The Great Game + Five-Act Structure

me and @messedupsockindex did a TGG rewatch (i think we’re gonna do the whole show hell yeah hell yeah) and I did some liveblogging that turned into several metas on things i think are important in this episode, with the five-act structure being a Theme (though i went off on a real tangent RE: solar systems/framing and metaphors too). Read on if you dare.

Here, John has accepted that Sherlock doesn’t (or thinks he doesn’t) care about the mechanics of something as basic as the solar system (attraction). So he asks, why comment on it? Sherlock says even if he doesn’t understand it, he still appreciates it. Telling. 

In the final instance of this conversation, the penultimate scene of the episode, John tells Sherlock that maybe a little knowledge of the solar system might have come in handy after all. But Sherlock also has a point:

John’s knowledge of something so basic as attraction has been useless to him thus far. 

(me reading about the five act structure and realizing series four is fake)

There is probably already someone who has explained/noticed this but…the exchange that Moriarty is responding to, that happened before he re-entered the room, was Sherlock and John getting the closest they ever get in the WHOLE show to discussing the sexual tension/attraction between them (I think I’m again standing on the shoulders of the legendary M theory here). John has taken a huge leap in choosing to bring up what “people” might think about Sherlock ripping his clothes off in a darkened swimming pool. Sherlock responds jokingly but not dismissively, and the logical next step would be to discuss what they themselves think about it…until of course they are interrupted by this, by literally being held at gunpoint.

Moriarty’s lines here are apparently some pretty famous lines in ACD canon. I didn’t know the canon context, so it’s a little easier to just parse the lines in context of this scene. Moriarty wants to stop this discussion that Sherlock and John are about to have, and more broadly, whatever that conversation might lead to. He would try to convince them that they can’t be allowed to continue, but everything he has to say, all the convincing he could possibly do, has already crossed Sherlock’s mind (or both of their minds - it’s actually not specified who he’s talking to here). This is true because Sherlock and/or John are afraid to “continue” - discuss their feelings for each other - because of trauma and internalized homophobia. All the reasons that they shouldn’t “continue,” reasons that Moriarty could cite out loud, have already crossed their minds, probably more than once. I think this unspoken meaning makes so much more sense than taking Moriarty’s “you can’t be allowed to continue” to mean “you can’t be allowed to continue to solve crimes,” which is what it meant in ACD canon. And it’s a fantastic rework of an ACD canon line. 

So… the end, I guess. I probably should have split this up into different posts…

ok here’s a lot more coherent and detailed analysis of TGG ☝☝

(head in the fridge and saliva oh my god skjdfkjsds)

aaahhhh good one to re read!

tonight i picked up on: HOW sherlock figures out that the 4th pip painting (s4) is fake, is that the supernova depicted, hadn't happened yet, back when the painting was supposed to have been made. so given the whole solar system/astronomy theme is subtext for atttraction, that says to me that the "supernova", the explosion, the REVEAL hasn't happened YET. the star itself of course was there all along, but it wasn't so visible till it became a supernova. so the attraction is there, and has been all along, but it's not been made so visible that nobody can miss it. YET.

You have a secret plan almost ten years in progress and decades in the making. You are almost at the final step in your plan when the secret will be revealed. Casuals now suspect “something” is odd, but have no clue what. Fans are begging for you to tell them the truth. Do you A) keep lying or B) stop lying thereby revealing your secret just before it is time to reveal it?

S4 is not real. TPTB are still lying. They HAVE to keep lying. They’ve been lying since the beginning and they are just continuing to do so. Look at the metas we’ve done. Look at the first three seasons/series for the proof in everything that leads up to S4. Look at S4.

If S4 had made a little sense I could have bought that it was real. It makes NO sense. What theory fits all of the facts rather than just some of the facts? The writers lose every bit of talent suddenly? The crew goes from wonderfully detail oriented to crap… suddenly? Sherlock tells us to believe in intuition?! What??

