This is the question I am posing to myself at the moment.
I am working on “In The Details.” But honestly…it’s really hard to do anything with this mess. Chapter 3 just bogged down over the question of exactly when Eurus murdered “the therapist who really lives here” and how long that body’s been “in a sack in the airing cupboard.” Because Eurus has apparently been John’s therapist for a while. If she killed the actual therapist in order to take over her life, let’s say, right before her first session with John…then by the time Sherlock shows up to the house in “The Lying Detective,” that body should be getting pretty ripe. Especially given that it’s in an airing cupboard, which I have just learned is either a heated closet used for drying sheets and towels, or a closet used to house the central heating/cooling system. Which means it would be warm. Which means the body’s decay would be accelerated, AND (in the case of the second definition of ‘airing cupboard’) the stink would be spread all over the house by the air ducts. And yet nobody in that house notices the smell of decay, despite the fact that John, Sherlock, and Molly are all quite familiar with it.
How does one explain this? Special super-powerful stench-of-death-masking potpourri? Adenoid-neutralizing forcefields? What?
Also…does this therapist have any other patients? Didn’t they notice when their therapist was replaced by Eurus Holmes?
Never mind. I will think of something, I’m sure, when I’m less pissed off.
It doesn’t matter how much you’ve mapped the territory of TFP, there’s always another plot hole to stumble into.
It is a plot black hole.
Just as I thought I read and at least put some thought into all the plot holes, theres ALWAYS something new.
Well, some people who have no problem with S4 would probably say that Churros compelled all the other patients with her magic powers I guess.
I don’t get right now why she must have been Johns therapist for a while, because with the given scene it’s this:
Monday: John decided to search for new therapist Tuesday: in the afternoon: Chose Churros Wednesday: in the morning: made the appointment Thursday: Friday: the day the scene takes place and the day of the appointment
That means if Churros new she had to take the therapists place, she would have to do it at least on Friday morning. That would mean one day of corpse in the airing cupboard.
BUT now it get’s fucky for me. I assume at this point that therapists must have a picture of themselves on their website, we see that with the one male therapists shown in the scene, he has a video online. Now if there would be a picture of the real therapists then surely John would notice that upon the first look he get’s at his new therapist aka Churros. That would mean she had to take over her life somewhere around Monday which leaves us with 5 days of that corpse hanging in the airing cupboard. BUT Sherlock must have done the same thing, at least two weeks ago, now assuming that Churros was even better at predicting everyones actions she would have to take the therapists life at least two weeks ago, right. So corpse hanging there for 14 days. nice.
Either way, that corpse is hanging there for 5 or 14 days and it must be reeking all over the house.
So am I having a massive brain fart or is this indeed fucky? ¯_(ツ)_/¯
It’s even…fuckier?…than you point out, because at least according to Eurus, the dead therapist is STILL in the airing cupboard at John’s final session. That’s when she says, “she’s in a sack in the airing cupboard.” John’s final session has to be at least a week after the one we see at the beginning of the episode (and possibly longer, given that enough time has passed for things to get ‘back to normal’ for everyone). So you take your 5 to 14 days and add, at a minimum, 7. That’s up to 21 days that corpse has been in the cupboard, and John is just sitting there blithely talking about how much happier he is, with nary a curious sniff.
I mean I am resigned to the fact that as written, this episode makes no fucking sense. But it’s pretty bad when you can’t even get your fix-it of it to make sense.
I suppose that the therapist could be alive in the sack in the airing cupboard. That would explain away the lack of smell, and Eurus could be periodically pumping her for information to keep the ruse going. Like, I don’t know, “How many appointments do I need to cancel today? How do I get your mom to stop texting me? Where do you keep the extra napkins?” Your basic impersonating a therapist logistics.
Oh my God, what a horrible thought.
I mean it’s brilliant actually if I use it I’ll credit you, but…EURGH. That poor therapist.
That poor therapist indeed. She’ll definitely need therapy after this.
I’m still not over how disjointed The Final Problem is… it’s all woosh, we’re at Mycroft’s house, woosh, 221B, woosh, and now a boat!, woosh, Sherrinford… just as the explosion faded into the ship scene with no explanation, my mum was all ‘oh, I get it now. it’s a dream’ just on the first watch… you’re meant to feel disorientated. Like a dream that doesn’t make sense but you’re still dreaming, so you just go with the flow…
And that’s not even to mention us opening with the little girl saying “Everyone’s asleep” on the plane and begging them all to “wake up!” Just like how you end a nightmare…
a clip from Inception, which is something Moffat’s borrowed before. Towards the end, he talks about how you don’t realize things are missing – like getting from one place to another. now tell me, do any of the main characters in The Final Problem actually travel from place to place? Or do they jump?
