#That is an oversimplication but also I mean look at her

[got-into-worm-by-mistake]

“Theoretically speaking,” I said, “Just in the interest of problem solving, or figuring out what’s going to work or not, would the chance of this happening change if I just drove around America and killed everyone in my power’s reach?” “Not really,” Dinah said. “Damn,” I replied.  If she’d said yes, I could have narrowed it down to maybe the eastern United States or the west, then cut it in half again with north versus south, or narrowed it down to certain states.  Home in on the person or people that the problem centered around, dealt with them one way or another

Its not that I don't understand why she's asking about it in this way, but also, I love that this is the way she picks to ask about it.

Our girl Taylor really does just leapfrog straight to the most escalating option :rofl:

[asynca]

If You Scratch My Back... - Mercy x Sombra

Dr Angela Ziegler finds an unexpected ally in Sombra. Actually, she finds an unexpected LOT of things in Sombra. 

AO3 | FF.NET

-

It wasn’t so much a sound that woke Angela. It was a feeling, she decided, an uneasiness. The type of feeling you get when you’re driving to work and wondering if you really did lock your front door.

She opened her eyes and stared up at the familiar ceiling in her Gibraltar HQ residence (it was still so odd to be back here again), wondering what it meant. Perhaps I’m subconsciously aware I forgot to do something important? she thought, rolling over to look at her clock: 3:42am. Hmm.

There wasn’t anything she could have left on, though. And when she tried to methodically go through her evening minute-by-minute, routine-by-routine, she couldn’t pinpoint anything she’d forgotten. Her new nanite formula was refrigerated—she remembered doing that. Ana’s new bullets (secretly altered so they damaged unintended targets less) were ready to be batched in the cupboard. Even her new formula for the ‘resus pack’, as she called it, a tiny life support implant with a single dose of a chemical cocktail to automatically resuscitate you if your heart slipped into arrhythmia was safely locked in the fridge, waiting for her to continue trying to convince those difficult new directors in Ethics to let her run live tests. Honestly, she couldn’t think of what she mightn’t have done.

The uneasiness remained, though, and no amount of closing her eyes and reassuring herself everything was fine was helping at all.

Well. Perhaps she should just get up and check the lab? You know, just in case.

Slowly, she pushed aside her blankets and stood into her slippers, pulling a light dressing gown around herself—mostly for modesty because she’d forgotten how warm Gibraltar nights were in the summer. Then, she walked the familiar route to her old (and now new) lab.

It was different at night; without the fluorescent lights, shadows from the moonlight outside the hangar feel in deep, heavy lines across the linoleum floor. It was eerie, and added to her feeling of unease.

At the lab, still half-asleep, she punched her access code automatically, in a smooth sequence she’d done 1000 times, only to have it beep and say ‘LOCKED’.

That woke her up. Locked?!

Huh.

Well, maybe she’d entered the code in wrong? Yes, she decided, that was probably it. She’d never done it wrong before, so maybe this was what happened when she did. She tried again, and this time it displayed ‘OPEN’.

That didn’t reassure her at all; in fact, a cold chill settled on her. If by punching in the correct code before she’d locked it…

She took a slow and steady breath. Maybe this was what she was subconsciously feeling uneasy about? That she’d left the lab unlocked? But—no, that couldn’t be it. She remembered locking the door after dinner because she’d been carrying her coffee mug with her and had found juggling it and closing the door difficult.

Which meant…

Oh, heavens, had someone opened it?! Had Winston needed something, perhaps? Surely it couldn’t be anyone other than him, surely…

Against her better judgement—she really should have checked to make sure it was Winston—she pushed the door carefully open and walked straight into—

—the barrel of a pulse gun, pointing straight at her forehead.

She froze.

She was face-to-face with someone who had… purple eyes, clothes more brightly coloured than even Lena’s always were, and who was also glowing faintly with her cybernetic augmentations; so many that she almost looked part-computer. Well, at least that explained how she’d hacked the security terminal…

Despite the fact she was staging a hold-up, the intruder was uncharacteristically relaxed. “Well, if it isn’t the doctor herself,” she said casually. She had an accent. “Pleased to meet you, Dr Ziegler. Or do you prefer ‘Angela’?”

