Three Patches of stimulating fun.

Which was more fun this week?

a.) Listening to one more "Not my Sherlock Holmes!" reaction to Sherlock's "The Six Thatchers."

b.) Hearing fans scream "WE HAVE MORE CANON!" and dive into the details with mad abandon.

c.) Avoiding the internet, social media, television, etc. and reading a well-worn copy of The Complete Sherlock Holmes.

As of this morning, I'm choosing "b."  Why?

Three Patch Podcast. New Sherlock gets them so excited they actually stop talking about sex for a few minutes now and then. (Not that there's anything wrong with that, just pointing out how excited they get. As in "intellectually stimulated.")

I really wasn't thinking I could take much more, critique-wise, of the new Sherlock episode already, but their sound editor seemed, over in her Twitter feed, to be working so hard on the episode that not rewarding such heroic efforts was a no-go. And I was very glad I did. Great episode.

We can "like" and "not like" things all day long, but when you really start data-mining the material, as Sherlockians have done with the original Canon all these years, a love shows up that is a pure pleasure to see. And there has always been an element of life imitating art to Sherlock Holmes and his fans that exists to this day, even with Sherlock.

Sherlock states early and enthusiastically how much he loves the Game in "Six Thatchers," with the same excitement you could hear in the Three Patchers taking up the latest episode. The "Game" might be different for the detective and the detective fan (Thank goodness -- no spouses are killed on our side of the equation . . . that I've heard of.) but the energy looks very similar.

And I realized a few things as I listened to this particular podcast. (I always realize something listening to Three Patch, for better or worse. They challenge, they stimulate, they work hard on this fan thing of ours.)

First, that Sherlockian shorthand will always exist, despite some decided opinions some Sherlockians take on things like the J.F. Christ abbreviations. The Three Patchers use "TAB" freely in this one, and, well, if you want to cruise the interstate, you have to get up to speed.

Second, if a Sherlockian says they haven't read "Six Napoleons, " but is insightful about Sherlock Holmes himself anyway? Glad to have 'em here. Sure, they might be improved by reading all the originals, or they might not. You have to take people as them come and enjoy them for who they are at this moment.

Which comes down to why I enjoyed Three Patch's reaction episode on "The Six Thatchers" so much. It wasn't "This wasn't as good as 'The Reichenbach Fall.'" It wasn't "Oh, yay, that person is finally out of our hair!" It was the overall happy acceptance of, "This is what we got, where do we go from here?"

Lately I've been listening to a lot of How Did This Get Made? podcasts, if I haven't mentioned it already, and part of the core joy of that is the way they review bad movies, getting into the internal logic of a movie, accepting its premises gleefully, and seeing what thoughts that leads to. It's very much improv's "Yes, and . . ." mindset, which is very non-judgmental at its core, and just always seems to lead to happy things. Listening to the Three Patch folk go happily into their thoughts on "Six Thatchers" reminded me a little of that . . . not that "Six Thatchers" was a bad movie. Not at all.

Before you give up on reactions and reviews of our first new Sherlock this week, I'd recommend giving the latest Three Patch a shot. It's a tightly mixed little sound cocktail, and I very much appreciate having them in our Sherlockian world.