Sherlock

[neadods]

Before we talk about me, Moffat and Gatiss have tweeted that there WILL be a third season, that it was already commissioned. Huzzah!

Now, tonight.

I've been offline all day so I haven't seen anyone else's reactions yet, and I really want to see this episode (and the previous one again) before I go into lots of detail. But that's not going to stop me from having (quite) a few first impression opinions.

The main one is that watching slow character assassination was actually loads more painful than watching a manhunt for 90 minutes. Especially when it looked like that slow character assassination was going to bring down Lestrade as well as Sherlock. (Anderson, really, do you hate Sherlock SO much that you're going to bring down your governor as well? If so, you deserve every nasty thing Sherlock ever said. And Donovan? Sherlock didn't do it with "just a shoeprint." He did it with a shoeprint, understanding of biology for stride and height, and rather a lot of painstaking chemistry, something that New Scotland Yard is theoretically capable of reproducing. Yes, if Sherlock had planted it then what NSY found would be what he said, BUT the fact remains that NSY detectives should be able to find the same data. It *wasn't* "just a shoeprint.")

I'm assuming that the three years dead will be resurrecting Sherlock's reputation instead of dismantling Moriarty's web. Or both. Mind you, the dismantling shouldn't be that hard, not *really* not with Moriarty himself gone. I watched in the company of a theater manager and a journalist; the theater manager was going on and on about how she'd contact all the theaters and see if "Rich Brook" really did have a part in all of those productions, because it's so unlikely that Moriarty actually acted as part of his cover story. The journalist had plenty to say about her counterpart on screen, and how true investigative journalism involves research, not taking the word and the paperwork of the guy you're boffing. (Hmmm. I suddenly sense an SJA crossover.) We all wanted to know two things:
1) Why was the crown jewel display so obviously, patently fake? Three Americans knew it was all wrong; we assume that all of England was pointing and laughing. And
2) There was incontrovertible evidence that Moriarty broke into the crown jewel display. What judge worth his law degree would put aside the tapes and the eyewitness account of the arresting officers on the say-so of an obviously tampered jury? And if the judge was also tampered with, why was the case not appealed? (Please tell me someone is working on a Law and Order UK crossover. Pers? That would be up your alley.)

How Sherlock managed to commit suicide in front of John and not die is a mystery that I dearly hope will be cleared up in the next season that I dearly hope will happen. Molly has got to have had something to do with it; too much was made of Sherlock soliciting her help.

On the converse, I hope that nothing was faked about Moriarty's suicide. He was such a whackaloon that there really didn't seem to be any other way out, and the idea that the Sherlock Holmes story would be reduced to season after season of the Sherlock-vs-Moriarty story really depressed me. Holmes isn't Batman, forever locked with the Joker. He really did detect crime and did not need a Napoleon of Crime to make his career worth living.

I'm surprised that Mycroft was that blindsided by Moriarty. Isn't My supposed to be the smarter of the two brothers? Because after all that time protecting Sherlock, it's gotta sting to know that you're the reason why Sherlock's nemesis could ruin him.

And I gotta say... after 90 minutes of bleeding for Sherlock and worrying about Lestrade? I'm so glad we got that last shot. I NEEDED that last shot.

Bottom line: I had a lot of angst about this one going in; not just because of the storyline, but because I had no confidence in the writer. However, this? Was way better than I feared it would be.

Comments

[songfire3.livejournal.com]

I need to go to bed now (lol - it's 4 am over here, but I HAD to see this!), but you don't need to worry about a third season, both Moffat and Gatiss confirmed that it was commissioned when they commissioned the second (!) season!

They are such trolls! XD

[drakyndra.livejournal.com]

Holmes isn't Batman, forever locked with Lex Luthor.

Just to nit-pick your analogy here: Lex Luthor is Superman's villain. Batman has the Joker et al.

[wendymr.livejournal.com]

I thought it was the best episode yet, and - as I said on my LJ - that MF and BC both deserve BAFTAs. So much to love, and so much to weep over for all the main characters.

I'm not so sure that Mycroft was fooled, really. He's so complex, and so Machiavellian, that it's impossible to say at this point what he was really up to.

Lestrade, though... I wish we'd seen some reaction from him at the end. He really was between a rock and a hard place, and I don't think he ever really believed that Sherlock was a fraud. He's stood beside him too many times at crime scenes to believe that it was all faked.

