I liked the idea about Mary not being completely sure what to do (better then the idea that we have a plot hole here ) and taking a split second decision. I think she couldn't be really sure that she wouldn't kill Sherlock: she just gave him a chance to survive.To me, the most chilling moment of Mary is another, however: it is in hospital, when she is saying in this falsely cheerful voice "Sherlock? You don't tell him". We have a shot of Magnussen's lips "bad, bad girl" and then cut to Mary's "Look at me and tell me you don't go to tell him". I wanted to scream "help! she is going to disconnect his oxygen in a moment!" She was truly scary in this scene.

If I start rambling I'm sorry (little disclaimer there!)

I'm not sure if she did intend to kill him or not, I think she was prepared to use Sherlock as leverage with CAM though.

CAM was witness to their standoff, she said if he took one more step she would shoot him. He moved, and so she shot. She never readjusted her aim, I don't think she would have intentionally killed him, but I think she knew when she had taken the shot that she might have done by saying she was truly sorry.

This then sends the message to CAM that she really means business, she's not to be messed with any more.
She is thinking only of herself, save for the tiny amount of sentiment Sherlock deduced she had.

I was thinking if she had to shoot him and incapacitate him, where else could she shoot? An arm or leg would keep him conscious and witness to anything else or say anything. Any higher and you're in heart lungs and brain, and lower you're in stomach, intestines and serious internal damage. Did she actually picked somewhere that would send him into unconsciousness, but not cause lasting damage to organs etc?

sj4iy wrote:

The face that she shot him in the liver while missing his ribs, spine and other vital organs, suggest that she is, indeed, a crack shot.

Not really. Mary is using a snub gun utterly impractical for precision shooting. This fact puts an interesting spin on peoples' hope she spared him deliberately.

And no, you would never put a silencer on that kind of gun either as it would be useless.

It is a tv show after all.

Willow wrote:

sj4iy wrote:

The face that she shot him in the liver while missing his ribs, spine and other vital organs, suggest that she is, indeed, a crack shot.  Yes, he would lose a lot of blood, but that's why she called the ambulance immediately.  If she wanted to kill him, she could have easily done so.

Actually, ribs are not vital organs; I have cracked them a few times and the only thing you need to worry about is one puncturing your lung, when you are in deep doodah. Oh, and the pain, which is really not fun. There are no nerve endings in the lung but there are vast numbers in the pleural wall surrounding them.That is why shooting someone in the chest is going to ensure that they are in agony.

But no marksman, however brilliant, could have deliberately avoided the ribs; it's a common error for people who do not study anatomy to imagine that the ribs are in a fixed position so all you need to do is aim between them, but it is impossible because there is a wide variation in 'normal' placement' in every human being. One size does not fit all. And every time you breathe in or out your ribs move in position, making it completely impossible to make the shot.

She wasn't 'doing surgery' as Sherlock suggests; the only reason she didn't make the immediate kill shot was because she knew that John wouldn't come after her if there was a chance that he could act to save Sherlock's life. And on the whole, being shot in the liver is not a good recipe for living a long and happy life. It's a centre of blood interchange; at any one time it will hold around a pint of blood with a continuous flow in and out, and a bullet through it would be a pretty good way of killing the person you are shooting...
 
 

"The ribs OR vital organs"- I'm fully aware of the difference between bone and organs.

I mentioned that hitting the ribs would have been bad because they not only encase vital organs, but bullet hitting bone can not only splinter the bone, but splinter the bullet as well and cause catastrophic injury.

I never said hitting the liver was a 'good' thing...in fact, I mentioned that he would bleed profusely as the liver has a very large blood supply.

HOWEVER...the liver CAN heal and even regenerate (to a certain extent) from an injury like that, unlike other vital organs.

In any case, it's a plausible injury with a plausible outcome.  Is it exactly like what would happen in real life?  Probably not...but stranger things have happened.  It's more realistic than most things you'll find on tv.  "Hyper-realism" is the term.  Everything is more accurate and things are more dramatic.  It's television.  But it's not unheard of to not die from a bullet to the liver.

Last edited by sj4iy (January 19, 2014 1:39 am)

The show is so medically improbable that trying to decide Mary's intention by where she shot him is probably futile, but since he actually arrested I think we can assume in story it was a very near thing.

!warning for largely irrelevant medical geekery!

As to what would happen if you actually shot someone on that trajectory, and assuming normal anatomy:-

t the very least you'd make 'holes' in the left lobe of the liver, the anterior and posterior walls of the stomach, and the ribs posteriorly as they come down a lot lower in the back.  You might also get the diaphragm and lung, depending on individual anatomy and how inflated their lungs where.  You might also hit the splenic artery and/or vein and the head of pancreas.  If your shot was angled a bit to your right you might also hit the vertebral column.

To make matters worse a bullet doesn't punch clean holes - it sets up a shockwave and kills a fair bit of tissue as it passes through.  This can be worse with a slower bullet that stays in the body because it looses all it's energy in the body rather than passing through.The liver is particularly inelastic and tends to shatter rather than give a clean tear.

If he lived to get to OTH he'd have several flood lines in and would have been volume replaced, at least partially, before they started.  If he was going to arrest he'd probably have done so on induction of the anaesthetic, not on the table.

In the unlikely event he survived Sherlock would have a full length midline laparotomy scar rather than the neat little incision the bandage on his right upper quadrant would suggest.

I guess Sherlock kind of takes it on the chin(or maybe that should be chest?!)that his is dangerous work and he's likely to get shot.
Ok he maybe doesn't expect it from his best freind's wife!  But then he has already expressed to us how(and this last part is my words!) John married a female version of himself. The difference between Sherlock and Mary being that Sherlock was niot trained to kill, but Mary was,.

Mrs.Wenceslas wrote:

sorry if this is somewhere else - too much stuff to read - but I have a question:
Sherlock knew/found out that Janine was CAM´s PA - why was not Mary suspect to him? I mean - strange coincidence between Mary´s friend- bridesmaid and his enemy´s PA...doesn´t he noticed that Mary is bound someway with CAM? 

He might have noticed if he were impartial. But he wasn't.