LII WATCHES: BBC Sherlock - "His Last Vow" PART II
I think I've gathered my thoughts enough now.
Of course, spoilers below. Spoilers GALORE.
Okay, so it turns out that the conspiracy theories floating around online in the fan communities were right: Mary Morstan wasn't always named Mary Morstan. She, when I last left off to go freak out and finish the episode uninterrupted (and then go to class, because school) was last seen threatening Magnussen with a gun in full black ops gear when Sherlock confronted them. At first, he thought it was the woman, his client, the MP from the opener. Imagine his - and my - shock when she turned around it was FREAKING MARY WATSON.
I quite literally flipped my shit, okay?
She told Sherlock to back off or be shot, and he replied she wouldn't ever shoot him. In response, she did. Right in the gut. Well, in a non-lethal spot so to speak. We got a fascinating, well-shot, and frankly terrifying look into Sherlock's mind during his crisis response - his Mind Palace, it turns out, is filled with people that have influenced him (we saw Molly, Anderson, and Mycroft telling him to figure out if he had an exit wound - he didn't - and that he should fall backwards; the mental Mycroft told him to fight going into shock, and we got an image of him calling to an enormous Irish setter named Redbeard and a flashback of little baby Sherlock playing with his dog; then we saw him draw upon a mental projection of Jim Moriarty to control his fear and pain) as he faded in and out of consciousness while the EMT's arrived and went to work on keeping him alive. He faded out for a moment, but the thought of leaving John alone and unprotected motivated him to stay alive.
Mary visits him in the hospital and tells him not to breathe a word of what happened to John.
Jeanine shows up when he wakes up completely and tells him she's pissed at him, he's an asshole (he is) and that she's sold the story to Magnussen's rivals. She's made herself quite a bundle, and she's moving to a cottage in Sussex, but first she'll have to clear out all the bees.
Okay, Moffat, you get a point for incorporating Canon in an unusual way. You're still batting below average.
Later, Sherlock escapes from the hospital and goes on the run. Lestrade, Myrcroft, John, and Mary all go out to search for him. Mary finds him first, or so we think, and Sherlock gets her to demonstrate her skills. In a heart-wrenching bait and switch, it turns out that he'd alerted John to his position and set John up in the dark (watch it) to witness. He's just basically exposed Mary to be more than John thought she was.
They go back to Baker Street and John has a semi-meltdown. When he asks why his wife had to turn out to be a "psychopath" (improper usage of actual clinical terms, Moffat!) Sherlock and Mary can only say that it's his type. Sherlock is able to convince John to at least accept Mary as their client, as she is also threatened by Magnussen. For, you see, Mary Morstan was actually the name of a stillborn baby girl back around the time that Mary claimed to have been born. Only her name and past were fake, she insists. She really does love John and wants to live the life she's built for herself. (Which means that she cares about Sherlock, too!) Sherlock has already caught onto this, and points out that Mary could have let him die at Magnussen's penthouse - instead, she called for an ambulance, which saved his life. They get another chance to do so when two EMT's rush in, and Sherlock admits he's bleeding internally and needs to go back to Urgent Care.
Cut to Christmas, months later. Mary's got to be in her second trimester and is already showing. She gave John a flash drive with all of the information about her true identity on it. John finally decides that he doesn't care, he fell in love with the woman who called herself Mary Morstan, he married her, and that's all that matters. Mary is overjoyed.
Meanwhile, it turns out that Mrs Holmes is a mathematical genius. Huh. I only wish they'd named her Eudoria Vernet Holmes, because I think I would just have died of joy (the Holmes mother is a fascinating figure to me, to be quite honest. I wish Conan Doyle had written about her as well.)
Mycroft and Sherlock have a heart-to-heart, and Mycroft is revealed to care deeply about his brother. I knew it, I knew it all along. But the Game is still On, as Sherlock enlists his new protoge Wiggins to knock out everyone except for John. He snags Mycroft's top secret official government work laptop and drags John along with him to Magnussen's hidey-hole, the Appledoor. He's apparently arranged for a trade with Magnussen in order to protect Mary and any future victims of Magnussen's blackmailing operation.
Upon arrival, Magnussen is supremely unperturbed by Sherlock's Batman Gambit (a clumsy one if I'll be honest) and reveals that there is no physical archive at Appledoor. Instead, he too has a Mind Palace much like Sherlock and commits all of the information to memory. He then reminds them that the two of them have just committed treason and that Mycroft and the po-po are on their way to arrest them for it. The U.K. equivalent of the S.W.A.T. team shows up with Mycroft in a helicopter, and Magnussen adds that he now owns Sherlock and Watson, because if they don't comply with his demands, he'll set people from Mary's past upon her.
