That's an interesting point about the faked bodies, I hadn't thought about that. Though as Sherlock was implied to be responsible for the evidence regarding the second fake death, I think we can rule out any actual murder on that one. He may have taken a page from his brother's book and procured an already-dead body which he then brilliantly/morbidly altered to pass post-mortum tests. *handwaves a bit as the ending was a bit ridiculous to begin with*
I suppose finding a conveniently freshly-dead doppelganger corpse the first time she faked her death is vaguely possible as well, but I think probably Irene used Moriarty's consultancy to arrange that one, so murder's seeming a lot more likely in that case. :(
Yes, when you make Irene criminal to that extent, I'm afraid in my eyes she no longer deserves to win against the Holmeses, whereas in the orginal story Holmes regards her as clearly morally superior to the King who hired him to retrieve her photographs. "Is it not a pity that she was not on my level?" / "From what I have seen of the lady, she seems, indeed, to be on a very different level to your Majesty,” said Holmes coldly.
I think this was sort of a fusion between "Curse of the Spiderwoman" and "Scandal in Bohemia," making Irene more of a femme fatale, but if you look too hard at what she's doing I think that hobbles the respect and caring that Irene is supposed to elicit from both us and Sherlock.
Yes, when you make Irene criminal to that extent, I'm afraid in my eyes she no longer deserves to win against the Holmeses
Exactly. They made her too much of a bad guy to justify her winning. Hell, I can see Sherlock not caring that much about the lady on the slab, but, again, she allied herself with a man that strapped John--you know, Sherlock's FRIEND?--to a fucking bomb. And he supposed to just... not care? I'm sorry, but: BULLSHIT.
Oh, interesting new opinions! Thanks for sharing your thoughts with me. :-)
Ah, but I think we have to divide between Irene as a professional (gangster or baddie or whatever) and her as a person.
Because as far as I see it, Irene the gangster doesn't win at all. Sherlock finds her weak spot and uses it against her, thus taking revenge for being used and also revenge for her helping Moriarty and the terrorists. Thus it's very clearly shown she was doing the wrong thing in sympathising with Moriarty. Interestingly enough, Sherlock doesn't seem to mind her criminal actions before Moriarty is mentioned. To me it almost looks like he is a bit amused at someone besting Mycroft for once (there goes your moral - but then we know Sherlock isn't a very moral person, think CIA man) - UNTIL Irene mentions she is working for Moriarty. Then Sherlock starts thinking again and immediately exposes her secrets. So I don't see him not caring about her alliance with Moriarty!
Irene as a person on the other hand wins in the end, in my interpretation, by making Sherlock care enough for her to save her. But then she is clearly not working for Moriarty anymore, otherwise Moriarty would have protected her. So I see no moral conflict for Sherlock to save her life if he only sees her as a person and not as a professional gangster anymore. Of course that's a very fine distinction, but I am pretty sure Sherlock understands it perfectly. Otherwise I'd have to agree with you that it'd be weird if he helped her despite still being in Moriarty's services.
But then she is clearly not working for Moriarty anymore
First off, I said she allied herself with, not "worked for" Yes, there's a difference.
Second: You think just cuz she's working with/for/whatever Jim, he wouldn't let he get killed? You have seen him, right?
Lastly; as far as I'm concerned, I don't care if she is no longer working with/for/whatever him, the very fact that she did at all is enough for me to write her off. And given that she would have been willing to make Sherlock carry out Jim's demands if he'd had any... Why am I supposed to be happy he saved this woman?!
Thanks for your thoughts! I see what you're saying; I do think Sherlock's win over Irene regarding her phone was the episode's own acknowledgement that she didn't deserve the victory the original Irene Adler had over Sherlock because this one was much more criminal. I just think that diminished Irene's character; it made it harder for me to like her, anyway.
For myself, I'm not terribly happy with the idea of separating what Irene does in her work from who she is as a person. Who she is as a person is informed by her choices, and while it is sweet that she comes to care for Sherlock much more than she expected to, it is horrifying that her caring does not inhibit her from using him to help terrorists and murderers for her own profit.
