Sherlock Episode 2.3.3
Here it is! The Big Finale! The final half-hour of The Reichenbach Fall! Drama!
Sherlock 2.3.3.
So here we are. Moriarty’s trap is closing on Sherlock. He’s a fugitive from The Law, a desperate, discredited, haunted man. Where does one go in such a situation? Barts, of course. Because no one who still had a valid arrest warrant out for Sherlock would ever think of looking for him in one of his favorite hangouts in the entire city. And who should he find there, but Molly, who apparently does not have anywhere else to be after hours than hanging around the lab.
Sherlock makes some noises about how she does count, no, really, and he’s always trusted her, which is fine as far as it goes, except that it doesn’t quite stretch as far as “she’s capable of trusting him in return to do anything other than be an asshole to her.” But, despite all that, she’s still a sucker for Sherlock’s puppy-dog eyes as he tells her that he’s going to die. Well, yes. Technically, we’re all born to die, as Isaac Watts wrote, “The moment when our lives begin / we all begin to die” - what? Oh. Sherlock means imminently. In the next twenty-four hours. Okay. That changes things.
Molly, God love her, asks Sherlock what he needs. “You,” he says, looming over her, and staring at her with an intensity that adds the unspoken subtext, “with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.”
Meanwhile, John has turned up at the Diogenes Club. Mycroft doesn’t seem all that surprised to see him, not that John gives him a chance to say a word before launching into the schimpfung of all schimpfungs. As has been a subtheme of the show all along, John’s not stupid, and he’s figured out that all the background that Kitty Riley got from Moriarty about Sherlock could only have come from someone who knew Sherlock well enough either to live with him or be related to him. And John knows he didn’t sell Sherlock out . . . and there’s only one other character in the series besides Kitty Riley who’s had significant unsupervised time with Moriarty . . .
John isn’t quite as badass in his accusation of Mycroft as, say, Al Capone (who, truefax, once ordered the murder of one of my ancestors who had betrayed him, with a simple “You’re t’rough!”, a phrase which has ascended into family legend), but he does manage to cut to the heart of the matter, which is that Mycroft essentially took a swan dive into the Idiot Ball Pit and told Moriarty all about Sherlock, and didn’t realize that this was a big mistake until much later. Right. Okay. Title of “Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother” now automatically passes to this guy, and Mycroft, I and the entire cast of Blazing Saddles do declare that you are the leading asshole in the state!
Meanwhile, as daylight dawns through the windows, the victim of Mycroft’s assholery is sitting bouncing a rubber ball in the lab at Barts, possibly contemplating his amazing good fortune that, in a busy, working teaching hospital, no one has noticed a wanted fugitive hanging out in a working lab. John, who also seems to have the power to move unnoticed through the city, arrives at the lab at Sherlock’s summons, and they hit upon the brilliant idea to take Moriarty’s alleged computer key that allows the user to break into every system and crack the public records to re-connect Richard Brook and James Moriarty. I suspect that that’s highly unnecessary, given the Windows 95-esque computer security of, say, Baskerville, but whatever. They haven’t had any sleep, and they’re clearly not operating on all thrusters at the moment.
Panicked, sleep-deprived Sherlock comes up with An Idea, and, moments later, a Clever Plan to go with it. He texts Moriarty, inviting him to come to Barts. John tries to catch a nap, but is interrupted by a phone call informing him that Mrs. Hudson has been shot and is dying. He’s startled and horrified and doesn’t think to wonder why a) the paramedics, not hospital staff b) are calling him, not her sister or other registered next of kin. I mean, officially, she’s his landlady. I don’t get phone calls when my building manager is hurt. I just get e-mails from the housing office informing me that another building manager will be taking over for a few days.
Sherlock doesn’t seem especially fazed by this announcement, which should clue John in, but as I’ve previously noted, John is just as sleep-deprived as Sherlock, and just as prone to making bad decisions at the moment. So John snaps at Sherlock and stalks off to Mrs. Hudson’s side. Sherlock doesn’t mind seeing the back of him, because Moriarty texts to say that he’s okay and ready to play.
And there he is, in the sunshine, up on the rooftop of Barts, with a fisheye lens and the Bee Gees singing “Stayin’ Alive” to set the scene. Just as we start really getting down with disco fever, Moriarty starts talking. Alas.
It turns out that Moriarty is even more terminally bored than Sherlock is. Sherlock, at least, has his detective work, and his Science Montages, and a small, yet extremely devoted, circle of friends to play with. Moriarty has nothing but his obsession with Sherlock and the fact that, despite his desire to amuse himself with a crime organization, he’s not particularly good at the job, and has only managed to rise to the level of small-time boutique mobster. He blames his own lack of creativity on Sherlock being ordinary, and spins for a bit on that theme.
