A Scandal in Belgravia in my pants

[sevenswells]

Finished re-watching, here are my thoughts:

Overall, I thought it was absolutely brilliant. I was very worried about being disappointed, because the fandom is so great and the fics were so amazing, and I was afraid the magic wouldn't be there, but god I was completely caught in the episode, it made me forget about everything, Moffat, Gatiss, Benedict, Martin, fanon, and that's how I know how good it was. I laughed, I held my breath, I was amazed, I was thrilled, I was awed, I was shocked, I was thoroughly entertained. Also very distracted on my first viewing by how pretty Benedict looked.

tl;dr IT MADE ME FEEL A LOT OF FEELINGS

There are pros and cons about Irene, I'm on Team "Overall okay but not quite there"; I thought Lara Pulver did an amazing job (the way her voice caught and slightly broke at the end of "Look at the poor man" is still giving me chills, it was just right) but I also think I don't understand the way Moffat writes women, and apparently I'm not alone in this. Nice of him to keep trying, though.
He has a bit of a hard time selling me his female characters; I don't really care about them because I don't find them likeable. The worst example was Jekyll's wife in Jekyll, who made me want to set myself on fire while simultaneously pushing her off a cliff.

Also, I would have preferred Irene beheaded by the end. Beheaded is cool, it's a good way to die, majestic even; magically saved by Ninja!lock... not so much. Here's how it went from my point of view:

MYCROFT: Only SHERLOCK HOLMES would be able to fool me.

ME: *spider Moffat sense tingling* Oh no. I hope there is not some stupid twist in the end where he actually saved her, because that would be really lame.

JOHN: *awkward, painfully transparent lie about witness protection in America*

SHERLOCK: You're adorable John, but she totally sent me a text to say she was dead.

JOHN: What did she write?

SHERLOCK: "Kthxbai".

JOHN: Huh. How mysterious and womanly.

SHERLOCK: IKR?

ME: Ah, that's good. She's dead, John knows it (btw, srsly Mycroft, sending JOHN to tell Sherlock a lie? You did it for the lulz, didn't you?), Sherlock knew even before John, they're awkward and affectionate towards each other, everybody's heart-broken, what a deliciously depressing episode. I lo-

SCENE WHERE IRENE GETS MAGICALLY SAVED BY NINJA!LOCK HAPPENS

ME: .... Lame.

Anyway, it didn't matter ultimately, because for me Irene wasn't the star of the show at all: I'm sorry, but Mycroft took the cake. And ate it.
So much from that scene inside the plane, anger, disappointment, worry, care, sadness, failure, fuck IDEK Gatiss you killed me there.
And then the exchange with Irene afterwards; you could see two very, very smart people trying to figure each other out; that's actually the scene where I saw for the first time that she was smart, because she was treading on thin ice with Mycroft. Yes she had the upper hand, but she knew she was still dealing with the most dangerous man on earth; during the whole exchange it was like she was weighing every single word and telling herself: "One slip, one mistake, and I'm fucking dead". I think you could sense that when Mycroft proposes to destroy the phone altogether, and there is some kind of game of chicken between them... the tension was palpable, and they were completely intent on each other; equal in a way that just never really happened when she was with Sherlock -- in my eyes, anyway.

GOD I'm really excited to see what's next GIMME NAO.

tl;dr

ETA: ALSO AFTER "HAPPY NEW YEAR" I EXPECTED THEM TO KISS WHY DIDN'T THEY KISS DAMMIT!!!

Comments

[falling-voices.livejournal.com]

Answering both this post and your earlier comment here, to save time and space:

I expect Mycroft's quip at Sherlock's supposed virginity (I take that statement with a grain of salt, admittedly) to be an answer to Sherlock's earlier dig at his sexuality — 'Are we here to see the Queen?" "... oh. Apparently, yes." — which isn't any better. They're both dicks, in the end. That said, all those scenes in which Mycroft is all alone (on Christmas Eve, of all nights) in that great, mournful house made me shiver slightly. He seems to lead a very lonely life.

Regarding Irene's ending: there are several scenarios I'd have liked better than what we were given (the Witness Protection scheme, for instance, or a is-she-dead-or-alive ambiguity) but now I really wish we'd seen her save herself and possibly fake her death again. It'd have left Sherlock, John and Mycroft in such a delicate position of knowledge and lack thereof.

[sevenswells.livejournal.com]

Well I was good with the idea of her dead. I mean, by the end of the episode, I thought "Wow, look at how adult this show is getting, before they were all about shooting cabbies and giggling afterwards, and now Sherlock is indirectly responsible for the death of someone he marginally cared about, and fucking dealing with the consequences holy shit".
Of course, without that stupid execution and then rescue scene at the end, it would have still been open for interpretation -- can we really believe Mycroft? Did Sherlock intervene or not? Did she find a way to save herself in the end? And people would have written fic and it would have been fine. I think an additionnal scene where we see her alive or where she escapes would have been too much, a bit cartoon-ish, Carmen San Diego-style, which would have been fine in the first season, but like I said, the adult tone all of a sudden was something marvellous, new and very welcome. The rescue scene kind of ruined it, so I've decided to follow this interpretation http://harriet-spy.livejournal.com/830759.html#cutid1 or delete it altogether.

[bloodyscary.livejournal.com]

If they really wanted to let us know Irene WAS alive, stoping the the scence where Sherlock smile at his phone would have been enough...

[sevenswells.livejournal.com]

The idea of Irene dead was a good thing, and I don't mean for the slash; just because it made the show very adult, the same way Waters of Mars suddenly turned Doctor Who into something of an uncompromising tragedy... but again, it would have been fine if it was open to interpretation too; that's one of the main strengths of the show, actually, being open to interpretation. I don't know why Moffat suddenly wanted to be so literal.

[coloredink.livejournal.com]

I deleted that scene. Irene saved by ninjalock? No idea what you're talking about. Never happened.

BUT OH SO MANY FEELINGS I CAN'T EVEN WRITE ANYTHING JUST TOO MANY FEELINGS

[sevenswells.livejournal.com]

I deleted that scene. Irene saved by ninjalock? No idea what you're talking about. Never happened.

You're completely right, as always, and I shall follow your example.