Hanka wrote:

Did I say anything about Sherlock in my post? This is about my only post in this forum in which I don't complain for hours about the way Sherlock's murder is dealt with in the series (hint: it is dealt with for about two minutes and then ridiculed by Sherlock returning so easily). Please don't make me repeat it (you can go through either this thread or the one called "I don't like HLV/Criticism", which I opened, btw). So, I completely agree that Sherlock should go to prison just like I think Mary should. However, I disagree that some people "deserve to die", or that it's the right decision to send Sherlock away to die, or Mary even. But, yeah, you can read about that in my other 386467 posts on this topic.

Sorry if what I wrote offended you, I certainly didn't mean to. There just seem to be a lot of people who have no problem forgiving Sherlock for what he did but are very determined about not forgiving Mary (I may fall a little bit into that category myself by forgiving Sherlock and being still undetermined about Mary). I was just trying to point out the prallels between the two (probably more to convince myself than anyone else) and I'm sorry if quoting you in this regard was a bad choice. I just didn't actually have time to read all the posts in this forum yet and to memorize who wrote what . . .


 

Willow wrote:

Mary says 'I'm sorry' after she shot Sherlock. The only things she says to Sherlock before then are to ask whether John is with him and then to tell him that if he takes one more step 'I swear I will kill you'. 

Putting a bullet into someone's chest is not the sort of mild faux pas which can be put right by saying 'I'm sorry' afterwards; it is an unescapable fact. 

Ok, so she said it after and not before, whatever, I still think she meant it. The point was not whether it can be put right, the point was that she felt sorry about it. She thought she had to do it to protect her secret, I'm not saying that's good, but she did feel sorry about it. 

Whether what she did was good is another thing, it really depends on what the stakes are, and we don't really know anything about that.
 

Swanpride wrote:

Just for the record: Being a CIA operative doesn't protect you from prison in another country. The CIA might do an exchange for you if you are lucky, but in general, you have to work outside the law.

Yeah, that's true. But I doubt the UK would extradite her to, say, Afghanistan or Iran or something? Especially if they know she worked for the CIA? Plus, as far as I know, there's not actually a regulation for murders commited in service of an intelligence service, it's kind of a legal limbo. Especially if it's the Americans. Remember Bin Laden? I was very disturbed by the lack of people saying that it's actually, you know, illegal to just kill people off (even in the US, if there hasn't been a trial). Nobody thought of pressing charges against the group of Americans (employed by the government) for killing him. I know this is kind of a big example, but the principle is the same. I'm still convinced Mary meant something else.

Also, LightPurple: It's fine. It's just that everybody always goes on about how I'm wrong for saying something about moral problems in HLV, and how Magnussen obviously deserved it, and then there's somebody who actually kind of agrees with me (in some points) and they still contradict me :D
 

Last edited by Hanka (January 20, 2014 9:27 pm)

Hanka wrote:

Swanpride wrote:

Just for the record: Being a CIA operative doesn't protect you from prison in another country. The CIA might do an exchange for you if you are lucky, but in general, you have to work outside the law.

Yeah, that's true. But I doubt the UK would extradite her to, say, Afghanistan or Iran or something? Especially if they know she worked for the CIA? Plus, as far as I know, there's not actually a regulation for murders commited in service of an intelligence service, it's kind of a legal limbo. Especially if it's the Americans. Remember Bin Laden? I was very disturbed by the lack of people saying that it's actually, you know, illegal to just kill people off (even in the US, if there hasn't been a trial). Nobody thought of pressing charges against the group of Americans (employed by the government) for killing him. I know this is kind of a big example, but the principle is the same. I'm still convinced Mary meant something else.

