The Empty Hearse
OK, I've watched The Empty Hearse twice now! I'm bubbling over to talk about it with others so I'm going to quickly write some thoughts here and then sit looking at your livejournals until you cough up your own metas. LBS, thank you for your post - I'll respond to it post-haste. :D
O.O <- looking at you waiting for you to write your meta.
SPOILERS AHEAD.
OK, so: in no particular order.
I'm so glad the minisode got explained away. I was really upset by the minisode's treatment of race - quite apart from the musical cues of funny martial music for Germans and undefinable 'asian music' and harps for Tibet (?), can I watch a show in which Sherlock Holmes within a tiny space of time becomes an abbot of 'a group of warrior monks' (really??) without giving a damn about their religion? I'm very glad that we can now write those scenes off - and even musical cues - as a reflection of Anderson's imagination rather than canonically confirmed. It doesn't make it all that better, but it adds a bit to what LBS has described as Moffat's 'LADY OR THE TIGER, MOTHERFUCKERS' stuff from this episode. :D
What does Sherlock have to interview about at the end of the show? He didn't solve either of the crimes. Who planted all that bomb stuff? Was it the North Koreans the crooked parliamentarian was supposedly working for? If so, why on earth would they do that and why aren't we supposed to care?
The best in-text explanation I can come up with for Watson's kidnapping is that the new criminal mastermind was trying to plant an obvious clue to Sherlock about the nature of the terrorist crime (though it being Nov 5th, they really should have guessed already), and-or that the mastermind needed Sherlock busy for 20min while he put something else in motion. And also that he wanted to see what would happen if he made a fanfic trope come to life? The scene of replay at the end almost reads like some types of fan reading - going over and over your favourite part to cherish the affect of an acute moment in the story or to try to read a character's emotions. Maybe as a parallel to he way Sherlock keeps doing this to John - manipulating him into extreme circumstances so that he can watch his face? Then, that raises another point. Sherlock has become such an actor in the past two years - allowing Lestrade's hug, saying thank you to Molly, patting Anderson on the back, faking intense emotion so that he could manipulate John into believing they were going to die (!!!)* - that maybe what the mastermind is looking for is merely to study his behaviour when he thinks he's likely to be seeing a flash of genuineness?
Speaking of genuineness and acting, I did love the scene where Sherlock is trying to solve crimes with Lestrade and Molly. He seems to be trying to act less obnoxious - less the crowy 'Sherlock Holmes' performance. It felt like a new type of detecting might be being born. I was also intrigued that Sherlock's internalized a John-voice (though I guess we knew that from the Irene Adler episode, when he was talking to John after he left). I was more intrigued that the John-voice is so personal and critical, entirely irrelevant to the crime, though very relevant to Sherlock's relationships with other people.
The plot: lamentable. Sherlock's system of 'markers' makes very little sense - how (after being away for two years) can he be so arrogantly confident that these and only these are the people he needs to watch? Are we supposed to think that these people aren't on Mycroft's watch-list? Speaking of Mycroft's watch-list, why the heck was Mary the first to know John had been kidnapped from the doorstep of Baker Street? Unless Mycroft is deliberately not protecting him, this just seems ridiculous. And the whole sci fi bomb thing with its off-switch, where none of the stuff about Sherlock having limits had meaning - this just seems lazy and rude in terms of plot-writing.
I don't really have an explanation for what Sherlock was doing with the game of 'deductions' with Mycroft, once we found out that the hat wasn't his (I think despite Moffat's trickery, we can assume that Mycroft knew all the time that the hat wasn't Sherlock's).
'You missed his isolation.'
'I don't see it; maybe he doesn't mind being different, it doesn't mean he has to be isolated'
'Exactly - he's different, so what, why would he mind? Why would anyone mind?'
'I'm not lonely, Sherlock.'
'How would you know?'
What is Sherlock implying? That Mycroft minds being different? That he feels he 'has' to be isolated?
Mary: I really liked the actress, and I liked that when Sherlock 'reads' her she comes up as a complex person. We'll see how things go. I didn't like that Mrs. Hudson is such a caricature again. I thought it was unfair that they gave Molly such a boyfriend - or that they made her all about romance at all. I loved that she got to use her doctor/pathologist skills.
Martin Freeman: He seems to have been the only person who thought this might be a serious episode.
All in all: I think this was probably a train-wreck (har har) but I'm holding judgment until we get the next episode on Jan 5. What did you guys think??
* if what Sherlock tells to Anderson is true - that he and Mycroft had mapped out every contingency and carefully planned for his death and disappearance - then what he says to John at the end of Reichenbach Fall falls into this category of unnecessary John-manipulation, along with the Baskerville poisoning-attempt and the dinner and this train-scene. We always knew he survived, but I liked this scene a huge amount more when it seemed like Sherlock really had been out-played and that he was doing his best with a terrible set of circumstances. This episode implied that none of the stress Sherlock showed in Reichenbach Fall was genuine at all.
While we're at it: John and Sherlock. LBS has already talked about this in depth and there's nothing I can really add. John pretty heavily implies that he went through a serious and potentially pretty dangerous depressive episode after Sherlock's death (especially given we know he was suicidal in the Study in Pink). With that and the threats of heart attack in this episode - it's getting harder to believe that Sherlock is unaware of how much he's been inflicting on John. This is getting into a pretty dark place.
