Episode 4.2 "The Lying Detective"

[Carol the Dabbler]

Plus pulling a gun out of its holster would complicate and slow down the action.  Plus a holster just has that old "television western" look to it.

[Arcadia]

I don't recall ever seeing someone pull a holster out of a purse on TV. If someone handed me a gun and told me to put it in my purse ... well, I'd probably squeak like a mouse and refuse to touch the foul thing, but for sake of argument :d ... it wouldn't occur to me to ask for a holster to put it in. I'd just stick it in my purse like they do on TV.

[CGRaines]

Ok, got a question: After reading the bits of script between Mycroft and Lady Smallwood, I've got to ask, is this one sided on LS's part or is Mycroft attracted to her, as well? 

From The Lying Detective:

LADY SMALLWOOD
I don’t know. Maybe you’d like a
drink some time.
MYCROFT
... of what?
LADY SMALLWOOD
Up to you. Call me, if you want - *
soon as you’ve stopped shaking.

 

Mycroft shaking?! What would make him do that?

Considering that she told Mycroft earlier that he never made it up to her, his reply of 'How am I supposed to do that?", and the subsequent voice over of Faith as she says 'Sex' as it cuts to another scene.

'Mycroft and Lady Smallwood have clearly just finished a meeting together, both preparing to leave.', makes me wonder just what they were doing in that 'meeting'.

Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but this is Sherlock, and one must follow the clues, both stated and implied. Too bad that didn't make the final cut.

What is everyone's thoughts on this? She IS 16 years his senior (going by the actors' birthdates, anyway).

[Caya]

Hello CGRaines and welcome to the forum!

One one hand, I kinda like the idea ... Lady Smallwood struck me as tough and intelligent (at least going by S3, can't say for S4) and she can't have been too happy in her marriage, so she was presumably well over her loss at that point. On the other hand, wasn't Mycroft hinted at being gay in S2 (that "see the Queen" quip by Sherlock)?

As for the age difference, nobody would bat an eyelash if it were reversed, so good on her, I'd say.

[CGRaines]

YES exactly, in fact, I read an interview of Mark Gatiss saying that it was explicit that if he was to play that character, Mycroft must be modeled off of the British politician Peter Mandelson (who is also gay). 

Perhaps she was just being friendly; but even though he took the card, in the very next episode, there he is alone in his private theater at home, watching a film. 

As for the age thing, I think it doesn't go that way because most women don't age as well as men (look at Sean Connery!); and the fact LS looks so dang OLD, like she could be his grandmother.. No idea why, but men just age better, less wrinkles when compared to a woman of the same age, it's strange! 

[Caya]

I should at this point maybe inform you that this forum skews rather heavily towards female, just so you're warned. That being said, many actors have an advantage when it comes to aging gracefully, male and female alike. Say, Dame Judi Dench or Katherine Hepburn are two who come to mind immediately.

Off to google Peter Mandelson now, thanks for that info and I have to admit that name rings only a very faint bell.

eta: Oh, you meant the Prince of Darkness. I didn't remember his name, only the moniker. Also, googling brought me this: https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/features/playing-peter-mandelson-mark-gattis-channels-the-prince-of-darkness-in-channel-4s-coalition-10134081.html

[CGRaines]

Ah, thanks for the warning! Guess I don't like to see Mycroft with her, just jealous I guess, even of a fictitious character, but they are portrayed so well! Silly, I know

Also, I caught this tasty tidbit in The Great Game regarding Dad Holmes:

MYCROFT
Good! That’s good, isn’t it? He’s a
real live wire, is Sherlock. When
we were children, he worked out
from the angle of the car seats and
a smear of lipstick in the back of
the Audi that Dad was having it off
with the au pair. I’m afraid Mum
wasn’t too pleased and that was
that. Bang went our happy home.
He gazes levelly at Sherlock.
MYCROFT (CONT’D)
Such a clever boy, but he really
should have got his priorities
right. Like now.

So, he had an affair! This kind of history makes me wonder also if Mummy may not be Mycroft's mother. What if Dad Holmes had an affair even earlier in their marriage?

Consider the siblings, all brunets, but Mycroft is ginger (when he's not coloring his hair). Why do I think this? The dialogue in His Last Vow:

SHERLOCK’S MOTHER
You, stop it! Sherlock’s been shot.
Somebody put a bullet in my boy.
And if I ever find out who, I shall
turn absolutely monstrous.