Also, LightPurple: It's fine. It's just that everybody always goes on about how I'm wrong for saying something about moral problems in HLV, and how Magnussen obviously deserved it, and then there's somebody who actually kind of agrees with me (in some points) and they still contradict me :D
 

No, I certainly don't think that CAM deserved to be killed by Sherlock; part of the tragedy of the episode is that Sherlock did something which he knew was wrong. As Mycroft said 'My brother is a murderer', and it seems pretty clear to me that Sherlock knows that he is a murderer and accepts that he must make reparation as best he can.

The reparation we see is his choice to take the mission which Mycroft had told him to refuse because he would not survive beyond six months; Lady Smallwood, Sherlock's client, notes that this is not merciful. She must herself feel an element of guilt because if she had not asked Sherlock for help he would never have become involved; he has almost lost his life as a result of being shot in CAM's office, now he will lose his life on the mission.

I think the writers have set up a series of moral questions. Right up to the point where Mary turns round Sherlock thinks she is Lady Smallwood, about to kill CAM in revenge for the death of her husband, and thus almost a straight rerun of the original ACD story, though in the original the killer was not Holmes' client. In the original story Sherlock Holmes remains hidden, does not attempt to stop her, and refuses to help the police find the person responsible; the moral questions there are whether he was right to allow someone to take a life without attempting to prevent it, and whether he was right to refuse to help the police find the person responsible.

In this version we still have another victim of a blackmailer but this time Sherlock intervenes, trying, as he thinks, to prevent Lady Smallwood from killing CAM. The irony of this version is that if Sherlock had remained hidden and refrained from intervening, as in the original story, he would not have been shot and almost fatally wounded; his attempt to prevent Lady Smallwood from killing CAM results instead in his own near death at the hands of someone else he has offered to help a few moments earlier.

And then there is the denouement at Appledore; Sherlock ends up killing someone whose life he has already saved, at a very high personal cost, which piles irony upon irony. Sherlock could have stepped aside and left CAM to the not so tender mercies of Mary; after all, she has already breached the apparently impregnable security of CAM's London office, and Lady Smallwood's husband has committed suicide so Sherlock cannot help her.

The trip to Appledore is the last part of the ACD story; in the original Holmes burned all of the papers which the blackmailer had since they could have been found and used by others continuing the cycle of blackmail. Sherlock's plan to access and destroy all of the information in the vaults crumbles with the discovery that there are no vaults, and the knowledge that CAM will not only continue to torment his victims, as he demonstrates so vividly on John, but also wield yet more power because he can bring pressure to bear on Mycroft, seems to be the last straw.

But Sherlock never claims that he was right to kill CAM, or that he deserved to be dead, and he never disputes that he must pay the price for killing him, which is his own life.  That is the difference between him and Mary, who is prepared to kill anybody who stands between her and anything she wants and has no intention whatsoever of making reparation for her actions...




 

Swanpride wrote:

Mycroft most likely didn't know why Sherlock did it. During their last talk he asks him why he hates Magnusson that much. He wouldn't need to ask if he knew about the "pressure point". So from his point of view, Sherlock killed him because he didn't like him.

 

Er, no. Mycroft asks Sherlock

'Why do you ... hate him?

And after Sherlock explains he then asks his brother why Mycroft doesn't hate him, and gets the explanation that CAM doesn't do that much harm and is occasionally useful.

But Mycroft is a genius, as is Sherlock, and on the whole people with brains the size of a small planet do not think in terms of killing someone just because they don't like them. If Sherlock wandered around killing people because he didn't like them there would be a very large pile of corpses strewn in his wake, which there self-evidently is not.

Mycroft would have understood, as soon as they discovered that there was no vault,  that CAM had set it up to get at Mycroft. It was Mycroft's laptop that was the subject of the proposed deal with CAM; you don't need to be a genius to work out CAM's motivation, and you don't need to be a genius to understand Sherlock's motivation. But both Mycroft and Sherlock have a sense of morality, which is why they both accept that murder is murder...
 

Kari wrote:

The show entirely lost credibility for me with Mary shooting Sherlock. I have looked the other way on a lot of strange plot holes, some even pretty major, but this one takes the cake.

