I have thought about this, too, and quite a long time and I think that Sherlock wants John to stay with Mary for certain reasons. This is his plan behind the whole Baker Street scene. I am not sure why she hesitated to shoot him in the head but any shot in the chest might be fatal. You can hit major blood vessels and/or the liver even if you avoid the heart. There have been lots of medical discussions about this. 
She was willing to take the chance of killing him and she killed him indeed. It might be possible that Sherlock lies about her phone call to the police and she of course does not protest because she wants to keep John. I am not sure if CAM was able to phone for an ambulance after the hit to the head. Then again the ambulance arrives quite soon after John's call. 
But her reaction in the hospital and what is more IMO, her threatening tone when she orders him not to tell John show that she was at least willing to kill him. 
 

I would not have been surprised. 

That is quite to the point, Lily. She does hesitate but not enough to ensure his survival. And she would have comforted John if Sherlock had died while being relieved at the same time. 

SolarSystem wrote:

But we've been over this several times now, so...

Haha. I'm sure we'll be over it several times more before we get Series 4...THIS IS WHAT MOFFAT WANTS.

besleybean wrote:

You're right.
But just to say, she did have to injure him enough to incapacitate him and distract John.

Only if you accept that it is morally permissible to gravely risk Sherlock's life in pursuit of what she wanted; that is a very large proviso, and one which I do not subscribe to.

I can accept her as an example of the sort of twisted and perverted love, which ACD wrote about so much in canon, but ACD didn't ever present this as being in any way admirable. Sherlock's prescription for the boy who, driven by obsessive and jealous love for his father, and hatred for his stepmother, tried  to murder his young half brother in the Sussex Vampire case, so that he alone could have all his father's love, was to send him off to sea for a year.

I wonder what the Moftiss equivalent would be 
 

saturnR wrote:

I don't understand in Sherlock's explanation where he explains why Mary knew CAM wouldn't go to the police. I don't get his reasoning. Is it that CAM would just collect this incident & add it to his blackmail goodies list or is it something else?

 
Heaven only knows; in reality CAM would have picked up the phone and have her taken out by one of her numerous enemies. After all, he'd been pistol whipped and watched her shooting Sherlock in the central mass; no one in their right minds leaves someone like that in play!.

Interesting Q poster, and some interesting answers.

I don't think Mary cared if Sherlock lived or died, she could work both outcomes.
Her short term goals were to appease Magnusson and silence Sherlock and leave.
Had Sherlock died she would tell Magnusson whoops didn't mean to kill him , had Sherlock lived he would be scared/threatened into silence.

Marys actions and character are superficially similar to Sherlocks on the surface, but almost directly opposites underneath.
Her killings are/were unjustified, her character is faked, her motives are selfish, Mary is the true sociopath , not Sherlock.
She took the code to Sherlock to make him hunt for John , knowing Magnusson was testing Sherlock and knowing he had John, the bonfire plot was carefully and exactly planned by Magnusson.  It does not make sense that he did not order Mary to take the code to Sherlock and ensure the hunt for John.
Mary is all about Mary, which leads me to wonder as to her motives with John and Magnusson...and thinking there must be more to it, and that Sherlock plays a long game.

When Sherlock says it was "surgery" he means it because in a way it was.
The decision was like a surgeons must be..cold..clinical and emotionless.

Last edited by lil (February 22, 2014 7:20 am)

Another way of trying to justify Mary's not-really-but-somehow-after-all kill shot is to consider that CAM was in the room and witnessed it. Mary didn't expect for Sherlock to catch her in the act. She only had seconds to decide what to do. I'm thinking she couldn't just shoot Sherlock in the shoulder or leg or wherever else more harmless because she wanted CAM to think she was a ruthless, calculating killer and wouldn't stop at (as good as) executing her husband's best friend. Granted, CAM heard her apologizing to Sherlock before she fired the shot, but she still fired.

As to why she would want to do so, I'm not exactly sure. From her point of view, CAM had leverage on her she wanted eliminated, and she would want CAM to think she's dangerous enough to kill someone to achieve her goals--even if this didn't exactly result in her ultimate goal, which was to get conrol over the files CAM has on her. If she'd merely shot Sherlock in an extremity, CAM would have thought her weak. Another pressure point to add to her file.

And in terms of Sherlock saying Mary's aim was "surgery", well, I'm sure that was just a pretty word they used to illustrate Mary's decision not to go for the forehead shot. If I wanted to be really pedantic, I guess I could try to argue now that she'd know where exactly the major blood vessels in the liver area are located, and she chose an exact spot where she wouldn't hit any of them. But, well, that would be a little too precise, wouldn't it?

Yep - it doesn't stand up, and you could almost go so far as to say Sherlock's lying; it wasn't surgery, it was death, as he knows darn well: his own will brought him back rather than anything Mary did so his declaration that she saved his life, or shot for surgery only is a nonsense.
Plus, he'd already, sincerely, offered to help her. At that point she had time to incapacitate CAM, ask Sherlock to keep quiet until she'd had a chance to speak alone to him, and escape.
Not such dramatic TV, maybe, but not such a huge step into the unbelievable either.

Last edited by Tinks (February 22, 2014 10:06 am)