I agree with you that this does not bother Sherlock as much as it bothers me. But I'm not sure that's a good thing. He's already very prone to compartmentalization, we saw that in The Great Game: Moriarty's murders do not interfere with Sherlock's fascination with him until he almost murders John. But that detachment - admiring the mind even when the uses it's put to are terrible - is actually more than a bit not good, as John himself points out in one of the key confrontation scenes where he says that, no matter how brilliant their antagonist is, these are real human lives he's destroying and Sherlock needs to learn to *care* about that. So I guess seeing him separate Irene-the-clever-woman from the damage she does with that cleverness is not really what I was hoping for from this story. It makes his attraction to her seem negative rather than positive; encouraging some of his already troubling tendencies.
I think we read the scene where he's listening to her negotiate with Mycroft a bit differently. I believe that for most of that scene Sherlock thinks he has been defeated; that she has thought of every eventuality and used him ruthlessly and there's really nothing that he or Mycroft can do about it at this point. I see him as feeling defeated and darkly amused as she spells out how she has anticipated every eventuality (it's kind of similar to the way he's acting in the earlier scene in the morgue with Mycroft when he thinks she is dead - quiet, depressed, darkly amused). But then at some point - perhaps galvanized with anger at the Moriarty connection, perhaps surprised by how strongly she's pretending she never cared for him - he has a flash of intuition and finally breaks that passcode that he's been unable to decode for six months. So he wins, and by taking away all her blackmail/inside-info he basically leaves her without protection to face the consequences of falling out of favor with the extremely dangerous people she's been working with.
The ending, as you say, is meant to show that he cares enough about her not to let her loss to him lead to her death.
I didn't want her dead, either - that won't bring back anyone who died or was hurt because of her - but I can't say that in the end it was easy for me to like her as a person in spite of her criminality. It's not like she *chose* to abandon her criminal connections; after she lost that phone she had no power and no choice in the matter. So I'm not sure I can give her credit for that.
Anyhow, sorry to be sounding negative about this; I really did enjoy the episode and I think it's possible to see it as a sort of redemption story for Irene in which her unexpected feelings for Sherlock undermine her gangsterism and push her into a new and less heartless way of life. It's just that she never really made that choice, she was forced into it. And her previous actions were *so* wrong that they interefere with my being able to feel really affectionate towards her. I find her fascinating, and I see why Sherlock does as well, but I can't really warm to her emotionally.
I suppose finding a conveniently freshly-dead doppelganger corpse the first time she faked her death is vaguely possible as well, but I think probably Irene used Moriarty's consultancy to arrange that one, so murder's seeming a lot more likely in that case. :(
Yes, when you make Irene criminal to that extent, I'm afraid in my eyes she no longer deserves to win against the Holmeses, whereas in the orginal story Holmes regards her as clearly morally superior to the King who hired him to retrieve her photographs. "Is it not a pity that she was not on my level?" / "From what I have seen of the lady, she seems, indeed, to be on a very different level to your Majesty,” said Holmes coldly.
I think this was sort of a fusion between "Curse of the Spiderwoman" and "Scandal in Bohemia," making Irene more of a femme fatale, but if you look too hard at what she's doing I think that hobbles the respect and caring that Irene is supposed to elicit from both us and Sherlock.
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Exactly. They made her too much of a bad guy to justify her winning. Hell, I can see Sherlock not caring that much about the lady on the slab, but, again, she allied herself with a man that strapped John--you know, Sherlock's FRIEND?--to a fucking bomb. And he supposed to just... not care? I'm sorry, but: BULLSHIT.
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Ah, but I think we have to divide between Irene as a professional (gangster or baddie or whatever) and her as a person.
