Slithytove

The more I think about the whole Mary business - and evidently I think about it too much! - the more I hope Sherlock's behaviour is all a bluff. I want him to have known all along that she was a baddie. I want him to acknowledge that all that stuff about "surgery" was so much rubbish. I want him to admit he was pretending to trust her. And, more than anything, I want him to be biding his time and waiting for her to fall into his trap. If not, what is the alternative explanation? Both he and Mycroft were too slow or too careless to realise that an assassin, under a false identity, was marrying John and getting close to Sherlock? Sherlock's knowledge of anatomy and gunshot wounds is so vague that he believes you can inflict that type of injury without a very high risk of death? He trusts, and wants John to trust, someone who lied and successfully decieved them both about her identity, and very nearly killed him without remorse? And the man whose whole life is spent bringing killers to justice believes it is all right to aid and abet a murderer to evade justice, because his best pal is in love with her? Too right it is hypocrisy, from both John and Sherlock. They are helping a criminal avoid prosecution and, frankly, it doesn't matter what was on the A.G.R.A. drive. Even if Mary did work for the CIA, and if CAM was lying about her freelance killings, there is no such thing as officially sanctioned murder. Mycroft & co might be able to hush it up - though his colleagues didn't seem to be falling over themselves to help Mycroft's brother avoid a prison sentence - but John and Sherlock have no excuse for not reporting her to the police. The same goes for her shooting of Sherlock. It was at least grievous bodily harm, and I think it would probably be classified as attempted murder. Serious crimes are prosecuted ex officio, i.e. regardless of the victim's wishes, and Mary would certainly stand trial if Lestrade learned the truth about her. Whether he liked her or not, he would have no choice. I know that the original Holmes allowed killers to escape justice on a few occasions. I'm not sure he was right to do so but he was motivated by pity, because the killers had suffered greatly because of the actions of those they killed. Even if that applies to Mary's past ( and I suspect it will, to somehow justify the murders she committed), it doesn't apply to the shooting of Sherlock. He and John know she will ruthlessly harm an unarmed person, not because they are threatening her but to preserve her freedom and her marriage. What makes her different from the other killers whom they track down and hand over to the law? And on the subject of Irene Adler.....Sherlock seems to have trusted her when he should not have done. Could the supposed misogynist actually be a bit dim where women are concerned?

We could debate forever the rights and wrongs of the prison system, but what alternative is there for people who commit very serious crimes? There is capital punishment ( including sending someone off on a one-way ticket to a suicide mission! ) but I don't personally support that, and I doubt whether those who think Mary shouldn't go to prison think she ought to be hanged..... The other option is to let them get away with their crimes, wipe the slate clean and get on with their lives in peace, which seems to be what happens in Mary's case. Where is the justice in that? Why should she get away, literally, with murder? So, it is bad for John and the baby - I don't doubt that it is bad for everyone whose relatives go to prison, particularly for life sentences, but that is not a reason to let people go! Whether or not any individual benefits from Mary's imprisonment, society benefits because it cannot allow murder to go unpunished. I don't see why Mary deserves a "get out of jail free" card, just because she happens to be married to John and he loves her. Plenty of killers have loving spouses, but it is no reason why they should not go to jail for their crimes. I would also suggest that some people might actually benefit from Mary's imprisonment - the people whom she has bereaved. What about them? We are supposed to feel sympathy for John and the baby, but what about the loved ones of the people Mary killed? Don't they have rights too? Don't they deserve justice? Personally, I think that the "did she mean to kill Sherlock or not" debate is splitting hairs. Whether or not she meant him to die - and I would say he did die in surgery - she put a bullet in him in a place where there was a bloody good chance of him dying. She recklessly endangers his life by choosing to shoot him in his upper abdomen, very close to his major organs and with a good chance he will die of blood loss and shock. If he had died, it would have been all the same to him whether her intention had been to kill or to cause grievous bodily harm! I think Sherlock did think there was a good chance she would have another go - hence the projected image on the house - and I believe her remark about being prepared to do anything to avoid losing John meant that she was willing to kill Sherlock to stop him telling John the truth. And she had brought her gun along in case she needed it for that purpose. I wonder if Moftiss intended to spark this sort of debate when they created such a controversial episode. I wouldn't be surprised if they knew exactly what they were doing....

