the bbc sherlock series by the dr who 'bloke' and starring tim from the office

yeah this "mystery" was one of the absolute worst in terms of plot holes

there was a lot of horrible public-school/establishment bro behaviour - present in the other episodes obviously, but probably more acceptable (if it is at all acceptable) because they are more vulnerable.

what do you mean by this?

yeah i get the mystery was going to be a minor part of the 'omg you alive' episode but Q: how does this train car disapper in between stations? there are no secret stations or passages between stations so how? A: there is a secret passage between stations! is really just too lazy

It made me want to revisit Jonathan Creek (which doesn't happen very often) to see if my memory of it combining convoluted and improbable mysteries with moderately clever solutions much better is correct.

The whole episode felt like a hook for the bantz, which might be fine if most of the bantz wasn't a tired variation on 'you are gay', 'your moustache looks silly', 'lol @ the woman who is in love with the mighty Sherlock', 'everyone's an idiot apart from me', etc, etc.

I enjoyed this episode as long as I didn't think too hard about it but honestly I just sigh whenever I see Gatiss's name on anything I like these days. He's not a particularly good writer he's basically just a tiresome fanboy for certain kinds of Victorian murk without much of an idea of how to make things genuinely mysterious or creepy. Which is weird because I liked him as part of the League of Gentlemen but every time he tries to write anything straight (or straight-ish ie Sherlock or Doctor Who) it falls flat.

Gatiss episodes still >>>>> Thompson episodes on average (esp if you count that Moffat plainly wrote much of Thompson's S2 ep)

Do we know for certain that Moff had a hand in the S2 finale, or are we just inferring from its quality (and how groansomely bad Thompson's S1 episode was)?

Did everybody look strangely at Molly's new boyfriend Tom near the end just because he resembles Sherlock, or was there something else notable about him that I missed? It seemed like the camera lingered on his shoes, but I have no idea what the significance of that was.

Jonathan Creek is brilliant, and it did that 'boyfriend who looks/dresses exactly like the main character' thing years before this.
Xp I think it was just that he looked like Sherlock

The Avengers showed Mr Peel just slightly before Jonathan Creek

Do we know for certain that Moff had a hand in the S2 finale, or are we just inferring from its quality (and how groansomely bad Thompson's S1 episode was)?

Its basic quality, parts of it's detailed interconnectedness to the series arc, and how groansomely bad both Thompson's S1 ep and his Who ep were that year. It's like how Chibnall obviously disappears from the room ten minutes before the end of the Silurian 2-parter.

Yeah, it was just that he looked like Sherlock, I think. I sort of enjoyed this without actually liking it, it was utterly ludicrous (a bomb with an off-switch? Really?! plus yeah secret underground stations that aren't actually on the line, wtf?), the fake-out explanations were annoying, and if that WAS the explanation, then fuck Moff and his "no-one on the internet sussed it" schtick because I'm pretty sure this very thread alone mentions the replacement body, the cyclist knocking Watson down on purpose, and the squash-ball-under-the-armpit trick.

Thanks sic.

If Sherlock was going to use the squash ball trick, what was the point of the replacement body then???

Actually, I might need to watch again, I think that was maybe a fake-out explanation as well.

I think the third explanation was indeed another fake-out.

everyone is saying that but I didn't get that at all. But then I didn't understand the bit when he disappeared away after telling that guy.

How was the bomb triggered to go off? I really think I might have fallen asleep at a couple of points :-(

The bad guy had a big remote control box with a red button on it in his suitcase.

I also was suspicious of the third(?) explanation, like, why was Sherlock spilling to that fan guy? Plausibility-wise, the second explanation is still in the lead, AFAI care.

Did Col. Moran trigger the countdown? If so why trigger a countdown instead of triggering the actual bomb to go off? I didn't get why it had to be on a timer.

Aye, the need for a timer was the bit I was struggling with.

Plausibility-wise, the second explanation is still in the lead, AFAI care

The gay kiss explanation???

it was just that he looked like Sherlock

I'm glad that's been explained to me because I didn't have a clue why everyone did a double-take when they saw him - I thought maybe he was a character from a previous episode that I either hadn't seen or forgot about. He didn't look anything like Sherlock to me.

