Boton

I totally agree, and this is underlined by Mycroft's speech later about how sometimes you need a blunt instrument and sometimes you need a scalpel. I really do see the shooting of CAM itself as a scalpel-type move: remove just that one cancer, and a whole body could live. As far as the triteness of "Merry Christmas," it doesn't bother me. Once you have written a scene like that, the protagonist has to say something before pulling the trigger, and everything pithy has already been taken and used in other non-Sherlock shows. (Things like "see you in hell," or "hasta la vista.") Plus, Merry Christmas has the advantage of closing the loop nicely on the conversation that already existed between Sherlock and CAM. Sherlock offered to "give" CAM his brother for Christmas (in the restaurant scene), and he attempted to do so, albeit with Mycroft's help using the GPS tracker and calling in Mycroft's governmental muscle. When that didn't work, Sherlock wound up saying something that would convey the idea "I said I'd give you a Christmas present, but I'm not holding up my end of the deal any more."

Yeah, how does he know she bakes her own bread? Does she have bread flour in her sleeve, and he's really adept at telling it apart from plain old unbleached? (Is there a blog entry on identifying flour I should be reading?) Is he jonesing after the ergot that is growing on spoiled rye? "You invaded Afghanistan." "I didn't do that alone." :-)

Made a little edit up there. My parenthetical remark about Sherlock should have read "and, I believe, he is highly sexual."

I think Irene Adler, in this incarnation, is intended to be Sherlock's mirror. Not his opposite, but his reflection, flipped. In that way, she shows Sherlock and us about his internal character. I agree with her when she said that any disguise winds up being a self-portrait, and both of them walk around in disguise all day, every day. Irene is an intelligent, curious woman who chooses to present herself as wholly, aggressively sexual. She wants people to be unable to see beyond the smokescreen of naked flesh and recreational scolding to her emotions inside. Her intellect is something that Sherlock can pique and engage to get her interested, which ultimately leads to her emotional involvement. Conversely, Sherlock presents himself as wholly intellectual (and, I believe, he is highly sexual). He wants people to be unable to see beyond the smokescreen of rapid deductions and social maladjustment to his emotions inside. Irene piques his sexual side, drawing him in and getting him interested, which ultimately leads to his emotional involvement. And I think she won, ultimately. I mean, it's one thing to have someone like you well enough to change their phone password; it's quite another to inspire someone to travel into a group of terrorists and save you from a beheading. I read once this description of a classical conception of soul mates. The idea was that every person is "conceived" with their soul joined to another, a literal mating. The souls would be split apart by the gods and sent to be born on Earth, where they would spend their lives with the desire to find their missing half. If you found your soul mate, you would recognize him or her nearly instantly, because this is the other half of your being. In some ways, I think of Irene and Sherlock as this kind of "soul mate," and I tend to use Irene as a way to interpret Sherlock's character.

Of course, I've made no secret of my absolute love of everything HLV, especially the mind palace panic, but if I were to choose another favorite scene, I think I'd choose the cab ride on the way to the crime scene in S1E1 SiP. I love that the writers used ACD dialog almost intact, only updating it to be about a mobile phone rather than a pocket watch -- and it almost completely works, other than the fact that practically no one would engrave a mobile phone. I love the delivery of the lines; for me, this is one of the most well-paced deductions scenes in the whole series, maybe because the cab ride gives the pair time to actually slow down just a touch and make the deduction really about Sherlock's observation, not about some word cloud magic that he can perform. The things he noticed really are details that every one of us could pick up on, if we cared enough to really observe rather than just see. And I love that John is not in the least threatened by this -- he thinks its amazing, which might be one of the first times in Sherlock's life that people have ever thought his talent was worthy of respect and not to be treated like a freakish quality or a parlor trick. At that point, I pretty much want to be friends with both of them, even before I really "know" that this is Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson in any meaningful way.

