Episode 4.3 "The Final Problem"

[BLS_Pro]

 

Anyway, I'm not going to get into an argument with you about absence of evidence...

 

Right.  You'll simply declare you don't need evidence to doubt - the same way others declare they don't need evidence to believe.  In other words, you 'stand by your assertion' based solely on faith. 

 

Fine.  You have every right to do that.  I will not impede nor deny you that right. 

 

As you say, this is a fan forum not a symposium.  Debating the merits of faith vs reason would either bore - or inflame - everyone else.  More importantly, a forum - regardless of its subject matter - is not a place one can teach others the merits/problems of faith or reason.  That requires a different format entirely.

 

As to continued examples of yourself or others 'getting something wrong', that is - again- not evidence of error, any more than examples of yourself or others 'getting something right' is evidence of accuracy.  Capacity for accuracy is not evidence of accuracy,  any more than capacity for error is  evidence of error.  Sorry.

 

We simply have to agree to disagree here - due to opposing epistemologies. 

[Inge l-w]

Oh, and you base accuracy on human observational capabilities? Then, you are sadly mistaken, because observational psychologists and clinical psychiatrists have proven time and again that as a species we are remarkably unobservant. There is a famous experiment where university students were set to watch a break-in. The thief wore a hoodie, broke into a family home and started putting things into a knapsack. Only, in an off-screen moment, he switched places with another person. A paltry 2% of the subjects noticed the change in stature and posture. We are remarkably unobservant AND capable of filling in the gaps at the same time. Talk about an unreliable narrator: it's not just this broken, anger-management thrill-seeking junkie who is one, we all are.

However, this does in no way absolve the creators from not answering big questions left open in S3.

[BLS_Pro]

We are remarkably unobservant AND capable of filling in the gaps at the same time. Talk about an unreliable narrator: it's not just this broken, anger-management thrill-seeking junkie who is one, we all are.

Yes.  We are all capable of error, just as we are all capable of accuracy.

 

But, just as I cannot logically point to every instance throughout history when human beings were right as reason to have belief in my argument, nor can anyone else logically point to every instance throughout history when human beings were wrong as reason to have doubt of my argument.

 

In other words, just as my capacity for being right doesn't make my argument right, so too my capacity for being wrong doesn't make my argument wrong.  Pointing to either capacity says nothing whatsoever about the validity or invalidity of the argument being presented.

 

[gerry]

 

 

 

 

I watched TFP again and the only aspect of the show that I still can't decide about is Eurus' immediate reaction to the ILY room right as Sherlock says play fair I won. It just seemed like her facial expression was inconsisent with the rest of the games where she had taken a lot of pleasure in the emotions she elicited from the men. It was strange to me upon first viewing and still is.

I think I know what you mean ... she's half smiling, as if she's genuinely touched by what Sherlock was willing to put himself through to save Molly. It fits with her "you're nicer than I thought you'd be" remark as Faith. But I still haven't decided what to make of it, because I'm still not convinced Eurus is actually capable of being touched in that way.

For me it was more like fascination with what she saw, all those countless complicated emotions. Almost like it was something she didn't expect from her game and it took a moment to process. It was odd to me but the show kept the reactions in so it must have had some kind of meaning, right?

I really like this interpretation too. Of course that assumes she was capable of knowing what she saw, would she have been? Or did she think she would be? Do you think it mattered that the conversation took place on the phone, so it meant Molly could not see him but Eurus could?

I actually don't think she needs to know what she saw to be fascinated by it. All she would have to notice is that it's something she hasn't seen before. I agree with Bedelia in a subsequent post that what Eurus is fascinated by is Sherlock's reactions, i.e. Which emotional context affects him. Sherlock wasn't affected much by the first two rooms because he had no emotional stake in the people affected. He didn't like what happened in those rooms but he wasn't emotional about it. It wasn't until Molly, Mycroft and John were directly affected by his actions was he emotional. Honestly, in the ILY room, Eurus, Mycroft and John should all have been fascinated by Sherlock's reaction including the coffin smash, especially since his reaction surprised himself, because Sherlock has never shown that Molly affects him in front of other people. It wasn't until the "I don't matter" in the TRF that Sherlock made any effort at all to show Molly herself that he cares about her and even then it's in rare doses. Ever since that point he's treated her with more respect than previously but in front of others it's always she's just a nice girl who loves me. I think John pushes the Irene angle in TLD because that is the only woman that John had seen affect Sherlock.

 

I'm sure that Eurus would have never really predicted that Sherlock would ever sacrifice himself for Mycroft and John but that's how much he cares for them. I doubt Eurus thought Sherlock was capable of it which again is why his reactions in that room would be fascinating to her.

 

In the end Eurus got what she wanted, she got to see Sherlock interact with the people he was closest to and which emotional context affected him most.

[Surelock]

 

 

 

 

 

I watched TFP again and the only aspect of the show that I still can't decide about is Eurus' immediate reaction to the ILY room right as Sherlock says play fair I won. It just seemed like her facial expression was inconsisent with the rest of the games where she had taken a lot of pleasure in the emotions she elicited from the men. It was strange to me upon first viewing and still is.

I think I know what you mean ... she's half smiling, as if she's genuinely touched by what Sherlock was willing to put himself through to save Molly. It fits with her "you're nicer than I thought you'd be" remark as Faith. But I still haven't decided what to make of it, because I'm still not convinced Eurus is actually capable of being touched in that way.

 

For me it was more like fascination with what she saw, all those countless complicated emotions. Almost like it was something she didn't expect from her game and it took a moment to process. It was odd to me but the show kept the reactions in so it must have had some kind of meaning, right?

