Molly Hooper

[Arcadia]

The timeline in this series has never been clear, but I've often thought it's possible that Lady Smallwood approached Sherlock well before the wedding. Just because we were shown it at the beginning of HLV doesn't mean that's when it happened. So he could have been planning to court Janine even before he met her. But I don't think so, if only because that's so much more complicated than it needs to be.
 
At any rate, the only reason Sherlock got involved with CAM in the first place was because Lady S asked him to. He didn't need to know anything about Mary in order to be interested in CAM. So it's possible he was targeting Janine from the start. That's not how I perceive it myself, but I think the story works about the same either way.

[gerry]

Plus it was quite uncommon for him to flirt with a woman the way he flirted with Janine.

Yes but this is why I suspected from the very beginning that he was up to something since he would never lower himself to flirting behavior with the goldfish unless he had an objective or a case. He did an extremely mild case of the same thing with Molly in TBB when he wanted to get in the morgue. Flirting isn’t real Sherlock to me, just an act he puts on when he wants something from a woman.

[T.o.b.y]

Theoretically, Sherlock could have gotten interested in Magnussen while researching the wedding guests' backgrounds. He would have come across him when looking into Janine.

[gerry]

Yup which is why I always thought he knew exactly who Janine and CAM were before he met her at the wedding. How could he not if he did backgrounds on all the wedding guests? And also fits with Sherlock’s “convenient to meet her at the wedding” line, meaning it gave him a perfect way in with Janine.

[J.P.]

On the other hand, when Sherlock reads CAM's greetings at the wedding, he seems clueless.

[Carol the Dabbler]

He probably assumes that "Cam" is short for Cameron or Camille or something.

 

Sherlock doesn't yet know about Mary's dark past, so at this point, the only connection he might know of between Magnussen and Mary is that they both know Janine, and that could apply to a lot of people who have no other connection. So he would have no reason at this time to think that some newspaper magnate has sent a note to Mary.

[Artemis]

Don't know - Sherlock checked the other guests, like Mary's former boyfriend.

And yet he never bothered looking very closely into the bride, apparently, lol.

 

Do we get any indication that he knew CAM was blackmailing before Lady Smallwood told him?

 

I don’t think he had planned to hook Janine from the start. It doesn’t make as much sense to me, and it doesn’t jive with his mannerisms, in my opinion. His interaction with Janine at the wedding seemed much more genuine, in contrast to HLV where he was laying it on a bit thick and it seemed more like playacting. If he’d been trying to win her over from the beginning, I think he would have come on a bit stronger and it would have looked more like what we saw in HLV (or even TBB, with the complimenting).

[Artemis]

Or just look at how he talked about her to John. “Convenient to meet her at the wedding” which I always took as he knew who she was from the beginning and started the act off the bat.

And also fits with Sherlock’s “convenient to meet her at the wedding” line, meaning it gave him a perfect way in with Janine.

Just had some thoughts on this, if this is the line you mean:

 

Sherlock: Stroke of luck, meeting her at your wedding.

Just to offer my own viewpoint, I pretty much took that line at face value, and here’s why:

 

There’s a phenomenon in playwriting (and I think there’s a term for it, but what it might be escapes me), which basically says that an audience is more liable to accept and dismiss a plot point they find strange when a character in the play also acknowledges and accepts its strangeness. Or in other words, they’ll accept what the character accepts. Playwrights can’t explicate every minutiae (that’s what these fan forums are for, :P ), and typically this method moves the story along by psychologically allaying viewer suspicions while simultaneously enabling the playwright to sidestep a detail they don’t want to waste time on.

 

So essentially, I interpreted this line as being deliberately placed with this intent, and more or less a subliminal communication with the audience.

 

Audience: “She works for CAM and just happened to be at the wedding? Well isn’t that convenient...”

Sherlock: “Yes, it was convenient. Moving on now...”