This. I have watched that mind palace sequence so many times. Gorgeous work. I think the self-preservation part is very evident, but he's fighting a battle he nearly loses, and one that grows increasingly focused on himself until a burst of herculean will allows him to let a focus on others motivate him. I notice these points: Once Mary has shot him, his consciousness is still on the "surface," so to speak. The alarm starts blaring in the background, which is a release of adrenaline. His body is moving into fight-or-flight mode, and his mind prepares to go with it. As the panic grows, his perspective grows increasingly internal, as symbolized by the run down the spiral staircase. He navigates the fall, and there's a second burst of adrenaline (alarm blare) that he has to mentally squelch. He does so with the image of Redbeard, which is located firmly in the memory portion of his mind palace/brain, but not in the "limbic system" or instinctive/reflexive parts of his brain. That's reserved for..... Moriarty, who for me symbolizes not some deep psychological problem, but just the body's instinctive life/death/pain response center. It's Moriarty in a padded cell, and indeed, this part of everyone is a little psychotic. This is the part of one's brain that goes into gear when people lift fallen automobiles off children and other seemingly impossible feats of personal strength. It's a little nuts down here when it needs to be. He's got to find a way to use his mind to control the pain. He looks horrified when he "realizes" that he has no choice about experiencing pain; all he can do is accept it. And this pain is enough to kill him. His mental image of himself is writhing in pain, which means that the real him is consumed with the pain he's feeling. Ultimately, the only way to escape the gut-tearing agony he is experiencing is to let himself die, and now the choice is not life or death but agony or release. But he's so strong mentally that he can use the last milliseconds of consciousness, when the pain is leaving him along with the life force, to actually think through the implications of his "actions." His death will leave his best friend married to a murderer, while Sherlock takes the knowledge to the grave. He can't do this to bring himself release at the expense of bringing his best friend pain and danger. So, in the most bad-ass example of self-preservation and yet selflessness ever portrayed on film, he freaking climbs out of his own limbic system and lets his analytical brain pull his physical body back into life. Talk about the triumph of intellect over base instincts. Anyway, that's the way I experience that scene, and why I love it so.

I've read that speculation, although I don't give it much credence right now. Although I think Mycroft was pleased, the Moriarty supposed return seems too flashy to be a Mycroft production. Had he wanted Sherlock "pardoned," he could have accomplished that behind the scenes earlier. Much more his style, were he going to make a rescue attempt, to let Sherlock knock around Eastern Europe for five months, three weeks, and some odd days (depending on how close his intell said Sherlock was to getting offed) and then swoop in to pluck him out. After letting him take a horrifying beating, of course. Guess we'll see in about 15 months!

Totally agree. Threatening John and Mary (who T.o.b.y has rightly called Sherlock's family) was the tipping point. John and Sherlock went into Appledore with the intent to save Mary as their "client," but Sherlock had been working on CAM for months. CAM had already indirectly caused the death of Lady Smallwood's husband. He apparently had met with the PM several times, so heaven knows what information he had that could change the course of international relations. And he admitted that he likes to toy with entire countries. I can see Sherlock being very galled by this man; he doesn't play by any rules of engagement but instead just uses people as playthings. I suppose I don't loathe Mycroft yet, but I'm not entirely fond of him after all this either. In S3, Mycroft is used as the counterpoint to Sherlock so we can better see Sherlock's emotional development. Mycroft doesn't form an emotional attachment to anything, really. His admission that losing Sherlock would hurt him ("Your loss would break my heart") was noteworthy because it was anomalous. (And fantastic so that BC could do a spit-take with cigarette smoke!) Mycroft has rules in his mind of how things should go; he's always doing the math on whether the collateral damage outweighs damage to his "employer." He has spent his entire life nagging his little brother that there is no advantage in feeling anything, but this season Sherlock is starting to learn otherwise. In some ways, I think Mycroft sending Sherlock on the mission in Eastern Europe is as compassionate as Mycroft can ever get. He's squelched his own emotion until he doesn't even know how to use it. I kind of believe that Mycroft lobbied for exile rather than imprisonment because at least if Sherlock were free, he had a chance. A small one, certainly. But I think Mycroft thought that if anyone could pull it out, it would be his brother, even though he knew the "balance of probability" was that he was sending Sherlock to his death. Mycroft is kind of the opposite of CAM. Whereas CAM flouts the rules of engagement and therefore must be stopped because he will not limit himself, Mycroft limits himself overmuch. He will live and die by the rules of engagement (the rules of a civilized society). Therefore, he believes that it is unassailable fact that his brother must be punished for murder by sending him to execution. He's going to throw his own brother to the lions, but by sending him to Eastern Europe, maybe he's sending him into the arena with a knife in his belt.

