A thought just occurred to me. Anderson's appearance at Baker Street in this episode is a stark contrast to his previous visit way back in "A Study in Pink." Both times he's a willing, eager participant to someone else's drive against Sherlock, but his motivations for being there are completely opposite.
It was obvious that the information needed to be destroyed and because it was only contained in CAM's mind palace, removing the head or destroying the brain was the only way to actually do that and I was expecting Watson to shoot CAM when he started flicking him in the face. Looking back on series three and actually having all the pieces, unlike series one and two which were more covertly linked with Moriarty in the back ground, in series three, the same could be said with CAM, but the three episodes feel more overtly linked and I'm sure it was someone here and not a newspaper review yesterday that said it was nice for Sherlock's return, the ramifications of said return for John and then John's new relationship to bed in properly across the four-and-half-hours. Roll on the BluRay of the three series next week and time for a massive rewatch of all nine episodes and try and get a screen capture of all of Sherlock's pressure points.
Yes looking forward to be able to see all of CAM's on screen info (I could have just paused/rewound the telly of course but I didn't want to slow the momentum!)
It was actually very much building to that - strange that they then had Sherlock do it. Sherlock is many things, but not a murderer, though he's perfectly capable of letting someone die. Watson is a doctor, but he's also a soldier, and so prepared to kill when necessary - and, hell, he shot the guy in the very first episode.
I guess Watson had more to lose than Sherlock. Shotting the guy in the first episode was something that might have been hard to prove, this would have been difficult to hush up given Mycroft and a load of soldiers were watching.
I was discussing this, as well as what I said earlier with the missus when she was getting ready for work. The reason why she thinks Sherlock and not John shot CAM was because of his wedding vow, he would always be there for him and I don't think he thought John would actually shoot CAM even though he had the gun.
Had it been me, I'd have shot him as soon as he went into his little white room, sat down, and tapped his head. I was a little disappointed with how long it took Sherlock and Watson to come to the logical conclusion.
Despite not wanting to slow down the momentum, I had to pause for each of them because I wanted to see all of the information right there and then. Interestingly, while it's made to look like CAM is scrolling through a long list of pressure points for Sherlock, there are actually only half a dozen or so. From memory (because I'm at work and can't check right now): Irene Adler, John Watson, opium, Redbeard. I know there were at least a couple of more, but that was it. The same list was just repeated ad naseum. This is how I saw it from the get go and I'm actually surprised that so many people were thrown off by Sherlock doing it. I guess it helps that I knew the title for this episode going into "The Sign of Three," so the moment I heard Sherlock's declaration, I knew that was going to be a big pay off in this episode.
Not half - I spent almost the whole 90 minutes saying to my wife "somebody should just shoot the cunt; problem solved."
There are just six of them, and you can guess almost all of them (it was the same list scrolling over and over). Mrs Hudson's scan was more interesting.
Don't even have to shoot him, if folks are squeamish. The right amount of domoic acid will take care of his faultless memory.
When I saw Mary at CAM's penthouse, I assumed that she would shoot him and the remainder of the episode would be Sherlock and Watson diverting police attention away from her, with the end result of Watson moving back in with Holmes and Mary on the run again. Of course, the baby complicates matters and the conclusion we did get was far more true to the characters, IMHO. I read somewhere that Watson should thank Sherlock for training him to forgive people, and that's not far off.
That "3 second" mind palace self rescue of Sherlock belongs somewhere among the most awesome moments of television!
To me, the season finale was entertaining while I was watching it, but the more I think about it now that it's come and gone, the more my reaction is "wow, fuck this show". Holmes shooting CAM in the face: That'd have been an OK way to end it if this was the final series. A rather massive deviation from canon (Holmes taking no steps to ensure CAM's murderer gets caught is pretty different from him doing the killing himself), but whatever: the show could have concluded with Sherlock finally snapping, proving himself to indeed not only be a sociopath but a *dangerous* one that is a menace to society, and going to prison. As this is not going to happen, though, the writers are in a bit of a bind now: there's no way they can go on from here that is not, in one way or another, despicable. Ep 1 of the next series will be about Sherlock being brought back to London to face off with (faux?) Moriarty: OK, fine, extreme circumstances call for extreme measures, blah blah blah. What then? He's still a murderer. He shot an unarmed man in the head, right in front of the police. It was not in self-defence, he was not under duress. He was just really pissed. After the immediate threat has passed, what will happen then? Will the show continue in prison (or with Sherlock facing his de-facto death sentence undercover in Eastern Europe), or will he be pardoned in light of the services he'll render the crown in the coming episode? How disgustingly Nietzschean. "Oh, never mind that thing where you shot a guy in the head, you've been a good boy since, and he was a real prick anyway. Let bygones be bygones. And vigilante justice is actually pretty cool, saves the police work." Mary shooting Sherlock, and her being forgiven for it, was equally harebrained. "Oh, I know you shot my best friend in the chest, but you only did so because you love me!" - give me a fucking break. John's bold declarations that he does not care about her past: if her past has molded her into a person that's willing to shoot an (at this point) innocent person in the chest (fuck that whole "non-lethally" bullshit) to avoid facing the consequences of her (actual) crimes, you'd better fucking care, you complete and utter moron. Moffat did this on DW already, and he's doing it here too: have characters do things that seem irredeemable, and then bend over backwards trying to show how the character in question is, actually, redeemable. And fail. To hell with that. If you don't want your characters to be irredeemable, stop having them shoot people. So, for me the show crossed a line with this last episode - it's obviously in a place (that DW has been at for some time) where Moffat cares more about shocking the audience than he cares about telling a coherent story. Hence: Wow, fuck this show.
Mind blown, Chilli. I did feel unsatisfied with the episode but couldn't quite point my finger on what exactly was bothering me. You managed to mention all the points that subconsciously bugged me and some I hadn't considered, like the legal ramnifications. To me, the rule of law has been subverted in the real world enough so that I don't feel it necessarily has to apply to fictional stories. Hence, I can buy that Sherlock wouldn't need to go to prison or even on trial due to his connections to the UK government/elites and Magnusson's sway over those same elites being broken. Hell, you could probably paint Magnusson as a sort of terrorist threat if you really wanted. But of course, the ethical issues remain. What his wife has done in the past should make a difference to Watson although I can also understand his desire to not know. Sherlock surviving Mary shooting him was portrayed as a big deal with the overly long mind palace scene so the audience believes it is a very narrow thing and that Sherlock probably would have died if he hadn't applied his abilities. Yet, later, we are told that Mary aimed so that Sherlock would only be hurt not killed. So, either the mind palace scene is a bit pointless or Mary was extremely reckless, banking on Sherlock being able to calculate how to fall and not to go into shock. (That's if you buy the premise one could aim so precisely and predictably but it's fiction so let's go with that.)
So, I was the only one who had an "Oh Shit" moment thinking that Sherlock's new "chemist" "protege" might be someone that Magnusson had in a bind, and that it was going to be revealed during Magnusson's soliloquizing that everyone they left at the house was now dead and it had been made to look like Sherlock did it?
A very evil man. Last week I came into this thread after only having watched the first episode of the third series and when I read that post, I realised, a new episode was released, as just around that time iTunes made me aware of that. But the positive thing was, I was on the edge of the seat until the very end, expecting that kill. And to that last episode's end, I cheered and I actually got up from my chair, as I quite like that character. But then again, another year goes by.