Additional thoughts on Sherlock S2E1

[petronia]

1) That was also fanfiction but not Katie Forsythe (the motto of the BBC Sherlock comm). I hope the Whedon Avengers movie is also like this, i.e. a Billy-Crystal-Oscar-skit-esque summation of the entire preceding year in fanfictional thinking.

2) Moffat and Gatiss would like you to know that if you insist on writing ridiculous D/s-verse AU scenarios, you should at least get some Word Of God on who is what.

3) The "canon references" in this one are basically the diggerdydum subject header approach, and I mean this in the nicest way (i.e. I LOLed). I hear you can already get a "geek interpreter" t-shirt.

(...I think I forgot to mention that that Gabaldon book contained toward the end the WORST groaner music pun of all time? Of all time!)

4) I did find the wrap-up dodgy - did we really need the visual of Irene in a hijab about to be beheaded? Seriously? Seriously?! WITH A CHINESE GREATSWORD - but it was a real emotional roller-coaster, before that. I should be majorly annoyed that the script didn't let Irene win (I've given up on Adler and Holmes not being "interested" in each other at all; if you're going to do that, may as well do it like this), but the fact is, she almost did win comprehensively, and it was such a vicious win, it felt devastating. It was a more emotionally vicious length, I got the impression, than this Irene Adler would have gone to to take down your average joe. Not just the "haha I was suckering you with the damsel in distress gambit", but that she 1) framed the goal as being about Mycroft instead, and 2) explicitly handed Moriarty his goal assist points, both of which are direct low blows to Sherlock's ego.

Sororial unit and I are emailing, right now, about whether the lesbian!dominatrix! stuff is annoyingly over-sensationalized. I'm on the side of it being unnecessary (other than, yeah, a straight update of the ACD story would have to involve some sort of sex tape-like material), but not annoying because it's such a good metaphor for what was actually going on between the characters. I remember a discussion on Iwa na Hana re: Penguindrum and Mishima, about how for certain strong-willed, control-freakish folks, "romantic love" is inherently a win/lose power play proposition - the first person to "care" fucks up and loses. Even though, if you didn't "care", you wouldn't even be playing the game.

(I am putting quotation marks around certain words, not for irony, but to indicate we're operating in a context where these words mean something similar but not identical to what people mostly mean by them. Even though I can't exactly define what. XD;)

To me the crux of the affair was when she drops it at the end and says, "I said all that because it is part of the game", and he smiles(!) at her and says, "I know, this is just losing". Like a physical D/s scene, pain and bloodletting are the purpose.

4a) ...And thus the crux of our argument seems to be whether Sherlock has sub tendencies (i.e. "derived pleasure" "from that experience") or none at all. XD; I can't imagine that Irene can't tell if someone's pupils are dilating and why, but unfortunately at key moments neither camera nor anyone else was in a position to know.

4b) DEAR INTERNET FANDOM: how can you be this unfamiliar with the concept of a woman who identifies as a lesbian but is occasionally attracted to a man in a mostly intellectual D/s kink way? HAVE YOU LOOKED AT YOURSELF IN A MIRROR LATELY?! I can't even

5) Speaking of pupils dilating, was Sherlock actually high in the scene where he comes home after listening in on Irene and John's conversation (he did, right? or am I imagining that? must rewatch). There were some weird-ass camera effects happening there. Also, I got the impression that his physiological reaction to Irene's knockout drug was more something (stronger, fucked-up) than what it was meant to cause. Also-also, the fact that Mycroft and John (and Mrs. Hudson!) may have had a real conversation at some point about Sherlock's "danger nights".

6) Mycroft could be his own separate post. Geebus, was the acting ever.

7) Lestrade/Molly omgggg. Actually, the entire Christmas party scene. Christmas. Party. At 221B. Scene. Martin Freeman can do more with a one-second reaction shot than any actor in the business today.

Comments

[brooms]

he did, right? or am I imagining that? must rewatch)

He did. I thought he was just dazed after months of grieving, didn't occur to me he could be high.

Lestrade/Molly omgggg. Actually, the entire Christmas party scene. Christmas. Party. At 221B. Scene.