T.o.b.y, this is a beautiful, beautiful thought very well expressed. I think yes, the whole Sherlock personality development arc for S3 is about whether or not he really does have a choice in his isolation. Clearly, Mycroft has been the literal voice in his head for years telling him to not let himself get attached to anyone or anything, not even a pet when he was little. And here he has started to build a life where there are people important to him ("....friends. I hear you go in for that sort of thing these days."), and suddenly he has to deal with the fact that, when people are really important to you, you can also be profoundly hurt by losing them or seeing them in danger. Again, such a nice set-up for HLV. In TSoT, we get an "everyday" loss of friends in the form of that panic you feel when one of your friends marries or gets pregnant -- the "this is going to change everything and there's no place for me" fear. By HLV, that is more or less resolved as evidenced by the nice little bit of adapted ACD dialog in which Sherlock admits he and Mary have discussed John's weight gain; just a little clue that things have settled down more normally, and that Sherlock has added Mary to his "family." And then he sees what it truly means to have his family threatened, in the form of CAM. I'm in! Give me a call, Moftiss! We can start with DVD commentaries for your next special edition.

One thing that was so nice about this episode on rewatch is how well it sets up HLV. Everyone's already mentioned things like the telegram from CAM, but what I noticed this time around is scene where Sherlock is pre-screening the guests, specifically Mary's ex-boyfriend, and demoting him to "casual acquaintance." He makes the "high functioning sociopath...with your number" comment, which had tremendous comic effect, mostly because about all we can picture Sherlock doing if the ex gets out of hand is going to have a strongly worded talk with him. Contrast this with the last 10 minutes of HLV, where CAM notes that he has names and phone numbers of the people who are connected to whoever Mary killed, and he'll use them unless he gets to flick John. Such an elegant and viscerally creepy reversal: CAM would indeed make a few calls and keep his own hands clean, but in this case, dialing a few numbers from Mary's past could well get her and John killed.

This was one of my favorite scenes too, and I interpreted it as you did. John's had quite the morning, really. The first thing he does when he gets up is find best friend back on drugs and lying on dirty mattress in a smack den. It's his worst fear -- he, John, got married, and his best friend couldn't really handle the change, so he slipped right back into bad habits as soon as he was alone. He stages an impromptu intervention with the help of big brother Mycroft, then he turns around to find that Janine, who I very much like as a character but would classify as a girl who is quite, um, "fun," is coming out of Sherlock's bedroom. And the kicker is, she isn't a drug-fueled one night stand. She's been there before! A lot! She's joining "Sherl" in the bath and sitting on his lap -- completely out of character for a guy who seems to need a fair amount of personal space. And then there's the cutesy talk typical of a new relationship, combined with a really long snog goodbye. So, 180 degree turn: Sherlock maybe hasn't fallen apart, maybe he has developed an actual, adult romantic relationship. What. The. Hell. No wonder John is having a lot of trouble processing all this. I think the bit where he looks away from the snogging and kind of up to inspect the tops of the curtains or anything in the world he can fix his eyes on that will keep him from watching this impossible scene going on in front of him is just brilliant. I know the first time I watched it, I watched it alone and actually said out loud at that point, "This is a lot of information all at once." Anyway, absolutely a brilliant scene and very well acted on all parts. (I am, of course, getting my fiction cause and effect exactly backwards, but every time I see that scene, I'm reminded of the episode of House where House and Cuddy break up and House checks into a hotel for two weeks of Vicodin and hookers. Until I knew what was going on in this scene, I had a moment of thinking that maybe Sherlock had just decided to completely throw self-control to the wind.) Another favorite scene I came here to post is the end of the reception at the end of TSoT. A lot has been said about Sherlock leaving the reception early and alone, but the part that tears me apart is the musical score. Sherlock in general uses very little contemporary music, and the original score they do use somehow takes our characters just a bit out of the modern "real world" and allows them to retain a bit of Victorianism or sense of "otherness." The use of "December 1963" as the first pop song played at the wedding destroys me. Up til that point, Sherlock has handled everything really well, especially for someone who never expected to have a friend, let alone a best friend, let alone a best friend who wanted him as best man. Yeah, he's gotten a little manic with the napkin folding and ran off the rails for a bit solving an attempted murder in the middle of his speech, but he also composed an ethereal violin waltz for the new couple and has basically done everything within his power to make sure that his best friend's special day is perfect. He's controlling it. But then that song comes on, and it's like a door closes. It's an invasion of modernity interjected into a day that Sherlock has helped orchestrate into being timeless. He loves dancing, but let's face it: No one is going to ask him to stand in a group and bounce up and down doing the "white man's overbite" (cf. When Harry Met Sally) to a pop song. There are going to be no more romantic waltzes to dance to that night, no more opportunities to attempt to control the trajectory of the day. His job is done. And he's just now realizing it.

