Spoilers Sweetie, in the words of River Song!!
An inquiry leads us to meet Charles Augustus Magnussen (Lars Mikkelsen) being questioned as he reads off info about them in his glasses, looking for people's 'pressure points', i.e their weaknesses. Lady Elizabeth Smallwood's (Lindsay Duncan) weakness happens to be her husband and Magnussen knows her husband has a weakness for women, younger girls at this point in time, she tells him he didn't know her age and that's a fact. He sniffs her perfume, Clair de la Lune (which happens to be very common) and then licks her face. Eurgh, enough with the face licking, do we have to see that in everything!! Anyway he's going to use the letters to blackmail her cos that's what he does, a master blackmailer, aka "the Napoleon of blackmailers" who's a newspaper owner/mogul and a most hated man. She's driven away in her car thinking that no one can stand up to him, no man or woman and then, the penny drops, hello, Sherlock (Benedict Cumberbatch). Though she doesn't mention him by name.
John (Martin Freeman) dreams of his time in Afghanistan as a soldier and when he met Sherlock for the first time, as he's awoken by a knock at the door, their neighbour who is concerned about her son, he's disappeared and is an addict. First thought Sherlock, no really, he is/was an addict and John must have thought that too even if only for an instance. She gives John the address of this den of inequity and Mary (Amanda Abbington) won't let him go alone. John takes a tyre lever just incase he needs it. The door is answered by another so-called addict who doesn't reply to John when he's asked the boy. So John sprains his arm, he's a doctor and he knows how to sprain arms, overpowering him and taking his knife. When he finds him, John also chances upon Sherlock in the next bed and I say chances cos what were the odds that Sherlock would be right there, seeing as John tells Mary Sherlock's vanished. Keeping tabs on him was he? Just a thought.
John thinks he's relapsed without him around, well I added that bit cos he really needs to be around to keep an eye on him. Referring to Sherlock's remark last ep, that John and Mary will make good parents since they have had practice, well John has, of looking after Sherlock. Anyway John thinks Sherlock has relapsed and has become an addict once again, but he tells him he's undercover, which is apparent. I mean why would Sherlock become an addict. They drive to see Molly (Louise Brealey) and she tests him, then slaps him. Molly really has sociopathic, sadistic tendencies doesn't she. Sherlock having to mention that the engagement ring is gone. It had to happen sooner or later and after stabbing him with a fork, Tom wouldn't really stick around for long, besides he's not the real thing!
Wiggins (he was a Baker street irregular) as he's now named 'deduces' everything about John, in what seemed like he was meant to be a protege of Sherlock, not likely although he may think so. Sherlock tells them still he's undercover which all falls on deaf ears. Ina bid to make Magnussen believe he's a drug addict and that it will appear in the papers by now. Getting home he sees Mycroft (Mark Gatiss) is there since he has straightened the door knocker, his OCD has anyway. John called him and he too thinks that Sherlock is an addict once more as he brings along Anderson (Jonathan Aris) and some of his cohorts from the fanclub to find the morphine, as Mycroft puts it. Also Mycroft notices Sherlock's bedroom door is closed so he must be hiding it in there. Sherlock gets angry with Mycroft and when he finds out he is investigating Magnussen, Mycroft warns him to stay away. Sherlock refuses and grabs Mycroft's arm, with John having to stop him from doing so, he knows Sherlock will break it especially since he is high. John asks him to leave and Sherlock gives up and goes for a bath.
Was it just me or has that doorknocker on 221B always been straight and not just straight now cos Mycroft's inside! Maybe it was meant to be a reference to Sherlock being high, but I have never seen that doorknocker crooked.
Out pops Janine (Yasmine Akram) in a bid to confuse, make angry or jealous, take your pick as we're meant to think Sherlock has been 'getting it on' with Janine. Which is far from the case, as I pointed out to everyone, well, blabbed! Ha. Clearly that shirt didn't look like one of Sherlock's, a little too high on her wasn't it. Janine has words with Sherlock in the bath and probably a little more, ha. John isn't interested in Magnussen but the fact that Sherlock out and out tells him he has a girlfriend. She tells him he hasn't been home last night. John still in awe at Sherlock having a girlfriend. Oh get it over it, he doesn't really! She's just a plot point as I like to say, ha. She invites John and Mary for dinner, the four of them at her place. Before leaving she and Sherlock kiss, which will send hearts racing, first Molly, now Janine. Oh Irene you
needed to make an entrance too!