 

That said, if I had construed more meaning in the line, I probably would have read it as Sherlock sensing an odd coincidence, the full implications of which flew under his radar and failed to register until he realized Mary’s connection to CAM; or put another way, the writers trying to be clever by presenting a “clue” to the connection that would only become clear later.

 

Anyway I hope that all made sense, I’m super tired right now.

[Arcadia]

 

Do we get any indication that he knew CAM was blackmailing before Lady Smallwood told him?

 

 

He knew an awful lot about CAM by the time he got home from the drug den, but he could have learned all that after Lady S came to him. The only thing that makes me think that Sherlock always knew CAM was a bad guy was his "no one turns my stomach like CAM" remark. That makes it sound like he's known about CAM's activities for a long time. But it's vague enough to mean he's only recently learned about him, too.

 

It's interesting too that Sherlock realized that Mycroft knew all about CAM already, but refused to take any stand against him. Although maybe Smallwood told him.

[gerry]

I don’t think he had planned to hook Janine from the start. It doesn’t make as much sense to me, and it doesn’t jive with his mannerisms, in my opinion. His interaction with Janine at the wedding seemed much more genuine, in contrast to HLV where he was laying it on a bit thick and it seemed more like playacting. If he’d been trying to win her over from the beginning, I think he would have come on a bit stronger and it would have looked more like what we saw in HLV (or even TBB, with the complimenting).

I don’t know what to tell you. I didn’t see much difference between his interactions with her in either episode except the location and what they were talking about. I thought both episodes with him flirting/interactions was playacting and knew from TSOT that it wasn’t real and he was playing her somehow. It was confirmed with the HLV hospital scene and the way he talked to John about her that he couldn’t care less about her. If you’re a Janine fan, I can see why you’d see it your way but I just didn’t.

 

Frankly I can’t see Sherlock as himself flirting. You know when he’s being real. He didn’t really even flirt with Irene when she was quite overt with her own and you could easily interpret him as being attracted to her.

[Arcadia]

Not to change the subject, but I just ran across this and want to post it before I forget about it: Molly and Her Relation to Fangirls. I've always agreed with the initial premise: a lot of Sherlock fans relate to Molly (I know I do). She takes the idea further than I would, but I find it interesting.
 
Here's some excerpts:
 

Molly is definitely the least glamorous female character on Sherlock ... And as of S3 she’s on the receiving end of some of the most heart-warming affection we’ve ever seen from Sherlock, as much as he seems capable of conveying.
And that nearly never happens, that’s the kicker.
In most TV series and films, you either have:

• the extraordinary hero who gets the extraordinary girl
• or the underdog that gets the extraordinary girl by doing some great deed and earning her

 

Stylistically speaking, American cinema is rehearsing the Herculean type and David vs. Goliath tropes (i.e. Classicism). While in England they’re (understandably) enamoured with the Byronic hero (Romanticism), the brilliant but troubled protagonist, “mad, bad, and dangerous to know” (Sherlock to the letter) who, when he wants to get his mitts wet, aims for the wholesome good girls.

 
And especially:

And they do this pretty often on the British screen. British TV and cinema are very subtly feminist in this way, influenced most likely by the lingering elements of Romanticism and the wealth of literature by their women writers. The appeal of the down-to-earth girl who grabs the attention of the exceptional anti-hero (and gets him without having a makeover, take note), as in stories like Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre and all the rest, that appeal is the core of the Sherlolly ship. And to see a relationship like that on the screen, after decades of American “Classicism”, is such a breath of fresh air, plus an amusing turn of the tables for a lot of female viewers.

 
Is that last bit true? I don't see enough British TV to make that call, but I haven't noticed it so much on the things I have watched. But then, when I see Brit TV at all it's usually crime drama, the girls usually wind up either dead or in jail. :P

[Artemis]

I don’t know what to tell you. I didn’t see much difference between his interactions with her in either episode except the location and what they were talking about. I thought both episodes with him flirting/interactions was playacting and knew from TSOT that it wasn’t real and he was playing her somehow. It was confirmed with the HLV hospital scene and the way he talked to John about her that he couldn’t care less about her. If you’re a Janine fan, I can see why you’d see it your way but I just didn’t.

