BBC Sherlock Fan Forum - Serving Sherlockians since February 2012 » Mary

besleybean · August 12, 2016 8:20 pm

Well she's the only wife we get to hear about and he seems to be sad at her demise...
He does go on about her quite a lot in the Sign of Four.

RavenMorganLeigh · August 12, 2016 8:33 pm

SusiGo wrote:
Wait until next season and stop posting until January? Not an option for me.

As for Canon - the funny thing is that ACD was not interested in writing a love story for Watson. His dismissive treatment of Mary after Sign of Four is notorious. We do not get to see any love between Watson and his wife because his wife is nearly absent from the stories after the marriage. Before she is gone altogether.

Add to that, BBC Mary is not ACD Canon Mary. ACD Canon Mary was a lovely person, and didn't shoot Sherlock to cover up her murderous past!

nakahara · August 12, 2016 8:45 pm

RavenMorganLeigh wrote:
Add to that, BBC Mary is not ACD Canon Mary. ACD Canon Mary was a lovely person, and didn't shoot Sherlock to cover up her murderous past!

True. We are not dealing with canonical Mary here but with AGRA, an original character. Who is mysterious and quite unpredictable.

SusiGo · August 12, 2016 8:47 pm

And quite probably not the best thing that ever happened to John Watson.

besleybean · August 12, 2016 8:48 pm

I think he gets to be the judge of that.

RavenMorganLeigh · August 12, 2016 8:50 pm

SusiGo wrote:
And quite probably not the best thing that ever happened to John Watson.

hey-o!

Liberty · August 12, 2016 9:37 pm

RavenMorganLeigh wrote:
Liberty wrote:
It seems more that she over-estimated how badly John would take being lied to.

No, shooting Sherlock isn't acceptable, but without further information, I don't feel I can agree with some of the ideas here about Mary's motivations. I just don't think we know for sure ... and what we have to go on is what we see her do, and what Sherlock interprets. I'm not wild about Sherlock's semi-explanation, but I think that stands until we see more in S4 (hopefully).

I'm thinking that Sherlock made his ridiculous explanation because he was in a corner. Too weak and ill to protect John or investigate Mary properly, she's standing in his apartment with a loaded gun, (she'd come prepared to shoot him again) and John's Not Thinking. As for "being okay with Mary" later, well, what was Sherlock supposed to do? John chose Mary. Sad, but there it is. (Though, I'm still holding out hope that Sherlock and John are in cahoots together in a plot to take Mary down!)

Yes, there are various options:
Sherlock believes his deduction about Mary, and he's right.
Sherlock believes it, but he's wrong.
Sherlock doesn't believe it.

I think it's weighted towards the first, simply because we're not given anything which directly contradicts the deduction. However, there a couple of things that drive me nuts about this, much as I love the episode.

1. Sherlock virtually dying. I feel this should be proof that Mary tried to kill him. But Sherlock obviously has access to this information and still deduces that that wasn't her goal. And he leaves her alone with John, so must believe the deduction.
2. Mary saving him by calling the ambulance. Apart from the fact that the information leading to the deduction is kind of silly (doesn't he know the difference between the average time, and the range of times? Maybe an ambulance happened to be in the area), we're not given that information beforehand and allowed to make our own deductions. Sherlock just springs it on us and we have to accept it (or not).

Now I know that ACD himself has been known to "cheat" by withholding information, and I think Moftiss are just doing the same thing, rather than setting up these things as clues for us. I love this episode, but I'd rather this little bit was written differently. They went to the trouble of setting up clues about Mary, so why not do this part neatly? I suspect the answer is just as they say, that they're writing a story about a detective, rather than a detective story. I just don't think they're always so strong on the "detective" parts, particularly in this episode. Normally it wouldn't matter too much, but here it's important because we need to know if we, and Sherlock, and John, can trust Mary.

besleybean · August 12, 2016 9:40 pm

They seem to be indicating that we can, unless Sherlock is spectacularly wrong about her working for Mycroft.