Someone does not shoot a "friend" when they are offering to help them. She should be dead to Sherlock after this; arrested too. Sherlock should want to protect John from someone so cold blooded. She doesn't love John, you do not (almost) kill your husbands best friend to save yourself a little trouble in being honest. You do not build a real relationship on deception.

How does everyone assume that she just meant to harm him? He DIED. His heart stopped beating, and a lot of the episode was taken up with him fighting for his life (which, later on, seems meaningless as everyone is acting like it was no big deal). She shot him in the chest. If she meant harm, there are plenty of other locations to shoot. She could not have calculated that such a shot would almost but not quite kill him. I don't care that she called an ambulance... there is no telling when it would've arrived (who cares about average arrival time -- you're going to risk someone's life on that assumption?!). A minute later would've been a minute too late.

Later they're all acting like it was just a flesh wound, to move on because all is forgiven; she's sorry? Who cares. Actions are what matter, not words. Why are we forgiving her again? Because Sherlock says so? Not going to fly. I need reasons. Because she's "good" for John? She seems like the most psychotic person in the show. How on earth is this being overlooked?

John forgiving Mary was absurd, I do not know a single person that would forgive their spouse for almost murdering their best friend, and for such a petty reason. He didn't even read her file. He's willfully ignorant and forgiving... but to an extreme that just does not exist in reality. It cheapens his relationship to Sherlock that he could forgive her and start up a relationship again like it was just a little misstep that all couples face.

It's totally ruined the show.

I think you will find that many of us regard Mary's actions as unforgivable and we have real problems in understanding the motivations.

My own view is that the only person entitled to forgive the person who shoots them is the person who has been shot, ie Sherlock;  the only explanation I can come up with for Sherlock's motivations is that he is guilty about not realising how much his apparent death had damaged John, he believed that Mary genuinely loved John, in an admittedly obsessed way, and at the time he told John that they should sort out their 'domestic' he knew he was bleeding internally and was not at all sure that he was going to survive.

And then there's the fact that Mary is pregnant; Sherlock has a romanticised view of motherhood since his only experience is of his own mother who gave up a brilliant career as a mathematician to have her family. And of course it's John's baby - or so we assume - whom Sherlock included in his first and last vow to protect.

I think Sherlock's attitude would be very different if Mary was not pregnant, but, since she is the next question is 'do you want the baby to be raised by a psychopath?' And since Mary clearly is a psychopath she needs, at the very least, to be kept on a short chain and the only person who could do that is John. John isn't a psychopath because he has a perfectly normal personalty for a trauma surgeon, where being an adrenaline junkie is not a drawback but a requirement. The sooner the writers put him in the role he was trained for the better, since he will be happily getting his fixes without punching Sherlock..

John could have entirely rejected Mary, and without the baby I am sure he would have done so. He too is trapped by by 'do you want your baby to be raised by a psychopath' and the only thing he can is avoid that is by sticking with her so the baby isn't raised solely by a psychopath.

And of course he may not really have thrown the real AGRA in the fire; I am pretty sure that Mycroft would be highly interested; Sherlock was still in hospital until shortly before Xmas, which may have made it a bit more difficult task for him to pinch it and replace after he had it copied, and John himself may have it copied also.

I think both Sherlock and Watson are trying not to spook Mary, because if she runs then they lose hope of John being able to raise his daughter, and Mary is good at running. I suppose, for me, the right phrase is 'its the baby, stoopid!