Frankly I can’t see Sherlock as himself flirting. You know when he’s being real. He didn’t really even flirt with Irene when she was quite overt with her own and you could easily interpret him as being attracted to her.

 

My opinion is that he wasn't flirting with her in TSo3 at all.  I think he enjoyed talking to her at the wedding, to a degree (or at any rate having someone to talk to), but flirting, no.  His only flirting was acting, in HLV.

 

 

[bedelia1984]

...

 

And especially:

And they do this pretty often on the British screen. British TV and cinema are very subtly feminist in this way, influenced most likely by the lingering elements of Romanticism and the wealth of literature by their women writers. The appeal of the down-to-earth girl who grabs the attention of the exceptional anti-hero (and gets him without having a makeover, take note), as in stories like Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre and all the rest, that appeal is the core of the Sherlolly ship. And to see a relationship like that on the screen, after decades of American “Classicism”, is such a breath of fresh air, plus an amusing turn of the tables for a lot of female viewers.

Is that last bit true? I don't see enough British TV to make that call, but I haven't noticed it so much on the things I have watched. But then, when I see Brit TV at all it's usually crime drama, the girls usually wind up either dead or in jail. :P

I 100% agree- with the quotes, on my phone so will read the article later. I see the comparisons with Austen, Bronte, Bleak House... And it doesn't hurt that LB shares qualities with many of the actresses in those period BBC pieces.

 

I would also see some comparison to Scully in the X files with Molly.

 

But British dramas especially just make their heroines differently and I think it's seen more as a sign of cool to not care how pretty you look (Helen Mirren in Prime Suspect, the heroine of Happy Valley, etc) as opposed to a cry for help from your fairy godmother.

 

It's actually a pet hate of mine on American TV to see female detectives totter on high heels with giant heads of hairsprayed hair and about an inch of makeup on. For me, that rings false. Not that you can't look like a fashion model and solve crimes, but something about them and the large numbers of them onscreen feels false.

[gerry]

It's actually a pet hate of mine on American TV to see female detectives totter on high heels with giant heads of hairsprayed hair and about an inch of makeup on. For me, that rings false. Not that you can't look like a fashion model and solve crimes, but something about them and the large numbers of them onscreen feels false.

This is a pet peeve of mine as well. Some shows are much worse than others though. Catherine on CSI and Beckett on Castle are ones that come to mind as classic offenders.

 

Speaking of that article and CSI, that’s the only American show I can think of a with a Sherlolly shipper type of appeal in Grissom/Sara. I definitely don’t think the plain girl getting an extraordinary anti-hero man is common in American TV. Then again I don’t think anti-hero’s are that common in American TV. Usually it’s the classic good vs. evil, at least in crime shows.

 

My opinion is that he wasn't flirting with her in TSo3 at all. I think he enjoyed talking to her at the wedding, to a degree (or at any rate having someone to talk to), but flirting, no. His only flirting was acting, in HLV.

ok, we’ll have to agree to disagree then. It was less overt in TSOT but was still there IMO. Whether you call it flirting or not, his interactions with her didn’t strike me as real Sherlock. I’m not sure why matters to you or anyone else whether he planned it before meeting her. It seems like the idea bothers you but given what he did in the next episode, whatever connection you thought you saw between them, didn’t it have to be quite superficial if he was capable of HLV with no remorse?

[Arcadia]

 

...

 

And especially:

 

And they do this pretty often on the British screen. British TV and cinema are very subtly feminist in this way, influenced most likely by the lingering elements of Romanticism and the wealth of literature by their women writers. The appeal of the down-to-earth girl who grabs the attention of the exceptional anti-hero (and gets him without having a makeover, take note), as in stories like Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre and all the rest, that appeal is the core of the Sherlolly ship. And to see a relationship like that on the screen, after decades of American “Classicism”, is such a breath of fresh air, plus an amusing turn of the tables for a lot of female viewers.

