How BBC Sherlock Violated the Premise of Sherlock Holmes

foreign [Music] let's be fully clear here from the outset I'm going to take shots at a property that was near and dear to my heart for a very long time and undoubtedly many of yours as well I'm also very aware that many of you were probably brought to click on that little subscribe button down there because of a thumbnail with this face on it and I had a lot of success piggybacking off the show during its run the Abominable ride and the series 4 releases saw spikes in my viewership and subscribers however here on YouTube I've always had a love-hate relationship between this show and my content on the one hand it was one of the things that got me to start the channel and propelled me forward as a content creator but on the other hand I really think that the show does my content the methods of deduction and the character of Sherlock Holmes himself a bit of it is service this is a retrospective on the BBC Sherlock not a renunciation of the methods of deduction that I have talked about here for years on the channel but this has been a video idea in the back of my head for a long time now because while I was a fan of the show I was aware of its various problems and I even took the time to mention some of them publicly in various videos however my roommate and I recently went back and re-watched the show which I hadn't seen in probably two years and holy [ __ ] it is way worse than I remember not just as a dramatization of the methods of deduction but as an adaptation as a story and as a production on the whole and there are just some things I really need to get off of my chest you still here okay okay that's great to be very clear I love you guys and I know that a lot of us here love or loved the show and many people claim it as their inspiration for studying deduction I am one of those people but let's all have a chat about it because in retrospect I feel like we were pretty disserviced by the show as deductionists this video also has chapters in it so if you want to skip around you can and if you just want to skip the media critique and jump right into why and how this show overall negatively impacts those seeking to learn the practice of deduction that'll be the last section but it's going to make way more sense if you watch the rest of the video so stick around uh also if you find this interesting there are more video essays that I reference as a part of my research Linked In the description a particularly good watch is a video essay by H bomber guy whose argument is very similar to mine but we focus on similar issues from different angles so if you want another perspective I highly recommend that one also the rest of my citations are going to be listed in the description below as well and anytime I reference the citation is going to pop up in the right hand corner of the screen within parentheses anyway let's dive headfirst into the garbage pile that is BBC Sherlock [Music] okay admittedly that was kind of an anticlimactic transition but to be even-handed there were some good things about the show that were the core reasons to develop such a huge fan base for a good portion of its run first of all credit to the cast and crew of this show regardless of the direction which is where I think most of the problems lie the heart and soul poured out by the people who worked on this property is very clear to see I've been working professionally in the production industry for almost six years now so I can confidently say that a lot of work to make the show look good was poured into the principal photography and while certain editing choices I failed attract from that work for the most part it is a very competently Shot Show furthermore every actor in the show in spite of interesting Direction choices brings their a game I personally love Martin Freeman invented at cumberbatch's actors they are fantastic leads and in everything I've seen them and they bring so much life to the characters they're portraying I think Friedman especially gives a special charm to Watson that I think the show would be severely lacking without Cumberbatch for his part I think was giving some genuinely poor Direction but he takes it in stride despite the creative direction that they took the character in and why I think it just surfaces the show as a whole the fault isn't with the acting because he makes it look very believable in addition to the leads The Supporting Cast is also very strong despite the lackluster writing each of them no matter how big or small the role fills it well and I know I decried the editing just a little bit ago but there are some genuinely fun and interesting scenes in Hanson post-production that do a great service to visually Telegraph to the audience Sherlock's thought process my favorite example of this is in season 4 episode 2. Sherlock is office tits on drugs wandering through a fever dream and while he's doing that he's piecing together a case and I think that scene was done extremely well as far as how it was shot and how it brings you into the mind of Sherlock but that's pretty much it as far as things that I still enjoy about the show so let's get into the actual critique shall we [Music] complaints I've made publicly about the direction of Sherlock was making homes a sociopath now you might have noticed the asterisk first of all what is a sociopath like seriously in the science of psychology what is a sociopath how is it defined let's do our research and find out shall we oh no no I'm not talking about that pop psychology garbage like that let's have a look at the DSM not in Roman numerals anymore because [ __ ] you and your citations five Let Me Wait a second where the hell is it it's not it's like a bath and sociopath while Layman jargon the differentiate two presentations of someone who is antisocial are not psychiatric terms popular belief is that a psychopath and a sociopath are the same just one is born that way and one is socialized that way in Clinical Psychology there is no distinction made largely because the etiology of a clinical condition isn't particularly relevant in defining a disorder because it is the symptomatic presentation that defines the disorder while ideology can be helpful in prevention and sometimes treatment it's not essential so the clinical literature doesn't waste time in paper writing two identical disorders in the section on personality disorders in the DSM-5 there are three clusters of Related Disorders cluster a includes paranoid schizoid and schizotypal personality disorders cluster B which is what we will be focusing on includes the anti-social disorders and cluster C includes avoidant dependent and obsessed with compulsive disorders the one someone would be diagnosed with if they fit the criteria for what we colloquially call a psychopath or sociopath is far more boringly named anti-social Personality Disorder so let's jump into the diagnostic criteria for this disorder and see if Sherlock fits also before we jump into this I am not a licensed clinician I only have a bachelor's degree in Psychology so I am legally and academically useless in diagnosing actual real life people with disorders this is purely for entertainment and in education do not armchair diagnose yourself or others speak to a licensed clinical psychologist or psychiatrist about diagnoses thank you there are four primary diagnostic criteria for antisocial personality disorder labeled a through D the first is a pervasive pattern of disregard and violation of the rights of others occurring since age 15 as indicated by three or more of the seven sub criteria we'll go into these in a moment B is that the person is at least 18 see is that there is evidence of conduct disorder with onset before age 15 and D is antisocial Behavior does not only occur during schizophrenia or bipolar disorder a quick note about this disorder there has been Disco course for a while on not diagnosing minors with this disorder because such a diagnosis can reify itself in an impressionable mind a child told that they have antisocial personality disorder or called a psychopath for shorthand might internalize that and alter their behavior to further fit the diagnosis so to prevent this children can only be diagnosed with a conduct disorder which follow most of the same criteria which is why Criterion C is what it is because patient history is very important with respect to psychiatric diagnoses just like in Physical Medicine the seven sub-criteria for Criterion a are where the majority of the comparative analysis for the disorder is done so let's go through one by one to see which in the show Sherlock fits one is failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest so Sherlock does fit this to some extent and the DSM notes that the individual does not have to be arrested to satisfy this Criterion only that is grounds for an arrest if they were to be caught certainly Sherlock's substance abuse is one such activity but beyond that he also regularly breaks police protocol and has a disregard for Crime Scene integrity and Department procedures there's also his clear willingness to break into top secret government facilities without hesitation and let's not forget that he acquired the means to get into that Facility by way of his pickpocketing happen and we also know that Sherlock has had a history of substance abuse since a young age so I'm gonna go and say yes to this Criterion two is deceitfulness as indicated by repeated lying use of aliases or conning others for personal profit or pleasure it would be quick to jump on this one and say that Sherlock fits given his behavior of the show but is equally important to note that these are all regular activities for his line of work as a private detective and he doesn't seem to engage in these behaviors much when they aren't in service of his line of work he is secretive for sure in the show but most of his lies are lies of a mission however he does seem to have a natural comfort for outright lying to the point where one could argue that he enjoys engaging in that sort of behavior so I'll give him this one as well three is impulsivity or failure to plan ahead Sherlock can be characterized as impulsive in this iteration but he is always planning ahead often seemingly impulsive behaviors are