I think I prefer not having a gun against my forehead, Angela thought, looking up at it.

The woman noticed. “Oh, yeah, that,” she said, and removed it, shrugging. “Can’t be too careful, you know. Everyone wears concealed guns these days, and if we had a gunfight in here it would wreck all your valuable medicine, right?”

Valuable? Was she planning on stealing something and selling it?

“But anyways,” the woman continued, looking directly at Angela’s thin nightgown. “I can see you’re not concealing much in that little thing, so I guess your medicine is safe.” As Angela’s mouth opened and her cheeks went a little pink, the woman extended her other hand. “Sombra,” she said simply, taking Angela’s hand and shaking it when Angela didn’t move. “Big fan. Really.” She turned towards the lab. “So, this is where the magic happens, hey?” Without being invited to—invitations clearly weren’t important to her—she wandered over to a counter where a solution was distilling and leant in for a closer look. “Huh. It’s creepy how it bubbles like that.”

Angela only came to her senses after the nightgown comment as Sombra reached out to touch one of the test tubes. It was the DST-1 formula, and she’d spent ages perfecting it! “Stop, that’s—!” she began automatically, and then realised she was shouting at a woman with a gun; a gun that, seconds ago, had been pointed at her.

Fortunately, Sombra looking amused rather than angry. “That’s what?” she prompted, grinning. “Poisonous? Explosive? Some sort of love potion that’s going to make everyone around me immediately fall for me? Because let me tell you, doctora, I don’t need anything like that.” She winked.

Angela stared.

Was this woman trying to…? No. No, of course not. It couldn’t be anything like that. She was probably just one of those cocky people who liked to flirt with people to unsettle them. Well, Angela wasn’t going to be riled that easily. Not even by a cocky woman with a gun. “I’m afraid it’s nothing like that,” she replied evenly, trying to sound calmer than she felt. “It’s just that it needs to settle within a fixed period of time or the sediment dissolves into the solution.”

Sombra looked disappointed. “Oh,” she said, and stood up from it, moving along the counter to examine the centrifuge and some of the equipment behind it. She seemed to be searching for something.

Angela watched her, dazed. It was all so bizarre. Honestly, she felt like she might be in some sort of odd nightmare. She still wasn’t 100% certain this woman didn’t mean to hurt her, but her curiosity got the better of her, anyway. “Sombra,” she began gently so as not to make her angry, “I’m sorry, but—why did you break into my lab?”

Sombra didn’t look bothered by the question at all. “Well, the door was locked, how else was I going to get in?”

Angela’s eyebrow twitched. “Perhaps by asking me?” At Sombra’s somewhat sheepish shrug, she added, “What could you possibly want to steal, anyway? I make all my formulas public.”

“Can’t a girl just want to say hello to her favourite doctor?”

Angela wasn’t buying it. “No, because your ‘favourite doctor’ wasn’t in the lab.”

Sombra made a face. “Okay, that’s true,” she conceded, glancing at Angela over her shoulder. That troubling smirk returned. “She wasn’t in the lab, she was in bed. And I mean, sure, I could have come to say hello to her in her bedroom in the middle of the night…” She turned to face Angela. “Are you saying you’d prefer I’d done that, Dr Ziegler?”

Again, Angela felt her cheeks heat up. “I’m saying that I’d prefer you’d asked me, and during the daytime!”

Sombra watched her for a little too long. “Fine,” she said, eventually. “Next time I want to break into your lab, I’ll ask you first.”

Angela felt like she aged about five years in one second. This woman. “So, what is it you want, then?”

Sombra sighed. “So serious…” she said about Angela, but then the smirk faded. “Rumour has it you’re working on a top secret project.”

