Fanboy apologies after a Sherlock high.

Well, since I can't sleep for thinking about last night's Sherlock offering anyway, I think I'll take this opportunity to apologize to anyone who might not have found the latest episode a high-inducing drug and taken my swear-y reaction personally. I have excuses.

You see, I am such a fanboy that I subconsciously deduced Sherlock would . . .

. . . oh, spoilers alert! Bail! Bail! Bail!

Safe now? Good.

. . . . that Sherlock would be on a saline drip by episode's end and put myself in hospital on a saline drip myself to celebrate the fact.

I'm fine, really. You get to be a man of a certain age and lack of shape and you just have to be sure of some episodes. And we're pretty sure things are okay. But saline drip coincidence! Yay!

I also obviously relate to Sherlock enough to not mind looking ridiculous when I feel my cause is just. Plus, I really, really thought everybody else was seeing what I saw last night when I wrote my initial reaction. Afterward, posting links to the blog on Twitter and Facebook, I discovered that wasn't really the case. Sorry about that, dissenting Sherlockians. People are always at their worst when they think God is on their side, and I thought we were all on the same page for a moment there.

"The Lying Detective" was like candy to me, though, and now it would seem it was one of those candies like licorice that divides the populace. There are fans of Nicholas Meyer's The Seven-Per-Cent Solution out there, which I detest, and "Lying Detective" both paid tribute to it and did a better job in addressing Holmes's drug issues without ruining the character, to my mind. But the drug thing is always a potential spot for division among Sherlockians.

Also, big fan of both Batman and Hardcastle and McCormick here, so 221 Baker Street suddenly having a "Huddersmobile" was just more candy to me. Probably not to the "too Bond" viewers, but since Sherlock has always been an intellectual Bond to me in his way, I'll take it.

I like Moffat's little tricks of making you think something, showing you were wrong, and then going "Oh, no, you were right the first time!" I like the addition of a Sherlock Holmes method of logically predicting human behavior weeks in advance. (All of Sherlock's tricks have long been in the "well, that might work if the dots all line up" category, so the new one was just extrapolating the Canonical "mind-reading" sequence.) And I like being retold a Canonical tale in a way that surprises me, as note-for-note adaptations, after forty years of fanning, would simply be dull ritual to me.

And then there's the fanfic aspect of Sherlock. H.H. Holmes and Sherrinford are both non-Canonical, but have always been hanging on the edge of things a fan associates with Sherlock and wants to see brought in. Just like Sherlock getting back together with Irene. Purists argue against it, but the ardent fan is always tempted by the possibility, if not the reality.

Can't imagine how they're going to bring this all home for a thoroughly satisfied third act, after getting me this sugared-up on episode two of the three.  But I sure did love this one.

And that, I won't apologize for.