Justified later as a part of a larger plot and even his relationship to substance abuse involves decking out his kitchen to be a lab to produce his own drugs which involves careful planning so I'll not give him this one four is irritability and aggressiveness as indicated by repeated physical fights or assaults we could characterize Sherlock as being verbally aggressive at times due to irritability but not to the extent of physical violence so I'll say he doesn't meet this Criterion number five is reckless disregard for the safety of self or others the initial thoughts that come to mind for this Criterion are when he intentionally tried to drug Jon with a dangerous hallucinogen in the hand of the Baskervilles and when he threw a CIA agent out of a second story window as well as his lack of regard for Moriarty's hostages in the first season this disregard for the safety is also Reckless as seen with his intentional goading of a desperate woman with a gun resulting in the almost immediate death of Mary however apart from trying to drug Jon and act he rationalized for he does seem to have a deep care for John's well-being and safety as well as that of Mrs Hudson and despite his comments about the death of one of the hostages in the first season he does try very hard to stop the old woman from getting herself killed and looks genuinely mortified when the call drops there's also a disregard for himself when he almost takes the pill in the first episode however we know he has a substance abuse problem as well and Suicidal Tendencies are comorbid with substance abuse disorder one could argue give that these behaviors are either coping mechanisms or conscious attempts to distance from people rather than persistent features of his personality the lack of consistency in what we see calls for more patient history but within the Sherlock Canon what bits we get from his past don't really touch on this aspect so I won't give this one from what we can see in the show number six is consistent irresponsibility as indicated by repeated failure to sustain consistent work or honor Financial Obligations Sherlock does not really exhibit this set of behaviors either one could argue that this is because he enjoys his work and is paid well for it which is true but this still doesn't allow for further speculation so he doesn't get this one either and the last one is lack of remorse as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt mistreated or stolen from another a consistent feature of Sherlock's behavior in the show is his intense rationalization of his decisions and lack of remorse for anti-social behavior on the Merit of those rationalizations so I'll give him this one as well it would appear that Sherlock does satisfy Criterion a by expressing three of the seven sub-criteria however we only have evidence for one of these behaviors before age 15. from what we have described to us it appears that Sherlock was not antisocial based on mycroft's memory in early childhood but that his childhood trauma relating to the death of his best friend changed him so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and say he satisfies the criteria there is however also the point of his loss of some of these behaviors as the seasons progress however the DSM-5 notes that it is not uncommon for symptoms to become less evident or even remit within someone's 40s given that Sherlock is in his 40s by the final season it actually fits the course of this disorder however he does only barely hit the diagnosis and in the universe consistently calls it by the wrong name and it says that other people need to do their research on the subject so I find it to just be an unnecessary choice for the character and one that doesn't service the larger story much if at all and it also fails as a characterization of homes as seen in the source material a it is a more recent Jordan with the benefit of hindsight coming at you in the editing Bay so while I was editing the sociopath section I realized that it didn't super tie into the rest of the argument as cleanly as I thought it was when I when I wrote it and when I was recording it um but the all the information is good but it just didn't seem like it um was necessary at the end but it but it is but I didn't tie it well into the next section but basically the point that I'm trying to make with why I think it was a poor choice to make homes a sociopath and only make him a sociopath butts dwell on that aspect of his character and really harp on it and make it a significant part of his character is that it doesn't really provide any narrative benefit like you could have all of these character flaws that he has in the show without him being sociopathic right without him having to claim anti-social personality disorder which I make the argument that he does barely hit it's just the the frustration with the like this sort of big brain stuff of like not caring about people is cool because like it shows how detached you are because you're so smart it's like some some of the most intelligently written things I have read come from a deep place of care and empathy right some of the most intelligent speakers I've listened to they are passionate about what they do from a place of deep care and empathy empathy and Care is not a bad thing it doesn't detract from intelligence in fact like later later on in the video I talk about how human intelligence is a product of social Evolution without socialization without the functions of social interaction and empathy and emotions for others your brain will not develop typically without that like socialization is good for you intellectually being empathetic is good for you intellectually um because that's why human general intelligence evolved to begin with so it just it was it's one of those things that in hindsight it's this big brain sort of like or slash I'm very smart [ __ ] if I'm being entirely honest uh sick of seeing and um it doesn't surface The Narrative at all which makes it even more frustrating and then I also had a section of the script that I cut where I was going to talk about how homes better fits ASD autism spectrum disorder which I ended up cutting because it just like wasn't super relevant to everything else but tying it into the sociopath thing like it's just I'm go they they make one mention of Sherlock having Asperger's in the show and I'm really glad they left it at that because being on the autism spectrum I'm really glad they didn't botch that too like with all the other things that they botched because um it would have been very easy for them to instead of having him be a sociopath Double Down On The Low empathy symptoms of autism um instead which I'm glad they didn't do because the stigma of that is what was one of the things that is difficult for people in the high functioning end of the spectrum um yeah so anyway this is editor's addendum I don't know if it's actually going to end up in the in the final video but I just kind of wanted to to rant about some of these thoughts you can you can go back to the real video now [Music] the canonical Sherlock Holmes not only doesn't fit the criteria for anti-social personality disorder he's not even as big of a dick as people seem to think in the Canon homes can be crass in a matter of fact way and breaks from the traditions of polite niceties of English upper class society when following those Traditions would get in the way but he's not mean to be mean in fact he's usually quite the proper English gentleman he's a matter of fact not to be mean but usually because someone is in denial or not getting to the point and just wasting time this is also employed in the reverse if being in polite wastes time instead of saving it he'll be polite he's a pragmatist not an egoist he's almost always at least Pleasant to Watson despite the fact that the characters are two very different people who see the world in very different ways he's not obsessed with one-upmanship often politely entertaining Gregson and lestrade's conjectures and outlandish theories before kindly seeing them out the door and forgetting about the entire interaction only to explain why he doesn't agree and maybe make a friendly joke at their expense when Watson asks him about it later homes in the books is a true obsessive a romantic cure from the literary standpoint he could care less about what people think and if they think he's the smartest what he cares about are the methods and the results if you don't believe me let's take a look at a couple of scenes that analog each other between the Canon and the adaptation now if you watch other video essays on Sherlock like the aforementioned one by H bomber guy you already know that the showrunners completely reversed the twist about the writing on the wall in his study in Scarlet for studying pink while in the book it is Gregson lestrade that think that the letters r-a-c-h-e were meant to spell Rachel and it is Holmes that knows that Racha is German for revenge in the show they flip it however more to the point that I'm trying to make later in this story there is a scene where Gregson comes to Baker Street to tell Holmes that the case is closed Scotland Yard has charged a man with the murder a man who as it turns out is innocent take a seat and try one of these cigars he said we are anxious to know how you manage it will you have some whiskey and water Don't Mind If I Do the detective answered the tremendous exertions which I have gone through during the last day or two have worn me out not so much bodily exertion you understand as the strain upon the mind you will appreciate that Mr Sherlock Holmes for we are both brain workers you do me too much honor said Holmes Gravely let us hear how you arrived at this most gratifying result this is a far cry from the desperate need for attention and validation that we see in a similar scene where Sherlock upon hearing the speculations of Anderson tells him not to speak because he quote lowers the IQ of the whole street in the scene in the book Holmes is clearly annoyed with Gregson for jumping to conclusions and doing so with such Brash arrogance but the way Gregson is written most people would have had that sort of reaction however the way that Holmes is written in the sequence shows that he is definitely trying to hold his