Scandal in Belgravia

[ivyfic]

For now, just one of my many thoughts on this episode--

I'm rewatching it trying to catalogue exactly what Irene Adler is responsible for. Since she is one of the biggest Mary Sues to ever roam through fandom, rampaging for over a century, I'm hyper sensitive to any portrayal of her. This one I like, but bears a worrying potential for her to pop up over and over, which would be grating to me. In particular, I've always hated the portrayals of Adler as a lovable rogue (see RDJ's Sherlock). In this, she is a lovable rogue--but not really. She is actually quite bad.

1. We can assume that it was her call to Moriarty at the pool, probably about the email she photographed. (Unless we find out what that phone call was in a future episode, that seems the most logical--Moffatt doesn't leave threads hanging.)
2. Since she reported it to Moriarty immediately, and since Moriarty was clearly giving her direction in the seduction of Sherlock, when she says later that she had one of the best cryptographers in the world look at it, and that he was upside down at the time, I'm going to assume that was Moriarty. Meaning she's probably, if not had sex with him, at least dominated him in a professional capacity.
3. Faking her death was part of the Moriarty directed plan. We aren't told how she could trick Sherlock so convincingly, but it would require the corpse to be a perfect body double. Those don't turn up by chance. Which means she either murdered someone or, more likely, was involved in the conspiracy that murdered someone. And she doesn't seem at all bothered by that.

Sherlock showed in the pilot that he's unreasonably attracted, intellectually, to killers, if they're smart. So I don't think the murder would give him pause.

What I think would, though, is what she says at the end--that she had all this information but didn't know what to do with it until Moriarty. That makes her Moriarty's subordinate. And, given the photos she received at the beginning, however well she played the game, it makes her Moriarty's pawn.

I think that it is that emotion--the sudden realization that she, as a subordinate, is inferior to him--that frees him up to solve the puzzle at the end. The very end of the episode was rather ludicrously over the top, more than a little Mary Sue, and clearly just to leave the writers the option of bringing her back. Which I will be annoyed if they do too often.

But I can't help feel that Sherlock must have lost some respect for her. Killing, that wouldn't turn him away. But allowing yourself to be someone else's pawn? That would. Look at how he reacts to Mycroft's attempts to use him as a pawn.

Comments

[derryderrydown.livejournal.com]

I would love to see a portrayal of Irene Adler that's true to Scandal in Bohemia - a woman who is absolutely genuine in only wanting insurance that will let her live happily with her middling husband. And a woman who is honourable enough that the king of Bohemia (eventually) trusts her to do just that.

I'm so fed up of this Catwoman version of Irene.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_abulafia/]

I can't even get over how clever and subtle almost everything about this episode was, and how much I liked it!

I still don't get why Adler needed Sherlock to solve the puzzle of the jumbo jet, though. I'm embarrassed to have to ask this, because I'm probably missing something really obvious and important, but couldn't she have done the same damage with something else on her phone? Was the idea just to get Sherlock even more involved by presenting him with a puzzle that she knew he could solve? (Why?) I feel like the answer is right there in my head but maybe it's just been too long since I've seen the episode and I've forgotten it. Why does Irene Adler need Sherlock Holmes at all, except to test the phone? And, this is a separate point, but how is it possible that he had it for six months, if she gave it to him on Christmas, and returned from the dead on New Year's Day?

[gryphonrose.livejournal.com]

We just watched it last night, and really enjoyed it. Except the end, which I agree is too much, too Mary Sue, and too obviously set-up. And since Moffat has already demonstrated--oh, River Song, how I loathe thee!--that he'll bring his favorite ladies back ad nauseum, we may well face more Adler. I like her a lot more, though, so I can live with that. :)

I agree, though, that the tipping point was when Sherlock realized that a) Irene hadn't been the one to outsmart him, and b) it had been Moriarty, of all people. That brought him out of his funk, and finally gave him a handle on her--which he hadn't been able to find until then. He still liked her, obviously, but now he knew he could beat her.

I was a little disappointed with that, though. I'd hoped that she would in fact beat him at his own game on her own.