By the time Sherlock gets to the pool at the end, one would think he doesn’t have any humanity at all. When Molly Hooper introduces him to her boyfriend, “Jim,” Sherlock’s only comment is “gay,” muttered under his breath. Of course, he has observations to back up that statement, but he knows better than to say it out loud, and does so anyway. When Moriarty’s third time bomb agent doesn’t follow protocol and Moriarty’s sniper pulls the trigger, Sherlock puts the phone down, mouth open in surprise. The next morning, he and John realize just how horrible it was, that 11 people died in addition to the elderly woman. Sherlock sits quietly in the chair, devastated at the loss of human life. No, scratch that … he’s upset that the explosion suggests that Moriarty won that round, when Sherlock knows that he won it because he had figured out the case in time. As he begins to piece together the three mysteries and what ties them together, John is infuriated: How could the two geniuses be playing with human beings this way? Don’t they care about the lives at stake in their precious game? “Will caring about them help save them?” Sherlock asks.
It’s a pertinent question. Surgeons don’t weep over every patient they can’t save. Veterinarians don’t mourn the loss of every animal they have to euthanize. Soldiers can’t stop to imagine the friends and families of the enemies they’re shooting at. Sherlock is simply distancing himself from the human element because, as he will discover even more in the second season, when one begins to care it affects the outcome of the game. And the game is what matters to him. He needs to keep himself clear of human emotion and act more like a machine. It’s that discipline that keeps his mind sharp, that ultimately gets the job done and puts the criminal element behind bars. He doesn’t think of the people sitting in the car, or standing in Piccadilly Circus, or trapped in an apartment, covered in C-4 and crying for hours as they imagine their impending deaths. If he did, he wouldn’t be entirely focused on the case; his concentration would be broken.
In contrast, watch how John investigates the case. He meets Connie Prince’s brother, Kenny, and assumes he has a personal vendetta against his sister because of how strangely he acts. He imagines a wildly concocted scheme whereby the cat’s claws are poisoned and he’s able to take everything from his sister by killing her. John doesn’t focus on the clues around him, but thinks of the way sibling relationships change over time (consider the damaged relationship between himself and Harry), and of how Connie treated Kenny in public, humiliating him over and over again. He’s utterly wrong, of course, and Sherlock comes up with the more mundane solution, gleaned by simply observing the evidence and ignoring the possibilities of human drama. John’s preference for romance over facts is illustrated in his blog posts, and Sherlock’s abhorrence of John’s versions of their investigations provides much of the hilarity of this episode. Sherlock mocks John for missing important clues, but John will always be able to counter that Sherlock didn’t know the Earth revolved around the sun. Hard to beat that one, Sherlock.
Amid all the Moriarty-induced fun, Mycroft has returned to request Sherlock’s assistance in helping him recover a memory stick that contains secret government plans that had been allegedly stolen by the now-deceased Andrew West. While Sherlock dismisses Mycroft’s emphasis on the case’s importance, John feels a responsibility to Sherlock’s older brother and, under the guise of acting on behalf of Sherlock, takes on the case himself. Just as Sherlock sent him to Connie Prince’s house knowing that John would be guided by his heart instead of his head, he similarly sends him to West’s fiancée’s house, knowing that John will do the requisite handholding and listening, paying attention to all of the emotions and none of the clues.
But best friends aren’t supposed to be robots. John might miss essential clues during an investigation, but he cares about people, their fears and plights, and he worries about Sherlock. Sherlock’s indifference to human suffering frustrates John constantly, and it’s one thing to purse his lips and jab his finger in Sherlock’s direction as he lectures the sleuth about his apathy; it’s quite another to live with him on a daily basis and slowly come to realize that Sherlock doesn’t even notice his absence.
