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Aja Romano writes about pop culture, media, và ethics. Before joining Vox in 2016, they were a staff reporter at the Daily Dot. A 2019 fellow of the National Critics Institute, they’re considered an authority on fandom, the internet, and the culture wars.
By now, so much has been said about Sherlock’s constant embrace of narcissism that it feels redundant khổng lồ go over it again for yet another one of the series’ few & far-between episodes.
Yet Sunday’s season four episode, “The Lying Detective,” cycles through the same beats we’re already well acquainted with: Sherlock embarking on a dangerous long trò chơi in order to lớn catch someone deadly, John lashing out with violence as Sherlock’s plan unfolds, and Sherlock flirting with disaster in the khung of untold drug addictions, only khổng lồ emerge, once again, victorious và vindicated by the depth of his own intellect. For, as we know well by now, Sherlock is always right, and all roads in John’s life, try though he might to lớn strike out in independence, endlessly lead back lớn Baker Street.
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And still all that rhetorical emptiness can’t quite obscure the spark of brilliance và creative ingenuity that made Sherlock so endearing in each of its previous seasons — a spark that was missing from the first of this season’s trio of episodes but is back in full force in episode two, just before what could be the series’ final installment.
Spoilers for “The Lying Detective” abound below.
Sherlock brings us Steven Moffat at his Moffat-y best (and worst)
Like all episodes of Sherlock, “The Lying Detective” is faithfully modeled on one of the original Arthur Conan Doyle short stories. This one is structured around “The Adventure of the Dying Detective” và its villain, Culverton Smith, played with typical brilliance by veteran actor Toby Jones. But the real star of this episode is co-creator and co-showrunner Steven Moffat’s script, which carries Sherlock convincingly — as convincing as this show ever gets, anyway — through a drugged-out long bé to catch Smith in the act of serial killing, while rolling out twist after twist on both the emotional and narrative fronts.
In the final moment of the previous episode, the newly dead Mary instructed Sherlock in a posthumous message lớn “go lớn hell.” This instruction, we ultimately learn, is the basis of an elaborate ruse in which Sherlock embraces his drug addiction in order to lay a trap for a killer, which itself is part of a larger goal to lớn “save” John — by forcing John lớn save Sherlock’s life.
The episode leans hard into the emphasis on addiction. Director Nick Hurran pulls out all the cinematic tricks lớn encompass the look and feel of a perpetual drug trip through the episode’s first third. Benedict Cumberbatch has rarely had quite as much fun playing Sherlock as he does here, pushing his character to his mental and emotional limits, appearing for all the world lượt thích a firecracker fizzing down at both ends until he suddenly explodes into the in-control, 12-steps-ahead high-functioning sociopath we came for.
Moffat’s greatest gift to lớn us with Sherlock has been his ability lớn make us truly believe that the great detective is 12 steps ahead of everyone around him — or, in this case, two weeks ahead of John. Cumberbatch’s greatest gift has been to lớn play him with such utter conviction that we rarely question, as Martin Freeman’s Watson so often does, whether he actually knows what he’s doing. Và when Moffat & Cumberbatch let Sherlock off the leash lớn be his most Sherlock-y, it’s a bit like a compelling train wreck: It’s messy, spectacular, & more than a bit frightening, but you don’t ever want lớn look away.
Still, though, with Moffat writing this week’s script instead of fellow creator Mark Gatiss, the ongoing issues I’ve had with this series — namely the ludicrous degree to lớn which every character, particularly the women, ultimately seem lượt thích empty reflections of Sherlock’s own narcissistic story rather than complex human beings — are only magnified.
The show embraced the interchangeable nature of its own female characters by giving us a three-in-one
One of Moffat’s most Moffat-y tricks is lớn have “strong” women protest that they’re independent women who aren’t tied khổng lồ the men in their lives, even as their every action and onscreen purpose is motivated by nothing else. “I’m not your housekeeper!” Mrs. Hudson insists, a few scenes before she reveals herself to be the primary caretaker of Sherlock’s emotional psyche. Meanwhile, the perennially shortchanged Molly Hooper is reduced, yet again, lớn the role of babysitting both of John’s children — his natural daughter & Sherlock.
Irene Adler, nebulously alive and offstage for seasons three & four, pops up via a vague text that reminds us that despite the fact that she is a lesbian, she is sexually & emotionally available lớn Sherlock. In this case, her reappearance prompts John to lớn realize important things about his own failed relationship, while reminding us that “lesbian” in this universe only means “until Sherlock Holmes drops in.”
And our wonderful, badass Mary, as noted in last week’s episode review, is relegated to having her entire arc be about Sherlock and John. In this episode, she manifests as a sản phẩm of John’s imagination, a projection, à la Inception, who is forced to lớn nod understandingly & forgivingly the moment John finally confesses khổng lồ “her” that he spent the last weeks of their relationship cheating on her emotionally.
Mary’s real anger & sense of betrayal, the real consequences she would have visited on John when she was alive — all those are conveniently swept away, & once again her death is fodder for the emotional bond between John and Sherlock — this time a moment of reconciliation rather than division.
