Willow wrote:

nakahara wrote:

 
And poor Sherlock certainly didn′t suppose he will survive CAM for long. It was painfully obvious he thought they will shoot him immediately after that.  What a luck that Mycroft was present!
 

 
I know! On the other hand, it was a great scene for Mycroft, revealing once and for all that he spoke the truth to Sherlock in the garden...

I agree. “The Iceman” is a big softie handling the business in which his little brother is involved.
(And I cannot express how I love Mark Gatiss in the role. He is the best Mycroft ever! )
 

And an executive producer.

Willow wrote:

nakahara wrote:

Willow wrote:

 
I know! On the other hand, it was a great scene for Mycroft, revealing once and for all that he spoke the truth to Sherlock in the garden...

I agree. “The Iceman” is a big softie handling the business in which his little brother is involved.
(And I cannot express how I love Mark Gatiss in the role. He is the best Mycroft ever! )
 

He does it wonderfully well; it's a hugely difficult part because we have to believe that there is one person who can not only keep up with, but frequently overtake, Sherlock, who is the epitome of intellectual brilliance. And our Sherlock is played by an actor of great charisma, which ups the ante, so Mark has to pull out all the stops to avoid fading into shadow, and he not only does it every single time, but he makes it look easy.

The fact that he co-writes the scripts is also pretty awesome  

Actually, I think there's a risk of Mycroft upstaging Sherlock. To have someone more brilliant than Sherlock appear in most episodes, and be "directing" Sherlock a lot of the time (i.e., the plan to trap Moriarty), makes Sherlock stand out less as a genius. He becomes "the younger Holmes brother" who helps the older one, instead of "THE Great Detective." Gatiss may not have charisma, but he's...formidable.

He's also gay. Which shouldn't matter to his performance, but given that he's a writer, might have implications for the use of gay characters and gay jokes.
 

SherlocklivesinOH wrote:

nakahara wrote:

.
 
 
But he abhors CAM. Completely.
In Sherlock′s eyes, murderers are nothing in comparison to this reprehensible man:
 
„I have said that he is the worst man in London, and I would ask you how could one compare the ruffian, who in hot blood bludgeons his mate, with this man, who methodically and at his leisure tortures the soul and wrings the nerves in order to add to his already swollen money-bags?“
 
He also hates with passion CAM′s tendency to pray on weaknesses of his victims:
 
„What would it profit a woman, for example, to get him a few months' imprisonment if her own ruin must immediately follow? His victims dare not hit back.“
 
CAM′s blackmail is utter cowardice, unworthy of man.
 
For Sherlock, this is not just about the case anymore. It gets personal between him and CAM:
 
„Between ourselves, Watson, it's a sporting duel between this fellow Milverton and me. He had, as you saw, the best of the first exchanges, but my self-respect and my reputation are concerned to fight it to a finish.“
 
And we can′t forget that in HLV, Sherlock′s own brother Mycroft is blacmailed apart from Sherlock′s other clients – Lady Smalwood, his best friend John and Mary.
 
Such is the Sherlock′s distaste for CAM that he, a well-known misogynist, miraculously transforms into a chivalrous knight and is willing to risk everything, his career and his life, for his female client:
 
„Surely a gentleman should not lay much stress upon this, when a lady is in most desperate need of his help?“
  

Watson says elsewhere that Holmes "disliked and distrusted [women] but was always a chivalrous opponent" and "had a remarkable way in dealing with them." And indeed, I don't think there are too many truly dislikable women in canon.

It is a favorite theory of Johnlockers that Milverton knew something about Holmes' love life, having to do with either Watson or the college friend Victor Trevor (because gay sex acts were illegal then.)

tobeornot221b hit the nail on the head for me:

Going by the fact that it was so important to clear Sherlock's name  from being a fake at the beginning of series 3 (in HLV)  -  it has to be the more important to absolve him from being a murderer. However successful in series 4 and beyond, Sherlock would always be fundamentally flawed.

Because I felt like, right on the heels of winning over Moriarty's smear campaign, Sherlock basically put himself right back in the position to be criminalized and villified, by things he actually did. The murder being the big one, of course, but I also wonder if the clients he saw on Stag Night will spread stories about him being too drunk to function.
 

As of the beginning of S3, his name was not only cleared, but the press was kind of adoring him. At the end of S3, we were pretty much back to the end of Season 2... so it would seem.

After seeing Moriarty "bring Sherlock down" only to discover Sherlock had been playing HIM all along, I have significant confidence that Sherlock had something up his sleeve in dealing with CAM, such that his apparent murder of CAM is not what it seemed.

As for Gattis and charisma...MARK may have it. Mycroft isn't exactly loveable for his personality. That isn't what makes the character.

 

But he doesn't officially work for the government, he certainly has no licence to kill.
When Mycroft proclaims Shelock is a murderer, he is right.

lil wrote:

It seemed to me that the hiatus -Sherlocks fake death and undercover takedown of Moriartys web - was a MI6 sanctioned operation.
Mycroft and Sherlock working with SIS approval.
Obviously it went well as MI6 were offering him more jobs...and had recalled him for the Moran threat.

When Sherlock shot Magnusson he went kind of rougue - without gov. approval.

However if Sherlock now back on approved Moriarty / MI6 operations prooves the connection between Magnusson and Moriarty ... wouldn't it be very easy to sweep Magnussons death into the... approved / sanctioned / undercover Moriarty takedown box...and MI6 / Mycroft /Sherlock saying it was part of finishing the Moriarty job.
Thus in the future Sherlock can continue to get the interesting - matter of national security - cases....
Obviously Sherlocks work here will be clasified top secret....

Personally I don't think it's necessary to clear Sherlocks name.
Rather naive imo to think Brit ( or any governments ) intel agents never have to kill people.
Especially as they have gone a bit Bond in HLV.
Licence to kill and all that....

Exactly! I keep wondering why Mycroft is making such a big deal of the terribleness of Sherlock's shooting of CAM...not that much of a stretch beyond what the Holmes boys have been involved in before that. And I think under some current US law a case could almost be made for legitimizing CAM's murder by treating him as an enemy of state. (The U.S. proably wouldn't do this to someone in that position, but he probably fits the criteria if you get technical about it.)

They could also easily have made up something about thinking CAM was going to attack them, since he does assault people, albeit not lethally.

I agree about "going a bit Bond" too...I think the series has become more Bond (spy) than detective, and I'm not sure I like that. 

Funny you should mention Bond...every now and then I re-watch the old Get Smart episodes, and after watching Sherlock I found it jarring at how UTTERLY cavailier they are about the constant shootings and killings. (Few shows treat people getting shot realistically, but most others treat it seriously.)

And I wondered: what makes the likes of Bond, Max, 99, Emma Peel and Steed "spies" and "secret agents" that we can root for, while Mary is an "assassin" who is bad? Aren't they all really doing the same thing? It wasn't even like Mary worked for a foreign government who is an enemy of the U.S. and UK...she worked for the CIA.

She deliberately shot "one of us" i.e., Sherlock...but she felt she had to do that because she had to cover up her past. Aside from everything else that seems like a dumb miscalculation. If you're afraid that your husband is going to hate you if he finds out about your past, shooting not only his best friend, but the person he puts in the same category with you as "the two people I love most," isn't going to win you any points.
 

Last edited by SherlocklivesinOH (May 10, 2014 6:00 pm)