Angela immediately knew what she was talking about. Suddenly, the woman’s intrusion made sense. “So that’s what you’re doing here,” she realised. “You’re planning to steal the resus pack.”

Sombra nodded. There was zero trace of any remorse.

It knocked the breath out of Angela. How could someone be so casual about robbery? “Well, go on, then,” Angela told her a little bitterly, figuring there was little she could do to stop Sombra. “It’s in the refrigerator. Just be aware that I haven’t tested it yet—I can’t be held responsible for what it does to you if it malfunctions.”

She looked unfazed. “Doesn’t it only do something if my heart stops?”

Well, that was a bit of an oversimplification, but, “Yes.”

“Then,” Sombra said, shrugging, “what’s the worst it could do? I’ll already be dead.”

Angela couldn’t help but cringe. Again, that was a huge oversimplication. People weren’t alive or dead, it wasn’t an on-off switch. It was a gradient between every cell in your body being functional and alive and every cell in your body being dysfunctional or dead, and she still wasn’t sure exactly what had happened to Gabriel when he’d—

“Dr Ziegler?” Angela snapped back to attention at Sombra’s prompt. “Look, my intel says that you’ve already finished it. And knowing your reputation, that means it will work perfectly.”

Hah. “Your intel is quite far off the mark on this one,” she said perhaps a little more dryly than intended. “Ethics just knocked back live testing because of their concerns. They’d like me to do animal tests, first.”

Sombra snorted. “Why do you care what some board of crusty old doctors thinks?”

Angela didn’t, actually. She’d certainly...bypassed their approval before on more than one occasion. But that was when she was in Overwatch and money for medical technology essentially rained from the sky. She couldn’t say that to this woman, though. “Because I’ll never get anyone to fund my project if it’s illegal.”

Again, Sombra looked unmoved. “How much money do you need?” It sounded like a genuine question.

Was she offering to…?

For second—for just a second—Angela held her breath. Could this stranger maybe help fund—?

No, she told herself, squashing that idea flat. No. This stranger was clearly a criminal, and the very last thing Angela needed was her medicine being connected to organised crime. “It doesn’t matter. I need ethics approval.”

“And animal tests are the only way to get it?”

“Yes.”

“Well, a human is an animal, right?”

Angela gave her an odd look. “I suppose, but Ethics would never let me install the pack into a participant who—”

—suddenly, in a fraction of a second, something whizzed through the air and there was a gun pressed against her again, this time at her throat. It was as if she’d blinked and Sombra was just there.

Sombra had a dark, dark smile. “You can tell Ethics that someone literally held a gun to you and told you to install the pack in them,” she said. “You don’t need approval to follow the instructions of an armed robber, do you?”

Angela swallowed, the movement of her throat making the gun bob. “No.” Oddly, she wasn’t particularly worried the woman would hurt her anymore.

Sombra chuckled once, and stepped back. “Okay then,” she said, and extended her hand to shake. “Do we have a deal? You install the resus pack into me, I’ll give you access to the data from it each time it gets used.”

Each time?! Angela really wanted to ask more about this woman’s job—but she also didn’t want to know, since the woman was clearly a criminal—so instead, she just considered the proposal.  

She wasn’t actually sure if it was a proper choice; the woman had a gun, after all. Angela was being held up. The more she thought about it, the more she wondered why that didn’t bother her. It didn’t bother her, though. She was looking for a way to test the device, and this was an excellent opportunity to trial it. Should anything go wrong, she reasoned, it wasn’t as if this woman wasn’t 100% aware of what she was in for… and 100% a criminal. And since the resus pack wasn’t patented yet; it wouldn’t be traced back to her.

Somewhat tentatively, Angela found herself reaching for Sombra’s hand and accepting it. “Alright, I agree.”

She was still coming to terms with the implication of what she’d shaken on, when Sombra, looking very pleased with herself, shrugged off her jacket, letting it pool at her feet. “Let’s get started then,” she said, and then locked eyes with Angela as she reached for the zipper on her bodysuit. “You can put it in me right now.”