Not going to attempt to use MultiQuote (old, still somewhat confused by mobile phones....), so I'll have to answer some of the points by name. Arcadia, I don't excuse Sherlock. I don't think killing is ever justified unless there is a direct and immediate threat to someone else's life. I think Sherlock made the wrong decision, even though he did for a good reason, if we accept that he was trying to protect John. If he was protecting Mary from prison, that can't be justified. (We shouldn't forget that his original reason for going to Appledore was to get hold of the evidence which could result in Mary's imprisonment. CAM's threat to Mary's safety came later. The whole project was on morally shaky grounds from the start.). For instance, would it be ok for Lestrade to help a murderer to go free because she was his friend? I don't think so, and the same applies to Sherlock. However, I am willing to believe that Sherlock was motivated by his desire to protect John, who is clearly the most important person in his life. The idea that Mary's motivation was the same - love for John - is pushing it a bit. Mary's motive was to save her own skin. I don't think that anyone could claim that, "My husband would be sad if he discovered I was a murderer, and went to prison for life, so I decided to kill the man who knew the truth" was a good moral argument. Well, you might be persuaded if you were in the Mafia, but otherwise..... T.o.b.y, I respect your opinion but I have to say I strongly disagree. Your argument is basically, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.". That is a compassionate warning against judging each other's weaknesses, but it has limitations. For a start, if no-one cast the first stone, we would have no criminal justice system and the strong would prey mercilessly on the weak. And the fact that we have all done things we are not proud of does not mean that no-one should reveal or condemn another person's wrongdoing. We all have secrets but not all our secrets are equal. Infidelity is wrong and hurtful but it is not as bad as paedophilia. Stealing is very bad and illegal but not as bad as murder. Of course, we all have faults. That does not mean that people who have hurt others in very serious ways - who have maimed or killed or sexually abused others, as that is the type of crime CAM is threatening to reveal - should be allowed to hide their offences or just write them off and start new lives. As Zain pointed out, CAM would not be wrong to ruin Mary's life by revealing the truth. She had ruined it herself by choosing to be a killer. Nor would it be wrong to question Lord Smallwood's relationship with a child. CAM's wrongdoing lay in trying to use the information for his own advantage. I'm not convinced that he deserved to die for that.

I agree that it is not the possession or revelation of the truth which is reprehensible, it is using the truth to gain an advantage which is wrong. If a journalist uncovers someone's ugly secret, it is not morally wrong to expose it. In fact, it is wrong to conceal it. However, if the journalist threatens to expose it, or promises to keep it hidden, to gain power over the person involved, then that's indefensible. For instance, it's not wrong to expose Mary as a killer. In fact, it is illegal and immoral to cover up that truth. However, to use that knowledge to get power over John, and thus over Sherlock, and thus over Mycroft.....That's CAM's sin. But Zain is right, I believe, that the people with dark secrets to hide are responsible for their own actions. You cannot be threatened by revelations if you have nothing to reveal - particularly not by a man who apparently doesn't possess even fabricated evidence to hold against you! As far as we know, the secrets which CAM threatens to reveal are real. Mary was a killer. Lord Smallwood's position was morally dubious. Using their secrets as leverage was clearly wrong, but they would not have been in that situation if it was not for their own misbehaviour. If CAM did not care about the truth of his allegations, as implied by his remark about not having to prove things because he only has to print them, there would be no need to go through the complex business of owning Mary to own John to own Sherlock to own Mycroft. Why not simply invent something damning about Mycroft himself and threaten to print it? Quicker, simpler and straight to the point.