 

Two things immediately stand out. 1. The script refers to her as SHERLOCKS mother, not THEIR mother, or Mummy Holmes, or anything else. 2. Mummy refers to Sherlock as 'my boy', as though Mycroft isn't hers as well. Or at the very least, a showing of favoritism as she does in TFP, referring to Sherlock as being the adult, and in general being horrible to Mycroft, calling him idiot boy, very limited, Mikey, which she knows he hates, ect. Red headed step child, indeed!

Again, I'm probably reading too much into it. But that's my theory. Of course, Mycroft tells mummy in the kitchen scene that Mummy had named him; what if, the woman Dad was having an affair with, got pregnant, but Dad, taking responsibility, took the baby in, and Mummy named him? Mycroft would have no idea about any of this, of course. Yet this would explain her total disdain for him. 

[Caya]

Mycroft having no idea? He would have deduced it by age two. Can't really see it though, myself - I took that "my boy" bit merely as an expression of a mother's protection instinct (Sherlock had come very, very close to being dead for more than a couple seconds, after all).

[CGRaines]

On 1/10/2017 at 5:03 PM, sfmpco said:

Regarding Euros, I wonder if it's related to the statement Mycroft made at the end of ASIP about upsetting Mummy.  Sherlock of course denies that he himself upset Mummy and that it was actually Mycroft.  Gatiss has speculated on an affair.  I don't know but by this time next week I will.  I suspect we will also have the missing info on Redbeard.

Regarding what you said about Gatiss speculating on an affair. What did he say? An affair between which people? In the script for the Great Game, Mycroft describes their dads affair with the au Pair to John, how that ended their happy home life; all this was cut from the final, of course. It's the only affair that I can think of that upset mummy; what did Mycroft have to do with it? Unless it had to do with Mycroft and Sherlock tying the nanny up and interrogating her (I'm assuming it's the same woman, the au Pair). Probably asked her about the affair with their dad. This was in a different script, I don't remember which. Mycroft told John about the treehouse interrogation at the Diogenes; the same episode where Mycroft was feeding the info to Moriarty). 

Anyway, if you have a link to the Gatiss quote regarding him speculating about an affair, I'd much love to read that! Thanks

[besleybean]

I think some of the quotes lost significance over time, because they basically changed their original plans...

[Caya]

I'm not sure but I *think* that was in the audio commentary somewhere, a dialogue between Mark Gatiss and Benedict Cumberbatch.

[besleybean]

Yes, it was on the DVD commentary and Mark was warning Benedict not to give too much away...

But I'm not even sure if Mark and & Steve actually knew how things were going to pan out at that stage...

[Carol the Dabbler]

3 hours ago, CGRaines said:

Mycroft describes their dads affair with the au Pair to John, how that ended their happy home life; all this was cut from the final, of course. It's the only affair that I can think of that upset mummy; what did Mycroft have to do with it?

It's my impression that what upset Mummy was being *told* about the affair, apparently by one / both of the boys.  Maybe she truly had not known about it, but I suspect she was intentionally ignoring her suspicions -- until having the facts brought into the open made that impossible.

And yeah, none of that is canon, merely something that the writers had considered including, but then changed their minds -- or at least postponed their decision.

[CGRaines]

I bet I know how mummy found out about it, too. In the script for Reichenbach, Mycroft tells John at the Diogenes this:

MYCROFT
(Suddenly cold)
Nine years-old. Family tree house.
Playing soldiers with the Nanny. He
persuaded me to tie her up and
interrogate her.
JOHN
I’ve heard the story before. Only
Sherlock swears that you were the
one who thought of it.

 

3 guesses as to who the nanny was..more than likely the one having the affair with Dad Holmes. Sure would have been interesting to keep all those tasty tidbits in there. 

Note also, until the affair, things were pretty normal (for them, anyway). Euros hadn't began manifesting her psychosis yet, tho I bet this event was what kicked it off. She definitely would have known, and when the SHTF, things went to pot for everyone. Would have made an interesting backstory, not just Euros being jealous of Sherlock's friend. Adds more context. 

