sj4iy wrote:

Ozma wrote:

And I wasn't saying that is  a bad thing. His trolling is partially what I watch his shows for.

It's not 'trolling'.  That is not the actual definition of 'trolling'.

"submit a deliberately provocative posting to an online message board with the aim of inciting an angry response."

You may not have liked Mary after what she did, but that didn't mean that Moffat was trying to 'troll' you or anyone else.  It wasn't out of 'nowhere', the hints were there all along.  I sure as hell didn't trust her the past two episodes...there was something obviously wrong and she was obviously connected to something bad.  She was not all she seemed from the very beginning, and to say that Moffat did this only to shock people into hating her is disingenous.  Because many people don't feel that way.  Many people see that she had reasonable explanations as to why she did what she did.  It wouldn't completely blindside anyone who had paid attention to the previous episodes.

THAT is why it wasn't 'trolling'.

but do you remember, we spoke about this - I NEVER liked her from the beginning, I could sense there was something very wrong just like you did.

And I realise I usually use the word  'trolling' very liberally, as in, I don't use it to mean '"submit a deliberately provocative posting to an online message board with the aim of inciting an angry response", but rather as in 'laugh at our expense'.

As in, Moffat sits there going, 'look at them, they think she's going to die in this episode!' Or, 'look at them, they all like her! Poor fools!'

So, yes, I didn't mean to confuse, but I hope it's a bit clearer now what I meant.

Also - this is not meant as an accusation or an attack on Moffat - I am being ironic. I love the guy.

Last edited by Ozma (January 15, 2014 1:09 am)

sj4iy wrote:

RavenMorganLeigh wrote:

LoveBug54 wrote:

Ozema, I agree with you! I can only hope there is some rational explanation later for some of it. After all, it seemed very stupid of Mycroft to tell Moriarty things about Sherlock then even let him go, but we found later it was all part of his and Sherlock's plan to defeat him.

Mary is an orphan because Canon!Mary is an orphan. Also, we are supposed to think the shooter is Smallwood because of the perfume and because in the Canon Milverton is killed by one of his victims. But Moffet likes to put his own twist on the Canon, thus Mary becomes the shooter instead. But did he have to give her the background of a killer to do that? He could have made up some other, less monstrous, background for her and she would have been a much more sympathetic character who takes up a gun out of desperation. But, Moffat has the bad habit of coming to his conclusions and twisting plot points to fit. I know it's anathema in this fandom to criticize The Mofftis but sometimes it's justified when the writing isn't making sense.

If you want to see a brilliant and more faithful adaptation of this story check out Jeremy Brett' s The Master Blackmailer.

This seems to be a trend in scriptwriting, and I don't like it: Amoral main characters-- to me, it's a sensationalist, cheap way of upping the tension for the audience; the character does horrible things, but as a main character, the audience must struggle with the quaundary of whether to empathize, or not. It's as if the writers are trying to lead the audience into a struggle with their own morality. The series "Dexter" was a good example of this, and so is BBC's Sherlock. 

Just me ramblin' again...

The original story itself has Sherlock and Watson refusing to investigate the crime because they thought Milverton deserved what he got.  This isn't a 'trend' in scriptwriting...it was right there in the original story itself written over 100 years ago.  Amorality or ambiguous morality isn't a new concept...it's a popular theme in many famous literary masterpieces throughout history.  It's because morality is entirely a social construct...it's something that varies from culture to culture and invariably from person to person.  Homosexuality used to be considered amoral by almost everyone a thousand years ago...now it's fast being accepted as acceptable.  If a woman kills her abusive husband, is that amoral?  The law doesn't cover every situation, nor does it account for those those know how to manipulate it to their advantage.

Sherlock Holmes has never been Dudley Do-Right, in ANY version of the story.  This isn't sensationism...it's storytelling.  Of course the writers are trying to make us question ourselves...that's what great writers do.  Those are my favorite books and tv shows, as a matter of fact.  People are neither wholey good or wholey bad.  We are a mix, and we change over time.

I should elaborate: what I'm talking about is the more extreme sorts of pushing the audience's moral buttons: 

Ex., Sherlock has no problem drugging his parents or a pregnant woman, Mary shooting Sherlock is "forgivable", in other series, the incest motif seems to have become ordinary, serial killers become heroes, --

You're right , it's not new, but I find that I resent it, when it seems like a ham-handed way to manipulate the audience. This is why I have a very tough time excusing Mary's behavior. :-)

Mouse wrote:

Mrs. Watson wrote:

Swanpride wrote:

My point was that it is not as easy as saying "murdering someone for money is the worst kind of murder" - there are always the circumstances to consider and we don't know the circumstances. Mary started out as a trained agent - so all the murders she did in the beginning were part of her job. Later she freelanced - why? Because of the money? She is apparently not particularly rich. Because she wanted to get away from the thumb of the organisation she worked for beforehand?
We neither know why she became an agent in the first place, why she decided to freelance and why she decided to give up her "job". We only know that Magnusson calls her a "bad, bad girl" and that she herself considers what she has done so bad that nobody would be able to love her knowing about it. But Magnusson is a guy who would paint someone as pedophile, knowing fully well that it isn't the truth, and she herself feels guilty for whatever she did, but people feel guilty for a lot of things other people don't consider that bad. So without the information on the stick, how are we supposed to judge her for her past?
Who knows, Mrs. Hudson helping out her husband might have killed more people indirectly than Mary did directly.

