Investigating Sherlock

by Nikki Stafford

  When Sherlock gets the first message from Moriarty, it’s preceded by five pips. In Doyle’s story “The Five Orange Pips,” the title refers to members of the KKK sending messages to each other using dried-up orange seeds, or pips.

  Sherlock tells John about his Homeless Network in this episode. In The Sign of Four, Holmes introduces Watson to the Baker Street Irregulars, a group of “street Arabs” who are able to inconspicuously gather information for Holmes far more effectively than the police force, simply because they’re able to slip through the streets of London completely unnoticed.

  Throughout this episode, Sherlock keeps saying that he needs more data. That was a word oft-used in the books: one prominent example is from “The Adventure of the Copper Beeches,” when Holmes famously shouts, “Data! data! data! I can’t make bricks without clay.”

  When Sherlock cracks the Bruce-Partington case, he tells John that Mycroft threatened him with a knighthood. At the beginning of “The Adventure of the Three Garridebs,” Watson mentions that Holmes had just refused a knighthood.

  When Moriarty and Holmes come face-to-face in “The Final Problem,” Moriarty says, “All that I have to say has already crossed your mind.” Holmes replies, “Then possibly my answer has crossed yours,” dialogue that is echoed poolside in this episode. Moriarty is described as having a soft voice and is “clean-shaven, pale, and ascetic-looking.”

  Just as the flat across the street from theirs is blown up in this episode, 221B is set on fire in “The Final Problem.”

  INTERESTING FACTS

  Moffat and Gatiss say they chose Belarus as the setting for Sherlock lecturing the convict on his grammar for two reasons: they wanted it to be cold, and it’s one of the only places in the world that still executes people by hanging. The scene was actually shot in Wales.

  For those outside the U.K., the Greenwich pips are a series of tones used by the BBC every 60 minutes to indicate the top of the hour. The series consists of six pips: five short, one long. The first time Sherlock is contacted by Moriarty, the message begins with five pips (four short, one long). In each subsequent phone call, the number of pips decreases by one.

  In the second case, Moriarty contacts Sherlock to tell him that the clue is in the name of the motor car company: Janus Cars. Janus is one of the oldest Roman gods and is depicted as having two faces: one looking forward to the future, and the other looking backward to the past. He was a good king who revered honesty above all other traits, but over time his allusions in literature, television, and film instead present a mistaken interpretation of his two faces. Janus now represents one who is two-faced, or hypocritical and deceitful (the opposite of what the god originally represented). So when Moriarty says his name is the clue, he’s pointing to the fact that Janus Cars purports to be one thing, but in fact is deceiving the public by helping people disappear.

  Connie Prince’s brother is played by John Sessions, whom North American audiences might recognize from the original British version of the popular game show Whose Line Is It Anyway?

  In the planetarium, the voice on the film Professor Kairns is watching belongs to Doctor Who’s fifth Doctor, Peter Davison. The music playing in the film clip is Gustav Holst’s “Mars.”

  The voice of the child on the phone during the Vermeer deduction is Louis Moffat, Steven Moffat’s son. He will appear onscreen at the end of “His Last Vow.”

  While there is no actual Van Buren supernova, Sherlock’s solution to the mystery of the Vermeer painting has actually been used to date paintings. In 2013, a group of scientists at Texas State University used what is called “astronomical chronology” to date a series of Monet paintings; in one case, looking at a particular rock formation and the location in the sky of a sunset, they dated it to an exact time: 4:53 p.m. on February 5, 1883.

  When John is under Moriarty’s thrall and repeating the words spoken into his earpiece, he says “Gottle o’ geer” over and over. This is a joke amongst ventriloquists — you can spot an untrained ventriloquist when they try to make their dummy say “bottle of beer” without moving their lips. It comes out sounding like “gottle o’ geer.” By making John say it repeatedly, Moriarty is poking fun at John being his dummy.

