I am Sherlocked: His Last Vow

 

His Last Vow.

I’ve been looking forward to reviewing this episode. Actually, I’ve been looking forward to watching it, review or no review. Why?

Because this episode is the peak of Sherlock drama. It is the most “Sherlock” that Sherlock gets.

And that’s…. not necessarily a bad thing?

Or is it…

OK, I have a strong feeling that my memories of this episode might be a teensy bit rose tinted.

There’s only one way to find out the truth of this episode. So, is it fantastic? Or fantastically awful…

 

We begin with an introduction to Charles Augusts Magnussen.

I still don’t know why he is called Charles Augusts Magnussen. The character he draws inspiration from is the blackmailer Charles Augusts Milverton. I think they could… probably have kept the same name?

Anyway, for the purposes of this review, I will call him CAM.

CAM is at a hearing, discussing his “influence” over the British Prime Minister with a committee. CAM insists he has no influence at all, but the committee won’t let him get away with that, so…

CAM puts on his glasses.

You know how, in the final episode of the last series, I remarked on how irritating it is to be directly lied to by the editing?

Yeah. They do it again here. When CAM puts on his glasses, we see his point of view. Lines of text in a computer-like format pop up, displaying information about the people on the committee, and their “pressure points”.

We later find out that CAM is actually basically just a genius who uses the same trick as Sherlock (a mind palace) to remember things.

However, the viewer is clearly meant to believe that his glasses are somehow the store of that information, given the way it’s displayed (including, like, loading screens, and references to other files, which are things we never see in Sherlock’s mind palace).

Anyway, CAM leaves the committee and returns to his home. Once there, we see him walking down a flight of stairs into his basement. Again, we later find out that this is all in his mind, and again, the editing is clearly designed to make us think that it is real.

I mean… sure. Fine. But again, this is a CRIME show. The whole point is that the audience get a chance to solve the crime alongside the investigator, and when we’re fed inaccurate information…

CAM flips through some files to find blackmail material on Lady Smallwood, the chair of the committee. Then he pops over to see Lady Smallwood. He is aggressively familiar, grasping her hand, smelling her wrist…  I have to congratulate the actors involved here. I am truly, utterly disgusted by CAM. He delivers a blackmail threat.

Oh… oh no.

“Your hand is sweating”

“I have a condition”

“It’s disgusting.”

Can we stop giving the villains in… like, any story ever, random medical conditions to mark them out as “evil” and “disgusting”? Because.. you know, real people actually have those conditions?

Now, I’m not saying that giving fictional characters real health problems is wrong, far from it. I’m just saying that, all too often, these conditions are given to the villains alone. They are framed in such a way as to make them seem creepy, without recognising the actual impact that the condition can have on someone’s life.

General rule here, if you can’t make a character seem creepy without giving them a real medical complaint, you probably need to go back to the drawing board. And if you’re going to give a character a medical condition, maybe consider if your portrayal of the condition is going to make the lives of people in the real world living with the same problem better or worse.

Anyway. Smallwood realises that she can’t disobey CAM. CAM tells her that he “owns” her. Then he licks the side of her face. She is too afraid of upsetting him to do anything.

We see her on the way home, deciding to go and visit Sherlock. The only Man in England that might be willing to go toe to toe with CAM.

 

Anyway, we cut to John in bed with Mary, having bad dreams. He is woken up by a neighbour knocking on the door.

Here begins a brief reference to the beginning of the original story “The man with the twisted lip”, which also begins with John being asked by a neighbour to go and fetch her relative from a drug den.

And John, being John, goes. Of course.

I mean, as the nightmares are never mentioned again, I suppose we are just…. Brushing off this reveal that he is still struggling with PTSD?

Amazing how it basically is never shown to have any effect on his life.

John goes to pick up his neighbour. Mary points out that John is acting out of character.

That’s… true, actually. John has never been established to be particularly caring or supportive. I can’t really picture him being the guy that would be friends with the family next door, let alone be the person they would go to for help.

Poor John, and his under-developed character that makes it difficult to even tell what is “in character” for him.

Mary insists on going with him, but stays in the car. John walks in, taking… um…. Taking a tire iron with him.

John, you realise that that means that, if you commit a crime in there, you could be considered to have pre-meditated it? Seriously, why is he doing this again?

So John walks into the abandoned house being used a drug den, pushing his way past the doorman. When he is told to leave, the doorman threatens him with a knife.

John is…. Epic here. He calmly walks up to him, disarms the guy and smashes him against the wall before threatening him with his own knife. He also sprains the guy’s wrist.

“I’m a doctor. I know how to sprain people”

Anyway, the guy tells John where his neighbour will be.

So, all in all…. I mean, he was threatened, but I can’t help but feel that John was spoiling for a fight there. He definitely escalated, rather than de-escalated, and then he just turns his back on the guy he just assaulted (who could just… pick up the knife again and come at him).

So, in terms of coolness, John Watson scores 9/10. In terms of practicality, ethics and every other measure… maybe a 3.4/10?

Anyway, he finds his neighbour, and….. Sherlock.

So that’s good.

Anyway, John and Sherlock have a shouting match as they leave the building. John thinks Sherlock has been using drugs, Sherlock insists he was “under cover” on a case.

Later we find out that Sherlock was trying to trick CAM into thinking that drugs would be a pressure point for him, but given that he ODs next episode…. Maybe not?