But the most blatant & strange Moffat moment comes with this episode’s big reveal: Just as Sherlock’s very first episode revealed John khổng lồ have a sister, now this season’s penultimate episode reveals Sherlock to have had a sister who’s been borrowing Sherlock’s master-of-disguise shtick to lớn hide herself in plain sight — first as “E,” the woman with whom John had his brief affair, then as “Faith,” Smith’s troubled daughter, & finally as John’s vaguely Germanic therapist.
Leaving aside the basic plot question of how John failed to lớn recognize the woman he wanted to sleep with, or how Sherlock failed lớn recognize his own sister, this twist emphasizes one of the most hard-to-miss facets of Steven Moffat’s traits as a showrunner: His female characters are noticeably, bizarrely interchangeable. There are multiple examples of this throughout the Moffat canon. Moffat-era Doctor Who gave us not one, not two, but three female companions (River, Amy, and Clara) whose entire narrative arcs were characterized by their having fallen in love with the Doctor in childhood, as “impressionable young girl” who then “live for the days” when they meet him again.
Molly’s terrible luck in love with Sherlock is such a joke lớn Moffat that he repeated a plot trope used in Doctor Who: Just as the doctor did to lớn Billie Piper’s Rose, Moffat “dump
All of this wouldn’t be so annoying if Moffat didn’t, once in a blue moon, give us an unforgettable, quality female character like Sally Sparrow, to lớn carry a wonderful episode like Doctor Who’s “Blink.” Sunday’s “The Lying Detective” had enjoyably bright flashes of the fast-paced intellect và delightful unpredictability behind that other, critically acclaimed Moffat episode. Và “The Lying Detective’s” primary plot twist hinged on a female character who cleverly weaponized her invisibility, her interchangeability.
But I’m doubtful that this twist will turn out lớn be a subversion of this longstanding Moffat trope — because Sherlock, as always, continues lớn be about how everything is about Sherlock.
Sherlock refuses lớn portray Holmes’s addiction in a meaningful, consequential way
The use of drug addiction as a red herring to lớn distract Sherlock’s friends while he plots lớn catch a criminal is a tactic Sherlock has relied upon before. In season three, he holed up for several weeks at a trap house while he and John were trying to live distinct và separate lives — and now in this episode, we see him again using his friend’s concern over his health and addict status as a ruse lớn lure in his target. Each time, Sherlock’s indulgence of his drug habit has been portrayed as something he controls in order to lớn catch criminals & expand his mind — but also as something he uses lớn manipulate John back into his orbit.
This is a cheap portrayal of drug use, one that paints Sherlock as somehow superhuman and above the pitfalls of “real” addiction. It’s not like the episode title didn’t tell us that Sherlock was lying about really being an out-of-control addict. But given how consistently this series chooses, again and again, khổng lồ let Sherlock off the hook for both his perpetual selfishness & his self-destructive behavior, it would be a huge relief khổng lồ see him actually face real consequences. But he never does.
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As John points out lớn Mycroft in this episode, Sherlock recently shot a man in cold blood, yet his friends made sure he paid no consequences for his actions because “we thought it was fun.” and yet, even though Sherlock also goaded a woman into shooting at him, a move that resulted in Mary’s death, it’s John who ultimately lets him off the hook, telling him that he wasn’t responsible for the events that led lớn Mary’s demise.
Once again, as all other episodes of Sherlock have taught us, Sherlock is always right, always validated, and always in control. No one knows this better than John Watson, since everyone & everything in John’s life is really about Sherlock. In this case, the woman he was having an affair with & the woman he attempted khổng lồ go to for therapy after Mary’s death were all parts of a tangled website involving Sherlock. And now that Mary, his one liên kết to a life outside of Sherlock, is dead, it’s Mary herself who sends him back khổng lồ Sherlock.
As if he had a choice.
Sherlock is a drug-riddled dream, và Sherlock is a junkie desperately fueling a hollow world of his own creation
Ultimately, the only way Sherlock makes sense khổng lồ me as a story — with its insistence on painting Sherlock as inhumanly brilliant and consistently right about everything, even as all other people & things in his life wind up being about him — is if the series is truly pulling an Inception on us và this is all an opium dream.
It’s quite possible that the ending moments of the next và final episode will reveal khổng lồ us that everything that has happened in Sherlock, from the first moment, has been taking place in the mind of a drug addict who’s painted a world within his own mind, a world where he’s the genius hero and all of his friends are reflections of his own psyche.
That’s the only way I can justify the series’ eternal reliance on setting one narrative trap after another that eternally encircles John within Sherlock’s story, and prefigures all the series’ minor players as willful, oblivious extensions of Sherlock’s mind games.
It’s Sherlock’s — & Moffat’s— world. We may have only one final episode to learn whether they’ve been aware all along that they’re the only people in it.
Correction: This article originally attributed a Doctor Who plot point written by Russell T. Davies to Steven Moffat.