Sherlock gets sick of this and changes the topic to the mystery computer key, which, he claims, Moriarty transmitted to him by tapping out binary code with his fingers. Moriarty is further disappointed at this claim, because, as everyone who lives in the real world of multiple incompatible operating systems has long since figured out, this computer key code is a complete fantasy, and it isn’t even as creatively badass as what real IT guys can come up with when they’re pissed off. Moriarty’s triple break-in was accomplished the exact same way he accomplishes everything else, with an army of henchpersons abetted by the UK’s lack of RICO laws, and essentially Moriarty’s next few lines boil down to “So you see, Lone Star, that Evil will always triumph because Good is Dumb.”
Moriarty hints, and Sherlock picks up the hint, that what he wants now is for Sherlock to commit suicide by jumping off the roof of the hospital. They both peer over the edge to demonstrate what a long way down it is. In the process, they reveal . . . an empty street.
Um . . . where is everyone? Kitty Riley’s story, published in The Sun, one of the most famous UK tabloids, has had plenty of time to hit the news stands. Sherlock is not only so famous that he could barely get out his own door to testify at Moriarty’s trial without being mobbed by reporters, he’s also still running from Police Squad! and their arrest warrant. And he’s on the rooftop of a busy hospital in the heart of a major world city. How is it that there is neither a mob of paparazzi - the same people who made an art of hunting down Princess Diana, remember - nor Police Squad! leading the combined casts of The Bill, Law and Order: UK, and Inspector Lewis waiting to storm the doors of the hospital?
And, for that matter, how is it that John, also wanted by Police Squad!, is able to get a cab to his home, which turns out not to be under Police Squad! surveillance? It’s almost as though they decided that, of course there’s no point in keeping a suspect’s home under guard, or even under police tape, while that suspect is running around loose in London.
To the surprise only of John, Mrs. Hudson turns out to be alive and well and -- supervising home repairs? How did she manage to get a contractor out there so quickly? John, who must realize that the dance between homeowner and repair contractor is a long and delicate one, finally twigs that there is more going on here than he knows about. Fortunately, there’s another cab prowling Baker Street, and back to Barts he goes.
Sherlock and Moriarty are still arguing on the rooftop. Moriarty wants Sherlock to just jump already. Sherlock wants . . . um. It’s not clear what Sherlock wants. Moriarty has already admitted everything he’s done. If Sherlock were to call in Police Squad! right now, odds are that they could be well underway towards clearing things up by lunchtime. What’s Sherlock waiting around for? Well, why waste a good opportunity to be a drama queen? “You’re insane,” he informs Moriarty. Moriarty raises his hands to cue the backup chorus of the entire viewing audience to join in his rousing reply of “You’re just getting that now?”
And finally, out comes the threat that should have come out five minutes of screentime ago. Why should Sherlock listen to Moriarty and jump off this building? Because Moriarty has henchpersons standing by to kill John, Lestrade, and Mrs. Hudson if he doesn’t. Now, the last time we saw Moriarty hire snipers, he went for the el cheapo ones who couldn’t aim, but Sherlock doesn’t look like he’s willing to bet everyone’s life on Moriarty not having upgraded. Moriarty spells it out for him. Unless the henchpersons see Sherlock jump to his death, they will kill Sherlock’s friends, and nothing can stop them.
Sherlock takes in this threat, but doesn’t really process it. For instance, he doesn’t ask how the henchpersons covering, say, Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson (who are nowhere near Barts) will receive the information that Sherlock has or has not jumped. Is Moriarty planning to be the one to tell them? Is there a Chief Henchperson waiting to relay the message? Sherlock steps up onto the roof ledge, and why hasn’t anyone noticed them yet? Seriously - tabloid hero and victim, a wanted police fugitive, standing on the edge of a tall building? This is the sort of scene that should be attracting, if not paparazzi and Police Squad!, then at least a crowd of interested hecklers. Poor Sherlock. Standing there all dramatic, contemplating whether or not to jump to his death, and he doesn’t even get hecklers.
Sherlock asks for and receives a moment of privacy, which he does not use to text his friends to warn them that they are being overseen by snipers and maybe they want to duck and cover. Instead, he realizes that Moriarty does have the power to call the snipers off, and decides to concentrate on making Moriarty do just that. So he hops down off the ledge.
Now, if Moriarty were truly the ruthless criminal mastermind that he claims to be, if he really truly wanted Sherlock to jump, he would give the signal for a single henchperson to pop Lestrade, right then and there, as soon as Sherlock backed down. But, fortunately for Lestrade, Moriarty isn’t willing to go that far. He’d rather taunt Sherlock some more than actually see him dead.
Not that that’s not a good reason, mind you. Sherlock squeezes out a few more lines of high-quality drama queening, and if your main problem is boredom, Sherlock is providing excellently entertaining melodrama right now. He’s not quite at the level of “To the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee,” but he’s definitely working up to it.
But Moriarty turns the tables by deciding to follow my great-grandmother’s advice to always leave the party when you’re having the most fun, and . . . shoots himself. Um? He’s dead? Moriarty is dead? Is that indeed blood and brain matter pooling around his head? Will we never be plagued by his Bat-villain scheming and honey-roasted ham acting again? HUZZAH! HUZZAH! HUZZAH!