The doorman guy also comes up to the car, and asks for a lift because of his sprained arm.

John takes them all to the hospital, and asks Molly to run a drugs test.

Which… I think comes back very positive, given that Molly immediately slaps Sherlock in the face. She demands that he apologise for letting his friends down (nice way of handing your addict friend who’s relapsed, Molly). Sherlock instead says that he’s sorry Molly’s engagement is over.

Because Sherlock, high or not high, is an asshole.

Sherlock tries to prove that he’s still on top of things (despite, you know, using recreational drugs) by deducing things about John. Only the doorman guy (who Molly is… bandaging? For some reason? Maybe if you’re going to insist the guy has a sprain…. You should give him the correct treatment for a sprain? And why is he still here, anyway?) wants to hear more.

Sherlock counter-attacks John by saying that he is addicted to violence. Anyway, turns out the doorman guy is a amateur deducer, using similar techniques to Sherlock.

Turns out his name is Bill Wiggins. So… looks like he might be becoming a returning character.

Sigh.

Anyway, Sherlock is over the moon, because he thinks his drug habit will be in the news.

Mycroft, turns out, has popped over for a visit. He is also disappointed at Sherlock, and he demands to know where Sherlock keeps his stash. He… also brought Anderson, and some of Anderson’s “Sherlock Fan Club”. To hunt through the flat. It looks like the stash is in his bedroom.

To stop Mycroft berating him, Sherlock tells him that he is going after CAM, and so the drug taking is for the case.

OK, so…. The original Sherlock Holmes used drugs explicitly when he was not on a case. It’s like, for him, his brain and his deductions sometimes become too much. If he has nothing to occupy himself, he takes drugs to dull everything down, and to stop his mind from buzzing.

Sherlock taking drugs while he is on a case is… just contradictory. Pretending to, sure. But actually having a stash, testing positive… it makes no sense! Completely out of character!

Once Mycroft hears CAM’s name, he turns and threatens Anderson and the other fans, sending them out of the flat. Mycroft is, according to Sherlock, under CAM’s thumb. He disgusts Sherlock to the point that he puts Mycroft into an arm lock. When he lets him go, John tells Mycroft just to leave. And… Mycroft does.

Anyway, Sherlock tells John that he’s meeting CAM in three hours.

Great time to be high then, Sherlock.

He invites John to be part of the case, despite admitting how dangerous it is.

You know how I often talk about Sherlock using people? He flirts with Molly to get her to do things for him, he pushes Mycroft away whenever he tries to help, knowing that he will come running back…

I think he does it with John, too. John, as portrayed in this series, is an adrenaline junky of the worst kind. He’s an ex-soldier who brought the war home with him, and deals with it by putting himself in increasingly dangerous situations.

I mean, sometimes. Frankly his character is highly inconsistent. But when it is true, it seems that Sherlock often uses his knowledge that John is after adventure and action to draw him into things.

This is possibly the best example. Sherlock is going after a man who he knows is incredibly dangerous. He knows John is newly married. He knows he has a child on the way. And yet he dangles the bait of action on front of him. Instead of saying “this is too dangerous, keep out”, he pulls John into it, putting his, and Mary’s, lives in danger in the process.

Um, so… anyway.

You know I said that Sherlock stopped Mycroft from going into his bedroom? Turns out… it wasn’t drugs that he was keeping in there. It was Janine, Mary’s maid of honour from the wedding.

So this is a thing, now. Actually, in the Charles Augustus Milverton story, Sherlock does woo a member of Milverton’s household staff in order to gain access to his house, but he never takes things too far. It’s something that he and Watson acknowledge is undesirable in the extreme, and were there less at stake he would never do it.

In this version, obviously Sherlock is basically fine with manipulating people for his own ends, so it’s totally fine.

Anyway, um… she goes to… join Sherlock in the bath….

So, to clarify, Sherlock left his girlfriend at home while he went to a drug den to get high, then returned home to find her hiding in his room from his brother…

Anyway. Janine leaves, and Sherlock explains to John how disgusting CAM is. I suppose he needs to build him up as a suitably awful villain, as this is the finale of the season.

Anyway, just as Sherlock is going through this, guess who shows up?

CAM! Of course. And couple of bodyguards. They search John, find the tire iron and flick knife from earlier (Um… oops), but don’t comment on it or anything.

Magnussen basically spends a few minutes insisting that the flat is his “office”, implying that he owns Sherlock, John, and basically everything else that he wants.

Meanwhile, he’s “reading” a list of Sherlock’s pressure points.

And yes, when he’s asked what he’s doing, again, he says “reading”. Another trick used to make the audience think he’s got a teeny computer in his glasses.

Also, the list of things he’s reading does look impressively long, but actually it’s a small number of items repeated.

In case you’re interested…:

John Watson

Irene Adler

Jim Moriarty

Redbeard

Hounds of the Baskerville (I… am confused by this one. Definitely no “S” on “Baskerville”, so…)

Opium

 

So… interesting. The thing he picks out is “Redbeard”.

Now, given that we later discover “Redbeard” was not Sherlock’s dog, but actually his pet name for a childhood friend, this does raise the question of… how does CAM know that name? And does he ACTUALLY know what it means?

Questions that are never answered.

