I am Sherlocked: The sign of Three

Wow. So I had a bit of a break from Sherlock. I watched Enola Holmes, I watched some superhero flicks… and now, I am back.

For The Sign of Three.

Now, I remember this episode being one of the better ones. Lots of jokes, a few sweet moments, a kind of superficially interesting mystery element…

And also the episode where all knowledge of science goes out of the window.

But hey. We begin by seeing Lestrade… being Lestrade. Except for once, he’s actually good at it! He and Donovan are chasing a crime family who have been robbing things. Lestrade needs to “catch them in the act”. He fails time and time again, sometimes just not catching them, sometimes not providing enough evidence to convict them. Anyway, eventually, he manages it. He gets them trapped in a vault. He’s about to go in to arrest them, when…

Sherlock starts texting him, begging for help. Lestrade immediately turns and leaves. Nice refence here, Donovan says that “Jones will get all the credit”- in the original stories, another Scotland Yarder is called Inspector Othelmy Jones. Nice touch.

Immediately ruined by the fact that, given that this has literally been Lestrade’s operation from the first, the name of the officer who puts cuffs on the criminals shouldn’t really matter that much.

But sure. Lestrade leaves to go and “rescue” Sherlock. He also calls for “maximum back-up”. Didn’t know that was a real thing….

Anyway, turns out Sherlock is panicking while trying to write a best man speech for John.

So…. No need for a police helicopter then?

I think this opening really just solidifies what we already know. There is NO WAY that Sherlock wouldn’t be aware of Lestrade’s work. It’s made front page news, after all. But he texts him anyway. Texts him in a way that makes him drop everything and come running, along with thousands of pounds worth of other officers and resources.

And I know it’s meant to be a throwaway gag, but, yet again, it shows that, with Sherlock is cold-hearted, and deliberately messaged Lestrade in a way that would make him drop everything and come running, or he is completely incapable of predicting humans behaviour.

Which would… be a fairly useful thing for the “world’s greatest detective” to be able to do.

One would think.

So, post-titles, we get to hear Sherlock playing more violin. It’s gorgeous sounding. I love this tune, it’s beautifully played, and we aren’t even forced to try and deal with the dissonance of watching Sherlock sort of/not really playing violin at the same time.

No, he’s dancing. To see if it’s possible to dance to his composition.

Just… nice.

Mrs Hudson brings up the tea, and Sherlock immediately insults her ability to think.

So…. Not nice.

He also claims not to have known that Mrs Hudson brings him tea every morning.

Urgh.

Really not nice.

Also out of character. You really think Sherlock Holmes wouldn’t notice when his landlady came into the flat?

Apparently, this is the day of the wedding itself.

(Sherlock still being “composing” at this point is therefore a little concerning). Sherlock seems to think that this is a complete formality, basically unnecessary, and “nothing big”. Therefore explaining PERFECTLY why, shortly before this, he was texting Lestrade in such a panic about his speech making.

Sherlock uses the example of Mrs Hudson’s own marriage, which ended in her husbands execution, as an example of why marriage is unimportant. Really, I’m not sure either side’s arguments make sense here, so rather than try to explain them, I’m just going to sit here, nodding and humming under my breath until it’s over.

And…

Phew.

Sherlock kicks Hudson out, then looks sadly at John’s chair.

As he puts on his tails, we cut to another guest preparing. One with a ceremonial sword, white gloves, tight belt… a military man. He looks… kind of sad to be going to this wedding. How cruel of John and Mary to have invited him.

Speaking of weddings, John and Mary are married, and step outside the church for the photos. We’re also introduced to the maid of honour. She basically starts flirting immediately, Sherlock deflects, deducing things about other guests to try and put her off the scent. Unfortunately. She decides that Sherlock will be “incredibly useful”.

Then we travel to the venue for the reception. Fun fact, I’ve actually been there. In the first week of a new job, there was an all-staff barbecue, followed by karaoke inside this gorgeous building. For staff bonding.

I and a few others decided to bond in a less “getting drunk and embarrassing ourselves” kind of way, by going for a pleasant walk around the grounds. In the course of this walk, I made several very good friends, and had an overall very pleasant evening.

Moral of the story, karaoke is NOT a good way to make people “bond”, no matter how beautiful the location is.

Anyway. Behind the scenes of the wedding, Sherlock has been “preparing” the guests. Including intimidating one of the ushers (one of Mary’s former boyfriends).