Thanks, T.o.b.y! To paraphrase HLV, "It's more or less my day job."

Totally agree. I think Moftiss found themselves on the horns of a bit of a problem, and they solved it pretty admirably. They have a great respect for the ACD Holmes, so when they were modernizing the Holmes/Watson stories, they could update a number of things, like cell phones and texting and blogs. But they couldn't really update the Holmes/Watson relationship without destroying the story. In the Victorian era, men and women inhabited very different spheres. So two people who were in the public sphere solving crimes and generally confronting danger were by definition going to both be male. (Likewise, a drama that was set in the interior of a household would by definition be made up of women.) Ironically, this division allowed for a lot more latitude as far as the depth of affection that same-sex partners could express for one another without it gaining a sexual connotation. Of course, you would expect to always see Holmes and Watson together -- they worked together, they lived together, they went places together. They were publicly a "couple" without the need for there to be a sexual connotation to it. (And this leaves aside the fact that the Victorian era didn't have our particular notions of sexual identity as being important; sexual behavior was the only thing that was considered in that arena.) Moftiss had to import a Victorian era relationship into our very sexual-orientation-aware era. Anyway, this type of relationship survived in literature and film for decades as what I would think of as the classic "buddy picture." You know -- the story of two soldiers who go into combat together and neither will leave the other behind. The story of two cops who have each other's back both in the line of fire and in personal problems. The "Lone Ranger and Tonto" pairings of the cowboys and Indians movies. All of these are examples of male-male partnerships that involved a great deal of love, respect, loyalty, and friendship without introducing the idea of romantic attraction. Somewhat sadly, I think, we've lost the idea that two people can have a very intense, bonded relationship without romance or attraction involved. I think Moftiss knows this (I've even read comments to that effect from Moffatt) and they continually poke fun at the audience or with the audience by making our contemporary comments out loud: "If you'll be needing two rooms," "Take my hand. -- Now everyone will talk," etc. But, IMHO, I see nothing in the Sherlock/John relationship that's sexual. (Sorry, Johnlock shippers!) I see the evolution of Sherlock as he essentially makes his very first friendship. We know from TEH that the Holmes boys grew up a little isolated, such that by the time the parents introduced them to other kids for them to make friends, they found these kids beneath their own intellect. Sherlock has obviously grown accustomed to being the odd man out in a big way; I just cringe every time I hear Donovan in S1 call him "freak." Anyone who has ever been marginalized for their intelligence can feel the pain of that one. And then here comes John. He's the one that accepts Sherlock's talents of deduction instead of saying "piss off," as everyone else does. And Sherlock can make him better too -- he saw right into John and helped him drop the psychosomatic limp within the first episode. That's a buddy pic relationship in the making. I do think Sherlock was intensely sexually attracted to Irene, for reasons that I may write later. Whether he acted on it or not is irrelevant to me; plenty of highly-sensually-aware people opt for temporary or long-term celibacy for a lot of reasons. I also think that the John-Mary-Sherlock relationship gives clues that the John-Sherlock relationship is not one of sexual attraction. Mary explicitly said that Sherlock can't fib to her like he can to John, and yet she has no problem setting the two up on crime-solving "dates" because they miss one another or conferring with Sherlock about how much weight John has gained. I mean, it's one thing for her to have utter faith in her husband's sexual orientation and fidelity, but it would take some really uncommon squelching of human nature for her to continually throw her husband in the path of someone she thought was sexually attracted to him. Plus, I truly read Sherlock's behavior throughout TSoT and HLV to be that of someone who really wants his friends to be happy. He's decided that married life probably isn't for him, but that doesn't mean he doesn't want his friends' marriage to work. Again, that says "buddy pic" rather than "rom com" to me. YMMV.

