Episode 4.3 "The Final Problem"

[BLS_Pro]

About Mycroft's movie- I looked it up and all I could find was that it was put together specially for the show and the actors in it are contemporary.

Yes.  The purpose of the movie is to show Mycroft's psychology in relationship to others.  It is specifically for the Adam and Eve quote.  That is what he smiles at.

[J.P.]

Okay, this is a surprise :D
From Ariane's transcript: http://arianedevere.livejournal.com/91118.html

 

Flickering black and white film footage can be seen. It seems to be a bit of film noir made in the 1940s or 1950s and is set in the office of a private investigator. The investigator, Leonard, stands with his back to his desk and in front of him is a typical femme fatale, Velma, holding a cigarette. Both characters speak with American accents.
LEONARD: You know I could arrest you?
VELMA: What for?
LEONARD: Wearing a dress like that.
VELMA: Would you like me to take it off?
LEONARD: Then I’d really have to press charges.
VELMA: Press away.
(We now see that Mycroft is in a small room with a film projector behind him. Sitting in an armchair with his left elbow on the arm and his fingers propping his head up, he smiles and mouths Leonard’s lines every time he speaks.)
VELMA (offscreen): Isn’t that how they got started?
LEONARD (offscreen, with Mycroft mouthing along): Who?
VELMA (offscreen): Adam and Eve.
LEONARD (offscreen, with Mycroft mouthing along): Oh, them.
VELMA (offscreen): And that turned out okay.
LEONARD (offscreen): You think so?
(Mycroft was too busy smiling to mouth that line. Now he turns his head and picks up a glass as he mouths the next line.)
LEONARD (offscreen, with Mycroft mouthing along): I thought it was supposed to be the beginning of all human misery.
(Mycroft drinks from his glass. The film footage can be seen again.)
VELMA: Now, what was all that about arresting me?
(She flicks the ash from her cigarette onto the floor beside her. Mycroft smiles.)
LEONARD (offscreen): Well, maybe not arresting you.
VELMA (offscreen): No?
LEONARD (on the footage): I could just keep you under close watch.
(For a split second the footage glitches, showing a yellowed image of a family of two adults and two children sitting on what looks like a beach, then the footage returns to the film.)
VELMA: Very close?
(Mycroft frowns.)
LEONARD (offscreen): Uh-huh.
(The footage glitches again, for a little longer this time and the yellowed image returns but then zooms in towards one of the children, a young overweight boy, about eleven years old. Clearly this is old cine footage. The screen briefly returns to Velma in the movie, then flicks over to a close-up of the fat boy smiling at the camera, then returns to the movie. Mycroft sits up and turns round to look at the film projector.)
VELMA (offscreen): Shame. I was looking forward to putting myself into the hands of the authorities.
LEONARD: You were?
VELMA: Fingerprinting ...
(Turning back, Mycroft reaches over and stubs out a lit cigarette in an ashtray.)
VELMA (offscreen): ... being searched ...
(Mycroft turns to the screen.)
VELMA: ... thoroughly.

Yes, the whole misery. :D

 

And he couln't quit smoking ^_^

[J.P.]

 

 

Among the other things Mary [in TST] can do better than anyone else, she can grow hair like a champ.   ;)

And what about Sir Edwin? That beard! I thought I was looking at Graham McTavish!

[J.P.]

I stumbled about a theory, that actually the story we've seen, was initially written for S4 and S5, and because they aren't able to make it now (pointing BC not wanting to to it anymore), they had to compress too much story in the last 3 episodes. Not that I believe it, but it somehow looks plausible :D

[J.P.]

Don't you think, that the highly functioning psychopath might be something Sherlock borrowed from the adults talking about Eurus? Not even this really belongs to him. :(

[T.o.b.y]

Don't you think, that the highly functioning psychopath might be something Sherlock borrowed from the adults talking about Eurus? Not even this really belongs to him. :(

 

I somehow doubt anyone ever considered Euros high-functioning...