He had hair and a coat and was a bit thin.

The gay kiss explanation???

Takes a lot fewer moving parts than the Lazarus plot!

As I understand it, they all went to great lengths to fool Watson - the one person they didn't need to fool. Only the sniper guys and Moriarty needed to believe Sherlock was dead. I get that there might have been some of the gang still hanging around but it doesn't explain why Watson was the one person that needed to be the centre of it all.

Might be the need to keep Watson in the dark for however long Sherlock needed to root out that last of Moriarty's gang?

Yeah, I figured Watson needed to not be in on it for convincing purposes.

right, but everything was set up from his POV - so what about the ppl that actually needed to be tricked?
did they take out the one sniper guy beforehand?

Think so, when S kicked Lazarus off, Mycroft sent his people to deal with snipers (or at least the sniper that was aiming at John). It's anticlimactic, but there you go.

yeah they showed the sniper thru the gunsight

has anyone actually watched the end of the s2 finale to see if it matches at all. seem to recall mycroft reacting in a manner (not mourning exactly) that didn't seem to indicate being in on it, neverminding having helped planned it.

Wouldn't they have filmed all those different explanations at the same time as they filmed the end of the previous series?

yeah presumably, i'm just trying to remember if they were actively dishonest or if they just pulled a solution out of their ass. the answer clearly is 'both'.

i watched the end of the finale just before this, it seemed to have matched up mostly. in one of them watson gets knocked down slightly earlier i think. i dont think we see mycroft after sherlock "dies", just before when watson is yelling at him--he doesnt really react, exactly

that was very silly.

As I understand it, they all went to great lengths to fool Watson - the one person they didn't need to fool.

My theory was always that Sherlock didn't tell Watson he's alive because he wanted to protect Watson. He didn't want Moriarty's crooks to try to get to him through Watson, as they had done in the past. (Though I don't know why doesn't say it in this episode - maybe he just doesn't want to admit it to Watson?) You may notice that the three major characters Sherlock didn't inform about his faked death are the same ones Moriarty's snipers targeted in the previous episode, i.e. the people Moriarty considered to be Sherlock's true friends. Maybe Moriarty's network was still keeping an eye on them even after Sherlock had "died"? Moriarty might've even been smart enough to figure out Sherlock might try to fake his death, so maybe he ordered his goons to spy on these three people in the case Sherlock would re-emerge and try to contact them. So by not contacting them Sherlock made sure they stayed out of harm's way until he had fully destroyed Moriarty's network.

Also, maybe I totally misinterpreted it, but I thought the "final" explanation for how Sherlock survived was just something Watson imagined? We see Watson waiting to die in the metro carriage, the scene fades to white, then we see Sherlock's scene with Anderson, then there's another fade to white to white and were back to Watson in the metro. IIRC, in that scene Anderson says he actually faked the whole terrorist scare just to lure Sherlock out of hiding, that the bomb wasn't real, which of course isn't what actually happened; it's just Watson imagining how they might survive the bomb. Which would mean the explanation for Sherlock's survival was imaginary too, and we never found out how exactly he faked his death.

The terrorist plot in this was a bit silly, but I liked how the writers handled the fake death cliffhanger... They must've realized that any proper explanation they could come up for it would fail to live to up to the fan expectations built up during the two-year break, so basically they just acknowledged this failure with a meta wink, and never gave a definite answer to the mystery.

IIRC, in that scene Anderson says he actually faked the whole terrorist scare just to lure Sherlock out of hiding

Did he? I don't remember that. I thought he admitted faking the Jack The Ripper thing.

Yeah, he admitted the Jack the Ripper thing, but after that I think he was talking about the bomb too... I guess I have to rewatch the episode to see if I remember the lines correctly, but I thought this scene's placing between the fadeouts in the metro carriage was curious, it certainly felt like it was something Watson (or Sherlock) imagined, not something that really happened. But anyway, even if the scene was actually real, it ends with Anderson saying that he would be the last person Sherlock would tell the truth; i.e. we still don't whether the third account was the correct explanation for how Sherlock did it.

there was a lot of horrible public-school/establishment bro behaviour - present in the other episodes obviously, but probably more acceptable (if it is at all acceptable) because they are more vulnerable.
what do you mean by this?

