he was the best and finest man John’s ever known and then shuts his eyes waiting for death.

At which point we switch to Sherlock explaining to Anderson how he faked his death. Because we’re really going to worry that the two leads in this show might possibly be blown up. Sherlock explains for two minutes and then spends another minute breaking Anderson down before he tells him that’s not how he did it and leaves.

Back in the subway, Sherlock switches the bomb to “off” and laughs at John’s pain. Because he’s a dickhead. Also, now I hate him. Moran gets arrested. Back at the flat, everybody’s celebrating when Molly brings in her new man who looks a lot like Sherlock; significant looks are exchanged, snickers are smothered, general asshattery reigns as Molly says, “I’ve moved on,” clearly not having moved on. Because that’s a JOKE. Then we get thirty seconds of the Big Bad watching multiple screens which tells us nothing. The End.

I outlined this whole episode and I still don’t know what the hell they were going after. It’s a complete mess, an indulgent morass of sadistic jokes, gotchas, scenes of people running, chat, and torture, glued to about twenty minutes of actual plot. This is why I don’t deliberately choose bad writing for us to watch. Everything you could learn from this you already know: establish your main plot clearly, anchor it with a strong antagonist, and don’t make your protagonist a dick.

I think much of my outrage at what has been done to this character stems from the deep love I had for him after the second season. Irene had made him vulnerable, Moriarty had shown him capable of sacrifice for the people he loved, and now this episode shows that none of that stuck and that he has, in fact, become worse than he was in the first episode of season one, where he was at least not intentionally cruel to people. They murdered my Sherlock and brought back an imposter from the grave.

Next week: The Dickhead Goes to a Wedding