Ah that he is and it is nicer to call him by his first name, I just mixed them up in my hasty posting haha

Last edited by Lis (February 9, 2017 7:46 pm)

Possibly she was such a child prodigy she read her old brothers' books and even those of her parents.

Yes, the thought has its merits. If I have learned something from TFP about Mycroft, it is that well-meant does not equal well. He meant well when talked Sherlock into believing that caring was not an advantage, that hearts got broken. He meant well when he talked his parents into believing that their daughter was dead. He meant well when he incarcerated his sister to protect the world from her and her from the world. But in the end he caused sadness and heartbreak.  

I also don't agree that Sherlock was pictured as "the family idiot". The fact that Eurus and Mycorft probably have a higher IQ than Sherlock doesn't make Sherlock an "idiot". And I also don't think that Mycroft seriously thinks that Sherlock is stupid. I think he used to "tease" his brother to challange him, to push him to be as good and as smart as he could be. And it worked: For example in the mind palace scene in HLV, Sherlock first doesn't realize that the bullet is still inside him. But then he wants to prove to Mycroft that he's not actually stupid and it's only then that he realizes that he hadn't heard the glass of the mirror behind him break and therefore the bullet was still inside him. So the motivation of proving to Mycroft that he's not stupid actually saved his life.

Last edited by Kae Em (February 10, 2017 4:41 pm)

Kae Em wrote:

I also don't agree that Sherlock was pictured as "the family idiot". Just because Eurus and Mycorft probably have a higher IQ than Sherlock this doesn't make Sherlock an "idiot". And I also don't think that Mycroft seriously thinks that Sherlock is stupid. I think he used to "tease" his brother to challange him, to push him to be as good and as smart as he can be,. And it worked: For example in the mind palace scene in HLV, Sherlock first doesn't realize that the bullet is still inside him. But then he wants to prove to Mycroft that he's not actually stupid and it's only then that he realizes that he hadn't heard the glass of the mirror behind him break and therefore the bullet was still inside him. So the motivation of proving to Mycroft that he's not stupid actually saved his life.

Well, he flatlined anyway. What really prevented him from dying was his inner Moriarty telling him "John Watson is in danger."

But that leads me to another unanswered question: what danger was it? I always assumed that Mary was dangerous for him and took that as a proof for Evil!Mary. But now that Mary was not that evil at all, what danger was it that John has been in?

Last edited by Schmiezi (February 10, 2017 4:45 pm)

Yes, he is clearly completely surprised and confused by Mary at that point.  He hasn't worked it out.  All he knows is that she apparently tried to kill him after he was sure she wouldn't, and that John is about to walk in and possibly get shot too.

I don't think Mycroft thinks Sherlock is stupid (and possibly Daddy Holmes is actually the family idiot in a family of geniuses, not Sherlock).  I remember his conversation about them meeting other children - he seems to include Sherlock in his very small group of people who are intelligent to the extent that it puts them in a different world from the goldfish.

And it works!

WhoIWantToBe wrote:

My reading on this is all about Sherlock's reply of "well, now you do". That is a pretty sarcastic comment, and I took it as such in this context. It is super surprising that John doesn't know after all this time, funerals and weddings when Sherlock's actual day of birth is, and given that Sherlock never freely offers anything about himself without being prompted I don't think he deliberately hid it. A lot of people, especially as we get older, don't bother to learn my birthday including really close friends, and we don't really want to celebrate them either haha. The celebration of it is kind of reserved for a social occasion in our youth, so from experience something tells me this scene was written for Sherlock to be a bit unwanting of the attention, and then John changed his plans to include Molly and Sherlock in the outing for cake  :D  

I actually took the Happy Birthday a different way.  From the start of the series, Moffat has always stated Sherlock is a "bad man" and that the show is his journey to becoming "a good man".  At the end of T6T, with Mary's death, Sherlock finally recognized he had a problem - that he placed ego over empathy - and sought to change himself.  The example that he does this is his acceptance of Mary's case "Save John Watson".  He does not take the case out of ego, but out of love for John.  This is a first for him.  It demonstrates he is a new person.  And John recognizes this fact, thus the deduction "Happy Birthday".  While it may be a literal fact, the metaphorical fact and recognition is far more important and thematically relevant.
 

Possibly she kept tabs on him, but possibly she just saw it in the news.  (Although I keep forgetting that that scene isn't strictly canon!)

I also think the Happy Birthday is just a nice thing for John to say, part of his apologising.  It was an ideal opportunity to make fun of him, or to berate him for keeping secrets (Sherlock let John think he was grieving) but he doesn't.  There's a subtext of "It's OK, I understand".

Besley, I think we see the flowers and the "W" card only in the deleted scene, right? But then they chose to publish it. You are right, it is a plothole, same as the Pentonville prisoners who sent flowers. Which, by the way, leads me to another curious thing - why do the papers we see in HLV not mention that Sherlock was shot? They only give us the sex gossip spread by Janine.