RavenMorganLeigh wrote:

I gotta say this; whether Sherlock "technically died or not, the real issue is that Mary shot an unarmed man , and to make matters worse, it was someone she called a friend; and the best freind of her husband, who grieved for him for two years. If you add to that, the fact that Sherlock, on seeing Mary pointing the gun at him, said to her, "Mary, let me help you, " and her reactions was to shoot him--
She initally wasn't interested in his help, redemption, -- she wanted to cover up her past. 

I don't think there is a way to make this better. :-(

No; whilst it's interesting to follow Sherlock's precept and Do Our Research, the moral questions are pretty clear cut, and Moftiss wanted to leave us no room to doubt that Mary had killed Sherlock.

No-one has much of a clue as to how the Lazurus Syndrome happens, so Moftiss are free to show us their version in Sherlock's mind; it's an intensively moving piece of acting by Benedict from start to finish, and the others were pretty good as well.

But it boils down to the cold stark fact that Mary was happier pulling the trigger of her gun than accepting the help freely offered to her by someone who had devoted immense time and energy to making her marriage and life with his best friend the best that he possibly could. And it seems clear that this was not a momentary aberration; she threatened him in hospital, and she was hunting him through London with a loaded gun in her pocket. She knew what Sherlock's apparent death had done to John, but she was prepared to do it again...


 

Zatoichi wrote:

Willow wrote:

Zatoichi wrote:

I am not a doctor and have none in the family, but what I found while researching the internet was that life-saving measures are only to be stopped after the blood circulation is interrupted long enough to cause irreparable brain damage. And when the brain is irreparably damaged there is no clawing back, not even for John Watson. So while the scene was very dramatic it was also not very realistic imo. But I will go and search for your lenghty screeds first before I´ll start arguing..

It may speed your research if you look for Lazarus Syndrome; it has the added virtue of being a pun on the plan in the Reichenbach Fall, which would have made Moftiss laugh even more

 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2121643/

Wow, thanks, that was interesting! I never thought 45% of the patients could have achieved a good neurological outcome after being without circulation for more than 3 minutes! Still that does not mean they returned from the dead, it just means that even after around 10 minutes without circulation they can still be alive.

To quote the article: "Death should not be certified in any patient immediately after stopping CPR, and one should wait at least 10 minutes, if not longer, to verify and confirm death beyond doubt. This is in line with what was said by W H Sweet in 1978: ‘the time honoured criteria of the stoppage of the heart beat and circulation are indicative of death only when they persist long enough for the brain to die."

I don´t make any moral implications here, for me it makes absolutely no difference if Mary very nearly killed him or actually killed him, I just wanted to discuss the terms.

You are most welcome!

Nobody understands it, but I like to feel that our head canon Sherlock would applaud our efforts to live up to his precept of 'Do your research', though it is an incredibly rare phenomenem; the hugely surprised medics were justifiably hugely surprised. You will note that they didn't disconnect Sherlock from the monitoring equipment, being on the safe side.

I must express some scepticism about how many doctors would actually follow the advice in the paper about what to tell the relatives; on the whole, 'we think he's dead but we're leaving him there for another 10 minutes to be on the safe side' is probably not the most sensitive thing to say to people who have just lost a loved one, and in an incredibly busy emergency facility the doctors are unlikely to stand there for 10 minutes when there are other people in urgent need of their help. And 10 minutes is an entirely arbitrary figure; people have come back from longer than that...
 

Swanpride wrote:

Sherlock survived without brain damage. Meaning that we are certainly not talking about 10 minutes here.

 
Actually, we may be. The paper makes it clear that some patients do come back without brain damage, for reasons nobody understands, after longer periods than the usually quoted figure of 3-4 minutes.

Ozymandias wrote:

In any case, we all agree that Sherlock actually died or almost die after Mary's shooting? HLV showed us that he flatlined. He came back to life thanks his love for John Watson (my god, it sounds so cheesy haha). There are facts shown by the episode. All the rest is merely speculation. Unfortunately, we don't know and we will not know if Sherlock truly forgave Mary until the airing of the season 4.

Something bothered me though. I listened to the episode 20 of 3 patchs podcast and they were all seemed convinced that Mary seems to be truly sorry for shooting Sherlock at the first place, by saying "I am sorry Sherlock, I truly am". I really thought she was very cold at this precise moment. She didn't seem to be neither upset nor remorseful for shooting Sherlock.

If she was all that sorry, she wouldn't have shot him in the first place! ;-)

Heck, if she was sorry, maybe she wouldn't hunted him down-- with the same gun equipped with a silencer? Maybe Sherlock woulnd't have had to take special precautions to make sure she didn't kill him after she tracked him down...Hmmmm... 

Doesn't seem sorry for anything other than having her lies revealed to John. 

 

The thing is, a gun is not a surgical instrument. It just isn't. Wasn't Sherlock on morphine when he (out-and-out lied) err.. pulled that theory out of his..err... mindpalace? 

I don't know whether I just have an overactive imagination, am so sad or what.  But certainly, if I keep this up for  another 2 years hiatus, I'm gonna burn myself out!
Ok, let me just throw tihs out there:
Was Mary some how involved with/working for CAM, or just at his mercy?
How do we know that scene wasn't set up. for Sherlock to find them?
Did Mary go off script?
Maybe CAM set it up, maybe he was at Mary's mercy.
I dunnno.
Yep, I've lost it.

