Something that’s been bothering me about Sherlock:
Why would Sherlock play such a trick on John when John is pouring his heart out? In The Empty Hearse, John and Sherlock encounter a bomb in an unused tube station under Parliament. Sherlock tries to defuse it to no avail while John finally reconciles with Sherlock about his pretend death. Presumably during John’s speech, Sherlock finds the switch to deactivate the bomb. Sherlock reveals this after John’s speech with a little theatricality. He tells John there’s always a switch. They laugh, John threatens Sherlock’s life, everything’s good again.
But why would Sherlock pull this trick, make John believe they were going to blow up? Well, I just watched Goldfinger. Near the end, James Bond tries to deactivate a bomb. Panic, panic, panic, then some guy walks in and, you guessed it, flips a switch on the bomb, deactivating it.
Guess who are Bond fanboys. Gatiss and Moffat.
Guess who has seen at least a few Bond films. Sherlock, at least according to John Watson’s blog. I’m betting John’s a Bond fanboy, too.
The only thing that could have made this moment more obvious would have been the timer stopping at 007 like it did in Goldfinger.
So, a moment that felt strained and out of character was actually Sherlock remembering a film John had show him back before his “death” and sharing that memory with John, making him laugh at the stupidity of criminals, at how the whole case has become a Bond film, and at how they are both alive and together.
Well done, Gatiss and Moffat.