As a human being, CAM is clearly a failure - a manipulative little creep with a penchant for nasty mind games. As a blackmailer and/or media mogul, he seems a bit stupid to me. Why tell your victims you don't actually have any hard evidence of their misdemeanours? Why bother to dig up dirt on people if you truly believe that it is enough to be able to print stories, without evidence - wouldn't it be easier, in that case, to make them up? However, just because you are a thoroughly unpleasant person, that doesn't mean people have the right to execute you because they don't like what you do. If CAM really was a blackmailer - and we don't know what he got out of people, if anything, as a result of his threats - he should have been prosecuted. Even Jim Moriarty, who had massive amounts of blood on his hands, would have been entitled to a fair trial rather than a summary execution. (As a lifelong opponent of capital punishment, I wouldn't support a state execution either, but a legal sentence after a fair trial is clearly different from arbitrary execution by an individual citizen.). Vigilante justice may seem satisfying but it is not only illegal, but also dangerous. Once you decide who "ought to be killed", where do you stop? And who has the right to make such decisions? Everyone who disapproves of someone else's actions? I would say that Sherlock's murder of CAM falls into the category of vigilante justice, because he felt he was killing a repugnant person for the greater good. If Mary had killed CAM, I think it would have been straightforward murder, as her sole motivation was to protect herself from punishment for her previous crimes. Do we really believe that CAM could have effectively gained leverage over people without hard evidence? Clearly he has some evidence, e.g. the Smallwood letters, and also says he sometimes sends for things when necessary. So he does have some sort of vault, somewhere.....Presumably he has people who provide information about those who have secrets, and presumably these people are capable of acquiring evidence ( in fact, are these people journalists?), so why wouldn't he keep it? Is he an idiot? I don't know about the law elsewhere but in the UK he risks prosecution for libel if he prints defamatory statements without evidence to back them up. Certainly newspapers will sail very close to the edge, printing all sorts of nonsense about people and usually getting away with it, but they can be taken to court if the subject of these stories challenges them. For instance, the comedian Russell Brand recently won undisclosed damages against a newspaper which falsely alleged he had cheated on his wife during their marriage. Very damaging allegations such as those made against Lord Smallwood or Mary Watson would have to be capable of being proved to be true, so CAM would definitely need Smallwood's letters and also concrete proof of Mary's crimes. (Also, to be fair, we've only got Lady Smallwood's word that her husband was misled about the girl's age - and, even if she was being honest, we don't know that her husband told her the truth.). I don't have any liking or sympathy for CAM as a person, but that is what he was - a human being - and you can't execute people just because you are a CIA- trained assassin or a consulting detective. Or, rather, you can but you are not only breaking the law, you are breaking the moral code of civilised society. I think that Sherlock, unlike Mary, understands this because he is, at heart, the good man Lestrade hopes he will be. He does a terrible thing for a good reason - to protect his friend's happiness - but he knows it was terrible. That's why he weeps and why he accepts that he must be punished. That's my take on it, anyway. No doubt it will all be disproved in the next series.....

It can't be a coincidence that Janine is Mary's friend, close enough to be her chief bridesmaid. Therefore, either Mary targeted Janine - as implied in the Baker Street scene - or vice versa. If Janine did deliberately befriend Mary, on CAM's behalf, it was a risky procedure. As soon as Mary knew the name of Janine's employer, she would realise she was a spy. ( What would be the odds against his PA coincidentally befriending her?). Mary is intelligent and, due to the nature of her past, must be wary of people she allows close to her, so could Janine have concealed her job for very long? And how much information could she have found out about Mary anyway? Sherlock didn't deduce her secret until he walked straight into it, and he's the world's only consulting detective! And when Mary did find out.....? We know she is utterly ruthless, even with her supposed friends. She shot Sherlock without hesitation, and would presumably have done the same to her bridesmaid if she discovered she was working for the enemy. Mary had no intention of going to prison and no qualms about killing anyone who could put her there, so Janine would surely become another of those who "ought to be killed" if she was spying for CAM. On top of that, the whole Janine/Sherlock story becomes very complex if she is CAM's catspaw. Why would she get into a relationship with the one man who might discover her secret? Why would she let him into the office? And I still can't work out why she let Mary get close enough to whack her over the head - surely she wasn't so overcome by Sherlock's proposal that she didn't notice that Mary was in the office, dressed like a member of the SAS? It seems simpler to me that Mary found out the identity of CAM's PA and befriended her, as Sherlock did, for her own purposes. Presumably Mary was playing the long game, if there was enough time to get so close to Janine that she was not surprised to be asked to be chief bridesmaid.

