The Lying Detective
Jan. 19th, 2017 02:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
daibhidcOh my goodness!
That was an episode and a half. It was one of those ones that takes the bare bones of the story (in this case "Sherlock feigns illness to put himself in Culverton Smith's power in order to expose him, and doesn't tell John what's going on") and then writes a basically entirely new story around it.
The initial visit by "Faith" was cleverly done, placing just enough doubt on the idea that she was really there, although even when she vanished, I was thinking "Moffatt wouldn't use "hallucinatory woman" as a twist in an episode which already has a definitely hallucinatory woman, although he might use that to set us thinking she's hallucinatory as well, and then the twist would be that she isn't." And I always like messing about with the Sherlock Scan visuals, in this case he gets chalk scrawled results, but he can't see his own working.
Culverton is suitably creepy. It's interesting that he is, in fact, creepy even when the mask of an eccentric philanthropist is firmly in place; as he suggests to Sherlock, this is a man who's secure enough in his position that he doesn't have to worry about whether he looks like a serial killer.
Mrs Hudson is awesome. Dragging Sherlock to see Watson, calling Mycroft stupid and a reptile, finding the disc because, unlike his brother, she actually understands Sherlock Holmes. And, of course, doing so by giving the ultimate lie to Sherlock's self-perception as a machine for detection: "He's not about thinking, not Sherlock. He's about emotion!"
The recording device in John's walking stick, is of course, the equivalent of Watson hiding in the room when Smith attempted to kill Holmes in the original. I wouldn't normally point out something that obvious, but this seemed surprisingly free of references to other cases; I didn't even recognise the cases Sherlock talked about in the children's ward. (Well, not as Sherlock Holmes cases; the orang-utan one could be a sideways reference to Murders in the Rue Morgue.)
The last conversation by Sherlock and John was probably good. I'm not sure, I spent it shouting "But the note was definitely there when Mycroft's goons were clearing up the place! Are we actually getting back to that at all?" And it turned out we were.
Okay. If Eurus is the third Holmes sibling, who is Sherrinford? And if she isn't (which is certainly possible), who is she? In any event, she's clearly someone who can out-Sherlock Sherlock, not only apparently doing the same chain of reasoning regarding John's therapist without knowing him, but also setting up her "Faith" disguise so that Sherlock would make exactly the deductions he did.
Apart from that, which I assume will be resolved in "The Final Problem", the one bit I don't understand is why Culverton would pass the note on to (presumably) Moriarty, instead of just destroying it? Part of his deep need to confess, I suppose.
(ETA: Oh, and just out of interest, how did Eurus's disguises work for the sort of viewer who can actually recognise secondary characters without hints best of three? Obviously, I was completely taken in but, well, that's me.)
That was an episode and a half. It was one of those ones that takes the bare bones of the story (in this case "Sherlock feigns illness to put himself in Culverton Smith's power in order to expose him, and doesn't tell John what's going on") and then writes a basically entirely new story around it.
The initial visit by "Faith" was cleverly done, placing just enough doubt on the idea that she was really there, although even when she vanished, I was thinking "Moffatt wouldn't use "hallucinatory woman" as a twist in an episode which already has a definitely hallucinatory woman, although he might use that to set us thinking she's hallucinatory as well, and then the twist would be that she isn't." And I always like messing about with the Sherlock Scan visuals, in this case he gets chalk scrawled results, but he can't see his own working.
Culverton is suitably creepy. It's interesting that he is, in fact, creepy even when the mask of an eccentric philanthropist is firmly in place; as he suggests to Sherlock, this is a man who's secure enough in his position that he doesn't have to worry about whether he looks like a serial killer.
Mrs Hudson is awesome. Dragging Sherlock to see Watson, calling Mycroft stupid and a reptile, finding the disc because, unlike his brother, she actually understands Sherlock Holmes. And, of course, doing so by giving the ultimate lie to Sherlock's self-perception as a machine for detection: "He's not about thinking, not Sherlock. He's about emotion!"
The recording device in John's walking stick, is of course, the equivalent of Watson hiding in the room when Smith attempted to kill Holmes in the original. I wouldn't normally point out something that obvious, but this seemed surprisingly free of references to other cases; I didn't even recognise the cases Sherlock talked about in the children's ward. (Well, not as Sherlock Holmes cases; the orang-utan one could be a sideways reference to Murders in the Rue Morgue.)
The last conversation by Sherlock and John was probably good. I'm not sure, I spent it shouting "But the note was definitely there when Mycroft's goons were clearing up the place! Are we actually getting back to that at all?" And it turned out we were.
Okay. If Eurus is the third Holmes sibling, who is Sherrinford? And if she isn't (which is certainly possible), who is she? In any event, she's clearly someone who can out-Sherlock Sherlock, not only apparently doing the same chain of reasoning regarding John's therapist without knowing him, but also setting up her "Faith" disguise so that Sherlock would make exactly the deductions he did.
Apart from that, which I assume will be resolved in "The Final Problem", the one bit I don't understand is why Culverton would pass the note on to (presumably) Moriarty, instead of just destroying it? Part of his deep need to confess, I suppose.
(ETA: Oh, and just out of interest, how did Eurus's disguises work for the sort of viewer who can actually recognise secondary characters without hints best of three? Obviously, I was completely taken in but, well, that's me.)