But, of course, this still leaves poor dumb Sherlock up there on the roof, with henchpersons still under orders to shoot his friends if he doesn’t jump. On which note . . . jumpin’ Jaysus on a pogo stick, how long have they been up there already? And the henchpersons still haven’t shot anyone? The great brain of Sherlock Holmes has apparently been shocked to a complete standstill, because this is a golden moment. The guy who’s paying the henchpersons has just blasted himself off this mortal coil. All bets are off. There has to be a henchperson watching Sherlock and relaying developments from Moriarty to the other henchpersons, and now, while that system is in the first moments of disruption, is the time to leap into action and alert Police Squad! already.
And, indeed, there is that Communications Henchperson . . . just setting up now? Oh. He’s been following John. And John is on his way back to Barts. It occurs to me that, of all the characters in the show, John is one who could probably do something about his assigned henchperson, but of course, he knows nothing, because Sherlock isn’t telling, because Sherlock’s brain has ground to a halt.
Sherlock steps up on the ledge again - still no hecklers - just as John’s cab arrives. Now he thinks to call John, lets him know that . . . oh, shit, he’s standing on the ledge, ready to jump. You can just feel John going on full, focused alert.
Sherlock and John have an intense, painful conversation. Both of them are clearly terrified of what Sherlock is proposing to do. Sherlock is trying his best to convince John that he really is the fraud that Kitty Riley claims he is, although his sobbing over the phone and John’s own inborn common sense are working against him. John is really showing the effects of being physically and mentally worn down by the events of the past twelve hours, as he can’t muster up anything to either talk Sherlock down from the ledge or find a way to summon some sort of help. They talk and talk and talk, and Sherlock cries, and John feeds him bite after bite of desperate logic, and Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman are acting the bejeezus out of this scene.
And a small part of me is marveling at the forbearance of the henchpersons. How long are they planning to give Sherlock here? How many chances, how many conversations, how many times to back off and step up and back off and step up, before they decide that he is or isn’t going to jump? Is it possible that Sherlock could, in fact, filibuster his own death?
Well, we’ll never know. Sherlock decides to play into Moriarty’s cold, dead hands, and steps off the building. He falls, flailing and struggling the whole way, and smashes onto the sidewalk. John screams his name, and then the editors do that trick where they mute out all sounds except the sound of a panicked heartbeat, and the handheld digital camera whips around, and the color has completely drained out of the scene, and the director and the editing team totally deserve all the awards for conveying the power, shock, and horror of the moment.
John stumbles toward Sherlock, only to be knocked down by a punk on a bike. By the time he picks himself up and makes his way over, a crowd has - finally! - gathered. John’s basic doctor-ness appears to be the only thing keeping him on his feet at the moment, as he attempts to push his way past the crowd and find Sherlock’s pulse. Whether or not he finds it, we don’t know - he’s looking for the radial pulse, which takes a bit of time and quiet to find, both of which are in short supply at the moment. And the crowd is trying to keep him away, even after he identifies himself as a doctor, and if he were in any kind of mental shape, he’d be wondering about that, but as it is, all he can see is Sherlock lying on the ground in a pool of his own blood.
John howls in pain as paramedics arrive and heave Sherlock onto a gurney. Part of John’s agony may be at having to watch this breach of procedure, since there is, at this point, no guarantee that the fall has, in fact, killed Sherlock. People have fallen from that kind of height and survived, but they need immediate medical attention, as well as proper emergency care, which is nowhere in evidence here. No one brings a backboard or a cervical collar or any equipment that might be useful in not injuring Sherlock any more than he already is. John collapses into someone’s arms as Sherlock is rolled onto his back, and John pleads to the Almighty, and just in case any of the viewing audience has missed that this scene of a man killing himself horribly in front of his very best friend is supposed to be sad, the violins go absolutely apeshit, and - really, show? Really? We get a long shot down from the rooftop, and two birds fly away. There’s subtle symbolism, and then there’s laying it on with a trowel, and then there’s parading it around with flags and a brass band, and I think I know where we’ve ended up at this point. And then it starts to rain.
The henchperson aiming at John (who looks like he was delivered straight from the casting agency’s Department Of Guys Who Should Be Playing East German Spies) puts his gun away, apparently fully satisfied, although I suspect that what’s really going on in his head is more on the order of “Well, shit, son, looks like you’re not getting that envelope full of grubby cash after all. I am through with this crap.”
It looks like the tabloid press finally got around to reporting on the death of their current darling, and Mycroft reads about it in the Diogenes Club. He sets the newspaper down and gives a sigh that expresses either deep, heart-rending grief or irritating intestinal gas.
John sits at home, barefoot, colors muted, staring at Sherlock’s empty chair.
And we’re back in the therapist’s office, finally having learned (TV Trope ahoy!) How We Got Here. And John still has nothing to say to her.