I agree that CAM, despite being a slimy character, doesn't deserve to be murdered. If we were going to start killing people just because they uncovered people's secrets and had the power to expose them, there would not be a journalist who was safe. Admittedly, CAM supposedly used his knowledge as leverage, though it was never very clear what this leverage got for him, but I wouldn't be surprised if most real life media moguls do exactly the same. For instance, the singer Charlotte Church said that, when she sang at Rupert Murdoch's wedding, she was told that she could choose either to be paid a fee or to have a guarantee that his newspapers wouldn't print negative stories about her. If true, that's pretty bad but I don't think she would be justified in shooting him! I don't see Sherlock's killing of CAM as either a pre-meditated act or a grand gesture - "Look at me, I'm a hero.". Of course, Moftiss will no doubt prove me wrong in S4' but I see it as a last-ditch solution to protect Mary and thus protect John - a desperate act driven by hopelessness and rage. Sherlock isn't cool and collected after the murder - as Mary would have been, judging by the way she covered up her shooting of Sherlock - he is distressed and tearful. A human response, I would say, to taking a life, even if you did detest the victim. Unlike Mary, he accepts that there are consequences for what he has done. As for Sherlock showing off re. breaking into CAM's office.....Well, yes, we know he is a show off. He admits that he is. However, I think the question of how Mary got in and out is very weak plotting. "You left the way you came.". What way? Practically dressed as a ninja, she somehow got into a high-security building full of people, got close enough to Janine and the guard to knock them out without arousing their suspicions, and escaped similarly unnoticed. How? Sherlock doesn't say, presumably because the writers could not work out the answer.

I am not sure that a comparison of two people's actions necessarily indicates any similarity between the people themselves. For instance, you could say that two people tell lies but they could have very different reasons for lying. One could be lying to protect someone, the other could be doing it to get someone into trouble. Context, motivation, content.....They all make such a difference. I don't see any resemblance between Mary and Sherlock's natures, though the writers seem to expect us to, nor do I think John and Mary are alike. To me, they seem like opposites in many ways.

I'm not very well-informed about organisations such as the CIA or MI6 - to be honest, I'm not very interested and only sat through Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy because Benedict was in it - but I wouldn't have thought that an assassin would be regarded as equivalent to a soldier. Basically, "assassin" means "murderer". If you are a pacifist, you might regard all killings committed by soldiers to be murder, and you might even be right, but from a legal viewpoint and in the eyes of most citizens they are not murderers. Of course, there are times when they act criminally and flout the Geneva Conventions but, generally, killing on the battlefield is not considered to be murder. (i am not trying justify war, just pointing out the legal and, for many people, the moral status of soldiers.) Assassination is murder and therefore Mary knows she would have no defence if arrested, and would go to prison for life. I don't think Mary is very much like either John or Sherlock, though she has been compared to both.

Occam's razor! How I love it, and how tired my family are of me referring to it..... I don't know, though, that the deep cover theory is any more complex, though, than the story of an ex-assassin who just happened to fall in love with the best friend of the world's only consulting detective, shortly before said detective returned from the dead. That seems about as likely as having your own best friend a chief bridesmaid happen to be the personal assistant of your enemy.....