(Given what we learn about Mary later, how does this timeline work? Several months of being with this random guy, then breaking up, then getting together with John… I presumed that her departure from her work as international agent was relatively recent, hence her lack of friends).

Sherlock, once again, reinforces the fact that he is a “high-functioning sociopath”. We have discussed this previously.

Anyway, Sherlock also traumatised Archie, a young child and ring bearer, apparently “bringing him out of his shell”, by showing him gruesome pictures to bribe him to behave for the wedding. That seems…. Why??? Not cute.

This is how you MAKE criminals. Expose people to violence from a young age, and they might choose to emulate that themselves.

We see more of Sherlock and the maid of honour talking about other guests, then cut to Mary asking about Harry, John’s sister. A no-show.

That’s good. Otherwise we might actually have to learn more about John Watson as a person. Wouldn’t that be awful?

But look who has come? That soldier we saw dressing earlier. Major Sholto.

A name taken from “The sign of Four”, the story in which John and Mary meet, in canon. Major Sholto served alongside/was part of a criminal enterprise with Mary’s father. Here, he’s one of John’s former commanders.

I suppose that was a change they had to make, given Mary is meant to have very few guests at the wedding (apart from old boyfriends).

Anyway, apparently Sholto rarely comes out for weddings etc, but his “good friend” John merits his attendance. Shame that we… don’t really get to see them acting as friends to each other. Or find out anything about their shared history.

Right. Much more important to see Mycroft working out on a running machine, and being self-conscious about his weight.

Why do so few Holmes adaptations get Mycroft right?

Mycroft, he of the great intelligence and little motivation. Mycroft, the backbone of the British government, from his comfortable armchair. Mycroft, he who has little ambition besides occupying himself with small puzzles, and protecting the Empire.

Poor Mycroft.

Anyway, he forgot to attend the wedding. He takes the opportunity to remind Sherlock that his best friend is moving on, and suggest that he and Sherlock will be working together more, now that John has moved on.

Mycroft is basically trying to get Sherlock to believe that, after John is married, John will no longer need Sherlock in his life.

Maybe if Sherlock cared about having John in his life, he shouldn’t have left for three years, leaving John with a terrible, horrific lie and no comfort.

But apparently Sherlock cares now.

Or Sherlock just likes “owning” people, manipulating people, and doesn’t like it when they make choices outside his control.

Mycroft also brings up “Redbeard”. This is the first reference of many, which will lead to the twist that made so many people leave this show forever.

At this point, though, it is meant to be a blissful mystery.

Right, so… onto the moment we’ve all been waiting for. The speeches.

Sherlock basically falters, and we cut to Molly and Lestrade discussing the potential pitfalls of Sherlock having to make a speech.

This moment does include one of the jokes in this episode that actually makes me laugh. I shall transcribe it here for posterity, preserve it as the rare and wonderful thing it is:

Molly: He’ll have to make a speech. In front of people. There will be actual people there, actually listening.

Lestrade: (looking doubtful) Well, what’s the worst that could happen?

Molly: Helen Louise probably wondered the same

Lestrade: Helen Louise?

Molly: (looks down at human brain she is carrying around in a bowl)

 

Ah, medically themed comedy gold.

Anyway, Molly (while holding a brain saw) calls Mrs Hudson, to have the same discussion. Mrs Hudson breaks down in fits of laughter over… “the telegrams”.

Cutting back to the weddings, John finally realises why Mrs Hudson was laughing. He prompts Sherlock to do the “Telegrams”. Thus ensues a comedy skit where Sherlock insults the institution of marriage, and reads out soppy messages from all of John and Mary’s friends. This, again, is actually, genuinely funny. It’s as if Cumberbatch is channelling Rowan Atkinson. I love it.

Anyway, Sherlock decides to skip through the rest of them, and get on with his own speech.

He begins by recounting the moment when John asked him to be best man. We begin with Sherlock doing… something involving fire and human eyeballs. Best not to think too much about that. I think we’re already discussed the appearance of human tissue in 221b… a lot.

So… basically when John asked him, Sherlock froze, then drank from a mug of tea with a recently burned human eyeball in it, while asking John if he was his best friend.

It’s… sweet, and funny, and nice. I mean, a very quick turnaround from last episode, probably out of character for both of them, and glossing over a bit of kind-of cannibalism…..

But beside that, sweet and funny.

