Slithytove

I disagree regarding Lestrade. We don't know that Mary's life, or anyone else's, is in danger. Even if the people who want revenge actually exist, and even if CAM truly intends to contact them (and, remember, he only says he will do so if John doesn't allow himself to be humiliated - which makes it seem more like another power play), there would be other ways to protect her. Take her into custody, for a start. There are grounds for putting her in prison, and she'd be pretty safe there from outside attacks. If there is any danger that John will be targeted as a way of hurting Mary, Mycroft could do a deal to ensure CAM's silence.....or, for God's sake, the consulting detective and self-proclaimed genius could work out the identity of these avengers and a strategy for stopping them! If, of course, the threat is a real one and not one of CAM's unpleasant little games, which seems more than likely. But the information which CAM knows that could put Mary in prison for life....It isn't inconceivable that Lestrade could discover that same information. Though Sherlock regularly insults his intelligence, he didn't get to be a DI in the Met without being bright and good at his job. As a policeman, he would have no choice but to arrest Mary. What would Sherlock do to prevent that happening, to fulfill his vow? Put a bullet through Lestrade's head? Also, Carol may have a point about Eastern Europe. I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out to be Mary's point of origin, as we've had several nods in that direction. (Serbia and the Czech Republic, not to mention the East Wind....). I agree that the UK doesn't demand strict adherence to our own laws, where extradition is involved. However, I still think Mary must have done something considered a criminal offence here, even if it is not a life sentence in a UK prison which she fears. I don't think we would extradite her to face a life sentence for something which we would not consider a serious crime, or a crime at all. I doubt that our courts would consider that compatible with human rights. So, even if Mary is a foreign national, I think her crimes must be sufficiently serious to warrant a life sentence under UK law, and murder seems the most probable cause.

The question regarding Hitler is a difficult one, I think. On one hand, I don't think anyone has a right to usurp the role of judge and jury, and condemn people without trial. On the other hand, I do believe that if you do have to kill someone to save your own life or the lives of others, then you have no choice but to do it. For that reason, I agree that John's killing of the cabbie can be justified, whereas Sherlock's killing of CAM cannot be, because he believed the man was forcing Sherlock to swallow poison under duress. (He couldn't know it was down to Sherlock's own pride and love of danger.) He shot Hope in the shoulder, I think, so maybe he didn't intend to kill. Having Sherlock stand on the wound couldn't have helped. Incidentally, the fact that the wound was fatal illustrates the fact that you don't have to go for a "kill shot", e.g. through the head, to take a life. The-bullet-as-surgery? A very weak explanation, Sherlock. Please tell me you had an ulterior motive for suggesting it. To return to Hitler, he was actively ordering the deaths of millions of innocents, so you would be saving those lives by killing him, theoretically - though not in practice, I think, as I doubt that the death of one man, however powerful, would have brought the whole war machine to a halt. I suppose the situation would have been different for myself, compared to T.o.b.y. and Zain. I'm English, so it would have been my "patriotic duty" to kill him if the opportunity arose. ( Hard to imagine that it would have done!). It might even have been legal, as war had been officially declared between our countries. Morally? I suppose that if I really could have saved six million Jewish people, including millions of other people on both sides, it would have been morally right. I would rather have captured him, though, and brought him to justice. I never realised, till I came on this forum, how strongly I believe in the rule of law! You learn something new about yourself all the time.... I don't agree that CAM should have been shot because he was going to ruin John and Mary's lives. Okay, so maybe he was going to reveal the truth about her past, but the truth was that she had done things which would put her in prison for life. No doubt that would have ruined things for her, and maybe for John too, but that's what happens when you commit crimes and go to prison. You can't go around killing people to stop them exposing criminals. CAM was pretty vile, I agree, but as Zain has pointed out, it was his use of the truth - i.e. as a way of blackmailing people - that was bad, not his willingness to reveal it. If you were going to kill people to stop them exposing secrets that could send people to prison, there wouldn't be an investigative journalist left alive. Also, suppose it had been Lestrade, rather than CAM, who had discovered the evidence which would send Mary to jail. Would it have been okay to shoot him, to stop him from ruining John and Mary's lives?