O.O <- looking at you waiting for you to write your meta.
SPOILERS AHEAD.
OK, so: in no particular order.
I'm so glad the minisode got explained away. I was really upset by the minisode's treatment of race - quite apart from the musical cues of funny martial music for Germans and undefinable 'asian music' and harps for Tibet (?), can I watch a show in which Sherlock Holmes within a tiny space of time becomes an abbot of 'a group of warrior monks' (really??) without giving a damn about their religion? I'm very glad that we can now write those scenes off - and even musical cues - as a reflection of Anderson's imagination rather than canonically confirmed. It doesn't make it all that better, but it adds a bit to what LBS has described as Moffat's 'LADY OR THE TIGER, MOTHERFUCKERS' stuff from this episode. :D
What does Sherlock have to interview about at the end of the show? He didn't solve either of the crimes. Who planted all that bomb stuff? Was it the North Koreans the crooked parliamentarian was supposedly working for? If so, why on earth would they do that and why aren't we supposed to care?
The best in-text explanation I can come up with for Watson's kidnapping is that the new criminal mastermind was trying to plant an obvious clue to Sherlock about the nature of the terrorist crime (though it being Nov 5th, they really should have guessed already), and-or that the mastermind needed Sherlock busy for 20min while he put something else in motion. And also that he wanted to see what would happen if he made a fanfic trope come to life? The scene of replay at the end almost reads like some types of fan reading - going over and over your favourite part to cherish the affect of an acute moment in the story or to try to read a character's emotions. Maybe as a parallel to he way Sherlock keeps doing this to John - manipulating him into extreme circumstances so that he can watch his face? Then, that raises another point. Sherlock has become such an actor in the past two years - allowing Lestrade's hug, saying thank you to Molly, patting Anderson on the back, faking intense emotion so that he could manipulate John into believing they were going to die (!!!)* - that maybe what the mastermind is looking for is merely to study his behaviour when he thinks he's likely to be seeing a flash of genuineness?
Speaking of genuineness and acting, I did love the scene where Sherlock is trying to solve crimes with Lestrade and Molly. He seems to be trying to act less obnoxious - less the crowy 'Sherlock Holmes' performance. It felt like a new type of detecting might be being born. I was also intrigued that Sherlock's internalized a John-voice (though I guess we knew that from the Irene Adler episode, when he was talking to John after he left). I was more intrigued that the John-voice is so personal and critical, entirely irrelevant to the crime, though very relevant to Sherlock's relationships with other people.
The plot: lamentable. Sherlock's system of 'markers' makes very little sense - how (after being away for two years) can he be so arrogantly confident that these and only these are the people he needs to watch? Are we supposed to think that these people aren't on Mycroft's watch-list? Speaking of Mycroft's watch-list, why the heck was Mary the first to know John had been kidnapped from the doorstep of Baker Street? Unless Mycroft is deliberately not protecting him, this just seems ridiculous. And the whole sci fi bomb thing with its off-switch, where none of the stuff about Sherlock having limits had meaning - this just seems lazy and rude in terms of plot-writing.
I don't really have an explanation for what Sherlock was doing with the game of 'deductions' with Mycroft, once we found out that the hat wasn't his (I think despite Moffat's trickery, we can assume that Mycroft knew all the time that the hat wasn't Sherlock's).
'You missed his isolation.'
'I don't see it; maybe he doesn't mind being different, it doesn't mean he has to be isolated'
'Exactly - he's different, so what, why would he mind? Why would anyone mind?'
'I'm not lonely, Sherlock.'
'How would you know?'
What is Sherlock implying? That Mycroft minds being different? That he feels he 'has' to be isolated?
Mary: I really liked the actress, and I liked that when Sherlock 'reads' her she comes up as a complex person. We'll see how things go. I didn't like that Mrs. Hudson is such a caricature again. I thought it was unfair that they gave Molly such a boyfriend - or that they made her all about romance at all. I loved that she got to use her doctor/pathologist skills.
Martin Freeman: He seems to have been the only person who thought this might be a serious episode.
All in all: I think this was probably a train-wreck (har har) but I'm holding judgment until we get the next episode on Jan 5. What did you guys think??
* if what Sherlock tells to Anderson is true - that he and Mycroft had mapped out every contingency and carefully planned for his death and disappearance - then what he says to John at the end of Reichenbach Fall falls into this category of unnecessary John-manipulation, along with the Baskerville poisoning-attempt and the dinner and this train-scene. We always knew he survived, but I liked this scene a huge amount more when it seemed like Sherlock really had been out-played and that he was doing his best with a terrible set of circumstances. This episode implied that none of the stress Sherlock showed in Reichenbach Fall was genuine at all.
While we're at it: John and Sherlock. LBS has already talked about this in depth and there's nothing I can really add. John pretty heavily implies that he went through a serious and potentially pretty dangerous depressive episode after Sherlock's death (especially given we know he was suicidal in the Study in Pink). With that and the threats of heart attack in this episode - it's getting harder to believe that Sherlock is unaware of how much he's been inflicting on John. This is getting into a pretty dark place.