tongue and not make a scene or make enemies Holmes in the Canon has a continual annoyance with Scotland Yard but he is always trying to make them better detectives sharing information suggesting lines of study it is the arrogance of the detectives of Scotland Yard that prevent them from becoming as good as homes it's not Holmes's natural Talent OR Superior intellect and certainly not Holmes's arrogance that makes him better in Sherlock most of the detectives have reasonable complaints about Sherlock Sherlock's refusal to Don proper forensic attire for the sake of his fashion sense would definitely piss off any self-respecting forensics expert and it's a far cry from Holmes's obsession with crime scene Integrity in the books in the books Holmes is the reasonable one and Scotland Yard is run by arrogant policemen who are far more in forces of the law than they are problem solvers whereas in Sherlock it is articular character who is the Arrogant one now is it inherently wrong to do something different with a character in an adaptation no and I don't even say that in defense of the argument that you have to change aspects of a written work to properly translate into Cinema that is true don't get me wrong and Cinema and literature are two very different mediums and they have different storytelling languages and while there's overlap between the two there are differences as well and adaptations require well adapting but beyond that from a fundamental character and story aspect this is an adaptation choice that keeps being made which does a disservice to the character and the stories he is in this idea that Sherlock is an [ __ ] but it doesn't matter because he's right is the perpetuation of the great man myth as far as I can tell Holmes isn't the only character to be portrayed in this way in modern pop culture basically any character that is coded to be the genius follows the Trope of this character flaw Iron Man for instance is a genius so it's okay that he's a selfish Man Child we're told not to question his decisions or whether he's qualified to make them because he's a genius even when he makes mistakes who else is going to fix these problems with the flesh bag with a supercomputer instead of a brain he isn't like the rest of us he's a genius so he can be unlikable and still the good guy because his genius status gives him the right House MD is another great example of this Trope and once again a Sherlock Holmes adaptation a much better one than Sherlock in my opinion and the decision to make house the biggest piece of [ __ ] in the office is actually largely Justified from the story perspective because the writers do something interesting with it but house himself sums up what this trip is all about when he tells the story of the doctor who inspired him when he was just a child a doctor who was a real [ __ ] but he was always right so no one could do anything about the fact that he was an [ __ ] same Principle as Sherlock trying to drug your friend with a dangerous hallucinogen that causes traumatizing Terror without their consent and experience you just had a day or so agum when there were multiple other ways to test your hypothesis is what we'd like to call in Academia unethical laboratory conditions might ask good luck getting that study design past IRB it's not clever it doesn't improve intelligence it shows that you're just kind of a piece of [ __ ] and having a character with flaws and watching them grow to be better is a tried and true storytelling method however in order for that to work the character Arc has to be fulfilled at some point with Sherlock we see him grow little by little but then a new thing about his past or his internal struggles is teased to the audience either to never be Revisited or poorly satisfied later where if you wanted a character-driven story you could have focused more on the character Arc that you set up to begin with Sherlock Holmes as a series of short stories was very episodic there wasn't character development noticeable between stories except on rare occasions changes to the characters are largely subtle and they didn't need to be anything more than that the reader needed to be able to follow Watson as the perspective character and believe that Sherlock Holmes could be a real person so that the suspense and clue finding and mystery solving of the crime mystery story was something the audience believed in and invested in the characters of the Sherlock Holmes stories were vehicles to deliver and idea that Doyle held to be true that if a detective approached a crimes the same way that a scientist approached a study then fewer innocent people would be convicted of crimes they didn't commit unless guilty people would get away with their misdeeds Sherlock Holmes has never been a character-driven story at its core its appeal has always been the audience's engagement with the mystery now can you make an adaptation that is a more character-centric one but also Services the mystery solving absolutely numerous adaptations have done that and do it well but one thing that I notice while watching this particular show was that after a certain point in the show there wasn't a lot of mystery solving like starting with the very first episode there's a murder and for the most part they stick to that in the story with a couple of unnecessary plot servicing detours for the larger story but for the most part it's a decent mystery Story episode 2 features a murder and evandalism the main plot basically takes no detours and the episode has a fairly decent subplot with Watson getting back into the dating scene these for me are my favorite episodes because they focus on the crime and the Mystery solving element and Sherlock's employment of deduction to solve the Mystery episode 3 is where the show sidesteps to the actual plot it wants a service the plot it foreshadows at the end of the very first episode The Mind battle between Sherlock and Moriarty in theory the setup for this episode is actually pretty good you've got a terrorist kidnapping people and strapping them with C4 and using them as a medium of communication between himself and the protagonists a crime is pointed out to the protagonist by the terrorists and they are given a time limit to solve the crime and only after that will the location of the hostage be revealed this is actually a really good setup however the execution is where it's found to be lacking the first crime the episode features is a Cold Case murder starting off strong our protagonists are given a single piece of physical evidence the evaluation of it is key to solving the mystery importantly this piece of physical evidence was the only thing not found in the original case as the murderer knew it was the only thing that would have traces of the cause of death they unnecessarily tied this into Sherlock's past and then never pay off the Intrigue of that but whatever it's a strong start nonetheless the next case features an apparent death that turns out to be a fraudulent death to get away from money troubles this is where the episode starts to take a turn because it solved almost entirely off screen the information presented to the viewer is almost entirely irrelevant to solving the case because it's Sherlock's off-screen chemistry and conjecture about a rental car company that solves the case third case is an apparent death by tetanus but the wound seems to have been made recently in Sherlock and John suspect the cause of death might be different that sounds super interesting and it would have been really neat to see how they pieced together how she was actually Poisoned With tetanus or maybe something else and the episode then takes a turn in that direction following Watson as Sherlock goes off screen to do something else I got excited when I first watched this because I was hoping that we would see some progression of Watson's skill as a detective something that occurs in the Original Stories as well because the skills of deduction arequirable and not some magical mind power that requires a Super Genius brain we watch Watson DO some honest to God detective work questioning suspects noticing Clues forming a hypothesis okay okay now we're getting somewhere we're bringing it back hold you this whole sequence is made immediately moved because of off-screen research Sherlock did and it's used not to show Watson's progression as a problem solver learning a new skill but for laughs at his expense to show the audience how smart Sherlock is even if you wanted to go that route wouldn't it be much more interesting to see Sherlock solve the case to follow Sherlock the same way we followed Jon while we can't do that because Sherlock already solved the case early on in the in this sequence so that he could get ahead in this game and move the telegraph some unlikable in Cal's Sherlock is also were you wondering what Sherlock was doing to get ahead in the game well you're out of luck because we'll never find out that also could have been an interesting plot to follow Sherlock solving the case quickly and then making a strategic decision to try and solve the larger case at hand that being finding the terrorists that is responsible for all these kidnappings that could have been really interesting to follow and played completely differently for his character sure it's callous but Sherlock being a pragmatist might have been able to rationalize it as preventing further suffering we could have maybe had the characters grapple with the Strategic decision later and wonder if letting an old blind woman live with explosive strap to her chest for 12 hours might have been slightly traumatic and made her so emotionally distraught she couldn't be reasoned with to not reveal any information about this terrorist but now Sherlock does everything off screen it's never paid off to the audience and the only grappling he does is rationalizing why he's still won while Watson makes virtually no case for the human decency he's advocating for now this still could have been done in an interesting way two partners who with entirely different World Views grappling differently with the loss of life that they may have inadvertently caused due to a strategic decision tensions are rising and this could lead to some compelling drama if you wanted a character-driven story