 

 

I really like this interpretation too. Of course that assumes she was capable of knowing what she saw, would she have been? Or did she think she would be? Do you think it mattered that the conversation took place on the phone, so it meant Molly could not see him but Eurus could?

 

Well, that's exactly what I'm struggling with ... Is she capable of recognizing the emotions for what they are? That's why I like the idea of "fascination" ... she's seeing emotions she's not accustomed to seeing (I imagine what she mostly sees in that place is fear, loathing, etc.) and filing them away for analysis. On the other hand, she's capable of acting like a normal person, i.e., Faith and gang. So she knows how to fake emotions, even if she doesn't really know what they feel like --- ?? But she recognized that Sherlock was "nice." Urgh, it just keeps twisting back on itself. That's why I keep going with she's just plain crazy, we can't expect any consistent behavior from her. But that's not very satisfactory either, because then we don't know how to understand what's going on with her ... why was Sherlock able to reach through to her when he did? Why did she start the game in the first place? Random whim, or plan? Ak!!

 

 

What makes it even more confusing is that Euros was able to effectively impersonate John's therapist.

 

Therapy is all about reading emotions and it looks like Euros did that really well.

 

We even see her read John's emotional state in 'The Lying Detective'. At the start of the episode, she says things like how John is behaving is normal and that he shouldn't hold himself up to an unreasonable standard. By the end of the episode, she can tell that John is better. If Euros is supposed to have trouble with emotions then how can she read John's emotions so well?

 

I considered the possibility that Euros was good at reading others but not herself. However even that doesn't really make much sense to me. I mean the Adult Euros persona was clearly aware of her Child Euros personality as she used it to scare Sherlock into playing her games.

 

Euros is one of those characters that doesn't really seem to behave logically and that's why it's difficult to understand her.

[Arcadia]

Those last two posts were so full of good ideas, I don't even know how to respond to them. Alas, I have to run but maybe later I'll have a go at them.

 

In the meantime ... beeee goooood.

[J.P.]

This is really interesting, considering the latest discussion about meanings :D

 

http://www.tcs.cam.ac.uk/culture/0036527-moffat-and-gatiss-on-sherlock-representation-and-box-ticking.html

 

 

"There's also curious things," says Gatiss, "which you don't generally first realise. In the Reichenbach Fall, Sherlock says 'how are you going to do it then, burn the heart out of me?' And Moriarty says 'well that's the problem, Sherlock. The Final Problem.' That looks now very clever, because the last episode is called The Final Problem. We only decided to call it The Final Problem last minute, we were going to call it something else! So now it's like retrospectively clever."

 

[Caya]

Douglas Adams once wrote about that - how, in his books, often when he wrote something happening in a later chapter, suddenly something from earlier made a lot of sense in hindsight, and how he was praised for this clever structure, when, in truth, he was as surprised as anybody else when the chips fell into place. :lol:

 

Oh, and you base accuracy on human observational capabilities? Then, you are sadly mistaken, because observational psychologists and clinical psychiatrists have proven time and again that as a species we are remarkably unobservant. There is a famous experiment where university students were set to watch a break-in. The thief wore a hoodie, broke into a family home and started putting things into a knapsack. Only, in an off-screen moment, he switched places with another person. A paltry 2% of the subjects noticed the change in stature and posture. We are remarkably unobservant AND capable of filling in the gaps at the same time. Talk about an unreliable narrator: it's not just this broken, anger-management thrill-seeking junkie who is one, we all are.
However, this does in no way absolve the creators from not answering big questions left open in S3.

 

That's called Change Blindness, I think, and Sherlock guest star Derren Brown demonstrated this, too:

 

[J.P.]

Personally I suspect that many of those processes run subconsciously. The brain is better than it realises, so to say. :P

[bedelia1984]

 

 

What makes it even more confusing is that Euros was able to effectively impersonate John's therapist.

 

Therapy is all about reading emotions and it looks like Euros did that really well.

 

We even see her read John's emotional state in 'The Lying Detective'. At the start of the episode, she says things like how John is behaving is normal and that he shouldn't hold himself up to an unreasonable standard. By the end of the episode, she can tell that John is better. If Euros is supposed to have trouble with emotions then how can she read John's emotions so well?

 

I considered the possibility that Euros was good at reading others but not herself. However even that doesn't really make much sense to me. I mean the Adult Euros persona was clearly aware of her Child Euros personality as she used it to scare Sherlock into playing her games.

 

Euros is one of those characters that doesn't really seem to behave logically and that's why it's difficult to understand her.

 

 

I thought they might have mentioned Eurus having a therapist because Eurus used that person as a template, ans was able to mimic and re-use some of her responses?

 

Yes, the insanity aspect gives her (and the writers) a bit of a carte blanche.

 

I don't know if it is just how good an actress she is, but there is something about teh performance that makes me want to find an inner mechanism for why she does what she does. You get the impression that Sherlock is sort of sacred to her. Why does she in no way approach harming her parents? Is it because she doesn't believe Sherlock would care as much, or because they matter too much to her? And then if some part of the family are sacrosanct to her, why is it that Mycroft is expendable? Or is it that she expects Sherlock to get rid of John? Are her attempts to go after John and Molly more of an attempt to get rid of the non-Holmes family that Sherlock has built, because she wants to in some strange way rebuild her own?

[Arcadia]

 

I don't know if it is just how good an actress she is, but there is something about teh performance that makes me want to find an inner mechanism for why she does what she does. You get the impression that Sherlock is sort of sacred to her. Why does she in no way approach harming her parents? Is it because she doesn't believe Sherlock would care as much, or because they matter too much to her? And then if some part of the family are sacrosanct to her, why is it that Mycroft is expendable? Or is it that she expects Sherlock to get rid of John? Are her attempts to go after John and Molly more of an attempt to get rid of the non-Holmes family that Sherlock has built, because she wants to in some strange way rebuild her own?

