By: Steven Moffat
**SPOILERS**
If you have not yet watched this episode, please go and do so before proceeding.
Observe, everyone - this is the episode penned by Moffat. Not The Reichenbach Fall, not The Empty Hearse, and not even The Sign of Three - this.
Observe, everyone - this is the episode penned by Moffat. Not The Reichenbach Fall, not The Empty Hearse, and not even The Sign of Three - this.
I mention it because I have seen several articles (professional articles, even) who loudly decry the more light-hearted and satire-oriented half of Series 3 as a clear sign that Moffat has gotten too big for his boots and is drunk on his own power. Uh-huh...while I too definitely have a bone to pick with Mr. Steven concerning his writing of late, I at least know where to aim my cannons of complaint. Fortunately, when it comes to Sherlock, there is usually little to complain about that doesn't stem from personal opinion.
Favorite Moments & Random Thoughts:
- Reaction to opener: Magnussen licked her face. HE LICKED HER FACE! Yuck!
- John is also apparently not the most tactful person before his morning tea. Asking his neighbor if her son is 'the druggie one' really shouldn't have happened.
- Mary, I love you! She is determined to go along and back her husband up to the best of her ability...and she thinks it is hot when he goes all Mr. Tough Guy with the tire iron. They were just made for each other.
- The scene with Bill Wiggans (the leader of Holmes' original Irregulars) and John will go down in history as one of the funniest and greatest scenes of John Watson.
- Ladies and gentlemen, behold Sherlock's "Oh crap...I'm high as a kite and John's going to be furious!" face:
- So John and Mary take Sherlock (who is hilariously overreacting like a bratty teenager over John's bust) and the other druggies to St. Bart's for a check-up. Mr. and Mrs. Psychopath? Hardly!
- One thing I have noticed about Moffat's writing of late is that he seems to be willing to bend and retcon past canon for the sake of a witty quip. We saw this in The Name of The Doctor with the comment about "...what idiot would try to steal a faulty TARDIS?!" (Susan Foreman, not the Time Lords, invented the term 'TARDIS') and we see it again with Sherlock's crooked door-knocker and Mycroft's OCD comment. I went back and looked, just to be sure, and we never see the door knocker as being crooked before that very moment in time. The comment is hilarious...the first time you hear it...but it doesn't hold up to future viewings.
- Mycroft's threat to the Andersons is quite funny and a bit scary. I also like how in this episode, as in A Study in Pink, it is Anderson performing the drugs bust at 221B. But, while during ASiP he was doing it out of spite, here it is because he honestly cares about Sherlock. That is character development, people - not Moffat having his chew toy slap someone around to make a point.
- I don't understand why Mycroft said that whole bit about "If you go against Magnussen, you go against me." I mean - it was a great quote for the trailer, but doesn't actually make a whole lot of sense in the context that it was actually said. There needed to be more explanation. Mycroft had got rid of Anderson's prying ears, so why couldn't he explain to his brother why they needed CAM to be left intact? Surely he must have known that the forbidden mystery aspect of it (and the 'it's just me against the dragon' mentality) would have made Sherlock more determined than ever!
- I laughed so hard at John's reaction to Sherlock/Janine...he really was the Voice of the Audience there!
- "...none of them have turned my stomach like Charles Augustus Magnussen!" Well me neither (I REALLY don't like the idea of people licking me! Who would?) but somehow that statement just doesn't line up. Maybe if we had seen more of CAM earlier in the series we could understand why he felt this way...but there's a lot of talk and not a whole lot of explanation. Show, don't tell, Moffat! First rule of writing! This whole thing just stinks of A Good Man Goes To War "He'll rise higher than ever before and fall so much further..." tripe. And that's not a good thing. I want to be repulsed by Magnussen (I am, but for reasons of my own) and I want to fear him. But just being told by Sherlock Holmes to fear him isn't enough for me. I expect more from you, Sherlock!