As the bodysuit fell away from Sombra’s middle, Angela was slightly horrified at herself for needing to tear her eyes away from the woman as they dipped immediately to the woman’s brightly coloured bra. Turning abruptly, she switched on the lights and went to retrieve the resus pack from the refrigerator, both angry at herself for noticing that bra, and slightly angry at the woman for so obviously choosing lingerie that was so eye-catching. They shouldn’t be doing this.

In any other circumstance, if there was a hint of a dynamic like this with a patient, she might have gone to get a nurse to ‘assist with the procedure’. Maybe she’d even have excused herself and then passed the patient to another doctor. There weren’t any other doctors here, though, and she was technically being robbed, wasn’t she? Even if this woman didn’t seem to have any intention of hurting her. It was such an odd situation. It felt surreal.

When she returned with the unit, Sombra had sat helpfully on one of the chairs, neck forward to expose the console anchored at her T1 vertebra, a fluorescent pink bra-strap dividing the brown skin on her bare back.

While Angela was washing up, putting on some gloves and quite successfully ignoring that pink strap and bare skin, Sombra was tapping out an idly tune on the bench with her long nails on the counter-top while she waited.

When Angela glanced up at them—they were claw like in some ways?—Sombra grinned at her. It was one of those grins. “Don’t worry about how long they are,” she told Angela, and then made sure Angela saw her completely retract them. Locking eyes with Angela, she winked.

Angela glanced quickly away, pausing for a moment as she stared down at the small console imbedded at the base of Sombra’s neck. She took a deep, slow breath. They could not get into this for a myriad of reasons—including the fact this woman was a criminal who’d broken into her lab with the express intent of stealing her technology!—but more specifically now because she was about to perform a medical procedure on her. “Stop it. I mean that.”

Angela could hear the smile in Sombra’s voice. “Stop what?”

She wasn’t playing that game. Sombra knew what she meant. “It’s highly unprofessional.”

“So why are you telling me to stop?” Sombra asked innocently. “You’re the professional.”

Angela did stop—she stopped being about to install the resus pack, dropping her hands to her sides. “Would you like me to do this or not?”

Sombra chuckled. “Okay, okay!” she said in defeat, resting her head on her crossed arms on the counter. “I get it. I’ll stop.”

Angela waited for a moment to make sure she meant it, and then got to work injecting some local anaesthetic and probing around the base of the console to look for a free socket. She was just marking the point on Sombra’s skin and checking there was enough room for the resus pack when Sombra exhaled audibly. She clearly wanted Angela to remark on that so she could explain why she’d done it—Angela didn’t. She just kept her eyes on her scalpel.

Sombra spoke anyway. “You know, I never understood that. The ‘don’t sleep with your patients’ thing. If you’re both adults, I don’t see where’s the harm.”

Oh, heavens. “Perhaps you could Google it,” she said neutrally in an ‘that’s all I’m going to say’ tone.

Sombra ignored her. “I mean, it would be different if I was the student and you were the teacher,” she said, and her voice was getting that smile in it again. She paused. “Have you ever been a teacher, Angela? I bet all the students had a crush on you. I know I would have.”

Angela closed her eyes for a moment. “Stop talking, please. I need to concentrate.”

Sombra chuckled. “Well, I’m sorry I’m breaking your concentration…”

Being very, very careful not to cut more of Sombra than she needed to just because the woman was a mixture of infuriating and yes, perhaps slightly charming, Angela made an incision under the base of her console and examined the wiring and the socket.

Since Sombra was clearly going to speak again, Angela decided to speak over her. “If you must know,” she said, “the patient-doctor boundary is to do with trust and an imbalance of power. A patient gives a doctor access to their body, trusting the doctor will view it strictly professionally. Furthermore, a patient’s life is literally in a doctor’s hands.” Angela looked at the console imbedded in Sombra back, open in front of her. “For example, I could literally switch you off right at this very moment. It may kill you. Because of that, I couldn’t be sure that any advance I would make, you wouldn’t just accept because you were scared of what I might do to you if you say no.”

