Episode 2.1, "A Scandal In Belgravia"

[aely]

You know, I'd never thought about it being a fantasy. Hmmm.

 

No matter what, Mycroft is definitely someone who would be economical with the truth if he thought there was good reason. That doesn't necessarily mean there *is* a good reason because Mycroft doesn't think like the rest of us.

[SherLOCKED221]

Decadent, wondeful, amazing.

I love this episode and I love Irene Adler.

Oh she so evil, therefore so wonderful.

My favorite episode.

Score one for the only woman brave enough to flirt AT Sherlock Holmes.

 

I'm not dead.

Let's have dinner.

[Alice Holmes]

Oh beware the lovers of Irene Adler...all of them!

[SherLOCKED221]

Yes beware Alice! BEWARE!

 

We kill with LOVE and Sentament!

Death by SnooSnoo! (Futurama Reference-If you don't get it, don't bother!)

[Undead Medic]

Death by SnooSnoo! (Futurama Reference-If you don't get it, don't bother!)

 

 

[SherLOCKED221]

*giggle* When I see an opening I just have to seize it!

[besleybean]

This is my 2nd least favourite episode, which possibly puts me in the minority.

It's nothing to do with it's quality.

I think Steven is a brilliant writer and deserves all credit.

I just always knew I would have issues with The Woman and I did.

Again, no reflection on Lara, she was great.

I just have problems with Sherlock's sexuality etc, but I'm coming around to the views of the writer and actors.

Anyhow it was a good episode, I'm just glad it's out of the way and personally don't ever wish to see Irene again...not that I have anything particularly against her. I just want her to keep away from Sherlock.

[Carol the Dabbler]

I think this is a love-it-or-hate-it episode, and I'm in both camps. Right now I'm rating it a notch higher than you do, but my reasons are different. When I read the Conan Doyle story (before seeing the episode), I sympathized with Irene, so when I saw the episode I thought she was being unfairly portrayed. On the other hand, "punch me in the face" is one of my favorite scenes of the entire series. And so forth.

[SolitaryCyclist]

Two thoughts regarding Irene Adler:

1. Battle dress: I thought it was interesting that whenever Sherlock looked at Irene in her battle dress, all we saw were questions marks. He looks at anyone else and we see all of his deductions. Her battle dress leaves Sherlock with few, if any clues.

2. Irene's beheading: Could it be a third possiblity, that Sherlock has faked the entire beheading scene, to put the wolves (including his brother) off of Irene? Mycroft tells John in the coffee shop that it would 'take a Sherlock' to fool him in this one. Maybe Sherlock did.

 

Beth

[Carol the Dabbler]

2. Irene's beheading: Could it be a third possiblity, that Sherlock has faked the entire beheading scene, to put the wolves (including his brother) off of Irene?

You're talking about the fantasy / reality question in posts 49 - 51? You have indeed come up with a plausible third option -- not reality, not fantasy, but a hoax. You're conjecturing that Sherlock has somehow managed to feed a staged video into one Mycroft's intelligence sources? Yes, that would surely convince the "wolves" (who are presumably monitoring the same sources) that she's no longer a threat to anyone.

 

Or -- hmm -- possibility number 3b -- maybe Mycroft is in on the hoax too? That should make it easier to insert the video, and explains why Mycroft lied to John (which he almost certainly did, in any case).

 

It also answers some of my other questions from post #50: How did Sherlock know that Irene had been captured? She hadn't been. How did he make Mycroft believe she was dead? He didn't need to. Is Irene actually dead? No (presumably she really is in something like a witness-protection program, somewhere).

 

What other loose ends are there?

 

This is great fun (though we may be in actuality grasping at straws to explain a brief scene that was added without too much real thought behind it).

[SolitaryCyclist]

Oh, this is indeed great fun! I look at that scene, and I see no possible way that Sherlock alone could cut his way out of a terrorist cell, dragging Irene along with him...where is she suppose to run?

 

But...if this is impossible, then, improbable as it may be, the whole thing has been stage managed by Sherlock, with or wihout his big brother's help. I like it either way.

 

In what particular did Mycroft lie to John?

