I'm surrounded by vague Sherlock fans in my office - some of them watched and enjoyed series one, at least parts of it ("Oh sorry, I fell asleep during "The Great Game" and: "I liked the Blind Banker best - it was at least a decent crime story."), and they have little understanding (and a lot of mocking) for me. But I don't care. I've got a shock blanket sticker at my printer, a Moriartea tin with teabags on my shelf and changing Sherlock screensavers.
Maybe they will be encouraged to watch series 2 in May? I'm working on it!

And I think my workmates considered me completely crazy after I came back from London two weeks ago.
"Well, what did you do there then, shopping, sightseeing?"
"Erm...not exactly, I went to the theatre to see 'The Recruiting Officer'..."
"The WHAT?"
"And I was taking photographs of St. Bart's hospital..."
"Photos of WHAT?"
"...and I had a cup of tea at 'Speedy's...and I emptied HMV by buying some interesting DVDs" (the titles were meaningless for them, of course!)
"A well...I hope the weather was nice at least..."
("Moron!" )

I love all your stories, guys. So far I only got stupid questions like "What is it about this series?" when wearing my "Best quotes of series 1 t-shirt". And a very good friend of mine still doesn't like Ben as Sherlock although she watched the original version, not the German one. Well, in some cases it's hopeless, I guess. But I wont't give up  .

Whereas on this board we're all totally rational, balanced human beings! (Myself included!) 

A lot of people seem to sleepwalk through life, telly is something undemanding to sit in front of.

The phrase " Don't you see?!" would spring to my  mind if I had to even start to explain what Sherlock is doing in a graveyard watching John at his headstone, why the letters of his name appear across John's chest, let alone why he might leave John out of the loop at times.

Can you feel the sense of isolation when you see the details and people don't get it?

You know, I'd have to say no I haven't had this problem.
People either 'get it' or they don't. It's pretty easy to spot a fan in a conversation so I steer clear of others with no idea.I don't have the patience to deal with twits.

But reality should come through also; not everyone is a Sherlock fan. And just because they are not doesn't mean they are stupid. We all find beauty in different things.

Recently had many good Sherlock recs (recognitions), which I'll describe elsewhere, but one really puzzled me. A woman, seeing my "I AM SHERLOCKED" t-shirt, asked me which one. I said, "Which one what?" And she said, "Which Sherlock do you like?" I explained and she said that she agreed that the series was really good. If she had seen it, how did she not know which Sherlock it referred to?

Anyway, everybody has different interests and I don't disdain people who don't like the show or haven't seen it. (Pity them, yes, but disdain, no.) There are lots of things other people like that I'm not into, but I don't think I'm an idiot -- even if Sherlock thinks most people are.

I love the collar story.

I don't think it is surprising that people watch the show, yet do not get as excited about as us. It's a question of taste, but even more so I'd say it is a question of how you watch a show. It is hard to fully appreciate something if you only see bits and pieces, or watch it at odd hours (which would be the case for most people in Austria and Germany, because it was shown on late night TV).

I remember catching a few random episodes of the sci-fi show Farscape on TV years back (it was on after something else that I actually wanted to watch), and for a long time I thought that the end of S3 was the end of the whole series. The cliffhanger ending did not hugely bother me, because I wasn't all that interested. It only was years later when I came across the show again and properly watched it from start to finish, that I realised how much I liked it and how important that cliff hanger scene really was.

I guess many people feel the same way about Sherlock. If you don't know the structure and writing of the show that well, there could be lots of simple reasons for Sherlock being alive in the last scene - maybe John dreamt it all, maybe he has a twin brother, maybe he has supernatural powers (there are so many TV shows out there at the moment which blend genres, a flying Sherlock Holmes would not be the wierdest thing I've seen)?