In the present, Sherlock pulls out his speech cards.

And the first part of his speech…. Again, insults marriage. Eloquently. And he also makes the whole thing about himself. While insulting John. And religion.

But apparently, he’s just trying to make the point that he, Sherlock, is an awful person. And John is amazing for putting up with him.

I mean… it…. Kind of works. Just about. It fits in with the characters that John and Sherlock are shown to have throughout this series, just not with the Watson or Holmes that I know and love.

Also, Sherlock was incredibly awkward at the beginning, but suddenly becomes incredibly good at public speaking, even moving the audience to tears.

It’s as good a relationship moment as these two characters are able to have.

Right, well, Sherlock decides to move onto “funny stories”, basically a quick rundown of loads of Sherlock stories that we will never see, loaded with classic Holmes references. Actually, these are mostly kind of subtle. I won’t go through them all, but… not bad.

Anyway, back to another flashback. Sherlock is helping plan the wedding, while John is trying to find a good case for him to go on… so that he will stop helping to plan the wedding.

Sherlock is being somewhat…. Overhelpful.

 And Mary, apparently, has learned how to understand Sherlock better than John, after, presumably, just a few months. She understands that this is Sherlock thinking that he won’t be able to do cases with John after the wedding. John has completely failed to pick up on this at all. Apparently.

Again. This is kind of funny, but it still feels like the relationship between Sherlock and John lets the moment down.

Anyway, John begs Sherlock to take him out on a case. Sherlock reluctantly agrees, and quickly finds a case. That of Private Bainbridge, who…..

Wait. That’s Wes. Wes from “How to get away with murder”. He’s…

I might have to stop to feel sad about that. Poor Wes.

Anyway, he’s a member of the Household guard, one of the guys who wears a bearskin hat and stands outside Buckingham Palace while tourists come and take photos.

Basically, he thinks someone is stalking him.

The two of them get sufficiently interested to go and visit. Although, apparently, it’s a bit trickier to get to see a Grenadier than you might think. Even if you have a military ID card.

Anyway, John and Sherlock talk about how the guards resist the urge to “scratch their behinds”. John says: “afferent neurons in the peripheral nervous system”. As if that’s an answer.

Afferent neurons (or nerves) carry messages to the brain from the rest of the body. Basically, they’re sensory nerves. (In this context, anyway).

Which is all very well, except if you translate this exchange into common English (from science language), it goes:

Sherlock: How to resist the temptation to scratch their behinds

John: Sensory nerves. Bum itch.

Sherlock: Oh.

…

And suddenly it doesn’t seem so impressive.

Especially as the conversation is set up to make it sound like Sherlock doesn’t know an afferent neurone from an efferent neurone, which seems highly unlikely given that he was clearly doing an experiment involving the application of heat to a human optic nerve just a few scenes ago.

Dear TV writers.

If you throw in science babble to make a character sound impressive, please consider actually making it sensible given the context.

Kind regards,

Sciencey people.

 

Anyway, Sherlock is curious about Sholto. Apparently, Sholto messed up on a mission, and loads of new recruits died.

Anyway, John starts talking to Sherlock about Mary, and Sherlock…. Walks away without John noticing.

And he breaks into the palace by putting on a bearskin hat and… marching.

Look, I’m sorry, but…………

Someone was just looking for an excuse to put Cumberbatch in another fancy hat, weren’t they?

Well……

OK. That’s a reason I can accept.

I won’t even ask any of the obvious questions, like “where did he get that hat?”, or “why did he put the hat on?”, or even “How did he get through the gates when only his hair was disguised???”

No. Not asking any of them.

So, after Sherlock just wanders into this military base…… again…… he starts looking for Bainbridge, who has just come off duty. Unfortunately, he heads straight to the showers. We see him taking off his uniform, then cut to John talking to the officer. (Not sure how he got in, we didn’t get to see him don a fluffy hat, after all).

Anyway, this Captain guy doesn’t know who John Watson is, but sends someone to fetch Bainbridge anyway.

So a soldier goes to the shower, and finds Bainbridge in a pool of blood.

Meanwhile, the CO has realised that he does recognise Watson after all, as the guy who hangs around with “the detective with the silly hat”.

You can talk.

Anyway, John is summoned to the “dead” Bainbridge, then promptly arrested. A moment later, Sherlock arrives.