 

As for what belongs to him: I think he wasn't entirely wrong when he claimed "I made me". Sure, like all human beings, he had no control over the circumstances he was exposed to, but according to what we learned in the last episode, Sherlock basically rewrote his own memories (although I have a very strong suspicion Mycroft had a hand in that as well).

 

Shying away from human connections and repressing his emotions doesn't exactly seem like something a therapist would have recommended to him, either, so I think it's safe to assume the man we met in A Study in Pink was a result of Sherlock's more or less deliberate efforts to find a way of being that would be most likely to prevent further hurt.

 

I think he's as self-made as anyone can be. Of course we're all at the mercy of our experiences, to a degree, and he can't be a total exception, but it does seem to me that he took his life and the development of his personality into his own hands as much as he could. Whether that was very wise or whether the result was very helpful is open for debate.

[Loekie]

And this one, by the same person, about the "I love you," scene.

http://bassfanimation.tumblr.com/post/155947842081/i-love-you-a-mans-perspective

 

I agree with her, I would love to have more of the male perspective on this show. Tim? Alex?

 

This is it:

He said that wasn’t the actions of a man who doesn’t really care.  He said, as a man, if I had to get a woman to say that and I didn’t really love her, I wouldn’t care as much.  I surely wouldn’t care enough to smash an entire coffin to bits with my bear hands.

[Loekie]

VELMA (offscreen): ... being searched ...
(Mycroft turns to the screen.)
VELMA: ... thoroughly.

 

Hmm, I see similarities with Sherlock 'being searched' by Molly in the previous episode.

Nothing is coincidence in Sherlock.

[jadpdr]

The way things are going, this thread will quickly become the Euros Admiration Society! Really? For a terminally deranged schizoid personality that started as a joke, Sherlock's elder sister seems to be mind-controlling the thread!

If they ever do a Special or even S5, I fervently hope that the governor is more resilient to suggestion and Mycroft engages deaf-mutes as her guards! And no more treats! Mrs Hudson was SO right about Mycroft not understanding his own family in TLD!

[Surelock]

 

 

*I don't understand why Euros has it in for Sherlock so much more than Mycroft. Mycroft is the one who has kept her prisoner, Sherlock doesn't even remember her, and that alone seems like a bit of an extreme reason to hate him.

Another one I'm still processing. I wondered the same thing, until other people started suggesting that he was her favorite and she just wanted to play with him, not that she was out to get him. But she's so warped she doesn't know the difference? She's really acting out of love but doesn't know it? Urgh. But the idea intrigues me, and is starting to make more sense to me. More rewatching required.....

 

 

My theory on that is that she always felt closer to Sherlock than Mycroft. With the age difference in between being much smaller, I guess there was a lot more immediate jealousy that he was ignoring her so obviously. From Mycroft describtions he clearly took an interest in his little sister, talking to her and trying to understand her, even though he was disturbed by her actions, whereas Sherlock basically just ignored her, since he had his own friend, a boy his own age. So I guess his sister would have been entirely not interesting to him, which since she doesn't seem to have developed emotionally in her relationship to Sherlock very much since that age, is a pretty good reason to have a much bigger grudge as well as longing for him than Mycroft.

 

In addition Mycroft seems to have visited her quite a lot since he's been in a position of power and in an odd way cared for her by keeping her save from the world as well as her own actions. At least that's probably how he would see it. Yes, he is absoultely terrified of her but he also seems somewhat concerned about her well being. Therefore she would have got a fair bit of attention from him and although she might be angry for being locked up, it wouldn't nearly be as bad as her frustration of Sherlock ignoring her, worse forgetting her entirely for more or less her entire life. At least that's the most reasonable explanation as I can come up with.

 

 

I think Euros was just more interested in Sherlock because he was the emotional one. Remember in all of her games she (as she said so herself) was trying to add emotional context. Euros likes seeing people emotional. The reason why she isn't interested in Mycroft is because Mycroft is a lot less emotional than Sherlock. He can keep a straight face and not give in to his sentiments much better than Sherlock can.

[Surelock]

So I found another example of smarter-than-Newton Euros being not so smart.