Oh, wait? My intuition tells me that there is something fucky about S4… could that be what Sherlock means when he says to trust my intuition? “Of course it’s not real.” “You were told, but did you listen?”: “It’s not a trick, its a plan.”

thisssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss alllllllllllll dayyyyyyyyyyy longggggggggggggg

Yeeeeesssssssssss And isn’t it exciting? Or am I crazy? 😜

All. Of. This.

Sorry, folks, but casuals are not suspecting something. They watched a shitty TV show a few months ago and have either forgotten or don’t care anymore and moved on to different content. Have you seen attendance at Sherlocked USA? Only very few people came.

The only people still talking about Sherlock might be our tiny group on here. And, believe me, they don’t like us or care for us. See what they said over the last weekend. They cater to the 99%, and we are the 1%. They certainly won’t tank their own show to do the 1% a service and proof a point.

What point, anyway? No one cares anymore. No one is interested, except perhaps a tiny fraction of the 1%. This is not how TV works.

I understand the need to make sense out of something that is the opposite of what we expected and “believed in ”. And I also understand the thrill of finding an explanation that solves this problem. But this also worries me. So here’s my honest question to everyone who likes to answer: Why is it important to you to believe s4 is not real? Why is it important to you to believe tptb are lying?

Speaking only for myself, I don’t experience a “need” for a “belief” about S4. I see in Sherlock a series that has been telling a consistent story in a consistent way for three seasons. It was followed this year by a single season that was inconsistent with everything that came before it, in every conceivable way.

I could choose to believe that this inconsistent season was the result of a sudden, significant loss of support or money or intelligence or talent or kindness. That sounds unlikely to me on its face, but if the evidence for it were overwhelming, I would accept it. Instead, an overwhelming amount of evidence (beginning with the content and style of Doyle’s own writing) points to this season being part of a larger plan, a mystery. That, in itself, is consistent with the nature of the show. So, that’s what I’m investigating.

We don’t determine the content of the show. One way or another, we’ll eventually have an answer to what I and many others think is a splendid puzzle. If the answer turns out to be far from what I expect, I will still have enjoyed following the clues, and I will still have learned far more about Doyle and related works by other authors than I ever expected to. If it troubles anyone to watch this process, then they should turn their attention elsewhere. Tumblr is a big place.

We each have our own reason to participate, and I, along with some others, just happen to be more…… stubborn. I wailed for about a month after TFP, but after sorting through the series in its entirety and getting back to ACD canon, I began to realize that it’s indeed all about the books.

S4 provided a very different perspective in engaging with ACD’s work, and I am glad to be finding the subtext way beyond what I have read in the past. To me, Sherlock (and now Dr. Who) is making a case for what Mofftiss see as the true story ACD was trying to tell and present it in a cinematic format – narratively and structurally – and I personally find the case incredibly compelling. It does not go against my original reading of Holmes/Watson in canon nor Sherlock/John in Sherlock, at all. For 40 years, ACD used Holmes and Watson to tell, I now believe, a very personal story; one that perhaps filled with contradictions, anger, and regrets, but nevertheless, a romance – as he himself proclaimed. 

Whether my current reading of Sherlock turned out to be the same as Mofftiss’ intent, in the end, matters very little; because as @devoursjohnlock said, I would’ve learned more about ACD and my childhood heroes than what I had thought possible. And that is a gift I’ll always cherish no matter what comes our way in the future.

I mostly want to second what @devoursjohnlock and @darlingtonsubstitution have said. I’m familiar with ACD canon but not nearly as immersed in it as they are. My primary interest is in long form storytelling. As a writer, I am fascinated by the ways in which writers do, and don’t, realise the potential in their own stories. 

Before s4, I wrote about how, whatever happened with it, any failure or success would be mofftiss’s, not ours. As a group, we’ve followed clues, read the story carefully and lovingly–a story, I might add, that, up until s4, had always seemed to reward close reading. For me, that was the fun of it–reading the clues, following the subtext. Yes, on an emotional level, I’m deeply invested in John and Sherlock and the happy ending they clearly deserve together. Equal to both following clues and yearning for johnlock is, for me, the game of trying to figure out what mofftiss are up to, and whether they will manage to pull it off, whatever it is. 

