Moriarty was too psycho for me, I never really understood his motivations.

Besides, I rather rank my psychopaths according to their emotional pay-off for me as a viewer. CAM is still no.1 for me with Eurus and CS sharing a very close second place.

 I think, the first title of the topic was not right - to restrictive, since there are many interesting characters, technically not being the psychopaths (like - Mary), who were Sherlock's enemies. 
I decided to change it from "Our favorite psychopaths" to "Our favorite villains".

...And now I can to mention Jeffrey Hope, murderous cabbie. He had only one good scene, but he managed almost convince Sherlock to swallow the potentially poisoned pill - in time of minutes. Obvious similarity with Eurus, but Hope was not a psychopath - he loved his children. And - he was the first

Last edited by Naavy (January 17, 2017 1:37 pm)

My favourite up until S4 had always been Moriarty. But after The Final Problem I'm not sure anymore...

As a result of introducing a character that doesn't even exist in ACD canon, they have reduced Moriarty to some puppet who basically recorded stupid video clips for an even bigger bad boss Eurus. I'm still not sure how I feel about that... but it's disappointing.

My favourite one is probably the cabbie from ASIP.
The other ones were bigger and more powerful, but the cabbie is in a way the scariest because he is the most believable as a realistic person you can actually encounter on street. I loved how his benign look and inconspicious job covered something cruel and sinister.
His crime was cruel and shocking and yet they managed to make him somewhat human without reducing him to a "poor baby" cliche.
Also I like the theme of "banality of evil" that was embodied in him. 

Whisky wrote:

I found CAM to be the worst. He had a coldness about him that I couldn't see in the others.
 

Not to mention that he had John kidnapped and put in a bonfire.

 

My favourite villain remains Moriarty, even though he is probably less realistic than Magnussen or Smith who were both incredibly creepy incarnations of dangerously powerful people in modern media. But the award for doing evil things in style goes to Jim Moriarty. And he is by far the most entertaining of all the villains. My least favourite has to be Eurus. Am I the only one who was put off by her monotonous whining? I found her less frightening but rather grating on my nerves especially in the scene where she repeated "etcetera etcetera..." ad nauseam. I almost wanted to jump out of my seat and tell her to shut up. And her mind games with Sherlock were a far cry from the elaborate, clever puzzles that Moriarty invented in TGG. Instead she simply resorted to put Sherlock under pressure by setting up situations where he had to sacrifice someone's life or make someone miserable to save his brother and his friends (John, Molly). Boring.

Azor wrote:

Eurus wasn't a psychopath, just sayin'. She had delusions, inner insecurity, pain. Psychopaths don't work like that. She had a mixture of psychopathy and psychosis, I don't know if this kind of pathology can even exist in reality...

Moriarty and Magnussen could be really psychopaths but after The Final Problem I don't know what 'psychopath' really means in the Sherlock universe. In real life, psychopaths don't have hidden sufferings (at most boredom), but it's like the series would like to proove the opposite.

Umm... maybe the whole 'Sherlock' project is for making people believe psychopaths do have a heart. What a conspiracy... Or maybe psychopath's emotional world is just too boring, and it's more cathartique and exciting this way.

Sorry, this is off topic, but Sherlock was never supposed to be a psychopath/sociopath. Yes, he used to call himself a high functioning sociopath, but I don't think he was ever professionally diagnosed
as such. I think one of the main goals of the series was to establish that he never was a psychopath/sociopath to begin with.

Now back on topic, it's hard to decide which is my favourite villain. Moriarty was very entertaining, his dark humour was very amusing (not just The Hungry Donkey Nativity). But I didn't find him very scary or creepy. CAM and CS both made me feel much more uncomfortable, they were creepy and cold, not funny like Moriarty. So as villains, they worked better for me. I liked Eurus because of the whole Sherlock/John/Mycroft dynamic she created with her psycho games, so as far as the actions of the villain and their effect on the protagonists are concerned, she was my favourite.

Last edited by Kae Em (January 19, 2017 6:34 am)

Kae Em wrote:

Sorry, this is off topic, but Sherlock was never supposed to be a psychopath/sociopath. Yes, he used to call himself a high functioning sociopath, but I don't think he was ever professionally evaluated as such. I think one of the main goals of the series was to establish that he never was a psychopath/sociopath to begin with.

Maybe he was never supposed to be a psychopath, but... how to explain. His character wasn't consistent. As if he was sometimes psychopath, and sometimes not. That's not how personality works in real life. You either a psychopath or not. Sherlock did things only psychopath do, but it turned out sometimes he is an emotional one. That is exciting but totally irreal.

 

I don't think he has ever been either (they are sometimes used synonymously)