Anyway, Sherlock asks for the return of Lady Smallwood’s letters, and CAM… urinates in his fireplace.

To show off his power, obviously. But still. Gross. Then he basically says “no, I’m keeping the letters”, shows Sherlock the letters in his pocket, then leaves.

John is kind of shellshocked, but Sherlock is spinning. He explains his plan, now that he knows CAM has the letters in London, he’s going to break into his office and steal them.

And….. because he doesn’t care about John, he invites him along too.

We catch up with them later that day, popping in to visit CAM. Well, his office. And by visit, I mean “break in”.

They actually use a relatively clever plan, wiping a security card, so that the system is confused, and calls in a real person to confirm the visitor’s identity.

That real person…. As it happens…. Is Janine.

His motives are revealed, and the lengths he’s prepared to go to exposed, as he proposes marriage to Janine over the camera system.

She lets him up.

Can I just say, this is the third time Sherlock has manipulated a woman’s emotions for him for his own benefit? Molly, Irene and Janine. All victims of his big brain and sharp cheek-bones.

What a nice, kind person.

But when they arrive in the office, Janine has been knocked on the back of the head. So have the security personnel. Jon starts giving first aid, while Sherlock tries to figure out what’s been going on.

He smells perfume, the same perfume that Mary, and Lady Smallwood wear. Coincidentally.

Sherlock tracks down CAM, who is being held at gunpoint by the invader. Sherlock deduces that it is Lady Smallwood, from the perfume smell.

Incorrectly.

It’s actually Mary.

Why Mary didn’t kill CAM long before Sherlock came in… I don’t know. I mean, she explicitly broke in to kill him, after all.

Mary points a gun at Sherlock, while Sherlock wonders why he didn’t notice earlier.

Yeah. Good question, Sherlock.

He tells Mary that John is downstairs, and CAM realises that Mary won’t kill him if it will incriminate her husband. Mary threatens to shoot Sherlock if he takes another step forwards. Sherlock… takes a step forwards, and Mary shoots him.

And thus, it begins. One of the coolest, most ridiculous things that I have ever seen on TV.

And I absolutely love it.

Mostly.

Sort of.

After Sherlock is shot, we dive into his mind palace. He imagines various people talking to him, helping him to dig through what’s happened. To try and find a way to survive.

Apparently, he has three seconds of consciousness to use to save his life. He decides that blood loss will be what kills him, so he needs to decide which way to fall to put pressure on the wound. He deduces that the bullet is still inside his body, no exit hole, so he needs to fall backwards.

Because… the bullet is stopping the blood flowing out of the wound, so he needs to make sure he doesn’t dislodge it….

I’m vaguely unconvinced that the chance of dislodging the bullet falling backwards is less than that falling forwards….

They also argue that “gravity” will help stop blood loss if he lies on his back. I mean…. Again, probably not. The blood vessels that are bleeding will continue to bleed anyway. I can’t imagine that gravity would actually make much difference at all.

Anyway, Sherlock falls. Inside his mind palace, he’s “going into shock”.

“That’s the next thing that is going to kill you” says Molly.

This has always made me titter a bit.

Basically, because “Shock” is a medical term, with a highly specific meaning. What they’re saying here is that Sherlock is “going into shock”, by which they mean panicking, and he needs to calm down to save his life.

So yes, after a gunshot wound like this, it’s quite likely that the patient will go into shock. To be precise, hypovolaemic shock, meaning that there is not enough blood left to perfuse the organs adequately.

Would “calming down” fix this, as depicted here? The answer is fairly obviously…. No.

I mean, if Sherlock can stay calm, he might decrease his heart rate a little, and therefore slow the rate at which blood is draining out of his circulatory system. There’s another side to it though. If you are hypovolaemic, your heart needs to beat faster in order to push the small volume of blood you have left around to your organs, in particular, your brain.

Anyway… Sherlock “cures his shock” by finding a memory of Redbeard… his pet dog. (Until next series, anyway).  

Next step. Apparently, “without the shock, you’re going to feel the pain”.

Um…………………….

I mean, Sherlock is still going into hypovolaemic shock, and no, hypovolaemic shock doesn’t stop pain.

So I am confused.

 Sherlock dives through his mind palace looking for a way to “control the pain”.

I mean…. No? He’s literally been shot. There’s nothing that Sherlock can do consciously to make that feel better. And he doesn’t really have time to, he’s only got three seconds of consciousness, remember?

But inside Sherlock’s mind palace, we see him confronting Jim Moriarty, chained up in a padded cell. Sherlock asks how he never felt pain. Jim says that he always feels it, but “you don’t have to fear it”.

I mean…. I’m really not sure if this is helping? But anyway, carry on with your three second long therapy session.

John shows up. His first question is “who shot him?” He starts to give first aid, someone calls an ambulance.

Anyway, we skip forwards to Sherlock being on the ambulance. Inside his mind palace, he’s still being taunted by Jim.

And…

Ooh.

There it is!

The film makers favourite. The flatline.

This is one of the most commonly occurring medical misconceptions in TV and film. The flatline. Your patient, in whatever situation, is dying. Their “heart stops”. They flatline. Then the magic pads appear, a jolt of electricity passes through the heart, and……

Beep. Beep. Beep. The heart starts again.

We all know this scene. We’ve seen it so many times.

And I am here to tell you that it is totally, TOTALLY wrong.

