"i read it in the papers, so it must be true." | a reichenbach fall review.
Finals over. Hitchcock paper handed in. Have some Reichenbach.
Damn, Steve Thompson, when the hell did you get this good? This was a rollercoaster of amazing, and in light of it it's quite clear that TBB could have been handled much better. To be fair, I was mostly holding out on a solid but rather average episode, plot-wise, whose emotional baggage would hopefully act as enough of a counterbalance to make it into a good episode, if not an overall marvelous one. Instead, we got an episode entirely on par with the previous two, which not only managed to keep me hooked to the story from beginning to end, but also warmed my heart in such a way as to break it utterly afterwards.
I love that the little Private Life of Sherlock Holmes nods are still alive: the deerstalker has become a Sherlock Hat, and John is Bachelor John Watson, and Mycroft reads The Sun in the Diogenes club - which I'm very glad we got to see, and makes for a rather hilarious sequence. (Am I the only one who cheered when John broke in the Club unnoticed, plonked down in Mycroft's chair, and waited for him to find him there? John, love, be a dear and break into more houses.)
Also in the count of All The Awesome in this episode, Molly Hooper, you wonderful person. Thompson has managed to do what very few stories in fandom have done - to flesh out Molly's shy, diffident personality and make her into a fantastic human being without either up-BAMFing her or altering her character entirely. Molly is self-effacing, farouche, nervous, and yet she's the one who most likely saves the day - and she doesn't have to become more confident or more assertive to do it. Molly's not River Song, and she's not Irene Adler - but she's the one who can save Sherlock, without guns, without riding crops, without fanfare. She's the one who sees him when he's sad, and says the right words while tripping over her own tongue, and finds him when he knows that this chess game of his and Jim's is very, very likely to result in his death, and then she makes it better, she makes it right.
She does all this, and then she ducks her head and says I don't count. I'm no one. You don't want anything from me, I know. Except she does count. In the end, she counts tremendously. I find it beautiful that, in this game between the two men who have ruthlessly manipulated and used Molly Hooper in the past, it is because it is Sherlock who recognizes her as someone who counts very much indeed - and Jim who doesn't, Jim who forgets about her entirely in his three-bullets plan - that this is where, in the end, the distinction lies. Jim's master plan fails because of the girl in the shadows, the girl who doesn't count, fails because of the girl who has always been overlooked, until she wasn't. There's a beautiful message in there, something I'm glad is in this show at all.
And that's where Jim-the-storyteller went wrong: it's the oldest trope in the world. It's always the youngest, the innocent, the frail one; it's always the one you pass over and forget about, the girl in the corner, the littlest brother, who comes and saves the day in the end. Jim's story is not perfect, certainly, and it has a number of ridiculous holes; but he has made Sherlock Holmes' extraordinary personage into something even more extraordinary - a story. No wonder people will believe it. No wonder people won't pay attention to the cold, hard facts; it's much more extraordinary to believe in a made-up story. It's so much easier to believe that Sherlock is a magician instead of the genuine article.
I love stories about subverting stories, about subverting storytelling - about pulling the art of crafting a tale inside out, about twisting fairytales and classical legends and making them into reality, about the art of persuading people into believing. And this played right into that. I was legitimately scared for the kids in the sugar factory, because I remembered that Hansel and Gretel's original fate would have been of being placed inside an oven, if they hadn't managed to overpower the gingerbread witch and trap her inside. If Sherlock Holmes is the witch in Moriarty's fake scenario, then he has truly been burnt to a crisp, like a gingerbread man with the center charred black.
The line that Sherlock Holmes has created Moriarty isn't a new one, either: Thompson has clearly drawn his inspiration from The Secret Of Sherlock Holmes, the 1988 play written especially for Jeremy Brett and Edward Hardwicke's Holmes and Watson, in which Holmes well and truly invented James Moriarty. But the way he plays on this is fascinating. It's perhaps a little cliché that Sherlock is only forced to admit to the story - to being a fraud, a fake, a farce - in order to protect the people he loves; but it fits, it hinges perfectly around the themes put into play by the two previous episodes. In a comment thread of my ToHB review, veronamay and I agreed upon her account of the progression in Sherlock's emotional state this season, which went thus:
Scandal - Sherlock discovers he has feelings. He tries to rise above, fails, and elects to accept said feelings to a point.
Hounds - Sherlock tries to deny, and then is infuriated by his inability to deny, the effect said feelings have on him.
Reichenbach - Sherlock falls prey to his feelings in some way, and this is instrumental to his downfall.
Ooh look, vindicated.