This, though:
The journalist had plenty to say about her counterpart on screen, and how true investigative journalism involves research, not taking the word and the paperwork of the guy you're boffing.

Remember that the "journalist" in question works for, or sold her story to, the Sun. There's a huge difference, in the UK, between the tabloid press and the serious broadsheets, and it's been getting worse. Have you seen any of the fallout of the phone-hacking scandal in the UK? The public enquiry into the behaviour of the press?

Yes, the serious press should have done more investigation, but you know how it is: today's scoop is tomorrow's fish-wrapping. With Sherlock apparently dead, the story's old news.

Anyway. Wasn't that graveside scene magnificent and heartwrenching? Sherlock's 'suicide phone call' was heartwrenching too, but John at the graveside is what will stick in my mind. And Sherlock's face, watching.

Is it time for S3 yet????

[bentleywg.livejournal.com]

How Sherlock managed to commit suicide in front of John and not die is a mystery

I don't have the full answer, but there's the obvious bit that Sherlock *did not* commit suicide in front of John. Sherlock made sure -- insisted -- that John in such a place that he couldn't see Sherlock's body hit the ground. How and when Sherlock arranged for a fake body to be placed there, I don't know, but a body with a messed up head is what John found after he went around the low building that was blocking his view of the pavement.

EDIT: (Why the coroner didn't realize they had the wrong body... *handwave* You'd think that, if they had a body with an unrecognizable face, they would use some of the form of identification, right? Fingerprints? Dental records?)

[themis1.livejournal.com]

Whilst it's true that NSY probably could have done the same scientific research as Sherlock into the footprint, the reality is that IT WOULD NEVER HAPPEN, and even if it did, it would take at least six months. I speak as someone who worked for the UK police for 28 years. Lestrade being ripped off by his boss for using a civilian investigator was absolutely true to life - he really has no defence for that. What wasn't realistic was the way Donovan spoke to him, which in the heirarchical UK police service would definitely not happen. You might speak about your senior officer that way out of his hearing, but not to his face!

Am worried about Mycroft's behaviour, however - hope they do something in the next three to sort that out, as I couldn't believe he'd be that dumb!!

BTW as a Brit I have never seen the crown jewels, neither has anybody else I know. We don't really go and look at our own heritage ...

[fyrdrakken]

See, the thought I had when Moriarty was talking about having destroyed Sherlock was that, really, no -- all he's done was wreck Sherlock's reputation, and I kind of took the opening montage (and the bit with the reporter and her fangirl disguise) as indicating that Sherlock's gotten entirely too well-known at this point and he could do with a nice stretch of being off the radar for the public to forget about him. So it didn't occur to me to question that he's going to be working to dismantle what Moriarty left behind him -- if he was so willing to kill himself like that, he must have left all sorts of horrible things going on in the hands of his underlings, including nasty things ready to spring up and bite Sherlock's survivors in the ass, and Sherlock's going to need to defuse those bombs and make sure John and Mrs. Hudson and Mycroft are going to be safe once he finally steps out of the shadows and resumes his life. (Though, yeah, in the process of investigating Moriarty's network and tracing his contacts, I imagine Sherlock would be making a point of gathering the evidence so he can present it and redeem his good name when he "comes back." Unless he decides he'd rather be forgotten and ignored, out of the public eye and free to work unimpeded again, clients coming from those desperate enough to try him despite his fall and from cases Lestrade consults him on.)

I ran across in passing a comment on Tumblr about there being a theory that John was dosed with some of the psychotropic agent from Hound and Sherlock on the phone was feeding him suggestions to make sure he'd "see" what Sherlock needed him to think he'd seen because John's too bad a liar. This comment being on a screencap from the scene of Sherlock's "body" being collected, clearly showing someone who wasn't Benedict standing in for the corpse -- the suspicion was that this was the "reality" that John wasn't perceiving (and presumably a corpse Molly had provided for Sherlock to stage his own suicide).

[lily-itriwi.livejournal.com]

The mystery cyclist manages to get the drug into John's system perhaps?

This is my favourite theory. When John sees his worst nightmare come to life, but one that cannot possibly be true a week after Hound? Hello, crazy drug!