I understand s4 as the point where the game goes live. As this corner of the fandom knows very well, there has been a plethora of subtext and clues and small moments to notice and enjoy in Sherlock in s1-3, and, for my money, TAB. With s4, the training wheels are off, and now it’s up to the audience to put it together, without the support of any textual level resonances or confirmation. There has been, as of yet, no Sherlock coming in at the end to reveal his thought process. There has been no revelation. Something has happened, something is going on, and the text is giving us heavy indicators that all is not what it should be, and inviting us to sort it out.

This understanding of s4 might look like it requires a leap of faith. It might look like continuing to analyse it is like gleefully accepting this gift of garbage and clapping our hands and writing mofftiss loving thank you notes for abusing us. Hey, I hate s4 on a textual level too. I was upset and angry about it initially also. And sure, yeah, continuing to work this problem could be wrong, I guess.

But, in a show that holds logic and reason as a primary value, that has been, in many ways, about puzzle solving on multiple levels (solving the puzzle of the cases, solving the puzzle of the heart), I honestly cannot believe that we are supposed to take at face value an episode that featured killer clowns, bleeding paintings, and a little person dressed as a girl child, not to mention a Holmes sibling straight off of the horror film industry’s cutting room floor and an absolute explosion (pun intended) of cheesy intertextual references. 

To answer your actual question, @miadifferent, it’s not necessarily important to me to believe that tfp isn’t real–it’s impossible for me to believe that it is. (The rest of s4 bears a shaky resemblance to an in-story reality, perhaps, but that’s a meta for a different day.)

I want to say this next part really, really, gently, because I understand, I do, that people want to throw s4 away from them and never think about it again. That is absolutely, 100% your right. But, the difference between a lot of the people here who want to keep going with the puzzle solving and those who don’t, is simply the people who have rewatched s4 with an analytical eye, and the people who haven’t.

There is a lot–a LOT–to pick apart and analyse and consider, once you get past the annoying wtf-ery and the more distasteful plot points / performances / directorial choices. You can call s4 an utter failure, or you can call it a subtextual puzzle. 

If anything, mofftiss have upped the stakes in every way possible from s3. They’ve got a lot to account for, and I’m not sure they’ll be able to do it, but I am interested enough to try to figure out what’s going on, and interested enough to see if they manage it when the time comes. 

Similar to what @may-shepard has said – I simply find it impossible to believe that s4 is meant to be taken on the textual level. For me, the dealbreaker is a tiny thing: the repeated (slightly differing) scenes in TST. People are blaming Mofftiss for everything, and I know they are intimately involved in every stage of the process, but they are not – as far as I know – experts in the film editing process. They would not be solely responsible for logging and editing every single day’s rushes, producing and reviewing a rough cut, making changes to that, producing first and fine cuts. The process takes months. There is stage after stage of continuity checking and approval involved in that. There would at the very LEAST be one editor and a director involved in that process, as well as Mofftiss checking every cut. Those repeated scenes CANNOT have got into TST accidentally. (Nor can the cameraman on screen in Morocco, come to that.)

I find it truly impossible to believe that a team as large as BBC Sherlock’s can all have accidentally allowed mistake after inconsistency after mistake to get into s4. That’s why I want to keep analysing it.

@green-violin-bow, I’m with you. My other dealbreaker is the amount of the “dream tells”. Why there is suddenly so many things about dreaming, like the sheep hopping on TV screen in the hospital. If we never get anything more or any explanation, my conclusion is, that we are supposed to decode S4 by ourselves.

This has already been written about, i'm sure, but remember the 4th pip in TGG, the pink phone didn't ring at the beginning like the ones before, sherlock had to go looking for the case. He discarded other possibilities before settling on alex woodbridge's body, which eventually led, in that roundabout way, to the fake painting and the child hostage with the intense countdown. Someone who has watched s4 more than once has probably already identified all the matching moments in s4. I think, as @may-shepard said, "the training wheels are off", we are meant to look for the case ourselves this time, find the thing, the dead body, that isn't where it should be, and follow the threads connected to it.