Swanpride wrote:

For me the fact that Sherlock survived is the important one.

I remember watching the episode and not being surprised at all when he revealed the "surgery" explanation.

Because up to this point I kept thinking "there is no way he would have survived getting shot from such a close distance if she had really tried to kill him".

Mary is near tears multiple times during the episode....to me it is obvious that she is holding herself barely together. Until John accepts her and she practically dissolves in tears, showing how worried she truly was.

Well, she shot him in the liver and he flatlined. So for me, yes, she killed him. I don't think Moftiss would have showed us Sherlock, fighting to come back to life for John Watson (the scene with the stairs) if they didn't mean to say that Sherlock died. We have several hypothesis to explain the fact that she didn't shot him in the head in Magnusson's office : 
- Sentiment (the surgery explanation, I don't really buy it [WHY PRECISELY THIS SPOT WHICH CAN BE DEADLY? WHYYYY NOT KNOCK HIM OUT LIKE MAGNUSSON? SAME EFFECT. NO THE LIVER IS NOT A SAFE SPOT.] but... still)
- John would have pursue her immediately if Sherlock have died immediately (+Mycroft fury)
- Missing her spot (well, even the best ones are not unerring, look at Sherlock)

However, I don't know if Sherlock meant to forgive Mary. I think his explanation about the "surgery" is not really credible, if we stay close to the facts. And I don't appreciate the fact that Sherlock rejected the fault to John with "the attraction to psychopaths thing". He blamed the victim "because you knew for the beginning she was like that. NO HE DIDN'T KNOW. PURELY COINCIDENCE (FOR HIM); Of course, universe is not so lazy. So maybe IT'S NOT A COINCIDENCE FOR HER, but it's just an hypothesis... and how could he know that Mary called the ambulance? He said "8 minutes", but it depends on the traffic jam (which varies EVERY DAY, EVERY HOUR, EVERY MINUTE). 

In conclusion, there's too many flaws in his explanation. But Sherlock missed so much things this season, so maybe he is just missing one thing more. Or maybe he's just being altruistic and wanted to make up the Watsons. After all, he just wants John to be happy. He proved it many times this season (the wedding, the murder of Magnusson). Perhaps he doesn't want to be ONCE AGAIN the source of John's unhappiness (even if it wasn't his fault this time). 

For me, the main flaw in this plot is that Mary never apologized for her actions. Sherlock let her think that her actions were just fine (surgery, mixed message, blahblahblah). But actually I think we all agree that she was being really selfish (and creepy > I love John and I'll do anything in my power to prevent him to leave me, even if I've to almost kill/kill your best friend you grieved for 2 years). I like to think there's a reason why Moftiss never showed us Mary properly apologizing for shooting Sherlock. Otherwise, it's just creepy. 

MARY: Because John can’t ever know that I lied to him. It would break him and I would lose him forever – and, Sherlock, I will never let that happen.

MARY: Please ...
(He turns back to her.)
MARY: ... understand. There is nothing in this world that I would not do to stop that happening.

How am I supposed to wait 2 years to finally know??? 

Swanpride wrote:

There is an element of protecting John in all this. After all, she could have simply killed Sherlock and Magnussen. John would have lived under suspicion, but without gunshot residue on his hands and Sherlock as victim, it wouldn't have been hard to convince the police that there was an unknown assailant. Mary could have lived with John, without Sherlock in the picture. But she choose the middle path, so to speak, in an effort to preserve her secret but also Sherlock's life - for John's sake.

And Mycroft would stand by and accept this? I'm sorry but it's ludicrous to believe that Mycroft would let it go as an unsolvable case, and whilst the police might let it go- though I don't see Lestrade going along with that either- Mycroft wouldn't stop until he had the person responsible in prison for life.

Provided he was feeling nice, of course...
 

Swanpride wrote:

Would Mycroft be nicer to the person who shot Sherlock? Mary is in trouble in either case. If Mycroft finds out - and Mycroft might be a lot of things, but he is not all-knowing. He would have no reason to suspect Mary if she gets away clean. But when Sherlock survives, he would question why. Nevertheless Mary takes the risk. For John.

Mycroft would start at the obvious point; most crimes of violence, and in particular murder, are committed by people known to the victim; an unknown assailant killing CAM and Sherlock, but leaving Janine, the security guard and John alive rings very large bells. Mary's cover can be dismantled in a couple of hours, as evidenced by the fact that Sherlock did it, and Mary's chances of avoiding Mycroft following Sherlock's death are zero. Mycroft is better than Sherlock at deduction, and after that it's all over bar the shouting, or at least her conviction for the murders of two people.

Shooting Sherlock in the chest, after ascertaining that John is on the premises, is premeditated; it prevents John coming straight after her as he would do if Sherlock was unequivocally dead. Shooting Sherlock but not CAM is lunatic, unless, of course, she wants CAM alive and Sherlock dead, in which case it's the logical thing to do.

Also, go Nakahara! Beautifully put



 

@nakahara: But she is disillusioned, maybe she doesn´t know Sherlock well enough to really take his offer to help while she is pointing a gun at him serious? Maybe she just thinks he tries to distract and disarm her, immediately to call John.. it´s what most people would do.

(I can´t believe I find myself defending Mary again.. why does that keep happening..? ^^)

Last edited by Zatoichi (March 4, 2014 12:32 pm)