That’s why the scene at the pool is essential to the entire season. Once again, Sherlock has gone behind John’s back because of his obsession with the game. Moriarty instigated the game, but Sherlock is determined to win it. When John steps out of the shadows in a large coat and says, “Bet you never saw this coming,” the look on Sherlock’s face is priceless, matched only by the faces of the viewers at home wondering just how far Gatiss and Moffat have decided to veer from the books on this one. Sherlock is in shock — not, for once, because he can’t believe he missed the clues leading up to this moment, but because he’s so surprised that his best friend would betray him like this. A moment later, as John opens the coat to reveal the bombs, Sherlock’s surprise turns to horror. Finally, here is a human being whose life he cares about. John begins muttering nonsense that’s being fed to him by Moriarty, and Sherlock begs his enemy to stop. Not only does he want John to live, but he doesn’t want him to be humiliated. From this point on, Sherlock seems to lack proper concentration and emotional distance and is instead focused on how he can save John’s life. He’s willing to turn over government secrets and — god forbid — forfeit the game, just to save his friend. He and John are more alike than either one could have guessed.
Moriarty finally steps out of the shadows, and … it’s “Probably Gay” Jim from St. Bart’s. “Hi,” he sings in a high-pitched Irish lilt. Sherlock’s face drops once again as he realizes that Moriarty had been under his nose the whole time. The intellectual limitations of everyone around him is a constant irritation for Sherlock. “You do see, you just don’t observe,” he hisses at Lestrade earlier in the episode. And yet, despite telling Miss Wenceslas, “The art of disguise is knowing how to hide in plain sight,” he had failed to observe that his arch-nemesis, the guy whom Sherlock paid no mind when he introduced himself earlier, the man who slipped his phone number under a petri dish … all along he’d been hiding in plain sight.
Throughout this episode, Benedict Cumberbatch is glorious, from his arrogant correction of a prisoner’s grammar, to the way a smile threatens to dance on his lips when he realizes he’s about to embark on a game, to the wide variety of emotions that play upon his face throughout this final scene. Martin Freeman is similarly remarkable as he tries to keep his anger in check around Sherlock, gets excited when he thinks he’s cracked a case, attempts to sacrifice himself to save Sherlock’s life, and then falls apart afterwards. Yet despite the mastery of these two actors, Andrew Scott as Moriarty is such a marvel you can’t take your eyes off him. In this one scene, he’s goofy, creepy, brilliant, terrifying, and hilarious, creating an entirely unsettling effect. As with Sherlock, the viewer knows when looking at Moriarty that he’s a man devoid of empathy, but one who is an extraordinary actor who can make everyone around him do, say, and believe whatever he wants them to. He tricked Sherlock, and even as he walks around the pool, hands in his pockets, head bobbing from side to side, Sherlock can’t quite figure him out. The master of detection and observation is stumped by this cunning person. Scott plays him as an extremely volatile man, one moment purring his words, the next shouting viciously. He speaks in a high, soft voice that almost lulls the listener into calmness. That tranquility suddenly disappears when Sherlock takes on John’s moral high ground and reminds Moriarty that people have died because of their little game. “That’s what people DO!!” Moriarty violently shouts, and his voice echoing around the pool area is chilling.
But Sherlock isn’t the only one caught by surprise in this moment. Just when the detective seems to have run out of ideas, John leaps onto Moriarty’s back and tells Sherlock to run. Moriarty isn’t angered by this turn of events, but instead looks deeply impressed by both men. He knows that caring for a friend makes Sherlock weaker, but in this moment he admires that Sherlock has taken on a “pet” to help him out of diffic
ult situations.
If there were ever a moment in this first season where we questioned Sherlock’s loyalty to John, that doubt disappears when Moriarty leaves and Sherlock frantically removes the bomb vest from his friend. He looks upset and deeply shaken, repeatedly asking John if he’s all right. He could have gone after Moriarty, but getting that vest off John is all that matters to him in this moment. When John asks Sherlock if he’s okay, Sherlock simply dismisses the question with a wave and then begins to stutter out his thanks to John for doing what he did. This is probably the first time in Sherlock’s life someone has thrown themself in front of a bullet for him, has offered willingly to sacrifice his life to save Sherlock’s, and the sleuth doesn’t know how to process his new emotions. Notice when Moriarty walks back through the door — “I’m so changeable!” — and Sherlock points the gun at the bomb, he first looks to John, who gives him an almost imperceptible nod, as if they’re now in this together, rather than Sherlock making the decisions and John having to live (or die) with them.