“So, it’s because you could kill me if I say no?”

All this oversimplifying. “That’s part of it.”

No sooner had she said that, she felt Sombra take an arm from under her cheek on the counter, heard the click of something being unlocked, and felt the cold barrel of Sombra’s pulse gun under her chin again. “But what if I could kill you, too?”

Surprised, Angela paused for a moment—just with surprise, though, as she wasn’t at all convinced this woman meant to hurt her anymore. She still didn’t know what to make of it. “Are you… ordering me to do something?”

“No.” Sombra let the gun drop from Angela’s neck and there was a pronounce click as she adhered it back against her belt. “I’m just saying that the way I see it, we’re pretty even right now.”

Rather than argue, Angela just considered that comment while she was implanting the resus pack and all its tiny components. After they’d fit into place, she enabled the device and closed the tiny wound in Sombra’s upper back with four or five stitches.

While she was swabbing it, she observed at least a dozen other healed openings—fanning out from Sombra’s console like the rays of a sun. She must have so many implants… Angela couldn’t think of what would necessitate that many augmentations. She wanted to ask—honestly, in different circumstances she would love to have sat Sombra down and asked her all about the integrated technology, what components were medical and what components were omnic hybrids… It was fascinating, all this new technology. She found her fingertips tracing some of the healed incisions, wondering what was underneath.

It was only when she caught Sombra grinning knowingly at her over her shoulder than quickly withdrew her hand, dressed the wound, and washed up.

Sombra dressed very, very slowly—probably hoping Angela would turn around at some point and get another eyeful of that bra and its contents, but Angela didn’t give her the satisfaction. She could see a dull reflection of the woman in the stainless-steel splashback, and only turned around when Sombra had her bodysuit on again.

It was skin-tight, though. Sombra knew it.

Angela tried not to show any reaction. In focusing on doing that, though, she fell back into old consulting habits and found herself saying, “Is that all for today?” as if Sombra was just another patient. She didn’t manage to stop herself in time.

Sombra found it extremely amusing. “Well,” she said in a very theatrical voice, “Now that you mention it, I have been getting all these aches and pains and stuff everywhere. Maybe you should give me a full-body check-up, Doctor? You know, just to be safe…”

Her cheeks flushing both from her mistake and Sombra’s reply to it. Angela sighed at her. “Actually, let me rephrase that:” she said flatly, “that’s all for today.”

“Just for today?” Sombra retrieved her jacket from the floor and watched Angela as she slipped it back over her shoulders. At Angela’s expression, she laughed. She then took a few slow and indulgent steps towards her, observing her pink cheeks and nervous hands. “Admit it, doctora,” she said with a grin. “You’re interested in me.”

Angela rolled her eyes. “Well, you’re certainly interesting,” she told Sombra dryly. “Do you always flirt with people after you’ve broken into their workplace to steal from them?”

Again, Sombra was unmoved by the accusation. “No,” she said simply, and then gave Angela that half-smile. “But then again, most people I steal from are not as pretty or as smart as you are.”

Angela groaned at that, closing her eyes for a moment and shaking her head. “You are absolutely unbelievable.���

Sombra seemed to take that as a compliment. “I know, it’s what makes me so interesting. And what makes you interested, right?”

“You held me at gunpoint and you honestly think I would consider anything further happening between us?”

Sombra scoffed. “You weren’t scared,” she said. “If you were, you wouldn’t be rolling your eyes at me right now.”

She… had a point. But still. “I still can’t imagine how you could possible think this could go anywhere.”

Sombra took another step towards Angela, giving her a slow and rather thoughtful once-over. “Well, don’t worry, doctora, I have enough imagination for both of us.” She finished her once-over by grinning at Angela, face to face. She was slightly shorter. “Anyway,” she said after letting a silence stretch between them. “We both got something we wanted tonight. I don’t see why we both shouldn’t get something else we want tomorrow night.”