 

 

Same here ... I'm really fascinated by her, I want to understand her. Yet thinking back on it, Culverton Smith must have been equally nutz, but I'm not in the least bit interested in how he got that way, or how he thinks, or why.

 

Could it be because Sherlock makes a connection to her, and we're connected to Sherlock, so by extension etc etc.? But I agree, the actress did a fantastic job, I wouldn't mind if Eurus popped up again someday. Preferably not free, though. Just a nice little scene of Sherlock visiting her, and her maybe helping him deduce something. If the show ever comes back, I hope they don't just pretend she doesn't exist anymore.

 

BTW, my friend who used to be a counselor says Eurus would be classified as psychotic, for what that's worth. Which I thought anyway, but it was nice to have a consenting opinion from someone who knows more about it than I do. However, my friend wasn't that interested in discussing Sherlock (she hated this season) so I didn't get any more out of her than that. Rats.

[Surelock]

 

 

 

What makes it even more confusing is that Euros was able to effectively impersonate John's therapist.

 

Therapy is all about reading emotions and it looks like Euros did that really well.

 

We even see her read John's emotional state in 'The Lying Detective'. At the start of the episode, she says things like how John is behaving is normal and that he shouldn't hold himself up to an unreasonable standard. By the end of the episode, she can tell that John is better. If Euros is supposed to have trouble with emotions then how can she read John's emotions so well?

 

I considered the possibility that Euros was good at reading others but not herself. However even that doesn't really make much sense to me. I mean the Adult Euros persona was clearly aware of her Child Euros personality as she used it to scare Sherlock into playing her games.

 

Euros is one of those characters that doesn't really seem to behave logically and that's why it's difficult to understand her.

 

 

I thought they might have mentioned Eurus having a therapist because Eurus used that person as a template, ans was able to mimic and re-use some of her responses?

 

Yes, the insanity aspect gives her (and the writers) a bit of a carte blanche.

 

I don't know if it is just how good an actress she is, but there is something about teh performance that makes me want to find an inner mechanism for why she does what she does. You get the impression that Sherlock is sort of sacred to her. Why does she in no way approach harming her parents? Is it because she doesn't believe Sherlock would care as much, or because they matter too much to her? And then if some part of the family are sacrosanct to her, why is it that Mycroft is expendable? Or is it that she expects Sherlock to get rid of John? Are her attempts to go after John and Molly more of an attempt to get rid of the non-Holmes family that Sherlock has built, because she wants to in some strange way rebuild her own?

 

 

I wouldn't say Euros was just 'mimicking' responses. Remember what John said when he was surprised that Sherlock predicted which therapist he had two weeks in advance. He told Sherlock that the session he had with her at the start of The Lying Detective was his first session with her. The real therapist never met John. So basically Euros was able to conduct a emotional evaluation of a new patient. How did she do that considering her own damaged mental state?

 

I'm not sure why Euros didn't consider harming her parents. When she burnt their house as a kid, she demonstrated that she was capable of at least being indifferent to her parents' welfare.

 

 

 

Also I noticed something about Sherlock's first call with Child Euros. It gets cut off immediately before Sherlock tells Child Euros his name. I initially thought that this would mean that Child Euros has some memories of her childhood or something like that. I speculated that Adult Euros cut off the transmission then because hearing Sherlock's name would cause Child Euros to realise that he's her brother and open up too much to him.

 

However this idea comes into contradiction with what Child Euros says when Sherlock is in Musgrave Hall later. Child Euros asks who Redbeard is when Sherlock mentions him.  So what? Child Euros can remember Sherlock's name but she can't remember Redbeard? That's the confusing thing about Child Euros. Who exactly is she? Is she supposed to be Euros when she's young or is she supposed to be an independent young persona or what? 

[Arcadia]

She's definitely not the young Eurus ... it's a different actress, and her behavior is different, so I don't think we're meant to associate her with the "real" child-Eurus. I think we're supposed to realize that she's just a different manifestation of Eurus' psyche. But whether she's an entirely different personality who surfaces from time to time, or whether she's an act that Eurus conjures up at will, I can't decide. Some combination of both, perhaps. Or neither. :p

 

When I think back over the things John's psychiatrist said, some of it sounds like your stereotypical shrink stuff: "How did you sleep?" "That's understandable." "You look like you're feeling better." Those are pretty non-specific statements, so I'm willing to believe that Eurus was just being an actress there, without any genuine understanding of what John was actually feeling.

 

Here's one that I just have to accept as a huge continuity oversight ... Eurus' hair length. I know Sherlock said "a few weeks" went by between sightings of her, but geez, even my hair doesn't grow that fast. And no way she had that dark mop tucked up under a wig, especially without Sherlock noticing. What's funny to me is how long it took me to realize it.

[Arcadia]

That's called Change Blindness, I think, and Sherlock guest star Derren Brown demonstrated this, too:

 

Some of those were pretty funny. But I have to take exception to his opening remark about how "most people think they're pretty observant." I guess I'm not most people, but I KNOW I'm not observant! Too shy to really look people in the face, for one thing. I'd fall for that trick so hard it would hurt.

[Arcadia]

Ariane Devere has the full transcript up for this episode. http://arianedevere.livejournal.com/91118.html

 

Her transcript of Eurus' song and some of Sherlock's deciphering of it are on the last page: http://arianedevere.livejournal.com/92287.html

 

Just took a cursory look, but it reminds me of the skip code from TEH in its construction.

