#the master blackmailer

[moroniccats]

LOOK AT THEM

06x01 The Master Blackmailer

I title this gifset "Being adorably domestic while plotting how to take down a villan".

[kingstoken]

A little blink and you'll miss it moment in The Master Blackmailer, Watson dancing and Holmes smiling as he watches him

[lexie-squirrel]

[holmesandbees]

Can we all say thank you to Granada Holmes for showing Holmes and Watson reacting this way to a blackmailer bringing up how he destroyed a gay man’s life?

[i-dont-talk-for-days-on-end]

Reblog and say in the tags which Sherlock Holmes stories haunt you. Not necessarily the ones you like best, but the ones that keep playing in your mind and make you toss and turn at night and pull your hair and sob into your pillow. Please. I need to feel more normal.

[no-where-new-hero]

i know why people rotate "the master blackmailer" like the episode is a blorbo in itself because it presents us with so many tantalizingly possible truths about holmes that are ultimately left up to audience interpretation. his reaction to colonel dorking (unusual depths of empathy or sympathy with queerness?). his reaction to watson's assessment of milverton's upbringing (wry awareness that this is his own story or brutal new revelation about himself?).

right now, i'm going to dig into the escott/aggie plotline.

we have here a holmes in disguise, becoming someone else, as we've seen him before, yet there is a sense that this transformation is less thorough than in episodes past (in part due to the lack of make-up and costuming from episodes like "scandal" or "empty house," which itself feels deliberate). a colder-blooded holmes (indeed, the holmes of the much more curtailed story) would treat the relationship like a game. you sense in the text that he finesses it perfectly, cavalierly. but in the show, we get that awkward reply to aggie's request for a kiss: "i don't know how." it's holmes being suddenly honest and vulnerable in a way he often isn't to anyone. this could be a misdirection...but we as the audience have been watching him for four seasons and are strongly positioned to suspect that this is the truth.

but the statement itself breeds more questions: is it because she's a woman? is it because he's never kissed anyone in his life? is it because he is unable to initiate tenderness, or respond to it? it elicits aggie's fond "poor boy," but it seems unlikely to have been a performance.

we do get an actual kiss (and i'm sorry but ahem jeremy brett's kissing ability is his least holmesian trait) but then immediately afterward--for reasons unknown, because the scene cuts away to the escaping dog--he's lying facedown in the mulch. he's not hiding from the other servants; he didn't even know he and aggie were being spied on. he's hiding from aggie, it seems. or is it from himself? out of amusement? or shame? or the enormity of facing this aspect of social life he's never experienced before?

[sarnie-for-varney]

Can we talk about the fact that Holmes BATHES WITH THE DOOR OPEN while Watson is right there? And they're just having a conversation like they've done it a million times?

They're married, I swear

And it's not just that, it's the fact that Watson is technically GETTING CHANGED in front of Holmes??

Also... Holmes and Watson are both undressed? Sounds pretty HOMOSEXUAL to me 🤨🧐

[blistering-typhoons]

i got hit with this idea and laughed so hard i started coughing so this is here now

[pix-writes]

Found this soft interaction in the Master Blackmailer episode - Holmes touches Watson's shoulder so tenderly! and its very brief part in frame, but you can see how Holmes' hand lingers on touching his shoulder even as he moves away <3

(spoilers in thoughts under readmore)

Watching this there are some wonderful moments of justified anger in it, I can see how much this case and the injustice wounds Holmes, and in turn stresses Watson (who's concern in Sherlock is also very justified, that even he himself says he went about the case in ways he's not proud of, in the end... poor Aggie made me laugh initially, but then feel burning second-hand shame at how Holmes used her during this case.) Robert Hardy is an amazing villain in this!!!! I got goosebumps from the way Milverton looked at people during this whole episode, like a predator sizing up its prey. Chilling

[demonicimagery]

we’re just normal men

[noa-nightingale]

Okay so I am in fucking shambles over the entire Colonel Dorking thing in The Master Blackmailer. I have already read everything I could find about it on tumblr and will probably look for more analyses later but, like...

I need more opinions. I need more links. I need to know more.

Not gonna lie, I am kiiiiind of distraught about it.

And also... Holmes’s and Watson’s reaction to Dorking’s death??? And how other people talk about it???

I did not expect Granada Holmes to bring queerness into the episode like this.

[holmesoldfellow]

Granada Holmes Mobil posters/designs: Adventures, Return, Casebook, and Master Blackmailer

[lexie-squirrel]

[sagelarson24]

im a screen shotter

ill screen shot everything

half of my camera roll is screen shots

if you’ve ever said anything ever i probably have it saved in a screen shot

[hitchell-mope]

Good. For. Her.

[virtues-of-artemis]

Agatha had no right to be so wholesome in The Master Blackmailer.

My precious ❤️❤️❤️