I agree with this, although I have sympathy for Schlauer Fuchs's position. It's uncomfortable for me to see Sherlock put himself into that kind of jeopardy. (Well, I do love a tortured, intellectual hero who will risk his life and health, so there's that....) But for the second time around (the "canteen" meeting with CAM), I think Sherlock's brain came back on line before his body did, and I think he's used to considering himself a walking brain. (cf. the unaired pilot comment referenced above, "Everything else is just transport.") In some ways, I think this sheds light both on his morphine use and on his vulnerabilities. I picture that little restaurant being the restaurant that every urban hospital I've ever seen has nearby: Its the little place that makes its living by being cheek-by-jowl with the hospital and being a place families can go get something different to eat than they could in the cafeteria. (There's always a flower shop next door, too.) My own backstory says that Sherlock has had some time to recover, and he's maybe not using the PCA (patient controlled analgesia) morphine pump as much (I think it was set somewhere at the 2-4 range on a 10 scale when he bumped it up during the meeting) and probably is walking around a bit. Typically, after a bit less than a week, they will have liver surgery patients start to walk around and get their strength back, so I figure he was told that he should start walking to the canteen to get his meals if he wants, because that would be a good, safe distance. He takes a look at how close this little restaurant is and figures that it doesn't make any difference if he turns left at the bottom of the elevator to go to the hospital canteen or right to walk out the door to the restaurant ("I am in hospital; this is the canteen." "It is?" "In my opinion."), so he sees his opportunity to meet CAM. He thinks he can clear his head of the morphine long enough to think his way through the encounter; the morphine drip is riding shotgun to support his body, not his mind. After all, he's figured the damn thing out! He's observed CAM's glasses, he knows CAM stares into nothingness and says "I'm reading," so Sherlock thinks he's got the "portable Appledore" figured out. He went to that restaurant to see Appledore, but he thought it was the spectacles. When it turns out he's wrong, he learns the hard way that maybe he wasn't quite in the right shape to do this, because he doesn't have much of a backup plan. Selling out Mycroft isn't too much of a hardship or a leap because that's what their relationship is: sibling rivalry wrapped in admiration for an older brother who always seemed to be able to take care of himself. Mycroft will be find if he's involved. Heck, he might actually be helpful. At minimum, Mycroft could pull in the resources of MI6, so this seems like a safe bet. That's the difference, as you say, between fiction and fact. But I think there's a point to be made here that Sherlock doesn't cavalierly shoot CAM. He makes the calculation that there are some things worth dying for. He ultimately has to show the flaws we discussed above to get him to this untenable situation where the only way out is to erase the Appledore vaults, wherever they might be. I think Sherlock has opened himself up to a lot of things over S3, most specifically friendship, and now he realizes that having people you care about also means that sometimes you care about them more than you do yourself. The way he shot CAM is not frivolous. He retreats into the persona that has always protected him ("Alone is what I have; alone protects me.") and draws strength from his ability to be the outcast who works solo ("I'm a high-functioning sociopath. Merry Christmas!"). And he shoots CAM and throws the gun away in one move and puts his hands up to accept his punishment -- hardly sociopathic behavior. The whole shooting was, in a weird way, a very very selfless act. He was willing to go to jail or even die as long as his friends John and Mary were safe and could live together as they wanted.