The Sherlock who faces the fall in that last ten minutes is no longer the Sherlock we met two (in-universe) years ago - this is the Sherlock who has gone through the pool, who has met Irene, who has felt doubt, who has felt fear, who has dreaded losing his best friend over and over again. His face as Moriarty gleefully announces that there's a sniper trained on everyone he loves is one of the best and most heartbreaking expressions I have seen on BC's face - the breath quite literally leaves him on John's name, his eyes going so wide and soft and scared it hurt to look at.
However much this episode may hinge around Sherlock and Moriarty's rivalry, however much we wish to understand the plot intricacies of the Final Problem, Sherlock still remains, through and through, the story of a friendship - it's a love story, right and true, regardless of what meaning you give to the word love. John is Sherlock's anchor and he's Sherlock's main weakness; he is the one person who saves him, and the one who dooms him. Unlike Jim, unlike Frankland, unlike even Irene, John is not a mirror held up for Sherlock to contemplate himself; he's a missing limb, a body at Sherlock's back, a second heart. They're a machine that works - they hold hands when they're handcuffed, and they need to coordinate, and they need to explain each other out - but Sherlock only ever cares when John might think he's a fraud. The public might imagine all the fairytales they care for, but John knows him for real. John is there for him when it matters, because friends protect people - they do. They do.
That phone call. I think - I really do think, despite the heartbreak, despite how horrible what is happening is, that this has become my favourite sequence between them. Even then, even when they're hundreds of metres and several stories and a fall away from each other, they remain a matching set, reaching out for one another's hand. Sherlock is slowly and determinedly setting about destroying everything he has ever worked for - his detective work, his reputation, his intellect, his relationship with John - for the sake of keeping them alive, and he's crying. We actually do get to see him cry, because in a spare few seconds he's going to lose everything that ever mattered. And he's laughing, too, because of course John doesn't believe him, because this is a paradox, this doesn't match. Love doesn't match; having a heart doesn't match. By all accounts, there should never have been a man mad enough to live with him.
So here's your heart, Sherlock Holmes. It's so big. No one ever even noticed.
And John, in the cemetary, stands at attention and asks for One more miracle. Just for me. Because John is a storyteller, too. He'll be thought Sherlock's accomplice, and he'll be hounded by the press and the former fans, and he'll try to write the story, the greater one. He'll find the details, the alibis; he'll study their cases, their statements, Sherlock's deductions, and he'll find none of them wanting. He won't understand why Sherlock did it; he won't realize the sacrifice made. He'll wait, and he won't even know he's waiting.
"Keep your eyes fixed on me.
Please, will you do this for me?"
Damn, Steve Thompson, when the hell did you get this good? This was a rollercoaster of amazing, and in light of it it's quite clear that TBB could have been handled much better. To be fair, I was mostly holding out on a solid but rather average episode, plot-wise, whose emotional baggage would hopefully act as enough of a counterbalance to make it into a good episode, if not an overall marvelous one. Instead, we got an episode entirely on par with the previous two, which not only managed to keep me hooked to the story from beginning to end, but also warmed my heart in such a way as to break it utterly afterwards.
I love that the little Private Life of Sherlock Holmes nods are still alive: the deerstalker has become a Sherlock Hat, and John is Bachelor John Watson, and Mycroft reads The Sun in the Diogenes club - which I'm very glad we got to see, and makes for a rather hilarious sequence. (Am I the only one who cheered when John broke in the Club unnoticed, plonked down in Mycroft's chair, and waited for him to find him there? John, love, be a dear and break into more houses.)
Also in the count of All The Awesome in this episode, Molly Hooper, you wonderful person. Thompson has managed to do what very few stories in fandom have done - to flesh out Molly's shy, diffident personality and make her into a fantastic human being without either up-BAMFing her or altering her character entirely. Molly is self-effacing, farouche, nervous, and yet she's the one who most likely saves the day - and she doesn't have to become more confident or more assertive to do it. Molly's not River Song, and she's not Irene Adler - but she's the one who can save Sherlock, without guns, without riding crops, without fanfare. She's the one who sees him when he's sad, and says the right words while tripping over her own tongue, and finds him when he knows that this chess game of his and Jim's is very, very likely to result in his death, and then she makes it better, she makes it right.
She does all this, and then she ducks her head and says I don't count. I'm no one. You don't want anything from me, I know. Except she does count. In the end, she counts tremendously. I find it beautiful that, in this game between the two men who have ruthlessly manipulated and used Molly Hooper in the past, it is because it is Sherlock who recognizes her as someone who counts very much indeed - and Jim who doesn't, Jim who forgets about her entirely in his three-bullets plan - that this is where, in the end, the distinction lies. Jim's master plan fails because of the girl in the shadows, the girl who doesn't count, fails because of the girl who has always been overlooked, until she wasn't. There's a beautiful message in there, something I'm glad is in this show at all.