Some time later, John and Mrs. Hudson take flowers out to Sherlock’s grave. It’s clearly been a while, because the grave doesn’t look fresh, and there’s a nice headstone, which in my culture takes about a year to be put up, but maybe the Anglicans do things a bit faster. Mrs. Hudson doesn’t know what to do with Sherlock’s things, and John can’t even bear to be in the apartment. Mrs. Hudson tries to be angry at Sherlock instead of sad, and overshoots it a bit, in what is probably the best moment of subtle comedy that the series has produced.
She walks off to leave John alone with Sherlock. John makes a Moving Speech, summing up his relationship with Sherlock and asking him not to be dead. Martin Freeman plays it very well, but the speech doesn’t quite do it for me, mostly because I kind of suspect that most people don’t actually make speeches to dead people’s graves, so that whole genre of scene has a tang of Film Setup to it that distracts me. After he finishes talking, John cries for a few seconds, then gives a sharp military turn and walks away.
As he goes, the camera pans over to show . . . egads. Sherlock Holmes, alive and well, and watching this whole scene. It’s not like this ending was a complete surprise to anyone who knew even the basics of the Sherlock Holmes story. But it does set the scene rather well for what can only be the thrilling reunion show that will surely begin Series Three, in which Molly starts acting completely possessed, and Mycroft visits John for an intense but puzzling conversation, which leads John to defy orders, teaming up with Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson to steal the starship Enterprise and take Molly to the Genesis planet to collect Sherlock’s -- oh, wait. Sorry. That’s the plot to Star Trek III: The Search For Spock. Oh, well. I’m sure Moffat and Gatiss will come up with something at least as entertaining, if not as well stocked in the Klingon department.
So that’s that. The Reichenbach Fall. Possibly the single most anticipated, picked-over, analyzed, fretted-about episode of the entire series.
It’s definitely got a lot going for it. The entire cast are at the top of their game here. Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman stand out of course, and Martin Freeman takes that last ten minutes or so and just smashes it out of the park. But really, there’s not a bad performance in the whole episode. Even Andrew Scott’s hamminess works well with the material he’s given. The direction is excellent, as well. Toby Haynes really pulled out the stops for this one. Reichenbach looks gorgeous, keeps up a steady pace that never drags or seems particularly rushed. There’s as much said visually as verbally, which is always a plus. And the music has definitely improved since The Great Game.
On the other hand . . . look, there’s no way around this. This episode is badly written. The plot is about as sturdy as a wet Kleenex, the characters run around like chickens with their heads cut off, and the whole delicate castle could have crumbled to dust in a New York second had even the lowliest walk-on character thought to apply the merest ounce of the common sense that God gave a goat. It’s pretty clear that the whole convoluted storyline was intended to set up a situation in which Sherlock would be standing on top of a tall building saying a tearful goodbye to John before he jumped off. And that scene is done exquisitely well, which is why it’s even more of a shame that the seventy-five minutes of show that precede it don’t support it at all.
I kind of get the feeling that Thompson was given the episode title, and decided to interpret the phrase “The Reichenbach Fall” as a morality play about hubris and British celebrity culture, and pride goeth before a fall, and that sort of thing, and then he showed it to Moffat and Gatiss, and they said, “Er . . . very nice, very symbolic, great commentary on the character’s inherent flaws and the failings of the modern world, but we were looking for something a bit more . . . literal, perhaps? Like in the original Conan Doyle story?” And then Thompson said “Oops,” and went back and kind of wrote one in.
So Reichenbach isn’t the world’s best put-together episode of - well, anything. Two-thirds of it is bad TV, one third is great TV, which averages out to Average TV. But. Here’s what Reichenbach has going for it. It is the most Sherlock-y of all the Sherlock episodes. Everything you love and everything you hate about the series, everything that makes Sherlock itself, it’s all here in this episode.
It’s got emotion, it’s got fantastic performances, it’s got great cinematography, it’s got a sense of ill-defined foreboding, it’s got some snarky John-and-Sherlock humor, it’s got Police Squad! being very much themselves, all three of them, as individuals, it’s got Mrs. Hudson, it’s got Molly being adorkable, it’s got Mycroft and Moriarty, and a John-vs.-Mycroft showdown.
It’s got a badly-thought-out idiot plot, it’s got a metric fucktonne of WTF and [Insert Institution Here] Does Not Work That Way, it’s got Sherlock being an attractive nuisance and making the problem worse, it’s got Moriarty mugging for the camera, it’s pretentious as all outdoors, it’s got an inexplicable non-grasp of human psychology, it’s got the Steve-Thompson-mandated one scene that isn’t scored with “Yakety Sax” and really should be, it’s got wildly improbable Bond Villains as supporting Baddies.
Everything that is Sherlock is compressed into this one ninety-minute episode. For this one episode, objective quality doesn’t really seem to matter. It’s good, it’s bad, whatever. It is itself, and it is the show, in its purest distilled form. That is all.