What happens next will make anyone watching the series for the first time thrilled that they aren’t watching it live in August 2010 with a year and a half until the next episode.
HIGHLIGHT
John, on Sherlock’s Homeless Network: “So … you scratch their backs, and …”
Sherlock: “Yes, then I disinfect myself.”
DID YOU NOTICE?
The yellow smiley face on the wall of Sherlock and John’s flat has been made with the spray paint from the previous episode.
The sign behind Moriarty when he’s standing poolside cunningly hints that, until now, Sherlock has been paddling in the shallow end of the criminal pool.
FROM ACD TO BBC The memory stick portion of this episode is based heavily on “The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans,” a fantastic later story:
The story begins with Holmes being incredibly bored, and he receives a notice from Mycroft that some very important government plans have been lost, and all of Britain would be compromised if they fell into the wrong hands. When he sends a telegram to Holmes saying he’s coming over, Holmes is so shocked — his brother rarely leaves the safety of the Diogenes Club — that he remarks to Watson, “But that Mycroft should break out in this erratic fashion! A planet might as well leave its orbit.”
Although the sibling rivalry between Mycroft and Sherlock isn’t nearly as heated in the stories as it is on the show, in this instance Mycroft tells Holmes, “You must drop everything, Sherlock. Never mind your usual petty puzzles of the police-court.” In “The Greek Interpreter,” the first time we encounter Mycroft, he condescendingly refers to his brother as “my dear boy” (in the books, there’s a seven-year age gap).
When Mycroft tells Holmes that there’s an honor in it for him, Holmes dismisses the offer and says, “I play the game for the game’s sake,” which ties this story into the rest of the episode.
In the story, Arthur Cadogan West is framed with the robbery, killed, and thrown on top of a train, and when Watson visits with the fiancée she is as adamant as Andrew West’s fiancée in the episode, saying, “Arthur was the most single-minded, chivalrous, patriotic man upon earth. He would have cut his right hand off before he would sell a State secret confided to his keeping. It is absurd, impossible, preposterous to anyone who knew him.”
At the end of “The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans,” Watson is scared about accompanying Holmes somewhere but agrees to go with him, and he notes, “For a moment I saw something in his eyes which was nearer to tenderness than I had ever seen.” It’s fitting that Sherlock would direct that same caring look to John at the end of this episode.
In “The Musgrave Ritual,” Holmes is so bored he shoots “V.R.” in the wall of the flat, which stands for Victoria Regina, just as he randomly shoots at Mrs. Hudson’s wall in this episode.
Sherlock complains throughout the beginning of this episode that he is bored. In “The Red-Headed League,” Holmes explains to Watson, “My life is spent in one long effort to escape from the commonplaces of existence. These little problems help me to do so.”
There are several instances in the canon of Holmes criticizing Watson’s storytelling, just as Sherlock mocks John’s blog in this episode. At the beginning of The Sign of Four, Watson asks Holmes if he’d taken a look at his write-up of the previous adventure, A Study in Scarlet, and Holmes expresses the same sort of disdain for it as Sherlock does. “I glanced over it,” he says. “Honestly, I cannot congratulate you upon it. Detection is, or ought to be, an exact science and should be treated in the same cold and unemotional manner. You have attempted to tinge it with romanticism, which produces much the same effect as if you worked a love-story or an elopement into the fifth proposition of Euclid.” Watson expresses his displeasure to the reader, admitting, “I was annoyed at this criticism of a work which had been specially designed to please him. I confess, too, that I was irritated by the egotism which seemed to demand that every line of my pamphlet should be devoted to his own special doings.” In “The Adventure of the Copper Beeches,” Holmes goes so far as to suggest Watson embellishes the stories, and at first Watson good-naturedly ribs him back, until Holmes escalates the conversation by saying, “Crime is common. Logic is rare. Therefore it is upon the logic rather than upon the crime that you should dwell. You have degraded what should have been a course of lectures into a series of tales.” Holmes says it again in “The Adventure of the Abbey Grange,” adding, “I must admit, Watson, that you have some power of selection, which atones for much which I deplore in your narrative. Your fatal habit of looking at everything from the point of view of a story instead of as a scientific exercise has ruined what might have been an instructive and even classical series of demonstrations. You slur over work of the utmost finesse and delicacy, in order to dwell upon sensational details which may excite, but cannot possibly instruct, the reader.”