"Brother mine" and "brother dear" aren't normal terms of endearment here. They are archaic forms of address. If anyone did say it, it would be assumed that they were trying to be funny or (much more likely) being extremely patronising. I think that when Mycroft says it, he is being condescending - when Sherlock says it, he is being sarcastic. More or less sums up their personalities, really. Re. Mary, maybe she doesn't love John at all. Maybe she is an assassin working in deep cover, and maybe her most recent assignment was to get close to John. (Maybe someone suspected Sherlock was alive, and wanted to find out for certain? Or knew he was alive, and needed to get someone close to him?). It is possible she would marry him if it served her purpose. It isn't a legal marriage - you can't marry someone under a false identity - and would she care anyway, if she was an agent? Sounds unlikely, but we have had fairly recent revelations here about undercover police who infiltrated protest groups in the 60s and 70s and, to maintain their cover and get information, they formed long term relationships with women in the groups and even had families with them. Maybe Mary did the same.

Actually, now I come to think of it, I'm not sure Sherlock ever did insult Sally. ( This rather fits my theory that he is much ruder to people who are nice to him - either he relies on them to forgive him, or he is a masochist. ) That makes her rudeness to him even worse. On the subject of language......I had to think about Merry vs Happy Christmas. I believe they are pretty much interchangeable, but the former may be slightly more formal, the sort of thing you might say when toasting the season. In my family, we say Happy Christmas to each other on Christmas morning and that might be the slightly more usual term. Mycroft & Sherlock are posh and quite old-fashioned - hence all the "brother mine" stuff, which I've never, ever heard anyone say - and might prefer the slightly more formal greeting. For instance, when proposing the toast in the best man's speech, Sherlock says, "Ladies and gentlemen, pray charge your glasses and be upstanding", which is the correct way to phrase it and you do hear people use that form of words but only at quite formal occasions. I imagine that Mummy Holmes brought up her little boys to use the language properly. I suppose the dominance of the English language does remove a powerful motivation for learning other tongues, but here in the UK we seem to be really bad at other languages in general. Most of us have slaved away at French for several years at school, and sometimes some German too, but most of us are still pretty rubbish at it. I live in a racially diverse city where Gujerati, Hindi, Punjabi, Urdu and Mandarin are commonly spoken, so you'd think I might know something of those languages, but no......Even worse, I've been married for 37 years to a man who speaks three Asian languages and a smattering of Swahili and I haven't really picked up any of those languages, except for a small but varied vocabulary of rude words and cookery terms......

May I say that you both have an amazing command of English. I am now cringing on behalf of the British people and our woeful inability to speak any language except our own. (Personally, I can make a pitiful attempt at French, just enough to make myself misunderstood in Paris, and that is all.) As far as names are concerned, this is a broad generalisation but I would say that, in the UK, we don't tend to address women by their surnames alone. It happens sometimes, of course, and newspapers often refer to people in this way, but not a lot in general conversation, I think. I don't think I have ever referred to a female acquaintance just by her surname, and we tend to use the full name when referring to famous people. So we would refer to our Prime Minister by his surname, i.e. Cameron, but refer to the Home Secretary as Theresa May, rather than just May. One exception to this generalisation was the late Margaret Thatcher, the "Iron Lady" of British politics, whom many of us just called Thatcher. I'm not sure why - maybe it was because, whether you loved her or loathed her ( I'm afraid I was in the latter group!), she was more terrifying than any man.....Otherwise, I think it is just seen as a matter of courtesy to use a woman's full name or, if she is a friend, her first name only. Also, in an attempt to appear less formal, some businesses and organisations have started using people's first names, rather than Mr, Mrs or Miss whatever. My doctor, for instance, now calls me by my first name, which he never used to do. Of course, Sherlock isn't Sally's friend and he isn't trying to put her at ease. Maybe he is deliberately trying belittle her - couldn't really blame him, when she is so rude to him. However, I prefer to think that it is a remnant of his upbringing, and that Mummy Holmes taught him to address a woman politely, even if every subsequent word out of his mouth is an insult.....