[bedelia1984]

She's definitely not the young Eurus ... it's a different actress, and her behavior is different, so I don't think we're meant to associate her with the "real" child-Eurus. I think we're supposed to realize that she's just a different manifestation of Eurus' psyche. But whether she's an entirely different personality who surfaces from time to time, or whether she's an act that Eurus conjures up at will, I can't decide. Some combination of both, perhaps. Or neither. :P

 

When I think back over the things John's psychiatrist said, some of it sounds like your stereotypical shrink stuff: "How did you sleep?" "That's understandable." "You look like you're feeling better." Those are pretty non-specific statements, so I'm willing to believe that Eurus was just being an actress there, without any genuine understanding of what John was actually feeling.

 

Here's one that I just have to accept as a huge continuity oversight ... Eurus' hair length. I know Sherlock said "a few weeks" went by between sightings of her, but geez, even my hair doesn't grow that fast. And no way she had that dark mop tucked up under a wig, especially without Sherlock noticing. What's funny to me is how long it took me to realize it.

 

Yes, perhaps the child on the plane is more a representation of Eurus' own feeling of being lost. In part it might be because in keeping her from the rest of her family, Mycroft took away everything (apart from him) that she knew, and left her feeling totally alone. I wonder what he told her, did he say that they didn't want to see her? There is so much more to this character to be revealed. Like you suggest though, going forward just a little bit more reveal of her here and there would be great, I don't want to see her on the loose again.

 

I thought she was a little bit clichéd as well- her 'therapist' role- so if she had her own prison therapist as one reference, perhaps she also was drawing from books or movies?

 

 

 

I wouldn't say Euros was just 'mimicking' responses. Remember what John said when he was surprised that Sherlock predicted which therapist he had two weeks in advance. He told Sherlock that the session he had with her at the start of The Lying Detective was his first session with her. The real therapist never met John. So basically Euros was able to conduct a emotional evaluation of a new patient. How did she do that considering her own damaged mental state?

 

I'm not sure why Euros didn't consider harming her parents. When she burnt their house as a kid, she demonstrated that she was capable of at least being indifferent to her parents' welfare.

 

 

 

Like Arcadia above, I'm not sure how 'professional' it was- a very good copy, though and good for her on fooling John, who has seen his share of real therapists (to be honest I've seen some real ones at work, and some of them I find quite unconvincing anyway).

 

About burning down the house- are we reading this as a protest/ cry for help or attempted murder? Part of me feels like she genuinely misses Sherlock and her parents. The sad looks she gives him at odd times, as we have discussed- they make me think nostalgia, and also perhaps in a strange way that she is happy for a moment that Sherlock is living the life she can't, that the real thrill of all this is being able to experience some of his life vicariously.

 

Perhaps she thinks of him as the person she could have been, if she had made different choices, if she had gotten the right help, if she had ever been able to land the plane. I always loved the line in the movie Capote where Toby Jones' (!!) Capote says, about killer Perry Edwards: “It’s as if Perry and I grew up in the same house, then one day, he walked out the back door, and I walked out the front.”  I see some shades of that in the Sherlock/ Eurus dynamic, though of course Sherlock is not insane! But then he does have the capability to take a life, if he feels it is just. And whilst Eurus was perhaps psychotic through some chemical imbalance, Sherlock was pushed to the edge himself by what she did also, in a way that took a very long time to begin healing from.

 

Do people think Sherlock will need drugs less, now that he knows the truth about Redbeard?

 

The thing I find interesting about all three of the Holmes children is that there is such an impression of a richly woven shared history and lineage, touched by both genius and madness, and we only ever get such fleeting glimpses of it. 

[Slithytove]

Throughout the 4 series, the writers have done some clever and original things but (like most writers) they've sometimes gone for a glib or cliched answer.  We've already had "...and it was all a dream", but they just about managed to get away with it by integrating it into a real-life storyline.  We've also had "salvation by sacrifice" - didn't you just know​ Mary was going to have to redeem herself by taking a bullet for Sherlock?  IMO, the most facile piece of plotting, the one which annoyed me the most, was "you've done terrible things, including killing people for money and shooting my dearest friend, but I'm going to turn a blind eye because I love you."  Now we've got Eurus and "inside this psychopath is an inner child, just wanting to be loved."

 

A lot of the material is smart, a lot of it is funny...but some of it is just a cop-out.  That doesn't make it into the disaster that some critics claim.  It simply means there are a few weak places in the various stories.  In the case of Eurus, the individual scenes are interesting but I don't think her storyline works that well at all.  It's a pity, because it could have been brilliant.

[Redbeard]

 

She's definitely not the young Eurus ... it's a different actress, and her behavior is different, so I don't think we're meant to associate her with the "real" child-Eurus. I think we're supposed to realize that she's just a different manifestation of Eurus' psyche. But whether she's an entirely different personality who surfaces from time to time, or whether she's an act that Eurus conjures up at will, I can't decide. Some combination of both, perhaps. Or neither. :P

 

When I think back over the things John's psychiatrist said, some of it sounds like your stereotypical shrink stuff: "How did you sleep?" "That's understandable." "You look like you're feeling better." Those are pretty non-specific statements, so I'm willing to believe that Eurus was just being an actress there, without any genuine understanding of what John was actually feeling.

 

Here's one that I just have to accept as a huge continuity oversight ... Eurus' hair length. I know Sherlock said "a few weeks" went by between sightings of her, but geez, even my hair doesn't grow that fast. And no way she had that dark mop tucked up under a wig, especially without Sherlock noticing. What's funny to me is how long it took me to realize it.