  Sherlock, mocking the people who would hire Moriarty as their consulting criminal, says, “Dear Jim, will you please fix it for me to get rid of my lover’s nasty sister?” He’s alluding to the British television series Jim’ll Fix It, starring British legend Jimmy Savile. He would read aloud letters from people who wrote in asking him to fix their problem, and then he would choose one (usually the letters from children) and fix it for them. The letters would begin, “Dear Jim, will you fix it for me to …” In a horrifying turn of events, this episode aired in 2010, Savile died in 2011, and in 2012 a sex scandal erupted where six decades of complaints against Savile came to light, and with the mountain of undeniable evidence, it was confirmed that Savile had sexually abused and raped people as young as five and as old as 75. Following the announcement, many monuments to Savile throughout Great Britain were removed, and the Savile family removed his grave’s headstone and had it destroyed, expressing their deep regret about what had happened. All of his honors were revoked (honorary doctorates, streets named after him, statues). What has yet to be determined is how these complaints, going back decades, were somehow buried until after his death.

  OOPS

  When Martin Freeman is standing in front of the fridge, watch how the skull on the table behind him disappears and reappears.

  When the news of Connie Prince’s death first appears on the television, the news ticker reads “Make-over Queen Connie Prince dead at 48.” But at the morgue, Lestrade points to the body and says, “Connie Prince, 54.”

  Shooting at Semtex (C-4) would not actually detonate it; it requires a detonator or blasting cap. The sniper shot would have killed the elderly woman, but not exploded the bomb. Similarly, the end of this episode isn’t much of a cliffhanger if you know that.

  PSYCHOPATH OR SOCIOPATH?

  “I’m not a psychopath, Anderson. I’m a high-functioning sociopath. Do your research.”

  And with that one put-down in “A Study in Pink,” Sherlock sparks one of the most heated debates in Sherlock fandom. Is Sherlock Holmes a psychopath or a sociopath? Or neither? What is the difference between the two? Is there a difference?

  In the 19th century, doctors working with mental patients began noticing that some exhibited morally depraved behavior, and by the turn of the 20th century, those patients were referred to as “psychopaths.” By the early 1940s, the term “sociopath” was being used to denote the damage that psychopathic behavior had on society, but it was generally used as a synonym for psychopathy. Today, many still argue that the two words describe exactly the same condition, while others maintain that the two conditions are quite distinct. To the latter group, a sociopath is someone whose psychopathic tendencies were caused by his or her environment and upbringing; a psychopath is someone who was born that way.

  In 1980, the symptoms previously assigned to psychopathy were suddenly altered and then given a new name: antisocial personality disorder. The term “psychopathy” had focused on the personality of the individual; ASPD was defined by the individual’s behavior in society. The shift caused enormous debate within the mental health community. Around the same time, criminal psychologist Dr. Robert Hare was working on what would ultimately become the Hare Psychopathy Checklist, a list of 20 items that could be used to indicate a high possibility that the patient exhibited psychopathic tendencies. The first half of the list refers to the patient’s personality traits, whereas the second refers to the antisocial behaviors stemming from those personality traits, thus taking into consideration both sides of the coin.

  According to Hare, “Most psychopaths … meet the criteria for ASPD, but most individuals with ASPD are not psychopaths” [emphasis his]. The complete list is as fol
lows: “glibness and superficial charm, grandiose sense of self-worth, pathological lying, cunning/manipulative, lack of remorse, emotional shallowness, callousness and lack of empathy, unwillingness to accept responsibility for actions, a tendency to boredom, a parasitic lifestyle, a lack of realistic long-term goals, impulsivity, irresponsibility, lack of behavioral control, behavioral problems in early life, juvenile delinquency, criminal versatility, a history of ‘revocation of conditional release’ (i.e., broken parole), multiple marriages, and promiscuous sexual behavior.” For each trait, the patient would score a 0 (no sign of that trait), 1 (shows some of that trait), or a 2 (fully exhibits that trait), and a score of at least 30 out of a possible 40 could lead to a diagnosis of psychopathy. Where a diagnosis of psychopathy seems to focus more on the personality traits of the person leaning to criminal behavior, a diagnosis of ASPD tends to derive from acting out the criminal behavior itself; far more people in prison have been diagnosed with ASPD than psychopathy (Hare estimates 50 to 75% of prisoners have ASPD, compared to 15 to 25% exhibiting traits of psychopathy).

