Well yeah, I know...I was just using historical revisionism!

I've just read a comment on YouTube, which confuses me:

"Also he makes a grammatical mistake. He says "That's what people do, don't they?" To be consistent, it should be "isn't it?" Might have been a heat-of-the-moment thing, or an error in the script, but I like to think that he's trying to hint to John that something's wrong. Because Sherlock. Never. Makes. Grammatical. Errors."

At first, I don't really get why there should be a grammatical error. So, your opinion on this?
 

Mary Me wrote:

Because Sherlock. Never. Makes. Grammatical. Errors.

 

Yes, he does.
SHERLOCK: Did you know there were other people after her too, Mycroft, before you sent John and I in there?

tobeornot221b wrote:

Mary Me wrote:

Because Sherlock. Never. Makes. Grammatical. Errors.
 

Yes, he does.
SHERLOCK: Did you know there were other people after her too, Mycroft, before you sent John and I in there?

Yeah, it should be John and me, but all native English speakers make that type of mistake. All of us. There's the right way, then there's the familiar-sounding way, and although our English teachers might have slapped our knuckles for mixing up I and you, especially in dialogue, what Sherlock said there reflects easy, familiar native speaking. No one would question it in everyday usage.

That certainly is a Sherlock grammatical error.

ancientsgate wrote:

tobeornot221b wrote:

Thank you, AG, for your explanation. It's only that Sherlock's "John and I" sounds unfamiliar in my German ears. Btw it's the same with "Who's sleeping with who" (instead of "whom"). Has to be correct in everyday usage as well I presume.

No one uses whom, pretty much. We can, and some of us actually know when to use which correctly, lol, but whom sounds very formal, kind of uppity, to our own ears. In a business situation, or with a teacher, or maybe at a job interview when you want to sound educated and try to impress the one you're speaking with (oops, sorry-- the one to whom you are speaking!), you'd use whom if you felt confident enough about it to know for sure that you were using it correctly. But among friends and in informal company, nah.... using whom sounds like you're putting on airs. *smile*

I do think it's a mistake Sherlock shouldn't make - I would definitely say 'John and me' without thinking about it, and I don't have Sherlock's education or brains.  People tend to make that mistake when they're trying to be correct but don't know or don't trust their grammar.  'John and I' sounds more formal, even though it's wrong.

And I would definitely say 'whom' in the example above - 'Who's sleeping with whom?'.  But I agree that it's usually too formal:  I'd say  'Who are they sleeping with?' rather than 'With whom are they sleeping?'.  It depends on where the preposition falls.  Right after a preposition, 'whom' is obvious.  Once I've dangled the preposition off the end of the sentence, however, the grammar's pretty much gone out the window.

tobeornot221b wrote:

Mary Me wrote:

Then he should apologize to Mr Berwick 
 

This might be too late...

This is a long thread and I (am not ashamed to) admit I don't have the patience needed to read through it all. So, what I say may or may not have been said before. I haven't watched the episode more than twice and I wasn't paying attention to any environmental details. However, several things did seem out of character to me. 

Firstly, all that media attention seemed weird to me. Sherlock was never one to love publicity and the only reward he sought was his personal satisfaction. He didn't look pleased with being in the center of attention, yet there he stood, almost politely (for him at least) when we all know he was rude enough to never show up to such events.

Then, that coversation he has with Molly at some point, where she notices he's sad when John's not looking. So, obviously, there must have been something troubling him, if he was trying to hide his sadness from John. Perhaps he already knew that he would soon have to go away for a while. Perhaps he didn't want to do what he knew he had to. 

The fake phone call to John about Mrs. Hudson was suspicious as well. I always thought he was the one who arranged for it because, firstly, as John mentioned, he'd once beaten a man half to death for laying a finger on her. He cared about her. And secondly, he texted Moriarty as soon as John left the room.

The three friends that were targeted by Jim's assasins were odd as well. I mean, John and Mrs. Hudson, I get, but Lestrade? Yeah, he was sort of a friend, but not nearly as good a choice as Molly. After all, she is the one Sherlock trusted with his mighty plan. So why Lestrade. He obviously must have made Moriarty believe he was close to Lestrade and he obviously had a reason for that. The most obvious I can think of is to give Molly freedom to work and do what he needed her to do. 

I also thought that the "IOU a fall" was interesting. I mean, it was as if Moriarty knew Sherlock would choose the hospital rooftop. Or perhaps Sherlock picked that spot because he caught that little phrase. 

As for the code. I don't really know what to make of that. It seemed quite a redundancy to me. So perhaps that's why it's important. Or maybe I'm just overthinking it. Or maybe it was just a means for Moriarty to fool Mycroft into revealing stuff about Sherlock. Which brings me to another thing that I personally found a bit fishy. Mycroft was clever, very clever. He could read people and I find it hard to believe he was fooled by a lie. So either the code is real, or perhaps Mycroft was in on the whole thing (for one side or another). 

I hope my ramblings do make at least some sense. 

ancientsgate wrote:

I think Sherlock got caught up sometimes in Scotland Yard's hunger for positive publicity-- your police force at work, look at us, we caught the bad guys, and since Sherlock was often the man behind the good work, out he got trotted for the press. Not anything Sherlock would want or have any patience with, but part of "the work" in a media-hungry world. Sherlock is willing to do some damned distasteful things (like meeting the press) in order to gain continued access to the kinds of cases he prefers.