It broke my heart. Poor Molly. I think she's the only character I'm attached to in an emotional level. Sherlock being distressed for John in the last episode of previous season paled in comparison to Molly being humiliated by Sherlock and played by Moriarty in my care-o-meter. Likewise in this episode. His distress for Irene << Molly at the Christmas party.

I wonder if there's another purpose to the character other than to showcase how hurtful Sherlock can be. A reminder that he's a dick.

[petronia]

I do kind of feel that Molly's getting some character growth at least (and she appeared in this one! which is more than several other characters from the last series). But what is not as nice, I think her appearance here was meant to showcase Sherlock's character growth. In that he's slightly less of a dick, or perhaps just less of an oblivious one.

[troisroyaumes]

the concept of a woman who identifies as a lesbian but is occasionally attracted to a man in a mostly intellectual D/s kink way?

Yes, that's similar to how I saw their relationship. I was a bit confused when going through Tumblr reactions b/c I saw Irene's attraction to Sherlock (and vice versa) as D/s but not sexual, so I didn't see it at odds with her being a lesbian. I mean, pupils dilating and elevated pulse doesn't necessarily equal sexual arousal; there are other forms of physical arousal as well. Actually kind of how I see Light/L despite all the fic that argues that relationship as being sexual too.

Having finally seen it

[canis_m]

I thought the audience is meant to take her attraction as being at least partly sexual, though? I mean to what extent her invitations were in earnest vs. "part of the game" is an open question--and I totes agree that regardless of Sherlock's supposedly authoritative diagnosis, the physical symptoms are ambiguous, sheesh--but if "dinner" is the new "dancing" (cf. DW, thanks Moff -_-;) I didn't think she was inviting him to a purely intellectual D/s encounter, if only because...they were having those already, ahaha. And I thought this was meant to be another sense in which Sherlock "wins": that Irene--who identifies as lesbian, even--is in fact attracted to him sexually, among other forms of attraction, while on his side he manages (probably? maybe?) to keep the sexual out of it. With shades of ye old-fashioned tropes like, yanno, Woman as helplessly sexual being vs. cold hard male intellectual purity, or whatever. Of course even if her attraction did include a sexual aspect that doesn't somehow negate her lesbian identity <--should go without saying!

For me the moral of the story was "even het dudes and lesbian ladies want a piece of that." As for ~The Woman~ as ball-busting and brain-busting dominatrix who ultimately needs to be rescued with a giant sword, yeah, I'd be hard pressed to side-eye Moffat any harder than I'm already side-eyeing him.

Re: Having finally seen it

[petronia]

I do think there is some element of the sexual there, on both sides - for one thing, no matter what Sherlock might tell himself there is no such thing as a mind-body divide, and sex is as much a mental as a physical process. Even if he wasn't physically aroused (and he wasn't behaving like he wasn't :P) that energy was already sublimated into their interaction. If in the alternate universe Sherlock had gone along with Irene's "dinner plans" something would have happened, but I suspect it would've been mostly bondage and talking. I can't picture them just going into the next room and making orgasms.

Also, yeah, Sherlock thinks he wins by keeping the sexual out of it, but I'm not sure 1) the audience is meant to accept unambiguously that not-having-sex-feelings = winning (let alone Mycroft's philosophy of "not admitting to any feelings ever, FOREVER ALONE"), and 2) the only reason Sherlock even thinks he succeeded in that is because - as Mycroft points out - he doesn't have enough personal experience to grok where the boundaries of sex and romantic emotion are to begin with. It would have been nice to have an Irene Adler who wasn't heavily sexualized front and centre, but to the extent that she is, it's not the fact that she's attracted to Sherlock that sets up the contrast. XD;

That shiz was an actual Chinese greatsword. Possibly inherited from that circus in the Blind Banker. I mean, Moffat aside I'm beginning to think there is one person in the props department who is a complete nutter.

Re: Having finally seen it

[troisroyaumes]

Oh, I don't disagree that there's a sexual element to it...I guess I just don't see that as being the dominant note of their attraction, more like a harmonic overtone? Especially since the way I see this version of Irene--sex, sexuality, sexual attraction are things that she very much has experience controlling in herself and others, so I don't see that as being sufficient to cause her to slip. So it leads me to read the root of the attraction as primarily nonsexual, with the sexual aspect layered on top as kind of an instrument in the game they're playing. I mean, invitations to dinner seem more like the cherry on top to me rather than wanting to move to a new level; I'm not convinced that they could get any more intense than the intellectual D/s encounters they were already having.