- I really want an explanation as to why Sherlock wasn't listed as one of John's pressure points. Was it just because Magnussen was just following the chain of command from Mary to Mycroft? Or did the writers just goof up? Magnussen keeps track of anything that throws a person off their game, so you would think that Sherlock (the man who made the good doctor punch out a Chief Commissioner who called him a weirdo) would be a pressure point for John along with Mary.
- It is cool, though, how Irene Adler is listed as one of Sherlock's. Is Magnussen somehow connected to Moriarty's web? Moriarty used the term 'pressure point' too when explaining how he skewed the jury...and he's the only one I can think of who could have spilled about Irene (somehow I don't see Mycroft as letting that information loose ever) so were they in cahoots? Just a thought...
- Why exactly did Sherlock need the drugs for the Magussen case? It seems to me that he already had the blackmailer's attention when he offered to act as Lady Smallwood's proxy. So what was the point? It's never explained or mentioned again.
- Sherlock using Janine's affections to break into Magussen's office comes directly from canon. Anyone who ever protests and says that the Holmes of the books wasn't as 'sociopathic' and cruel as Sherlock is has been reading a different edition than what I possess.
- Oh Mary. What a plot twist! This is a piece of character development that I found very interesting. CAM has some terrible dirt on Mary that will completely uproot her life and turn it on its head in the most destructive and hurtful way. She has also recently found out that she is pregnant, so not only is the clock ticking on her action window of opportunity but she also now has a child to protect as well (notice that she is wearing a second bulletproof vest over her stomach). Mary goes to Magnussen, not to kill him (because they were just talking when Sherlock walked in and if she was going to kill him she would have already done so) but to bargain. It's obvious from that fact that she is in over her head and in danger of being sucked back into the life that she thought she had left behind her.
- I think by far my favorite part of this episode is the Mind Palace sequence. Good lord is that beautiful! The shots, the colors, the way they represent each and every part of it is just perfect. It's creepy, it's sad, and it gets very dark whenever you finally reach ground zero and realize that Sherlock keeps Moriarty locked away deep inside his subconscious. It just serves as a reminder to us all that Sherlock is not so different from Jim...he just happens to fight on the side of the angels.
- And if you though Moriarty was scary alive...he's twice as terrifying whenever he's in Sherlock's head and reciting twisted versions of childhood poetry. Just goes to remind you that (a) Moriarty played a children's storyteller as Richard Brook and got his kicks out of fairytales and (b) Moffat was once a genius when it came to scaring children by taking their playthings and worst nightmares and bringing them to life.
- Nobody can ever convince me that this particular Sherlock Bolt-hole suggestion isn't a reference to The Great Mouse Detective!
- There is a fractured timeline being used in the latter half of this episode, similar to the one in The Sign of Three. But while that episode had the Best Man speech to use as a framing device and utilized the timeline as a means to a bit of visual comedy and storytelling, here it just seems to be there for the sake of being there. I know Moffat likes to play with our feels...but here he went a bit overboard to the detriment of the story.
- I think the main problem I have with this episode is that it feels like it's trying too hard to be big and dramatic and surprising. Reminds me of the RDJ films, actually. A lot of surface and not much interior. Moffat is a genius with manipulating emotions and getting that immediate response from us. We've seen him do it with Doctor Who in The Name of The Doctor, The Angels Take Manhattan, Asylum of the Daleks, and many others. The problems with all of those episodes named is that they don't hold up under scrutiny. His early work such as A Study in Pink or The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances still holds up to this day and is good for multiple viewings. Those episodes just get worse the more I think about them. I can poke plot-hole after plot-hole and because the emotional impact is lessened the second time you experience it because it isn't a shocker any more, they just don't hold up. That is what is happening with His Last Vow. Moffat is going for a specific response (he wants us to cry over poor John being betrayed and the near-breakup of the Watsons' marriage) and he succeeds...but it is to the detriment of the story at large. It isn't cohesive and there are numerous problems.
- Here we have a nice reference to the original story The Sign of Four where Mary Morstan is first introduced as a client. Fans of the books are quick to pick up on the fact that the AGRA treasure was an empty box. Is it possible that the memory stick was actually empty as well?
