every time i fuck up plugging in the USB to charge my iphone and scratch it against the underside of the phone i think about that scene at the start of sherlock where sherlock assumes that john watson’s sister is an alcoholic because of the scratches around the charging port of the iphone she gave to him as a gift and i think to myself “man sherlock is a fucking idiot”
Actually the thing about scratches around charger port=alcoholic was a reference to the original stories, where the phone was obviously instead a pocket watch, and the charger port was the spring wind, which was harder to fuck up than plugging in a phone. The whole sherlock scan thing worked well in the victorian era, because social roles were just that rigid – the slightest deviation from the norm said everything.
That obviously doesn’t fucking work now, and the only reason that was a thing in Sherlock is because Moffat is a pretentious asshole who thinks that a show being well written, sensible, and having a coherent plot structure is all for lesser writers, and the only thing he needs is to seem as clever as possible. Which admittedly, does work out for him for a few years, until the plot holes build up too much, and fans start to get pissed off about nothing ever being resolved but instead being thrown away for the new bigger mystery it led to, which then gets thrown away for the new bigger mystery that led to. Remember Doctor Who, how at the start of Moffat’s time as showrunner, he opened series 5 with ‘what caused the crack in Amy’s wall’? He never fucking answered that. He got distracted and wandered off into different plot threads that also never got resolved. He’s a very good writer when given a single episode to work with! His first episode on Doctor Who, he was just a guest writer, and he did the first Weeping Angels episode, and it was really good, because he only had that hour to tell the story. There was no follow up episode, no next season, just this amount of time, start a story, wrap it up satisfyingly, the end. He should NEVER have been put in charge of a show, because he’s the sort of writer that really needs something to reign him in and keep him on track, to remind him ‘hey you didn’t finish that plot, wrap it up before switching tracks’.
So it looks like he’s building this giant complex mystery, and keeps promising a satisfying answer to EVERYTHING once it’s over, but it’s never over because he doesn’t know how to let shit go – there’s always got to be another twist. The Weeping Angels can’t just zap you back in time and call it a day, they need to be made an EVEN BIGGER THREAT, they gotta be able to possess you! And steal the voices of dead people! and move while you’re looking! and be the statue of liberty! and instead of leaving you alone after the time warp, they hold you prisoner for the rest of your life now! No need to explain how or why, just escalate! And of course, Sherlock can’t just fake his death, take down moriarty’s organization, and then return to solving weird crimes, nope, there has to be a bigger threat than goddamn moriarty! he needs to have a secret evil sister! and secret dead childhood friend whose represented as a dog in his memories! and maybe moriarty isnt really dead – no wait, he is – no wait, he ISN’T – no wait, he is – OR IS HE? and john can’t just get married to a nice girl he loves, NOPE, gotta be more drama, she’s secretly an assassin and on the run from the government.
Moffat just keeps building and building and building, but eventually his stories start to collapse under their own weight because he’ll never let there be an end – he just can’t let go. And eventually fans will start to get bored and annoyed with the twists, and the show that used to make them feel smart will now just make them feel irritated. And they know there will never be a conclusion to the story, so they lose interest in the characters, because there’s no struggle – its never going to wrap up, so who cares? So they stop watching, and moffat starts dropping in viewers and ratings, and tries more desperate twists to bring people back, driving away the ones still holding on… lather rinse repeat until the network finally pulls the plug and makes him walk away.
basically the sherlock scan thing made sense in the original context, in a modern setting it’s just bad writing fam
I don’t even watch Sherlock but this was wonderful to read
Someone explained very well how I feel about Stephen Moffat. I’m still pissed years later that he ruined the weeping angels for me by showing them move.
