It’s a very happy feeling in my gut to feel some sort of vindication. For me, growing up reading official Sherlock Holmes books by ACD and pastiches throughout the years has led to me realizing that Sherlock Holmes is the kind of character whom will be loved and studied until the end of time alongside such literary figures as Captain Ahab or Ebenezer Scrooge while at the same time made fresh and alive in the same way Doctor Who or Super Mario will always have a new way to shake things up and have a new way to connect to people.

But for a while, I know this wasn’t the case. I remember a time in which the shows Elementary and Sherlock were more than a little hostile towards one another. Since then, this has subsided and tensions have fallen considerably. But let’s discuss when things were at a head: when Sherlock and Elementary came to a head-to-head during Elementary’s second season. At this point, Elementary had easily established it’s own identity with a string of powerful episodes while Sherlock had people sitting on the edge of their seat waiting for the resolution of a two year old cliffhanger(which we still are. But whatever). During that time, Elementary went on a three week break as Sherlock aired it’s three episodes to a decidedly mixed reaction. Elementary meanwhile seemed to have pulled out a nice bag of tricks leading up to this break, having a season of Sherlock Holmes’ triumphant return to London, a close interpretation of a classic Holmes story and fan favorite Moriarty returning.

But to understand why Sherlock’s third season received a mixed reaction, we have to understand the circumstances leading up to it and the contested finale of the season. Sherlock’s third season represented the biggest break with canon that the show had ever seen, and no where was it more apparent than the finale, His Last Vow. The episode, a mash up interpretation of His Last Bow and The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton, created one of the most complex and borderline convoluted plots Sherlock had ever faced. Leading into it was a greater, more drama and emotionally driven story line than Sherlock had ever had before(And has been pointed out to me, strongly reminiscent of Elementary’s Irene Adler plot line).

To his credit, Steven Moffat is fantastic at complex and exciting. One only needs to watch A Study in Pink to be reminded that the man loves to use tension as the true antagonist of a story and wit as the true protagonist. For Sherlock Holmes, this is an easy sort of fit, because mysteries mesh these elements together in a satisfying way.

But unfortunately for Moffat, His Last Vow is not a mystery story. It’s a two-headed mashup of a tale wound together by the lingering plot threads of the former episodes. But what’s interesting to note is that in this instance, Elementary had already interpreted the tale less than a year earlier with Dead Man’s Switch.

As a quick aside, I don’t mean to say Moffat took anything from Elementary. Elementary airs on Sky in the UK and was a bit behind the US at the time. At the same time that the episode was airing in the US, Moffat already had finished the script and was still in the middle of shooting the episode. The two were not connected or influenced one another in any way unless the writers sent each other scripts, which is highly unlikely.

What’s most interesting here is that unlike Sherlock’s interpretation, Dead Man’s Switch is a faithful adaptation that pragmatically adds more to the scenario to match the updated setting, something Sherlock did amazingly in stories like Scandal in Belgravia and The Great Game without changing much of the original tale. In it, the original story plays out but with the new twist of a fail safe release of the blackmail material by an accomplice should Milverton be killed. Elementary’s logical conclusion of playing it safe payed wide dividends in that the simplicity of the original tale was engaging and drove a powerful narrative, while the small tweak of having that accomplice made a lot of sense in the information age, where no one man can hold all the information while the internet exists.

Sherlock’s twist went wildly off the path of the original story(-ies) by contrast. Milverton became a mash up of the villains of His Last Bow and Milverton, named Charles Augustus Magnussen. Where this all became confusing is that the story suddenly tried to do so many things, having an international relations twist with Mycroft, Magnussen somehow being both a supercomputer who never backed up anything but never got targeted despite playing hard ball with no accomplices to his actions besides a secretary. And suddenly, the episode wasn’t about a mystery, but a heist of Magnussen’s information. A heist that takes forever because we have character drama strewn through the center and padding out the episode.

Convoluted plot threads aside, the biggest reason this story doesn’t work is that it simply didn’t connect on many levels. Magnussen, a genius playing international politics like marbles with a hard drive in his head, isn’t really much of a threat. Especially when we consider that other private individuals with secret information such as Edward Snowden are considered heroes to the general public. The biggest problem is that as a villain, he doesn’t do a lot on camera to show his wrongdoing. International politics and secret trading doesn’t have a lot of consequences to Sherlock and John. It doesn’t pose a real threat, because on camera, we never see anyone worried about what Magnussen could do. We never see a scene of him picking up a phone and a cut away to a terrorist attack or soldiers being ambushed. As a result, it’s hard to put the fear of the threat that Magnussen poses to the main characters, and indeed us as viewers, when the most directly threatening thing Magnussen does is threaten Sherlock and Watson legally. Heck, even Sherlock realizes how little actual Magnussen’s actual threat poses in the climax.

Contrast Moriarty from Sherlock. Moriarty can kill anyone anywhere without consequences or a traceable line. Off screen during his first appearance, he kidnaps and blows people up for a game. The threat that evil is random is real and terrifying. Contrast Milverton from Elementary. Milverton has information on many high powered people throughout the city, bringing them to desperation and tears before our eyes. The fact that they’re willing to risk Murder to stop him says everything about how terrifying and cerebral blackmail is. Magnussen exhibits none of these traits, and arguably his most direct, evil actions aren’t even motivated by evil or monetary gain, but because Sherlock and Watson are messing with him.

But what’s fascinating is that for one story in time, Elementary and Sherlock switched places, and it speaks to the enduring strength of the story that it can have two wildly interpretations of the same character. Though it may have been a bit of a dark spot for the series, the other episodes of the season wildly experimented with canon and came away with very different results. And despite the wildly different takes on Sherlock Holmes’ canon, these stories aren’t indicative long run of the series lasting legacies, where BBC’s Sherlock continues to grace the cover of rereleases of the classic ACD books and Elementary has spawned it’s own book series.