I think from a Doylist perspective, you're absolutely right that Sherlock was meant to "win" by not giving in to his sexual desires, while Irene was meant to "lose" because she did. I just had trouble really buying that message from the way I interpret the characters and the way the actors seemed to portray them. I mean, I really just can't believe that Sherlock is a sexually attractive man to begin with; I can see John being romantically attracted to him and Irene being intellectually attracted to him, but I don't really see him being so amazingly sexy that they would primarily desire him in a sexual way. (This may also be affected by the fact that I think Cumberbatch is interesting to look at but not actually good-looking.) The way I was perceiving the narrative, I was a bit WTF at Irene losing at the end; it felt discontinuous with the construct I had built up of their relationship before that point. >>; And then whole "rescue" at the coda just left a sour taste in my mouth.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

the WORST groaner music pun of all time?

Worse than the one in Pratchett's Soul Music?

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Oh God it was SO BAD not least because no one could have seen it coming. XD;;

[starlighter.livejournal.com]

3) The blog titles were my favoritest.

4) I actually found the password prob the most jarring moment in the entire episode, nearly where Moffatt & Gatiss lost me entirely. Apparently, I can swallow all manner of horrible puns but you can't make me swallow that Irene Adler would make that kind of a pun. Mostly.

The lesbian-y stuff I felt set up the whole Irene and John scene, probably one of the best in the episode IMO, where she basically points out to everyone that sexuality (his, hers, theirs) in this series is the least of everyone's issues with each other and Sherlock. "Look at us both" indeed. It's like a non-issue about whether he's gay or she's a lesbian, at all.

4b) SING IT.

7) Martin's adorable, ADORABLE faces in Buckingham Palace were almost better than the sheet.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

I was wheezing with laughter at the blog titles, man, I CANNOT. I mean, it makes me sad that they won't be doing all of these stories, but then I don't really expect this series to extend beyond a season 3; all the key players are essentially shooting three feature-lengths a year while jugging other projects. So bring on the throwaway gags.

As with all of Moffat's scripts, I expect that on a rewatch I will start spotting fridge logic. For instance, I thought (did Sherlock?) for a large part of the action that Irene wanted Sherlock to unlock her phone, it was just passcoded to be clever. Because unless that was his expectation, how would he ever think she was so daft as to use "221B" as the password? XD;

Ugh that conversation was amazing (that one and the Holmes sib two-handers, those were the best), and I knew even as it was happening that the Internet would misunderstand it. XD; ...And then Sherlock stumbles away, obviously in spasms of inability to deal, but what is he unable to deal with? Never says.

I called it, I keep telling you: the Holmeses have a massive fuck-off Brideshead-esque mansion, and John Watson is Aloysius the teddy bear.

[starlighter.livejournal.com]

I really wish they would do /some/ of those cases!! The Speckled Blonde LOLOLOL Look at it this way, either we get more of those or we get more desperate Sherlock!Smaug/John!Bilbo fic than we already have and god help us that one is actually very well written.

I get that a 4 character password limits you, I really do - you want it to be conceivable you could figure it out, considering it's apparently alphanumerical - but on the other hand, I really would have preferred 1895 or even 221B than... well, what it was.

I think that scene where he's walking back to 221B and it's a sound-muted close up of his face to give the impression of his being unable to deal - that's good story telling right there. Doesn't last long, and you can fill in the blanks as to what he's in shock about, but I think even Moffatt would agree that Irene's self-declared sexuality would be at the very bottom of that list.

Come on, fangirls and boys, like /you/ wouldn't take Sherlock's brain over the table and whip it until it begged for mercy twice if it didn't come clothed in Benedict's body and Belstaff coat. Remember, everything else is transport for that magnificent brain!

John as Aloysius == LOLOLOL FOREVER. I CAN SEE THE TEDDY BEAR'S LONG SUFFERING FACE NOW.