Speak of the devil along comes Magnussen, as Mrs Hudson (Una Stbbs) runs up looking rather worried to announce his arrival. His men search them both and find the knife and tyre lever in John's coat. Sherlock tells him he is acting on behalf of Smallwood, but it seems to fall onto deaf ears. So very arrogantly, he's more interested in looking for Sherlock's 'pressure point(s)' of which there seem to be plenty but John Watson comes up many times. Magnussen needing the loo but won't use it cos it's like the rest of the place so in the ultimate slap in the face, insult, he pees in the fireplace. Sherlock's fireplace of all places as Sherlock must stand by and watch. Though he's not concerned with that when he leaves, Sherlock will see John later as they will attempt to break into Magnussen's building. In the meantime, Sherlock has some shopping to do, oh since when? Ha.
They meet and enter his building and as said the only thing that was on Sherlock's mind when he asks John if he saw what he did, obviously I knew he meant he flashed them Smallwood's letters, but John was more bothered about the pissing in the fire place and so he should be! Sherlock demonstrates how he can get into his office, without being caught. He has his keycard which he nicked from his guard and put it with his mobile phone, thus the magnetic strip is rendered useless cos of the tech from the phone. So if he enters it his guards will catch him, but if he enters the corrupted card then his PA will just let him in, we're shown a woman's hand on the keyboard but not whom. Though hazarding a guess, I went for Janine. remember it's all about foreshadowing, well mostly and by now we know that Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss always get most of the guests returning.
So no surprises there but his PA is Janine, it pays to befriend bridesmaids at weddings! Sherlock wants her to let him come up but she refuses in which case he has to do it here and shows her a ring. By the time they get to the the office, Janine has been knocked out and so has the guard. Sherlock sniffs Clair de la Lune and finds Magnussen being held at gunpoint with a masked intruder. He thinks it's Smallwood but it's actually Mary, so now you see that 'There's something about Mary', was right. Well anyone who said there was, was correct in their observations. Sherlock thinks back to when he analyzed her and stops at liar, several times over. He should have known it would be Mary as John mentioned that's her perfume too, not two seconds ago. She wants to kill him for what he has on her with Sherlock asking why she didn't tell him. He thinks she won't shoot him but she does, she pulls the trigger, Sherlock oh how could you underestimate her! He has all sorts of thoughts and flashes to Molly whilst he's shown lying on that gurney in her morgue and she tells him what he must do, whether he should fall back or forward.
Mycroft appears asking him what is behind him, the mirror of course and as it didn't break, it means the bullet is still inside him and so it's stopping the blood from flowing out which would be the COD, blood loss. So he has to fall back and look Anderson shows up too telling him what he should be doing and asking if it's just the one bullet then. Sherlock falls back, the second stage that will kill him is shock. He needs to stay alive, or did I just say that, thinking of Moriarty's ringtone! Sherlock calls out to their dog, his dog, little Sherlock (Louis Moffat) that is and saying that they had to put him down. With older Sherlock running down some stairs in his coat, flowing with him all the while. He ends up in Moriarty's padded cell and Moriarty (Andrew Scott) talks to him about being dead and the pain. He doesn't like pain but Sherlock did. Eventually he tells him about John, he can't leave John behind and that's what makes Sherlock fight, as he comes back up the stairs and struggles to return. He must return for John, he can't leave him alone and especially not with Mary.