Hmm... I don't know. Maybe you're right. Except, I don't see why the Scotland Yard wouldn't be happy taking the credit? It perfectly fits with human nature. And since Sherlock didn't mind, I don't see why they would so expressly insist that he take part in such events. It just semed odd to me, that's all.

Lestrade gives Sherlock access to a lot of his cases, his most interesting work, the serial killers, etc. So although Greg may not be a fast friend, he's absolutely necessary to Sherlock because he's the one who calls when he needs help. If Lestrade were taken out of the picture, Sherlock would die of boredom, relegated to cases involving cheating husbands and blue bunnies.

A lot of the ideas you brought up will be settled in episode 3.1, I presume. We all need answers really badly, don't we. Especially John.

True. But even so, it strikes as odd. Because whether they like it or not, the rest of the law enforcement officials need him just as much as Lestrade does. Lestrade is simply more... warm towrds him. As we see in the Blind Banker, the other Det, Inspector whatever his name, though reluctantly, does seek out and follows Sherlock's advice. 

I'm sure they will. But I like speculating. And then most likely finding out I was wrong. Well, I don't like that part, but maybe I'm right about at least one thing. But even if I'm not, I've got to pass the time somehow, haven't I?
 

I am slowly making my way through this site. It's HUGE BTW. In any case this thread stood out. Theories of how he did it. All of my theories are based solely on the episode as seen in this show. I am for the most part unfamiliar with the actual stories. The only other Sherlock Holmes adaptation I have seen is the movie that Robert Downey Jr. was in. (Not really caring for that portrayal)

In any case as I see it there were several unanswered questions at the end of TRF.
1. How did he survive the fall?
2. How did he pull the fake suicide off?
3. Who helped him? (He had to have had help.)
4. Did John have a clue to the truth even if he doesn't recognize it?
5. If Sherlock is to come back he needs to have his name cleared. So how is that going to be accomplished?
6. Is Moriarty really dead?

I think that the answer to question 1 is pretty obvious. There was obviously something that broke his fall such as one of those trampolines or drop sheets that the fire department uses for folks who have to jump from burning buildings.

The answer to question 2 is linked to question 3. I believe that Molly was one of the people who helped Sherlock. She provided a body from the morgue that was the right height, weight and basic physical features, then made the body up to strongly resemble Sherlock. Splash some blood around and you have a perfectly plausible dead Sherlock. I think that Mycroft was also involved and that it was his people who surrounded the body and kept John from getting too close. I think that the man on the bicycle was there to slow John down so that they Mycroft’s people and Sherlock had time to make the switch and lay out the dead body for John to see.
Also John did watch Sherlock fall from that rooftop but he never actually saw him hit the ground; he couldn’t have because Sherlock made him walk back across the roadway so that the one story ambulance intake building was between him and the sidewalk where Sherlock was meant to land.
 
Question 4 is a little tricky. John was emotionally distraught by all of this. I believe that the emotion in Sherlock’s voice was very genuine and John knew and recognized that. Sherlock was indeed crying as he spoke to John, but obviously not out of guilt; rather it was due to the fact that he was about to put John, his best friend through absolute hell, and because he is going to have to leave his life behind because of Moriarty. In a way Moriarty had beaten him, he just wasn’t going to die in the process.
 
John did manage to push his way through the crowd and grab a hold of the wrist of that body. He was in shock and still probably dizzy from the hit he took by that guy on the bicycle. Some part of his mind will have stored the fact that the body he touched was stone cold. If it had indeed been Sherlock he would still be warm. John is a doctor and I find it hard to believe that he didn’t or wouldn’t at some point realize that he was touching a corpse that had been dead for a while and had been stored in a morgue freezer. This may be part of the explanation for his wish at Sherlock’s grave to perform one last miracle, and not be dead. That is an odd thing to say when you saw the death with your own eyes. I think that somewhere in the back of his mind John doubts the validity of that death.
 
Question 5 is actually easy for me. I spotted this the first time watching the episode. There was a camera in that chimney vent thingy right by the ledge of the rooftop. You could clearly see it panning from left to right at the beginning of the rooftop scene. Who put it there? Why that would have been Mycroft of course. The entire encounter on that rooftop was recorded and that is the proof that will clear Sherlock’s name.
 
That leaves the question of Moriarty’s death. Nothing was mentioned about Moriarty or Rich Brook being found dead on the rooftop. Naturally the police would have gone up to that rooftop after the suicide. If Moriarty was dead they should have found him or at the very least found a rather large blood stain, but the papers only said that the fake detective takes his own life. They didn’t say Fake detective murders accomplice and then takes his own life. So one of three things happened; A) Moriarty faked his own death and after Sherlock jumped he got up and walked away. B) Moriarty’s people got up to that rooftop and removed his body. Or C) Mycroft’s people removed the body. I can not figure out why Mycroft would remove the body. That makes no sense. Finding that body who had clearly committed suicide (powder burns on the hands, self inflicted wound) would only cast doubt on Kitty Riley’s story, so why not just leave him up there? I suppose Moriarty’s people could have come to collect their boss, but once again, why bother? That makes no real sense. If Moriarty is now dead, why not just leave him there. I think the most plausible scenario is that Moriarty faked his own death to make Sherlock finish his story and jump from that building. I just don’t see James Moriarty as a suicide kind of guy. He would want to witness the end of the story, the resolution to the final problem. He can’t do that if he is dead. If he dies then how has he truly won?
 

Last edited by AliceI (February 23, 2013 5:44 am)