Image copyright © by Marcus Trahan

Sherlock

(UK, USA, 2017)

Wow. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a really good series crash and burn quite as spectacularly as this one just did. I was awed and horrified as the three episodes went from weak, to pretty bad, to fucking awful. I’ll deal only with the last one, The Final Problem. And jeez, if they keep on like this I sure hope it’s the final problem. Turns out Sherlock and Mycroft have a sister, Eurus, who is bugfuck crazy. She has been in a mental institution for criminally insane super-villains (borrowed from the comic books?) for most of her life. But now she is free, she has imprisoned the brothers, and puts them through a pointless and dreary series of moral dilemmas: “So, Sherlock, will you kill your best friend or your brother? If you don’t kill one of them, this little girl on an airplane where everyone else is drugged to sleep will crash!” I was reminded of that famous National Lampoon cover of a dog with a gun pointed at its head: “If you don’t buy this magazine, we will kill this dog!” It’s all really on that juvenile level. Mycroft behaves like an idiot, and Sherlock is not much better. Stephen Moffat and Mark Gatiss, it’s time to toss this overdone turkey over the Reichenbach Falls.