Defibrillation, the passing of an electric current through the heart, cannot restart a stopped heart. All it can do is “reset” the heart when it is beating in an unsustainable rhythm.

There are two kinds of rhythm that the heart can be in that are “shockable”, ie where shocking the heart stands a chance of putting it back into a life sustaining rhythm. These are ventricular tachycardia, (sometimes called V. Tach), and ventricular fibrillation (V. fib). In these cases, the heart is working really, really hard to get blood flowing around the body, but it’s out of sync with itself. Beating too fast, too irregularly to actually shift any blood. If you shock the heart, you trigger all it’s circuits at once. The heart takes a moment to recover, then can sometimes start beating normally again.

If someone’s heart trace shows a flatline, the heart is no longer moving at all. There’s nothing to reset. If someone has flatlined, defibrillation will not save them.

Anyway, Sherlock is suddenly, magically, in theatre, still flatlined.

Let’s break down some of the things that they’ve done for him so far. (ignoring the fact that his heart has supposedly stopped). He’s been intubated, there’s a tube going down into his lungs to breathe for him. This is connected to a ventilator. He has three bags of fluids hanging. Two are blood products (which is appropriate, given the amount of blood he’s lost), another is probably a salty water solution of some kind.

Now, what’s missing…. Hmmmm…..

Maybe, if he’s flatlined, someone should be doing CPR? I mean, this could be happening after his heart has started again, but…

Anyway, back to Jim. He goads Sherlock, saying that “John Watson is in danger”. This sparks life back into Sherlock. He thumps himself in the chest, and…. Starts…. His heart……?

Yeah, cause death is basically optional. If you’re desperate enough to live, you can survive… literally anything.

Apparently.

So the first heart beat reappears on the monitor, Sherlock’s finger twitches…The surgeon looks around in surprise…

Sherlock twitches his finger again, people dive towards him, starting to… adjust lights, and stuff? Someone feels for his carotid pulse…… his eyes open.

Look. I’m not an anaesthetist. But generally speaking, people opening their eyes and moving… suggests that they haven’t been given enough anaesthetic? Normally not a good thing.

Anyway, I so intensely confused by the timeline here. The way it’s cut, it looks like Sherlock flatlined in the ambulance, they took him into theatre anyway, they stopped chest compressions… but then his heart started beating, he started moving, and everyone dived into action to try and save his life.

I think…?

Look, who cares about medical accuracy?

 

(I do. I care about medical accuracy. But not when it gets in the way of a cool sequence).

From a medical perspective, this makes no sense at all. But it is just…. Amazing. So much drama. So many call-backs. I didn’t know that I needed to know the answer to the question “What happens inside the brain of a genius when they are shot?”, but, turns out, I did.

That was just… cool. And that’s OK.

But… there’s a problem.

I almost hate myself for bringing it up, but… I can’t review this episode without mentioning it.

Mary shoots Sherlock. She shoots him in the chest, probably around the level of the fourth or fifth intercostal space (inbetween the ribs), slightly to the right of the sternum

There’s a problem.

Mary deliberately tried not to kill Sherlock when she shot him.

And yet she shot him in the chest.

Firstly, why did she need to shoot him at all? I’m pretty sure she could have got him to play dead, or something. Or, she could have pistol-whipped him, as she did CAM and the others.

Secondly, if she did need to shoot him, why not shoot him in his leg? There’s a nice big muscle bulk there, that, yes, can still bleed catastrophically, but still, it’s better than being shot in the chest.

But no. Mary shoots Sherlock in the chest. At a very particular point in the chest.

So, what is she going to hit?

Now, I’m pretty sure she’s aimed to go between the ribs here. How nice of her. So the bullet will pass through the skin, through the subcutaneous fat, and between the ribs. On the way, it might nick an intercostal artery. After that, Sherlock might be lucky. It might hit his lung, tearing through the large vessels, the airways, causing a severe bleed. That blood will then collect around the lung, causing it to collapse. It might also create a sort of valve out of lung tissue, creating a pneumothorax (whereby air surrounds the lung, also causing it to collapse).

Basically, down to one working lung, lots of blood pooling in his chest.

And that’s a “best case” scenario, whereby no shards of broken rib are sent flying into his heart, and where the major blood vessels coming off the heart are avoided.

But there’s an even worse “worst case scenario” than that.

Let’s talk about the human heart. Now, we normally talk about the human heart being on the left side of the chest, but… actually that’s not quite true. It actually sits in the centre of the chest, under the sternum, and only slightly offset to the left.

And because the sternum is narrower than the heart, the heart pokes out a little from under its bony protection. Mostly, this is on the left but…

There’s a bit of heart the right atrium, that sits just to the right of the sternum. Almost exactly where Mary shoots Sherlock.

In short, Mary has not just shot Sherlock unnecessarily. She has picked a place to shoot him whereby she might damage his heart as well as one of his lungs.

But this is all hypothesis, of course. We can’t actually know what organ Mary hit, or what damage she did….

But we can tell that it was very, very serious. Why? Because Sherlock had only three seconds of consciousness before the blood loss made him lose consciousness.

Actually, kind of getting a sense of déjà vu from the last episode here.

Basically, if Sherlock was injured badly enough that he would lose consciousness in seconds, he was definitely injured well enough that he might die as a result.

In fact, his heart did stop as a result of this injury.