I agree with you. Mary is obviously a flawed person but since we don't know anything about her we can't judge her. I wonder if she told Sherlock something about her past. He might be the one person who could understand her.

 
She lied to John about everything, even her own name - and then married him. That's pretty heinous and we can judge her for that if nothing else.

Yep-- and we have people that are still mad at Sherlock for "lying to John, and faking his death" , and that was to save John! I don't understand how we can forgive Mary, when she's done something much, much worse. 

Last edited by RavenMorganLeigh (January 15, 2014 3:52 am)

I am still asking the same question: if Mary killed baddies and did it for the CIA, why was she so absolutely sure that John wasn't going to love her anymore.

I don't buy it it's 'because John wanted his nice little wife'; she'd shot sherlock by then, so anything good that she might have done prior to that would have only helped her case in that moment. If that file contained the names of bad people she killed and the world saving missions she'd carried out, she would have wanted him to read it - and he probably would have felt much better than he did when not knowing and having to accept the possibility that she was a ruthless and cruel assassin.
 

belis wrote:

The Doctor wrote:

Mary Me wrote:

John was a soldier and killed many people. 

Most soldiers on active duty do not kill any people and/or combatants at all. Hollywood has a lot to answer for!

True. Most doctors (aspecially MOD GPs) don't even leave the base when on deployment, which reduces the possibility of getting into any active combat even further. How John managed to get himself shot and where his PTSD nightmares come from is something that I haven't exactly sorted out in my headcanon.

Agree. Also he's always seemed appalled by any form of violence towards unarmed/non-threatening people, and I'll go further by saying that he seemed to me like someone who got scared quite easily - someone normal, like us, who only got his 'courage' beacause he was with Sherlock - let's face it he would have stayed well clear of murder cases and the likes had he not met Sherlock - which therefore made me think he really did just stay at the base and tend to the wounded.

Of course he can be BAMF because he would have received training for his work in the army; but I don't think his actual role there was 'to kill people'. (and in fact Sherlock says to him, 'You were a doctor!', when John tries to insinuate he killed people in Afghanistan)

Ozma wrote:

I am still asking the same question: if Mary killed baddies and did it for the CIA, why was she so absolutely sure that John wasn't going to love her anymore.

 If that file contained the names of bad people she killed and the world saving missions she'd carried out, she would have wanted him to read it - and he probably would have felt much better than he did when not knowing and having to accept the possibility that she was a ruthless and cruel assassin.
 

 But Mary WAS and IS a ruthless assasin: the way he says "People like Magnussen SHOULD be killed, that's why there are people like me" is absolutely chilling: he doesn't consider M. a human being but an object to be eliminated. Granted, M. is despicable man, but it is her indifference and lack of any consideration for the human life that counts here. It is logical to suppose that Watson would discover from the file that his wife was just that: a professional killer, thinking about murder as simply a "job" to do, with no moral thoughts about it.
 

Hera wrote:

Either way, I think it's very interesting.  John chose to ignore her past and certain elements of her present - she did shoot Sherlock after all, she still is an assassin (not literally, but she didn't change that much since then, did she?) - and that makes the base of their relationship very shaky. On the other hand, their bond is stronger, because they are willing to accept much more than a "normal" person would. 

I'm very curious how it all turns out. I feel a little bit sorry for John, because he's got almost two Sherlocks now. Did you see how Mary and Sherlock agree with each other, how they understand each other?  Poor John!  They'll win every argument!

basically, John would have married Sherlock if he had had female parts down there. (I am sorry for being crude. lol)

MissMe? wrote:

I don't want to keep Mary around for season 4, I really don't. The basis of the show is the friendship between John and Sherlock and if Mary & baby stay around, John's focus will HAVE to be on his family. I just don't see how his relationship with Sherlock would not suffer. It already bothered me when we found out in the beginning how they haven't seen each other in a month. This will certainly only get worse once the baby is around.
So, as much as I think John deserves a family and happiness, this is not the show I want to watch. Now that Mary is pretty far along in her pregnancy the only way out I see is her dying in childbirth. Pretty cruel if you ask me. I also wonder why the writers added the whole pregnancy situation. No good can come of it.
I'm torn about Mary. On the one hand I understand why she did what she did, but then again she'll always be the woman who shot Sherlock. Who then almost died - no wait, for a few seconds he DID die. So yeah, can't really get past that. Mary needs to go.

yep totally my opinion too.

I really liked Mary at the beginning but this whole bad ass assassin thing doesn't work for me and I don't want Mary to change Sherlock and Johns dynamics. I mean as far as we now Mary doesn't look like the stay at home mum so she'll definately be with them on cases.

I also don't understand how John could forgive Mary so relativ quickly...I mean she nearly killed his best friend for crying out loud.

So please Moftiss, do something about Mary...get her killed or imprisoned at the beginning of the next season ( or in between) or otherwise Sherlock will loose some of its magic. ( whoa never thought I would say that about a character)

Last edited by Mali (January 15, 2014 1:01 pm)

Swanpride wrote:

Either way, I really hope that they don't start the fourth season with killing off Mary. I fear that they will do exactly that, though.

I have this feeling too - but they might stretch it out and even do it in the second episode - in order to avoid the cliche' of 'somebody has to die in the last episode'...

When John and Mary meet at the Holmes' place, he want's her to stand up. I guess to see the baby bump? It could btw still be a fake...
Or the baby WAS harmed by the drugs in the tea, although Billy calculated it for her...