To start the season we know we are beginning with a re-birth, after which, Sherlock is repeatedly born again and again. The result of which I find disorienting, and un-nerving, as if I'm walking out of a dirty movie theater. I didn't know it was porn when I first entered, but then I stayed .. for hours.

What has drawn us to the Holmes stories through its many adaptations is the consistency of the mind. It is an important facet that the Sherlock character is essentially unknowable, but this BBC series draws us farther and farther away from a recognizable brilliance, to a fetish like, celebrity driven spectacle.

There is a moment in this newest 3rd episode where Mary meets Sherlock at Leinster Gardens, he projects her face on the building and proceeds to tell us that he won that particular facade in a poker game, betting with his kidneys. At this point he became to me completely unrecognizable. Who is this man who lives in his mind yet goes through the trouble to set up an elaborate projection? Who is he that plays poker at such grandiose levels? (Perhaps it was an attempt at humor, something I've always appreciated about the Holmes mythos compared to your other cop and intrigue dramas, but where it succeeds most is in the smart and small moments)

In this season we are also bombarded with Mycrofts political power. While it was intriguing in its small sightless bits in the first season, the obvious necessity to hang together a cogent plot, saw us seeing Mycroft do incredible things .. which of course conversely then makes the whole thing more and more fantastic (for if Mycroft can do all these things, why isn't he just doing them all the time) and straying from the science of deduction to a plot that needs more spectacle.

The distance that this creates between us and the Holmes character, is what I mean by voyeurism. At no point was it bad, it just lost its emotional resonance, like watching porn.

Where is that Sherlock that gets bored? His boredom was the triviality of his battles, the real triviality that we deal with everyday, but go on trying to beat anyway. The science of his thinking that transcends the self, where how and why are not as important as watching us get there. Where is the Sherlock that does that?

I hope That Sherlock comes back (though I doubt he will), I don't like being a voyeur.