Investigating Sherlock

by Nikki Stafford

  He is impressed. Really impressed.

  But the awe quickly passes, and the fury sets in. He growls at Moriarty and yells at him the way a parent would a child to “Stop it NOW!” before he chases him up the stairs. It’s a fantastic scene, capped by Kitty’s haughty “You repel me” line hissed at Sherlock as he runs out the door.

  Since Moriarty works alone, there’s no one who could refute his charges (except for Sherlock). Tell the world that you’re a nobody, and all eyes are suddenly upon the detective and off you. We live in a society that takes great pleasure in seeing celebrities fall. No matter how much we love them, everyone loves a good scandal more. And now Sherlock, the man who seemed to know everything, who could solve cases like magic, who was superior to everyone else in the room … now that man is nothing but a con artist and a liar. He’s not superhuman, he’s just ordinarily corrupt.

  However, where Moriarty works alone, Sherlock has friends. Moriarty sees them as a disadvantage, as does Mycroft. But it’s these friends who help Sherlock kick his addictions, who give him an apartment in which to live, who shoot cab drivers trying to give him poison pills, who put up with his arrogance, who pick up the groceries for him, who pay people to watch and protect him, who love him. (Yes, they often loathe him as well, but they mostly love him.) If season one was about Sherlock and John getting to know one another, season two is about the humanization of Sherlock. Through examinations of love and fear, we see that, despite his protestations to the contrary, he is not a sociopath but a human being who has trouble socializing. He is capable of love and fear, of apologizing to friends, and of caring about them. When a thug beat Mrs. Hudson and put a gun to her head, Sherlock’s retribution was swift and violent. When Moriarty strapped a bomb onto John, Sherlock was willing to do whatever it took to save his friend’s life. When he realized he had humiliated Molly Hooper beyond reason, he immediately became humble, apologized, and kissed her on the cheek. Aside from the occasional hiccup, he seems to be trying harder with her this season than before.

  No one has been humiliated by Sherlock worse than Molly has, and yet in this episode she continues to stand by him. No longer fawning over him, this quiet, shy person is the one who meekly deduces Sherlock, silencing him in the process. Sherlock constantly tells everyone that they see but they don’t observe. Molly steps up and surprises Sherlock with her declaration that she has been observing him, and notices that he looks sad when he thinks no one is looking at him. She draws a connection between Sherlock and her father, who acted the same way, and when Sherlock counters with “You can see me,” she quickly brushes him off, saying, “I don’t count.” Sherlock is speechless and looks at her like she matters for the first time. It’s as if he thought Molly was a speck of lint that he kept trying to sweep off his exquisitely tailored coat and now he realizes she’s actually a thread that helps hold that coat together. Her assertion not only shows Sherlock that he has underestimated her, but it also says something about his own personality: he’s willing to put up a positive front for the sake of his friends and slumps into sadness only when he thinks they’re not looking. Molly offers herself to him if he ever needs her, immediately editing her statement in case he mistook her words for a sexual advance, then she leaves the room before he’s able to say anything further to her.

  So when he returns to her later in the episode, and he looks like someone who knows he’s going to die, the scene is so much more powerful because of the earlier conversation. The entire scene is written to look like a man sexually propositioning a woman on the eve of his death, causing our minds to wander back to Irene Adler’s question in “A Scandal in Belgravia”: “If it was the end of the world, if this was the very last night, would you have dinner with me?” Sherlock now believes this could be his very last night, and he appears to be asking Molly to “have dinner” with him. In the season two premiere, he told Irene, “I imagine John Watson thinks love’s a mystery to me but the chemistry is incredibly simple, and very destructive.” In “The Reichenbach Fall,” he’s not propositioning Molly for sex, but telling her that he truly does love her as a friend, and notices her, and that she means a lot to him. And that assertion from him probably means more to her than any tumble in the sheets. Like Sherlock’s other friends (and despite Sherlock’s protestations to the contrary in “The Hounds of Baskerville,” the word is plural in his case), Molly cares for him and wants to help him in any way she can.

  And so, when his friends’ lives are threatened, Sherlock first comes up with a way to save them as he stands on the rooftop and faces Moriarty. And when that solution is taken away from him in shockingly graphic fashion, he’s forced to do the only thing he can: sacrifice himself to save them.

  In “The Final Problem,” the story this episode is based on, Holmes and Moriarty fight to the death over the Reichenbach Falls, and just before falling to his (apparent) death, Holmes pauses to write a goodbye note to Watson. It’s rather formal and gives him the whereabouts of a report that will help convict Moriarty’s gang, but he also expresses his regret that his death will no doubt bring Watson much pain. Watson is not by Holmes’s side because he has been called away to see a sick woman (as a trick by Moriarty), and Holmes confesses that he suspected the call was a fraud, but he let him go anyway to spare Watson from seeing Holmes die. In “The Reichenbach Fall,” Sherlock is the one who plants the fake alarm over Mrs. Hudson and forces John away from the scene, but when John returns — as Sherlock no doubt knew he would — Sherlock calls him and says goodbye over the phone. “This phone call, it’s my note,” Sherlock tells him in a nod to the original story. “It’s what people do, don’t they? Leave a note?” What happens next is so shocking, fans were exchanging theories for the next two years waiting for the solution to be revealed in the season three premiere. The three themes of the season come together when Sherlock’s love for his friends allows him to overcome the fear of death.