It had been a very long time since anyone had propositioned Angela so openly, and there was… something to be said for this woman, in truth. She was very pretty. And as much as Angela was loath to admit it, definitely rather charming. But, then again, she’d broken into her lab…

“Come on,” Sombra prompted her, that half smile on her perfect lips. “I know you want to, doctora. I’ll even let you bring your scalpel, since I know you’re dying to find out what’s inside me.” They were standing so close that for a second, Angela actually thought Sombra might try to kiss her. She didn’t. “And after you’ve poked around inside me, maybe I can return the favour.” Sombra’s eyes dipped to Angela’s lips.

It was—actually, sort of intoxicating.

Angela had forgotten what it this felt like, and it wasn’t that difficult for her to admit that—yes, Sombra was right. She was interested. Against her better judgment, she was interested. Heavens, though, what on earth was she getting herself into? Whatever happened between the two of them had better be good enough for the risk to be worth it!

There was defeat in Angela’s sigh. “Well. I hope you’ll at least take me to dinner first.”

A look of devilish satisfaction broke across Sombra’s face. “Hah, I knew it!” she said triumphantly, and then stepped back, not breaking eye-contact with Angela., “I’ll find somewhere so good that you’ll want to eat there every night,” she said with conviction, her lips curling deliberately around key words. “See you tomorrow, doctora.”

Then, just like Lena used to do on occasion, she quite literally vanished.

Angela was left there alone in her lab in the middle of the night, surrounded by small surgical implements that needed to be re-sterilised.

After a moment of trying to gather her senses—had all of that really happened?—she sterilised everything, gave her lab one last cursory check, and then locked it and made the walk back to her room.

Stepping out of her slippers, she sat on the edge of her bed for a moment and stared down her body. The room was a little milder now that the door had been open; the sheets were cool from her absence and as a result, her nipples were pushing against the thin fabric of her nightgown. She found herself wondering if they’d been that way in front of Sombra—and if they had, if it even mattered. After all, she was essentially going to offer that woman a lot more.

You agreed to that, Angela, she thought, shaking her head at herself. Was she really going to sleep with someone who broke into her lab to steal her resus pack, despite the deal they’d made?

Honestly, this was all complete crazy. Absolutely, completely crazy. Sombra hadn’t even left any details about how they were going to meet tomorrow night—should she just expect her to break in or something?

While she was lying in bed, staring wide-eyed at her ceiling and wondering if perhaps she’d genuinely gone mad, her phone flashed. Curious, she turned over to read the message, and found that a contact called ‘Sombra’ had saved itself on her phone.

“Hey there, doctora,” the message read. “Wait out the back of the hangar tomorrow night at 8 and wear something really nice. There’s a hotel near the restaurant so no one needs to drink and drive.” Angela scrolled down. “And, Angela? If you’ve got a cute little doctor’s uniform or a little nurses’ uniform that you could bring along with that scalpel, I’ll definitely show you how much I appreciate it ;)”

Angela read that last part twice, holding her breath. Tomorrow night was going to be an experience.

[katyagrayce]

The Final Problem: my final opinion

I know that there are some fans, on Tumblr and elsewhere, who actually liked this episode. THAT’S OKAY. SERIOUSLY. You’re entitled to like whatever you want. It doesn’t mean anything other than that we have different taste in movies/different priorities when it comes to what we want from Sherlock, and that kind of opinion divide is pretty much inevitable with a show this varied and this popular. So if you belong to the TFP Fans Club, I want to clarify that I mean you no hate :-)

