The Televangelist: ‘Sherlock,’ Season 2, Ep 3
As Cersei Lannister once said, caring about people is such a liability!
- BBC1
- “In a building of locked rooms the man with the key is King. And baby, you should see me in a crown”
By the time I finish crying, do you think Season Three will have started yet?
The finale of Season Two certainly began -and ended- darkly. Within moments of “The Reichenbach Fall” being on air, John Watson says “Sherlock Holmes, my best friend, is dead.” Surely not!
... Right?
For the next 90 minutes, we poor, feeble-minded mortals were subjected to a rollercoaster of emotions (I was in a glass cage of emotion, honestly). Everything that “The Hounds of Baskerville” lacked, “Reichenbach” had in spades. All major characters present and accounted for, exceptional use of Moriarty, maximum John and Sherlock “feels,” and a traveller’s guide to London. Although there were still a few missteps, “Reichenbach” never slowed for a moment to let us really consider them. By the time the shrapnel from one bomb had settled, another was set off.
Andrew Scott as Jim Moriarty has remained the most controversial element of this new “Sherlock” adaptation, and his peculiar take on the master villain was on full peacock-esque display last night. From his strange mannerisms and oddly disassociated voice to his criminal brilliance and completely unhinged mind, this polarizing Moriarty likely drove viewers who had already made up their minds about him further into whichever pole they initially settled on. In my first review of this season, I mentioned that I was fine with Moriarty as cast. For one, his youth fit in with a younger Sherlock. Also, as this version of Sherlock is shown to be supremely cold and logical about all things, it would make sense that his nemesis would be his utter opposite, someone whose motivations could not be easily understood, or understood at all, because they have no basis in the rational. “Every fairy tale needs a villain,” Moriarty says, and it’s true that there are many things the two share with other villain/hero pairs from Batman and the Joker to Harry Potter and Lord Voldemort. And as a prophesy reads in the Harry Potter series, “neither can live while the other survives.” Eventually the villain must have his downfall, and occasionally, the hero goes with him.
Though this adaptation of “The Final Problem” bears little resemblance to the short story on which its based, its outcome is essentially the same. Arthur Conan Doyle wrote the story to truly be the end of Sherlock Holmes, allowing him to go out in a blaze of glory by sacrificing himself for the greater good (a tale as old as time!) But Doyle was begrudgingly pressured by fans to bring back his popular character, and Sherlock was reborn. Thankfully, as we saw in the finale of “Reichenbach,” Sherlock does indeed live. The “how” is a question I’ll deal with in a moment, but in the meantime, what of Sherlock’s nemesis? If Sherlock and Irene could fake their deaths so convincingly, why not Moriarty?