 

Yes, perhaps the child on the plane is more a representation of Eurus' own feeling of being lost. In part it might be because in keeping her from the rest of her family, Mycroft took away everything (apart from him) that she knew, and left her feeling totally alone. I wonder what he told her, did he say that they didn't want to see her? There is so much more to this character to be revealed. Like you suggest though, going forward just a little bit more reveal of her here and there would be great, I don't want to see her on the loose again.

 

I thought she was a little bit clichéd as well- her 'therapist' role- so if she had her own prison therapist as one reference, perhaps she also was drawing from books or movies?

 

 

 

I wouldn't say Euros was just 'mimicking' responses. Remember what John said when he was surprised that Sherlock predicted which therapist he had two weeks in advance. He told Sherlock that the session he had with her at the start of The Lying Detective was his first session with her. The real therapist never met John. So basically Euros was able to conduct a emotional evaluation of a new patient. How did she do that considering her own damaged mental state?

 

I'm not sure why Euros didn't consider harming her parents. When she burnt their house as a kid, she demonstrated that she was capable of at least being indifferent to her parents' welfare.

 

 

 

Like Arcadia above, I'm not sure how 'professional' it was- a very good copy, though and good for her on fooling John, who has seen his share of real therapists (to be honest I've seen some real ones at work, and some of them I find quite unconvincing anyway).

 

About burning down the house- are we reading this as a protest/ cry for help or attempted murder? Part of me feels like she genuinely misses Sherlock and her parents. The sad looks she gives him at odd times, as we have discussed- they make me think nostalgia, and also perhaps in a strange way that she is happy for a moment that Sherlock is living the life she can't, that the real thrill of all this is being able to experience some of his life vicariously.

 

Perhaps she thinks of him as the person she could have been, if she had made different choices, if she had gotten the right help, if she had ever been able to land the plane. I always loved the line in the movie Capote where Toby Jones' (!!) Capote says, about killer Perry Edwards: “It’s as if Perry and I grew up in the same house, then one day, he walked out the back door, and I walked out the front.”  I see some shades of that in the Sherlock/ Eurus dynamic, though of course Sherlock is not insane! But then he does have the capability to take a life, if he feels it is just. And whilst Eurus was perhaps psychotic through some chemical imbalance, Sherlock was pushed to the edge himself by what she did also, in a way that took a very long time to begin healing from.

 

Do people think Sherlock will need drugs less, now that he knows the truth about Redbeard?

 

The thing I find interesting about all three of the Holmes children is that there is such an impression of a richly woven shared history and lineage, touched by both genius and madness, and we only ever get such fleeting glimpses of it. 

 

 

Just to the bolded last two lines....yes now that you mention it I think Sherlock's drug use will be less.  It would make sense as part of the character development into the wise older man he is meant to be.  Will he always struggle with it?  I would say yes, but I think the worst of that struggle is behind him now. 

 

And your last line, about the Holmes children.  That is just so beautifully stated....all I can do is sigh at the magic of it. 

[Arcadia]

Throughout the 4 series, the writers have done some clever and original things but (like most writers) they've sometimes gone for a glib or cliched answer. We've already had "...and it was all a dream", but they just about managed to get away with it by integrating it into a real-life storyline. We've also had "salvation by sacrifice" - didn't you just know​ Mary was going to have to redeem herself by taking a bullet for Sherlock? IMO, the most facile piece of plotting, the one which annoyed me the most, was "you've done terrible things, including killing people for money and shooting my dearest friend, but I'm going to turn a blind eye because I love you." Now we've got Eurus and "inside this psychopath is an inner child, just wanting to be loved."

 

A lot of the material is smart, a lot of it is funny...but some of it is just a cop-out. That doesn't make it into the disaster that some critics claim. It simply means there are a few weak places in the various stories. In the case of Eurus, the individual scenes are interesting but I don't think her storyline works that well at all. It's a pity, because it could have been brilliant.

Oddly, although there are "glib" plot points that bother me, none of those you mention are among them. Which just points up how hard it is for a writer to please everybody, and how sensible it is to just write to please themselves ... to the extent possible. I sometimes suspect if Steven really wrote just to please himself, the plots would be even more full of holes than they already are. :P And if Mark really wrote just to please himself, the jokes would be a lot naughtier. :D

 

At any rate, I'm still not convinced Eurus is simply a psychotic who secretly wants to be loved; I think they described her as something more complex, and far more disturbing, than that. Or tried to; I'm also still not convinced that they pulled it off. I thought so when I first saw it, but now that I've started reviewing some of the "facts", I'm not so sure. More study required.

[Surelock]

She's definitely not the young Eurus ... it's a different actress, and her behavior is different, so I don't think we're meant to associate her with the "real" child-Eurus. I think we're supposed to realize that she's just a different manifestation of Eurus' psyche. But whether she's an entirely different personality who surfaces from time to time, or whether she's an act that Eurus conjures up at will, I can't decide. Some combination of both, perhaps. Or neither. :P

 

When I think back over the things John's psychiatrist said, some of it sounds like your stereotypical shrink stuff: "How did you sleep?" "That's understandable." "You look like you're feeling better." Those are pretty non-specific statements, so I'm willing to believe that Eurus was just being an actress there, without any genuine understanding of what John was actually feeling.

 

Here's one that I just have to accept as a huge continuity oversight ... Eurus' hair length. I know Sherlock said "a few weeks" went by between sightings of her, but geez, even my hair doesn't grow that fast. And no way she had that dark mop tucked up under a wig, especially without Sherlock noticing. What's funny to me is how long it took me to realize it.