Interesting....Whilst I agree about the flexibility of fictional law vs real life law, insofar as the latter is frequently bent to serve the demands of the plot or poetic justice, there is one inescapable fact. Regardless of CAM's accusations or Sherlock's deductions, Mary herself knows that there is enough evidence against her to send her to prison for life. Prison in Britain, presumably, unless it's a case of extradition. So it is either something illegal here or in a country with which we have an extradition treaty. I don't know much about extradition but I can't imagine we'd be packing her off to Iran, for instance, for violating sharia law. So it is fundamentally something which would get you a life sentence here or in a country which has, more or less, the same concept of law as we do.(I.e. you've committed murder or treason, rather than something we wouldn't consider a crime, such as having an affair or being gay.). Several of you have drawn a distinction between murder and government sanctioned lethal force. Okay, so let's say that working for the CIA grants you a "licence to kill.". That wouldn't help if you were caught in a hostile country but the US and the UK are allies, so you'd undoubtedly get away with it. So, what's left? If it is something that would get you a life sentence here, and it isn't the CIA "wet jobs" because they are government sanctioned, it has to be treason or murder. Sherlock implied that Mary isn't a native English speaker, if I remember rightly, so we are back to the extradition question if it's treason. Mary's remark about "people like me" implies that she is a killer. So, when you rule out the CIA work and treason seems unlikely, what are you left with? Only murder, I think. (Well, you could get a life sentence if you were a serial rapist, but I think we can discount that.....) If S4 just ignores these issues and expects us to swallow something which makes no logical sense, I want a full explanation, in writing, from Stephen Moffat.

Is Sherlock keeping him out of the loop -- or is Mycroft's convenient distance from Mary all part of another Grand Holmes Brothers Scheme? Presumably that's what CAM meant, yes, and I suppose it's even likely that he was telling the truth. But I think it's important here to distinguish between "killing" and "murder." I think it may have been you who defined "murder" as basically "illegal killing" (and if not, please forgive my error). Under that definition, is a CIA "wet job" (blecchhh!) technically a "murder"? Technically, did it even happen? And if it did, well, it was a government assignment, so it must be legal. I guess I'd prefer to define "murder" as "immoral killing," regardless of opening up a whole 'nother can of personal-opinion worms there. We know so little about Mary so far, and especially her past, that I have no idea what my opinion on that question might be. I think it probably was me who defined murder as illegal killing. I don't really see how else it can be defined. Legal killing - e.g. capital punishment or in war - may be just as morally repugnant but it is legal in that it is sanctioned by law and the participants will not find themselves in court unless they break the law in some other way, e.g. soldiers killing people who have surrendered. (Of course, it happens all the time and most perpetrators are never brought to justice, but it isn't legal.). I don't think murder is an arbitrary label. How can you choose between a moral or immoral killing - who decides, if not the law? In fact, how can we have a civilised society which protects the lives of its citizens if we all have our own individual definitions of murder? I'm an old hippy but I suppose I believe fundamentally in the rule of law. I don't see how society can function unless we have generally agreed definitions of right and wrong. As for assassinations by the CIA and the like - it is possible that the government can sanction the use of lethal force, though I believe it is constrained by common law and other restrictions. It certainly doesn't make it moral, in my view, or legal in the opinion of other countries. I remember, for instance, two notorious murders of Russians living in London. One was almost certainly down to the KGB and the other, more recent one was strongly believed to have been done on the orders of Putin or, at least, prominent members of the current government in Moscow. The British government certainly did not consider them to be legal. (Of course, the Soviet Union was not our ally and we're still not exactly best buddies with Russia, at least to the extent of turning a blind eye to their state sanctioned killings.) The killers would have been brought to trial here if they had been caught. Presumably the Russian intelligence services protected the killers. And presumably that applies to CIA killings too - considered illegal by countries where they are committed and sometimes legal/sometimes illegal within the US, according to whether they violate other legal restrictions. (It's a technicality, of course, as the killers would never be tried even if they did act illegally.) MAybe Mary's CIA assassinations are, indeed, not murders but killings. We are back to legal-but-morally-repugnant. Mary is resident in the UK and intends to kill CAM because he has information which could send her to jail for life. Presumably that means jail here, unless her killings were committed in a country with which we have an extradition treaty - unlikely, as we are allies of the US and tend to have the same friends and foes. Evidently she doesn't expect to be protected by the US government, or by MI6 which cooperates with the CIA, so it is something which would be considered a crime here and would result in life imprisonment - so probably not something legally sanctioned by our allies, the US government - so we're back to illegal killing again, i.e. murder. The freelance work, maybe?

