The episode leans hard into the emphasis on addiction. In the final moment of the previous episode, the newly dead Mary instructed Sherlock in a posthumous message to “go to 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 “save” John - by forcing John to save Sherlock’s life. 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 con to catch Smith in the act of serial killing, while rolling out twist after twist on both the emotional and narrative fronts. This one is structured around “The Adventure of the Dying Detective” and its villain, Culverton Smith, played with typical brilliance by veteran actor Toby Jones. Like all episodes of Sherlock, “The Lying Detective” is faithfully modeled on one of the original Arthur Conan Doyle short stories. Sherlock brings us Steven Moffat at his Moffat-y best (and worst) Spoilers for “The Lying Detective” abound below. For, as we know well by now, Sherlock is always right, and all roads in John’s life, try though he might to strike out in independence, endlessly lead back to Baker Street.Īnd still all that rhetorical emptiness can’t quite obscure the spark of brilliance and 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. 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 game in order to catch someone deadly, John lashing out with violence as Sherlock’s plan unfolds, and Sherlock flirting with disaster in the form of untold drug addictions, only to emerge, once again, victorious and vindicated by the depth of his own intellect. By now, so much has been said about Sherlock’s constant embrace of narcissism that it feels redundant to go over it again for yet another one of the series’ few and far-between episodes.
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