rather than a mystery driven story you certainly set up for that kidding but we have to keep moving on to the next crime which makes sense given the premise of the episode to be fair but maybe we'll see Watson traumatized by this in future episodes leading to character-driven drama between him and Sherlock you're cute the next crime involves a washed up corpse the show makes an effort to actually show Sherlock making some deductions regarding this crime scene some of which are fine and others are quite a leap and require him to already know the signature style of an assassin but whatever it's not like Holmes didn't know things that the police didn't had to explain things in the books just like he would also go off screen in the Original Stories as well so okay we know who we're looking for and we need to find out where he is and why he was hired could be fun to watch that unfold narrowing down where the Killer is and so forth nope it once again gets solved off screen but this time by Sherlock's homeless Network which is just an excuse for some very classless remarks towards the poor people who just did his [ __ ] job for him for 50 Quid in the books rather than make comments like I scratch their backs and then disinfect myself when Holmes would employ Lower Class People largely children to help him gather information he says this there's more work to be got out of those little Beggars than out of a dozen on the force they are sharp as needles too all they want is organization while still mildly glasses it's not degrading or filled with malice however in Sherlock the homeless are portrayed as Vermin thanks to Sherlock's comments very [ __ ] tasteful coming from a country that has had a homeless crisis for the past decade but whatever hijinks ensue the Assassin murders the person who had the essential information to help solve the case and her death is never mentioned by anyone I'll stress that again her death is never mentioned by anyone this leads to Sherlock having to solve the case in 10 seconds featuring these superpowers that he has and his extremely quick Googling skills to piece together that a painting is fake based off of a supernova visible in the night sky a concept we have established he has no knowledge of prior to hearing about it in a planetarium presentation while fighting a comically tall man not 30 minutes ago now it is possible that within a fairly short research time frame he could have pieced this together but on a Blackberry in 2010 in 10 seconds nah it is hard enough to get decent services in an art museum in 2022 that [ __ ] just ain't happening you know what could have been interesting Sherlock piecing together the two people who have been murdered by a hit man in relation to a recently discovered painting had a background in astronomy we know that the amateur astronomer was reaching out to a professional with his suspicions about something based off of a voicemail and we also know that both of them died shortly after this phone call the intersection between the astronomy and the painting would most likely be the night sky depicted in the painting and since we know the night sky changes over the centuries one possibility is that any historical inaccuracies in the night sky would prove it's a fake that's honestly not a difficult line of reasoning to follow especially since we already accepted Sherlock's conjecture about the painting to begin with and wouldn't have been hard for the protagonist to figure this out over the course of a scene or two but once again the mystery solving is done entirely in Sherlock's head without showing the viewer and the interesting part of actually piecing together using logic the thing being serviced here isn't the mystery not the audience not even the characters but the fictional ego of Sherlock himself as if the scene was written by this self-absorbed man-child to show off how smart he is and in retrospect while there was a power fantasy aspect to it if you do your best to relate to Sherlock as a whole it's not a satisfying conclusion to the mystery for the audience just like everything else in the episode The One crime where the mystery is solved with the viewer and the only point in the story that actually gives Jon some Justified screen time and that isn't played for Laughs is the case that Sherlock doesn't even want to solve John in this episode solves the crime surprisingly the way that Holmes would have solved the crime in the books he starts his investigation questioning Witnesses and Persons of Interest and through inconsistencies in the information presented to him versus the physical evidence starts to solve the case these are things that Sherlock Holmes would do because he was a detective but things that Sherlock doesn't do in the show because he's so smart he already figured these things out without having to do the legwork that a mere mortal would rather have required to gather all the evidence this is the most service mystery in the entire episode and when Sherlock has his meeting with Moriarty and brings the missile plans to him you think holy [ __ ] this is what it's all been about this is what Moriarty was after the whole time and I could have got them anywhere okay the argument could be made that in an episode with so many cases going on it's impossible to service all of them properly and heard that I agree but one of these could have been cut perhaps the one that turned out to be a complete waste of everyone's time and probably existed to tie Mycroft into the story for basically no reason with one of these cases cut we would have had more time to explore the others and the characters themselves this episode was overly ambitious and exists to set up the further conflict between homes and Moriarty the first confrontation sets up Moriarty as a criminally insane genius who enjoys playing games but ultimately he has his own Ambitions and wants Sherlock out of his hair because he stands a chance at ruining his criminal Empire in the books Moriarty is a criminal mastermind building a criminal organization he has respect for Holmes's abilities for sure but he doesn't try and kill Sherlock to prove that he's the smartest he does so to get the Troublesome detective out of his hair so that he can achieve his ends this episode sets up Moriarty in that way adding this sort of terrorist element into the mix because it was the late 2000s but then by their next confrontation it turns out that that's not at all what he was doing he was in fact trying to play a game with Sherlock and didn't give two shits about his criminal Empire or his own life and for that matter and then later via flashbacks we learned that the government locked him up illegally after this episode and turns out that everything Moriarty said to Sherlock in the swimming pool was a complete Nutter horse [ __ ] he really just had an obsession with Sherlock the whole show hinges upon the conflict between Sherlock and Moriarty and you know what they did they blew their load at the end of season two by killing him they even produced an entire Christmas special where they explore a historic case of someone faking their own death in the same way only for that special to end with Sherlock for some reason saying that Moriarty is in fact very dead and then it turns out that yes he is in fact very very dead so they built up the conflict between Sherlock and Moriarty for five episodes killed him in the six and then tease his return three episodes later and then spent another three episodes and a special not paying that off the show continues the theme of not focusing on the Mysteries not even focusing on the actual character-driven stories but but teasing cool things about the characters and then not paying them off later Series 2 episode 1 features a retelling of the Hound of the Baskervilles a story that is admittedly somewhat difficult to translate into a modern setting but the setup is actually kind of decent but once again almost all of the mystery solving is done off screen or by characters looking at a literal screen the one interesting mystery solving bit is Sherlock being wrong and he literally walks into the answer at the climax of the episode in other news Sir Arthur Conan Doyle described his frustration with Detective novels from the time thusly it won't annoyed me her in the old-fashioned detective Story the detective always seemed to get at his results either by some sort of Lucky chance or a fluke or else it was quite unexplained how he got there he got there but he never gave an explanation of how Series 2 episode 2 retells that 25 page long short story of a scandal in Bohemia over the course of an hour and a half and it isn't satisfied with exploring the story for what it is alone but by tying it once again into Moriarty as we find out that Irene Adler was the one who called Moriarty at the end of series 1 and that she's been working with him ever since there's exactly one mystery solved in this episode but that takes all of three minutes of screen time the rest Services the larger plot the final episode of Series 2 brings back Moriarty and follows a similar structure to the finale of the first series but with even less crime solving more wild conjecture and that turns out to be right and endless teasing to the audience before they blow their load for the entire show Series 3 starts off with Sherlock's return and deals with the emotional trauma that Jon is dealing with from the death and return of his friend sets up new Supporting Cast members and features a mystery that Sherlock is too bored to solve until he feels like it where we then speed through the mystery at a Breakneck Pace I'm actually not against starting the series off this way per se because it actually tries to focus on the characters and their relationships and establish a new status quo for the series unfortunately it's only three episodes long so we don't have a lot of time for that Series 3 episode 2 features John's wedding and Sherlock's best man speech which actually gives a glimpse of what the show could have been exploring a series of interesting short Mysteries you know the majority of the Sherlock Holmes Canon for the most part each Mystery is self-contained and they're all fun little Mystery Adventures they ruin this by needlessly tying all these different cases