 

Haha I can see Mycroft doing the interrogation, practicing his skills for later, when he becomes the British government; bet she was terrified, even when he was at that age; Couldn't have been more than 14.  

[besleybean]

That's possibly a whole over story that we won't get now.

Incidentally, I think we tend to go with Eurus...to stop it sounding like the currency!

[Carol the Dabbler]

15 hours ago, besleybean said:

I think we tend to go with Eurus...to stop it sounding like the currency!

Actually that's not just us, it's show-canon; i.e., that's how her name was spelt in the credits.

The mythological being's name can be spelt either Euros or Eurus (I assume the former is an approximation of the Greek spelling and the latter is the Latin spelling).  On the show, they've chosen to spell it Eurus (presumably, as Bev says, to avoid confusion with the EU's monetary unit), even though they've pretty consistently pronounced it the other way.

Does anyone have any idea why they called her that in the first place -- other than it (like Sherlock and Mycroft) is an unusual name?  I think it's basically a masculine name, which seems odd, considering all the feminine or androgynous names they could have picked from.  And once they realized they couldn't spell it the way they wanted to pronounce it, they could have chosen a different name, but they didn't.  All of which leads me to suspect they had a specific reason for choosing it.

 

[besleybean]

It was because of the early show mention of the coming East wind...that is Eurus.

Oh and I knew about the canonical spelling, I was trying to be nice!

[Carol the Dabbler]

7 hours ago, besleybean said:

It was because of the early show mention of the coming East wind...that is Eurus.

Oh, of course!  I was thinking I had known of a reason, but could not for the life of me remember what it was.  Should have looked up Euros!

And of course the mention of the East Wind is Doyle-canonical -- though in that case it was pretty clearly not referring to a sister, but rather to the approach of what's now known as World War I.

Added:  But hang on a minute -- wasn't the East Wind comment made by John?  Is he psychic?  Now if Moriarty or Mycroft had said it, then it could have been a reference to Ms. Holmes -- but John???

 

[besleybean]

No, Sherlock tells John about the story Mycroft used to tell him about an East Wind coming and wiping away everything sinful...usually him.

John repeats it back to Mycroft, afterwards.

I think Sherlock says it twice...he defo mentions it on the runway, anyway.

[Carol the Dabbler]

You're right -- I just checked Ariane Devere's transcript of Last Vow.  When Sherlock is saying goodbye to John before his plane leaves, he says "the East Wind takes us all in the end," and then explains it's something Mycroft used to tell him (because "he was a rubbish big brother").

Then when Sherlock's plane is returning, John says to Mary (incidentally quoting Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Holmes) "There's an East Wind coming."

And then in the let's-scare-Mycroft scene at the beginning of Final Problem, there's a child's voice repeating that line, and then John repeats it again on his way out the door.

So basically, in the show, it's all based on what Mycroft said as a kid, and Sherlock finally figures out that it actually meant something.  I don't see how he could have known what it meant, though, since he didn't consciously remember his sister -- so how did he know to have a (fake) little girl scare Mycroft?

 

[besleybean]

Because they knew by then that John's psychiatrist was Eurus.

[Carol the Dabbler]

Well, they knew she wasn't a real therapist, that's for sure!  But Sherlock didn't remember his sister, or that Redbeard was a boy, till the end of Final Problem, yet he and John had a fake girl to scare Mycroft at the beginning of that episode.

OK, so maybe they figured if the woman on the bus was also John's fake therapist, then she was a significant person to them (and of course she would have previously been a little girl).  But she had appeared only to John, so how did they connect her with Mycroft?

Added:  No, wait -- Alex reminds me that Sherlock knew about the sister in the scare-Mycroft scene at the beginning.  Ariane Devere's transcript shows that he "deduced" it, but apparently the episode did not disclose his methods.  So I guess my question remains open.

[besleybean]

Did you Americans have that scene cut?

Before Eurus shoots John, she tells him her name and that she is the Holmes sister.

[Carol the Dabbler]

Thanks, Bev!  No, it wasn't cut (they stopped doing that after series 2), just been a while since I watched it.  Yes, I remember now -- she says something about didn't it ever occur to John that Sherlock's secret brother might actually have been a secret sister.

That whole series is basically one long episode, isn't it?

 

[besleybean]

Yep!