John tells Lestrade (Rupert Graves) Sherlock must know who did it since he was shot facing forward and he won't tell them who cos he's protecting them, no John, he's protecting you. Mary appears to Sherlock telling him he can't tell John and he wakes up with Janine there and all the newspaper headlines. So you see, he was using her which was what I said all along. You know just sometimes I wish that they would write things to be a little bit harder to suss out. Not being big headed or egotistical, ha, but it's too easy to work out what happens/is happening. She tells him Magnussen must be angry cos she broke the news to his rivals and also how Sherlock used her, well they used each other cos she is a publicity seeking whore and got a cottage out of it. As he ups his morphine, then lowers it when she leaves. As said does it look like Sherlock would have a girlfriend, not that gullible, not quite yet anyway! Though in one of the canons, Sherlock did get engaged.
John and Lestrade enter Sherlock's room, only to find it empty, he made his escape via the window. He gets Wiggins to contact Mary and he hands her the phone. She's on Leinster Gardens and he talks about the houses. Then projects her photo from the wedding outside two of the houses which have been demolished for the underground (ooh let's mention the underground again). They're just a facade, like her, she's a facade too. He invites her in and asks how good a shot she is, since she could have killed him but didn't. She thinks he's sitting in the chair talking to her, again, it was obvious it wasn't him. As he asks her to demonstrate what she can do with a gun. She throws up a coin and shoots it. Sherlock creeping up behind her and she thinks it's a dummy on the chair, well if you look at it that way, I jest. She admits she's not really Mary, well Sherlock does that for her since the real one died and is buried, she didn't become her until five years ago and that's why she doesn't have any friends, as he mentioned in The Sign of Three, her side is rather sparse and she put it down to being an orphan. He wants to know why she didn't come to him for help and she replies she didn't want John to know and he mustn't know now. John is in the chair and has heard it all. Think he got that when he sat in his chair that Sherlock put back for him after removing it to see the view to the kitchen. As John notices the bottle of perfume on the table. He was meant to see that. Seeing as he's the one who mentioned that Mary also wears the same brand.
Sherlock wants them to return to Baker Street where they can both have a domestic. Cue Christmas scene where they have moved on and have all been invited to the Holmes's Christmas gathering. Even Wiggins is there as he gives some tea to Mary. She reads one of his mother's (Wanda Ventham) books on Maths which she comments is is rather boring, as his father (Timothy Carlton) lights the fire. He's the sane one in the family. John turns up and they're not really on speaking terms. Back to Baker Street where John wants Sherlock to just shut up. Sherlock asking John what she is now, what she really is, a client of course. John pulls up a chair for her and she sits there as he tells her that's where they decide if they'll take on the case. She hands him a flashdrive with the initials A.G.R.A, that's her real name. She's a spy or more likely a CIA assassin.
Cue forward to Christmas again and Sherlock saying he doesn't like it. Their mother comments on how someone shot her little boy and if she finds out who it was... John loves Mary and he throws the flashdrive away. He doesn't want to know who she was or her name, she is Mary. He's not bothered with her past but with her future, with him. Mary telling him Sherlock was right, John is attracted to people like her, that's why he ended up marrying someone like her. His best friend is a sociopath after all. So what does that say about Sherlock and Irene?
Everyone has been drugged as Wiggins is a chemist, and Sherlock tells John not to drink Mary's tea or the punch. He needed Mycroft, his laptop with all the secrets in it cos he wants to confront Magnussen and get to Appledore: the vault where he keeps his secrets. That will be their ride, his helicopter. Magnussen refuses to deal since he knows that the laptop will have GPS and by now Mycroft and the police will be here. He shows them the vault, just a room with a chair where he sits and gathers his thoughts, cos everything he needs to know is in his mind. Again too obvious. Which is why he teased him with flashing the letters, to fool Sherlock. That's why I said it would have been easier if Mary had shot him, it was after all, what she does. Out on the patio, John asks if Sherlock has a plan and Magnussen wants to flick John, as long as it wasn't to lick him! Sherlock wants him to go along with it cos he's buying time. John telling him if it's in his mind he hasn't got any proof, but he doesn't need proof, he only needs to publish and the damage is done.