  So is Sherlock a sociopath? Sherlock certainly checks off many of the traits, especially when it comes to his lack of understanding of human emotions, but we also know that he is capable of attachments to others and deep emotion, as we see in the second and third seasons. He is deeply drawn to the criminal element, yet he uses his intellect to stop crime. Both Sherlock and Mycroft exhibit similar traits of coldness and isolation, which could point to a joint childhood trauma or genetics, yet they display their personalities in different ways. Experts have fallen resolutely on both sides of the argument, while others disagree with both assessments. Perhaps Sherlock is just irresponsible and childish, and needs to stop using his “I’m a sociopath!” declaration as an excuse, some say.

  In the end, what matters in this scene isn’t the diagnosis — it is, after all, a television program, and Sherlock exhibits traits of ASPD, psychopathy, schizoid personality disorder, schizophrenia, autism, and Asperger’s, depending on the clinician you ask — but that Sherlock is able to put down Anderson so spectacularly in that moment that he leaves Anderson utterly speechless. Which is pretty much all Sherlock ever wants to do with his least favorite forensics expert.

  Season Two (2012)

  Love, Fear, and Death

  The first season of Sherlock introduced us to the central friendship; for season two of the show, Gatiss and Moffat decided to take on the three biggest foes Sherlock Holmes ever faced: the Woman, the Hound, and the Professor. It was a daring task — packing all of these legendary stories into a single short season rather than spreading them across several could have backfired — but it makes for a phenomenal sophomore outing.

  Throughout the series, Sherlock insists that he’s a high-functioning sociopath, even when his detractors prefer the phrase “psychopath” (see “Psychopath or Sociopath?” sidebar). The second season pits him against the heavy hitters of human emotions to see how he reacts. Irene Adler tests his ability to love, the Hound introduces fear and doubt into his usual robot-like way of seeing things, and Professor Moriarty returns to force Sherlock to face the greatest fear of all: death. But in each case, Sherlock experiences the emotion differently than others would. He doesn’t fall in love so much as learn how people use love to gain an advantage; he doesn’t fear the Hound, but instead fears the doubt that the possibility of the Hound instills within him; he doesn’t react to Moriarty in the face of his own impending death so much as fear that the wrong action might cause the deaths of the people he cares about.

  It’s the way he deals with each of these emotions in season two that will largely change the way he interacts with the world around him in season three.

  2.1

  A Scandal in Belgravia

  WRITTEN BY Steven Moffat

  DIRECTED BY Paul McGuigan

  ORIGINAL AIR DATE January 1, 2012

  When Sherlock reluctantly agrees to take on a case, he is faced with one of the most legendary of his foes: the Woman, Irene Adler.

  “Do you know the big problem with a disguise, Mr. Holmes? However hard you try, it’s always a self-portrait,” says Irene Adler, the only woman who ever beat Sherlock Holmes in the stories, who was more cunning than even Moriarty, and who is involved in the only case wherein Holmes asks to take away a sentimental keepsake: a photograph of her. In the finale to the first season, Sherlock says that the secret to disguise is hiding in plain sight. In this story, as in its literary counterpart, Sherlock must take on many disguises, but ultimately Adler sees through every one of them, eventually donning her own disguise that outdoes the best of his.

  Moffat takes the idea of disguises and uses it as his key theme of this episode. No matter what mask each character wears, those who truly know them can see right through it. Sherlock pretends to be uncaring and aloof, but Mycroft knows that, above all else, Sherlock wants to impress. Mycroft acts as though a life of solitude is the only one for him, but whenever we see him alone, he looks unhappy, and the fact that he’s constantly coming ’round to “two hundred and twenty-one bee” to see Sherlock suggests he doesn’t value his alone time as much as he says he does. When Irene first enters the room to see Sherlock, she’s entirely naked, but she wears her concern for her own well-being on her face, and Sherlock uses that vulnerability against her. And eventually, she reveals one card too many, which proves to be her undoing.

