It is. 

I have to say, what surpised me the most in this episode, was Sherlock going to see a therapist.

I had suspected that there might be a falling out between him and John, and that Mary would possibly die - but I had never anticipated seeing Sherlock go visit Ella. One of the most shocking things in this episode to me.

Vhanja wrote:

I had suspected that there might be a falling out between him and John, and that Mary would possibly die - but I had never anticipated seeing Sherlock go visit Ella. One of the most shocking things in this episode to me.

Same here.
Sherlock is so used to rely on his intellect. Even if Ella is just MP, I think it's very poignant that Sherlocks admits he needs help with this puzzle...

Yes.  I wonder if maybe he's seeing Ella not so much to deal with his own grieving, but to help him understand human emotion - realising that he needs to, in order to save John. 

Norbury was a mis-step - all his deductions were right, but he seemed to miss the main point (that Mary understood), that he was riling her up into killing him, and she ended up killing Mary.  He didn't anticipate the emotional side of what was he was doing. 

Interesting to see how this leads into TLD.

Yes I don't see Sherlock making mistakes on the contrary he is being better than ever.

I don't see how the death scene could have happened the way we are shown at all. Realistically Mary would have taken old lady Norbury down before she got the handbag open 

Sherlock blaming himself seems something in line with the She shot me to save my life line.

There were a few allusions to good old Agatha Christie in that episode. That was one of the things I liked about the episode. I'm a big  fan of the Queen of Crime. "By The Pricking Of My Thumbs" which is quoted by Sherlock,  is not only a line from Shakespeare but also the title of an Agatha Christie novel about elderly people caught up by their criminal past and their former spy activities. The murderer turns out to be an old and slightly gaga lady with an astonishingly long criminal record. Virtually nobody suspected her. Then there's this other Agatha Christie title "Appointment With Death" which could also have been a fitting title for TST. I wonder if we will be treated to a murder mystery a la Agatha Christie in connection with Mary's death.  All the setlock talk about alibis and guns thrown into the Thames might hint at a more old fashioned murder mystery. Would be nice.
Btw, in connection with the narrator's perspective which we have discussed lately:  Agatha Christie also wrote the groundbreaking novel "The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd" where the whole plot is narrated by the murderer himself,  culminating in a posthumous confession of the narrator in his diary - but unlike in Columbo episodes where we know right away who has done it,  the reader isn't in on it all. It's done extremely wittily and skillfully by Christie. The end catches you completely by surprise. First reaction is always that this is unfair towards the reader. But it's done so skillfully that you cannot even call it a case of an unreliable narrator. Nothing of importance is withheld from the reader. You have a fair chance of solving the mystery. But of course the narrator manages to give everything a spin which throws you totally off the scent. Christie never repeated this. It's something which can be pulled off successfully only once.

Sorry, if I bore some people with my love for Agatha Christie. But  for what it's worth: according to Wikipedia "The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd" has been voted in 2013 as the "best crime novel ever written". Now, that sounds like something Mofftiss might definitely be drawn to. Amanda Abbington said at Comicon that TST tries to do something which has never been done before on tv. Now, what could that be? Could it be that Mofftiss tried to channel Agatha Christie's famous novel with it's devillishly unreliable narrator? I'm not sure if I like this idea at all, but I wouldn't put it past Mofftiss. That would certainly pull off the rug under our feet as they threatened to do in S4.
The only hints we have are the hints at Agatha Christie and the mounting signs that in TST a very unreliable narrator was at work.

Edit: the more I'm pulling at this thread, the more I discover: the murderer of Roger Ackroyd was a nice and respectable doctor - not unlike the Dr. Watson of Doyle's novels. And he was the ASSISTENT of the detective - which in this case is Hercule Poirot, Christie's version of a great and enigmatic detective...
I still refuse to join the voices who wisper that John has killed Mary...seems to be a development too extreme....

Last edited by sherlocked (January 5, 2017 3:39 pm)

Sherlocked, would you mind putting the details of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd in spoiler tags?   It's a fantastic book, and I was lucky enough to read it without knowing "whodunnit".  I agree with all you say there, but it's a huge spoiler if anyone hasn't read it!   I know it's an old book and a classic, so most people probably already know, but there might be people here who haven't read it and would like to!   Thanks in advance .

I don't think the unreliable narrator works quite so well on film.  For instance, I felt The Remains of the Day worked better as a book, for that reason.   But there are some examples.  500 Days of Summer is the one which is springing to mind at the moment!

Last edited by Liberty (January 5, 2017 5:02 pm)

I don't know it's all quite amusing - Norburys motive for shooting seemed to be Surprise!

would have been funny if Mycroft would have been revealed to be "love" though

Liberty wrote:

I think Sherlock deflected attention at first, but he seemed to genuinely miss that she would kill him.  She said herself that she could still suprise him.  I think in a way he gave into a bit of arrogance, a bit of showing off, and possibly his own feelings about Norbury's actions.    He does something similar when he smashes the bust to reveal the black pearl, and gets it wrong - he does get carried away with how clever he is.   Now in this case, once he'd got Norbury's attention away from Mary, there might have been a better way to handle it and calm her down.   Mary knows  it ... she asks him to stop, but he doesn't listen.    He couldn't have predicted Norbury shooting, yes, but she had a gun, she was cornered, she possibly was going to be tried for treason, so prison for murder wasn't much of a deterrent - he could have guessed that it wasn't a good idea to rile her. 

I think Norbury would shoot somebody anyway - that´s why she brought a gun in the first place. Because she works for a government, she certainly does not carry a gun around during normal circumstances - her handbag is searched numerous times during her normal working day...