So Mary, when you go and see Sherlock and chat happily about how you shot him in a way that you knew he could survive… just remember that he was temporarily dead as a result of this injury.

There is no “safe” way of shooting anyone, anywhere.

OK?

Anyway, after basically killing Sherlock, Mary (kindly) goes to visit him in hospital. To tell Sherlock not to tell John that it was her who shot him.

Anyway. Presumably several days later, Janine visits Sherlock. She has decided to profit off their fake relationship, but Sherlock doesn’t mind. I mean, it would be fairly hypocritical of him to, wouldn’t it?

Anyway, apparently she did mind a bit though, she turned his morphine pump off.

Also, Janine takes this opportunity to make it clear that she and Sherlock never had sex.

I… still don’t know why they decided to make that clear. I mean, does it matter?

Anyway, Sherlock turns his own morphine supply off, so that he can think more clearly.

Interesting. So taking drugs earlier, while on a case, was fine, but now that he’s in pain… not fine?

Fun fact, pain also has a massive effect on your ability to think clearly and concentrate.

But he decides better to be befuddled by pain than by drugs, so…

Anyway, Lestrade pops by to interview Sherlock. But… Sherlock has climbed out of a window, apparently.

Great time to go on the run.

John asks everyone who would know where he might find Sherlock, but Mary gets there first.

Or rather, Sherlock finds Mary, and invites her in.

After projecting her face onto the outside of the building.

Stylish.

Sherlock reveals that he knows Mary is using a stolen identity. We get loads of flashbacks to the “hints” that were dropped earlier.

I mean, I still don’t think that there were actually enough hints dropped to male anyone thing…. “Hmm, maybe Mary is an assassin?”

Anyway, Mary proves how good a shot she is. And Sherlock says that she “failed to make a kill shot”.

I mean, she could have shot him in the left ventricle, I suppose. Or the brain. But heart, lungs, major arteries…

What exactly do you count as a “kill shot”, Sherlock? Because maybe the fact that your HEART STOPPED should be taken into consideration????

But yeah, apparently, it wasn’t enough to kill Sherlock. It was “surgery”.

Hmm.

Well, Sherlock decides to take Mary’s case, but also reveals that John had been listening to the conversation all along.

This is actually a really nicely framed piece. Again, acting is fantastic.

Anyway, time for Christmas! At the Holmes family house!

Mrs and Mr Holmes, Mycroft, Sherlock, Mary, John and Bill Wiggins.

Delightful.

Anyway, it’s appropriately awkward. But Sherlock has something other than festive joy on his mind. He has a countdown going on his clock.

This does give us a bit of time to get to know the Holmes parents. Mrs Holmes is a mathematician, a genius, apparently. Mr Holmes is “the sane one”.

Mary and John are still begin very awkward with each other. Understandable, as, you know, their whole relationship was built on a lie.

Then we see what happened after John found out the truth. They go back to Baker street, John realises that basically everyone he’s met is a “psychopath”.

I mean, no. But carry on.

Between them, Sherlock and Mary basically say that it’s all John’s fault. He’s drawn to highly intelligent creeps, criminals and sociopaths. They’re his “type”. He can’t stay away from danger. He pursues violence.

I mean, that’s a reasonable statement about this portrayal of John. Just not an accurate portrayal of John Watson.

Still. Fairly sucky for Sherlock to point it out.

Then they move on. Sherlock gets John to look at Mary as a client.

Nothing else.

So they sit her down, and listen to the story.

Again. Nice framing. Good acting.

This show being this show at its best.

Then, cut back to Christmas.

John has a memory stick with “AGRA” written on it.

Cut back to 221b, and Mary hands the memory stick to John.

OK, this show is now doing that irritating over-editing thing that it does…

(Though AGRA is a nice reference to the Agra treasure, the treasure the original Mary nearly inherits in the Sign of Four).

Mary says that AGRA are her initials. This later turns out to be a lie. She tells John that, if he reads what’s on the stick, he won’t love her anymore.

Sherlock tells John that he thinks Mary is a former intelligence agent, who was going to kill CAM because he knew who she was.

Mary also insists that John married her because he could see the assassin within her.

I… am surprised that he doesn’t scream when she says that. Because…no. Stop blaming John. Please.

Anyway, Sherlock also says that Mary “saved his life”. Because she shot him, when he was a witness to her attempted crime. She couldn’t kill CAM because John was there, and would be blamed. Obviously.

So she shot to “incapacitate”.

Again. Heart. Lung. Haemothorax. Cardiac arrest.

“incapacitate”.

I’m… still confused as to why she couldn’t just knock Sherlock out.

And she also made a pretty big gamble. She bet everything that CAM would choose to blackmail her, rather than go to the police.

And then she “saved his life” by phoning the ambulance.

OK, so Mary’s plan makes no sense, the only reason I can imagine Sherlock could have for not being mad at Mary is that his wound is bleeding, and his brain is being undersupplied with oxygen, and John should be really, really angry with both of them.

Oh, yeah. Sherlock left the hospital, started bleeding internally, and now his pulse is “erratic”.

Remember earlier when I mentioned ventricular fibrillation and ventricular tachycardia? Looks like he might have one of those going on. And when he says his heart might need to be “restarted”, he…. Actually, yep, quite correct. Erratic pulse would suggest that he needs either a medicine, or an electric shot to get his heart back into the correct rhythm.