  Martin Freeman gives a tour de force performance in this episode. First, in the opening scene, as he sits in his therapist’s office several months after Sherlock’s death and can barely speak the words; then, as he flips through the materials that Kitty hands him at her flat, his mind racing about what all of this new information could mean; third, the way he reacts to Sherlock’s threat of suicide and actual jump; and finally, his total heartbreak standing beside Sherlock’s grave. Freeman has shown us time and again what a titanic dramatic actor he is. If we could sum up in one word who John was before he met Sherlock, it would be lonely. The strains of “Watson’s Theme” play whenever he fears being alone or abandoned again, returning to a dull life without Sherlock. And at Sherlock’s grave, he acknowledges that. “I was so alone and I owe you so much,” he says, with one hand on the tombstone. He is so utterly wonderful in this scene, stammering through his words, fighting back tears while expressing his deepest sorrow to a friend who is gone. He is broken. But he will not become the John that he was before Sherlock. Perhaps Sherlock has shown him there is more to life for him, and he will go out and seek it.

  But without Sherlock, it won’t be half as exci—

  Waitaminute … who’s standing behind that tree?

  HIGHLIGHT John reassuring Sherlock that he believes he’s the real deal: “Well, nobody could fake being such an annoying dick all the time.”

  DID YOU NOTICE?

  The discussion that John and Sherlock have about the deerstalker is hilarious, because for the past 100 years, most people have simply referred to it as a Sherlock Holmes hat, which is what John angrily calls it. Sherlock’s bafflement at the hat’s real name — “You stalk a deer with a hat? What are you going to do, throw it? Some sort of death frisbee?” — is one of the comic highlights of the episode.

  John tells Sherlock to lay low and take on a small case. Sherlock actually listens to him (which is worthy of mention on its own) and looks into a very old case (see below) where he concludes that Henry Fishguard didn’t actually commit s
uicide. Hmm …

  When Moriarty writes SHERLOCK on the glass, he puts a little happy face inside the O that matches the happy face Sherlock painted onto the wall of his flat.

  Usually Sherlock uses only instrumental music composed specifically for the show, but in this episode they experiment with some great music. When Moriarty steals the Crown Jewels, he’s listening to Rossini’s “Thieving Magpie Overture” (“La Gazza Ladra”); during the newspaper montage, you can hear “Sinnerman” by Nina Simone; and at Sherlock’s apartment, the detective plays Bach’s “Sonata #1 in G Minor” for Moriarty.

  During the montage of newspaper articles covering Moriarty’s criminal trifecta, the Guardian article amusingly begins, “In a twist worthy of a Conan Doyle novella, Mr. Sherlock Holmes was yesterday revealed to be an expert witness at the trial of ‘Jim’ Moriarty.”

  When Moriarty visits Sherlock in his apartment, he refers to Bach as “Johann Sebastian,” similar to the way A Clockwork Orange’s Alex — a man capable of horrific crimes — would always refer to “Ludwig Van” instead of saying “Beethoven.”

  Moriarty’s “I … owe … you” message to Sherlock is repeated three times in the episode. It’s cut into the side of the apple, then it appears in the windows of the office building across from Scotland Yard. Those ones are obvious. But when Sherlock and John are in handcuffs and running from the police, watch when Sherlock points the gun at John’s head: you can see IOU graffitied onto the side of the building behind them, with wings painted around it. The repetition of the letters and words — as if leading to a revelation that never happens by the episode’s end — caused fans to speculate over its meaning almost as much as they theorized about how Sherlock would evade death. Theories abounded on the assumption that all would be revealed in the season three premiere, and my personal favorite was one by fan Eva Christine (eva-christine.tumblr.com) who posited that the I, O, and U stood for iodine, oxygen, and uranium, because Sherlock mumbles “I.O.U.” under his breath when he’s in the lab with Molly. The atomic numbers for each are 53, 8, and 92. If one looks at the copy of Grimm’s Fairy Tales that is found at the school, the 53rd fairy tale is “Little Snow-White” (featuring the queen giving Snow White a fatal apple); number eight is “The Strange Musician,” where a violinist outsmarts a fox (Moriarty is wearing a fox tie-pin when Sherlock plays the violin); and number 92 is “The King of the Golden Mountain,” about a boy who becomes king by undergoing several trials and succeeding (picture Moriarty sitting on the throne with a crown). Her theory was utterly brilliant … and never actually happened on the series. Check out her full explanation anyway, if only to fall in love with internet fandom all over again.

  So what does the “I owe you” refer to? In the end, it’s possibly just a simple explanation: when Moriarty says it to Sherlock, he means it in a negative way — I didn’t kill you poolside, so now I owe you a death, and I’m coming for you. That’s contrasted with John standing by Sherlock’s grave at the end of the episode, telling Sherlock, “I owe you so much.” He means the same three words in a loving, positive way. Why does Sherlock mutter it under his breath in the lab? I believe it has less to do with the chemicals under the microscope, and more to do with the person standing next to him at the time.