John seems to take no end of pleasure in the fact that Sherlock knows very little about the solar system. In A Study in Scarlet, Watson writes that after living with Holmes for a short time, he’d made lists of things Holmes knew and things he didn’t, and among the things he knows very little about are literature, philosophy, and politics. Watson adds that Holmes is “ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar System.” Later, in The Hound of the Baskervilles, when Watson is a little ticked off with Holmes, he reminds him, “I can still remember your complete indifference as to whether the sun moved round the earth or the earth round the sun.”
In “The Adventure of the Second Stain,” a very important government document is stolen out of the bedroom lockbox of the Prime Minister’s Secretary of European Affairs, the loss of which could start a war. Readers have often nitpicked that such an important document wouldn’t just be put into a lockbox in someone’s bedroom, but rather be kept in a safe in the Houses of Parliament. There is a sly nod to that story in this episode, when Mycroft explains that the plans for the missile defense system were being kept on a memory stick and John scoffs, “That wasn’t very clever.”
Sherlock asks John to find as many clues as he can on the shoe, and even though he doesn’t come close to finding what Sherlock does, the detective praises him, only to then shoot down what he came up with. This is a running trope in the stories. In “The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter,” Holmes asks for Watson’s advice on their next step, and when Watson comes up with a plan, Holmes says, “Excellent, Watson! You are scintillating this evening,” only to tell him he’d already thought of the plan, checked it out, and it wouldn’t work. In “A Case of Identity,” Holmes gives Watson the first shot at deducing a client, and after Watson’s conclusions Holmes says, “’Pon my word, Watson, you are coming along wonderfully. You have really done very well indeed. It is true that you have missed everything of importance, but you have hit upon the method, and you have a quick eye for colour.” At the beginning o
f The Hound of the Baskervilles, he has Watson make deductions about a cane that was left behind by a client, and Watson throws out a few ideas. Holmes begins to praise him exuberantly before adding, “I am afraid, my dear Watson, that most of your conclusions were erroneous.”
John is upset to learn that while he thought he was being clever and working the case on his own (deducing that Connie Prince was somehow killed by the cat claws; starting to figure out that Andrew West’s body was found where it was because of the train switches), Sherlock had been following him the entire time and had already cracked both cases. Sherlock’s treatment of John is similar to the way he treats him in The Hound of the Baskervilles, when he sends Watson off to Baskerville on his own, and Watson sends back long reports to keep him abreast of events, only to discover that Holmes has been there the entire time, always keeping two steps ahead of Watson’s investigation.
After Sherlock doesn’t show appropriate concern in the wake of the elderly woman’s death, John accuses of him being unfeeling. In The Sign of Four, during one particularly passionate outburst, Watson says to Holmes, “You really are an automaton — a calculating machine … There is something positively inhuman in you at times.”
Moriarty is introduced (and then killed off) in Doyle’s short story “The Final Problem.” When Holmes tells Watson about him, he says, “If I could beat that man, if I could free society of him, I should feel that my own career had reached its summit, and I should be prepared to turn to some more placid line in life.” When describing him, Holmes tells Watson that when their paths crossed, “I had at last met an antagonist who was my intellectual equal.”
Investigating Sherlock Page 8