Maybe Moffat & Gatiss do interpret the books differently - we all bring something of ourselves to everything we read - but I think it is pretty clear that Watson is supposed to be a fundamentally good and decent man and Holmes has a strong if idiosyncratic sense of justice. He might let a man go free for taking revenge on the murderer of his girlfriend but he wouldn't shoot an unarmed man through the head to shut him up or let an assassin go free because she was married to his best mate. I know that Moftiss say that it was Holmes who killed Charles Augustus Milverton, and Watson was covering for him by blaming a mysterious woman, but I think that that is a reading too far. It did occur to me that Russell T. Davies might be responsible for the Doctor's conscience! Though Moffat did write several of the scripts before he took over as show runner. Also, the Doctor's personality changes with each incarnation, so it would not be impossible to alter his conscience a little if that was required. After all, that is presumably the reason why he tends to be more of a pacifist after his more recent regenerations, unless he is just (much) older and wiser.

You've identified the source of my problem as well -- perhaps unfairly, I like my fiction to promote and uphold some sort of moral order. Depicting someone as a killer is one thing ... depicting their actions as reasonable is something else. I can live with it -- I do realize it's fiction -- but I can't help but be troubled by it, if only because there are people who DON'T know the difference between reality and fiction. Every month there's another killing inspired by today's entertainment; if I were in the industry, I'd like to think I'd feel some obligation to be sensitive to that. But I know many don't agree, so .... so it is. I can't tell where Moftiss stands on that issue based on what I've seen so far, tho. Erm, I don't think there's any evidence she committed multiple murder. Not saying she hasn't, just saying that's an assumption, not a fact. Mary says the evidence CAM has would mean a life sentence; but she doesn't say what the crimes are. Treason could result in a life sentence, for example. I don't mind Mary being condemned for her crimes, but I'd like to know she's being condemned for the right ones. This strikes me as an area where Moftiss has been deliberately vague, I'm wary of jumping to conclusions. Actually, I'm having a hard time thinking of an area where they haven't been deliberately vague....... I assumed that "wet jobs for the CIA" meant killings. I could be wrong. They sound vaguely disgusting, actually. Also, Mary's remark that people like her exist because people like CAM ought to be killed does imply that she is a killer. Regarding the morality of the writing, the odd thing is that Moffat has taken the exact opposite line in Dr Who. One of my sons- in- law, a Who fan since childhood, constantly moans about the various modern Doctors constantly agonising over matters of conscience. He misses the old days when the Doctor would cheerfully blast his enemies to bits without a thought for their side of the story. The Doctor in his more recent incarnations has developed a distinct dislike of guns and warfare and constantly tries to negotiate with alien life forms, even if he is forced to fight them in the end. (With the exception of the Daleks - he thinks they have no redeeming features. There are still moments, though, when he tries to reason with them.) Dr Who has become a more moral man according to Moffat's interpretation, which makes me wonder whether the writers can really want to say that vigilante justice is okay or that assassins who believe people deserve to be killed should suffer neither remorse nor retribution for their crimes. Seems to me that HLV makes both Sherlock and John into men with far less conscience than the original Holmes and Watson. It's up to the writers to create their own stories, of course, but it feels uncomfortable to me.

