A Better Solution to the Final Problem
I enjoyed the first three episodes of BBC’s Sherlock. I was disappointed by how episode 4 (the first of the newest trilogy) resolved episode 3′s hangover, but immediately forgave the writers as A Scandal in Belgravia unfolded. But then came episode 5, The Hounds of Baskerville, which was frankly awful.
So it all came down to episode 6, The Reichenbach Fall. Good opening, great development, tension steadily ratcheting up, and then bam, the final three minutes ruined it all. Completely. It was completely implausible, inconsistent with what we’d seen of the characters up to that point—frankly, it almost had me expecting Moriarty to reveal that he was Sherlock’s long-lost twin brother.
My ending is below the fold. Enjoy.
[Scene: Moriarty and Sherlock are on the roof. Sherlock's standing on the edge; Moriarty is explaining it all to him, and then Sherlock grins and turns around and Moriarty says, "What? What did I miss?" And instead of that utter crap about "you have to kill yourself or your friends will die", the dialog goes something like this:
Moriarty: What? What did I miss?
Sherlock [plucks a camera off the wall, identical to the one he found in his apartment earlier]: I don’t know what you missed, but the police won’t have missed anything. Or the the people watching online—we decided to do a live feed. [throws camera away]
Moriarty [furious]: Your friends are dead! Dead, do you hear? My people are going to—
Sherlock [laughs]: Your people? Did you really think that if you hired a bunch of international assassins, none of them would turn out to be working for my brother? Jim, Jim, Jim—the ones who aren’t Mycroft’s people are dead themselves.
[cut to: an old lady from Sherlock's Homeless Network shuffling along the street past one of the assassins, then whirling around and stabbing him with a knitting needle.]
[cut to: Mrs. Hudson introducing her "nephew" to the large bald assassin who was doing renos for her. As the LBA turns around, the nephew picks up a hammer from the toolbox and hefts it.]
[cut back to: incredulous, furious face of Jim Moriarty]
Sherlock: Oh, poor Jim. Poor, poor Jim. All this time, you thought you were playing a game with me. Well let me tell you something. Mycroft and I solved the final problem years ago. We figured out how to cure boredom. [leans forward] All this time, you’ve been our game.
Moriarty: I don’t believe you. I don’t believe you!
[Sherlock, laughing, turns to go. Moriarty howls with rage, rushes forward, grabs him. The two hurtle over the edge of the building. Freeze frame. Fade out.]
The ending wasn’t that bad. If they hadn’t shown Sherlock alive at the end it would have been better off. It’s the unexpectedness of the last scene that leaves us questioning whether or not he is truly dead. How would you explain your ending in episode 7? Also I think that the idea of Sherlock finally being outplayed makes the ending more interesting –except that revealing him being alive kind of ruined that.
1. We don’t know at the end of my E6 whether Sherlock is telling the truth or not.
2. We see Moriarty tackling Sherlock, and we cut to them falling, but anything could have happened in between (including substituting a convenient body from the morgue).
And I’m bummed that Lestrade wasn’t there at the graveside at the end—I liked him.
I didn’t think The Hounds of Baskerville was nearly as bad as others said. I certainly was better than the ending to season 1 and the start to season 2. I agree the ending to Reichenbach was disappointing. Part of the fun to me of both Hounds and Reichenbach was how they played with the original stories. But the ending had little homange to Doyle (beyond the name of the episode). Plus I still don’t quite understand why Moriarty felt like he had to shoot himself. What you outline would make much more sense.
But your sherlock has let moriarty kill people and rob people all over even though he could stop him.
That’s a different character.
I am 100% with you on your assessment of the 6 episodes. I laughed so much during Belgravia that I could have forgiven anything in that episode.
Baskerville was half-length episode stretched out with so much padding that I expected to find coins had rolled under the cushions.
Once they’d entered the lab and seen some angry animals (very early in the show), all the dominoes fell over. Everything else was Sherlock showing off reading people unconnected to the case.
As for Reichenbach, the magical code was such a ridiculous macguffin that it almost needed a magical sonic screwdriver to resolve it.