Hm, I'm honestly making an effort to feel things speaking in favor of Mary if I consider her shot only to be a "possibly fatal shot" .... What does it say about her and her motivation? We discussed some pages ago that incapacitating could have been done at other body parts. I must conclude that she calculated with him dying. Which leads me back to a selfish motive of just not wanting to give her secrets away.
Kitty, I'm a bit astounded about the thing you wrote about the partly guilt of victims applied to this scene. I wonder what made Sherlock threatening. And what goods exactly Mary had to protect in CAMs office....
I agree with Vhanja, not a big big fan of HLV either.,.

I agree.
yet I wonder... had she no means of overpowering Sherlock and getting the hell out of there? And, most important, keeping disguised?
John would have been to late to call the ambulance, she said... and she and Sherlock had these few moments to talk. So there was time, even if not much of it. She could have threatened Sherlock and gotten out. Magnusson could have told Sherlock about her, but it wouldn't matter at that point.
And why is there never an investigation? Did Magnusson just tell his staff: sorry about the blood on the carpet don't worry, or did he get on his knees to do it himself? had janine to clean to keep everything hidden? did the ambulance guys never alert the police?
 

mrshouse wrote:

.... I wonder what made Sherlock threatening. And what goods exactly Mary had to protect in CAMs office....

Sherlock begins to take a step towards Mary - that's the threatening move. (After she told him not to take another step - was he aiming for a Darwin award?)

Mary had to protect her cover story, her marriage, her live as she lived it at the time...

But actuallly I think that she wasn't thinking at all at the moment, that pulling the trigger at the adversery's first move was a reflex action (one that probably had saved her life a few times in her previous career) - in view of that it's actually impressive that she slightly shifts her aim... I completely understand Mary in this scene - as I said before, Hollywood-normal behaviour (except that most of the time it's a man in the role). I also agree with everybody who said that if Mary had seriously wanted to kill Sherlock, he'd be dead.

What I do not understand is Sherlock: I don't think he sees a nurse with a gun - the "liar" is prominently enough floating around Mary's head. (And or once I'm impressed with the writing: "liar" was really already there in TEH, even if only small and rather hidden.) And no nurse with a gun would be dressed all in black in Magnussen's office. Dismissing Mary as a serious threat in this situation is Sherlock at his arrogant idiotic worst...
 

Whisky wrote:

yet I wonder... had she no means of overpowering Sherlock and getting the hell out of there? And, most important, keeping disguised?...

Both together, no way. One slight possibility would have been to knock out Magnussen and flee, assuming Sherlock wasn't in the way (and we still don't have a satisfactory explanation of how she got into the office in the first place, do we? Or out of it...). Sherlock recognized her as soon as she turned around, so from then on the only options were silencing him or talking with him. Who knows whether they would have gotten around to talking if Sherlock had not taken that (almost literally) fatal step...

The aftermath - I don't even feel like thinking about it. The show is so far off real-world logic that anything goes: The building is so big that nobody noticed the shot (much more probably than for 221B, IMO). The paramedics are busy trying to save Sherlock's life and forget to make a report to the police (supposing they should). Mycroft drops a word at the hospital. Lestrade has learnt not to make inquiries into any illegal activity involving Sherlock and John. CAM blackmails anybody who still wants to make a fuss into silence...

Back to Mary, the topic of this discussion: In previous posts she was criticized for marrying John without revealing her past to him. Again, Hollywood-normal behaviour - remember Mission Impossible 3 (the one directed by J. J. Abrams)?  

There Ethan Hunt as an active agent gets engaged and married without ever revealing that he is not a Department of Transport employee. His wife learns that something is wrong when she wakes up kidnapped... When she sees hubby the next time she doesn't make a scene but listens to his explanations on how to use a semi-automatic, kills some bad guys and then saves hubby's life. And then they go off on honeymoon, to live happily together until the next installment...(it doesn't look as idiotic on film as here in my summary - it's probably my favourite MI...)

So I have no problem with seeing Mary and John happily married, at least for a while.



 

Kittyhawk wrote:

SusiGo wrote:

.....
I find this quite enlightening and I think you do not have to know Orange is the New Black to understand it (I have not watched the show):

http://221bmeta.tumblr.com/post/121826454268/if-we-were-meant-to-empathise-with-mary-as-of-the

I agree with the tumblr post - Mary is lacking a backstory. But as Moftiss don't provide one, I simply adopt Jason Bourne's. Jason had the good fortune of being the hero of his own films rather than an ambiguous character at best or a villain at worst in somebody else's show but otherwise in my headcanon it's a perfect parallel. (Except that Bourne's past actually got his girlfriend killed...)

Another parallel, and an example of double standards: When John threatens to break down Major Sholto's door, Sholto says: "I really wouldn’t. I have a gun in my hand and a lifetime of unfortunate reflexes." and everybody backs off. But when Mary threatens: "Oh, Sherlock, if you take one more step I swear I will kill you." Sherlock dismisses her and tries to take another step.