Is that last bit true? I don't see enough British TV to make that call, but I haven't noticed it so much on the things I have watched. But then, when I see Brit TV at all it's usually crime drama, the girls usually wind up either dead or in jail. :P

I 100% agree- with the quotes, on my phone so will read the article later. I see the comparisons with Austen, Bronte, Bleak House... And it doesn't hurt that LB shares qualities with many of the actresses in those period BBC pieces.

 

I would also see some comparison to Scully in the X files with Molly.

 

But British dramas especially just make their heroines differently and I think it's seen more as a sign of cool to not care how pretty you look (Helen Mirren in Prime Suspect, the heroine of Happy Valley, etc) as opposed to a cry for help from your fairy godmother.

 

It's actually a pet hate of mine on American TV to see female detectives totter on high heels with giant heads of hairsprayed hair and about an inch of makeup on. For me, that rings false. Not that you can't look like a fashion model and solve crimes, but something about them and the large numbers of them onscreen feels false.

Hm, interesting. Now I'm thinking of Havers on Inspector Lynley and how rough around the edges she often looks, which is what I like about her. (Not a big fan of the show itself, though.)

 

I agree with you about American TV ... those women look so ridiculous dashing about in their tight clothes and high heels. The one the really drove me over the edge, though, was the sex bomb look they gave Jeri Ryan in a show called Boston Public ... she's teaching teenage boys dressed like that!????!? An insult to the professionalism of real teachers everywhere.

 

I hope this doesn't come across as offensive, but I have often noticed how much flashier, in general, British male actors are than British female actors. Peacocks to the peahens, if you will. I guess I just assumed it was because Hollywood was more interested in stealing the males, so I saw more of them ... but now I'm seeing it in a different light. American female characters are generally designed to turn on men. British female characters are actually characters.

 

 

It's actually a pet hate of mine on American TV to see female detectives totter on high heels with giant heads of hairsprayed hair and about an inch of makeup on. For me, that rings false. Not that you can't look like a fashion model and solve crimes, but something about them and the large numbers of them onscreen feels false.

This is a pet peeve of mine as well. Some shows are much worse than others though. Catherine on CSI and Beckett on Castle are ones that come to mind as classic offenders.

 

Speaking of that article and CSI, that’s the only American show I can think of a with a Sherlolly shipper type of appeal in Grissom/Sara. I definitely don’t think the plain girl getting an extraordinary anti-hero man is common in American TV. Then again I don’t think anti-hero’s are that common in American TV. Usually it’s the classic good vs. evil, at least in crime shows.

Yep. I never found Beckett remotely believable.

 

Was Grissom extraordinary? It's been so long, I don't remember much about the show except that I stopped watching it when it started getting too gory. I do remember some spark between Sara and Grissom though. And that he was a bit ... odd.

 

There's something of that in NCIS, too, between the lab girl and the Mark Harmon character. Except it seems to be leaning more father/daughter these days, no doubt due to Harmon's steadily greying hair. :smile:

 

I just realized, NCIS is the only American crime show I currently take much interest in. Apparently I have a type .... :p

[gerry]

Grissom was a brilliant scientist but he wasn’t an anti-hero. He would be so lost in his mind, his experiments, or bugs, or the cases, you wondered if he had any interest in people other than the psychology of why they committed the crime. I loved Grissom though. The show wasn’t the same when he left.

 

You mean Gibbs and Abby on NCIS? They’ve always had a father/daughter type love between them IMO. Mark Harmon though... he still looks good with the grey! Some men can pull that off and not look old. He’s one of them. Ironically I’m losing interest in NCIS. I miss Tony and Abby is leaving too so the only original character left will be Gibbs.