Thanks, Zain. Yes, the time is here - they fly out on Friday - and, sadly, it doesn't help in this occasion to ask myself, "What would Sherlock do?". Delete everything, I expect, and concentrate on solving a mystery......Wish it was as simple as that! But I do feel like the bit at in TSoT, where he looks at his best man's suit and mutters, "Into battle....." I agree with T.o.b.y.'s point that the fictional world is often simplified into good vs evil with very little subtlety. Many films, particularly the blockbusters, steamroller straight over any thought that maybe maiming and killing people isn't the best way for the heroes to take on the villains. But I expect Sherlock to be a bit more intelligent than that, and the writers to be a bit more conscious of their own subtext. Some people have the right to dispense their own version of justice and have everything hushed up by the state? Murdering people is okay if you work for the security services? Is that really what Moftiss is saying? Maybe Sherlock Holmes has always been a law unto himself but I never felt, when reading the books, that his concept of justice was based on selfish motives, such as the desire to protect his friends from the consequences of their own crimes. Whether he kills CAM to protect Mary or to protect John by protecting his wife, the motive is the same - CAM dies to ensure his silence. Maybe Mary is saved from the revenge of her victims's families - if CAM really intended to contact them - but she is definitely saved from a life sentence for multiple murder. Would ACD's Holmes have killed someone to protect a professional killer? I can't believe that he would, even if that killer had been married to Watson. Nor can I believe that ACD would have expected us to like and forgive a character who - as well as nearly killing Holmes - believed she had the right to kill those who " deserve to be killed.". He certainly wouldn't have left her happily married Dr Watson! I don't mind if Mary is a complicated character with an attractive persona hiding a cold, calculating killer. In fact, I'd like her to be the next Big Bad. What I don't like is the clear indication that we, like John & Sherlock, should forget all the pain and death and still find her adorable.

Thanks, everyone, for understanding. Emigration has always been second on my list of Bad Things Which Must Not Happen. (Number one being, of course, "Someone Dying."). We are smiling through gritted teeth, trying to be happy for them because they're going on this great adventure with lots of opportunities, but we're howling inside. At least my husband and I are supposed to be visiting them next year, maybe in April, if everything goes according to plan. Our first visit to the USA - it's a bit daunting, really. Anyway, back to HLV. I don't really get the reason why people ascribe sentiment to Mary. Instead of shooting him through the head, she shoots him in the body, near his heart and numerous other vital organs, causing agonising pain, blood loss and massive shock which kills/nearly kills him - that's sentimental? It's hardly the stuff of Hallmark Cards. Well, Sherlock may call it sentiment, but his understanding of emotions is limited at best. In fact, it's utterly skewed, so we can hardly take his word for it. I do love HLV overall, because there is so much to love. So many good lines, such excellent acting, so many compulsive scenes ( the Mind Palace, above all!) However, it's the one which causes me the most problems - the-bullet-as-surgery nonsense, Mary's lack of remorse, Sherlock's insistence that she can be trusted (really, why, for God's sake?), John's willingness to forgive her and his refusal to face the truth, the execution of CAM, the airfield scene....I realise that many people are fine with these things but they seem, to me, to be very hard to swallow. One of the most unpalatable things is Mary's comment that people like her exist because people like CAM "deserve to be killed". By what right does she make that decision? I won't be surprised if it turns out to be true that she was a CIA agent, as it seems that killing for your country makes you one of the good guys, as long as it's a country we approve of. Hmm....state sanctioned murders - are we okay with that? Again, the question is: who decides that someone should be killed? To choose a real life case at random, take whistleblowers. To some people, they are heroes, the champions of truth. To others, they are traitors, revealing a country's secrets and even - it has been suggested - deserving of death. To the governments whose secrets they expose, they're an embarrassment at best, an enemy at worst. Who decides whether they are heroes or villains? And, having made that decision, who decides whether they live or die? That throwaway line by Mary seems utterly wrong to me but it seems to go unchallenged, and then Sherlock seems to act out the same logic by deciding that CAM should die. Are the writers saying it is okay for people like Mary and Sherlock to decide who deserves to die? Surely they can't be saying that. I have my fingers crossed that S4 will present these issues from a different perspective and show us that there is more going on than we realised. However, I have a feeling that the show runners think they've dealt with the issues (Mary didn't mean to kill Sherlock, and John's forgiven her! Sherlock killed a nasty man and now it's all over!) and they'll move on to the story of Mary's past and the arrival of Baby Watson. In which case, I shall be very annoyed.

