#elementary 3x24

[kajaono]

And now rewatching the depressing Elementary season 3 finale...

[amindamazed]

beanarie replied to your post:

joaneuglassiawatson: Oh hey wanna hear something...

in 224, he was still in the brownstone. and 324 ended with them on the roof. so the difference is physical space.

whoops, I’d forgotten about the roof conclusion in 324, fair point. But the last moment of 224 has Sherlock at the MI6 office, asking to take the job. IMLTHO, he’s not only projected her gone from the brownstone/partnership but himself as well.

[dearvoidgoodnight]

“What is existence but the absorption of and reaction to the data that the universe presents?”

-Sherlock Holmes

[beanarie]

very necessary and important master post of post finale fics

fic-sized fics

The Message by Bookman230

To Know And Love What You Live With by Browneyesparker                  

Hold On Tight by time-converges

Can't fall from the bottom by GhostScript                  

Towards the light by nairobiwonders​

be invited by sunshinemachine           

one for the road by... me :)

shared burdens by elyndis

Needle and Pin  by Gilded_Pleasure                  

ficlets and drabbles

Turns Out There's Two by empiricallyspeakingholmesandwatson  

three ways to fall by nicolauda

stumble and fall by alexofthewriterpeople

ficlets by coldtea

Game Ending, Double-Play by amindamazed​

Not Going Home Without You by a_graceless_heart                  

less angsty palate cleansers

ficlet 1 and ficlet 2 by nairobiwonders

headcanons by nicolauda

post by ptsdandtea

ADD AS NEEDED pls and ty

[amindamazed]

sanguinarysanguinity replied to your post: beanarie replied to your post:Long post is long...

The fight club possibility?

That Oscar only existed (or co-existed) in Sherlock’s mind.

[amindamazed]

beanarie replied to your post:Long post is long about 3x24 please take as given...

excellent analysis as always. gave me a bunch of things to think about, as always. esp oscar being an au sherlock. SCARY. did marcus really say forthwith? rofl

It was one of the uniform cops, not Marcus.

I almost wish they hadn’t given Oscar scenes with Joan in 3x16 or confirmed he took Alfredo because the ‘Fight Club’ possibility would be so interesting. And there’s even a sort of precedent, the way they used Alistair in 2x20.

[amindamazed]

Long post is long about 3x24

please take as given that I wanted roughly ten times as much Joan as was in the episode, and the continuity of skipping over emotional moments like her finding out about the relapse is not the sort of continuity I’m happy to cry about. Unlike many other episodes in seasons 2 & 3, I don’t think there was much extraneous case-blather that could have been cut to make room for what I missed. Rather, this should have been a 2-part episode.

“I also have the one with Frankenstein’s monster” which I choose to believe is a nod to JLM’s performance in NT’s Frankenstein.

“Third base.” and for those of you who didn’t grow up in the shadow of WPIX′s Abbot & Costello reruns, watch and learn:

Indecisive Sherlock in front of the fridge. On the one hand, it’s a subtle bit of comedy. On the other, it’s a subtle expression of distress because the evening didn’t go as planned. Which Joan observed and asked him about, in a nice turnabout of all the times Sherlock told her (us) what she was feeling. (And is a good example of why those times flopped for me: in this case, we saw Sherlock and Alfredo before Joan commented on their relationship. In contrast, we weren’t given evidence of Joan’s alleged preference for an unconventional relationship before Sherlock spouted off about it. That’s just one example; there are many others.)

Estella Llamosa! The photo of Ato Essandoh as a kid! Sherlock’s demeanor with her! I loved how she treated Sherlock as both sharing her concern for her son and at risk of the same things Alfrado faced. And Sherlock’s discomfort when she asked how he was doing and if he knew what to do about those feelings. To which he wasn’t comfortable reacting brusquely or dismissively, as he does with Watson time and again (not just in this episode). Although given that we see multiple facets of Sherlock’s ‘game face’ over the course of the episode, I reluctantly concluded after the fact that a lot of that softness of tone and affect was an act. He was similarly disarming with Olivia’s Hemdale roommate, Kamela, a facade he put on the moment she arrived and took off the second she left. Big question for me from that scene: how did Sherlock first meet Estella? (And what was his relationship with his own mother like?)

The juxtaposition of Estella’s comment “can you believe that was him?” about the childhood photo of Alfredo with Joan’s surprised “oh my god, is this Alfredo?” about his mug shot.