- I do like the way Mrs. Holmes gets on Mycroft and Sherlock for smoking. Serves them right!
- Reaction to opener: Magnussen licked her face. HE LICKED HER FACE! Yuck!
- John is also apparently not the most tactful person before his morning tea. Asking his neighbor if her son is 'the druggie one' really shouldn't have happened.
- Mary, I love you! She is determined to go along and back her husband up to the best of her ability...and she thinks it is hot when he goes all Mr. Tough Guy with the tire iron. They were just made for each other.
- The scene with Bill Wiggans (the leader of Holmes' original Irregulars) and John will go down in history as one of the funniest and greatest scenes of John Watson.
- Ladies and gentlemen, behold Sherlock's "Oh crap...I'm high as a kite and John's going to be furious!" face:
- So John and Mary take Sherlock (who is hilariously overreacting like a bratty teenager over John's bust) and the other druggies to St. Bart's for a check-up. Mr. and Mrs. Psychopath? Hardly!
- One thing I have noticed about Moffat's writing of late is that he seems to be willing to bend and retcon past canon for the sake of a witty quip. We saw this in The Name of The Doctor with the comment about "...what idiot would try to steal a faulty TARDIS?!" (Susan Foreman, not the Time Lords, invented the term 'TARDIS') and we see it again with Sherlock's crooked door-knocker and Mycroft's OCD comment. I went back and looked, just to be sure, and we never see the door knocker as being crooked before that very moment in time. The comment is hilarious...the first time you hear it...but it doesn't hold up to future viewings.
- Mycroft's threat to the Andersons is quite funny and a bit scary. I also like how in this episode, as in A Study in Pink, it is Anderson performing the drugs bust at 221B. But, while during ASiP he was doing it out of spite, here it is because he honestly cares about Sherlock. That is character development, people - not Moffat having his chew toy slap someone around to make a point.
- I don't understand why Mycroft said that whole bit about "If you go against Magnussen, you go against me." I mean - it was a great quote for the trailer, but doesn't actually make a whole lot of sense in the context that it was actually said. There needed to be more explanation. Mycroft had got rid of Anderson's prying ears, so why couldn't he explain to his brother why they needed CAM to be left intact? Surely he must have known that the forbidden mystery aspect of it (and the 'it's just me against the dragon' mentality) would have made Sherlock more determined than ever!- I laughed so hard at John's reaction to Sherlock/Janine...he really was the Voice of the Audience there!
- "...none of them have turned my stomach like Charles Augustus Magnussen!" Well me neither (I REALLY don't like the idea of people licking me! Who would?) but somehow that statement just doesn't line up. Maybe if we had seen more of CAM earlier in the series we could understand why he felt this way...but there's a lot of talk and not a whole lot of explanation. Show, don't tell, Moffat! First rule of writing! This whole thing just stinks of A Good Man Goes To War "He'll rise higher than ever before and fall so much further..." tripe. And that's not a good thing. I want to be repulsed by Magnussen (I am, but for reasons of my own) and I want to fear him. But just being told by Sherlock Holmes to fear him isn't enough for me. I expect more from you, Sherlock!
- I really want an explanation as to why Sherlock wasn't listed as one of John's pressure points. Was it just because Magnussen was just following the chain of command from Mary to Mycroft? Or did the writers just goof up? Magnussen keeps track of anything that throws a person off their game, so you would think that Sherlock (the man who made the good doctor punch out a Chief Commissioner who called him a weirdo) would be a pressure point for John along with Mary.- It is cool, though, how Irene Adler is listed as one of Sherlock's. Is Magnussen somehow connected to Moriarty's web? Moriarty used the term 'pressure point' too when explaining how he skewed the jury...and he's the only one I can think of who could have spilled about Irene (somehow I don't see Mycroft as letting that information loose ever) so were they in cahoots? Just a thought...