Sherlock 2.3.3.
So here we are. Moriarty’s trap is closing on Sherlock. He’s a fugitive from The Law, a desperate, discredited, haunted man. Where does one go in such a situation? Barts, of course. Because no one who still had a valid arrest warrant out for Sherlock would ever think of looking for him in one of his favorite hangouts in the entire city. And who should he find there, but Molly, who apparently does not have anywhere else to be after hours than hanging around the lab.
Sherlock makes some noises about how she does count, no, really, and he’s always trusted her, which is fine as far as it goes, except that it doesn’t quite stretch as far as “she’s capable of trusting him in return to do anything other than be an asshole to her.” But, despite all that, she’s still a sucker for Sherlock’s puppy-dog eyes as he tells her that he’s going to die. Well, yes. Technically, we’re all born to die, as Isaac Watts wrote, “The moment when our lives begin / we all begin to die” - what? Oh. Sherlock means imminently. In the next twenty-four hours. Okay. That changes things.
Molly, God love her, asks Sherlock what he needs. “You,” he says, looming over her, and staring at her with an intensity that adds the unspoken subtext, “with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.”
Meanwhile, John has turned up at the Diogenes Club. Mycroft doesn’t seem all that surprised to see him, not that John gives him a chance to say a word before launching into the schimpfung of all schimpfungs. As has been a subtheme of the show all along, John’s not stupid, and he’s figured out that all the background that Kitty Riley got from Moriarty about Sherlock could only have come from someone who knew Sherlock well enough either to live with him or be related to him. And John knows he didn’t sell Sherlock out . . . and there’s only one other character in the series besides Kitty Riley who’s had significant unsupervised time with Moriarty . . .
John isn’t quite as badass in his accusation of Mycroft as, say, Al Capone (who, truefax, once ordered the murder of one of my ancestors who had betrayed him, with a simple “You’re t’rough!”, a phrase which has ascended into family legend), but he does manage to cut to the heart of the matter, which is that Mycroft essentially took a swan dive into the Idiot Ball Pit and told Moriarty all about Sherlock, and didn’t realize that this was a big mistake until much later. Right. Okay. Title of “Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother” now automatically passes to this guy, and Mycroft, I and the entire cast of Blazing Saddles do declare that you are the leading asshole in the state!
Meanwhile, as daylight dawns through the windows, the victim of Mycroft’s assholery is sitting bouncing a rubber ball in the lab at Barts, possibly contemplating his amazing good fortune that, in a busy, working teaching hospital, no one has noticed a wanted fugitive hanging out in a working lab. John, who also seems to have the power to move unnoticed through the city, arrives at the lab at Sherlock’s summons, and they hit upon the brilliant idea to take Moriarty’s alleged computer key that allows the user to break into every system and crack the public records to re-connect Richard Brook and James Moriarty. I suspect that that’s highly unnecessary, given the Windows 95-esque computer security of, say, Baskerville, but whatever. They haven’t had any sleep, and they’re clearly not operating on all thrusters at the moment.
Panicked, sleep-deprived Sherlock comes up with An Idea, and, moments later, a Clever Plan to go with it. He texts Moriarty, inviting him to come to Barts. John tries to catch a nap, but is interrupted by a phone call informing him that Mrs. Hudson has been shot and is dying. He’s startled and horrified and doesn’t think to wonder why a) the paramedics, not hospital staff b) are calling him, not her sister or other registered next of kin. I mean, officially, she’s his landlady. I don’t get phone calls when my building manager is hurt. I just get e-mails from the housing office informing me that another building manager will be taking over for a few days.
Sherlock doesn’t seem especially fazed by this announcement, which should clue John in, but as I’ve previously noted, John is just as sleep-deprived as Sherlock, and just as prone to making bad decisions at the moment. So John snaps at Sherlock and stalks off to Mrs. Hudson’s side. Sherlock doesn’t mind seeing the back of him, because Moriarty texts to say that he’s okay and ready to play.
And there he is, in the sunshine, up on the rooftop of Barts, with a fisheye lens and the Bee Gees singing “Stayin’ Alive” to set the scene. Just as we start really getting down with disco fever, Moriarty starts talking. Alas.
It turns out that Moriarty is even more terminally bored than Sherlock is. Sherlock, at least, has his detective work, and his Science Montages, and a small, yet extremely devoted, circle of friends to play with. Moriarty has nothing but his obsession with Sherlock and the fact that, despite his desire to amuse himself with a crime organization, he’s not particularly good at the job, and has only managed to rise to the level of small-time boutique mobster. He blames his own lack of creativity on Sherlock being ordinary, and spins for a bit on that theme.