In the virtual worlds I normally move in (Die Hard 1 and 3 are some of my all-time favourites, I also rather like Child's and McNab's books) getting shot when one makes a threatening move towards the person pointing a gun at one's chest is the normal and expected consequence.

On page 1

SusiGo wrote:

.....Is this to imply that it was his fault he was shot and nearly died? Interesting line of defence: the victim is at fault because someone threatened to kill him and he dared move because he knew and trusted the person not to kill him. Human error, I suppose.

Actually, even in the real world the victim will be blamed (or at least, the killer will be acquitted) if he has made threatening moves towards the shooter, provided the shooter was holding a legal weapon (which is never the case with civilian handguns in the U.K.) and (for example) "defending" their own home (i. e. not committing a crime at the time, as Mary was doing) - remember the case of Yoshihiro Hattori? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Yoshihiro_Hattori)

Being very obviously unarmed and offering to help is a threat? Sherlock deserved to be shot for "not obeying Mary?"  I can't really get behind that. That's like saying that women deserve to be raped for wearing the wrong outfit, going to the wrong bar, leaving the house... 

Lola Red wrote:

Kittyhawk wrote:

What I do not understand is Sherlock: I don't think he sees a nurse with a gun - the "liar" is prominently enough floating around Mary's head. (And or once I'm impressed with the writing: "liar" was really already there in TEH, even if only small and rather hidden.) And no nurse with a gun would be dressed all in black in Magnussen's office. Dismissing Mary as a serious threat in this situation is Sherlock at his arrogant idiotic worst...
 

I think "arrogant idiotic worst" is a bit too harsh, but he completely misjudges Mary. What I meant with seeing her as a “nurse with a gun” is that while he knows that she had been lying, the whole impact of that has not yet quite sunken in. He stills sees her as the woman he met in the restaurant, while at that moment, she is AGRA. After the shooting (when he allows himself to think) he understands and plays her two sides masterfully (he even dares to put John in the shooting line), but in this office he underestimates the assassin in her.
 

I think he saw her, first and foremost as John's wife, and his friend, whom he made a vow to protect. That might be why he actually believed that Mary might not shoot him. He believed the lie-- that she cared for him and was his friend, and even more -- that she loved John enough not to kill Sherlock. Sherlock was wrong in that assessment. 

Vhanja wrote:

As for the gif-set, that sounds more to me as slight inconsistency from the writers. They talk about him being murdered in the mind palance scene, because that is more dramatic.
 

I don't think it's inconsistency, so much as story-telling.  Most of that is in Sherlock's mind palace. He thinks Mary has shot to kill, and we, the audience, are meant to think so too at that point.   Molly thinks Sherlock is going to die, and Mycroft thinks Sherlock has been murdered because that's what Sherlock thinks in that moment.  It's not a surprise to us that Sherlock survives because we know he's needed for the show (!), but following the story through, I think it IS supposed to be a surprise that Mary didn't mean to kill him.   Particularly as some of the information that Sherlock uses to deduce that (the timing of the paramedics' arrival) isn't revealed to us until the time of the deduction.  (Which I actually think is kind of unfair - trying to work it out before Sherlock is one of the attractions of the stories, so I think it's only sporting to give us the information to try to do so!). 
 

Well, I do blame her for pulling the trigger and I find it quite unacceptable to excuse this violent act - especially from a man who never used any aggression or violence towards her. And the fact that this is "TV reality" does not necessarily mean that completely different moral rules apply. 

As for the book you mention: such advice perpetuates a situation that is fundamentally wrong, i.e. that women become victims if they behave in the same way as men do. instead of trying to change the situation. Why should my own freedom be limited just because some men tend to get aggressive? So I should sit there for hours with a bursting bladder just because a man might attack me on the toilet? For me, this is definitely a step in the wrong direction. 

 

Last edited by SusiGo (June 19, 2015 10:50 am)

I agree with most of what you say although I would not got as far as calling Sherlock stupid. Naive, overly trustful, impulsive, but not really stupid. 

 

Interesting enough, in my self-defence course in school for us girls, I've learned that the girls in unattractive clothes are in more danger of rape, statistically. Because a short skirt and sexy clothes would convey confidence, and a confident girl isn't as easily targeted. Although I think that only applies to very limited cases.

Also I strongly agree with Susi. I think women should be able to move in the world in the same way as men. If they cannot yet, there's work to do.
 

Last edited by Whisky (June 19, 2015 10:50 am)

A miscalculation shouldn't end deadly. And also I think that Sholto acts very responsible in warning the others of his reflexes. Mary could have done so as well. She could have said "I'm stuck here, Sherlock, I don't know what to do, your appearance here puts loads on pressure on me, so don't move because I don't know what I will do". But she doesn't. If she cared about him, she should have done. I think she could have gone for "get out of here and don't say a word to John, I'll explain, Sherlock, I promise". He might have even done it. He even kind of trusts her after she has actually shot him - why wouldn't he before that.