OK, so science out of the way, WHY ON EARTH DID SHERLOCK DO THIS TO HIMSELF??????????

I know TV makes cardiac arrests, defibrillation etc. look easy and harmless, but actually there is a massively high risk of complications associated with abnormal heart rhythms requiring defibrillation. Even if people’s hearts do go back into a normal rhythm, there’s a high risk of brain damage, ischemia….. Seriously Sherlock, why would you do this to yourself? Could you not think of another way of having this conversation? And why not just wait until you were better, and able to actually leave the hospital without nearly dying!???

Anyway. Back to Christmas.

John tells Mary that he hasn’t read the memory stick, and he isn’t going to. He is happy to let the past be the past. He throws the memory stick into the fire.

“You don’t even know my name” Mary says, crying.

“Is Mary Watson good enough for you?” John replies.

Sweet moment with crying and hugging ensues.

I’m still not sure that this is a healthy relationship.

Anyway, Sherlock and Mycroft head outside for a chat about CAM. Mycroft says that he’s occasionally useful to the government, and never does too much damage to anyone important. He basically tells Sherlock, again, not to go after him.

Mycroft also takes the opportunity to drop a… job offer. A job in Eastern Europe, that Mycroft thinks will lead to his death in 6 months. Mycroft tells him not take it, Sherlock agrees.

Here be foreshadowing.

Anyway, um… Sherlock and Wiggins drugged everyone apart from John. Mary loses consciousness. Everyone else loses consciousness.

Now, I would expect John to… maybe put everyone into the recovery position?

But apparently not.

Also, everyone conveniently collapsed at the same moment. How convenient. How…… completely unrealistic.

Anyhoo..

What is the point of this?

Sherlock wants to take John to go and see CAM, offering him Mycroft’s laptop as bait.

Oh, and flashback.

Another one.

Because, wouldn’t it be boring if we got to see everything in a sensible order that gave us time to deduce what was going on, and have some element of mystery?

There is a difference between mystery, and surprise.

Anyway, in this flashback, Sherlock, in hospital garb and connected to a drip, is sat in a café eating fish and chips. CAM comes to visit, and Sherlock asks to come and see Appledore, CAM’s home. This is when they make the “laptop for home tour” idea.

Also, Sherlock tests the whole “computer in the glasses” theory.

And finds it’s untrue.

I’ve already gone into how it irritates me that we were led to believe that this might be a thing. Again. If you set everything up to point one way…

Surprise is not mystery.

Anyway, Sherlock admits that he is basically selling out Mycroft. I mean, fair enough, Mycroft sold him out to Jim Moriarty.

And… back to Christmas.

Is it relevant that this takes place on Christmas day?

Anyway.

Sherlock drags John into ANOTHER life and death situation. This time, though, he asks John to bring his gun with him.

Why does John happily carry around the gun that he has used in many crimes?

But we can’t dwell on that. They board a helicopter to Appledore.

Oh, and…. CAM is watching video footage of Sherlock pulling John out of that fire in episode one.

Wow. Again. No mystery here. If there are no clues to suggest that he was involved, the audience has no chance to work it out for themselves…..

I’m just repeating myself now. I mean, to be fair, so is this episode.

CAM reveals that he just wanted to see how much Sherlock would do for John. He also says that he had “people standing by”, he never planned to kill John.

That’s just… I mean, as a plan, ridiculous? How was he going to explain that?

And, I mean, he waited until John was half-choked and did nothing. So…

His master plan is revealed. Mycroft Holmes will do anything for Sherlock. Sherlock will do anything for John. John will do anything for Mary.

If you have dirt on Mary, therefore…

Sherlock demands everything CAM has on Mary, in exchange for Mycroft’s laptop and its password. Kind of clever, from Sherlock’s perspective. He can sell out Mycroft, get a bit of brotherly revenge, while also removing himself, John and Mary from the equation.

But, it seems, he’s miscalculated. CAM starts laughing, and saying hwo disappointed he is in Sherlock. He expected better.

Wait… more déjà vu.

Does every season end with a super-genius laughing at Sherlock, and thinking that they’ve over-estimated him?

Because…

So far, anyway, yes.

CAM knows that the laptop has a tracker in it. He sees that Sherlock had planned to set a scene. CAM would be found by the security services, rushing to retrieve the laptop, with incriminating information at hand.

I mean, if CAM knew that this was Sherlock’s plan, why agree at all?

Because he has no incriminating information at hand. It’s all stored elsewhere. He doesn’t need to prove anything, he just prints it. He takes great joy in revealing that the Appledore vaults are only in his head. His own mind palace.  

(Interesting that he uses the same term that Sherlock made up to describe his mind palace, by the way)

So CAM can let the police come, arrest Sherlock for stealing official secrets, and then CAM can continue to pressure Mycroft by threatening Mary.

OK, so the whole mind palace thing. Doesn’t explain why CAM sees text floating in front of his eyes. He also explains that his process for accessing his mind palace involves closing his eyes, “descending” into the vaults. We know from Sherlock, and from his demonstration here, that it takes time to find information stored using this memory technique. So…. How did he do that whole “look at people and information flashes up in front of his eyes” thing?

Never explained.

Because it makes no sense.

Unless you’re trying to trick the audience into believing one thing for the express purpose of pulling the rug out from under their feet at a later date.