together and use it to set up an attempted murder at John's wedding for drama I guess I both love and hate this episode for showing what could have been and being very fun to watch for the most part and then ripping us back down to more of the same [ __ ] the finale of the series introduces the plot twist that the character we met two episodes ago is actually a super mercenary and she didn't tell her husband hi jinxin Sue was this an interesting premise sure and I think it could have been done well is it no it's rushed and messy and there's not enough time to let it breathe because at the same time there's a case to solve which is also underserviced neither Mary being an ex-mercenary nor the Magnuson plot are bad by themselves but tying them together unnecessarily rushes both if there had been more episodes for each series they could have built this up over the course of a few episodes and then tied it together in the climax but each episode is 30 minutes longer than necessary and each series is seven episodes Too Short we run into the problem of having both too much time and not enough I'm actually quite a fan of Magnuson as a villain and I think he was a much better better version of Moriarty than the actual Moriarty in the show when I first watched this episode I was excited because the protagonists at the end are stuck in a horrible situation where there's no winning against a very clever villain who had an ace up his sleeve since we killed off our previous big bad villain perhaps series 4 will explore this villain and provide an interesting game of chess for Our Heroes to play as they try and stop this very powerful and dangerous person while the same time their hands are tied because he has so much leverage against them leverage that would also continue to stress the relationships of the protagonists with each other mystery action and drama altogether Merry Christmas I guess not then Magnuson could have been the perfect replacement for Moriarty and a chance for them to get it right since they messed it up so badly at the beginning of the series Magnuson is not concerned with Sherlock as a person he doesn't care about him he respects his abilities for sure but is concerned with amassing power for his own Ambitions and ends and immediately ties Sherlock's hands the second he starts poking his nose around in his business instead of utilizing this character and doing something interesting with the adaptation by making the most formidable villain not be Moriarty the kill him and then immediately bring Moriarty back sort of in the first episode of series 4 we essentially tie up the Mary was a mercenary plot that we were super invested in for all of a half an episode before this one before killing her off in the end again the crime isn't explored and Sherlock knows everything by the end somehow the next episode is spent grappling with the death of Mary by both John and Sherlock and the near irreparable strain is put on their friendship this is actually some of the best character development in the show featuring some of the best acting from Freeman and Cumberbatch we get to see in the series and the director's honest attempt to actually bring these arcs to a close and it's most disservice by the fact that these arcs were poorly handled for three series prior also as I said before this episode features one of my favorite visual sequences in the show and it does bring us into Sherlock's thought process while solving a crime in a very visually interesting way unfortunately the HH Holmes style serial killer as a villain is kind of made in my opinion he's almost too Goofy and creepy to be taken seriously and the case in the end is just Sherlock picking a fight so Jon will help him so it's against an opponent that Sherlock already knows is a killer so don't really even have a mystery in the episode and at the end we find out that oh boy it ties into Moriarty again I wonder how they're gonna bring him back the finale of the series and the show as a whole starts with Moriarty back on screen baby well maybe he's uh no no no he's dead he's very dead don't worry he's still dead do you want him to come back well too bad now I'll be honest I didn't want him to come back in the show after they killed him because I didn't like their take on the character to begin with but after all this teasing I was just really pissed that they didn't pay it off so much screen time plot diversion and distraction from the part of these stories that makes them compelling to tease bringing back a character only for them not to bring him back instead they introduce an entirely new character that brings the whole mind powers super genius nonsense to the next level after watching this episode I actually started out writing a script about why Euros Holmes was a really unbelievable character but I never ended up finishing it like so many of my video ideas but I always had a problem with this direction firstly it cements for me that the writers don't actually understand deduction and they don't even understand what human intelligence is other than big IQ number human intelligence is a product of the evolution of The Social Animal the very thing that Euros homes decries by the way but more to the point cognitive development is severely stunted without social contact for this reason feral children not raised by humans and thus not exposed to language after a certain age will not be able to learn to speak any language in a fully abstract way after the age of five a human child not exposed to language will never be able to abstractly communicate even if as in the case of Euros the child has already acquired language if you put a five-year-old in solitary confinement for 30 years with barely any human contact they will not develop cognitively in a typical way on account of adults put into solitary confinement will start to experience permanent cognitive decline after weeks to months and they certainly won't develop a social and linguistic intelligence enough to be able to mind control people with their words this telegraphs a hugely hereditary and sentiment of intelligence a sentiment that is not very supported by actual evidence and what hereditary and component there is to intelligence is still influenced upon by environment psychology largely recognizes currently that things are not a question of nature versus nurture but nature via nurture whatever genetic components exist for intelligence will not be expressed if the environment is sub-optimal beyond this they completely do away with any semblance of the use of deductive inductive and abductive reasoning in favor of magic mind Powers again of these three in particular super Geniuses they do all this to satisfy Sherlock's character Arc of becoming a better more empathetic person the thing about satisfying a character Arc though is that you make it infinitely more difficult to do such in a satisfying way when you introduce an entirely new character into your finale as the medium with which you fulfill the character Arc instead of using the characters you've been developing for almost four series before this point as a medium to do so why do Zero's homes have to exist for Sherlock and John to fully come into their own as friends and people why did Sherlock need a dead childhood best friend that he is repressed to realize how important his friendships are why did uros have to concoct a murder dungeon for Sherlock and Mycroft to embrace their Brotherhood despite their differences the answer is she didn't and there were other characters killed off or forgotten about along the way that could have serviced the resolutions of these relationships far better lestrade of all people the character that sets up Sherlock's character Arc will be the point of the show in the first episode resolves his hope that Sherlock will one day become a good man in the laziest sloppiest way that disservices a character that was actually quite likable Sherlock as a show is constantly jumping from new idea to new idea Each of which could have been an interesting setup but the show wants to have its cake and eat it too so every new thing has to get killed off or forgotten about so that they can tease you about the next cool thing coming up next this leads to a Breakneck pacing for the show that makes everything feel so short despite feature-length episodes any one of the ideas set up in Sherlock could have made for an interesting adaptation but all of them together makes a sloppy adaptation that misses the point of the stories and is over or insults what made them compelling to begin with nowhere else is this clearer than in what I like to call the mystery montages the mystery montages feature the premise and resolution of a vast number of original Sherlock Holmes short stories the premises often feature interesting ways of modernizing the setting for these Mysteries like they did in the wedding episode but instead it's a montage so we go from premise to resolution sometimes the Sherlock not even leaving his house or even waiting at all to blurt out the answer leaving the audience with no way of participating in an interesting mystery and Powerless to just watch Sherlock gloss over something that could have been fun to watch some of my favorite short stories are glossed over in literally five lines of dialogue in 30 seconds of screen time furthermore the show seems to feel the need to make fun of or show some sort of disdain for the source material not just in laughably glossing over the stories that made Sherlock Holmes The Legend he is but actively making fun of Jon and his titles they waste a vast swath of their Source material that they could have adapted and explored in interesting ways these sequences exist only to show how smart Sherlock is and to provide a few low-hanging jokes one of the key features of Sherlock Holmes in the books is how measured he is how attentive he is and how much deliberation he takes to the process information he's always described as attentively listening and engrossing himself in the tales of his clients rather than interrupting them and forcing them to hurry up he'll ask the occasional question but he doesn't assume that anything is irrelevant until it's proven to be so he's a very good listener he goes for days sometimes pouring over paperwork in his flat