I like the way they've changed Anderson, showing he has a heart and a conscience, particularly when you consider how rude Sherlock always was towards him. I also like the way they caught out the fandom who, judging by the fanfic, expected Sally to be the one who felt remorse over Sherlock's "suicide." Sally is a strong character and adds to the drama, and I hope she is in S4, but I really don't like her. I realise that some of her antipathy towards Sherlock might be due to her feeling that he has Lestrade at his beck and call, but anyone who constantly calls someone "freak", behind his back but also to his face, is pretty nasty. Time for some re-training, maybe?

Poor Jim - not many people want see him return. (Well, not really poor Jim, because he is a homicidal maniac.....). I am one of the minority who would like to see him revived. I don't really care that much if it is a bit silly - after the silliness of the Fall's explanation, I don't think that rationality is a major issue here. They would have to be pretty clever, though, to come up with a good way that Jim managed to survive shooting himself in the head. Oh, well, bring on the (even more) evil twin.....

I agree that Martin is a fine actor but I think the scene is underwritten and doesn't give him the opportunity to do much with it. Far from being a masterpiece of suppressed emotion, it seems cold and unconvincing to me. John isn't a fool. He knows Sherlock is going for good and he must know he is going into danger. He's been a soldier, he must know the risks of working undercover. He must know there is, at least, a strong possibility that Sherlock will die. I don't think their farewell is a moving display of repressed emotion, on John's side, at least. Sherlock seems brimming with unspoken pain but the Watsons.....? No. First, we get Mary saying goodbye as if she is seeing him off for a week at the seaside and then we get a distant and offhand John. This scene ranks second to the Xmas reconciliation scene in my personal ranking of least favourite scenes.

I didn't expect John to get on the plane but, given that Sherlock has told him they'll never meet again, I would have appreciated a tiny bit of the type of angst he felt post-TRF to surface. I know John is supposed to be emotionally constipated but, for God's sake, this is your best friend leaving forever! You can't manage anything, not even a manly hug? I wonder if, subconsciously, Sherlock realises that the balance between them has shifted. In TSoT, he rejects Mycroft's hectoring voice, in his imagination, in favour of John, claiming "You keep me right.". However, when he is in extremis, it isn't John who keeps him right. When he has three seconds of consciousness left, who shows up in his Mind Palace to help him stay alive? Mycroft, Molly, Anderson, Jim Moriarty and a dog. No John. "I see but I do not observe" could be my motto, so I didn't notice, until it was pointed out, that the corridor Sherlock runs down when struggling against shock is pretty much the same one that John runs down in ASiP, searching for Sherlock with the intention of saving him. Of course, Sherlock would be looking for John. What he finds is Redbeard. Ultimately, as we know, it is his devotion to John which makes him force himself back to life - an act of loyalty which, in my opinion, weighs strongly against any of the bad things he is accused of inflicting on John - but it is Jim who acts as the face and voice of his anxiety, not John himself. He doesn't imagine John calling him back to life. I wonder if, deep inside, he is no longer so certain that John will be there for him always. It's just a thought.....

I don't know......To me, the feeling has changed. When John was standing at Sherlock's grave, his emotion was clear and heartfelt. At the airfield, even though Sherlock told him they would never meet again, there was nothing. Granted, John is somewhat repressed and thus more comfortable talking to a stone than to a human being, but even so.... As Zain said, it's not just the words, it's the deeds. In S1 & 2, he seemed to be there for Sherlock all the time - dashing to save him in ASiP, trudging off to the moors or the railway at Sherlock's request, sitting through Jim's trial, and so on.....but in S4 he seems to have been there for the highlights but, otherwise, pretty distant. However, I could accept the change in attitude if he wasn't still living with the woman who tried to murder Sherlock. ( Okay, so her intent is debatable, but "balance of probability, brother mine".). That seems to signal a change of focus that is just too much to bear.