  After the scuffle at the Diogenes Club (see “From ACD to BBC” below), Mycroft says to John, “They don’t want a repeat of 1972.” The way Mark Gatiss delivers the line is hilarious, and there’s probably no further meaning behind that particular date than his insinuation that something terrible happened that year (there was probably a stale scone on the tea tray). However, 1972 was a year of great strife in England, with the miner’s strike, Bloody Sunday and several other fatal IRA attacks, the crash of British Airways Flight 548 (with 118 casualties), ballooning unemployment figures matched with increasing inflation, and the premiere of soap opera Emmerdale. It was inevitable someone in the Diogenes Club would snap.

  The close-up of Richard Brook’s CV not only states that his photo was taken by Arwel Jones (who is the production designer and art director on Sherlock, Doctor Who, and several other BBC shows), but shows Richard’s home phone number and email address (Richard@r-brook.co.uk). It also states that he studied at the BADC (British Academy of Dramatic Combat), which is a real academy, and a superb detail.

  On the wall of Kitty’s flat are the words “MAKE BELIEVE” in big letters.

  When Sherlock and Moriarty name Sherlock’s friends, neither one of them mentions Mycroft.

  As John finishes his speech at Sherlock’s graveside, he pivots on his heel before walking away, as if he’d just been speaking to a soldier.

  The creators of the show reveled in the theories that ran rampant around the internet, and ended up using a few of them in a webisode that preceded season three (see “Many Happy Returns” sidebar) and in “The Empty Hearse.” Steven Moffat began teasing the fans, telling them that despite the dozens of well-thought-out theories, everyone had missed one giant clue. So what was it? It’s still not completely clear, but knowing the reveal we get in “The Empty Hearse,” I would guess that one should pay attention to the names that Moriarty rattles off as Sherlock’s closest friends, and who Sherlock himself lists as his closest friends when he’s talking to John. Sherlock says a name that Moriarty doesn’t.

  FROM ACD TO BBC Moriarty’s repetition of “the final problem” is a nod to the story of the same title, from which much of this episode is taken.

  Just as this episode opens and closes with John’s sadness, Watson opens and closes “The Final Problem” with a tribute to his friend. He explains that he’s writing the story two years after Holmes died because he found the situation — “that event which has created a void in my life which the lapse of two years has done little to fill” — too painful to put into words, and is doing so now only because Moriarty’s brother is publishing letters saying his brother was innocent, just as Moriarty tries to make himself an innocent in this episode.

  On the witness stand, Sherlock says, “James Moriarty isn’t a man at all — he’s a spider; a spider at the center of a web — a criminal web with a thousand threads and he knows precisely how each and every single one of them dances.” When Holmes is describing his arch-enemy to Watson, he describes him similarly: “He sits motionless, like a spider in the centre of its web, but that web has a thousand radiations, and he knows well every quiver of each of them. He does little himself. He only plans.”

  At the very beginning of “The Reichenbach Fall,” Sherlock is credited with Peter Ricoletti’s capture. In “The Musgrave Ritual,” Holmes is recounting some of their problem cases, and mentions “Ricoletti of the club-foot, and his abominable wife” among them.

  When Sherlock is making deductions about Kitty, he looks at her wrist and says, “Those marks on your forearm: edge of a desk. You’ve been typing in a hurry, probably.” In “A Case of Identity,” Holmes similarly notices a woman’s wrist: “The double line a little above the wrist, where the typewritist presses against the table, was beautifully defined.”

  When Lestrade is being interrogated by the superintendent, he says he’s not the only senior officer who regularly used Sherlock, and that Gregson did also. Gregson was the other main detective in the Sherlock Holmes stories; perhaps he’ll play a part on the series soon.

  Although we caught a quick glimpse of it in “The Hounds of Baskerville,” we finally see the inside of the Diogenes Club in this episode. In “The Greek Interpreter,” when we are first introduced to Mycroft, Watson and Holmes visit him at the Diogenes Club. It’s described as a place where the introverts of London, who hate social contact but want to get out of their houses, developed a society where they could go and read in peace. Holmes describes it as a place that “now contains the most unsociable and unclubable men in town,” and then admits he quite likes it there himself. There’s a strict no-talking rule in the club, because introverts don’t exactly react wel
l to conversation. That’s why John gets hauled out of the room for talking.

  When investigating the boarding school kidnappings, Sherlock is able to draw several conclusions from the footprints in the hallway. In several stories, Holmes looks at footprints and sees them as being just as telling as fingerprints: he is often able to deduce height, gait, gender, and other characteristics.

  The boarding school case is taken from “The Adventure of the Priory School,” where a wealthy student similarly goes missing and Holmes follows trails of tire tracks to find him.

  While investigating the disappearance at the boarding school, the clue that John finds is a book of fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm. In “The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire,” Holmes receives a letter forwarding him a case involving vampirism, and he says to Watson, “We seem to have been switched on to a Grimms’ fairy tale.”