 

Some thoughts: 

- Irene: of course she is focused on power, manipulation, and leverage but not in the very situation that might be connected with love, i.e. in her relationship with Sherlock. This is her one weakness which in the end leads to her downfall. You may criticise that with her love/attraction proves to be disadvantage (interesting parallel to Sherlock/Mycroft) but not that she uses love for evil ends. It proves an impediment in reaching her aims. 
- I have a far more positive view of Molly. She is a wonderful character IMO who gets stronger and more important in the course of the series. She may have a certain type but I would not call it obsession to love a person even if this love is not requited. They have become real friends in series 3 and he appreciates her as a person and a professional which is saying a lot in case Sherlock.
- Donovan - when do we ever see her being ashamed of her relationship with Anderson? It is mentioned only in ASiP as far as I remember. I suppose everyone would be angry and ashamed after Sherlock's deduction. In series 3 there is no connection anymore between her and Anderson and we see her doing her job in a professional way. 
- Do you really think Janine was in love with Sherlock? I don't think so. She takes revenge for being used by him as a means to get to CAM. 
- As for Mrs Hudson - I always liked how well she does on her own, living an independent life, having a little fling with Mr Chatterjee and being quite tough for an elderly lady. And I seem to remember she mentioned that she did not love Mr Hudson but that it was purely physical attraction. Besides, she does not seem to suffer very much from the memory of her failed marriage and has built a life of her own. 

I would say of all these women only Mary and Molly are really in love. 

 

Kari wrote:

Willow wrote:

My own view is that the only person entitled to forgive the person who shoots them is the person who has been shot, ie Sherlock

You can be harmed by someone directly or indirectly. Just because the bullet hit one person does not mean one person suffered as a result.

A murderer only has family and friends of the victim left to apologize to, and usually, they want to hear it. Or you could look at domestic violence... it's only the mother being hit, but everyone suffers. The father has taken his whole family down around him and often the mother is so abused that she cannot even see the problem. Or a drug addict; they are only technically harming themselves but you better believe they have reparations to make to everyone they love. If they don't, they're not going to get through the 12 steps.

Willow wrote:

John could have entirely rejected Mary, and without the baby I am sure he would have done so. He too is trapped by by 'do you want your baby to be raised by a psychopath' and the only thing he can is avoid that is by sticking with her so the baby isn't raised solely by a psychopath.

... all the more reason to get her arrested for attempted murder, and turning over all the evidence against her. The courts remove the baby from her care when its born.

I am far from disagreeing with your position; I would have been happy to see her arrested, and we know that a knock on effect of her shooting Sherlock was that he was unable to help prevent the suicide of Lady Smallwood's husband.

I think, however, it would not have been simple to prevent her running; she was a trained agent and one hint would be enough to start her running. Sherlock was back in hospital, exceedingly ill, which leaves it to John, and, from everything we have seen of John, he is not good at deception. He's also not very good at judging character, since if he was he would not have married Mary in the first place. There is also the problem that in England there would be legal difficulties in refusing Mary bail on a charge of attempted murder; that is the crime they would have had to charge her with until they could substantiate whatever was on the memory stick, and even that charge might be difficult with Sherlock in the ICU and unable to give testimony against her, whilst CAM was refusing to identify her to the police.

I don't like it, but I can see that it would be difficult to prevent her disappearing; in the end it comes back to the baby. That is the gamechanger, and that is, I think, why Mofftiss made her character pregnant. It was the one thing which would protect her from the obvious consequences of her actions 
 

Willow wrote:

Kari wrote:

Willow wrote:

My own view is that the only person entitled to forgive the person who shoots them is the person who has been shot, ie Sherlock

You can be harmed by someone directly or indirectly. Just because the bullet hit one person does not mean one person suffered as a result.

A murderer only has family and friends of the victim left to apologize to, and usually, they want to hear it. Or you could look at domestic violence... it's only the mother being hit, but everyone suffers. The father has taken his whole family down around him and often the mother is so abused that she cannot even see the problem. Or a drug addict; they are only technically harming themselves but you better believe they have reparations to make to everyone they love. If they don't, they're not going to get through the 12 steps.

Willow wrote:

John could have entirely rejected Mary, and without the baby I am sure he would have done so. He too is trapped by by 'do you want your baby to be raised by a psychopath' and the only thing he can is avoid that is by sticking with her so the baby isn't raised solely by a psychopath.