“Where’s the weapon” Sherlock asks, always asking the key questions. He then goes on to point out that Bainbridge couldn’t have been stabbed before he got into the shower.

REMEMBER THIS.

Meanwhile, John shouts off his list of qualifications to be allowed to administer first aid.

I mean, I’m a bit surprised that, in a room full of soldiers, nobody thought to… you know… check that the guy was dead.

Shame really, as it turns out that he isn’t.

Still, John also misses the whole “Maybe check that the guy is dead thing”, and wastes valuable time inspecting the wound before… noticing that it’s still bleeding.

And the heart is still beating.

In fact, he’s still breathing.

This is why the general public need to be taught first aid, people! DRscABCDE!

Or whatever version of the acronym you prefer… anyway, no-one checked to see if he was breathing????????

Anyway, John calls Sherlock “Nurse”, and orders him to press on the wound.

Why?

I don’t know.

Oh, I mean the “call him nurse” thing, not the “put pressure on the wound thing”. Though, also, maybe put the guy into the recovery position, and actually maintain the airway, rather than…

But before we get to see John actually in action, we cut back to the speech.

Sherlock’s point in this story is that John saved the soldier’s life, while Sherlock only tried to solve the case.

Anyway, instead of making this point quickly, he asks the audience to weigh in and give their theories.

These include a “dwarf in an air vent”, and a “meat dagger”.

But anyway.

Sherlock admits that he still doesn’t know how the attempted murder was committed, then moves onto an embarrassing story about John.

The stag night.

Sherlock’s idea, a pub crawl to every street where they’ve found a body. He’s gone to Molly, because, despite being a “graduate chemist”, he thinks he needs her help to work out the correct alcohol dosing. Because he thinks that Molly has more “practical experience”.

As soon she starts to call him out on, basically, calling her a heavy drinker, he falls back into his old habits. “Can’t get Molly Hooper to do what you want? Flirt with her, emotionally manipulate her until she will literally risk her life and career for you”.

At least in this case, he isn’t putting her life in danger. Thankfully, also, Molly rebuts his attempts promptly.

And still ends up doing what Sherlock asks.

Grrr.

So near, and yet so far.

Anyway, the pub crawl begins. With just the two of them. Despite many other friends coming to John’s wedding. Sherlock couldn’t convince any of them to come.

Anyway, pretty soon, John starts buying extra shots to liven things up, and…. Things go downhill. Until Sherlock starts getting into fights, and they run off home to collapse on the stairs.

They are both very, very drunk.

Apparently in only two hours.

So, to spin things out a bit, they start to play party games. This is… funny. Though again…. Can’t really picture Sherlock Holmes deliberately getting drunk. Ever.

This scene works because the two actors involved are... fantastic. They are brilliant. And it’s funny.

What is… quite a lot less funny, is the appearance of a client.

Why Mrs Hudson brought a client up to them, knowing full well that they were both very, very drunk…

And why the client stays, when their level of inebriation is quite obvious… (and she’s a health care professional. So she would probably notice).

Urgh. To be honest, I hate this bit of the episode. I’d kind of wiped it out of my mind.

Because seeing a crying, emotionally vulnerable client asking two drunk people who can’t think straight for help… Maybe it’s my medical mindset, but it feels so grossly inappropriate for all of them to be in this situation.

Anyway, the case. Loads of people have been “dating ghosts”. As in, dating someone who vanishes off the face of the Earth without a word.

So, we’re treated to a scene of “Sherlock tries to deduce things while very drunk”. This is where any trace of humour vanishes for me. Because… it isn’t funny. I mean, the acting is still great, but…  Why would no-one have stopped this? Or delayed it until the morning after?

Anyway, eventually the landlord calls the police. After Sherlock throws up on a carpet.

Sorry. So gross.

Out of character. Meant to be funny, but actually comes across as cheap…

Both of them wake up in a cell. Lestrade has fetched them, and is taking an immense amount of joy over screaming loudly at them.

Yeah… I’m on team Lestrade here. Definitely. A doctor and a detective getting incredibly drunk, claiming to be competent to investigate a case, then messing around at a potential crime scene… not cool.

Anyway, as they leave, John laments his rubbish stag night, and Sherlock laments the “wasted opportunity” of the case that he messed up.

Back at 221b, Mrs Hudson talks about her marriage with John. We actually get to find out more about her husband. Apparently he ran a drugs cartel, cheated on her multiple times, and then “blew someone’s head off”.