When you think about it, John is pretty dense at times regarding Sherlock's mental state. (I wonder about the quality of care his patients get, if they have anything other than physical ailments!). Sherlock is, of course, a very complex man but John is his best friend and a doctor, and Sherlock seems most at ease in his company, so he might be expected to understand better than anyone how Sherlock feels. However, it seems he often does not. Pretending to kill yourself in front of someone and then disappearing for a couple of years is a cruel thing to do, even if you had a powerful reason for doing it. Personally, I think the original explanation, i.e. the snipers, made most sense and vindicated Sherlock's behaviour much more than the explanation in TEH, so I prefer to think that it was closer to the truth. I can't blame John for his initial anger - it was more believable than Watson's response, which was more or less, "Yay, you're back! Let's solve crimes!". However, I think it would have been more satisfying if John had, after forgiving Sherlock, shown something of Watson's unshakable friendship. Like Zain, I felt that that powerful bond was less obvious now on John's side. The series begins with Sherlock suffering and he keeps on suffering, physically and mentally, but no-one seems to realise the extent of what he is going through. I agree that John suffered too, realising that both his best friend and his wife had lied to him, and then being told by both that it was his own fault for liking dangerous people. That, I thought, was unfair. All in all, though, I felt John wasn't there for Sherlock in the ways that he needed (I know he was there for the adventures, that's not what I mean.). I will admit to be very Sherlock-centric. I love John but I would throw him under a bus, figuratively speaking, to save Sherlock. I suppose that's why Sherlock's suffering in S3 resonates so strongly with me.

Incidentally, I do know that none of the characters are real! I was just making the point that it was not necessary for the writers to marry John off. He could have stayed as Sherlock's flatmate forever, if they chose to let him stay at 221b.

I wouldn't say John is a bad friend, it's just that his priority is no longer Sherlock. Of course, that is reasonable when someone Is married ( unless they find out they're married to a killer!) but that's maybe the reason why marrying him off wasn't such a great idea. After all, he isn't a real person, so he doesn't actually need the comfort and support of a wife and kids. As for John being led by Sherlock regarding Mary.....hasn't he got a mind of his own? Couldn't he say, "I don't care if you forgive her or want me to forgive her - she shot you in cold blood, and I'll never forgive her"? As for taking her back, despite his own anger, because Sherlock told him to.....Well, I find that too hard to believe. No-one in their right mind stays married because their friend tells them they should!

I suspect Caya is right. Not wanting to get involved or make a fuss would be a very strong incentive to turn a blind eye and keep walking, however intrigued we might be......But Sherlock, of course, wouldn't care. John, on the other hand, seems torn between his law-abiding instincts and the urge for adventure. Seems the latter wins out every time, when they're together.

I'm not sure that people who dislike Mary now necessarily disliked her prior to HLV. I liked her as a character in the first two episodes, though I was admittedly a bit concerned that she might upset the central dynamic between John and Sherlock. You can't really compare Mary to Molly or any of the other minor characters, because there is no other character whose emotional impact can affect the central relationship in the same way. However, if Mary had been allowed to fade into the background like the original Mrs Watson, I would not have minded her and I suspect that many others feel the same. (In the original stories, all other characters, including Mary, seem like shadows compared to the three- dimensional reality of Holmes and Watson. Lestrade probably gets top billing but, even so, we see him only as he flits briefly in and out of Baker Street life.). The shooting of Sherlock was, for me, a deal-breaker. It changed my feelings towards Mary for good. Even if they make her a background character now, she will always be the woman who nearly killed Sherlock, and it will always seem wrong that John is with her. The question of why John wants to be with Sherlock is interesting. I think it begins with curiosity and admiration. For ACD's Watson, admiration and the need to be needed always seemed to be the basis for his friendship. I found his unswerving devotion to Holmes rather touching and lovely, but maybe it wouldn't be convincing in the 21st century. So we have an edgier John who hits Sherlock and yells and swears at him, but still regards him as his best friend. I suppose we are supposed to accept the John-likes-dangerous-people theory, but it seems to me that Sherlock just makes him feel alive. That was what happened in ASiP, when he rescued John from a pointless existence, and it seems reasonable as an explanation of why John wants to stick around. Sherlock infuriates him, amuses him, drags him into adventures and, as John says, "I'm never bored." I do feel, though, that their friendship changed in S3 in a way that weakened it. Yes, they were together in moments of crisis. Yes, Sherlock's loneliness and uncertainty showed us the warm heart behind the cool facade. Great. But now let's have a bit more of Watson's heartfelt devotion and loyalty, even if Mary has to go, or if Victor has to turn up to show John that he too was "not the first.". Or maybe we just need to go back to John's point of view, after seeing so much through Sherlock's eyes.