Sherlock takes John's gun and pulls the trigger on Magnussen. It's the only time we've ever seen Sherlock kill someone. He tells John to step away from him and let him take the fall, and to give Mary his love.
Some time later, Sherlock is sentenced to exile. It seems that Mycroft was approached about recruiting Sherlock for an MI6 mission that involved going into deep cover in Eastern Europe and, according to Mycroft, would end after six months with Sherlock's death. Well, that looks to be how Sherlock will be punished for murdering Magnussen. After some (almost) tearful goodbyes, Sherlock boards the plane that will take him to his destination. Before the show can officially end (and I was expecting this to be The End, but Moffat and Gatiss are crafty bastards, to be sure) the video started staticking out. No, really, the credits nearly started rolling and the theme music was playing and then it faded to static. We cut to Lestrade in a sports bar, trying to watch a football match, before a new picture cuts in.
It's Moriarty.
Mycroft is alerted and calls off the East Europe mission, and Sherlock is brought back after turning the flight around in midair, and John tells Mary that whatever's going on, there will be hell to pay with Sherlock back on the case.
Holy shit, I was not prepared. I also wasn't prepared for the curveballs that Moffat threw at me - it turns out that he is capable of taking risks with his precious self-insert fantasies (which is what I perceive Sherlock to be for him, as well as the Doctor on Doctor Who). He doesn't hold a candle to what Gatiss was able to do (see The Great Game for that instance) but this was a nice change of pace for him. It wasn't a complete break of his habit, but if we can get more episodes where he breaks his molds more often, he might evolve and progress as a writer. That being said, this episode could use a little bit of work in some spots, but overall, much more polished and palatable than the usual Moffat episode. (And no instance of queerbaiting and No Homo, either. That was nice!)
And that was BBC's Sherlock series 3. Some people weren't impressed or enamored of it, but I had fun. I'm curious to see what the hell they'll pull out of their hats for series 4, which has indeed been commissioned. In the meantime, though, I've gotta catch up on Elementary.
I just can't quit with Sherlock Holmes, can I?
Of course, spoilers below. Spoilers GALORE.
Okay, so it turns out that the conspiracy theories floating around online in the fan communities were right: Mary Morstan wasn't always named Mary Morstan. She, when I last left off to go freak out and finish the episode uninterrupted (and then go to class, because school) was last seen threatening Magnussen with a gun in full black ops gear when Sherlock confronted them. At first, he thought it was the woman, his client, the MP from the opener. Imagine his - and my - shock when she turned around it was FREAKING MARY WATSON.
I quite literally flipped my shit, okay?
She told Sherlock to back off or be shot, and he replied she wouldn't ever shoot him. In response, she did. Right in the gut. Well, in a non-lethal spot so to speak. We got a fascinating, well-shot, and frankly terrifying look into Sherlock's mind during his crisis response - his Mind Palace, it turns out, is filled with people that have influenced him (we saw Molly, Anderson, and Mycroft telling him to figure out if he had an exit wound - he didn't - and that he should fall backwards; the mental Mycroft told him to fight going into shock, and we got an image of him calling to an enormous Irish setter named Redbeard and a flashback of little baby Sherlock playing with his dog; then we saw him draw upon a mental projection of Jim Moriarty to control his fear and pain) as he faded in and out of consciousness while the EMT's arrived and went to work on keeping him alive. He faded out for a moment, but the thought of leaving John alone and unprotected motivated him to stay alive.
Mary visits him in the hospital and tells him not to breathe a word of what happened to John.
Jeanine shows up when he wakes up completely and tells him she's pissed at him, he's an asshole (he is) and that she's sold the story to Magnussen's rivals. She's made herself quite a bundle, and she's moving to a cottage in Sussex, but first she'll have to clear out all the bees.
Okay, Moffat, you get a point for incorporating Canon in an unusual way. You're still batting below average.
Later, Sherlock escapes from the hospital and goes on the run. Lestrade, Myrcroft, John, and Mary all go out to search for him. Mary finds him first, or so we think, and Sherlock gets her to demonstrate her skills. In a heart-wrenching bait and switch, it turns out that he'd alerted John to his position and set John up in the dark (watch it) to witness. He's just basically exposed Mary to be more than John thought she was.