 

And anyway, what have we got to do but think these things through until the third season??

[Bakerstreet Irregular]

It seems that Gatiss and Moffat do leave clues hidden in the episodes that viewers can use to solve the mystery presented if we know how to look for and figure them out. At least they hinted at this for "Reichenbach Fall".

[Carol the Dabbler]

"Reichenbach" for sure, yeah. Even if they didn't create intentional "clues" in the other episodes, though, they presumably had some sort of rationale in mind for the unexplained bits -- which amounts to sort of the same thing, but probably requires more work on our part (ergo, more fun!).

 

OK, back to the "Scandal" rescue scene. If you need a reference, here's a link to part 4 of Ariana DeVere's transcript (the scene is a little over halfway down). I need to think about all the possible combinations (real/hoax, Mycroft/no Mycroft) and what effect they might have on the puzzling aspects of the scene, but my brain isn't cooperating right now.

 

How did Mycroft lie to John? If Sherlock managed to pull off the rescue or hoax without Mycroft's knowledge, then I suppose Mycroft was actually telling John the truth (as he knew it), in which case I apologize for calling him a liar (at least until I come up with a better example). But if he was in on either scenario, he obviously lied when he told John that Irene was dead -- which I suppose a more charitable soul than I could think of as a reason to believe that he was *not* in on it.

 

OK, got to go watch Elementary, then take my poor fuzzy brain to bed. Probably won't have much forum time tomorrow, but should be back, hopefully in better mental condition, on Saturday. Maybe by then you'll have everything worked out!

[Bakerstreet Irregular]

In the canon Watson was always noting that no matter how long their association, he never really knew what Holmes was up to. Holmes believed that the safest plotter was he who plotted alone. Was he able to scurry off to rescue Irene if he was to learn she was in danger? Indeed he was.

 

Did he know that her life could be? He said it in the scene when he finally deduced the final code to unlock her phone, and supposedly, her heart. To quote "If you're feeling kind, lock her up. Other wise, let her go. I doubt she'll last long without her protection." Irene's answer? She said that she wouldn't last even six months. All this after Sherlock made her beg, of course. Sherlock did not share much of his own intell with Mycroft so who knows if Mycroft knew about the rescue and lied to John.

 

But it seems he did know that Sherlock's suicide had to be faked, so like everyone else in the fandom, I can't be sure where any of this leaves us. Hopefully Season Three will answer some of these questions.

 

All though I do believe that at one point in the canon Holmes does say something along the lines that "The Woman" was deceased.

[SolitaryCyclist]

All though I do believe that at one point in the canon Holmes does say something along the lines that "The Woman" was deceased.

 

This I don't recall; do you remember which story this would have been in? I always hoped Irene would show up again, but she never does. At least not in the stories and novels that Conan Doyle wrote.

 

In The Empty House, the only person that Sherlock let into the secret that he was still alive is Mycroft. Maybe in this incarnation, the only one to know is Molly. As someone else stated, too many people 'in on it' and it ceases to be a secret.

 

 

And yes; Sherlock NEVER gave his hand away until the very end of an investigation.

[Bakerstreet Irregular]

I'll try to suss it out this weekend, unless someone can come up with it before I do.

[Bakerstreet Irregular]

Okay, the reference to Irene Adler being deceased comes in the last sentence of the opening paragraph of "A Scandal in Bohemia"

 

"And yet there was but one woman to him, and that woman was the late Irene Adler, of dubious questionable memory."

 

Watson noted that the case of "The Scandal" took place from Friday, May 20, to Sunday, May 22, 1887.

 

No less then two scholars took on the task of wondering why Irene would have been deceased seeing that she was noted to be young and in good health. Both came up with the theory that she had had to met death through some violence and point a finger at assassins hired by no less a person then the "King of Bohemia."

 

They feel that Sherlock may have learned of this just before his fateful meeting with Professor Moriarty at Reichenbach Falls and that he had, at some point, decided "to do something about it." It seems he was very pleased when he could tell Watson of 'the late King of Bohemia" in August, 1914.

[SolitaryCyclist]

Brilliant, Fox, I missed this completely! So as regards canon, maybe Moftiss are not above altering it a bit, if our contemporary Irene lives, and the ConanDoyle Irene does not.