I know that I will carry on watching, even if we get a hideous amount of the Watsons's domestic life in S4 and (worse still!) Mary never gets her comeuppance. Even if I get frequently exasperated, I love Sherlock himself and I can put up with an enormous amount of annoyance on his behalf! However, I do want desperately for something to happen to prioritise John and Sherlock's friendship again, and Victor Trevor might be the way to do it - particularly if Mary is gone as well. Mary's death wouldn't have to mean another episode of grief for John. If he still loved her, it would undoubtedly break his heart, but what if he hated her? I agree it is unlikely that he would shoot the mother of his child (though it would be dramatic), but it is not improbable that someone grows to loathe their spouse. Happens all the time, so why shouldn't it happen to John & Mary? What if her personality, the one John fell in love with, was as false as her identity? What if she was a cold-hearted killer? What if Mary was the Big Bad or, at least, a Colonel Moran figure whose sole motivation was to find and destroy Sherlock, maybe to avenge Moriarty? She could even be one of the snipers involved in previous cases, i.e. TBB and/or TGG. Wouldn't John hate her then? She could die in dramatic circumstances without us having to endure another bout of unbearable sorrow for John. He might even be relieved that she was out of his life and their daughter's, particularly if her crimes put Baby Watson's life at risk. I know it won't happen, as the writers have a sentimental streak and also seem to think Mary is somehow redeemed (although, personally, I can't see how or why) but I think it would work and could put Sherlock back at the centre of John's life, where he belongs.

Well, I liked Mary a lot in the first two episodes - warm, droll and understanding about the depth of John and Sherlock's friendship. I liked nothing about her in HLV, so I can't say anything nice about her there. I've seen it pointed out somewhere - probably on archiveofourown.org - that there are actually two Marys in S3, because Amanda Abbingdon was told nothing about the way her character would develop in HLV. So she did not know Mary's backstory as an assassin or that she would go on to hurt Sherlock. As a result, it is pointless to look to TEH or TSoT for any clues about her motivation and, as the meta writer pointed out, impossible for Amanda to express the character's darker side in those episodes. As a result, we get a Mary who is sweetness and light in two episodes and cold and dangerous in the third, almost as if they are two different people. I agree with the writer that Amanda might have been able to give a more subtly nuanced performance in TEH and TSoT if she had had any idea what was coming in HLV. As for John having to grieve for Mary, after grieving for Sherlock - well, chin up, John, I'm sure you'll pull through. After all, your predecessor, ACD's Dr Watson, managed to cope with both losses. In fiction, people deal with repeated loss which, in real life, would be enough to break anyone. That's part of the beauty of fictional characters, that their hearts can be so much stronger than our own. Let's kill off Mary and move John back in 221b, like Conan Doyle did. Or, if the writers can't bring themselves to kill her - and they seem reluctant to let any major characters die - then let her take Baby Watson and run far, far away. And John can move back into Baker Street.....