Sherlock gets sick of this and changes the topic to the mystery computer key, which, he claims, Moriarty transmitted to him by tapping out binary code with his fingers. Moriarty is further disappointed at this claim, because, as everyone who lives in the real world of multiple incompatible operating systems has long since figured out, this computer key code is a complete fantasy, and it isn’t even as creatively badass as what real IT guys can come up with when they’re pissed off. Moriarty’s triple break-in was accomplished the exact same way he accomplishes everything else, with an army of henchpersons abetted by the UK’s lack of RICO laws, and essentially Moriarty’s next few lines boil down to “So you see, Lone Star, that Evil will always triumph because Good is Dumb.”
Moriarty hints, and Sherlock picks up the hint, that what he wants now is for Sherlock to commit suicide by jumping off the roof of the hospital. They both peer over the edge to demonstrate what a long way down it is. In the process, they reveal . . . an empty street.
Um . . . where is everyone? Kitty Riley’s story, published in The Sun, one of the most famous UK tabloids, has had plenty of time to hit the news stands. Sherlock is not only so famous that he could barely get out his own door to testify at Moriarty’s trial without being mobbed by reporters, he’s also still running from Police Squad! and their arrest warrant. And he’s on the rooftop of a busy hospital in the heart of a major world city. How is it that there is neither a mob of paparazzi - the same people who made an art of hunting down Princess Diana, remember - nor Police Squad! leading the combined casts of The Bill, Law and Order: UK, and Inspector Lewis waiting to storm the doors of the hospital?
And, for that matter, how is it that John, also wanted by Police Squad!, is able to get a cab to his home, which turns out not to be under Police Squad! surveillance? It’s almost as though they decided that, of course there’s no point in keeping a suspect’s home under guard, or even under police tape, while that suspect is running around loose in London.
To the surprise only of John, Mrs. Hudson turns out to be alive and well and -- supervising home repairs? How did she manage to get a contractor out there so quickly? John, who must realize that the dance between homeowner and repair contractor is a long and delicate one, finally twigs that there is more going on here than he knows about. Fortunately, there’s another cab prowling Baker Street, and back to Barts he goes.
Sherlock and Moriarty are still arguing on the rooftop. Moriarty wants Sherlock to just jump already. Sherlock wants . . . um. It’s not clear what Sherlock wants. Moriarty has already admitted everything he’s done. If Sherlock were to call in Police Squad! right now, odds are that they could be well underway towards clearing things up by lunchtime. What’s Sherlock waiting around for? Well, why waste a good opportunity to be a drama queen? “You’re insane,” he informs Moriarty. Moriarty raises his hands to cue the backup chorus of the entire viewing audience to join in his rousing reply of “You’re just getting that now?”
And finally, out comes the threat that should have come out five minutes of screentime ago. Why should Sherlock listen to Moriarty and jump off this building? Because Moriarty has henchpersons standing by to kill John, Lestrade, and Mrs. Hudson if he doesn’t. Now, the last time we saw Moriarty hire snipers, he went for the el cheapo ones who couldn’t aim, but Sherlock doesn’t look like he’s willing to bet everyone’s life on Moriarty not having upgraded. Moriarty spells it out for him. Unless the henchpersons see Sherlock jump to his death, they will kill Sherlock’s friends, and nothing can stop them.
Sherlock takes in this threat, but doesn’t really process it. For instance, he doesn’t ask how the henchpersons covering, say, Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson (who are nowhere near Barts) will receive the information that Sherlock has or has not jumped. Is Moriarty planning to be the one to tell them? Is there a Chief Henchperson waiting to relay the message? Sherlock steps up onto the roof ledge, and why hasn’t anyone noticed them yet? Seriously - tabloid hero and victim, a wanted police fugitive, standing on the edge of a tall building? This is the sort of scene that should be attracting, if not paparazzi and Police Squad!, then at least a crowd of interested hecklers. Poor Sherlock. Standing there all dramatic, contemplating whether or not to jump to his death, and he doesn’t even get hecklers.
Sherlock asks for and receives a moment of privacy, which he does not use to text his friends to warn them that they are being overseen by snipers and maybe they want to duck and cover. Instead, he realizes that Moriarty does have the power to call the snipers off, and decides to concentrate on making Moriarty do just that. So he hops down off the ledge.
Now, if Moriarty were truly the ruthless criminal mastermind that he claims to be, if he really truly wanted Sherlock to jump, he would give the signal for a single henchperson to pop Lestrade, right then and there, as soon as Sherlock backed down. But, fortunately for Lestrade, Moriarty isn’t willing to go that far. He’d rather taunt Sherlock some more than actually see him dead.
Not that that’s not a good reason, mind you. Sherlock squeezes out a few more lines of high-quality drama queening, and if your main problem is boredom, Sherlock is providing excellently entertaining melodrama right now. He’s not quite at the level of “To the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee,” but he’s definitely working up to it.
But Moriarty turns the tables by deciding to follow my great-grandmother’s advice to always leave the party when you’re having the most fun, and . . . shoots himself. Um? He’s dead? Moriarty is dead? Is that indeed blood and brain matter pooling around his head? Will we never be plagued by his Bat-villain scheming and honey-roasted ham acting again? HUZZAH! HUZZAH! HUZZAH!