Thank you all for your comments. I'm finding everything very difficult at the moment. Tears every day, I'm afraid, and I'm dreading the end of the week. Anyway..... She could have knocked out CAM and held the gun on Sherlock whilst she negotiated/tried to escape. Yes, he took a step towards her but that doesn't mean he would risk wrestling her for the gun. She could have risked it - wouldn't an assassin be trained in martial arts? The first two options you suggest could be done if she was prepared to give up her new life with John. She could have accepted that her criminal past had caught up with her and it was time to run if she wanted to stay out of jail. John would not have been implicated in murder if there was no murder, and Mycroft would have got them off the breaking and entering charge. Instead, she decided to hold on to John, keeping her husband in ignorance by killing his dearest friend. In reality, of course, she would have killed CAM and Sherlock - and John too, no doubt, if he was a threat. Professional killers share with terrorists a distinct lack of sentiment. They can't afford emotions and I doubt that many try.

I don't see why Mary shot Sherlock to avoid the implication that John was involved in murdering CAM. That's as unlikely as the "bullet as surgery" explanation. For a start, she doesn't murder CAM anyway. Maybe protecting John might be a motivation for sparing CAM's life but it isn't a coherent reason for shooting Sherlock. Even Sherlock's explanation that she did it to buy herself time to negotiate with him (Sherlock) makes slightly more sense, though it's pretty feeble - particularly as those negotiations seemed to consist of her looming over his hospital bed and saying, "Don't tell John.". For all she knew, his first words on recovering consciousness could have been, "Mary shot me!". If you want to make a deal with someone, it's best to keep them conscious and rational. If you want to protect your dear husband from becoming a murder suspect, don't commit the murder. And don't show your love for him by shooting his best friend. On the other hand, if you want to silence someone, and stop them telling your dear husband the truth, killing them works pretty well.....That, in my opinion, is the most sensible reason why she shot him. Sorry if I'm not expressing myself clearly. Not thinking straight at the moment - eldest daughter and 4 of our grandkids moving to the USA on Friday. Trying to distract myself in various ways, including reading the discussions here and burying myself in Shetlock fanfic till I am too tired to think. Probably not the best strategy but it's the only one I've got.

One of the problems with a fictional world that seems to be reflecting the real world - i.e. 21st century London, as compared to Narnia or Middle Earth - arises when something jars with a known fact. For instance, if you know that a character gets the wrong sort of medical treatment, and it isn't part of the plot and appears to be a mistake, you can't un-know it and it can irritate you. It can even make the rest of the story seem less real. On the other hand, when it is something which probably doesn't happen but could do, that is fine. For instance, the police probably don't secretly employ consulting detectives but they might. The country probably isn't ruled by civil servants with unlimited powers, who know everything and are able to make criminal charges and people disappear without trace, but it could be....

Good point - that had never occurred to me!

If the topic is TSOT, I don't see why any discussion of John and Sherlock's relationship - any aspect of it whatsoever, including Mrs Hudson's opinion - can be off topic. Surely that crucial, central relationship is really what the whole episode is about. The Mayfly Man is more or less a red herring. The real story seems to be about what the two men mean to each other, and how that relationship is inevitably changing. That's why I think people who have sneered at it for being"too sentimental" have missed the point.

Mrs Hudson is certainly very broad minded - maybe because of her own colourful past? - so maybe her friend Mrs Turner is a kindred spirit.

