i got really distracted in places. unfortunately.

[krabapple]

Apparently I'm not done talking about Sherlock yet, at least for today. This was inspired by magnetic_pole's thoughts on TRF and is mostly me thinking out loud, as it were.

Comments

[numberthescars]

This post was so interesting to read! Makes me miss studying theology.

I really liked your interpretation of "Sinner Man" and Moriarty as the "adversary" to Sherlock (with John as Job, poor man! But fits the situation so well...). I was curious though, what you make of the scene on the rooftop, when Moriarty accuses Sherlock of being "boring" and "on the side of the angels." Sherlock responds that he "may be on the side of the angels," but he's not one of them. Then...bang, bye bye Moriarty. That particular scene intrigued me, because I thought it showed MORIARTY undergoing a change, rather than Sherlock. For the first time, Moriarty thinks he's not alone--there's another person in the world who's like him. I think the writers want us to think that Sherlock is faking here, that he's actually not ruthless and insane like Moriarty--Moriarty's the baddie, after all. However, (and I'm not sure if it was just Andrew Scott's amazing performance or whether this was part of the script) I felt that I saw Moriarty as a more sympathetic character in that moment than Sherlock.

From a theological POV, I thought it was interesting that immediately after Moriarty makes this connection between himself and Sherlock, he chooses to shoot himself. There are two main outcomes of this: on the most surface level, it furthers the plot by forcing Sherlock to fake his death. On another level though, it suggests something interesting about the sort of super-human (god-like? Angelic? Demonic?) nature ascribed to Sherlock and Moriarty. As you mentioned, I think the world painted here is fairly atheist, but I also think Sherlock and Moriarty both see themselves as slightly god-like, above "normal" people. So, when Moriarty takes his own life (and, so he thinks, forces Sherlock to take his own as well), is he acknowledging something about his and Sherlock's mortality? As Moriarty said in TGG, dying is "what people do." People--meaning, other people. So something about Moriarty changes drastically between his encounter with Sherlock at the pool, and their meeting on the rooftop.

What do you think? Is there a double-transformation going on, both Sherlock and Moriarty? If so, it looks like Moriarty beat Sherlock to the punch. I can't wait for next season to see if Sherlock follows.