 

In the fourth game, she panics when Sherlock points the gun on himself rather than Mycroft and John. The rules of this game were to shoot Mycroft or John yet Sherlock was able to defy the rules in this game although he wasn't able to do so earlier? Why? Well it's because the fourth game didn't have a hostage.

 

Think about the first three games. Each of them had a hostage (Governor's wife, suspects, Molly) and Euros used that hostage to get Sherlock to follow the rules of that game. She herself said that if Sherlock tried some funny business then she would execute the hostages.

 

However in the fourth game, Euros decided to not have any hostages and she was surprised when Sherlock decided not follow her rules. If she was just holding someone like Mrs. Hudson hostage, she could have convinced Sherlock to shoot Mycroft. In fact she could have just said to Sherlock that if he shot himself then she would kill both John and Mycroft. However she didn't do anything like that. Yet she was still surprised when Sherlock decided to point the gun at himself.

 

I swear this episode tries to be all about the feels but in doing so it only ends up proving what Sherlock and Mycroft have been telling us in the earlier seasons about sentiment. Sentiment is a detriment to your intelligence and that's reflected in the writing of this episode. They try to make it all about the emotions and that's why the story doesn't feel cleverly written like the stories of the previous seasons were.

[J.P.]

Surelock, there was still the plane with people, going to crash and kill even more people. It's a lot of hostages, don't you think?

[Surelock]

Surelock, there was still the plane with people, going to crash and kill even more people. It's a lot of hostages, don't you think?

 

That was true with all of the other games as well but the other games also had additional hostages that Euros could execute immediately.

 

However you bring up a good point. Why didn't Euros just tell Sherlock that if he shot himself then she would call the game off and let all the little girl and all the other hostages in the plane die?

[MycroftsUmbrella]

 

Surelock, there was still the plane with people, going to crash and kill even more people. It's a lot of hostages, don't you think?

 

That was true with all of the other games as well but the other games also had additional hostages that Euros could execute immediately.

 

However you bring up a good point. Why didn't Euros just tell Sherlock that if he shot himself then she would call the game off and let all the little girl and all the other hostages in the plane die?

 

 

It's a good point. I think she just didn't consider the option that he might do such a thing and started to panic unable of thinking of exactly that. Also the plane technically wasn't real and maybe she considered that Sherlock might have figured that out at that point. His very action of suicide might suggest that to her since if he's dead he can't save the girl anyway if she was on a real crashing plane?

[Pseudonym]

She obviously had a failsafe in place in case he tried something like that or there wouldn't have been darts in the wall. 

[MycroftsUmbrella]

 

 

 

*I don't understand why Euros has it in for Sherlock so much more than Mycroft. Mycroft is the one who has kept her prisoner, Sherlock doesn't even remember her, and that alone seems like a bit of an extreme reason to hate him.

Another one I'm still processing. I wondered the same thing, until other people started suggesting that he was her favorite and she just wanted to play with him, not that she was out to get him. But she's so warped she doesn't know the difference? She's really acting out of love but doesn't know it? Urgh. But the idea intrigues me, and is starting to make more sense to me. More rewatching required.....

 

 

My theory on that is that she always felt closer to Sherlock than Mycroft. With the age difference in between being much smaller, I guess there was a lot more immediate jealousy that he was ignoring her so obviously. From Mycroft describtions he clearly took an interest in his little sister, talking to her and trying to understand her, even though he was disturbed by her actions, whereas Sherlock basically just ignored her, since he had his own friend, a boy his own age. So I guess his sister would have been entirely not interesting to him, which since she doesn't seem to have developed emotionally in her relationship to Sherlock very much since that age, is a pretty good reason to have a much bigger grudge as well as longing for him than Mycroft.

 

In addition Mycroft seems to have visited her quite a lot since he's been in a position of power and in an odd way cared for her by keeping her save from the world as well as her own actions. At least that's probably how he would see it. Yes, he is absoultely terrified of her but he also seems somewhat concerned about her well being. Therefore she would have got a fair bit of attention from him and although she might be angry for being locked up, it wouldn't nearly be as bad as her frustration of Sherlock ignoring her, worse forgetting her entirely for more or less her entire life. At least that's the most reasonable explanation as I can come up with.