🙌🙌🙌
@peggymarsh seriously, thanks so much for linking this video! ❤
like: “Let me ask you a question: you never really remember the beginning of a dream, do you? You always wind up right in the middle of what’s going on. […] So, how did we end up here? […] Think about it, how did you get here? Where are you right now?”
Where is Mycroft’s house? How did John and Sherlock travel there? Where did they come from? If The Final Problem was real, do you think they’d waste the opportunity of showing John and Sherlock’s reaction to 221B burning, hype up how hard it is to break into Sherrinford, show John, Sherlock and Mycroft forming a plan? But no, we just end up there. We have no idea where we really are. And it’s not strange to them because someone’s not woken up yet.
And it is emphasised by ending TLD in such a climactic cliffhanger, which is barely aknowledged in such a flippant and absurd way at the begginging of TFP, because nah, tranquilizer! They’ve deliberatedly broken their pattern. Think about it:
TGG′s cliffhanger: the pool –> ASiB picks up right from there. TRF′s cliffhanger: the fall –> TEH picks up right from there. HLV′s cliffhanger: the tarmac –> TAB picks up right from there. TLD’s cliffhanger: garridebs –> TFP is a theatre of the absurd.
I think TAB is the best example for this, because it sets a precedent for how they deal with an episode set inside a character’s mind. Sherlock actually does wake up from his dream eventually, and we realize we were on the tarmac. Whereas John still has’t woken up yet.
BBC Sherlock has a lot of taxi scenes, people hailing taxis, getting in and out of taxis, having conversations while inside taxis, but TFP has none. None. Taxis pass unnoticed wherever they go, hunt in the middle of crowds, we’re supposed to notice when they’re not even there anymore.
Like is it just me or are the red walls in the Garridebs room strangely reminiscent of the walls in the building where John and Sherlock solved their first case?
@jenna221b did a meta about Eurus’s cell looking like the morgue from TLD, but there is this element as well. The furniture is the same design as from Sherlock’s fight scene with Ajay.
There was foreshadowing about this in TBB.
The same visual memories are being recycled. So far, I’ve written or contributed to six metas on this topic, but it just keeps popping up. This links to a few of them. ( x ) @teaandqueerbaiting@may-shepard
1. Molly’s Galaxy Edge is calling Sherlock (isn’t she the one who’s supposed to answer up the call?) They even give us a full shot of her phone calling Sherlock at the same time we hear a phone ringing. We’re supposed to believe its her phone ringing but is it really? I refuse to believe this is bad production because actors have insisted they film scenes multiple times and the show-runners want everything to be perfect, how could they then film, edit, and air this scene when this was supposed to be one of the parts literally everyone was waiting for (Sherlock saying “I love you” in the trailer). Is it really that hard to call Molly’s smartphone and have her answer it and repeat the scene? It would definitely have the same intended dramatic effect but why make a huge error like this?
Why show us Molly calling Sherlock?
I concede S4 has a lot of fuckiness but this one is just….bold and staring us right in the face. This probably has a deeper meaning and might be a clue to the real footage they should be fucking releasing (maybe someone can theorize on this)
2. When she finally picks up and holds the phone to her ears, we see the Galaxy Edge lockscreen (so she isn’t on a call now? who is she talking to then?)
3. “Softer, Sherlock.” I thought it was Eurus the first time I heard it but I replayed the scene and now I can confirm this is definitely Mrs. Hudson whispering to Sherlock (but why? out of nowhere? did eurus record Hudders reaction gifs as well?) or could this be Mrs Hudson telling Sherlock to be softer when they’re at John’s bedside in a hospital?
4. The video on the screen is a looping video (as some of you have already pointed out)
Other things:
5. Mycroft wearing a different tie (Before explosion vs Sherrinford):
6. Sherlock also wearing a different shirt
(Before explosion vs Sherrinford):
7. John too (Before explosion vs Sherrinford):
(Notice that their suits and blazers stay the same….How?)
8. Only 2 pins are fired when Sherlock puts a gun to his head (Sherlock and John pass out, we find out later that Eurus didn’t hurt Mycroft, but just locked him up in an old cell? Could this mean something? Was it a plan? Was Mycroft involved?
9. An actual projector projecting at a curved LED TV? What the fuck is going on?
Yup, that’s definitely a TV, you can even see it here:
Hold on…. A fucking projector?!
Please, let this be our smoking gun. This is probably the same brand (but different color and model) as the one used in TST to show us doctored footage:
Thanks for tagging me @xalphaofficial These are very interesting finds. Just found a little mystery in the cut in family video of Mycrofts movie at the beginning. So many strange things. And this is just the beginning …. :))))
There’s been a lot of bantering about how it could be possible that Sherlock didn’t notice there was no glass in Eurus’ cell, so I thought I’d have to try to explain this fact to you.