Yes, I agree. I think you have two timelines going on at that point: the story of Sherlock's time in hospital, in the form of a flashback, and the story of Christmas day, told as "real time." It's potentially confusing, because at a certain point the "real time" nature of the hospitalization plot becomes flashback to make room for Christmas day as "real time." But basically, I think Sherlock is shot, hospitalized, threatened by Mary, pulls himself together (and does some Mind Palace work on how Mary could have fooled them all), and goes to have a showdown with Mary with the idea of exposing her to John at Leinster Gardens. While there, he realizes her full story and switches into the mode of helping them patch up their relationship, but this task is interrupted when he collapses at 221B. He knows he's going back to hospital based on "you may have to restart my heart on the way." The previous lines emphasize that now Sherlock feels that CAM is the only issue at hand, so it makes sense that after this revelation, he will pursue CAM exclusively, thus the meal/confrontation with CAM came after the 221B "domestic." There is a probably-boring-to-watch-and-thus-omitted series of scenes where John is trying and failing to wrap his head around how his wife could be a trained assassin who nearly bumped off his best friend. But yes, it took me more than one watch to get the timelines in my mind in a way that made sense.

What did cross my mind as an option is that he brought the morphine drip as a "prop" to continue to give CAM pressure points for his vault record that he, Sherlock, could control. Perhaps knowing that he could literally turn his morphine use on and off as needed made that an attractive "weakness" to have. That would also explain a bit of the "theatricality" of clicking the morphine up by three clicks. I'd be happy with that interpretation too. But I will use my last breath to defend the position that he didn't know he was going to kill CAM until right before he did it. I think he went to Appledore intent on getting the vault records on Mary -- and maybe he missed a bit of logical analysis along the way, what with being shot and all, and didn't think of the ways that his plan could go wrong. But for me, the line where he confirms with CAM that the vault is inside CAM's head tells me that he was going to wipe the vault no matter what, and when he found out it was located in CAM's head, then that was a sorry day for the integrity of CAM's head.

Can we just talk for a second about the utter gorgeousness of the acting, set design, and direction (I never quite know who to credit for which element of a scene) of the restaurant scene with Sherlock and CAM? I think the way it was executed, especially BC's portrayal, lent a lot of information to a very short scene and went beyond the initial done-to-death visual joke of "patient escapes hospital wearing a gown with IV in tow" that we initially think it is. First of all, Sherlock is eating while he's on a case. To the best of my viewing abilities, this has never been done; in fact, it has been a relatively subtle thing that he'll stop so John can have a meal, but he isn't eating. Never eats while working. Now, I don't expect him to refrain from eating while he's recovering from liver surgery, which takes weeks, but he is actually meeting with CAM, and this time CAM is in the power position of not eating (except to exert his dominance by picking through Sherlock's leftovers). For Sherlock to eat not only while he is on a case but in front of an adversary is an immediate admission of weakness. Not only is Sherlock eating, but the set design and acting of it are really well done. If you watch, he looks very much like he's having that meal you have when you are sick and just starting to feel better -- the "this tastes like crap but I've got to keep my strength up" meal. He seems to be working fairly hard at eating, and his meal is basically pasta and water, which should be a reasonably easy thing to eat. And I think the water is a good set design choice -- it isn't anything that adds any taste to a meal or to the experience. It isn't even a hot cup of tea on a blustery day. It's something to wash the food down with, period. Last, the way he handles the morphine drip, elevating it from joke prop to storytelling device. When CAM applies the least bit of verbal pressure, Sherlock carefully ups the morphine by three clicks, one at a time. Contrast this with the scene in hospital with Janine, when he pretty aggressively (for a guy that was shot 3 days ago) cranks the morphine from 0 to 9 in one move, and then when he needs to think moves it from 9 to 2 in one move. With CAM, he's calibrating, doing the math on how much pain/anxiety relief he can use and still keep his wits about him. Taken together, this has created an entire back story for me. This event must be several days or even a week or more after the 221B "Watson domestic." Once again, Sherlock has been unable to resist the temptation to work on a case, but this time he's taking control of it. He's not going to float along high, even if he has darn good reason to. But he's just not up to it yet, and CAM just sits and toys with him. Gorgeous, gorgeous scene.

I loved these scenes. It reminds me of very genuine "best friend" situations, when you both see someone incredibly hot and start flirting, then it becomes clear that the person in question likes one of you more, so the other one pulls back and starts doing quiet "get a room" jokes to cheer you on. In fact, rather not unlike the way I met Mr. Boton. Except, of course, he wasn't an internationally-known Dom, nor was he my client. At least, its true that both my best friend and I started flirting, until she noticed him looking at me and immediately downshifted into cheering us on.