― max, Thursday, January 2, 2014 3:03 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yep, was a bit glib, I'll see if I can break it down a bit:

a lot of horrible public-school/establishment bro behaviour

by which i mean that sadism towards the emotions (not just a feature of public school male behaviour). why am i hand-wringing about this? well, the episode stank of the stuff - it was tiresome. unlike earlier episodes where sherlock is seen to be unaware of what other people might feel, by the end he is aware of what he can do with Watson's emotions. He's not a detective here. It's also condoned, in previous episodes Watson was seen as a reformative character - someone who might make Sherlock be better. Here S's behaviour is seen as charming or amusing - in fact the whole episode, if it was about anything, was about getting Watson to 'come round'.

probably more acceptable (if it is at all acceptable)

i can probably find it acceptable because <3 the earnest and innocent young males of Victorian/late Victorian genre lit (RL Stevenson!), but i can see why people might not see 'charm of male arrogance'=entertainment. perhaps this is because i'm in a self-inflicted nihilistic mood of 'destroy the white male hegemony, it's had its turn and it f'ing stinks to the core'.

because they are more vulnerable

early episodes represented a 'getting to know' period of uncertainty (for the viewer as much as the characters), series 2, Holmes was seen to be matched (E1), chemically frightened (E2), and E3 was about his rise and hubristic fall. the eccentric arrogance (which as I say was not condoned) had a touch of frailty about it. This episode was about the returning conquering hero, adored by all (even Watson's fiancee!), undefeatable even by a big bomb under Parliament. Not so earnest, not so innocent. As is always the case, bombast and bravura are different coming from those who are vulnerable than those who are in power. (it's the thing that people who make false claims about notional equality never get ('why can't we have a white history week!').

He's not a particularly good writer he's basically just a tiresome fanboy for certain kinds of Victorian murk without much of an idea of how to make things genuinely mysterious or creepy.

oh you saw The Tractate Middoth too did you? Odd choice of story anyway, one of the very few (only?) happy ending MR James stories. And Gatissss's's equivocation at the end (omg is he still haunting them?!!) was a bit shit, quite reminiscent of MR James's despised 'modern' use of elipsis...

Yeah I didn't think the Tractate Middoth was much cop at all really. This episode was a million times better by comparison.

I think Watson's more affectionate tolerance of Sherlock bullshit can be explained by Sherlock having a) come back from the dead and b) saved him from being burned alive. Those scenes were genuinely tense, btw.

It seemed a lot of Sherlock's sadism towards the end (lying about not calling the police, the bomb timer scene) was because he wanted to get Watson back to business by making him admit he's almost as big a thrill-seeker as Sherlock himself, and he couldn't have done that without getting him into a thrilling life-or-death situation (but one where Sherlock felt he was in control and Watson wasn't in real danger, unlike with the Guy Fawkes bonfire scene, where he obviously couldn't have afforded to play any games). Though the timer did start at 2:30 and we see Sherlock stopped it at 1:30, so it remains unclear whether Sherlock knew how to stop it the whole time and was just playing mind games from the beginning, or whether he was being serious to Watson at first, and only figured out the off-switch at 1:30, after which he decided to fuck with Watson a bit. It's true that Watson should've called Sherlock out on his behaviour, but on the other hand he already did that in a major way (more major than in any previous episode) in the first act, when Sherlock revealed he wasn't dead, so maybe doing the same in finale would've been repetitive? Also, maybe Watson actually got Sherlock's point, despite his fucked-up method of getting it across? After all, it was his own choice to team with Sherlock again and go looking for the bomb, even after he was almost burned to death.

And he could've called the police himself, it's not like Sherlock was forcing him not to call them. He had the choice to stay behind and phone the cops, or follow Sherlock and try to solve the whole thing with just the two of them, and he chose the latter, as Sherlock had hoped he would.