But, of course, this still leaves poor dumb Sherlock up there on the roof, with henchpersons still under orders to shoot his friends if he doesn’t jump. On which note . . . jumpin’ Jaysus on a pogo stick, how long have they been up there already? And the henchpersons still haven’t shot anyone? The great brain of Sherlock Holmes has apparently been shocked to a complete standstill, because this is a golden moment. The guy who’s paying the henchpersons has just blasted himself off this mortal coil. All bets are off. There has to be a henchperson watching Sherlock and relaying developments from Moriarty to the other henchpersons, and now, while that system is in the first moments of disruption, is the time to leap into action and alert Police Squad! already.
And, indeed, there is that Communications Henchperson . . . just setting up now? Oh. He’s been following John. And John is on his way back to Barts. It occurs to me that, of all the characters in the show, John is one who could probably do something about his assigned henchperson, but of course, he knows nothing, because Sherlock isn’t telling, because Sherlock’s brain has ground to a halt.
Sherlock steps up on the ledge again - still no hecklers - just as John’s cab arrives. Now he thinks to call John, lets him know that . . . oh, shit, he’s standing on the ledge, ready to jump. You can just feel John going on full, focused alert.
Sherlock and John have an intense, painful conversation. Both of them are clearly terrified of what Sherlock is proposing to do. Sherlock is trying his best to convince John that he really is the fraud that Kitty Riley claims he is, although his sobbing over the phone and John’s own inborn common sense are working against him. John is really showing the effects of being physically and mentally worn down by the events of the past twelve hours, as he can’t muster up anything to either talk Sherlock down from the ledge or find a way to summon some sort of help. They talk and talk and talk, and Sherlock cries, and John feeds him bite after bite of desperate logic, and Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman are acting the bejeezus out of this scene.
And a small part of me is marveling at the forbearance of the henchpersons. How long are they planning to give Sherlock here? How many chances, how many conversations, how many times to back off and step up and back off and step up, before they decide that he is or isn’t going to jump? Is it possible that Sherlock could, in fact, filibuster his own death?
Well, we’ll never know. Sherlock decides to play into Moriarty’s cold, dead hands, and steps off the building. He falls, flailing and struggling the whole way, and smashes onto the sidewalk. John screams his name, and then the editors do that trick where they mute out all sounds except the sound of a panicked heartbeat, and the handheld digital camera whips around, and the color has completely drained out of the scene, and the director and the editing team totally deserve all the awards for conveying the power, shock, and horror of the moment.
John stumbles toward Sherlock, only to be knocked down by a punk on a bike. By the time he picks himself up and makes his way over, a crowd has - finally! - gathered. John’s basic doctor-ness appears to be the only thing keeping him on his feet at the moment, as he attempts to push his way past the crowd and find Sherlock’s pulse. Whether or not he finds it, we don’t know - he’s looking for the radial pulse, which takes a bit of time and quiet to find, both of which are in short supply at the moment. And the crowd is trying to keep him away, even after he identifies himself as a doctor, and if he were in any kind of mental shape, he’d be wondering about that, but as it is, all he can see is Sherlock lying on the ground in a pool of his own blood.
John howls in pain as paramedics arrive and heave Sherlock onto a gurney. Part of John’s agony may be at having to watch this breach of procedure, since there is, at this point, no guarantee that the fall has, in fact, killed Sherlock. People have fallen from that kind of height and survived, but they need immediate medical attention, as well as proper emergency care, which is nowhere in evidence here. No one brings a backboard or a cervical collar or any equipment that might be useful in not injuring Sherlock any more than he already is. John collapses into someone’s arms as Sherlock is rolled onto his back, and John pleads to the Almighty, and just in case any of the viewing audience has missed that this scene of a man killing himself horribly in front of his very best friend is supposed to be sad, the violins go absolutely apeshit, and - really, show? Really? We get a long shot down from the rooftop, and two birds fly away. There’s subtle symbolism, and then there’s laying it on with a trowel, and then there’s parading it around with flags and a brass band, and I think I know where we’ve ended up at this point. And then it starts to rain.
The henchperson aiming at John (who looks like he was delivered straight from the casting agency’s Department Of Guys Who Should Be Playing East German Spies) puts his gun away, apparently fully satisfied, although I suspect that what’s really going on in his head is more on the order of “Well, shit, son, looks like you’re not getting that envelope full of grubby cash after all. I am through with this crap.”
It looks like the tabloid press finally got around to reporting on the death of their current darling, and Mycroft reads about it in the Diogenes Club. He sets the newspaper down and gives a sigh that expresses either deep, heart-rending grief or irritating intestinal gas.
John sits at home, barefoot, colors muted, staring at Sherlock’s empty chair.
And we’re back in the therapist’s office, finally having learned (TV Trope ahoy!) How We Got Here. And John still has nothing to say to her.
