"The Game is on."
Hello everyone!
Happy New Year!
I hope that you've all celebrated with your loved ones and had an amazing time during the longest night between 2016 and 2017. I'll admit mine was spent very lazily, at home, watching the Police Academy movie marathon and going to bed before one o'clock.
I know, I'm hopeless.
BUT.
That being said, with 2017 now firmly in our midst, the new series, and new seasons are finally beginning!
I'm looking at you, Shadowhunters, but before I even nip at that particular episode (because I still have to watch it) I'm going to go into a review of what is quite possibly the most anticipated show besides Game of Thrones and probably Walking Dead.
Ladies and gentlemen, our favourite detective from Baker Street is back!
Last we saw Sherlock, he was having a heck of a time being high as a kite during The Abominable Bride (the review of which, I do believe I've also done so I shall include the link down below, as well as to any other Sherlock-related blogs I've written so far), but now that season four is officially upon us, he's back and pretty much better than ever.
No one annoys people as well as Sherlock. No one.
I will be doing weekly reviews of this season as the episodes air, since there aren't that many, and besides it's what EVERYONE wants to read about these days.
The episode itself begins with Sherlock recounting the story of a merchant in Samarra, who has an appointment with Death, but our sleuth is walking around in an aquarium, of all places.
Without giving us any time to figure out an explanation, we are thrown to right after the series special as Sherlock and Mycroft are both before the very prominent members of the British government, who have now remade the story of Sherlock killing Magnussen back at the end of season three (oh, you've forgotten about it? Me too, until they brought it up again) because they believe something of Moriarty's is back, a master plan of some sort, and they need Sherlock to deal with it.
So, Sherlock does what Sherlock's best at - he starts solving cases again. And Watson blogs about them.
Which was a continuous joke throughout because poor Lestrade FINALLY got the gumption to speak up and point out that while it's fine that he gets the credit in the beginning, everyone knows it was Sherlock by the time Watson types up the blog!
A little smidge of resentment there. Just a smidge,
Anyway, while Sherlock is busy solving a case about a young man who was found charred to crisp in his car in front of his own home while supposedly away in Tibet, he also notices a weird shrine to Margaret Thatcher, and that something's missing from it.
Namely, a bust that was broken, and that nothing else was taken the night this had happened.
This prompts the detective to believe that it's Moriarty's plan, finally beginning, and he's as excited as you wouldn't believe when there's ANOTHER broken bust found, and a murder to top it off.
Fan note: by this point, my brain was starting to prick and prod, because I was fairly sure I'd heard about six bust statues before somewhere. Only, they were of Napoleon (of that I was certain) and Hercule Poirot was the one doing the sleuthing (that one I wasn't quite sold on). Luckily, I have a volume of Holmes' stories on my nightstand and a quick glance at the content page showed me what I was looking for: The Adventure of the Six Napoleons.
By this point, it's all hands on deck, but of course while they also enlist the help of bloodhound Toby (a lovely throwback to the original writing where Sherlock often consulted with the canine) they don't actually find anything or anyone.
Until Holmes corners the bust-breaker in one of the houses, almost drowns, and instead of the Borgia Pearl finds a memory stick inside the bust, the same one Mary gave to John back in season three and which John had destroyed.
Going to Mary for information, he's told about her previous work as an assassin in the AGRA group, about a botched operation from which only she had escaped (or thought she had), and how they would never turn on each other because they quite literally had the means to bring one another down, if necessary.
Unfortunately, the other survivor is intent on killing her as he says she betrayed them all, so she drugs Sherlock, and heads off around the globe, only to be cornered by Sherlock AND Watson in the Middle East (Watson suggested they put a tracker in the memory stick, the clever fiend).
That's where the ultimate shoot-out ensues, during which the would-be assassin is shot to death, but Sherlock figures out it might have actually been a different Englishwoman all along.
Namely, one of the previous high figures, who's nickname 'Love' (Amo in Latin, or a derivation of it anyway) kept popping back up through their investigation. Mycroft interrogates her, but gets nothing, and at that point I started going through the other women we'd been introduced to during the episode - just as Sherlock figures out it wasn't the high-ranking one, but the secretary.
She'd been the one selling state secrets all along, which is how we end up at the aquarium watching sharks swim around.
Sherlock and Mary confront her alone, but Watson is smart enough to call in both Mycroft (and his umbrella, for some reason) and Lestrade for backup, and the culmination of it all is that the old biddy shoots towards Sherlock, but Mary throws herself in front of him, getting shot in the process.
The unfortunate result of this being that she dies in Watson's arms.
Left reeling from THAT, we then see Sherlock first at a counsellor (which is definitely new) and then speaking to Mrs. Hudson while thinking he's received a message from Moriarty (which isn't so new).
In fact, it's a video from Mary, made as a precaution in case she ever passed away, and she gives him a case: to save John Watson.
Only, John Watson currently doesn't want to be saved.
So there we go.
Among other things in this episode, Mary also gave birth to baby Rosamund Mary, John Watson, who usually struck me as the most righteous man ever in these stories, apparently has a clandesdine 'thing' with another woman (not sure how far it went though ... just flirting I believe), and Lestrade goes on a date with someone Sherlock announces isn't good for him.
I'm very lucky no one actually sat with me while I watched this episode, because unfortunately my poor computer had to listen to my overzealous commentary through the full hour and a half. That's right, people, we got almost 90 minutes of the episode!
I'm shocked and saddened by Mary's passing, but Doyle did in fact write her out of the stories back in the day, and it was probably easier for both Amanda and Martin as they had previously parted ways in real life, though they both strike me as quite the professionals. Anyway, no sign of Moriarty quite yet, but knowing the meddling miscreant he probably cooked up something even more sinister which will rear an ugly head in the next episode.
But until then, we have to deal with another rift between Holmes and Watson, and I dearly, dearly hope that it won't last too long.
The show, after all, is about them.
xx
*images and video not mine
No comments:
Post a Comment