I do think its important to distinct between not liking something and being disappointed by it.

You can enjoy and like something that has disappointed you. In fact after the initial disappointment usually you can find something more to like as well.

I'm with the boys on this one though. I liked the idea of CAM, I liked the thought of a more intense kind of bad guy to play off against Sherlock. Most adaptations take Moriarty and make him the BIG BAD because he was the stand out big bad in the book but CAM could have been what separated Sherlock from other adaptations.

Now don't get me wrong I love Andrew Scott and his Moriarty was alright. There were times he was too camp and too much but I still enjoyed his characterisation of Moriarty.

But look at CAM.

To make him more shocking they had to force a whole episode of creepy moments. Bearing in mind that he's a Mikkelsen brother and they do creepy so well think of maybe two series of him being creepy but not having to go as far as peeing in a fireplace. The sniffing and licking and blackmail could have made an interesting story vein through two series. Instead he's touched upon in episode one and then episode three makes him look rather bipolar before he gets shot in the head. Then there is the whole forced removing Sherlock from England thing before having to relay on the fan favourite to bring Sherlock back.

Now a lot of people accuse Moffat and Gatiss of fan pleasing too often, and I usually roll my eyes, and to an extent I do when people go over board with the criticism of this series. But you can feel the fanness of it. People were sad that Moriarty had died, he's now been given life, at least till the series airs, fans are happy. We all had different ideas of how Sherlock survived, and each theory had at least ten people calling it crap, so to please us all they gave us fan theories abundance of how he survived and left it a mystery. Good. But do we need to hear all the "Sherlock your my best friend" stuff? It was subtle before and now is being spelt out.

The feel has changed a little and it'll work for three episodes if you think of Sherlock as a longer series split into three segments given to us every couple years. Watch them altogether and you'll get the infant years,the honeymoon period and now we've been give the we can stay friends years... Hopefully by next series it'll have returned to telling stories over making things fit into a character piece.

Now I agree that every episode has focused on the character development, the story has been the background, but in these three episodes the story was hardly touched upon and the character development was all that mattered to them. We need it to be balanced again.

Now that doesn't mean I don't like the series. The only thing I disliked was Mary being the female Sherlock in a way. I loved Mary but I loved her more when I thought John had just found a loving and caring women to look out for him that knew that his life lay with Sherlock but wanted to give him a home to come back to. The baby I don't know. That can go one of many ways but I didn't like how by the end the dynamics had been blown apart. Maybe there was too much Mycroft as well and being a Gatiss fan I'm blinded by his awesomeness but I liked the dynamic of Sherlock/John+the Detectives. That worked for me. If all of a sudden everyone and their brother is a part of the process or become the reason for the story then it'll start to lose interest for me. If it comes back to here is a case - Sherlock works on case - Character development intertwined with it - end of case I'll be happy. If it stays this way I might lose interest.

The big news is that it is coming back next year.

We have to expect the unexpected and Sherlock will be facing his biggest mystery yet.

Moriarty seems to really be back.

People love Moriarty though, just because you don't doesn't mean that others don't!

The most important thing is for there to be mysteries to be solved. I didn' like the boring focus on personal lives in the last series. I prefer when it takes a back seat. The last series spent more time making fans happy then it did making good TV.

Moriarty back is no big deal though I guess that will sort out the special and leave room for aa better focused series 5.

Haha! But if I go on about him enough then because he's popular in my eyes then we'll have him back the season after .

I didn't actually explain myself well there.

My point was thus :

Moriarty was good in season one and two. If they hadn't had Reichbach Falls in season two then they could have given Moriarty a great goodbye in season three and left CAM over for season four.

The thing is Moriarty is not the big villain people think he is. Holmes in the stories really didn't have any enemies, yes Moriarty was one but it was all rather.... Nothingness really. Holmes only returned because people wanted him to and he returned WITHOUT Moriarty.

Moriarty wasn't a ghost that followed Holmes about through the books, therefore I would have liked this Sherlock after showing us Moriarty dying (because he DID die, I mean how can you not die after shooting yourself in the head?!) was going to build a new big bad for Sherlock out of CAM.

Instead to ME personally it feels like they rushed CAM to bring back another Moriarty plot.

Now it could be interesting, especially if it is someone else behind the plot using Moriarty footage and under his orders from before he died. There could be something really interesting behind it all.

My actual point was :

1/If Moriarty is alive then personally I think the show has gone crazy
2/If Moriarty is alive then it ruins season three... Or what was left of it to ruin
3/If Moriarty isn't alive then great DON'T BRING HIM BACK!
4/Why kill CAM after one season just to go back to Moriarty in the next?