Um… interesting.

I feel like this is one of those instances where we are told something and have… no idea what to do with that information.

Meanwhile, Sherlock is looking up Major Sholto, while also researching the “ghost” boyfriend. He’s been busy, apparently. We get a scene with Sherlock in a courtroom with all the women on the site. He goes through them, identifying the ones that he thinks are victims of the same guy.

Then he “interviews” them.

I actually really like this imagery as a way of showing, in a concise way, the different pieces of evidence coming together.

The guy, apparently, dated four women in as many nights. He took names from the obituary list, then broke into their houses to use them for the dates. Sherlock decides to change the name, from “ghost” to the “mayfly man”.

Sherlock looks for commonality between the five victims. He finds that they all have a secret, then… they all leave.

Back to the speech. “The Mayfly man was breaking through the chains of domesticity and marriage by creating fake identities”. Great wedding speech content.

Sherlock’s “point” this time is that “John can understand people the way I can read the crime scene”. That perfectly summarises the problem with Sherlock. A detective needs to be able to understand people. Sherlock can only understand or predict people sporadically, and the rest of the time it becomes a running joke when he is inappropriate or rude.

Anyway. He makes the toast.

Except…. Then he doesn’t.

Because he realises that one of the mayfly man’s victims knew John’s middle name was Hamish. And she knew about the wedding. So he drops his glass.

And we cut to scenes of Sherlock trying to guess John’s middle name, and eventually stealing John’s birth certificate to get the answer. Now, apparently, the only people who know are those invited to the wedding. It was on the invitation.

And it can’t be a coincidence that someone created a false identity to get close to someone who knew about the wedding.

So Sherlock decides that something bad is going to happen at the wedding, and that the Mayfly man is there.

In order to figure out what’s going on, Sherlock extends his speech, and wonders through the crowd, trying to find the mayfly.

Have to say, I kind of love the few moments while Sherlock is trying to take in all the information he can while still trying to say nice things about John. Again, Cumberbatch is a fantastic actor.

While he’s talking nonsense, he texts Lestrade to “lock the place down”. He also gives John a “Vatican Cameos” warning. John realises that something really bad is happening.

Sherlock decides to “save the life” rather than solve the murder. He stops looking for the murderer, starts going for the victim. This is… actually a good approach, based on a previously established message in this episode. Nice.

And it works. He eliminates people until Sholto is the only one left. A man who gets multiple death threats, who might have employed all of the mayfly man’s victims at one point or another. A man who rarely leaves home, and so could only be killed at a wedding. Sherlock decides to tell Sholto that it’s him.

Meanwhile, the young boy that Sherlock showed graphic photos to suggests that the “invisible man”, the killer who attacked Bainbridge, might be behind it.

Well blow me down.

Just so happens… the kid is right.

Bainbridge was a rehearsal.

I’m not sure why the killer went to so many lengths to “stalk” Bainbridge before killing him, given that it was just a practise run. Surely any guard could have done. But hey, it made him easier to catch.

Sholto leaves for his room, Sherlock makes the toast then runs off to follow him. John follows him, of course.

And Mary follows John.

Sholto, of course brought a gun with him. Just in case. So he barricades himself in his room. Sherlock and John knock on his door, but Sholto won’t let them in.

For… some reason. Instead, he tells Sherlock to work out how the “invisible man with the invisible knife” kills. Before he kills again.

This doesn’t seem like a sensible option, as they go, but John and Mary both agree, saying that now there is a pressure to solve the case, Sherlock will be able to do it.

 Well….. sure.

And, almost immediately, Sherlock does. He comes up with the idea of a thin knife, inserted and then removed through a tight elastic belt. Apparently, the belt would stop the bleeding from being too severe, because that’s how tight they were. And, because the belt was tight, you “wouldn’t even feel it”.

And thus you get a “delayed action stabbing”. The belt holds the tissue together, when you take it off, you die.

OK. So. Medical opinion time.

Firstly, as far as data goes, we don’t have much. No info about the blade itself, its width, what it’s made of, or how it’s inserted, making it quite difficult to tell exactly what would be damaged by it.

But, we know where the belt is, and we know that the pressure from the belt is the given reason for no bleeding until the belt is removed. Therefore, I would say, we’re looking at something inserted almost perpendicular to the skin, through the belt, from behind. It’s wide enough that it leaves an obvious stab mark, because we know John immediately spotted it on Bainbridge’s body, so this isn’t exactly a needly. It would also have to be rigid and sharp enough to pass through the belt, and the underlying skin and soft tissue.