[Arcadia]

I don't miss Tony, but I agree the show isn't what it used to be. And I heard about Abby; boo, hiss. I'll probably check in on it as long as Gibbs is still around, though.

 

I never saw a romantic attachment between Abby and Gibbs, but I've noticed that the shippers do. :smile: 

[gerry]

Abby and Gibbs shippers? Yuck! I didn’t care for Ziva but at least shipping her with Tony made sense even as a non shipper who didn’t care. I will never understand shipping.

[Artemis]

I’m not sure why matters to you or anyone else whether he planned it before meeting her. It seems like the idea bothers you but given what he did in the next episode, whatever connection you thought you saw between them, didn’t it have to be quite superficial if he was capable of HLV with no remorse?

 

Nah, you're misreading me.  It doesn't bother me at all, I was just throwing my own perspective in with everyone else's.  I don't think they had some super deep connection either, I wasn't saying they did.

 

 

[Boton]

 

Plus it was quite uncommon for him to flirt with a woman the way he flirted with Janine.

Yes but this is why I suspected from the very beginning that he was up to something since he would never lower himself to flirting behavior with the goldfish unless he had an objective or a case. 

 

 

Goldfish, though, is a Mycroft thing. Although we've seen Sherlock disparage those of lesser intellect, there are just as many cases, especially later on, where he appears to be wanting to try out the kinds of human interaction he sees everyone else doing.  I read the wedding as an awful lot of flirting both ways, plus John perceived it that way, saying something about glad Sherlock managed to pull at John's wedding.

 

 

 

I don’t think he had planned to hook Janine from the start. It doesn’t make as much sense to me, and it doesn’t jive with his mannerisms, in my opinion. His interaction with Janine at the wedding seemed much more genuine, in contrast to HLV where he was laying it on a bit thick and it seemed more like playacting. If he’d been trying to win her over from the beginning, I think he would have come on a bit stronger and it would have looked more like what we saw in HLV (or even TBB, with the complimenting).

 

 

I can't see how he would have been planning to hook Janine from the beginning.  I think it really was a fortuitous coincidence that he met her at the wedding and later discovered the CAM connection.

[bedelia1984]

 

It's actually a pet hate of mine on American TV to see female detectives totter on high heels with giant heads of hairsprayed hair and about an inch of makeup on. For me, that rings false. Not that you can't look like a fashion model and solve crimes, but something about them and the large numbers of them onscreen feels false.

This is a pet peeve of mine as well. Some shows are much worse than others though. Catherine on CSI and Beckett on Castle are ones that come to mind as classic offenders.

 

Speaking of that article and CSI, that’s the only American show I can think of a with a Sherlolly shipper type of appeal in Grissom/Sara. I definitely don’t think the plain girl getting an extraordinary anti-hero man is common in American TV. Then again I don’t think anti-hero’s are that common in American TV. Usually it’s the classic good vs. evil, at least in crime shows.

 

Yes, they were definitely two who came to mind- especially Beckett.

 

I can see Grissom and Sara- well actually I can see it in the sense that I imagine it was quite controversial with the fans too, and also because the male lead is so unique and beloved that the fans feel very strongly about who he should end up with. He even had his own Irene- Lady Heather.

 

...

 

 

Hm, interesting. Now I'm thinking of Havers on Inspector Lynley and how rough around the edges she often looks, which is what I like about her. (Not a big fan of the show itself, though.)

 

I agree with you about American TV ... those women look so ridiculous dashing about in their tight clothes and high heels. The one the really drove me over the edge, though, was the sex bomb look they gave Jeri Ryan in a show called Boston Public ... she's teaching teenage boys dressed like that!????!? An insult to the professionalism of real teachers everywhere.

 

I hope this doesn't come across as offensive, but I have often noticed how much flashier, in general, British male actors are than British female actors. Peacocks to the peahens, if you will. I guess I just assumed it was because Hollywood was more interested in stealing the males, so I saw more of them ... but now I'm seeing it in a different light. American female characters are generally designed to turn on men. British female characters are actually characters.