The thing is the story that CAM comes from was an interesting one and they only just lightly touched on it. They made The Women a soppy love interest like always so the only other smart guy that I could think of off the top of my head before I knew who Lars was playing was CAM (well the character he was in the books, he wasn't called CAM in the book!)

I feel by bringing back another Moriarty plot after having the perfect ending to it, regardless of anything else, is silly.

I didn't like season three and Pete hit it on the head. There wasn't many mysteries to be solved and when he was solving them they really weren't the forethought. There obviously was cases being solved and I wouldn't give up the drunken Holmes for anything. BUT there was a lot of sorting out cases to sort out his personal life.

I LOVED Mary, I LOVED getting more Holmes brothers. I even LOVED the mum and dad.

I don't like that Mary was over the top mega spy that could out think Sherlock Holmes. I loved having a women the genuinely loved John and was taking on Sherlock at the same time and was just so cool that she didn't care about Sherlock. Yes Mary is still all that, and it didn't ruin her character, the story was just crap.

I also thought the complete focus on John, John's life, John getting over Sherlock and Sherlock forcing himself to be human (I mean the girlfriend thing was just icky) was terrible and boring.

And there WAS a lot of "this is what the fans want" thrown in. It felt like a fan fiction a lot of the time.

The good bits were GENIUS like always but there was too much of everything else.

And not enough of Greg. Never enough Greg!

I still enjoyed the characters and I quite liked the interactions still but I just felt the series was rushed, it tried to please too many people and make everyone super human then built up a great villain only to kill him off to replace him with the same old same old.

Now Moriarty might still be dead and we might get a good season 5 and a special episode but that is yet to be seen!

Haha thanks for the reply! I won't reply the same way because it'll make it all go funny but I'll answer each point!

-No that isn't the point because to be honest I DIDN'T like CAM! I thought it was too much in such a short time period and that was the point! We had such weird and bizarre stories being shoved at us to rush a bad guy.

My main point is that Sherlock could have broke then mould by being different and after doing away with Moriarty in two seasons made a new bad guy. There are no limits to what you can do with someone new, you don't have hundreds of adaptations to play against, they could have made CAM what they wanted!

My point isn't that I liked him but that it would have been interesting to have focused on someone different from Moriarty!

-Yes but we HAD Sherlock with Moriarty we no longer need that. We had a great story with them and now we could have someone different!

-We SAW him shoot himself in his head, we saw his dead body. There is nothing that can make him survive that, well there is but he'd be brain dead if he was. The difference with Sherlocks is that it was set up for him to survive because he survives in the story, Moriarty DIED we SAW him die, it would be completely crazy if he survives.

-Well that is where we differ, you liked the series me not so much. Why would it ruin it more? Because it would, in my opinion and my opinion only, make it feel like a filler season in between the same old same old cast.

-It might have been the grand plan but it doesn't mean that I have to like it.

-No, no you can't say that of Sherlock. A Study in Pink to Reinchback Falls all focused on the story first and character development inbetween the mystery. Yes there was a lot of stuff about them but the story never felt like it was behind the character development.

-Oh Pur-LEASE that is not what I'm saying! Mary could have been a lot of things, John's first girlfriend was a Doctor, a head Doctor. How is her being a normal human being with a good job demeaning? Why did Mary have to be a super spy?! Why did she have to be the lady that gets blackmailed by CAM?! And don't just say because they decided it to be that way. She could have been super smart (but not as smart as Sherlock) and super awesome and be a police officer, vet, just a normal military women.... Even just ******* working in a office doesn't demean her!

-Really? I love Moff and Gatiss so it is not like that at all. You know it isn't!

What I mean by that is simple things, the wedding and all the speeches, more Mycroft, drunk Detectives..... I mean there was obvious "haha" moments like all the conspiracy theories to how Sherlock survived but a lot of it and the way people were talking and the wink wink knowledge just kind of made it feel like they made it for fans.

There isn't A LOT wrong with that but it gets to the point where it loses its charm because its changed.



In general of course if I liked the series and Moriarty returning I'd have no problem with it. The fact that I wasn't happy with the series and I don't want Moriarty to return means that I can see different ways I'd want the series to be going. That isn't bloody wrong! So I can only have a opinion if I like it? I've said it could be brilliant, I'm not saying anything about the next series I'm talking about what I felt was a missed opportunity in general. I don't like this series, I never will, but I might love the next and I definitely loved the other two! I'm allowed to talk about what I found good and bad though!