Now, it’s no explicit, but they have cut to the image of a meat-skewer a few times, and I find it hard to believe that out weapon is that different from that, so let’s assume that we are looking at a very sharp meat skewer, inserted at 90 degrees to the skin, and offset to the side to avoid the spine.

Question one. Would such a wound be felt?

Short answer…. Probably yes?

Now, the human body can do strange things with pain. There are cases of people being shot, stabbed etc. and barely noticing at all. This normally happens in high-adrenaline situations, and is possible because the body has an inbuilt system that allows it to dampen down pain.

I don’t really think, though, that that is a good explanation for why no pain would be felt. In neither situation, the wedding, or while Bainbridge was on guard, is there enough adrenaline floating around to explain the absence of pain.

Second possibly explanation. The human brain has a constant filter in the information that is passes onto the conscious mind. Think about the clothes that you are wearing. Nerves in your skin are constantly sending a message saying “there is light pressure” wherever your clothes touch, but until I mentioned it you were probably completely unaware of it. Additionally, nerves from a particular area can only carry so much information at any one time. This is why heat packs can work well as pain relief, the message of “heat” is carried at the same time as the “potential damage” message that would cause pain, and so the brain is kind of overwhelmed and sends the “Pain” message less strongly. Another example would be that feeling that you have to rub something that hurts, same principle, you’re creating another set of nerve messages that distract from those that lead to pain.

Now, if the Bainbridge’s belt was tight, nerves would constantly be sending a “pressure” message to the brain, and the brain would probably be filtering it out most of the time. It’s therefore possible that, to an extent, a sharp pain in the back would be felt less severely, because the brain might be distracted from it by the “pressure” signal, which it is used to ignoring.

Now, some combination of these signals could lead to a reduction in the pain felt. But not by enough that a piece of metal being forced through the skin could be ignored completely.

That’s another thing against this theory, actually. No matter how sharp your piece of metal is, some pressure will be required to push it through the skin. That change in pressure would be another way for the brain to detect that something weird was going on. Remember that what we’re thinking about here is considerably larger and longer than you’re average blood taking needle, for example, and if you’ve had blood taken you will be well aware that you can DEFINITELY feel that.

So both the victims should have felt something. Now, would a meat skewer sized instrument being pushed through the back lead to a “delayed” stabbing?

Hmm… it depends. So, the main question for me is “what is being cut here that would lead to someone bleeding enough to lose consciousness and die within a few minutes?”

Remember that Bainbridge was feeling well enough to get into a shower and start washing, so he had a few minutes of consciousness after removing the belt, bur didn’t feel unwell enough during that time to seek help.

So. Piece of metal entering into the back, around the waistline.

Firstly, if we’re looking at bleeding, there are some MASSIVE arteries around the back. The abdominal aorta lies just in front of the spine, and so might be relatively protected from this kind of insult, but there are plenty of things that branch off it that could be damaged. Something that comes to mind given the location of the injury might be the renal arteries. These are pretty big blood vessels, as they go, and are set relatively close to the back wall of the abdomen, so they might be good targets. According to Wikipedia (this is a blog post, relax!) the kidneys receive about 1.2 litres of blood a minute (for a 70kg male). Half that, for only one renal artery damaged, and you’re looking at 600mls a minute. And if that sounds like a lot…. It is. A LOT a lot. Now, a small nick in one artery and you might not lose all of that, but you would still probably feel fairly unwell, fairly quickly.

There’s a similar story with most other structures that could be damaged. Lots of bleeding very quickly. Which we need, in this situation, remember? Otherwise Bainbridge would have had time to get help. So the main thing at issue here… would the belt put enough pressure on the bleed to stop it from becoming obvious (and I mean, no blood leaking from the wound AT ALL) for several hours?

Short answer….. no.

A lot of people online, when discussing this, compare the belt to a tourniquet. I think that they are wrong to make this comparison. Tourniquets are used to stop bleeding, but only on the limbs (apart from extremely, EXTREMELY rare situations). They work by generating enough force to atop arterial blood from passing below the tourniquet, which is… a mixed blessing. On the one hand, if there is damage to an artery below the tourniquet, and the patient is going to bleed to death if you don’t stop the flow to that point, it can save a life. But deprive the tissue of oxygenated blood for too long, and it will start to die.

