Happy with Holmes

Now that season 2 of Sherlock is over (NOOOO!), I just want to say that as far I’m concerned, the massive downer that was “A Scandal in Belgravia” was to some extent remedied by “The Hounds of Baskerville,” despite the visual wank-fest that was Sherlock’s “mind-palace” (no-one should ever be made to look like Tom Cruise in anything; and a striking insight doesn’t actually physically strike you, at least not in my experience. But then I don’t even have a mind bedsit). And the series really redeemed itself with tonight’s “Reichenbach Fall.”

No need for spoiler alerts. I’ll just say this: here was a Holmes seriously unpleasant, and unequivocally so; a Holmes self-limitingly arrogant; a Holmes less in control of some situations than Watson (or Moriarty); a flawed and even troubling human being, and much, much more interesting for it than the superficially vulnerable but ultimately invincible genius of “Scandal.” One could be picky and say that the two characters who do the most damage to Sherlock in this episode (and play into Moriarty’s hand in the process) are both women, but the script didn’t really focus on their gender — or only to the extent that Holmes, in his by now familiar misogynist vein, treated one of them reprehensibly first and thus set himself up for a, forgive me, fall (this Holmes, after all, hasn’t been taught the lesson Irene Adler teaches Doyle’s Holmes; no wonder this Sherlock is much more of an unreconstructed male than his Victorian ancestor…). And for once there was nothing even vaguely funny about his dismissive attitude to Molly.

This is the Sherlock that awed me so much in season 1: so clever, so knowing, so craftily constructed, and so good at sustained two-handers. The scenes with Moriarty and Holmes are a treat. And the translation of the Reichenbach Falls confrontation into 21st-century terms works brilliantly, movingly, and has left me far more flummoxed than I’d expected to be. Wherever they’re boldly going, outer space or New Zealand, Cumberbatch and Freeman better come back for another series. I demand answers.

PS.: What’s a deerstalker? “It’s an ear-hat!”