Some time later, John and Mrs. Hudson take flowers out to Sherlock’s grave. It’s clearly been a while, because the grave doesn’t look fresh, and there’s a nice headstone, which in my culture takes about a year to be put up, but maybe the Anglicans do things a bit faster. Mrs. Hudson doesn’t know what to do with Sherlock’s things, and John can’t even bear to be in the apartment. Mrs. Hudson tries to be angry at Sherlock instead of sad, and overshoots it a bit, in what is probably the best moment of subtle comedy that the series has produced.
She walks off to leave John alone with Sherlock. John makes a Moving Speech, summing up his relationship with Sherlock and asking him not to be dead. Martin Freeman plays it very well, but the speech doesn’t quite do it for me, mostly because I kind of suspect that most people don’t actually make speeches to dead people’s graves, so that whole genre of scene has a tang of Film Setup to it that distracts me. After he finishes talking, John cries for a few seconds, then gives a sharp military turn and walks away.
As he goes, the camera pans over to show . . . egads. Sherlock Holmes, alive and well, and watching this whole scene. It’s not like this ending was a complete surprise to anyone who knew even the basics of the Sherlock Holmes story. But it does set the scene rather well for what can only be the thrilling reunion show that will surely begin Series Three, in which Molly starts acting completely possessed, and Mycroft visits John for an intense but puzzling conversation, which leads John to defy orders, teaming up with Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson to steal the starship Enterprise and take Molly to the Genesis planet to collect Sherlock’s -- oh, wait. Sorry. That’s the plot to Star Trek III: The Search For Spock. Oh, well. I’m sure Moffat and Gatiss will come up with something at least as entertaining, if not as well stocked in the Klingon department.
So that’s that. The Reichenbach Fall. Possibly the single most anticipated, picked-over, analyzed, fretted-about episode of the entire series.
It’s definitely got a lot going for it. The entire cast are at the top of their game here. Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman stand out of course, and Martin Freeman takes that last ten minutes or so and just smashes it out of the park. But really, there’s not a bad performance in the whole episode. Even Andrew Scott’s hamminess works well with the material he’s given. The direction is excellent, as well. Toby Haynes really pulled out the stops for this one. Reichenbach looks gorgeous, keeps up a steady pace that never drags or seems particularly rushed. There’s as much said visually as verbally, which is always a plus. And the music has definitely improved since The Great Game.
On the other hand . . . look, there’s no way around this. This episode is badly written. The plot is about as sturdy as a wet Kleenex, the characters run around like chickens with their heads cut off, and the whole delicate castle could have crumbled to dust in a New York second had even the lowliest walk-on character thought to apply the merest ounce of the common sense that God gave a goat. It’s pretty clear that the whole convoluted storyline was intended to set up a situation in which Sherlock would be standing on top of a tall building saying a tearful goodbye to John before he jumped off. And that scene is done exquisitely well, which is why it’s even more of a shame that the seventy-five minutes of show that precede it don’t support it at all.
I kind of get the feeling that Thompson was given the episode title, and decided to interpret the phrase “The Reichenbach Fall” as a morality play about hubris and British celebrity culture, and pride goeth before a fall, and that sort of thing, and then he showed it to Moffat and Gatiss, and they said, “Er . . . very nice, very symbolic, great commentary on the character’s inherent flaws and the failings of the modern world, but we were looking for something a bit more . . . literal, perhaps? Like in the original Conan Doyle story?” And then Thompson said “Oops,” and went back and kind of wrote one in.
So Reichenbach isn’t the world’s best put-together episode of - well, anything. Two-thirds of it is bad TV, one third is great TV, which averages out to Average TV. But. Here’s what Reichenbach has going for it. It is the most Sherlock-y of all the Sherlock episodes. Everything you love and everything you hate about the series, everything that makes Sherlock itself, it’s all here in this episode.
It’s got emotion, it’s got fantastic performances, it’s got great cinematography, it’s got a sense of ill-defined foreboding, it’s got some snarky John-and-Sherlock humor, it’s got Police Squad! being very much themselves, all three of them, as individuals, it’s got Mrs. Hudson, it’s got Molly being adorkable, it’s got Mycroft and Moriarty, and a John-vs.-Mycroft showdown.
It’s got a badly-thought-out idiot plot, it’s got a metric fucktonne of WTF and [Insert Institution Here] Does Not Work That Way, it’s got Sherlock being an attractive nuisance and making the problem worse, it’s got Moriarty mugging for the camera, it’s pretentious as all outdoors, it’s got an inexplicable non-grasp of human psychology, it’s got the Steve-Thompson-mandated one scene that isn’t scored with “Yakety Sax” and really should be, it’s got wildly improbable Bond Villains as supporting Baddies.
Everything that is Sherlock is compressed into this one ninety-minute episode. For this one episode, objective quality doesn’t really seem to matter. It’s good, it’s bad, whatever. It is itself, and it is the show, in its purest distilled form. That is all.