A moment ago, I mentioned extremely rare situations where a tourniquet is not used on the limbs? Well, it might be interesting to talk about that instance, actually. There is a device that exists to cause compression on the abdominal aorta. It’s used in combat and trauma situations, where there has been a traumatic loss of the lower legs, or where there is severe bleeding from a pelvic fracture.

Now, although it is placed around the abdomen, this device is VERY different from a standard military belt. For one thing, it generates pressure of 250 mmHg. If you’ve ever had your blood pressure taken, the cuff probably didn’t go up that high around your arm. The placement is also very different. This is targeting injuries well below the waist. And with the kind of pressure it generates, it can only remain in place for 60 minutes. (https://www.trauma-news.com/2019/08/combat-tested-abdominal-junctional-tourniquet-proven-equivalent-to-reboa/)

That is the kind of device, and the kind of pressure that is needed to stop abdominal bleeding from a major artery. An elastic belt can’t even come close. An elastic belt, loosely tied around the waist, is not a tourniquet. And if it even came close to functioning like one, soldiers all around the world with similar styles of belt would be dropping dead routinely, because, surprisingly (not), cutting off blood supply to major organs is…. Bad for you?

So no. The belt thing makes no sense. None at all.

Which is irritating. If you have to bend the rules of the world you’re working in to make the solution of a problem make sense how is the audience meant to figure it out on their own? That’s meant to be the point of a detective series, right?

Right?

Anyway, back to the script. Sholto refuses to let anyone in, saying that he wants to be “killed by his uniform”. Obviously, this… makes no sense. I mean, we’ve had basically no time with Sholto, but there’ve been no hints that he might have suicidal thoughts up to this point.

Still. It makes drama. He prepares to take off his belt, but Sherlock (Yes, Sherlock!) talks him down. By pointing out that it would be kind of bad manners to die on John’s wedding day.

So, hopefully, someone calls an ambulance or something. But let’s skip over that, and get onto dancing.

Apparently, Sherlock has always loved dancing. He does a triple pirouette in passe to demonstrate this.

So, anyway, who was the murderer all along?

The photographer. The one person not in any of the photographs.

And remember the guy stalking Bainbridge? He was… taking photos.

And there it is. The photographer, Jonathan Small. Brother of one of Sholto’s soldiers, a victim of his incompetence.

So Lestrade arrests Jonathan Small. (Another Sign of Four villain, by the way). And John, Janine, Mary and Sherlock go off to dance. Or rather, John and Mary dance, while Sherlock plays violin.

Cumberbatch has got quiet a lot better at faking at this point. He’s now at the point where you would probably have to be a violinist to tell. Clearly, that took work, and it was well spent.

Anyway, Sherlock decides to make another speech, this time, in order to make his “first and last vow”. To always be there for “all three of you. Sorry, two of you. Both…”

Anyway…. Mary is pregnant. And Sherlock can tell. While John and Mary couldn’t.

Hence the title. “The sign of three”.

Both immediately panic, but Sherlock reassures them that they’ve got plenty of practise at dealing with babies while looking after him. Miraculously, that works!

And so…. Mary is pregnant.

I still don’t really know why… it doesn’t add much to any of the stories from this point onwards, apart from providing this big, dramatic reveal. And it’s an interesting place to choose to split from the books.

Anyway, while everyone else parties and is happy, Sherlock walks away on his own.

Interestingly, I think this might be the shortest Sherlock review I’ve written yet. By… quite a lot. Why?

Well, simply, I think there’s… not that much wrong with this episode. And most of the things that are wrong, I’ve already written about in more detail, or are things that are set up in this episode, but which haven’t actually come to fruition yet. This is, in fact, an episode that exists to set things up. It gives us the John/Mary wedding. It gives us a John/Mary pregnancy. It drops hints about Mary that will be picked up on next episode, it talks about Sherlock and John’s relationship, and how it will change…

And it’s all wrapped up in lots of fun moments. Honestly, this is one of those stories that is pulled off by the acting, which is fabulous. The actual crime is kind of kept in the background, barely relevant at all, and so we can just watch the characters having fun together.

It’s… it’s good! It works!

Well, anyway, I hope you’ve enjoyed this review. I… can’t promise I’ll be so nice about the next episode.

Thanks for reading 😊

 

Muddles