And that's where Jim-the-storyteller went wrong: it's the oldest trope in the world. It's always the youngest, the innocent, the frail one; it's always the one you pass over and forget about, the girl in the corner, the littlest brother, who comes and saves the day in the end. Jim's story is not perfect, certainly, and it has a number of ridiculous holes; but he has made Sherlock Holmes' extraordinary personage into something even more extraordinary - a story. No wonder people will believe it. No wonder people won't pay attention to the cold, hard facts; it's much more extraordinary to believe in a made-up story. It's so much easier to believe that Sherlock is a magician instead of the genuine article.
I love stories about subverting stories, about subverting storytelling - about pulling the art of crafting a tale inside out, about twisting fairytales and classical legends and making them into reality, about the art of persuading people into believing. And this played right into that. I was legitimately scared for the kids in the sugar factory, because I remembered that Hansel and Gretel's original fate would have been of being placed inside an oven, if they hadn't managed to overpower the gingerbread witch and trap her inside. If Sherlock Holmes is the witch in Moriarty's fake scenario, then he has truly been burnt to a crisp, like a gingerbread man with the center charred black.
The line that Sherlock Holmes has created Moriarty isn't a new one, either: Thompson has clearly drawn his inspiration from The Secret Of Sherlock Holmes, the 1988 play written especially for Jeremy Brett and Edward Hardwicke's Holmes and Watson, in which Holmes well and truly invented James Moriarty. But the way he plays on this is fascinating. It's perhaps a little cliché that Sherlock is only forced to admit to the story - to being a fraud, a fake, a farce - in order to protect the people he loves; but it fits, it hinges perfectly around the themes put into play by the two previous episodes. In a comment thread of my ToHB review, veronamay and I agreed upon her account of the progression in Sherlock's emotional state this season, which went thus:
Scandal - Sherlock discovers he has feelings. He tries to rise above, fails, and elects to accept said feelings to a point.
Hounds - Sherlock tries to deny, and then is infuriated by his inability to deny, the effect said feelings have on him.
Reichenbach - Sherlock falls prey to his feelings in some way, and this is instrumental to his downfall.
Ooh look, vindicated.
The Sherlock who faces the fall in that last ten minutes is no longer the Sherlock we met two (in-universe) years ago - this is the Sherlock who has gone through the pool, who has met Irene, who has felt doubt, who has felt fear, who has dreaded losing his best friend over and over again. His face as Moriarty gleefully announces that there's a sniper trained on everyone he loves is one of the best and most heartbreaking expressions I have seen on BC's face - the breath quite literally leaves him on John's name, his eyes going so wide and soft and scared it hurt to look at.
However much this episode may hinge around Sherlock and Moriarty's rivalry, however much we wish to understand the plot intricacies of the Final Problem, Sherlock still remains, through and through, the story of a friendship - it's a love story, right and true, regardless of what meaning you give to the word love. John is Sherlock's anchor and he's Sherlock's main weakness; he is the one person who saves him, and the one who dooms him. Unlike Jim, unlike Frankland, unlike even Irene, John is not a mirror held up for Sherlock to contemplate himself; he's a missing limb, a body at Sherlock's back, a second heart. They're a machine that works - they hold hands when they're handcuffed, and they need to coordinate, and they need to explain each other out - but Sherlock only ever cares when John might think he's a fraud. The public might imagine all the fairytales they care for, but John knows him for real. John is there for him when it matters, because friends protect people - they do. They do.
That phone call. I think - I really do think, despite the heartbreak, despite how horrible what is happening is, that this has become my favourite sequence between them. Even then, even when they're hundreds of metres and several stories and a fall away from each other, they remain a matching set, reaching out for one another's hand. Sherlock is slowly and determinedly setting about destroying everything he has ever worked for - his detective work, his reputation, his intellect, his relationship with John - for the sake of keeping them alive, and he's crying. We actually do get to see him cry, because in a spare few seconds he's going to lose everything that ever mattered. And he's laughing, too, because of course John doesn't believe him, because this is a paradox, this doesn't match. Love doesn't match; having a heart doesn't match. By all accounts, there should never have been a man mad enough to live with him.
So here's your heart, Sherlock Holmes. It's so big. No one ever even noticed.
And John, in the cemetary, stands at attention and asks for One more miracle. Just for me. Because John is a storyteller, too. He'll be thought Sherlock's accomplice, and he'll be hounded by the press and the former fans, and he'll try to write the story, the greater one. He'll find the details, the alibis; he'll study their cases, their statements, Sherlock's deductions, and he'll find none of them wanting. He won't understand why Sherlock did it; he won't realize the sacrifice made. He'll wait, and he won't even know he's waiting.
"Keep your eyes fixed on me.
Please, will you do this for me?"