They go back to Baker Street and John has a semi-meltdown. When he asks why his wife had to turn out to be a "psychopath" (improper usage of actual clinical terms, Moffat!) Sherlock and Mary can only say that it's his type. Sherlock is able to convince John to at least accept Mary as their client, as she is also threatened by Magnussen. For, you see, Mary Morstan was actually the name of a stillborn baby girl back around the time that Mary claimed to have been born. Only her name and past were fake, she insists. She really does love John and wants to live the life she's built for herself. (Which means that she cares about Sherlock, too!) Sherlock has already caught onto this, and points out that Mary could have let him die at Magnussen's penthouse - instead, she called for an ambulance, which saved his life. They get another chance to do so when two EMT's rush in, and Sherlock admits he's bleeding internally and needs to go back to Urgent Care.
Cut to Christmas, months later. Mary's got to be in her second trimester and is already showing. She gave John a flash drive with all of the information about her true identity on it. John finally decides that he doesn't care, he fell in love with the woman who called herself Mary Morstan, he married her, and that's all that matters. Mary is overjoyed.
Meanwhile, it turns out that Mrs Holmes is a mathematical genius. Huh. I only wish they'd named her Eudoria Vernet Holmes, because I think I would just have died of joy (the Holmes mother is a fascinating figure to me, to be quite honest. I wish Conan Doyle had written about her as well.)
Mycroft and Sherlock have a heart-to-heart, and Mycroft is revealed to care deeply about his brother. I knew it, I knew it all along. But the Game is still On, as Sherlock enlists his new protoge Wiggins to knock out everyone except for John. He snags Mycroft's top secret official government work laptop and drags John along with him to Magnussen's hidey-hole, the Appledoor. He's apparently arranged for a trade with Magnussen in order to protect Mary and any future victims of Magnussen's blackmailing operation.
Upon arrival, Magnussen is supremely unperturbed by Sherlock's Batman Gambit (a clumsy one if I'll be honest) and reveals that there is no physical archive at Appledoor. Instead, he too has a Mind Palace much like Sherlock and commits all of the information to memory. He then reminds them that the two of them have just committed treason and that Mycroft and the po-po are on their way to arrest them for it. The U.K. equivalent of the S.W.A.T. team shows up with Mycroft in a helicopter, and Magnussen adds that he now owns Sherlock and Watson, because if they don't comply with his demands, he'll set people from Mary's past upon her.
Sherlock takes John's gun and pulls the trigger on Magnussen. It's the only time we've ever seen Sherlock kill someone. He tells John to step away from him and let him take the fall, and to give Mary his love.
Some time later, Sherlock is sentenced to exile. It seems that Mycroft was approached about recruiting Sherlock for an MI6 mission that involved going into deep cover in Eastern Europe and, according to Mycroft, would end after six months with Sherlock's death. Well, that looks to be how Sherlock will be punished for murdering Magnussen. After some (almost) tearful goodbyes, Sherlock boards the plane that will take him to his destination. Before the show can officially end (and I was expecting this to be The End, but Moffat and Gatiss are crafty bastards, to be sure) the video started staticking out. No, really, the credits nearly started rolling and the theme music was playing and then it faded to static. We cut to Lestrade in a sports bar, trying to watch a football match, before a new picture cuts in.
It's Moriarty.
Mycroft is alerted and calls off the East Europe mission, and Sherlock is brought back after turning the flight around in midair, and John tells Mary that whatever's going on, there will be hell to pay with Sherlock back on the case.
Holy shit, I was not prepared. I also wasn't prepared for the curveballs that Moffat threw at me - it turns out that he is capable of taking risks with his precious self-insert fantasies (which is what I perceive Sherlock to be for him, as well as the Doctor on Doctor Who). He doesn't hold a candle to what Gatiss was able to do (see The Great Game for that instance) but this was a nice change of pace for him. It wasn't a complete break of his habit, but if we can get more episodes where he breaks his molds more often, he might evolve and progress as a writer. That being said, this episode could use a little bit of work in some spots, but overall, much more polished and palatable than the usual Moffat episode. (And no instance of queerbaiting and No Homo, either. That was nice!)
And that was BBC's Sherlock series 3. Some people weren't impressed or enamored of it, but I had fun. I'm curious to see what the hell they'll pull out of their hats for series 4, which has indeed been commissioned. In the meantime, though, I've gotta catch up on Elementary.
I just can't quit with Sherlock Holmes, can I?