I also don't believe Mycroft is to blame. You mentioned how he said "Sherlock, what have you done?", Jolie. He said that to himself, no-one else heard it (besides us, of course). We can therefore assume that his reaction was an honest one. If he were to blame, he surely would have reacted differently.

Schmiezi wrote:

"Sherlock, what have you done?" ...  He said that to himself, no-one else heard it (besides us, of course). We can therefore assume that his reaction was an honest one.

Just as honest as his reaction to seeing Jim Moriarty back on every screen at the very end of HLV?  (Honestly, people, am I the only one who believes that Mycroft engineered that magical rebirth?)

Anyway back on topic, I think you've got me convinced that it wasn't neccessarily Mycroft who fed Sherlock the false information about the archive, he may have just been fooled like everyone else.

But another point that I can't quite get my head around is that if Magnussen planted the false information himself, wanting people to believe that he had a real, physical archive, why did he do that? Because if people had known it existed all in his head only, someone would have put a bullet through his brain much earlier? He doesn't strike me as a physically brave person at all (remember how he cowers and whimpers before Mary), so was he just trying to protect himself that way? But mustn't the "archive illusion" have meant that he'd get lots of attempted break-ins at Appledore, that people'd contiuously steal his briefcases, laptops, phones etc.?


And yet another thought that just struck me - if the letters regarding Lady Smallwood's husband and his one-time underage love interest really did not physically exist, or at least were never in Magnussen's possession, and the papers he lets Sherlock see in 221b are a complete fake, then Sherlock actually failed spectacularly at resolving Lady Smallwood's trouble.

The "Magnussen case" starts with her, but she and Sherlock's mission on her behalf just drop out of the picture after Sherlock gets shot. She is never mentioned again, there's just a quick news headline suggesting that her husband took his own life, indicating that at least up until that point there had been no agreement or settlement of any sort between the Smallwoods and Magnussen, but rather than that he's used his knowledge of Lord S's past to shame and humiliate him publicly, which is exactly what Sherlock was supposed to stop happening.

I've never looked at HLV as being a monumental failure in Sherlock's casebook, but that's what it adds up to, doesn't it?

Maybe I understand a little better now what precisely made the Sherlock that we used to know shoot an unarmed person in the head.

Lady S is back at the end of HLV, not lifting a finger either for or against Sherlock, just looking bitter and disillusioned. Shouldn't she at least feel some revengeful glee at Magnussen's death, and take a more active role in trying to get Sherlock off an official murder charge?

(I really liked her, by the way. She's so controlled but still so strong. I love how she says "Baker Street!" to her chauffeur at the start of HLV. And she's obviously not falling into depression after her husband's death, but just keeps going in her job. I'd have liked to see more of her.)

Last edited by La Jolie (August 10, 2014 7:43 pm)

SusiGo wrote:

As for the casework - I think it is obvious that Sherlock is not well and does not show his usual deductive brilliance in this episode.

The question here is how long was he on morphine and/or other heavy duty painkillers? Because that dulls your reasoning skills dramatically. We know he was on morphine at least a week after he got shot and most likely was back on it when he returned to hospital. So his reasoning was cloudy during the Baker Street confrontation and for some time after.

Moreover, morphine is the medical form of heroin, which is what he was on at the beginning of HLV. So he started the case without full use of his mental capacities.

Finally, an injury like getting shot would have taken a huge toll on him and the healing process would have also dulled his senses, never mind what the drugs were doing to him.

There is definitely an emotional component to his reasoning problems in this episode, but there's a lot more to it than just that.

Mary

La Jolie wrote:

But another point that I can't quite get my head around is that if Magnussen planted the false information himself, wanting people to believe that he had a real, physical archive, why did he do that? Because if people had known it existed all in his head only, someone would have put a bullet through his brain much earlier? He doesn't strike me as a physically brave person at all (remember how he cowers and whimpers before Mary), so was he just trying to protect himself that way? But mustn't the "archive illusion" have meant that he'd get lots of attempted break-ins at Appledore, that people'd contiuously steal his briefcases, laptops, phones etc.?

And yet another thought that just struck me - if the letters regarding Lady Smallwood's husband and his one-time underage love interest really did not physically exist, or at least were never in Magnussen's possession, and the papers he lets Sherlock see in 221b are a complete fake, then Sherlock actually failed spectacularly at resolving Lady Smallwood's trouble.

Magnussen didn't have to have the physical evidence to make his blackmail effective; he just had to know there was physical evidence and how to get it--which of course means that to make his threats credible he HAD to ensure that the victims believed he had the evidence in his possession, or they'd try to get hold of it to destroy it. And after all, since everything of importance was only in his head, he wouldn't care in the least if his  briefcases, etc., were stolen. And so long as he DID know how to get it--and we know that large media empires are certainly willing to pay for such evidence--he probably did indeed get the physical evidence against Lady Smallwood's husband when he wanted to use it and then immediately printed/aired it all.

As for break-ins at Appledore--he has quite extensive security in his office, and I'm sure even more extensive security in his home, and being caught breaking into his home would be just as damaging to his victims as whatever he had on them--remember, he was going after politically powerful and influential people, not in the normal way of things people who'd know how to get through levels of security. Mary was an exception, and almost backfired on him--and he only went after her as part of the chain to catch Mycroft. Indeed, the only reason Sherlock was able to get into Appledore is because Magnussen WANTED Sherlock in Appledore, as Sherlock was his hook to Mycroft and total control of the British government.

 

La Jolie wrote:

Why did it have to be heroin he was taking at the beginning of HLV?
 

The close-up of injectables in the drug den, everyone being in a stupor, plus Sherlock's behaviour (sleeping it off, then the fit of rage) is indicative of coming off a heroin high.

This meta, written by a British doctor, has much more to support this: His Last Vow – Sherlock, Drugs and Urine Tests

Mary

Last edited by maryagrawatson (August 11, 2014 9:48 pm)