Mycroft approaches and wants them to step away from Magnussen so either he can get him shot or arrest him, but it was the inevitable, that Sherlock would be the one who would end it all, as he shoots Magnussen. Mycroft ordering them not to shoot Sherlock. Mycroft tries to ensure the bigwigs can't make Sherlock go to prison, it would be chaos. But to no avail, well that's gratitude for you, yes you Smallwood! So he has no choice but to send Sherlock on that mission in Eastern Europe for six months which will prove fatal for him. Not that he wants to lose his brother. Mary promises to look after John and to get him into trouble.
John won't see Sherlock again so he suggests baby names: William Sherlock Scott Holmes, but he tells him it's a girl. He still tries to convince him that Sherlock is a girl's name, but he can't fool him into naming the baby after him. Sherlock leaves and is called by Mycroft asking how he's enjoying four minutes of exile? The TV signals are disrupted as we get Moriarty asking, "Did you miss me?" Sherlock being the only man who can help them! SO it's London for you Mr Holmes once again!! It's like he never left!
Did you like the scene where we actually get to see Sherlock eat! The hospital canteen he calls it, and Magnussen shows up. Sherlock thinking he reads files through his glasses but finds they're just an ordinary pair of spectacles. Think that's where he worked out there is no vault and had to keep the illusion going of not really knowing. I mean this is Sherlock he had to have deduced that for certain now. Some people have said he made a mistake, as Magnussen did, that he thought the vault was real, but I didn't get that impression. Also the scene at their parent's house where they both smoke and have another brotherly moment together, before mother catches them in the act. Sherlock saying it was Mycroft, who is called Mike and hates it.
SO the question or tag line will now be #MoriartyLives, but how? #MoriartyReturns #MoriartyNeverDied. Or I like #MoriartyStayinAlive. That will haunt us now for the foreseeable future, as long as it's not two years! Anyway knew he wasn't dead as I wrote in my review of The Reichenbach Fall, it could not be that easy. Mind you anyone could have sent that transmission, anyone, it's not like we saw Moriarty in person. Could have been Mycroft, Sherlock, even.
Not to mention the fact that Magnussen had a so-called 'mind palace,' hey only Sherlock can have a mind palace! Mycroft calls it a "memory palace" then what or where were the letters that he had on Smallwood. Since no one got a hold of them, they were only in his mind. SO was shooting him enough,, did he have the letters stored in his memory too, cos really he wouldn't have destroyed them, or would he.
Of course it would have been more conducive if Mary had just ended it all for him but then we wouldn't have gotten those scenes at the end, where Sherlock had to be the one to kill him, since he was the one really being taunted, but he was a really bad man, even if he kept pointing out he wasn't a killer or a villain. But he was. He was the worst kind of criminal, human, the one who hides behind his fancy words without admitting to what he really does and is. But it had to be Sherlock that's why he asked John if he brought his gun with him, cos in this case, only a gun would do.
As for Janine calling him "Sherl", done that already, ha, in my tweets for the new year! To quote Moriarty, "I am so good", well paraphrase him then. Ha.
Questions there were plenty, as Mycroft mentions there was a third brother and he died, surely not Moriarty, Noo, well anything's possible in this production, as we do get to move away from the original books!! Ha. So there was a third Holmes. Other interesting moments, Mrs Hudson being an exotic dancer and Sherlock being the one who sent her husband to death row in Florida. Well it wasn't mentioned here but I like the reference to series 1.
This ep was based on The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton and other mentions too from other books, though I know many refer to them as canons. The opening scene with Magnussen was meant to be one where we immediately hate the villain and the true abhorrent nature of him and the workings of his mind. Smarmy and yet attempting to be so very above it all. Sherlock even mentions his "dead eyes" towards the end. He's entirely focused on one thing and one thing alone, his blackmailing and how he keeps not just mere mortals but countries at his beck and call. Finding peoples' pressure points, Mary was John's and he couldn't quite be sure if John was Sherlock's as he had to find out, thus kidnapping him in The Empty Hearse to find this out. How Sherlock would move heaven and earth to save him. He even returned from flatlining to ensure John is 'saved.' Apparently Sherlock's pressure points also include Irene, though John was recurring. But somewhere it had to include Mycroft too. Blood is thicker and all that.
