Sherlock: The Worst Episode From Every Season

While not part of a season, this special deserves an honorable mention due to the fact that it perfectly highlights what made Sherlock become such a terrible show: the writers trying to do too much in one episode. This episode starts off well enough (and is even fun, in a way) but quickly turns into a chaotic, strained, overdone mess that tries too hard to be clever and interesting to the point where it actually becomes quite boring and, well, silly.

Strangely enough, this episode tries to incorporate both past and present Sherlock into the plot. This episode contributes almost nothing meaningful to the overall series, so why couldn't it have just been a straightforward telling of Sherlock during the Victorian era? It certainly would've made the episode less overstuffed, but even then, the Victorian-era plotline is so terribly written it barely works as a standalone story.

So if it doesn't work as a part of the overall series and it doesn't work as a standalone story, what do we have here? An enormous waste of time, that's what we have. The Abominable Bride certainly deserves compliment for its impressive production work, but aside from that, there's very little in this episode that really justifies its existence.