They keep doing this, and it is REALLY IRRITATING.

I also find it irritating that he claims that he doesn’t need proof for… anything. “I just have to print it”.

I mean, I’m sure that he can print whatever he likes. But there’s a small problem with this. Say someone doesn’t bow to his demand. He prints a true story about them… I don’t know, cheating on their partner. They, obviously, are devastated. It probably has a lot of awful effects on their life.

But then, because… you know, we live in a world with a justice system, they take them to court, and sue them for defamation. Libel. Whatever. I’m not a lawyer. In order to justify their position, the paper owned by CAM would have to produce the evidence, the physical proof that he was using the blackmail his victim in the first place. He would then have to explain how, exactly, he came to own that piece of evidence.

And do you really think he obtains anything, anything, through legal means? In order to defend his paper in court, CAM would have to reveal everything about his blackmail empire. And, once that evidence is out in the open, that blackmail victim can take CAM himself to a criminal court, because they have nothing left to lose.

This is the problem with being a blackmailer. Once you have carried out your threat, your victim has nothing left to lose. They can turn on you.

This, by the way, is how the original story ends. Milverton is murdered by a victim who’s secret he revealed. Her husband died with the stress and grief of the revelation of his wife’s secret. She broke into his house, and shot him.

This is the fate of all blackmailers. If you don’t act on your threats, your victims will feel free to hand you over to the police. If you do act on your threats…. Your victims have nothing left to lose, and they hand you over to the police. Or just murder you. Depending.

In this version, though…. Well, we’ll get onto the fate of CAM in a minute.

John desperately asks Sherlock if he has a plan. Sherlock can’t answer, and the three of them head outside to meet the police.

Outside, CAM again demonstrates his creepy level of control over people.

“Come and stand over here and let me flick your face, or I will reveal secrets about your wife to the world that will get her murdered”.

Thing is, given that, if he loses control over Mary by acting on that threat, he loses control over Mycroft, you can be… pretty sure that he’s not going to do that over John refusing to let him flick his eyeball.

Seriously, think rationally about this!

I mean, I know calling his bluff would be a risk, but… this seems like a fairly safe call.

Or Mycroft could just make Mary vanish. Give her a new identity, a new life. Sure, it would break John’s heart, but she would be safe, and CAM’s hold on Mycroft would be broken.

I’m really disappointed that no-one’s brave enough to do this.

I mean, in the original, Holmes and Watson broke into Milverton’s home to steal the incriminating documents that were being used to blackmail their client. That’s still not a great plan, definitely on the high risk end of the spectrum, but it really seems like Sherlock’s only plan is “pay the blackmailer”.

Paying the blackmailer never works. They only ask for more.

It’s disappointing that Sherlock doesn’t realise this.

Anyway, the cavalry arrive. Along with Mycroft in a helicopter.

Sherlock wants to make a few things clear. He confirms that the information that CAM has on Mary only exists inside his mind.

Meanwhile, CAM gives a speech about his plan to “acquire assets”. He tells Sherlock that there’s no way for him to be a hero. Sherlock answers by picking the gun out of John’s pocket, and shooting CAM in the head.

So… they’re both arrested. But now CAM is dead, along with all of his secrets.

Sherlock tells John to give his love to Mary. She’s safe.

(until the start of the next series, anyway. Such a big, meaningful sacrifice, when you look back).

Anyway. Sherlock has crossed a line. He has shot an unarmed man in front of dozens of witnesses.

Now, what is wrong with this moment?

Because there is something wrong here. Something very wrong.

As a Holmes fan, when I watched this episode, I expected either Lady Smallwood, or Mary to end up killing CAM. Why?

Because in the books, this is one of the few instances where Holes is outstepped by a woman. A female victim of Milverton kills him while Holmes and Watson watch from the shadows, then leaves. She actually (accidentally, but anyway) sets up Holmes and Watson to take the fall for her crime. None of the three are caught, but she makes the cleanest getaway.

So taking the murder of CAM away from one of the female leads, and giving it to Sherlock… why? Smallwood and Mary are both perfectly set up to pull the trigger. But of course, Sherlock, the male lead, has to be the one to do it.

Even though it’s out of character for him, and even though it demonstrates a colossal failure on his part.

Sherlock Holmes would never kill an unarmed man. In fact, this is even worse. This is a premeditated killing. Sherlock said, remember, that he thought there was a high chance of “failure”. And he made sure that John had brought his gun.

Sherlock, yet again, went toe to toe with a villain, and knowingly brought them to their deaths. At the end of last series, he pushed Moriarty into killing himself. And now, he puts a gun to CAM’s head.

This doesn’t fit with Sherlock Holmes.

There’s a reason why he didn’t take the kill in the original, and there’s a reason why one of the female victims of CAM should have taken the kill in this adaptation.

In the aftermath, we see Mycroft arguing with a committee of… I assume they’re important people. He’s making the point that Sherlock is like a “scalpel”. He will cut away the things and people that the government cannot.

Something important does happen in this scene.

“I’m not given to outbursts of brotherly compassion. You know what happened to the other one.”

Because the biggest twist moment in the entire series is already being set up. Back when I first watched this, I thought (excitedly), that there might be another Holmes sibling out there. I also hoped that it might be a sister.

How naive I was.

