Well it's been said Sherlock Holmes met his match in this one in the form of Irene Adler (Lara Pulver) but I think not! Though she does set her plan in motion to meet him by arranging that phonecall to Moriarty (Andrew Scott) so that we don't get much of a showdown at the swimming pool. What all that suspense and waiting around for the second series for nothing! Well when it was aired the first time round. Seems Irene had more plans afoot and thought she could engage Sherlock (Benedict Cumberbatch) in a more 'great-er game.'
Lots of good bits in this one and by that I don't mean certain body parts either! No, Sherlock and Irene were getting one up on each other and in the end Sherlock had to get the better of her, well he did. It was only fair. Okay not fair, but right. All those people looking to him for help and being turned away, had to have been there for a reason and not just cos they read Watson's (Martin Freeman) blog, which was more intriguing than Sherlock blogging about the 473 of different types of tobacco ash, hmm, wonder if he tried them out?
Then the one 'case' that catches his eye is the one about the motorist who sees a man in a field and the car backfires and he drops dead! Not really intriguing at all, save for getting both Sherlock and Irene to solve it. Since "brainy's the new sexy." Or as Sherlock puts it, "thinking is the new sexy." Millions would agree, 'ey Sherlock! Said man having been killed by a boomerang.
So whilst he's driven to Buckingham Palace and Watson gets a helicopter ride, we get allusions to what Sherlock and Irene are doing, i.e both looking at photos of each other, he in bedsheet, not his customary form of dress and her in her many Dominatrix attire, well, okay, one in particular. Mycroft (Mark Gatiss) telling him to dress but he didn't and thus his sheet almost falls down as he steps onto it, sure many would have enjoyed that sight! Funny though, we get Irene being introduced in her best armour and Sherlock also naked here, barring sheet and going out in public like that. Watson not knowing where to look, but he's a doctor! He's seen it all before. That scene between the two was like it was almost ad libbed on the spot, when they couldn't stop laughing and Watson wasn't the one to steal an ashtray, Sherlock did.
This time Sherlock was after compromising photos concerning a certain female royal and yet there was much more going on than that, there always is. So there's banter between the two and obviously she was naked so he couldn't read her, but even that wasn't necessary in the end. Especially when he did read he measurements. With Watson finding himself facing the barrel of a gun this time round, pheww that was barely after the bomb at the pool. A bit of a slo mo fight scene, great to watch and Sherlock gets his hands on the phone but doesn't manage to hang onto it. Oh Sherlock turning your back on her! The photos would be on a phone, that's how far tech has advanced but so is practically everything in a Sherlock ep. There was the pink phone in A Study In Pink, and so on.
So with Sherlock out of it she takes the phone and his coat and beats him up too. Cue his provocative ring tones and we get to Christmas. Once again Sherlock being nasty to Molly (Loo Brearly) when he thinks the present she's wrapped in red is for someone else and she has to compensate for it. Said present being for her and he also gets Irene's phone back. There's only one way she'd part with that cos her life 'depended on it.' So he IDs her DB but it's apparent she's not dead and I knew that first time round too, cos even if her face was bashed in, he knew her measurements! Hey that was her copying his ploy of getting beaten up and pretending to be a man of the cloth when he came to see her. Their line about disguises from earlier on. Irene: "Do you know the big problem with a disguise, Mr Holmes, however hard you try, it's always a self-portrait." Alas it would have been better if it was acknowledged by Sherlock she'd have known what he looks like anyway and I don't mean after his pic in the paper with the deerstalker hat either.
So he smokes a cigarette to feign being a tiny bit upset and then proceeds to compose a sad ditty for the violin. Mycroft's woman, ha turns up and takes Watson on a drive where he meets none other than Irene and thinks she should tell him she's alive. But he already knows! She's been texting him, 57 times was Watson's last count and she reads some out, with ones asking him to dinner after every other text. She was flirting with him. Yes plus also she was after info from him considering she's in league with the 'Criminal Consultant.' And off goes Sherlock's text message tone again, so why was he there anyway, looking out for Watson or did he just have to see her again. Watson wanting everyone to know he's not gay! Irene is.
Finally she turns up at Sherlock's place and in his bed and after some more guesses on what the locked code on her phone could be, she shows him the e-mail she has that everyone's after and yes he deciphers the code in under a minute or even less. As he also recalls Mycroft mentioning "Bond" on the phone and the flight is 007. Irene of course texts the message to Moriarty who else. These scenes and script must have taken Benedict a long time to put to memory, wonder how many takes they needed. Later he takes her hand and takes her pulse, you'd have thought she'd have known that, ugh. It was Patrick Jane's ploy after all from The Mentalist, to take someone's hand and their pulse. Giving away their true feelings.
Sherlock is driven to the airport this time and mentions Coventry and how the government knew it was going to be bombed in World War II but let it happen anyway so as to not let on they knew the German code. A dilemma for Mycroft too, or it looked like it as Moriarty texts him, showing the game's afoot. At the airport where we have "Flyaway Airlines" Mycroft tells him the plane's not taking off since the terrorists know they know and he was only going to use DBs anyway, thus explaining all those people who came to him looking for help.
Irene has her demands which Mycroft must meet or he won't get the info on the phone, but our Sherlock foils her plans. He works out the code cos of her racing pulse and her dilated pupils, showing she has feelings for him even if she denies it. The password being "Sher" as in "I am Sher-locked." It was staring us straight in the face first time round!
Mycroft turns up to tell Watson she's dead, for real, no, Irene was never killed off in the book and he should tell Sherlock she's on some witness protection programme in the US. Again he was one step ahead of them since he saved her and is one for keeping secrets! He'll keep her phone though.
She's a woman, "the woman;" who came close to his 'intelligence' level but not quite. And the one who had his heart. The "ice man and the virgin" could be another ep title, ha. Did you think Sherlock found his match in Irene, my opinion, no. She made common, silly mistakes throughout trying to prove she was just as good or even better, but wasn't. No one can come close to matching the world's greatest consultant detective.
As for the 'CIA' man falling from the window and turning up alive and well, with hindsight, this is kind of a foreshadow towards the last ep of season 2, when Sherlock falls from the building. Cos we know he's not dead!
Mycroft's line to Sherlock: "All lives end. All hearts are broken. Caring is not an advantage..." reminded me of Doctor Who for some reason, maybe it was the way it was delivered, all very cold and straight faced.
No comments:
Post a Comment