  Whereas season one mapped out the beginning of the relationship between John and Sherlock, season two treats it like an established friendship with all of the advantages and problems that entails. The season two premiere opens exactly where the previous episode left off, with our heroes staring down their mortality in the face of Moriarty’s game. In order to move into the new story at hand, the problem is done away with quickly, albeit hilariously, and, as John’s blog title suggests, life goes on.

  A lot of time passes in this first episode, and we see the seasons change and the friendship deepen between the two men. Now that John and Sherlock have had the poolside moment to deepen their bond, they are more at ease with one another. We see time pass as they work on cases, and rather than acting unsure of themselves as they move about the flat, they form an unbreakable team. John rolls his eyes at Sherlock’s careless comments, while Sherlock peers over John’s shoulder making caustic remarks about his blog entries. Their new, closer relationship offers a lot of opportunities for hilarity, especially in the alleyway when Sherlock asks John to punch him in the face. It’s one of the highlights of the episode, but once again shows a strong friendship where they can punch each other in the face yet still remain pals afterwards. It’s this ease and companionship that will become more important in the coming episodes.

  One moment they’re bickering via Skype as John tries to piece together a case on site while Sherlock is a complete jerk; the next they’re sitting in Buckingham Palace, silent, unsure of how they got there. The scene of the two men on the couch is a wonderful moment because of the way it shows just how much their friendship has progressed. Until now we’ve only seen them share a laugh once, at the end of the first episode, when they knew something no one else did. But here all it takes is John asking Sherlock if he’s wearing any pants — receiving a terse “No” in reply — for them to suddenly break down and giggle like schoolboys. The scene almost feels improvised, as if the actors couldn’t keep straight faces after John’s ridiculous question, and when John asks if they’re here to see the queen, and Sherlock replies, “Apparently,” just as Mycroft comes in, they lose all control.

  Sherlock and John’s relationship couldn’t be more different from that of Sherlock and his brother. While it was clear in the previous season that Mycroft was a source of tension for Sherlock (and vice versa), this episode suggests the rift runs deep, all the way back to childhood. By setting Sherlock and John’s friendship against this volatile sibling relationship, the bond between Sherlock and John is made that much stronger. O
ne can assume that Mycroft has never jumped on a madman’s back to save his little brother’s life the way John did; similarly, Sherlock has not (yet) hurt John the way he hurts Mycroft at the end of this episode. Mycroft’s entrance into the scene of two grown men acting like children is timed perfectly, for we immediately imagine that no such moment of hilarity has ever existed between the two Holmes boys. Mycroft prefers dignity and order, sits rigidly on the couch, announcing “I’ll be Mother” as he pours the tea, and all shenanigans cease in his presence. There’s no fondness apparent there, no inside jokes, and little respect for one another. Sherlock refuses to get dressed, and Mycroft berates him as he would a child.

  Last season, we were shown the similarities between Mycroft and Sherlock, but in this episode the focus is on the differences. Mycroft comes to Sherlock’s flat and keeps his focus on the case, telling Mrs. Hudson to shut up when she interrupts him. Instead of continuing the conversation with Mycroft, both Sherlock and John, shocked that he could speak to their beloved landlady in such a way, shout at the elder Holmes and refuse to continue until he apologizes to her. Later in the episode, we see Sherlock in his flat on Christmas Eve surrounded by his friends — Watson and his latest girlfriend, Jeanette; Mrs. Hudson; Lestrade; and Molly Hooper — but when he calls Mycroft, his brother is sitting alone. Sherlock used to be like his brother, preferring a solitary existence to a social one, but John has helped push Sherlock into a different social sphere. As Sherlock becomes closer to John, he moves further away from his brother.