Talkie Tuesday: The Abominable Bride

"If you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

Hello everyone!

Happy New Year! 

I hope you all had a festive and cozy get-together with the people you care about the most, and started off this calendar year with a bang - I know I did. Not so much the bang as it was the previous part, as I was lucky enough to spend my New Year's Eve with very good friends who make everything a whole lot less problematic and seem much brighter than it sometimes is. And then I got to go home to my family, which, of course, is even better.

To top it off, the first weekend of this new year was spent in the most delightful way imaginable (I may be chaneling my inner Galadriel here, but An Unexpected Journey was on TV this Sunday night, blame it on that): watching the Sherlock special, The Abominable Bride, surrounded by a bunch of Sherlockians and Sherlock-enthusiasts!

Really, life just doesn't get any better than that.

So, as those of us unfortunate souls who keep waiting on the new A Song of Ice and Fire book know, sometimes, things are much easier said than done, or in this case, delivered.

Whereas season one, two and three of Sherlock followed in two-year intervals (2010, 2012, 2014, respectively), the fourth season has a ways to go yet, because the stars are a little bit more in demand now than they were way back when. And, of course, there's Doctor Strange, too.

Luckily for us though, there was a holiday special!

And, to top it ALL off, it took Benedict Cumberbatch and plunked him down in 19th century London, England, in the land of perpetual fog and horse-drawn carriages and cobbled streets, where the famous sleuth Sherlock Holmes made his literary debut and mesmerizes us all from the moment Sir Arthur Conan Doyle imagined him onto paper.

Ahem.

We actually start the episode by recapping some of the events that happened in the previous three seasons - wait for it, this is important later. But when we jump into the episode itself ... it zooms back, and the screen spells ALTERNATELY, and we're in 1889.

YES!

At this point, to my eternal delight, John Watson narrates returning home from war using the exact words from the book, and he meets his new, fellow lodger, beating a corpse mercilessly to figure out bruising post-mortem. Ah, Holmes. The address remains 221B Baker Street, and we're off!

On an adventure, of course, though we fast-forward a little to when the sleuthing duo is already well into the business, and Lestrade (who has SIDEBURNS, people!), comes to tell them about a case of a deranged bride, Emilia Ricoletti, who committed suicide rather spectacularly, but then apparently rose from the grave (the morgue) and went on to kill her husband before obligingly returning herself to the slab and staying there.

Yeah, it's THAT kind of day at Baker Street.

Sherlock is disdainful, until the moment when Lestrade comes to tell him there's been a series of murders just like the first one, and he deduces these are copycats - and that there's a method. At which point we encounter an ENORMOUSLY FAT Mycroft, who tells his brother that Eustace Carmichael has received a letter with five orange pips in it (how clever are these writers?!), and is being threatened with death. So, Holmes and Watson trudge off to stay up all night in a foggy country mannor.

Obviously, what happens is that they attempt a conversation about sex, the man gets killed, Watson gets spooked by a hissing bride (no joke), and Sherlock begins hallucinating Moriarty.

At which point, we are violently thrown onto the plane in modern-day, where Sherlock has juiced himself up with drugs to get into this Ricoletti case, as it resembles what Moriarty had done (which is why we needed the reminders at the beginning of the episode).

He goes into his mind palace again, and wakes in Victorian London, apparently having dabbled with cocaine (7% solution, anyone?). Mary Watson (the wife, yes), sends word that she found the co-conspirators of Emilia Ricoletti, and we enter a bizarre rendition of a Ku Klux Klan muttering, only these are all women, they're all Caucasian, and all are waging the battle to be given the right to vote and be treated better by their husbands. This is, essentially, a war the men cannot win, but once again, Sherlock is plunged into a delusion of Moriarty, and wakes on the plane.

This time, we go dig up Emilia Ricoletti's grave, because he is determined to figure it all out, but the corpse attacks him, and he wakes at the Reichenbach Falls, with an exasperated 'Oh, I see, not awake yet, am I?', and a gleeful Moriarty.

There is a duel, of course, and the fans are treated to the arrival of one John Watson (unlike in the story), and Moriarty goes overboard. Literally.

Watson also tells Sherlock he knows he's in a story, and asks how he plans on waking, in answer to which Sherlock jumps off the ledge, too.

Waking once again in the modern world, explaining that, while Moriarty is dead, he had put wheels in motion for what would happen AFTER his death, too, regardless. It's not Moriarty, but a copycat.

And then, we wrap up with Victorian Holmes and Watson, talking about the delusion Holmes had of aeroplanes and cars and the modern world, and Sherlock explains that he has always felt that he is a man 'out of his time', while looking out the window on a modern-day Baker Street.

IT WAS BRILLIANT.

I didn't understand all the bouncing around through time until the very end, but really, all that aside, seeing the Victorian setting just made everything so much better. I've always loved those original Sherlock Holmes adaptations, and this one more than lived up to the potential.

But now, who knows when season four premieres?!

xx

*images and video not mine