to get his firm of a grasp of the details of the case as possible as he concox's plan to carry out his investigation in the most strategically viable and scientific way he can Sherlock Holmes is written as a measured and patient deep thinking character not an impetuous [ __ ] cutting everyone off this is where we get to the ultimate problem with moffatt and Gates's attempt to modernize Sherlock Holmes see in the late 1800s solving a crime using observation of deduction like Holmes does was very new but in the last hundred and some odd years modern criminal investigation has literally been founded on that methodology meticulous data Gathering scientific evaluation and physical evidence Etc how do you make Sherlock A Cut Above the Rest making more than just a typical modern Detective When every detective is using the same methodology now well you could do what elementary did and just write him to be better at the methodology than everyone else and do so in a way that doesn't make the other detectives look stupid but just shows how obsessed Holmes is and how that Obsession made him the best that there is or you could do what Sherlock did and give him magical mind powers gaydus and moffatt literally talk about this in an interview how they focus on his ability to read people so much to set him apart from other detectives for this very reason and yes when he's reading people that is where the show will actually show some effort to show you his thought process and how he gets to those conclusions a lot of the time is overblown and towards the end they get lazy with that too but it's largely where the actual deduction and reasoning happens most of the solving of the crimes is just making Sherlock a Mary Sue and having him know just because the plot needs him to the exact thing Doyle wrote The Original Stories because he was frustrated at now I think when you violate the core premise of the source material you're adapting you're bordering on a poor adaptation [Music] okay so no Sherlock video essay is complete without at least touching on the queerbaiting and as a CIS head man there's not a lot of insight I can offer on this topic and what I can speak on has probably already been talked about at length so I encourage you to go watch some video essays from LGBT creators on the subject I've linked one as well as other video essays on the topic below however tying into my larger argument the showrunners clearly have a problem with committing to things in the story as we just talked about at length there's a pattern in the show of teasing something interesting and then never paying it off or doing so in an unsatisfying way the same applies here seemingly the showrunners want to cater to straight viewers and gay viewers at the same time either of these could have been committed to without being poorly done if the showrunners wanted Sherlock and John to be straight and go the canonical route of John getting married at some point in the story that's perfectly fine and no one would have been surprised or criticized the show too harshly some viewers would have been disappointed and of course people are going to have their own head cannons like with everything but if that was the story they wanted to commit to and they did it it would have been fully within the norm and no one would have been surprised or mad if the show Runners instead wanted Sherlock and John to be gay then that would have been extremely Progressive especially in 2010 when the show started and it would have been fantastic representation to have one of the most iconic characters in the entirety of Western Canon be gay in an adaptation sure that would have run the risk of alienating straight viewers so it makes sense why they didn't do it but if it was written well it could have been done well and the show still would have performed well there's also the interpretation that Holmes could be an ace character which is something that Moffitt has seemingly flipped on multiple times between whether he interprets Sherlock to be straight or Ace however if they were intending to go that route which it doesn't seem like they were they botched that potential as well as far with how the show deals with queer characters that are stated to be such the showrunners don't do a good job here either as seen with the portrayal of Irene Adler in the original Canon Irene Adler is a one-off character who appears in one story and is never heard from again at the end of which she gets married and runs away after beating Sherlock Holmes at his own game Irene Adler is a love interest for Sherlock Holmes is a creation of subsequent adaptations if you wanted Sherlock to be ace then you could have simply stuck to the source material in this regard and not heavily implied sexual tension on both sides from start to finish of the episode further complicating this this show explicitly States her to be a lesbian but then she falls for Sherlock which is how Sherlock eventually wins the day in the episode going with the Trope of having a lesbian character that is shot and directed for primarily the male gaze and having the protagonist awaken her heterosexuality is a tired and tasteless Trope and shows the showrunners didn't know how or didn't want to write good queer representation so why is all this bad well the lack of commitment in this case especially affects gay people because they're teasing them with representation or fulfillment of a Fantasy by dangling it over their head for the entire run of the show and then never paying it off the problem goes deeper to a level of exploitation some of the official marketing for the show was aimed at Young queer viewers with the implication of fulfilling the promises of representation this brings queer viewers to watch the show and brings money to those individuals involved in its production knowing full well that they were never going to pay that off and drawing viewership through false advertisement of a vulnerable population desperate for representation is exploited active and the industry needs to move away from that [ __ ] yesterday on a final note the show makes the r Sherlock and John gay question the butt of many jokes throughout the round of the show reifying The Shame of that sexual orientation and not to mention that at the start of the season 3 they literally make fun of the fairy fans who have these fan fictions and Fantasies the same fans who made the show as popular as it is again pretty tasteless and you can see why that would be super frustrating especially for a young gay viewer now it's also important to keep in mind that the gay subtext of the show is largely confined to scenes of Sherlock and John alone for all the other characters all they see are Sherlock and John being good friends and these characters immediately assume that they're gay without seeing the wistful glances that we see as the audience and while knowing that Sherlock does not have a romantic history at all and Jon only has a heterosexual romantic history this Nobles to perpetuate the cultural disdain that we have for heterosexual male and male affection a huge part of toxic masculinity and the way that that it is instilled in men from an early age is by discouraging friendships with other men that is affectionate on a substantial level this robs people of having intimate friendships and for the straight viewer who interprets Jon and Sherlock is straight this perpetuates this anxiety so in both respects queerbaiting is just bad for people in general it reinforces bigotry against LGBT people by reifying it it exploits them financially and it perpetuates toxic masculinity by way of internalized or overt homophobia in the straight viewer [Music] as promised let's talk about why this is bad for deductions and people studying the methods of deduction like I said at the beginning of the video I piggybacked off of the success of Sherlock for a while so I have a special insight into both how it inspired and gave unrealistic expectations to a vast swath of people unrealistic expectations that I made my career fighting against I'll show you an interesting thing about my channel while I piggybacked off of the success of Sherlock during its run that success was in subscribers not views to date I have a little over 117 000 Subs but the average number of views I can expect on a video in the first week is one to five thousand roughly one to four percent of my total subscribers to date and as you can see that's been the case for my content since mid 2016 when my subscriber pool was Far smaller this was also in between the releases of the Abominable bride and series four this is also where I had my first brush with virality with this video why you shouldn't emulate Sherlock Holmes this is the point in my content where I made a decision was it going to try and squeeze as much success as possible from my association with Sherlock and play into the show's fantasy of deduction or was I going to stick to doing my best to explain real methods I chose the latter and openly took shots at a good portion of people who would be stumbling on my Channel people who had accepted the power fantasy of Sherlock as a genius [ __ ] and fantasized about being like him it was also the point that I had to let go of that power fantasy for myself now in hindsight it's not that good of a video I was 16 when I made it I wasn't very good at researching or editing or doing voiceovers I hadn't even decided that I wanted to study psychology at that point and therefore I didn't know how stupid it was to use mbti as a part of my argument but nonetheless I do look at that video as an honest attempt by a younger me to steer people who had become interested in deduction because of that power fantasy into a more constructive direction of actually learning the skill and this is the point where my content plateaued I was still gaining subscribers but I wasn't getting more views for each new video aside from the occasional one that went viral that one to five thousand views in the first seven days has been the constant for my content despite the growth in subscribers for just about six years I think that due to the unrealistic expectations set by the show for how deduction Works people who were inspired to try and learn the skill found my channel only for me to come and say that