 

Here's the problem with the the different-actress-so-not-Young-Euros-personality argument: the girl on the plane had to be a different actress.

 

Remember Moffatiss wanted the twist in the end to be that the girl on the plane that Sherlock was trying to save all along was Euros. However in order for that to be a twist the actress had to be different. If they used the same actress as the one that played Young Euros in the flashback then they wouldn't be able to make a twist out of the girl on the plane because everyone would see that the actress who played Young Euros is also the girl on the plane.

 

So we're left in an ambiguous position to interpret the girl on the plane:

 

- The girl on the plane was Euros manifesting her child-like self in some way

 

OR 

 

- The girl on the plane was a different manifestation of Euros' psyche.

 

Which is the right one? We don't know and that's why it's difficult to interpret Euros' character.

 

Honestly it felt like Moffatiss thought of the twist first and the story about Euros second. That's why Euros being the girl on the plane raises more questions than answers. 

 

 

 

 

Also when Euros was impersonating John's therapist, she did show at least a few signs of a professional understanding of psychology. The most notable example is how she seemed to be able to tell that John was hallucinating Mary. 

 

Remember that John hallucinated Mary standing behind Euros-therapist. When John lied to Euros-therapist that he doesn't talk to anyone, hallucination-Mary starts crying. John then turns his eyes towards her. Euros-therapist notices this and asks John what he's looking at behind her. John saying he's just looking away. However then Euros-therapist says, 'There's a difference between looking away and looking to. I tend to notice these things.'

 

I have trouble seeing how Euros could have done that by just acting. She seems to actually be good at reading John's emotional state.

 

 

 

About burning down the house- are we reading this as a protest/ cry for help or attempted murder? Part of me feels like she genuinely misses Sherlock and her parents. The sad looks she gives him at odd times, as we have discussed- they make me think nostalgia, and also perhaps in a strange way that she is happy for a moment that Sherlock is living the life she can't, that the real thrill of all this is being able to experience some of his life vicariously.

 

Perhaps she thinks of him as the person she could have been, if she had made different choices, if she had gotten the right help, if she had ever been able to land the plane. I always loved the line in the movie Capote where Toby Jones' (!!) Capote says, about killer Perry Edwards: “It’s as if Perry and I grew up in the same house, then one day, he walked out the back door, and I walked out the front.”  I see some shades of that in the Sherlock/ Eurus dynamic, though of course Sherlock is not insane! But then he does have the capability to take a life, if he feels it is just. And whilst Eurus was perhaps psychotic through some chemical imbalance, Sherlock was pushed to the edge himself by what she did also, in a way that took a very long time to begin healing from.

 

Do people think Sherlock will need drugs less, now that he knows the truth about Redbeard?

 

The thing I find interesting about all three of the Holmes children is that there is such an impression of a richly woven shared history and lineage, touched by both genius and madness, and we only ever get such fleeting glimpses of it. 

 

 

I think I said earlier that I read Euros burning the house down as a protest against her parents for taking her favourite hairband away. However the very fact that she's willing to burn the family house down shows that she's willing to put her parents lives in danger if she deems it appropriate. So it is strange that she didn't try to toy with her parents in any of her games. The only explanation I can think of is that Mycroft may have lied to Euros that their parents had already died because he didn't ever want her to ever seek them out or anything like that.

 

I do think it's possible that Sherlock will now not rely on drugs as much as he used to.

 

 

 

The biggest problem with Euros is that I have trouble buying her being lonely. From what I can make out of their personal history, I don't see why it should be difficult to get Sherlock to play with her. Sherlock was an emotional child so if she was lonely then it should make sense for him to sympathise and want to play with her.

 

Additionally it seems that Euros and Sherlock were on good terms in at least some point of their childhood. Remember Euros said so herself that she taught Sherlock how to play the violin. Most of the time when siblings teach each other to do things it's when they're close to each other. So Euros and Sherlock should have been close in at least one point of their early life.

 

However Euros still ended up being lonely so I'm guessing that she may have had some sort of falling out with Sherlock? But what kind of falling out? I don't know. There just doesn't seem to be enough information given in this episode.

[Arcadia]

Also when Euros was impersonating John's therapist, she did show at least a few signs of a professional understanding of psychology. The most notable example is how she seemed to be able to tell that John was hallucinating Mary. 

 

Remember that John hallucinated Mary standing behind Euros-therapist. When John lied to Euros-therapist that he doesn't talk to anyone, hallucination-Mary starts crying. John then turns his eyes towards her. Euros-therapist notices this and asks John what he's looking at behind her. John saying he's just looking away. However then Euros-therapist says, 'There's a difference between looking away and looking to. I tend to notice these things.'

 

I have trouble seeing how Euros could have done that by just acting. She seems to actually be good at reading John's emotional state.

Well, how about this for an idea? Maybe she just has the same ability as her older brothers ... to be observant. For all his self-proclaimed sociopathy, Sherlock would have been a pretty poor detective if he hadn't been able to deduce what people were feeling. He didn't have to understand or share those feelings, he just had to know how they motivated people. So, Eurus wouldn't have to know why John was glancing to one side; she merely had to notice that he was glancing to one side. Besides, there's no indication she thought he was hallucinating; she simply asked what he was looking at.

 

The biggest problem with Euros is that I have trouble buying her being lonely. From what I can make out of their personal history, I don't see why it should be difficult to get Sherlock to play with her. Sherlock was an emotional child so if she was lonely then it should make sense for him to sympathise and want to play with her.

 

Additionally it seems that Euros and Sherlock were on good terms in at least some point of their childhood. Remember Euros said so herself that she taught Sherlock how to play the violin. Most of the time when siblings teach each other to do things it's when they're close to each other. So Euros and Sherlock should have been close in at least one point of their early life.