RavenMorganLeigh · August 12, 2016 10:11 pm

Here's a dumb question: keeping it in mind that at the time Sherlock made his (ridiculous!) Deduction about Mary, he was: bleeding internally, suffering from tachycardia, on morphine, in agony because the morphine was wearing off, and he'd over-exerted himself---

Is it just possible that Sherlock wasn't in any condition to make that sort of deduction in the first place? That maybe, if John had been paying attention, he might have figured out that the "explanation" was really about grasping at straws in order to maintain the status quo until Mary could be dealt with safely?

Liberty · August 12, 2016 10:58 pm

Not at all a dumb question, but I don't think so. I think he actually made the deduction in hospital, and then set up the confrontation with Mary, which not only confirmed it, but showed John what was happening. I think that everything he does after the deduction seems to point towards him believing it, and believing that John was safe with Mary. The flaws in the argument (him almost dying, and the ambulance timing) are far too obvious for him just to have missed. I think this is part of the story telling, and I'm giving it a pass because of that. (And will be fizzing if Moftiss end up saying something like "Nobody spotted that the ambulance timing wouldn't work like that, or that Mary technically did kill Sherlock!". Because yes, we did, and suspended disbelief because you were asking us to! ).

Last edited by Liberty (August 12, 2016 10:59 pm)

tonnaree · August 13, 2016 12:46 am

I know it's not something we can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt, but there is a strong argument that can be made that CAM actually phoned the ambulance.

RavenMorganLeigh · August 13, 2016 4:19 am

tonnaree wrote:
I know it's not something we can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt, but there is a strong argument that can be made that CAM actually phoned the ambulance.

I think he did, too.

besleybean · August 13, 2016 7:17 am

Why would they lie about that?

Schmiezi · August 13, 2016 7:19 am

besleybean wrote:
Why would they lie about that?

Sherlock does not have to lie. He could simply be wrong. Sentiment influencing his deduction skills.

besleybean · August 13, 2016 7:20 am

Seems an odd thing to pick on...he already had the 'surgery' thing.

Schmiezi · August 13, 2016 7:24 am

besleybean wrote:
Seems an odd thing to pick on...he already had the 'surgery' thing.

See, that's the point. There are many aspects about his deduction of Mary that seem to be odd. That's why some people believe he is either wrong or lying.

besleybean · August 13, 2016 7:39 am

I prefer the former, to the latter.

Liberty · August 13, 2016 7:52 am

If CAM could have phoned the ambulance, then Sherlock would surely have thought of that as a possibility. I presume that what we see in his mind is put together from what he's been told (e.g. by John), about what time the ambulance arrived and so on. That includes CAM only coming round when John arrived. If John hadn't told him about that, then presumably Sherlock would have considered that CAM might have phoned the ambulance. After all, CAM wanted to keep Sherlock alive. But it doesn't make sense that CAM would phone, and pretend to be unconscious, so that John would tell Sherlock that, and that Sherlock would deduce that Mary phoned the amubulance, and ... ? It's just not the way he operates.

It's also a crappy trick to play on the audience. Because we don't have any extra information (such as a scene with CAM conscious and holding his phone), and have to go along with Sherlock's deduction. The whole deduction relies on information that Sherlock has and that we don't have independently, and I personally feel that if they're going to do the deduction that way, they have to give us independent information if they expect us to deduce that it's wrong. In terms of story-telling it just doesn't work to have CAM phoning the ambulance, and I would not be happy if they chose to this.

besleybean · August 13, 2016 7:55 am

I honestly don't think that was the case, so don't worry about it!

tonnaree · August 13, 2016 3:18 pm

I'm still not saying it's true, but it is still a possibility. They may have left subtle clues that we missed since it's a very dramatic scene.

http://221beemine.tumblr.com/post/83121055303/cosmoglaut-sherlockholmeslovesjohnwatson