... all the more reason to get her arrested for attempted murder, and turning over all the evidence against her. The courts remove the baby from her care when its born.

I am far from disagreeing with your position; I would have been happy to see her arrested, and we know that a knock on effect of her shooting Sherlock was that he was unable to help prevent the suicide of Lady Smallwood's husband.

I think, however, it would not have been simple to prevent her running; she was a trained agent and one hint would be enough to start her running. Sherlock was back in hospital, exceedingly ill, which leaves it to John, and, from everything we have seen of John, he is not good at deception. He's also not very good at judging character, since if he was he would not have married Mary in the first place. There is also the problem that in England there would be legal difficulties in refusing Mary bail on a charge of attempted murder; that is the crime they would have had to charge her with until they could substantiate whatever was on the memory stick, and even that charge might be difficult with Sherlock in the ICU and unable to give testimony against her, whilst CAM was refusing to identify her to the police.

I don't like it, but I can see that it would be difficult to prevent her disappearing; in the end it comes back to the baby. That is the gamechanger, and that is, I think, why Mofftiss made her character pregnant. It was the one thing which would protect her from the obvious consequences of her actions
 

Yep! And THIS might also be why Sherlock did not (a) tell John about TRF beforehand, or (b) contact him during those two years he was gone, etc, etc.... and the thing that gets me-- a lot of the fandom still thinks Sherlock deserves to be punished, even more. But we (some of us) can sweep Mary shooting Sherlock under the rug, easily. Maybe it's because some of us think that Sherlock deserved it? 

Hmmmmn.... 

It bothers me, just a little...

Swanpride wrote:

Mary made a decision in a split second. It might have been the wrong one, but she did it, and she did have to face the consequences. It might not look much for some people, but I think that John would have had a much easier time to forgive her if not for her shooting Sherlock, and a part of him will always be angry about it - which is in a way, for Mary one of the worst punishments she could face. She would have prefered to stay Mary Morstan in John's eyes.

Sherlock's decision on the other hand was not one he did in a short moment, but one he planned ahead. He planned ahead that John would see his suicide. Everyone who ever dealt with suicidal loved ones knows what a toll this takes on the ones left behind. It was an unbelievable cruel thing to do.

In both cases, though, John's feelings are the most important part for me. He forgave them. And that's it for me.

 
I'm sorry but suggesting that Sherlock was being unbelievably cruel implies that Sherlock had meaningful alternatives. And given the plot he had no alternatives; he was acting to save lives. The fact that John carried such crippling guilt was because John had been incredibly unkind in his last conversation with Sherlock before he rushed off to the supposedly dying Mrs Hudson; John was guilty because he knew he had said dreadful, and completely unjustified, things.

There is nothing in the programme to suggest that Sherlock did have alternatives when he was faced with a Moriarty who was prepared to die rather than give up the abort code; Sherlock had no reason to expect that John would get back to Bart's, so the 'suicide' cannot have been set up for John's benefit. There is no evidence to support the belief that it was. I am baffled as to how people can completely ignore the evidence in order to arrive at a full blown melodramatic romance drama featuring a poor tragic figure and a dreadful villain who just happens to have saved a lot of people's lives, including that of the poor tragic figure.

As far as I can tell you would have preferred a situation in which everybody died; I appreciate that Götterdämmerung has dramatic attraction but then there would have been no Season 3. I prefer the outcome which provides us with Season 3, and I am living in hope that John will grow up and stop flouncing. Who knows, someday he may become the sort of person you could trust to keep a secret.

In the real world the consequences of killing someone are rather higher than the disapprobation of a loved one; suggesting that Mary has faced the consequences when it is only the disapprobation of a loved one is perilously close to farce. Sherlock, by contrast, was prepared to pay with his own life; he accepted that he had murdered someone. It is Mary who argues that some people should be killed and that therefore it is not murder; she has no morality beyond what she wants...