Anyway. Mycroft points out that imprisoning Sherlock would be tricky. So he suggests that Sherlock be forced to take up the job in Eastern Europe. The one which, Mycroft expected, he could survive for six months.

We cut to the tender departure. Sherlock says his touching goodbyes. He suggests Sherlock as the name for John and Mary’s daughter.

Sherlock allows John to believe that he’ll be working in Eastern Europe for six months, then… “who knows?”

It’s kind of sweet that he keeps the fact of his imminent demise secret.

Well, at least it’s better than there last goodbye. You know, the one where Sherlock lied to John?

The plane takes off. John and Mary stand nearby and watch.

The screen fades to black, then…

What’s this? the teaser for the next season, of course.

TV screens across the country fill with static. An image appears.

Jim Moriarty.

“Did you miss me?” a distorted voice says, over and over again.

Mycroft calls Sherlock, and turns the plane around.

Apparently, England needs Sherlock.

Sigh.

Watching these episodes again… it’s painful. All these little hints, things that we thought were pointing towards something amazing, the return of Moriarty, the reveal that the man we knew as Jim Moriarty had been a cover for the real Moriarty all along. A possible Holmes sibling. “The East Wind” and Redbeard.

I remember being so, so excited.

But watching this now, knowing where all of it leads… it comes across as clumsy. It comes across as deceptive. It feels… it feels unfair.

The internet, collectively, spent a lot of time thinking about these clues. We tried to string them together, many ideas were suggested.

We were never given enough to solve the puzzle. There were too many red herrings, not enough…. I don’t know, what’s the opposite of a red herring? Truths? Clues?

It feels like the writers of this show wanted to come up with a solution to this problem that no-one would guess. Rather than making it clever, or ingenious though, they were just careful not to give the audience enough to work with.

It’s one of the biggest problems with Sherlock, and I’ve said it time and time again. The wonder of detective fiction is the audiences ability to get involved with the crime. To try and solve it.

The general public, or a significant proportion of it, likes to solve this kind of problem. In the Victorian era, there was a massive growth in armchair crime solvers. They would read about crimes in newspapers, where all the gory details would be laid out. They would write letters, they would discuss the crimes with their friends, they would try to figure it out themselves.

Arthur Conan Doyle, and many others, played on this fascination. They provided an outlet for it. He created Sherlock Holmes, the master investigator, and John Watson, his friend, confidant, publicist and student. When he told his stories, he was always careful to give the reader enough that they could try to solve the crime before the solution was revealed.

An example. In the case of “The Dying Detective” (possibly my favourite Holmes story), the reader find out that Holmes has been hiding himself away, he’s off his food, he’s refusing medical attention. When Watson arrives, he finds Holmes looking deathly, ranting on about Oysters and, again, refusing help. At one point, Watson nearly touches an ivory box, and Holmes yells at him, warning him of the risk of contagion.

Finally, he sends Watson to fetch a man who can heal him. During their meeting, Watson mentions that Holmes is worried about spreading the disease that ails him by touch, and the expert says that he thinks Holmes is wrong, the illness is not as infectious as Holmes has made out.

From these things, as a reader, you can guess that Holmes is planning something. We might not be able to tell that the illness is faked, but I suspect one who knows how the Holmes stories works could deduce that Holmes is setting a trap. That the ivory box is dangerous. That he wants to keep Watson at arms length for some reason.

Being able to work out some of the details, to begin to grow a suspicion, to finally have the whole thing revealed… this is the wonder of detective fiction.

This is where Sherlock fails.

Look back at episode one. John is kidnapped, drugged, almost burned alive. We don’t find out who did it. It’s never investigated. Everyone seems completely happy to shrug their shoulders and say “Well, that was a weird evening.”

Later, they all seem surprised to find out that it was CAM all along.

Now, if you actually wanted to make this work and be satisfying as a reveal, you would have Sherlock begin to look into this in episode one. During episode two, you might have him starting to find some details, maybe even to suspect CAM. Then, in episode three, you can have CAM admit to it. Sherlock, and through him, the audience, will have already worked this out from the clues that were dropped throughout the series. To those who had worked it out, the reveal would be satisfying. To those who hadn’t, it would still be an, “ah, so THAT’S what that was referring to” moment. You end up with a happy audience.

But in order to get that, you have to accept that some of the audience will be able to work out the twist before it happens. And that’s something that the writers of this show don’t seem to be willing to do.  Maybe they disliked the internet response to the Sherlock rooftop scene. Maybe they disliked the fact that so many people guessed that an inflatable pillow was the solution to his survival.

Whatever the reason, I think this is why, from this point on, the series starts to… upset fans. Because instead of being satisfied, we became disappointed.

There have always been problems with Sherlock, but it’s such a fun show to watch, the production value is so high, the acting is fantastic… we can overlook it. We can just settle down, enjoy it, and then discuss the plot points with our friends later.

But there comes a point where we can’t ignore certain things anymore. For me, this episode was that turning point.

There are loads more things I could talk about here. Why I dislike Mary Watson secretly being an international assassin. Why I dislike “The East wind”, and the “Redbeard” references. Why I hate the idea that Mycroft would send his little brother off to die. Why I am perpetually confused by this weird committee that Mycroft seems to work for or with.

But those can be dealt with in future reviews.

I hope you’ll join me then.

Thank you for reading.