Well nobody commands you have to like her!
It's John who chose to marry her and made her pregnant.(possibly)

Commentary or not, I really do not see the similarity between Sherlock and Magnussen.

We know Sherlock wants everything to be clever. The obvious parallel is between the key code form TRF and the idea about the glasses. 

Well I know what Liberty means and I agree with her...
Actually, in the end, they both try and be too clever.
Again, Sherlock is only lucky he doesn't get his brains blown out for trying to be too clever.

maryagrawatson wrote:

nakahara wrote:

But if Mary was intended to be shown as a good, albeit misguided, person, why was she portrayed as an exact parallel to Magnussen - an explicit badie?
 

I am NOT going down that rabbit hole again even though I do have an answer to this.

Mary

Sorry! 
We will be wiser only after S4 anyway. 

Yes, I saw Moriarty rather than Magnussen as a parallel, so it surprised me, but I do see what they mean.  Not that they're similar as people, but they are similar in the way they've trained their minds - that's their "superpower".  Sherlock has used his for deduction, Magnussen for memory - and they use these skills for their different purposes, good and evil.  The mind palace is definitely a parallel.   (And good point about the key code too!)

I'm sure that they say in the commentary that they got the idea of the mind palace from Hannibal Lecter.  They had to put something in Hounds other than Sherlock saying "Oh, I've just remembered ...".  But then they used the mind palace for Magnussen too - which is funny, because his brother played Hannibal Lecter! 

Anyway, Sherlock it's that particular way in which they're similar that Sherlock seems to have a block on recognising - as if he doesn't want to see them as similar in any way.  (Or maybe I'm reading too much into it).  I think with Moriarty, Sherlock manages to be mostly a step ahead of the game and outwits him - with Magnussen, he's always a step behind until the inevitable end. 
 

Last edited by Liberty (November 9, 2014 8:43 pm)

Yes, although it's a cerebral decision to use brute force.  When he finally sees the truth about Magnussen, he seems to very quickly see that there's only one solution and it's an awful one.    It makes me wonder about the parallels with Mary - obviously at that point, shooting Magnussen seems like the "right" thing to do.   But if you took them all out of that situation, but gave them the same information, risks, etc, would Sherlock actually seek Magnussen out and assassinate him?  Could he?  It would be the same result in the end.   And although he makes the killing seem spontaneous, in the heat of the moment, it isn't.   There was just a relatively short period between planning and execution - would it make a difference to him if the plan involved killing Magnussen in cold blood at another location, rather than waiting for the helicopters?

My heart says, no, that Sherlock wouldn't be capable of that.   But why not?  Why is it different? 

I honestly have no idea.. The helicopters coming to arrest him certainly put some pressure on him that limited his options drastically to the one weapon left to him in that moment. Given more time to think and devise a plan he might have come up with something better..? At least that´s what I´d like to think.

Last edited by Zatoichi (November 9, 2014 9:12 pm)

Pretty much the only parallels between them (Sherlock and Magnussen), as far as I can see, is that they are both clever men who use mind palaces to remember things. I suppose you could argue that they both have a distaste for authority.

besleybean wrote:

Oh I know, I just have to admit I was wrong about Sherlock(again!)...
I never would have thought Sherlock would do this.

While not condoning murder, I do think the murder says good things about Sherlock, about how far he's come in understanding how actions ricochet from one person to another and how much he cares (perhaps more importantly, how much he's not afraid of caring!).

There are huge parallels between TRF and HLV. The way that I take the end of TRF is that Sherlock is not emotionally involved in his plan. He has no idea of the repercussions of pretending to kill himself in front of his best friend (whom he doesn't even know is his best friend!). He thinks he's sacrificing himself for John, Mrs. Hudson, and Lestrade, but he has no idea what that actually means.

In the TEH, he finally gets it. He makes the emotional connection after seeing the aftermath of his 'suicide.' The rest of series three is about him learning to use that knowledge and reconcile it with his slightly sociopathic calculating side. He is experiencing a huge paradigm shift in the way he's seen the world, his place in it, and his relationships with people for almost 40 years. It's no wonder he's so muddled and seemingly slow in this series!

Assuming that Moriarty bested him in TRF (which is what I think), Sherlock finds himself bested once more in HLV and he decides to take the fall again so that his loved ones can be safe. He knows that he is going to hurt them and I'm convinced he knows that his punishment will be that suicide mission (again, TRF parallel!), but killing Magnussen is something that needs to be done and Sherlock makes the sacrifice.

You can see many times in the scenes leading up to the shooting that he is not sociopathic about it, that he is making a deliberate and painful choice, so different from John coldly shooting the cabbie for a perfect stranger. As he pulls the trigger, Sherlock makes the decision of the man he wants to be, one who is deeply flawed, yes, but good and finally worthy of the love and trust his friends have for him.

I ended TRF with nothing but disgust and loathing for Sherlock making John watch him fall and I ended HLV finally finding something sympathetic about our detective. No, I really don't think Magussen's murder is proof of a character flaw.

Mary

Sherlock Holmes wrote:

Pretty much the only parallels between them (Sherlock and Magnussen), as far as I can see, is that they are both clever men who use mind palaces to remember things. I suppose you could argue that they both have a distaste for authority.

I don't think they're just clever though.  They're both quite exceptional.  

Maybe the block Sherlock has on recognising that aspect of Magnussen is arrogance, rather than not wanting to be like him?  He expects everybody else to be "goldfish"?