Not to be pedantic, but the death penalty for sodomy was abolished in England in 1861. Oscar's trial was in 1895. His conviction destroyed his good name, exposed him to public abuse and ridicule, ruined his health and sent him to an early grave. Quite a harsh punishment for being gay. Somehow I doubt that he sued Queensberry just for the hell of it. It was a terrible error of judgement, and it is hard to understand how he imagined he could win, but presumably he felt he had to do it in response to Queensberry's public accusation. Happily, we do live in more tolerant times (but let the BBC make a Johnlock episode of "Sherlock", and watch the queerbashers crawl out of the woodwork.....) However, there could be many reasons why John might be attracted to Sherlock but might assert that he is not gay. For a start, it can still be a difficult world for minorities. Maybe his sister Harry faced rejection and/or hostility because of her sexual orientation. Maybe that contributed to her alcohol and relationship problems. Maybe Mum & Dad Watson didn't react well to their daughter being a lesbian. Maybe they wouldn't be happy if their son came out too. It can be particularly difficult for men in very macho groups to come out - for instance, how would his ex-army pals react if he declared he was gay? Would they be supportive? Hostile? Mocking? Maybe that is a factor. Maybe, as many Johnlock shippers have pointed out, he is saying he is not gay but is omitting to say he is bisexual. Or maybe he is 99.9 per cent straight but he has fallen in love with Sherlock because he's brilliant and drop-dead gorgeous. I've known more than one straight man, for instance, who has said he'd consider making an exception for David Beckham, particularly when he was captain of the England team (rich, handsome, famous and had the job most Englishmen covet. )

Maybe Sholto was allowed to keep his gun as a part of the uniform that he had special permission to keep? If Greg didn't know before "Hounds," he surely noticed John blazing away right next to him! Yes, that special arrangement that allowed him to keep his uniform - and wear it in public, even though he was no longer a serving member of the armed forces. Another suspension of disbelief required. I had forgotten that. John, as well as Lestrade, fires at the dog. Really, dear old Lestrade turns a blind eye to a hell of a lot, where the occupants of Baker Street are concerned.

I thought nobody was allowed to keep their gun after serving? Or does that depend on which country one is talking about, for example, does England handle this differently? I thought they had strict(er) gun control, too. To me, this was always the writers asking us for some willing suspense of disbelief. Just like with John's gun, and the off-switch on the bomb. Handguns are illegal for private citizens in the UK, with very few exceptions - mostly historical exhibits, I believe. That legislation was passed after the terrible murder of primary school children and their teacher in Dunblane, Scotland. It deeply shocked us as a nation and led to the change in the law. So, neither Sholto nor John are likely to have licences for their guns. It is hard to understand why Lestrade has a gun in THoB - if he is simply a Detective Inspector in the Met, he wouldn't normally be armed. Firearms legislation here is very strict and fairly straightforward - you can't have a handgun or a machine gun but you might get a shotgun or rifle licence, for sport, or for work (gamekeepers, for example) or as a collector, but not to use for self-defence. There are restrictions over the size of gun you can own, and restrictions on the type of people who can own them. All in all, guns are not part of most people's lives here, so "Sherlock" doesn't really reflect UK gun laws or usage - in reality, Lestrade probably wouldn't have carried a gun himself and would have removed John's from his possession long ago. (Surely he is bright enough to have realised John has a gun?)

Sherlock is perhaps at his most childlike in this episode, and it is a side of his personality I find very endearing. It does diverge fairly sharply from canon, as I would say ACD's Holmes is very much a grown man whereas Sherlock allows us glimpses of the inner child. I'm thinking particularly of the scenes you mention, and also his moments of bewilderment during the wedding speech. ("Did I do it wrong?"). There are also moments during his interactions with Mycroft where he seems more like a child than a man - and evidently he still pictures himself, in his Mind Palace, as a little boy dealing with an adult brother.

Anderson was much closer to the truth than Lestrade, John or any of Sherlock's other friends (except those in the know, of course) or other employees of the Met. A nice touch, considering how many times Sherlock had railed against his supposed stupidity. Oscar Wilde got off lightly? But prison broke him and he died soon afterwards, only 46 years old. He was warned against prosecuting Queensberry but seems to have felt he had no choice, given that the Marquess had, in effect, made a public accusation against him. Presumably he underestimated the other side. Poor old Oscar - another genius destroyed.