 

 

 

I've actually noticed the same, and it is quite hard to know why- but a lot of the most adored british actresses are probably the character actresses- people like Maggie Smith and Judi Dench. It always surprised me, for example, that Colin Firth was such a runaway success after Pride and Prejudice and Jennifer Ehle didn't get much of a look in? She's still a very pretty actress, but apparently the English rose type just doesn't have that box office draw in Hollywood?

 

Yep. I never found Beckett remotely believable.

 

Was Grissom extraordinary? It's been so long, I don't remember much about the show except that I stopped watching it when it started getting too gory. I do remember some spark between Sara and Grissom though. And that he was a bit ... odd.

 

 

 

I think Grissom wasn't quite extraordinary, but he had that quality on TV that is almost better- where there is something indefinable about the character that causes people to warm to him even when he's not the most like-able in terms of his actions.

 

This reminds me what I didn't always like about Grissom/ Sara- he could be very stodgy and controlling, so I felt like that type of age gap relationship was prone to bring out his worst qualities. Now, I thought it played nicely onscreen for the most part- especially because Petersen is a very strong performer and managed to make it not seem weird.

 

And about Beckett- that performance was part of the problem there, I think, the character was just a bit inauthentic in appearance and behaviour. 

[gerry]

Goldfish, though, is a Mycroft thing. Although we've seen Sherlock disparage those of lesser intellect, there are just as many cases, especially later on, where he appears to be wanting to try out the kinds of human interaction he sees everyone else doing.

Sherlock has at the very least decided that romantic relationships are not for him going by what he said to John in TLD. Now whether that’s because he considers himself “too good” for them in a Mycroft goldfish analogy way or not is debatable but I can’t see him engaging in frivolous flirting if that’s how he feels about relationships. What would be the point?

 

I do disagree that Sherlock doesn’t believe in at least a part of the goldfish mentality. He’s at the very least an intellectual snob, just maybe not as obvious as Mycroft.

 

I can see Grissom and Sara- well actually I can see it in the sense that I imagine it was quite controversial with the fans too, and also because the male lead is so unique and beloved that the fans feel very strongly about who he should end up with. He even had his own Irene- Lady Heather.

I wasn’t sure how Grissom/Sara was going to go and I was actually surprised the writers kept it going with WP/JF coming and going from the show over the years. They must have had a following of some kind.

 

CSI did the dominatrix character in a much more tasteful way than this show did and I thought Grissom’s friendship with Lady HEather was much more interesting than Sherlock’s whatever with Irene. Sara was jealous of that friendship all the way to series finale movie they did.

  

And about Beckett- that performance was part of the problem there, I think, the character was just a bit inauthentic in appearance and behaviour.

I’m sure a large part of that is the actress not being very good. That show survived based on the charm of the characters, not writing depth or acting ability. And from what I hear there was quite of bit of BTS drama on that set.

[bronzeblues]

Wanted to add my two cents on this thread since I am new on board. The sheer fact this thread is the longest out of any other character thread just shows how much are people ready to sympathise with a character like Molly.  I believe one part does because they feel like they need to. People love to cheer for the underdogs. The other part does it since I agree wholeheartedly that Molly is basically a fangirl substitute in the show. All those Sherlock(or BC) fangirls just see themselves in Molly to whom Sherlock is just so far out of reach. The third part is really the one that identifies with Molly because they truly share characteristics with her. That introvert akwardness, shyness. That perhaps overtly familiar feeling of pinning after someone you can't possibly have. As much as I understand all that, characters like that don't really get a lot of my love. I feel like they should. Like I say said, everyone feels like they should cheer for the underdog. But sorry, there's a reason why Molly is not "The Woman". All that being said there's a certain likeable sweetness with which the actress plays Molly and I truly respect that. But that highschool crush on Sherlock is simply... urgh. Molly is supposed to be a grown woman yet she behaves as a smitten 12 year old. 