 

However Euros still ended up being lonely so I'm guessing that she may have had some sort of falling out with Sherlock? But what kind of falling out? I don't know. There just doesn't seem to be enough information given in this episode.

 

As far as getting Sherlock to play with her ... kids that age are awfully selfish. They haven't yet learned how not to be. Eurus was a year younger; she was a girl; she was "weird"; she was smarter ... I think it's perfectly understandable that a little boy would have preferred to play pirates with his best friend than hang out with his oddball baby sister. I base this largely on my observations of my nephew and his younger sister; at that age, she was primarily a nuisance to him, especially if there were other little boys his own age around to play with. Their interests were just so different.

 

Still, if we are to believe that Eurus taught Sherlock to play the violin (oh, really, at that age? Oh, okay, so maybe she was a musical prodigy on top of everything else... ) then they did indeed have a connection. But even if they did, it wasn't enough for Eurus. She wanted more, and when she didn't get it, her psychosis led her to do something horrible.

 

And is lonliness even her problem? Or is it possessiveness, or the insatiable need to control others? Those two would be more in keeping with a psychosis, I would think. Or maybe not, I don't really know how that works.

[Surelock]

So in order to make sense of Young Euros' character I decided to examine those pictures she drew in the flashback. We only get three shots of the pictures for a few seconds  so I had to screenshot them all to examine them thoroughly.

 

From what I can see, it looks like Young Euros seemed to really hate Sherlock and wanted to get rid of him.

 

Here's my 'deduction':

 

 

 

 

Image 1

 

One thing I've noticed about these pictures is that Euros has a habit of putting a cross over Sherlock. She doesn't do it for her parents, Mycroft or even herself. It's just Sherlock. It looks like she wants to get rid of him.

 

Look at the bottom right picture. It's Sherlock's corpse on a grave. It says 'RIP Sherlock' on the grave.

 

If you look at the first row of bottom pictures clockwise, you can see she drew pictures of Sherlock with a lot of red near his neck. They look like pictures of Sherlock having his neck slit open and his blood bursting out. It also looks like Sherlock's eyes are drawn with Xs and in cartoon language when a character's eyes are drawn as Xs it means they're dead.

 

The top left picture looks like Sherlock is being hanged.

 

The middle far right picture looks like Mycroft as it depicts a fat figure which is dressed in the same clothes as Mycroft is in the other pictures (green shirt with blue pants). However I'm wondering if this figure is actually just a fatter Sherlock. The reason for this is because the hair is drawn with squiggly lines. Look at the rest of Euros' pictures of Sherlock. Sherlock's hair is always drawn with squiggly lines. However Mycroft's hair isn't. So is the middle far right picture really a picture of Mycroft or is it actually a fat Sherlock? However that raises the question of why is Euros drawing Sherlock like Mycroft? Is she perhaps mocking Mycroft's affection for Sherlock?

 

If we take a look at the top middle picture we see a picture of the Holmes family. However it's clear that Sherlock is in a different place from the rest of his family. Mr and Mrs Holmes, Mycroft and Euros are on a beach as they're standing on sand, there are waves in front of them, there's a sandcastle behind them, a beach ball next to them and a clear blue sky behind them. However Sherlock seems to be pictured in a different place as the background doesn't look like a clear blue sky from where he is standing. It looks more like he's in a darker cloudier area. It looks like his family left him behind. Euros drew crosses over him and has him struck by lightning.

 

Some of the top middle picture gets cut off but we can see some of it in Image 2.

 

 

 

 

 

Image 2

 

You'll notice that there's a bottom left picture which gets cut off. This picture is a cloud which is striking lightning. What is the lightning striking? Well we can see the other end of this picture in Image 1. The top middle picture in the Image 1 is the other end of this picture in Image 2. Thus the lightning is striking Sherlock. So the cloud striking lightning is the same picture in which Sherlock is left behind as the rest of his family go to the beach together.

 

This rest of Image 2 is self-explanatory. There's a picture of Sherlock's gravestone. Next to it is a picture of Sherlock with his hair on fire. Sherlock also has a cross over him in this picture.

 

 

 

 

 

Image 3

 

This is just another picture with a cross over Sherlock while he's standing in their house all alone.

 

 

 

Assuming that the middle far right picture in Image 1 is just a fatter Sherlock then it looks like Euros has a habit of only drawing Sherlock alone. Whenever she draws Mycroft, her parents or herself, they're always together. However only Sherlock is featured alone in her pictures. Also a lot of bad things happen to Sherlock in those pictures as I've explained already.

 

To me it looks like Euros is angry at Sherlock. That's what I'm getting out of her pictures. It looks like she wants Sherlock to be alone. She wants him to suffer alone. She wants him to die alone. It really looks like she wants to kick Sherlock out of her family. That's how I interpret her putting so many crosses over her pictures of Sherlock. She wants Sherlock removed from her family so she's using crosses to 'delete' him.

 

Considering the fact that Euros decided to set the house ablaze after drawing these pictures, then I think it may be possible that she intended for the fire to kill Sherlock. Remember she did draw a picture of Sherlock with his hair on fire in Image 2. Also the last picture she drew before lighting the fire was in Image 3. The picture in Image 3 depicts Sherlock alone in the house and a cross drawn over him.

 

It's also notable that Euros doesn't seem to have the same hatred that she has for Sherlock for any of her other family members. She doesn't draw any of them suffering. She doesn't put crosses over them. In fact she draws pictures of herself standing side by side with Mycroft and her parents. It looks like she really wants their company.