Reminding me of The Empty Hearse scene, where he tells John to be careful what he wishes for when he wants Sherlock dead. Thus somewhere we had to get a scene where this actually happens. Another thought I had was how in Sherlock's mind palace after he was shot, with Molly asking if he needs to fall backwards or forwards, was a kind of allusion to how he jumped off the building to survive his fall. I know this sounds a bit far fetched; or at least how they both planned his 'demise' back then.
Still some laughs assured in this but not quite as laugh out loud as the other two episodes. Like John telling Magnussen, "I don't understand," Magnussen replying he should put that on a T-shirt and John saying, "I still don't understand," would be on the back of the T-Shirt. (With Sherlock's T-Shirt saying, "Fooled you!" Included here by me. Not that Magnussen would be around to see that one.)
Another point to his episode is how married life is not really boding well for John. He has his clothes packed in his bag, his shirts folded which he changes into at work, as deduced by Wiggins. With Sherlock adding he's putting on weight, seven pounds, cos he misses this sort of detective work, John adding it' actually five pounds. John's war nightmares returning maybe a little disturbing since he was over them, with the help of Sherlock and seeing his shrink, but now that he's getting them back, is worrying since he seems to be regressing back to pre A Study In Pink days. Maybe his nightmares were trying to tell him something about Mary.
Mary was another addition who was quite a breath of fresh air, she understood both men and that she was willing to go so far to end the blackmailing, even shooting Sherlock, more a last resort, he happened to be there at the wrong time, but he still knew all about her. She knew when he was lying and even John can't determine that. She changed the dynamic between the two friends and in a way, also made Sherlock realize his humanity and how he does need a friend, how much of a true friend John really is. Sherlock forgives Mary and wants John to do the same since she saved his life, she called the ambulance before John did and it takes an ambulance in London eight minutes to reach its destination as he times it, suffering a relapse as Sherlock bleeds internally.
Sherlock needs morphine and as he tells Mrs Hudson she hasn't got any but she ran a drug cartel, she responding, "I just did the typing." The entire three episodes showed Sherlock: character and detective in a different light with all the people he knew and has built up a relationship with over the years. Oh and never to be forgotten, Molly slapping him endlessly for being an addict and ruining his life! As Redbeard was mentioned quite a bit, he was actually the family dog.
That scene with Sherlock on the plane was so heartbreaking and gut wrenching. Here was a man who did all for his friends, kept his last vow, dying to keep it, stepping on board that plane and to certain death and accepting it so, well so graciously, can I say that, just brought tears to my eyes. Deep down thinking that he is Sherlock, he won't die. Then we get Moriarty, who perhaps can be called a life saver, ha. SO many emotions in this episode still, from the funny, to the sad and then look, it was Sherlock as we knew him all over again as he's coming back.
Oh and also enjoyed Mycroft's reference to dragons and needing slaying, his "here be dragons" line was no allusion to Smaug of course!! ha. As Sherlock tells John the game will never be over, there'll always be a new villain and in this case we have the return of one of our very fave ones in Moriarty, or is he just one big tease? It's as if series 3 didn't really happen and we're back to The Reichenbach Fall, in some ways.
In The Adventures of Charles Augustus Milverton, Sherlock is hired by a socialite to retrieve some stolen letters from one his most hated criminals he has encountered. Sherlock disguises himself as a plumber to gain the layout of Milverton's house and befriends the maid for this purpose, he even gets engaged to her. Read Janine here. Milverton is actually shot here by one of his Vics and Sherlock and John just stand by and watch it happen. In one adaptation, Milverton was part of Moriarty's gang, maybe why Moriarty was mentioned here at the end.
Mycroft and John both mention "an east wind" a reference to Mycroft predicting Sherlock's death, whereas Sherlock predicts Moriarty's return, all in his mind palace and John alludes to Sherlock's return. Janine and her cottage, in the book, His Last Bow, Sherlock retires to a cottage on the Sussex Downs and keeps bees, here Janine mentions removing the beehives from her cottage. As for A.G.R.A being Mary's real name, In The Sign of Four the treasure was stolen from Agra, India.
Roll on series 4 as we anxiously await a new beginning....
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