Personally, however, I did not like The Final Problem. My reasons included, but were not limited to: a) The disproportionally rapid, action-reliant and melodramatic storytelling, which wasn’t really consistent with the series’ tone so far. (This encompasses everything from that crazy Hollywood explosion to the fake cell Euros built for Sherlock - not to mention the the ‘video game’ set up of her puzzle system. Also, the age-old idea of throwing someone down a well. There were a lot of clichés at play in this episode). b) The suddenness with which Euros was introduced as a character, and the unfeasibility (IMHO) of Sherlock not remembering her at all. c) Speaking of unfeasibility - I also had issues with Euros planning the entire torture session in five minutes, building all of that underground lair, ferrying herself between Sherrinford and London so easily, getting everyone to Musgrave Hall/into their various cells so quickly, and getting John/Victor down that well without causing them serious injury. d) The oversimplicity of Euros’ psychological arc also frustrated me. I mean - there is loneliness, and then there is clinical psychopathy. They are two separate things. It’s true that there’s some overlap between the two groups, but not enough to pin all Euros’ behaviour on her being a scared little child with ‘no one’ to turn to - someone who later becomes 100% complacent just because she’s finally been hugged. Plus, when they decided to oversimplify Euros’ psychology Mofftiss basically dropped the chance to create a really complicated, really nuanced villain like Moriarty (remember all that amazing analysis about whether he wanted to beat Sherlock or just wanted the distraction, why he killed himself, whether boredom had driven him almost to the edge of insanity, etc., etc.? Euros doesn’t get any of those interesting conversations, mainly because she’s been automatically typecast as a ‘creepy loner child in need of attention.’) e) Speaking of emotional oversimplification - I also didn’t like the maximum emotional milking that Mofftiss brought to EVERY SCENE. Entire sequences, like Sherlock’s phone call to Molly and Euros forcing Sherlock to choose between Mycroft and John, seemed explicitly orchestrated to stir up audience feels as quickly as possible, instead of doing it slowly, skilfully and in-context (eg. I found Sherlock’s conversation asking for Molly’s help at the end of TRF much more feels-worthy than his phone call here, because it tied back to a conversation they’d already had about her ‘not counting’ and didn’t take place in a completely staged, high-tension situation.) f) And now for a big one - inconsistent character development. I feel that there were a lot of characters who acted quite OOC in this episode. First up, I think that John would have shot the governor. After all, he’s a soldier, he knows the pain of losing a wife, he’s very morally self-assured and he has killed before (see ASIP for evidence of the last two points), so even though he would have found it difficult I think he would’ve pushed through. I also think he would’ve tried very, very hard to talk Sherlock out of suicide, not just stood there dumbly and watched. Especially considering that he’d been prepared to die for him literally twenty seconds beforehand. Now for a second character: Molly. I understand that the scene with Molly was really effective for a lot of viewers, but - I wasn’t one of them. In TEH, it seemed that Molly was finally getting some character development beyond her crush on Sherlock - she recognised that he was using her as a replacement for John and cut that behaviour in its tracks, despite how difficult it might have been for her. In this episode, she spends every second on-screen looking totally lovesick, and proceeds to sacrifice her dignity just to answer a request that - from her perspective - must look a lot like either a cruel prank or a childish whim. The Molly we knew had grown beyond that - and, while I’m happy she survived, I’m not happy she had to fall apart to do it. Plus, what about that quick glance of her in the closing sequence when she pops into Baker St, smiling and seemingly totally okay? Did the phone call really have that low an emotional impact on her? To me, it just seems like a quick, lazy fix. And now, last but not least: Sherlock. This episode throws some spanners in what has been, up until this point, a very consistent and well-written subplot about his emotional growth. Throughout all the previous episodes we can track his ‘becoming a good man’ - he knows he’s hurt Molly in ASIB, he soothes a hysterical Henry Knight in THOB, he can talk down Major Sholto in TSOT and understands John’s grieving process in TLD. He even goes from subtly intervening in John’s suicide in ASIP to explicitly saving ‘Faith’ in TLD, which is an amazing example of how much he’s grown as a character. But in this episode - all of a sudden - he starts fluctuating wildly between ‘emotionally incapable’ and ‘emotional paragon’ when he shouldn’t really be at either end of the scale. The kind of man who can’t understand why Molly isn’t picking up, and who thinks “But it’s me calling!” is a valid excuse, can’t possibly be the same person who charms his sister out of psychosis with a hug and explicitly tells a DI that his brother ‘isn’t as strong as he thinks.’ Personally, I think that the episode’s latter actions are slightly more in-character for Sherlock than the earlier ones, but that’s not the point. The point is that this episode muddled a lot of very good character development back up again. g) A more minor thing, but - this episode was literally full of plot holes. Including, but not limited to, how the furniture in 221B possibly survived the blast, how Euros (an adult woman) sounded like a little girl on the phone, and how John climbed out of a well he was chained to. h) Another, less minor thing - ALL THE LOOSE ENDS FROM THE SERIES THAT THIS EPISODE LEFT BEHIND. Irene Adler was brought back into the picture, only for nothing to come of it. Rosie Watson was born and then featured for a grand total of two seconds after TST. Euros had a working partnership with Culverton Smith (? How did that exist while she was confined at Sherrinford?) that was neither explained nor justified. And, perhaps worst of all - this whole ‘final problem’ promised by Moriarty ended up being organised by someone totally different. i) And finally, one of the most disappointing elements of the whole episode - Mary’s final video. Put bluntly, it contradicted everything that I see the show as being about. Sherlock has always been very much about the two people behind the legend, putting the spotlight on Sherlock’s fragility and John’s dangerous addictions where ACD just smoothed them over with a Victorian gloss - ‘there’s always the two of them,’ as said in TAB, and the focus is on the relationship in between. But what Mary is saying in this speech is that nothing the show gave us apparently matters. Only the legend does. The ACD stories are apparently the important part. It’s a very, very demeaning way for the series to summarise itself, and it’s this, over anything else, that makes me suspect we might have a secret 4th episode upcoming.