Sherlock is a heavily dramatized version of deduction and what is possible will take a great deal of effort and practice people still on the high of that initial interest would stick around and subscribe but only a small portion of very dedicated people that one to five thousand would actually stick around for future content so let's talk about how Sherlock sets these unrealistic expectations for what is possible with the methods of deduction as we've talked about previously the methods of deduction are largely unused or openly mocked with respect to the crimes and Mysteries laid out in the show and the show elects to show the majority of Sherlock's use of deduction with respect to reading people which is also what the majority of people here are interested in so how does the show handle this aspect of deduction in the beginning it actually handles it quite well the first deductions we see on screen is when Sherlock meets Sean and reads him the observations and conclusions are pulled straight from their meeting in the book and adapted to fit a modern setting sticking to the source material here is where the deductions make the most sense and one can see how Sherlock piecedes his conclusions together the deduction about the charging port on the phone implying the previous owner of the phone was an alcoholic has been largely made fun of over the years and yes there are a multitude of possible reasons for those scratch marks being there plugging in your phone in the dark having a normally shaky hands or just struggling to figure out which orientation the mini USB goes in the port alcoholism is only the most salacious possibility and so the writers went with that without having any other evidence for Sherlock to back up this hypothesis but apart from that the evidence in the scene clearly points to the conclusion derived and one can also see how these tells would be present under normal conditions unfortunately the show deviates more from The Source material after this and the deductions become more salacious the evidence becomes more convenient and harder to suspend the disbelief to imagine that the evidence would be that clear and towards the end they largely stopped showing the thought process and just showed the conclusion along with the general area that the talcan supposedly be found so let's see another example of deduction to see where the show gets it right and where it gets it wrong in the scandal in berggravia we see two officers of the crown coming to collect Sherlock they don't announce themselves or who they work for or why they're coming to collect your luck Sherlock takes a look at one of them and then draws several conclusions determining that they work for Buckingham Palace first he determines that the suit the man is wearing is over 700 pounds which is within the realm of possibility especially if you are well versed in clothing lines you can fairly easily spot the expensive clothing in this way and this is a line of study we know Sherlock is known for so I'll give him that concluding that he is unarmed because of a lack of any bulge in the chest of the suit is kind of jumping the gun pardon the pun on account of the placement he's looking at is where a firearm would be kept if it was in the inside jacket pocket but not if it was kept in a shoulder strap which holds the firearm more closely to the side of the ribs which would definitely be safer and a more efficient way to carry plus a firearm could just as easily be in the holster on the back of the waist instead or just tucked into the back of the waistband band so neglecting to consider these possibilities and simply looking in the wrong spot to begin with I'm gonna say that the show took Liberties here to save her time and make the deduction look more salacious the next deduction zooming in on the thumbnail determining that the nails are manicured is totally possible and not hard to do if you know what you're looking for so I'll give it that one but the next one where it just Zooms in on the hairline and concludes office worker I'm not even sure where the show is trying to imply the Talia here is because the depth of field is so shallow in this shot the only thing that is in Focus are two portions of the hairline so presumably that's the tell however not suffering from male pattern baldness and having a well-groomed up kept clean haircut does not imply office work something like that could be one of a cluster of tells that could lead to that conclusion but it's quite the leap otherwise the next deduction Zooms in on the right hand clasping over the left hand with the deduction being that he is right-handed I've actually talked about this previously on a video I did on how to determine dominant handedness and this piece of conventional wisdom is total bunk can clasping has very little if anything to do with hand dominance I for example am right-handed and I clasp my left hand over my right hand naturally this is one of those deductions made completely based off of conventional wisdom rather than the sort of tells a real-life Mentalist or deductionists would look for the next in this line of deductions is looking at a well-polished shoe and showing the conclusion of indoor worker I work indoors you want to see my shoes oh as you can see there's some standing for mud here even though I work indoors that's because I park across the street from the building I work in and it's a very old beat up parking lot so I'm liable to get mud on my shoes plus I rarely have the motivation to polish my shoes so they've lost their luster and the leather is quite obviously worn although one could tell from this observation alone is that he recently polished his shoes one could further reason that given the expense of his clothes and his generally professional attire as a whole that he likely primarily Works indoors and we could further conclude that there's a high likelihood he regularly polishes his shoes given the attention to detail with the overall appearance given the manicure the haircut and given the aforementioned expense of the suit the job he works is probably very high paying so professional appearances are expected Ergo regularly polishes his shoes as opposed to merely polishing them today there's a lot to be determined from a grouping of observations like this but looking at them one at a time while an efficient way of telling the story does a disservice to the process of deduction the thing that creates the appeal for the character of Sherlock Holmes for many people and that's a reoccurring problem with most of the deductions visually depicted in this way the deductions Sherlock verbally explains in the show do have more effort put into showing a more holistic approach but like we saw with the first deduction of John we can see that not all of these deductions actually hold up to scrutiny in fact most episodes have relatively few examples of Sherlock explaining his conclusions in this way surprisingly however when he does oftentimes the observations when shown are much more obvious than they tend to be in the real world for instance in the hand of the Baskervilles when Sherlock starts to make deductions about Mrs Hudson having gone on a breakfast date and points out the flower on her sleeve and the camera Zooms in on that and we can see that the flower looks as though it has been freshly dropped on the sleep and there's been no attempt to wipe it off for someone who likes to keep a clean house and certainly has an attention to detail for anything that needs to be cleaned she literally just mentioned how she could clean his apartment not having noticed being splashed with flour and or not having wanted to bother with trying to clean it off of this nice dress seems to lend itself to a completely different line of questions than Sherlock bothers to pursue making the presentation of tells as obvious as this with seemingly little thoughts of how the tell would actually get there she was a lack of focus on this aspect of the Sherlock Holmes stories and for review we're interested in learning in the skills of deduction this can give the wrong Impressions obviously this is a television show and certain things are done for the sake of Storytelling which is why I find the written stories to be the best for showing Holmes's lines of reasoning and observations despite not being able to visually show them because Doyle took great care in describing them I don't want to be seen as nitpicking here but given that this is a skill I've studied for quite a while now and this show has set up expectations for people that I have had to Dash and correct in my career on YouTube I'm pointing these out in service of my larger point also a key thing to keep in mind as a deductionist this sort of unbridled confidence that Sherlock has in the show shows a complete misunderstanding for the process at the end of the day you are most often drawing conclusions from an incomplete picture your conclusions are possibilities possibilities that you can bolster with evidence but you are not going to be right all the time it is a very helpful skill to learn things about people to piece things together Etc but there is an inherent margin for error one that you can narrow down with more data but sometimes that extra data you need isn't presented homes in the books has confidence in his conclusions because he's been doing it for so long and he's learned a lot through his study through practice through trial and error and presumably from his past mistakes but he's not often Brash about these conclusions and presents them as the most likely possibilities given the data available and is more than willing to change those theories when conflicting data is presented Sherlock in the show seems to be completely incorrigible in this regard never doubting that this reads of people are 100 accurate every time on the few occasions that he is ever wrong he's completely baffled in the very first episode again going back to his read of John they set up Sherlock as a more measured Reasoner mentioning that he didn't expect to get everything right I thought that was a great characterization when I first saw it but then the show seemed to have forgotten about it and we end up with shaking inclusions built on a few pieces of evidence and an unbridled arrogance for the rest