 

 

I think Euros was just more interested in Sherlock because he was the emotional one. Remember in all of her games she (as she said so herself) was trying to add emotional context. Euros likes seeing people emotional. The reason why she isn't interested in Mycroft is because Mycroft is a lot less emotional than Sherlock. He can keep a straight face and not give in to his sentiments much better than Sherlock can.

 

 

That's also true. Though given that he's usually the completely unemotional one he showed and awful lot of emotion during the games. Different ones from Sherlock but probably more than we've seen in the entire seasons combined before. He was also constantly looking away, putting his hand over his face and could barely keep it together at times to use his usual deduction skills. That's the one thing we've definitely learned: Mycroft Holmes does not deal well with not being in control. I actually thought that was one of the things that was really interesting to see, how John, Sherlock and Mycroft each dealt so very different with being used as lab rats.

[J.P.]

But IMO they overdid it a bit. Was there a certain point when you can see Mycroft actually crack?

 

Sadly cannot rewatch anymore, have to wait for the DVDs.

[Pamela]

Yes, I'm really looking forward to the DVDs so I can go back and forth at leisure and slo-mo, whatever. And even use subtitles for T6T and TFP. TLD, of course, doesn't need them. It's probably the best episode as far as being able to understand every word.

[Surelock]

 

 

Surelock, there was still the plane with people, going to crash and kill even more people. It's a lot of hostages, don't you think?

 

That was true with all of the other games as well but the other games also had additional hostages that Euros could execute immediately.

 

However you bring up a good point. Why didn't Euros just tell Sherlock that if he shot himself then she would call the game off and let all the little girl and all the other hostages in the plane die?

 

 

It's a good point. I think she just didn't consider the option that he might do such a thing and started to panic unable of thinking of exactly that. Also the plane technically wasn't real and maybe she considered that Sherlock might have figured that out at that point. His very action of suicide might suggest that to her since if he's dead he can't save the girl anyway if she was on a real crashing plane?

 

 

I doubt Sherlock was actually giving up on the girl and the plane when he turned the gun on himself. I think it's more that he couldn't bear to kill his brother or friend so he decided to kill himself, leaving Mycroft and John to advance to the next game and save the girl and the plane. It makes sense when you think about it. If Sherlock shot himself, even Mycroft would want to save the girl and the plane because that would be Sherlock's final wish.

[MycroftsUmbrella]

But IMO they overdid it a bit. Was there a certain point when you can see Mycroft actually crack?

 

Sadly cannot rewatch anymore, have to wait for the DVDs.

 

I don't think they took it that far. Not that I noticed it when I rewatched it. He just didn't act like his normal self all the way through it and just passively emotional and awfully quiet through most of it rather than using deduction or displaing his usual arrogance. Or doing very much at all unless immediately forced to by Eurus games. But you could tell he was pretty distressed by the situation. Also at the end Sherlock asks Lestrade how Mycroft is doing and he replies that he's pretty shaken after he was locked into Eurus old cell and left there ( the one with the mysteriously reappearing glass in between Sherlock meeting Eurus and them getting knocked out and waking up in there). So I' guessing that didn't help it. Probably worried sick about Sherlock possibly dying through his own sister. But we'll never know. I'd kind of like to see a fanfiction of Mycroft in that cell on his own contemplating what to do next.

 

Totally agree that they overdid it a bit. He seemed a bit too vulnerable, but I forgive them for doing that as it was nice to see the more human side of him.

 

 

[gerry]

 

 

I see that coffin as a sort of metaphor for the box Sherlock has put her in in his own mind, and to an extent in his life as well. It is only when he sees Eurus reducing her to that lonely mid-range coffin, that he realises he has done something similar himself.

