Liberty wrote:

Yes, they said they'd wanted to use Leinster Gardens in The Empty Hearse, didn't they?   Do you think that they made it a metaphor for Mary and changed her character just so that they could use it in HLV?  Oh dear. 

I don´t know, but obviously they wrote Janine in HLV because Yasmine Akram did such a fantastic job in TSoT and gave Tom a much bigger role because they found him so fantastic as Sherlock double.. looks a bit as if they´re making things up as they go. Then all the roles included to give family members their moment on the show.. ah, I´ll stop now and vent my negativity somewhere offline!

I still kind of like it because it´s still kind of a good show with kind of clever ideas! (Whoa, watch me ending on a positive note! ^^)
 

Zatoichi wrote:

Liberty wrote:

Yes, they said they'd wanted to use Leinster Gardens in The Empty Hearse, didn't they?   Do you think that they made it a metaphor for Mary and changed her character just so that they could use it in HLV?  Oh dear. 

I don´t know, but obviously they wrote Janine in HLV because Yasmine Akram did such a fantastic job in TSoT and gave Tom a much bigger role because they found him so fantastic as Sherlock double.. looks a bit as if they´re making things up as they go. Then all the roles included to give family members their moment on the show.. ah, I´ll stop now and vent my negativity somewhere offline!

I still kind of like it because it´s still kind of a good show with kind of clever ideas! (Whoa, watch me ending on a positive note! ^^)
 

I'd imagined they wrote each series as a whole.  I know it's different writers, but I assumed they collaborated over the general story arc, and continuity at least, and obviously they do do that to some extent (Mary guessing the code in TEH comes up as a sign of her background in HLV, etc.).  So I heard those bits in the commentary but was thinking "Surely they don't mean they wrote the story around those things" ... but it looks like maybe they did?   I'd also assumed that they filmed each series as a whole (around location timings, etc.) i.e. maybe a scene in HLV followed by a scene on TSOT depending on what was convenient.   But from what they were saying, that's not the case, and they'd already finished one episode and seen Yasmine and Tom's performances before even fully writing and casting the next episode, never mind fliming it.  There are some times when Mark asks Steven questions about quite important points, as if he doesn't actually know the answer.  Maybe he's just raising the question for our benefit, or maybe (amazingly, to me!) those are things they haven't fully hashed out between them. 

That's a bit of a revelation to me (as I'm so ignorant of the process of making a TV series).  It's maybe helping to explain to me why it doesn't always seem to hang together well.  Even though I love it .
 

Thank you, Besleybean!  It makes sense to film the episodes separately as they are like separate films.  I'd just thought it might be more cost-effective to film them as a whole.  It's fascinating that Steven writes last and his episodes are filmed last.  So in S3 the first two were filmed without fully knowing the conclusion (no wonder Mark asks about Mary's character)?  Because it wasn't written yet?  It will be interesting to watch with that in mind. 

This point has already been discussed, but I wanted to add my own two cents (the curse of coming to the game late). Before I start: As these things translate poorly when written down, let me warn you: the following lines are dripping with irony and not to be taken 100% seriously. If you feel offended by any of this, just assume I don’t mean it, I probably don’t. Proceed at your own caution.
 
The thing that really confused me when I watch His Last Vow: everyone is surprisingly o.k. with Sherlock getting shot at. Including Sherlock. Mummy Holmes seems to be the only person who is not cool with having her youngest be pierced by bullets. If we look at the three main participants in this drama we get:

Mary: Tells Sherlock she is going to shoot him, shoots him, apologizes and moves on to try to safe her relationship.

John: Is very, very cross with Mary. Because she shot his best friend? No. Because she lied to him, therefore violating the trust their relationship is built on and quite possibly aggravating his trust issues. He mentions the fact that she also shot his best friend exactly once, while trying to correct a statement from said best friend. He is also unhappy about the specifics of his wife’s former occupation.

Sherlock: Offers to help Mary while she points a gun at him, get’s shot, goes in and out of cardiac arrest, get’s off his pain medication so he is once more coherent and offers to help her again. Granted, his reaction makes the most sense when you see it from his perspective. He is still somewhat behind in his social skills, but he has very much internalized that when you do something wrong – say, making your best friend’s life hell by faking your death and then returning to his life in a surprising manner with a drawn-on disguise and a joke on your lips or shooting your husband’s best friend in the chest – you are supposed to say your sorry. Other than John, who is just unreasonable in these kind of situations, Sherlock does not hesitates to accept Mary’s apology. After all, she said she was sorry, truly sorry even. So, no biggy, she was after all not trying to kill him. That his heart stopped beating there for a minute was really just bad luck.
I personally feel that the fact that one of these three people shot one of the other two should have been more of an issue for everyone involved, they all move on to other things extremely quickly.
 
For everyone who read through my late-night ramblings: thank you very good much and I see you in the loo…I mean, good night
 

My view on the shooting:

I think everybody was seriously concerned for Sherlock, but there is a gap between where he first wakes up in the hospital after almost being dead, to the scenes with John, Lestrate and Mary at the hospital. At that point, it is clear that he will survive and he has probably already been in the hospital for a little while.

Meaning that all the concern and worry about him actually being shot and might die, has been done off-screen.

This might be a naive question, but... why not shoot him in the leg? That would be much less dangerous and still incapacitating. 

SusiGo wrote:

Exactly. And this is why I will never be convinced about the "saving one's life by shooting him in the chest" stuff. 

Well, considering she is an excellent assasin/marksman, it seems to be meant to be deliberate. I think this is Moftiss wanting to create a more dramatic "come back from the dead"-scene than you would have by a shot in the leg.

That scene was absolutely astounding, btw. One of the best ones in the show, in my opinion.
 

Yep, great twist. But my favorite will always be the 'let's kill protagonist, sort of, and piss off for two years' Reichenbach. 

maryagrawatson wrote:

The leg would have been even more dangerous: more likely to hit the femoral artery, more likely to shatter a bone and leave him permanently crippled. That fact that she nicked his inferior vena cava was unfortunate, but she did pick a spot where she was less likely to cause permanent and irrpairable damage has his IVC not been a tad over from where it is on average.

Mary

Sorry, but no.
http://archiveofourown.org/works/1235479
Here a surgeon explains where exactly Sherlock was shot. She explains in details all the consequenses Mary's shot could easily have had and comes to the conclusion that Sherlock was more than lucky to survive.

If you don't want to read it all, take a look at the pics in chapter 2 and 3.

Oh sorry, I didn't know you are a medic of some sort.

I discussed the topic with my mom who was a nurse at cardiology and a friend who earned a medical degree and they agreed with the AO3 meta. But surely the human body is as ambiguous as the show.