I agree about Mad Men's soapiness quotient. But I did like some of the middle seasons quite a bit, so its worth viewing, I think. And I agree about Sherlock. I do like a really good case, but I'm most interested in the psychology of Sherlock that we learn more about as time goes on. Right now, I'm pondering some juxtapositioning of statements Sherlock has made. "Alone protects me." But humans aren't meant to be alone, even if they consider themselves "high functioning sociopaths" (oh, welcome to the club, Sherlock!). I rewatched SiB last night, and I'm thinking very much about the impact Irene Adler had on him ("The Woman. The woman.") and then moving forward into HLV to the mind palace scene (God, I love that.) "Moriarty's" advice to him, at his deepest, most core level: "You always feel the pain. But you don't have to fear it......Pain, heartbreak, loss, death; it's all good.") I love the idea that every one of these experiences intensifies Sherlock's humanity. Indeed, maybe he's a sociopath not because he has a deficiency of feeling but because he feels way too much; shutting it off is a defense. OK, enough. Back to writing, for pay and all that.

T.o.b.y., I love Mad Men! Its accuracy depends on who you talk to. Some agencies really were a continual festival of skirt-flipping, and others were much more sedate. If you want a great read to tide you over to the second half of the final season, I recommend Mad Women by Jane Maas. I had the honor of sitting by Ms. Maas at a dinner on her book tour, and she had some fabulous tales to tell about her days at Ogilvy and Mather in the early 1960s. Including an anecdote about one big name who was known as "a great swordsman," if you catch her drift. What's nice about the show is that it captures a fundamental shift going on in advertising at the time, from the separation of art and copy to a more unified creative team approach. The art shown in the show is also very good and very true to the style of the years in which it's depicted.

Thanks, all! No, I wasn't on the TWOP Sherlock forum; I'm really sorry to have missed it, because trying to access it through the Wayback Machine is a real pain. Caya, my field of history is American 20th century advertising. I'm working on a book in that field right now (when I'm not obsessing over Sherlock, which is totally not helping my productivity). I'm sort of hoping to import some of my Sherlock fascination into my next class I teach. I've done a lot of research into the marketing of patent medicines (such as early OTC compounds that contained delightful things like a mix of morphine, cocaine, and cannabis -- guaranteed to stop your cough and quiet your baby!), and I'd like to have a discussion with my class about Victorian and early 20th c. attitudes toward drugs and their marketing. This might be a nice way to tie that in with popular culture, which I like to do.

Hi, all! I'm Boton. I was Boton over on Television Without Pity, and on Previously.tv, so I thought I'd keep my television postings consistent. I came to Sherlock fandom all at once, this month. I spent the summer binge-watching House because I love medical dramas, especially those that stay away from the run of the mill pneumonia/domestic abuse/cancer diagnoses (cancer is boring, as House would say) and go more toward the zebras. I like to try to armchair diagnose, so give me the rare diseases every day! (Heaven knows I've diagnosed every pheochromocytoma that has ever been shown on TV; give me a challenge, already!) After House, I was looking for something else, preferable something with a quirky, prickly lead, a lot of intellectual games, and some good script writing. I read about the parallels between House and Sherlock Holmes, so I dialed up Sherlock even though non-medical mysteries have never been my thing. My God, I'm so hooked! I'm working on my rewatch of the entire series now, and I've started reading the canon books and short stories. It doesn't hurt that Benedict Cumberbatch in Sherlock is easy on the eyes, but it is way more than that. The quality of the scripts and the acting of Sherlock have drawn me right in. This is, for my money, simply some of the finest television out there. And, as a semi-professional historian (meaning I teach college history, but not full time), I'm gaining an appreciation through the books of some things about Victorian culture that I hadn't had before, given that Victorian England is not my field. I like to think that readers of ACD books/stories in that time were seeing their Sherlock as a quirky, slightly antisocial, badass genius too. I kind of love that. Anyway, looking forward to discussing with everyone here!