The Lying Detective is lurid, horribly entertaining episode of Sherlock packed with style & surprises. Spoilers ahead…
What a circus that was; acrobatics, dangerous creatures, clowning, surprise turns, high-wire danger… the lot. By the time the over credits rolled, you were left feeling enjoyably concussed, the sheer ‘whomp’ of it having sent cartoon stars spinning around your head.
Once the ice-pack had been applied và you could see straight again, did the story stand up to prodding? Not all of it perhaps, but in the lurid, implausible realm of Sherlock Holmes, originally filled with putty noses & poison darts, who’s counting? I haven’t been that consistently entertained in front of my TV for a good while. & it all made sense in-world, which is where it counts.
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As part of his quest to save John Watson, Sherlock was instructed lớn first find a baddie & lord, he did that. Toby Jones’ Culverton Smith was exactly as horrid as promised. More so, even. From his crooked teeth to lớn his Laughing Policeman cackle he was a genuinely sinister ghoul, his cartoonishness tempered by the uncomfortable parallels between him & a real-world monster.
They weren’t even parallels. Smith was Jimmy Savile in all but the precise nature of his crimes. A serial killer rather than a serial molester, Smith embodied the awful truths we’ve had khổng lồ face in the last few years about the nguồn of fame, money & public good deeds to lớn disguise private depravity.
That point was hammered repeatedly in Smith’s scenes, not least in his speech about the Queen (add that khổng lồ the Thatcher bust-smashing of last week and Sherlock’s iconoclasm is alive & well). Seeing Smith sat between children as he delivered that monologue, having him jangle that mix of keys & boast about his favourite room in the hospital was unsettling in the extreme. Jones made Smith into a true grotesque, the perfect mix of cheery affability & venom.
How tasteful and sensitive was it lớn resurrect a real-life criminal, many of whose victims are still alive, as a TV villain designed lớn chill & thrill? Not at all, but when real life writes better baddies than fiction, you can forgive the temptation khổng lồ steal. Series three gave us Scandi Rupert Murdoch after all.
We first met Culverton Smith in Bond-villain mode, delivering an Etch-a-Sketch confession to his assembled flunkies. The cathartic nature of confession was a recurring theme of The Lying Detective. John confessed his text affair khổng lồ figment-Mary. Sherlock confessed his guilt over Mary’s death khổng lồ John (albeit to lớn provoke a beating that was all part of his meticulous plan), guilt of which he was eventually absolved.
All that was beautifully played by Martin Freeman, who’s cornered the market in English-man-struggles-to-repress-pain poignancy. He was so moving in the early therapy session, I assumed that was why director Nick Hurran (His Last Vow, The Day Of The Doctor) framed his face so closely; to lớn capture every swallow, blink & twitch. It was all a ruse of course, khổng lồ make sure we weren’t looking too closely at the woman opposite.
The Eurus Holmes revelation shot a cloud of question marks swimming into the air. Where has she been all this time? What precipitated her removal from family life (we were at the Holmes house last Christmas, remember)? What went on at that childhood beach Sherlock keeps remembering? How long since she và Sherlock saw each other? Was she behind the Moriarty “Miss Me?” message all along? Was she in cahoots with him? Did John really not recognise his bus squeeze behind those tương tác lenses? What happened to lớn Sherlock’s powers of deduction when she turned up at 221B in disguise?
We may as well stop there or we’ll run out of word count. Disguise was obviously key to The Lying Detective, from Eurus’ turns as ‘E’, Faith và the therapist, lớn Sherlock’s stage-managed public breakdown and faked near-death experience, to serial killer Culverton Smith hiding in plain sight (two things, incidentally, that take us back khổng lồ this show’s pilot episode). It was a well-kept secret that very much did the job.
As did Nick Hurran’s directing. Strung-out Cumberbatch was on đứng top form, while the episode’s style, which used creative tricks to help tell the story rather than embellish it, was much improved from The Six Thatchers’ overcooked transitions và busy screen. The slo-mo handbag, the kitchen notice board conjured from air and the Natural Born Killers editing (Sherlock was high therefore so were we) regained the elegance & surprise this show’s direction is known for.
Speaking of surprise, welcome back khổng lồ Amanda Abbington. Impish figment-Mary was moving, comic and the best her character’s been. What a great trick that was.
No figment, and surely the anh hùng of the hour was Mrs “not your housekeeper” Hudson, who was gifted her best scenes since A Scandal In Belgravia. Una Stubbs emerging from that Aston Martin was the first of several fun twists, closely followed by the sight of Sherlock handcuffed in its boot. From that point onwards we were kept guessing with a funny, pacy script that benefitted from not being mired in the tragedy foreshadowed throughout last week’s episode, nor from drawing on a genre distractingly other than the playful detective thriller.
Overall, it was ninety minutes with two villains, thirty-six twists, roughly eleven endings & a creeping sense of finality.
Each character in the show, it feels, is steadily being ushered towards the door. Mrs Hudson had a moment in the sun, Mycroft has a date, Sherlock has The Woman and much more importantly, John Watson. If Molly gets something to vì next week, then nobody will be left feeling short-changed if this series does turn out to lớn be Sherlock‘s final problem.
