This and the Six Thatchers destroyed S4's potential. Not that excited for S5. And you would think that with more time it would produce a better season, and it only had three episodes.

@Daddie0 said:

I have been a HUGE fan of the Sherlock series, but I found "The Final Problem" to be so self-obsessed and pretentious as to be all together off-putting. It was all I could do to finish the episode...and then the ridiculous voice-over from Mary? I don't get it. I have always left one episode unable to resist starting the next, but wow, this one was bad IMO. Anyone else? If so, what do you think was so different? And most importantly, do you think it will continue?

S4 was pretty frustrating all round (although there was a lot to like about TLD). The annoying thing about it was that it doesn't seem to have been because the writers had run out of ideas but because they'd got a bit undisciplined, which is unforgivable in a show about details . For example: Two guys jumping face-first through glass windows and then falling from the first floor onto the broken glass are going to have injuries, but Sherlock and John didn't. Of course no one would care much if that happened in a Transformers movie or something, but how can it be OK in a show in which the main character can deduce the existence of three separate dogs from the marks on a man's trousers? It just felt like they wanted a cool shot of them busting through the window and sod everything else.

It's hard to know whether it will continue. The Mary monologue was presumably intended to sort of wrap everything up if there aren't going to be any more episodes, but it sounded from interviews as though mostly people involved wanted to keep the door open to making more – it's just that getting Cumberbatch, Freeman, Moffat and Gatiss (for a start) all available for enough months to get an episode in the can was getting increasingly tricky.

Of course that was before they heard the response to S4 which was generally pretty critical – and that's even if you ignore the crazy people on Tumblr having meltdowns because John and Sherlock aren't in bed together.

Anyway if you want my best guess: there may be one-off specials rather than any more seasons. But we'll just have to see.

Well if that's all true then it's sad...and even sadder still because it would make for a terrible end to an exceptional series. I agree with you...they definitely dropped the ball on tight-script writing and intelligence!