“Don’t call this number again.” Sherlock’s immediate reaction to Oscar, before Oscar has mentioned Alfredo, is exactly as Oscar told Sherlock it would be when Sherlock asked why Oscar didn’t just ask him for his help. If I didn’t know Joan had interacted with Oscar before, I’d believe Oscar was a figment of Sherlock’s imagination. He’s incredibly accurate, insightful, and on target with everything he says about Sherlock. He has excellent recall and can read Sherlock as well as Sherlock reads suspects. He’s a canny manipulator (just like Sherlock) and while Sherlock knows Oscar is intentionally dragging him past all the triggers, he never catches on that the whole thing was a set-up until he sees Olivia’s body. Moriarty is one reflection of who Sherlock could have been; Oscar is another. 

I assume Oscar went to the brownstone after he found Olivia and followed Alfredo home after the aborted movie night. (echoes of Kitty watching Gruner?) I wonder if a scene like that was filmed/edited out to explain how Oscar knew about Alfredo in the first place. Oscar never refers to Alfredo as Sherlock’s sponsor, which I would have expected him to jab at if he knew.

Joan defending Sherlock’s very bad decision to Gregson, and Marcus’ faceplams while she does it. My headcanon is that she made every one of Gregson’s arguments during her own fight with Sherlock about this terrible idea, but when she failed to sway him she still stood by him the only way she could. [And do I resent the fact that this has to be mere headcanon? Yes, yes I do.]

“You want to hurt me? Oh man, do you want to hurt me.” We don’t know how or when Sherlock started using drugs (I assume it was in his teens; he mentioned being too high to follow international cases as early as 2010, before he met Irene), but at least since Irene’s murder, violence is Sherlock’s gateway drug, and Oscar sees that. (I also think Oscar is doing this in the hopes he can goad Sherlock into killing him, both to destroy Sherlock’s life and to end his own agony. Moriarty wasn’t willing to jump off the cliff to pull Sherlock down with her, but Oscar is.)

Twitch on Sherlock’s up-to-that-moment entirely stoic face when Oscar mentions his father.

“I’m kind of a veteran of the process” I love that Kamela is an expert on recovery, able to discern that Olivia wasn’t ready while implying that she herself is, and demonstrating (foreshadowing) by example that it’s not always a one-time solution. (I assume that when she called herself a “veteran” she meant she’d gone through rehab more than once.) 

hey look, there’s your hug, back when Oscar held Sherlock and took care of him by bringing him to “a place just like this” for Christmas. happy now?

“I’m no closer to using than I was yesterday.” Are you actually fooling yourself with that line, Sherlock? You yourself have made the point that the decision to use is right there, all the time.

Anyone know if this is might be one of Lucy Liu’s paintings? I thought I’ve seen work like this by her, but I couldn’t find anything like it on her (fantastic new) website.

The entire scene with Joan and Marcus at the construction site, and particularly his guidance on working a difficult case. And Joan making the last two connections that saved Alfredo. [which, number one favorite thing about this episode? ALFREDO LIVES]

Oscar and Sherlock as mutual voices of self-loathing: Oscar explaining it was Sherlock’s voice in his own head telling him how terrible he was when he found his sister, as I assume it’s been Oscar’s voice in his head when Sherlock fought the urge to relapse before. Oscar’s monologue says it all, literally: Sherlock speaks 20 words in the last 7 minutes of the episode and none at all in the last 5.

“I was gonna be there, to watch you fall.” But Sherlock “wins” because  no one sees him fall: Oscar is unconscious, and Sherlock drops his connection to Watson before picking up the box. I’m reminded also of what he told her in 3x01 about why he went to London, “And in the event I failed, it would not be right in front of you.” 

I kinda doubt this was intentional, but Joan gave Andrew cpr compressions on a count of 8; Sherlock kicked Oscar 8 times.

I predicted the possibility of a relapse-by-coersion, Oscar getting his revenge by giving Sherlock the choice of staying sober or saving Alfredo, one of the few times my guess about what would happen came close to panning out. yay me! But I prefer how they handled it here, making it the anticlimax to that dilemma. (even if it wasn’t really the sort of non-event anticlimax Sherlock described in 3x09)

and now for something completely different:

“We need a bus, forthwith.” Forthwith? seriously? That tossed me right out of that scene.

[elementaryteam]

I’m no closer to using today, than I was yesterday.