of the show apart from the actual observations and deductions one of the things that I didn't mention in the beginning of the video which is actually one of the things I like about the show is that it popularized the uses of of the Mind Palace as a memory technique however the way the show depicts the Mind Palace gives some very unrealistic expectations in the show Sherlock's mind Palace is either depicted as a place that he can freely wander around where both semantic and autobiographic memories are stored or like a computer user interface where you can just search for keywords the show really doubles down on the whole computer analogy calling Sherlock's brain a hard drive on numerous occasions when in reality the analogy does not work for a mind Palace okay so let's take a quick break to talk about cognitive psychology and the current dominant theories on memory seriously go go to the bathroom or get yourself a drink go get yourself snack we're taking a break [Music] okay all right you ready we're back generally memory is split into two categories semantic and autobiographical autobiographical memories are the little movies that you watch in your head when you remember your first date or something embarrassing that you did in school you're welcome for reminding you of all those little embarrassing things semantic memories are the memories of information that you can recall and verbally describe pretty intuitive distinction with semantic memories you have two options for recall intentional recall where you can access the information whenever you want usually this is with things that you know very well or use on a regular basis usually both and then there's recognition recall where something externally cues the recall of this magic memory that thing where you're taking a test and the way the question is worded or just seeing the right word in the list of answers triggers the memory when you couldn't have recalled it from will without that cue the Mind Palace works as a memory system to commit semantic information to memory by utilizing this recognition recall function of the brain you commit a visual location to memory where you can intentionally recall it via an autobiographical memory you do this by creating a route through a physical environment and stopping at certain objects in the environment these are the pegs that you will then put visual associations on later you're not freely able to move around in your mind Palace because you're not creating a model of the location in your head you're just repeating a route so many times that it commits that route to an autobiographical memory think of it like taking a video of an inside of a building rather than rendering a 3D model in the video you can only see what the camera saw and only in that order whereas in the 3D model then you're free to move wherever you want this autobiographical memory creates the anchor of a memory that you can freely recall and return to at any point you can pick any starting location but you have to follow the route the same way you took it initially as mentioned before there are objects you'll along that route where you can pause the movie in your head where you've stared at this object for so long that you can picture vividly this is where you will then create a visual image on top of that memory tying it into the object on your route you use your imagination to create an association between the semantic information you're trying to remember and the image you're creating so that the image reminds you of the information triggering your recognition recall when you come back to it later and then you implant that imagined image into an autobiographical memory so you have a clear memory to revisit later and find that visual Association that you created in your imagination now I can't blame the show for depicting the Mind Palace in the way that it did per se it's hard to depict something like the Mayan Palace as I just described it in a way that translates well to film the reality here is heightened and dramatized and that's okay that's what film into a larger extent art does however I feel as though a little bit more work could have I've created a more grounded depiction of the Mind Palace or the very least they wouldn't be describing it as being like a hard drive [Music] ultimately Sherlock BBC was a very popular adaptation of an iconic character for a long time but stanfall came in the end as people started to realize that the problems they saw in series 4 were pervasive from the start of the show and if you still love the show more power to you I can't stress that enough I really wish that I could still watch it and enjoy it because there are still things to like about it as I mentioned on the outset it's beautifully shot the acting is great and it's fun and entertaining and if it's inspiring to you still then please by all means enjoy to the fullest it's been almost six years since the last series aired so why do I even feel the need to say these things now what have I been trying to say over the last 12 000 some odd words I guess the love-hate relationship that I've had as a content creator with Sherlock has affected what I produce to this day and it's also why it's not producing content for almost two years the plateau I hit with the growth of my channel was very disheartening and it was clear to me for a while that I had gone with such a niche subject matter and the only mainstream sources of Interest we're giving people unrealistic expectations both before they even came to my content I mentioned in the last video that I also recently graduated from college and digging into my major in Psychology I discovered my passion for that field and for science writing majoring in Psychology started as an attempt to improve my abilities as a deductionist and it did to some extent but I think the greatest takeaway I got from my undergrad was how to properly research the literature and write good papers I've learned a lot over the last few years and it's been my desire for a while to shift my content away from this Niche topic of deduction and Branch out into more thoroughly researched video essays deduction is still a passion of mine I still cultivated and employed in my life but as far as something that I want to dedicate myself to explaining here I lost that passion somewhere down the line I know that's probably disappointing to many of you and understand this does not mean that I'm never going to make a video about the methods of deduction again it's still a topic that interests me and therefore is something that I will want to talk about on occasion however if you're looking for exclusively deduction centered content I do highly recommend Ben Cardel his podcast and his YouTube channel are fantastic places to dive deep into the methods of deduction he also has a book called The monographs which I've referenced several times in the past I've interviewed him here on this channel and on me and observes old podcast mind reader if you want a brief introduction to him and what he has to offer Links of course are in the description and of course all my old content will still be here for you to consume and enjoy ultimately though I wanted to make this video just to put the final nail in the coffin and step fully out of the shadow of BBC Sherlock and Mark A New Beginning for this channel I don't want to be tied down by a niche topic if that's not what drives me to write and research and produce if you stuck around to the very end of the video I can only assume that you're probably at least curious as to what I'm going to say and do next and I really do appreciate that interest and I really appreciate you hearing me out I also don't want to seem like I'm just chasing views yes the gap between my subscriber number and my average views has been disheartening but I'm not out here seeking attention for attention's sake I would like to be able to make this content for my job because I love doing it and if that never happens then that is what it is but I have very little interest in viral Fame and clouds I'm passionate about making art and I'm passionate about creative freedom and I'm passionate about proper science communication I believe that Art Is How We explore the bigger questions about the human experience I believe that it uplifts and inspires us so I am on the side of good art and not to say what I do here is Art but to have the freedom to make a short film or a character study that would be amazing to me to have the time to do so I also believe that science is how we come to understand the world around us I believe that a people well educated in science will lead to people making more informed decisions so I am also on the side of good science communication for Lay people I also believe that psychology unfortunately is a field that has a particularly difficult relationship to the public there's a huge Market in grifting on misrepresenting the science of psychology or straight up peddling pseudo-psychology and to be fully transparent I am guilty of this not intentionally but I have been misinformed and made misinformed content so even when one isn't trying to there's so much clutter in the discourse it is hard to find the actual truth when you don't know how to study the literature properly so in these future endeavors it is my intent to fall in the footsteps of one of my scientific Heroes Stephen J Gould and in particular this quote since I am better at scholarship than kindness I need to cast my fealty with Humanity's goodness in this sphere man up next to Judas Iscariot Brutus and Cassius in the Devil's Mouth at the center of hell if I ever fail to present my most honest assessment and best Judgment of evidence for empirical truth and I will leave you with that thank you for watching and I hope you have a great day ciao [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: The Art of Deduction

Views: 399,178

Keywords: sherlock, deduction, the art of deduction, Sherlock holmes, inductive reasoning, abductive reasoning, inductive reasoning, body language, nonverbal communication, lie to me, facial expressions, lie detection, lie, deception, deception detection, psychology, behavioral ecology

Id: lT8alajWqUg

Length: 78min 49sec (4729 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 17 2022