- Why exactly did Sherlock need the drugs for the Magussen case? It seems to me that he already had the blackmailer's attention when he offered to act as Lady Smallwood's proxy. So what was the point? It's never explained or mentioned again.
- Sherlock using Janine's affections to break into Magussen's office comes directly from canon. Anyone who ever protests and says that the Holmes of the books wasn't as 'sociopathic' and cruel as Sherlock is has been reading a different edition than what I possess.
- Oh Mary. What a plot twist! This is a piece of character development that I found very interesting. CAM has some terrible dirt on Mary that will completely uproot her life and turn it on its head in the most destructive and hurtful way. She has also recently found out that she is pregnant, so not only is the clock ticking on her action window of opportunity but she also now has a child to protect as well (notice that she is wearing a second bulletproof vest over her stomach). Mary goes to Magnussen, not to kill him (because they were just talking when Sherlock walked in and if she was going to kill him she would have already done so) but to bargain. It's obvious from that fact that she is in over her head and in danger of being sucked back into the life that she thought she had left behind her.
- I think by far my favorite part of this episode is the Mind Palace sequence. Good lord is that beautiful! The shots, the colors, the way they represent each and every part of it is just perfect. It's creepy, it's sad, and it gets very dark whenever you finally reach ground zero and realize that Sherlock keeps Moriarty locked away deep inside his subconscious. It just serves as a reminder to us all that Sherlock is not so different from Jim...he just happens to fight on the side of the angels.
- And if you though Moriarty was scary alive...he's twice as terrifying whenever he's in Sherlock's head and reciting twisted versions of childhood poetry. Just goes to remind you that (a) Moriarty played a children's storyteller as Richard Brook and got his kicks out of fairytales and (b) Moffat was once a genius when it came to scaring children by taking their playthings and worst nightmares and bringing them to life.
I'm laughing,
I'm crying,
Sherlock
Is dying!
- Can I just say that I love the way Janine gets back at Sherlock by selling sordid stories to the tabloids? (I'll bet Irene Adler, wherever she is, got a real kick out of those!) The maid in the original was consoled 'by an old enemy...' but here Janine takes her fate into her own hands and gets a cottage to boot.
- Also, I'm not certain if Sherlock was cringing because Janine turned down his Morphine or because she mentioned destroying the beehives.
- Nobody can ever convince me that this particular Sherlock Bolt-hole suggestion isn't a reference to The Great Mouse Detective!
- So...is Mary's love for John a selfish one? Yes. I think to a certain extent it is. Does that make her a terrible, evil person? No! That makes her wonderfully flawed, human, and vulnerable. It makes sense that she is clinging to John with everything that she has. He is her chance to be loved - her chance to turn over a new leaf and leave the uncertainty and death of her old life behind. So yes she's going to fight with everything she has to keep him. Is her love selfish? To a point. She is human. It's complicated. In fact, I think it is better that she doesn't have a completely selfless love for him as that would make her less three-dimensional and less someone that we can relate to. We would aspire to be like her, but not be able to see ourselves in this former assassin.
- There is a fractured timeline being used in the latter half of this episode, similar to the one in The Sign of Three. But while that episode had the Best Man speech to use as a framing device and utilized the timeline as a means to a bit of visual comedy and storytelling, here it just seems to be there for the sake of being there. I know Moffat likes to play with our feels...but here he went a bit overboard to the detriment of the story.
- I think the main problem I have with this episode is that it feels like it's trying too hard to be big and dramatic and surprising. Reminds me of the RDJ films, actually. A lot of surface and not much interior. Moffat is a genius with manipulating emotions and getting that immediate response from us. We've seen him do it with Doctor Who in The Name of The Doctor, The Angels Take Manhattan, Asylum of the Daleks, and many others. The problems with all of those episodes named is that they don't hold up under scrutiny. His early work such as A Study in Pink or The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances still holds up to this day and is good for multiple viewings. Those episodes just get worse the more I think about them. I can poke plot-hole after plot-hole and because the emotional impact is lessened the second time you experience it because it isn't a shocker any more, they just don't hold up. That is what is happening with His Last Vow. Moffat is going for a specific response (he wants us to cry over poor John being betrayed and the near-breakup of the Watsons' marriage) and he succeeds...but it is to the detriment of the story at large. It isn't cohesive and there are numerous problems.