I don't think marriage necessarily means you aren't gay. I have a good friend who was in a heterosexual marriage for several years and had two children before admitting to himself that he was very unhappy, and making his wife unhappy too. He is now married to the love of his life - a man - and his ex-wife has remarried too. It does happen that people make mistakes - sad but true. However, many, many people are bisexual. I venture to suggest that anyone and everyone could be, if they happened to meet the right person. When that person is someone as dazzling as Sherlock, maybe a straight man (John?) and a gay woman (Irene?) might find themselves drawn to someone so charismatic and - let's be honest - so beautiful.

Good point - I do like Jack. However, Sherlock's audience is presumably greater and includes rather more conservative sections of society. Also, he's a pretty iconic figure. I can imagine the uproar iif the BBC decided it was going to make such a revered literary character gay - or even bisexual.

Sorry, I don't believe Sherlock is gay. That doesn't fit at all with his natural attraction, near instant attraction to The Woman. He stumbled over his words just a few minutes into meeting her. In SIP he clearly let John know he didn't have a boyfriend, but it certainly threw him off. He was quite succinct in his answer, however, to John about not having a girlfriend, but felt that John was hitting on him with the do you have a boyfriend question. Now he and John do have a really close relationship a lot like David & Johnathon in the Bible. They weren't gay, but the Bible says the love they had for one another was greater than that of a woman. That's exactly what we are witnessing with Sherlock & John. At no point do the writers even hint to Sherlock being gay, it's the exact opposite actually. Its others who think they are gay per John is Sherlock's live in PA, but it's really just humor in the script. We need to separate the meaning of love from sexual attraction. They're not at ALL the same! The idea that Holmes and Watson are lovers is nearly as old as the characters themselves. Of course, in those days it was "the love that dare not speak its name." Although the people involved in making "Sherlock" say that the relationship is not gay, they certainly play with the idea. From the scene in ASiP where Sherlock makes it clear that girlfriends are not his area but answers defensively when John assures him that it is fine if he has a boyfriend - through the jokey "people will talk" moments - to the obviously flirty hints in the stag night scenes.....the writers have clearly enjoyed giving little winks to the fandom. However, there are also more subtle suggestions. John's jealousy of Irene (and Janine?) as an object of Sherlock's affections, and her suggestion that they are both attracted to Sherlock despite their sexual orientation. In fact, I would say ASiB says as much about John's feelings as it does about Sherlock's, whose feelings towards Irene seem ambivalent, to say the least. Even more telling is Sherlock's aching loneliness in TEH and TSOT. Those moments seem to express something of the deep emotion he feels for John - okay, maybe it is purely platonic. Or maybe not. Personally, I would like to see a mainstream series with a charismatic leading man who was gay but whose sexuality was not the focus of the story - a man whose brilliant mind was his outstanding quality. Of course, there are thousands of Johnlockers who would be delighted by that development, but the BBC is looking at audiences of millions (including overseas sales), so we are never going to see that happen. Oh well. Some of the tension often goes out of shows after the main characters declare their love. As for David and Jonathan....."surpassing the love of women.". Hmm. Say no more.......

I don't think I can improve on Zain's answer. Sums up everything that needed to happen. Although I don't agree with the shooting of CAM, I suppose that one way of overcoming him would have been for Mary to turn up at Appledore at the crucial moment and kill him (it was her original intention after all.). She could then take responsibility for her deeds and let Mycroft's men arrest her.. I don't really like it as a solution - it still says it is okay to kill your enemies - but I like it better than Sherlock being the killer.

I know that British accents can be problematic for Americans but I've never really understood the reason why. We don't seem to have the problem in reverse - there are a lot of US programmes on British tv and no-one seems to have difficulty understanding the dialogue. There are many different accents within the US itself, so I wonder if, for instance, a New Yorker has difficulty watching a programme set in New Orleans. Or is it just foreign programmes that cause this problem? Even If anyone does struggle to follow British accents, I wouldn't have thought they would have much difficulty following Benedict, as his speech is extremely clear and precise. Not that Martin doesn't speak clearly too, but Benedict's enunciation is perfect. Sherlock does, admittedly, speak quite fast and his use of language tends to be fairly formal - though that might be an advantage, as he rarely uses colloquialisms.