For the end, Sherlolly fanfiction is also widely OOC, granted, I don't have much experience with it but it just is. 

[Hikari]

On ‎1‎/‎28‎/‎2018 at 7:32 AM, gerry said:

Yup which is why I always thought he knew exactly who Janine and CAM were before he met her at the wedding. How could he not if he did backgrounds on all the wedding guests? And also fits with Sherlock’s “convenient to meet her at the wedding” line, meaning it gave him a perfect way in with Janine.

That is certainly possible . . .though there was another quantity as this wedding with a mind as cunning as Sherlock's--especially where CAM was concerned--and that was John's bride.  We take for granted that the mind of Sherlock Holmes encompasses all possibilities and all eventualities are allowed for but I'm not convinced the Janine connection was immediately apparent to him, before the fact.  He was going to be dragged into this wedding regardless of who Mary had as her bridesmaids.  But--who does Mary have as her maid of honor, out of all the women in London she could have befriended and awarded this honor--but the personal assistant of the very man who is poised to blow the lid right off all her secrets?  Surely that was not incidental.  And Mary would have had to been cultivating J. for months or years . . the whole time Sherlock was away, possibly.  So his lightning fast mind was still several steps behind John's new wife on this one.  Because how likely is it that Mary and Janine would have become friends naturally without J. being targeted expressly for the purpose by Mary?  Mary's quite a bit older; she works in an NHS surgery . . certainly not the more glamorous world Janine inhabits as the right-hand woman of a high-roller like Magnusson.  So really Janine got screwed over twice--by the man she thought cared about her, but long before that--by the woman she thought was her best friend.  Thank goodness she at least got a cottage out of that whole humiliating charade.

We see Sherl doing background checks on people he thinks pose a threat to John's happiness, such as David, the hapless sod who'd dated Mary & was still stalking her in social media.  It's possible he looked into Janine's background prior to the wedding and getting cosy with her, but one wonders why he didn't look closer at Mary herself, since she was crucial to John's happiness.  Sherlock would have come immediately upon thorny conundrums like:  Why does John's fiancée have the identical name of a dead child?  Why did she suddenly appear in London about 2 years prior and go to work in John's surgery out of all the places in London she could have chosen?  Is she even qualified as a nurse?  Of course Mary is ex-CIA and they can cook up fake identities and records to rival anything Mycroft can put together.  Either Sherlock investigated her and swallowed her story whole, OR he gave her a wide berth, while checking out everyone else in deference to John.  The whole 'in love' thing had him thrown, and maybe enough so to do that.

But we dig some more and it gets more byzantine still. Why, out of all the cities in the world and all the identities she could have picked for her new life does she choose the very same small patch inhabited by one John Watson, acknowledged chronicler, partner and closest associate of Sherlock Holmes--the *other* man in London (along with CAM) who has the power to unmask her?  If she targeted Janine as a friend for strategic reasons . . did she do the same with Watson?  When she took up with John, Sherlock was allegedly dead.  That may have rendered John 'safe', therefore . .I like Amanda's exclamation of shock at the restaurant when Sherlock appears--that sounds pretty genuine to me.  With Sherlock back in the picture unexpectedly, John isn't such a safe haven anymore.  Surely his best friend the Great Brain is going to winkle out all her buried secrets.  Rather than having her shoot Sherlock to protect herself in HLV, it would have been more in character for the Mary they gave us ultimately to have cancelled the wedding and fled London without a trace.  Did she really think she was going to be happy with such an ordinary middle-class life?  In the wake of HLV I have to question the genuiness of her motives.

Maybe if she had run, we could have settled down to more episodes that were not so histrionic as the whole of the fourth season.

[Carol the Dabbler]

4 hours ago, bronzeblues said:

Wanted to add my two cents on this thread since I am new on board.

Hello, bronzeblues -- welcome to Sherlock Forum!  Thanks for jumping right into the discussions!