- Here we have a nice reference to the original story The Sign of Four where Mary Morstan is first introduced as a client. Fans of the books are quick to pick up on the fact that the AGRA treasure was an empty box. Is it possible that the memory stick was actually empty as well?
- Sherlock keeps morphine in his kitchen. Good to know...
- I can't believe that neither John (a doctor) nor Mary (someone trained in reading body language) noticed that Sherlock was deteriorating so fast. That's either a gigantic OOC moment...or an indicator of just how distressed they both were. I can't decide.
- I do like the way Mrs. Holmes gets on Mycroft and Sherlock for smoking. Serves them right!
- Oh...so many Hobbit references in this episode. From Sherlock berating John for not being a natural at burglary to Mycroft calling Sherlock a dragon-slayer (just before the little brother blows off a puff of smoke), I honestly think that this is my favorite reference all series!
- It is a nice twist to have the Appledore Vaults exist only within Magnussen's Mind Palace. Much as I've complained about him, I have to give kudos to Moffat for that twist. I honestly didn't see it coming!
- A while back I compared Moriarty to that kid on the playground who catches and de-wings live flies simply because he can. Well if Moriarty is the twisted de-winger, then Magnussen is the bully eyeball-flicker. He just gets pleasure of being the one in control of people. Much as I think they went a bit over-the-top with the whole face-licking and fireplace peeing moments, I have to admit that by the end of the scene where he flicks at John's face just for the fun of it I had completely forgotten about earlier transgressions. I was sure John was going to lose it and punch him.
- Sherlock shot Magnussen. Okay. Did not see that coming.
- Mycroft still sees Sherlock as his baby brother. Well of COURSE he does! I'll admit that I stayed dry-eyed through most of the episode (the exception being the moment where Sherlock reveals to John who shot him) but that shot of young!Sherlock crying in the laser lights just hit me in the feels.
This episode was, for me, a hard one to watch and review. It's not that I don't like watching my beloved characters go through pain (If I couldn't take it, would I be a Supernatural or Doctor Horrible fan?), but I just have a lot of problems with the writing. What drew me to Sherlock in the first place was the characters. I LOVED the way the show focused on the relationship between Sherlock, John, Lestrade (who has actually been rather absent this series), and the rest. The second thing that caught my eye was the cases. I had just come off of the Robert Downey Jr. films and, while I initially enjoyed them, they just didn't feel like Sherlock Holmes to me. They were too big, too flashy, and too full of surface-icing and not enough substantial content. I love Sherlock whenever it focuses on casework, though I never want to see them sacrifice character development for cases, and I just feel like with this final episode they have pushed too big and too catastrophic. Rather like the Doctor Who series finales in the late Davies era. There were some good things about this episode...but on second and third views those good things fail to make it a good thing.
And then there's the stinger. Honestly, I don't think Moriarty is still alive - I think this is someone else using his name and image - but it miffs me that now the whole hiatus focus is going to be 'How did he survive?' We've already had two years of that question, people! Not to mention the fact that if Moriarty is indeed still alive it would be the biggest cop-out in television history, probably ruin the show by making it all about one villain, and greatly lessen the emotional and character impact of TRF. Don't go there, writers, just don't.
Overall His Last Vow was an okay episode. It had its moments and there was some striking visuals and concepts introduced:
I'm pretty sure that's a reference to Sherrinford...
But overall it failed to live up to the promise of the Series' 1 and 2, or even the first half of Series 3. Yes I know the whole point of this episode was to build us up to a happy place and a false sense of security before the finale, but I feel like Moffat focused more on the concept of the emotions and failed to tell a good story. Shame on him! I expected so much better! His Last Vow rates at about a 3/5. It was fine, but not great.
What did you think? Do you agree with my rating? If not -
what would you say differently?
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