 

OOooooh, I really like that one! It still leaves it ambiguous what his real feelings about her are (maybe even to himself), and it harks back to TAB, where he seems to acknowledge to himself that he's been a bit of a bastard where she's concerned. But still doesn't know how to fix it.

Please forgive my ignorance but what is TAB?

[Arcadia]

I stumbled about a theory, that actually the story we've seen, was initially written for S4 and S5, and because they aren't able to make it now (pointing BC not wanting to to it anymore), they had to compress too much story in the last 3 episodes. Not that I believe it, but it somehow looks plausible :D

 

That was me. Well, maybe someone else came up with it too.

 

Don't you think, that the highly functioning psychopath might be something Sherlock borrowed from the adults talking about Eurus? Not even this really belongs to him. :(

 

I thought of that too, but I'm pretty sure Eurus qualifies as a psychopath ... so I think Sherlock really did make up "sociopath" all by himself. Feel better?

 

I think Euros was just more interested in Sherlock because he was the emotional one. Remember in all of her games she (as she said so herself) was trying to add emotional context. Euros likes seeing people emotional. The reason why she isn't interested in Mycroft is because Mycroft is a lot less emotional than Sherlock. He can keep a straight face and not give in to his sentiments much better than Sherlock can.

 

Oooh, that's a good point.

 

She obviously had a failsafe in place in case he tried something like that or there wouldn't have been darts in the wall.

 

I wonder if maybe we should be looking at this one a different way. Maybe Eurus set up this puzzle the way she did because she wanted to see if Sherlock would be willing to sacrifice himself to save his friends? Because to me it was the obvious solution the moment the problem was stated. So obvious, it's surprising to me Eurus wouldn't think of it. But maybe she did; maybe that's why the tranquilizer darts were handy?

 

Please forgive my ignorance but what is TAB?

TAB=The Abominable Bride.

[Pamela]

I wonder if maybe we should be looking at this one a different way. Maybe Eurus set up this puzzle the way she did because she wanted to see if Sherlock would be willing to sacrifice himself to save his friends? Because to me it was the obvious solution the moment the problem was stated. So obvious, it's surprising to me Eurus wouldn't think of it. But maybe she did; maybe that's why the tranquilizer darts were handy?

 

I don't think she expected it. She looked pretty surprised to me. Remember she wrinkled her brow and said "No, no, no!" Although you're right about having the darts handy. It's a dichotomy.

[Surelock]

But IMO they overdid it a bit. Was there a certain point when you can see Mycroft actually crack?

 

 

Well Mycroft vomits after the Governor shoots himself in the face. I'd say that's pretty close to cracking.

 

I wonder if maybe we should be looking at this one a different way. Maybe Eurus set up this puzzle the way she did because she wanted to see if Sherlock would be willing to sacrifice himself to save his friends? Because to me it was the obvious solution the moment the problem was stated. So obvious, it's surprising to me Eurus wouldn't think of it. But maybe she did; maybe that's why the tranquilizer darts were handy?

 

I don't think she expected it. She looked pretty surprised to me. Remember she wrinkled her brow and said "No, no, no!" Although you're right about having the darts handy. It's a dichotomy.

 

I think the darts were always planned to be there because Euros was always planning on putting Sherlock and his companion to sleep and transport them to their old house. I doubt Euros was planning on taking Sherlock and his companion to their old house while they were awake. Transporting them would be easier if they were asleep and not struggling.

 

So initially Euros believed that Sherlock was going to shoot Mycroft so she positioned a bunch of dart holes throughout the room. After Sherlock shot Mycroft, darts were supposed to come out and sedate Sherlock and John. She didn't know exactly where they were going to stand in the room so she had a number of darts ready to be fired from every angle. However Euros believed she would only need two by the time that the fourth game was complete.

 

However when Sherlock pointed the gun at himself, Euros ended up firing the darts early and she ended up using one extra dart because Sherlock didn't shoot Mycroft.

[gerry]

This has the video with the actors about the ILY you scene. I think someone asked for the reference.

 

http://jeni2727.tumblr.com/post/155957319627/alphielj-this-played-after-the-tfp-i-saw-a-few