Because as far as I see it, Irene the gangster doesn't win at all. Sherlock finds her weak spot and uses it against her, thus taking revenge for being used and also revenge for her helping Moriarty and the terrorists. Thus it's very clearly shown she was doing the wrong thing in sympathising with Moriarty. Interestingly enough, Sherlock doesn't seem to mind her criminal actions before Moriarty is mentioned. To me it almost looks like he is a bit amused at someone besting Mycroft for once (there goes your moral - but then we know Sherlock isn't a very moral person, think CIA man) - UNTIL Irene mentions she is working for Moriarty. Then Sherlock starts thinking again and immediately exposes her secrets. So I don't see him not caring about her alliance with Moriarty!
Irene as a person on the other hand wins in the end, in my interpretation, by making Sherlock care enough for her to save her. But then she is clearly not working for Moriarty anymore, otherwise Moriarty would have protected her. So I see no moral conflict for Sherlock to save her life if he only sees her as a person and not as a professional gangster anymore. Of course that's a very fine distinction, but I am pretty sure Sherlock understands it perfectly. Otherwise I'd have to agree with you that it'd be weird if he helped her despite still being in Moriarty's services.
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First off, I said she allied herself with, not "worked for" Yes, there's a difference.
Second: You think just cuz she's working with/for/whatever Jim, he wouldn't let he get killed? You have seen him, right?
Lastly; as far as I'm concerned, I don't care if she is no longer working with/for/whatever him, the very fact that she did at all is enough for me to write her off. And given that she would have been willing to make Sherlock carry out Jim's demands if he'd had any... Why am I supposed to be happy he saved this woman?!
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For myself, I'm not terribly happy with the idea of separating what Irene does in her work from who she is as a person. Who she is as a person is informed by her choices, and while it is sweet that she comes to care for Sherlock much more than she expected to, it is horrifying that her caring does not inhibit her from using him to help terrorists and murderers for her own profit.
I agree with you that this does not bother Sherlock as much as it bothers me. But I'm not sure that's a good thing. He's already very prone to compartmentalization, we saw that in The Great Game: Moriarty's murders do not interfere with Sherlock's fascination with him until he almost murders John. But that detachment - admiring the mind even when the uses it's put to are terrible - is actually more than a bit not good, as John himself points out in one of the key confrontation scenes where he says that, no matter how brilliant their antagonist is, these are real human lives he's destroying and Sherlock needs to learn to *care* about that. So I guess seeing him separate Irene-the-clever-woman from the damage she does with that cleverness is not really what I was hoping for from this story. It makes his attraction to her seem negative rather than positive; encouraging some of his already troubling tendencies.
I think we read the scene where he's listening to her negotiate with Mycroft a bit differently. I believe that for most of that scene Sherlock thinks he has been defeated; that she has thought of every eventuality and used him ruthlessly and there's really nothing that he or Mycroft can do about it at this point. I see him as feeling defeated and darkly amused as she spells out how she has anticipated every eventuality (it's kind of similar to the way he's acting in the earlier scene in the morgue with Mycroft when he thinks she is dead - quiet, depressed, darkly amused). But then at some point - perhaps galvanized with anger at the Moriarty connection, perhaps surprised by how strongly she's pretending she never cared for him - he has a flash of intuition and finally breaks that passcode that he's been unable to decode for six months. So he wins, and by taking away all her blackmail/inside-info he basically leaves her without protection to face the consequences of falling out of favor with the extremely dangerous people she's been working with.
The ending, as you say, is meant to show that he cares enough about her not to let her loss to him lead to her death.
I didn't want her dead, either - that won't bring back anyone who died or was hurt because of her - but I can't say that in the end it was easy for me to like her as a person in spite of her criminality. It's not like she *chose* to abandon her criminal connections; after she lost that phone she had no power and no choice in the matter. So I'm not sure I can give her credit for that.
Anyhow, sorry to be sounding negative about this; I really did enjoy the episode and I think it's possible to see it as a sort of redemption story for Irene in which her unexpected feelings for Sherlock undermine her gangsterism and push her into a new and less heartless way of life. It's just that she never really made that choice, she was forced into it. And her previous actions were *so* wrong that they interefere with my being able to feel really affectionate towards her. I find her fascinating, and I see why Sherlock does as well, but I can't really warm to her emotionally.
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