Have you ever been really stressed? Do you know what happens to your brain when you are confronted with a really stressful situation?
Your cognitive abilities shrink, your vision field is limited to the point in which you can get your vision tunneled.
All your senses can become tunneled when you are stressed. For vision, it means your visual attention can be focused on one small geographic area of an emergency scene or one task being performed at a scene and you miss seeing things in your periphery.
When you are suffering from tunneled senses your situational awareness is vulnerable because you are likely to miss important clues and cues.
No wonder, even for such an observant person as Sherlock, that in those extremely stressful circumcstances – seeing his long forgotten, psychopatic sister, after he heard (and ignored) “vatican cameos” from John, he lost his usual abilities to see details, he was doing his best but his it was his humanity, normal physiological and emotional reactions that didn’t allow him to use his brain to its fullest, as usual.
I am really not surprised Sherlock didn’t see there was nothing to see.
Unanswered question? …He stabs it. | S04E03 The Final Problem
John is so interesting in this scene.
“Let me hold this thing that distresses you, so that you can stab a knife into it, inches from my hand.”
So much trust, not to mention how close they must be standing for this.
Certainly closer than the latter shots imply.
It’s surprisingly sweet, for a violent moment!
For an ex-Fusilier, this speaks volumes.
My husband is also an ex-Fusilier with major trust issues. I asked him who he’d trust to stab the knife in and he nodded and said “you”.
I cannot point out enough how huge that is.
Ahhhh! @madadhruadh thanks for this real-life perspective! There is one person that John Watson finally learned to trust this much. And of course it’s Sherlock. His wife, his sister, his therapist with a patient confidentiality agreement – none of them came even close. I don’t know what the creators intended
to communicate
with this blocking choice, but as always the actual meaning is clear. Guh.
Skully asked about this a while back, but people’s best efforts at
ENHANCE revealed only that it’s on official letterhead of some kind, and
signed “Sincerely”. So, definitely not legible, but not from John. Best guess was NSY or some other agency, IIRC. Unfortunately I can’t link the post anymore. 😦
But can we talk about the intensity of John’s looking at Sherlock?
As usual Martin’s expression says everything, but I am happy to talk about it, too! It was this look (landed on at random while seeking) that made me back up and start framing for a gif, and only then did I notice the hand placement. THESE TWO! You can’t put them in a room together without sparks flying, seriously. That look definitely affects my head-canon for the letter, too: it’s clearly something important to make John look at Sherlock with so much concern.
(For the purpose of this post, I’m going to focus on Gore Verbinski’s 2002 film, rather than the Japanese source film Ringu / Ring,because the former is much better known in the West, and I think it’s more likely that it’s The Ring, and not Ringu, that Moffat is talking about in this interview, where he mentions watching it. However, since the broad strokes plot outline of both The Ring and Ringu are very similar / the same wrt the idea of the false climax, the argument I’m making holds either way.)
The Ring is well known for being a really beautifully done horror film. It looks incredible, for one thing–it’s visually gorgeous and thematically dense. But mostly, it does something with the concept of hauntings, ghostly origin stories, and the standard horror plot that, at the time of its release, was incredibly stunning and exciting.
In short, The Ring fakes out its audience by presenting a false climax that appears to resolve the story, in a way that is emotionally nice, if a little unsatisfying, before pulling the rug out from under its own plot.
Because The Ring is such a standout intertext for TFP, i.e., TFP not only draws on it, but resonates with it in multiple ways, via names, repeated motifs, the framing of certain shots, as well as relying on it for nearly its entire climax, I really think the story of s4 and the series as a whole is not over. Even if you think there aren’t any further episodes coming down the pipe, I’m hoping this discussion might help people understand why the story feels incomplete. (Because it is).
If you’ve been trying to sit with the idea that the Redbeard reveal / presentation of Eurus’ backstory / resolution of Sherlock’s story is real / supposed to be taken at face value, but that reading isn’t working for you, maybe this will help.
Basic premises: the reading I’m doing here is a mind bungalow reading. The rationale for The Ring as a major intertext of TFP is that John has been shot, and TFP is the content of his hallucination as he’s bleeding out, which offers an understanding of why it’s so bizarre and tonally shifted from everything else we’ve seen in Sherlock. This reading pulls on the newly revealed information, in TST, that John is a horror movie buff–enough so that he feels the need to correct Mary on the difference between The Omen and The Exorcist. John’s proclivity for horror films offers one justification for why they not only seem to inform TFP, but practically take it over.
I’m hoping to show, for people who aren’t familiar with The Ring, exactly how wildly it dominates TFP, and to talk about how we can use this fact to make some sense of the episode, and possibly the future of the show.
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