 

If I have to take a guess, I'd say that Euros seems jealous of Sherlock. She seems to think that Mycroft and her parents only think about him and not her. I can actually buy that being true because Sherlock was a very emotional child when he was young, unlike Euros. I guess it would make sense for Mycroft and his parents to be more affectionate towards him than to her. Assuming this is true then I can buy the middle far right picture in Image 1 being Euros' way of protesting that Mycroft only shows affection for Sherlock and not her.

 

I think all of this may explain some of Euros' loneliness. If she felt that everyone loved Sherlock and not her (despite the fact that she was the youngest) then I can see why she would grow to resent Sherlock.

 

What I'm not sure is how any of this ties into Euros' other actions, especially considering how she behaved in the future. I mean if Young Euros resented Sherlock then why did she still want to play with him? She wants to kill him but she panics when he points a gun at himself in the fourth game in Sherrinford? Did she change her mind when she grew up? What caused her to change her mind?

[BLS_Pro]

 

And is lonliness even her problem? Or is it possessiveness

Loneliness is her problem.  As is possessiveness.  The love that saves is not selfish love.  Ego is "the signature in human destruction".  Selfish love is love of others as commodities for yourself.  It is the making of others into "things" for your pleasure. 

 

Jealousy - possessiveness - is selfish love.

 

John and Molly - especially Molly - are examples of selfless love.  Selfless love is what Sherlock finally gives John in TLD.  Sherlock 'plays the game', not for love of the game, but for love of John.  That is the lesson he learns.  He acts, not to satisfy his needs, but the needs of another.  It is that lesson which allows him to save Eurus.  And he learned that lesson dealing with another jealous murderer - where his lack of love, his lack of empathy, for that woman -  and his love of himself, his Ego - led to death.  That is how Sherlock has grown from the beginning of the season.  He doesn't make the mistake he did with Norbury. 

 

Sherlock doesn't just love - he loves selflessly. 

[BLS_Pro]

 

At any rate, I'm still not convinced Eurus is simply a psychotic who secretly wants to be loved

Then I am curious how you interpret the message translated from her song:

 

I am lost.

Help me brother.

Save my life before my doom.

I am lost without your love.

Save my soul, seek my room.

 

As to "psychotic", would you describe Mary's old comrade as "psychotic" after having been left alone to be tortured senselessly and without end for six years?  Or do you, in pity, call him a tortured soul?  Do you blame him for being angry?  (One can certainly blame him for misdirecting his anger, but that of course is not the same thing).  I believe that is why the writers created this particular backstory about Mary - so that the audience would sympathize with him, and thus sympathize with the little girl in the same situation (and is why she is depicted as a little girl) - who has been alone and tortured (by existence itself) without end since childhood.  It is another of the mirrors they created for the audience to reflect upon.

 

[Arcadia]

The middle far right picture looks like Mycroft as it depicts a fat figure which is dressed in the same clothes as Mycroft is in the other pictures (green shirt with blue pants). However I'm wondering if this figure is actually just a fatter Sherlock. The reason for this is because the hair is drawn with squiggly lines.

I wonder if, instead of a fat Sherlock, that could be Sherlock being boiled alive in a cauldron?  :o

 

 

At any rate, I'm still not convinced Eurus is simply a psychotic who secretly wants to be loved

Then I am curious how you interpret the message translated from her song:

 

I am lost.

Help me brother.

Save my life before my doom.

I am lost without your love.

Save my soul, seek my room.

 

Eeek, I haven't even started on the song yet! I'm still trying to find out if it was written for this episode, or if it's some old folk song they found for the purpose. If the former, then Eurus would have written it when she was 5-6 years old? When she didn't even know what love was? Sorry ... I just don't know what to think yet. I'm just a humble goldfish.

 

Okay, I have a partial answer ... psychotics can be very, very adept at faking emotions in order to get their way. Very. Is Eurus faking? I don't know. I don't think I can measure her by the same standards I would a "normal" person.

 

As to "psychotic", would you describe Mary's old comrade as "psychotic" after having been left alone to be tortured senselessly and without end for six years?  Or do you, in pity, call him a tortured soul?  Do you blame him for being angry?  (One can certainly blame him for misdirecting his anger, but that of course is not the same thing).  I believe that is why the writers created this particular backstory about Mary - so that the audience would sympathize with him, and thus sympathize with the little girl in the same situation (and is why she is depicted as a little girl) - who has been alone and tortured (by existence itself) without end since childhood.  It is another of the mirrors they created for the audience to reflect upon.

Possibly, but to me the difference is, Ajay was made "psychotic" by his treatment. Eurus was born that way (if we are to believe Mycroft.) I can apply "sympathetic" to Ajay, but somehow, for me the better description for Eurus is "pitiable." I think it's because Ajay had a reason to become what he did, but Eurus ... if she was born that way, then it was just ill fate. I feel sorry for her, but I can't sympathize with her, because I've never been psychotic. But I have been hurt, betrayed, and angry, like Ajay. (Not to that extent, thank goodness. )

 

And then we have Culverton Smith, who is (also) a homicidal maniac. One who felt better when he started confessing his sins. One could say that Ajay had some justification for his actions, misguided though they were. So maybe it's Smith who is a mirror for Eurus? Since he too was born, not created (I assume). And since Eurus also "felt better" when her sin was revealed. (Or did she?)

 

To be honest, I tend to think of Ajay and Culverton less as possible mirrors, and more as foreshadowing; it's less specific. But since you mention mirroring, I find it interesting that when Eurus and Moriarty meet, they literally mirror each other's movements. Although I thought, when I first saw it, that was really meant to convey a form of sex.