REReader wrote:

It's a fair point, though, that there is a lot of violence in this series, and from the tone of things we aren't meant to take it all that seriously--as, indeed, was the case in the ACD canon. There are poisonings, shootings, stranglings, bombings, beatings, torture, corpses left and right, and it's all part of The Game. 

If you go and look at the original stories, almost every one begins not with "The Mystery of" but  "The Adventure of"--they were first and foremost adventure stories, and violence was and is part of that genre, both done to and by the hero(es). As long as the hero is standing at the end of the story--or at the closing credits--it's all good. So, personally, I scale my reactions to any violence in the show WAY down, to fit the conventions of the field.

 
After all it's a crime series, a detective story, a story about a detective.
It's not Disney. 

Yes, there is a lot of violence and sometimes it is even played for laughs ("not on my bins"). But the whole filming of the shooting and the mind palace scene imply that this is serious, that the hero of the story is in lethal danger. The same goes for the bonfire scene. There are different varieties of violence in the series and we should distinguish between them. 

maryagrawatson wrote:

Here's a doctor's analysis and fabulous meta about Mary shooting Sherlock.:

Mary Did Not Intended to Kill Sherlock or Magnussen, and this is how we know.

I really don't see much of a difference between shooting Sherlock and the beating John gave him in TEH. That had at least as much probability of killing him as did Mary's bullet. From a study quoted in the link above, a gunshot wound like Sherlock's has only an 8% mortality rate. What could have killed Sherlock in that beating?  Most obvious is that a cracked rib could have broken as Sherlock was thrown to the ground, perforating any number of organs.

This one, by the same doctor, also makes for interesting reading:

How Sherlock Survived A Cardiac Arrest

And we all bring our own bias into these discussions even if we don't discuss them openly and I think that admitting to those biases is the first step to seeing someone else's point of view. Looking at the scene now from the point of view of someone who sees Mary as a romantic threat to Sherlock, I can understand how many of you would hate her as much as you do. I don't share that feeling, but now a lot of the comments in thread make much more sense to me.

Mary

 
So no "sorry", but "come on, you all hate Mary because you are Johnlockers, just admit it!" ?
Fine.

First it's the language, now it's "bias".

The links you posted now are very interesting, but most of the viewers are no doctors, so how shall they know?
To them it's still fact: Mary killed Sherlock; she could have hit him into the leg or whereever, but no, she didn't. She deliberately choose somewhere else.
IMO this shot is very much more risky to be killed by it then "being beaten to death" - the way John did it.

I do apologize if my epiphany struck a chord. I couldn't figure out why I couldn't see things the way many of you do.  It all just made more sense to me when I realised that a lot of people, not necessarily the lot of you, have disliked Mary from the getgo, even before she was outed as an assassin, because of her competing romantically with Sherlock for John, and that the shooting scene was just icing on the proverbial cake, a non-slash justification for disliking Mary that most people would agree with.

I'm crawling back into my corner now, suitably chastised.

Mary

Girls, please.  Not here.

Sorry, I couldn't resist.  That has been in my head for the last page or so. 

It is so interesting to me how this show is like a Rorschach test.  Bias may not be quite accurate, but we cannot avoid seeing and interpreting the story through our own lens, our own world view.  And frankly, that is what makes it great television and raises it to the level of art. In years to come, I predict this show will be studied and discussed and dissected in the same way as other great pieces of literature and film.

So, can we all agree to disagree for the moment? The great and powerful Moftiss have not yet spoken!

One thing we can say for sure: Mary could have just as easily--more easily, really--gone for the kill shot...but she didn't. So whatever her motivations, killing Sherlock was not her goal, although it could have been a consequence.

It seems to me that Magnussen may well have let Mary know that he was blackmailing her as part of a chain to reach Sherlock (even if he didn't trace that chain through to his ultimate goal, Mycroftt and the government of the UK), which would give her a reason to want to make Magnussen think she didn't really care about Sherlock.

Last edited by REReader (August 15, 2014 10:38 pm)

To fool Magnussen.

As for the audience, why believe Sherlock about everything else but not this? The audience was told by Sherlock that Mary didn't aim to kill, which gave the writers the chance to totally shock the audience by having Mary "kill" Sherlock and then take it back...a bit.

Last edited by REReader (August 15, 2014 11:08 pm)

Very interesting, Mary. I agree that it would have been helpful for the writers to have included something more specific than "It was surgery." 

But perhaps they did, and it ended up on the cutting room floor..Or perhaps they cut it out on purpose in order to leave us all in the tizzy we currently find ourselves in.  But nooooo, they would never do that, would they?

I agree, Swanpride, I can also see Sherlock doing the same thing. BUT I cannot see him doing that for the same reason.
Sherlock killed Magnussen to protect John and his family. Mary shot Sherlock to protect herself. This is the major difference between them, IMO. Where Sherlock learned to be selfless in S3, Mary appears to be selfish, even in her love to John.

This is what makes her so interesting for me. (Just to end the discussion wether I hate her nor not. I love to see her on the show. She makes a wonderful addition to the characters. I just don't think she is a good person.)


 

I have mentioned before: there may be some grand scheme that I am unaware of.
But until that becomes known, I follow Sherlock's lead.
He says Maey didn't mean to kill him, he appears to have forgiven her...so I'm with him on this.