Now, you might notice something - reading the above list. You might notice that I didn’t mention Johnlock. That’s right. I, personally, didn’t mind whether Johnlock happened or not. And it’s getting really frustrating seeing people dissatisfied with TFP get dismissed because ‘they’re just angry that their ship didn’t happen.’ There was a lot, a LOT wrong with this episode beyond the ship, and while it might be a valid reason for people not to like TFP (I’ll get to that in Point 4) it’s not the only one. Please, don’t write off some very legitimate, very reasoned disappointment as some kind of ship-driven whim just because you can.

Now, all that said - I have to add that the queer-baiting in the lead-up to this episode was absolutely horrendous. Like I said, I’m not a Johnlock shipper and always had doubts about it happening, but the trailer editing and publicity stunts - Sherlock saying ‘I love you’ right after the Culverton Smith ‘darkest secret’ quote, the flickering rainbow letters on the PBS TV spot, Benedict saying ‘Love conquers all’ and Amanda saying TFP ‘makes television history’ - all those things were pointing in one pretty obvious direction. Now, this wouldn’t be such a bad thing if it had happened with literally any other potential plotline on the show, but the thing about queer-baiting is that it exploits a highly vulnerable and extremely under-represented group - the LGBTQ+ community. It lures them in with something they sorely want and need - media representation - and then not only fails to deliver but thumbs its nose at their disappointment. It rubs salt into the wound. It’s cruel and not okay, and as an experienced partnership with one gay member Mofftiss should have known better. So, even if you think disappointed Johnlockers are ‘just being petty,’ you have to remember that the experience of being denied this ship can carry a lot of emotional impacts other ships don’t.

And, finally - there were things about this episode that I liked, even loved wholeheartedly. Sherlock calling John family. Their re-decorating the flat, and the two-second snapshot featuring a happy Rosie. Sherlock remembering Greg’s name, and Greg calling him a ‘good man’ (it was a bit on-the-nose, but still). Mrs Hudson sassing Mycroft about the kettle. Even the idea of Euros as a little girl on a plane was fundamentally a good one, if oversimplified, over-focused on and overdone. So yes - this episode did have its moments. And it’s not affecting my enjoyment of Sherlock as a whole, but still - that doesn’t mean I have to like it. Um... If you’ve read this far, congratulations! I didn’t mean for this post to get so long, but it feels good to have vented a bit :-)