[Bakerstreet Irregular]

An interesting thought. The canon Irene could not be saved from her assassins, but Moffat and Gatiss could save theirs from her own assassination.

[Carol the Dabbler]

Unless her death was a hoax (or her rescue went undetected) in both universes.

[Bakerstreet Irregular]

She never did turn up in the canon again and was ever afterward spoken in the past tense. But then, they were written by Dr. Watson and he wouldn't know the difference, would he. The discussion continues.

[Carol the Dabbler]

... they were written by Dr. Watson and he wouldn't know the difference, would he.

Nope, I don't expect he would. Holmes sure wouldn't tell him (cf. "The Final Problem" / "The Empty House") without a damn' good reason.

[Bakerstreet Irregular]

So maybe Moffat and Gatiss wasn't so far off after all? They probably own every reference book on Sherlock Holmes known to man. I know I would if I had the money and space They do seem to know their canon. Maybe they took the possibility that Irene Adler had not bolted with her husband to be but had been murdered then the house emptied to look like she had gotten away and turned it on it's ear.

 

It would have made the BBC version more plausible and less objectionable then those who feel Irene Adler's character was looked to be such a loser when in fact, in this interpretation, she was very much the winner. She was rescued by the one man who was not going to use her then let her die. Makes a whole lot of sense to me.

[Carol the Dabbler]

Just ran across this on another forum:

 

... Moffat's Irene Adler really isn't ACD's Irene Adler, in spirit or in fact; I think though Gatiss and Moffat have admitted that they're as inspired by the Basil Rathbone films of the 1940's as they are by the ACD stories. Sherlock, in general, has a very retro feel to it, and I mean retro to the 40's rather than retro to the 1800's. For A Scandal in Belgravia SM obviously decided to go with 'femme fatale Adler' from the Rathbone films, and IMO once he'd decided to go that route there's no way of incorporating ACD's Adler into the character as well; they're completely different species. The archetypal femme fatale is always an amoral, manipulative bitch and she's always brought down and put firmly back into her place by the end of the story. In contrast, ACD's Adler, while cunning, is also a rather honorable woman. .... I think the main thing to remember is that ASiB is basically a fun romp, a very loving homage to the Rathbone films....

That's the first explanation of Moffat's Irene that's really made sense to me. OK, she's so unlike ACD's Adler because she's not ACD's Adler, she's the Rathbone/Bruce Adler. OK, now I can relax and judge the episode on its own merits.

[biscuitbear]

I suppose we can imagine that the King of Bohemia was really devious and lied when he said he believed Irene would keep her word, went to Moriarty the next day and had her killed. But I prefer to think that the King was sincere and in the 1890s I see nothing extraordinary in a woman dying quite young without being necessarily assassinated.

 

Regarding BBC Irene, I see in her a lot of the female character from The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, which is said to have inspired the writers. To me there is a really strong parallel :

in BBC Sherlock, Sherlock overhears Mycroft talking about Operation Bond on the phone and uses this information to solve the mystery of the email Irene has stolen, thus bringing disaster to the government, and does it to show off to a woman. In The Private Life, Sherlock overhears Mycroft giving equally cryptic instructions to an underling ("tell them that the 3 boxes go to Glennahurig and the red runner goes to the castle"), and uses this information to solve the mystery of the engineer's disappearance, thus bringing disaster to the government, and does it to show off to a woman. So both Irene and Ilse von Hoffmanstal use Sherlock's vanity to further their own devious ends.

 

In both cases, the viewer asks himself whether Sherlock is actually falling in love - there are is-he-or-isn't-he moments. The women are both adventuresses, and in the end they both lose the game, whereas ACD Irene comes across as a rather decent woman, who falls back to a traditional womanly role by getting properly married, which is probably why ACD allows her to win. In The Private Life, Ilse von Hoffmanstal ends up caught as a spy and executed by a firing squad, which is very similar to the plot in BBC Sherlock. Only in the case of poor Ilse Sherlock doesn't come to the rescue. Last but not least, they both parade stark naked in front of Sherlock .