Sherlock series three, writing round-up, Sherlock Remix
Hi, everybody!
I was asked by a friend what I thought of the new series of Sherlock, and it ended up being so long that I thought I might as well post it. ( SPOILERS, obviously, for the series that will end on Sunday (and which begins airing on January 19 in the US on PBS). )
I was asked by a friend what I thought of the new series of Sherlock, and it ended up being so long that I thought I might as well post it. ( SPOILERS, obviously, for the series that will end on Sunday (and which begins airing on January 19 in the US on PBS). )
YES! That ticked me off so much!
There are things I liked in the episode, but I'm having trouble getting over what Mary did and that John just accepts it. He says, "Your past is your past"-but as I think I said somewhere else, it's her present too; Sherlock's still recovering from the wound when he says it! That felt forced.
I can believe that John would still love her. I'm glad they haven't killed her or the baby.
not what was it about Sherlock and Mary that made John seek them out, but what was it about John that made them come to him, made them find their rest in him?
Yes to that too! I felt like Sherlock was projecting onto John when he said that John chose Mary. Sherlock and Mary also each chose John. Sherlock chose a man who would go with him to a crime scene after having spent a total of maybe five minutes in his presence, and who would shoot a man to death to save Sherlock a day later. I'm not sure what Mary saw, but perhaps it was the reason why the neighbor came to John when she couldn't find her son: the neighbor, and Mary, both expected him to do something.
And neither Mary nor Sherlock wants to make John choose between them.
I just wish they had not made Mary a murderer to make her exciting. A spy? I could handle that and love it. But an assassin? Who went freelance after leaving the CIA and apparently continued to kill people? No. I really liked her in the first episode and loved her by the second, but now I can just like her, if I work at it.
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I thought it through again, and you can see from my response to rachelindeed that I still can't make any sense of Mary's failure to kill CAM when he's literally on his knees in front of her and completely defenseless.
As for Mary's past vs her present, I think John's in a space where he's accepting her definition of the present: that loving, pregnant wife that she's evidently worked hard to become, leaving behind her deadly past. That baby tips the balance on so many levels.
The thing with Mary being a killer rather than a spy - there's precedent for that. Irene Adler was presented to us as Sherlock's equal, a worthy adversary, and their contest just an intellectual puzzle, but no one seemed to remember that she was a traitor, was working with Moriarty, and had caused the deaths of at least a few people. M&G don't seem to see the line you drew, which is upsetting all on its own without having a killer carrying John's baby.
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Oh, I remember!-and I'm not the only one. I'm still really annoyed at Moffat about her.
As for Mary's past vs her present, I think John's in a space where he's accepting her definition of the present: that loving, pregnant wife that she's evidently worked hard to become, leaving behind her deadly past. That baby tips the balance on so many levels.
I would find this a lot easier to accept if she hadn't just shot Sherlock. If she had just knocked him out as she did Magnussen, we'd still have loads of drama as Sherlock worried about whether or what to tell John and John still had to struggle with a wife who had lied to him about everything, but it wouldn't demean any of the characters in the way that part of the episode did.
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And yes, I very much agree with your point about what's necessary to get the characters to the point of drama - your suggestion of Mary knocking Sherlock out works, as does rachelindeed's suggestion of Mary asking for a grace period. But then, of course, M&G wouldn't have their big fancy set-piece of Sherlock's mind palace, with Molly and Anderson and Redbeard and Moriarty. All of which was, to me, frankly unnecessary.
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