I think Watson's more affectionate tolerance of Sherlock bullshit can be explained by Sherlock having a) come back from the dead and b) saved him from being burned alive. Those scenes were genuinely tense, btw.

they were - the burning alive scene was excellent and v alarming.

and yep, fair points, Tuomas - I got in a state of unhelpful critical agitation about the whole thing. hope the rest are better because thoroughly enjoyed the first two series.

that scene was less tense for me because it's certain that he will be there on time as watson will not die. but that really is just me watching TV incorrectly!

I didn't think this was a superb episode either; as people have pointed out above, the actual plot is full of holes. But I think it managed to do the things it absolutely needed to do (showing how people react to Sherlock's return, giving some explanation to how he survived, re-establishing his relationship with Watson) in a satisfactory way, while also providing a couple of neat character moments for Mycroft, Mary, and Molly. Let's just hope the next two episodes can build on that, with better mysteries.

TBH I was maybe expecting more of this episode because the recent Dr. Who movie Gatiss wrote was so great, much better than his Dr. Who and Sherlock episodes of the past... But that movie was all about the characters and their interaction, whereas Sherlock requires some intricate plotting too, and it just doesn't seem like Gatiss is very good at that.

(xpost)

that scene was less tense for me because it's certain that he will be there on time as watson will not die. but that really is just me watching TV incorrectly!

― ^ sarcasm (ken c), Friday, 3 January 2014 14:29 (9 minutes ago) Permalink

no i think this is watching tv correctly, or being good at watching tv

like if there are plainly no stakes then the only interesting thing is the novelty of the solution to the nominal problem, and the solution to the nominal problem was dull

as was everything with thinking bullet time, or with the mobile/internet superimposed text device -- devices i liked fine when well-executed -- which were just clunky here

elementary's first season actually did better at setting up situations where something is at stake i think. and this is an american tv model which one expects to be way more about slate-wiping. like the question of whether sherlock will kill moran in that, e.g., even when he doesn't the way in which he doesn't has outcomes, ramifications.

http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2014/jan/03/sherlock-doctor-who-fans-influencing-tv

This seems true for Sherlock, but less so for Dr Who. I haven't actually watched Dr Who for years and haven't seen the episode in question, so I could be wrong, but the whole 12-regenerations thing is quite a fundamental thing that would have been picked up on by the majority of viewers, I would have thought, rather than just a small number of obsessive fans, so it needed to be sorted out. Probably wrong thread.

I agree with Tuomas that the episode demanded too much plot from Gatiss when he's much better at character and emotion. I was thinking the other day about Brian Michael Bendis and how I adore his intimate work on Daredevil and Alias but can't connect with him at all when he has to do the kind of intricate plotting demanded by multi-title arcs because he doesn't have enough grasp of pace and exposition to keep all those plates spinning. To be honest, few writers do. Even Moffat, who did some great plate-spinning with the Riversong storyline, got in an almighty tangle with the latest Doctor Who, and I remembered that the epsiodes of his that initially engaged me, like Blink, The Empty Child and The Girl in the Fireplace, were small, character-driven stories. And that's where the first few episodes of Sherlock also excelled - you could enjoy them in isolation. Which is my long-winded way of saying I can live without complicated continuity and geek pandering.

My theory was always that Sherlock didn't tell Watson he's alive because he wanted to protect Watson. He didn't want Moriarty's crooks to try to get to him through Watson, as they had done in the past.

If M's henchpeople suspect S is alive and wanted to get to S via W, that's not at all contingent on whether or not W is aware of S's vitality.

we still don't whether the third account was the correct explanation for how Sherlock did it.

Agree with this.

I wasn't really pulled into this, but I thought the Sherlock death conspiracy group was a nice touch.

the way to make this episode great is to get so stoned you can't keep a train of thought for longer than about 45 seconds, which is the longest stretch in this episode where anything makes sense plotwise. it feels like they randomly cut out about a third of the story and just kept the bits with the best dialog.

ok I accept my reaction to Ep1 was a bit off beam but I think this is quite a good episode of bob hope and bing crosby.