[coloredink.livejournal.com]

I agree with basically all points of this reaction post, but especially 2, 4, 4b (OMGGGGGGG) and 6. And 7. OKAY I AGREE WITH BASICALLY ALL POINTS.

But yeah, that was insanely good. That was, like, one of the most intense 90 minutes of my life, what.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

It was incredibly intense! In terms of the actual emotional response it's a tighter roller-coaster than RTD's conclusion to the Tenth Doctor's run (which got its effect, but was sometimes completely shaggy/accidental). I guess if there's one cloud here it's that this episode really proves where Moffat's attention was this past year, between Sherlock and Doctor Who.

I'll have to put this somewhere so it may as well be here: I don't really give a damn about what Moffat or Gatiss have said in the media about Sherlock or John's sexuality and the nature of their relationship. If I were them, I would make the statement least likely to court controversy, because the fact is what they've written (both in S1 and here) is far too subtle to be summed up in a good soundbite. Namely, 1) no one can define whether Sherlock is asexual or celibate (homo-, bi-, or het-) FOR him, because he refuses to either define himself or have sex where we can see it; 2) John defines himself as straight, but is told flat out by a couple of people that that doesn't preclude him being in a life partnership with a man (which it doesn't); and 3) Irene defines herself as gay, but has sexual relations with men professionally, and has no problem owning a sexual attraction to Sherlock which seems mostly to be based on intellect and kink (intellect and/or kink as factors overriding gender in determining sexual attraction is something I come across all the time, this is NOT HARD TO GROK)... but she has slightly more difficulty with the idea that she might be emotionally attached to him, and vice versa.

Now try summing that up in a way that the Daily Mail can comprehend. I mean, I am usually first in line to niggle about Moffat's writing of women, but I genuinely think the handling of sexuality in Sherlock is not where he's failing.

[coloredink.livejournal.com]

did you hear that Moffat ohhhh BURN

But no, for rizzle, I hear ya. Like, I do not interact much with fandom because I got shits to do, yo (like uhhhh...write fanfiction, and the more I actually interact with fandom the less writing I actually do), but I kept hearing these sad noises pre-BELG actually airing, people being like, "oh I hope Sherlock/Irene is not a romantic thing" and I was like, what? Have you been paying attention to the writing in S1 at all? I mean, esp. if you consider the fact that Moffat did write the line "It's all transport," even if it did get cut/altered later, who knows why.

But I am really, really impressed by the way sexuality etc. was handled in BELG (yes I am making up my own four-letter codes for the episodes, shup) because I mean, if you consider that this is prime-time BBC fare and yeah the Daily Mail reader/viewership etc. and it's like DOMINATRIXES ALL UP IN YOUR SHERLOCK HOLMES YES. JOHN WATSON THE STRAIGHT MAN IN COMPLICATED LIFE PARTNERSHIP WITH YOUR SHERLOCK HOLMES YES. WATCHING YOU ALL HAVE HEART ATTACKS NOW YES. I mean, damn. It is one thing for us fandom intellectuals to sit around discussing definitions and sexualities, but I think if my father had seen this episode he would not have grokked it. Actually he would have just been deeply uncomfortable.

Since I do not interact much with the fandom I have also not been privy to the outrage (?) over Irene-the-lesbian-who-is-also-attracted-to-Sherlock-Holmes but I am amused because fandom as a whole does not seem to have a problem with John-the-straight-man-who-is-also-attracted-to-Sherlock-Holmes aka Sherlocksexual. So it's clearly not that difficult a concept???

[petronia.livejournal.com]

You have probably not read the Daily Mail's actual response, which was "frothing" "viewer" "outrage" that the Beeb had dared to put a naked woman on-air pre-9pm watershed. So safe to say no subtleties regarding fluidity of sexual identity were registered. XDD

I'm really just doing a first pass over LJ/DW fflists and Tumblr tags to see what ppl are saying, and yeah. Sometimes I agree, sometimes I disagree, with people on the Internet. XD What actually does surprise me is that ppl are not picking up on how the kink aspect plays into Irene's (and arguably Sherlock's) attraction, despite there being a lotta kinky ppl in Fandom last I checked, who should presumably understand the difference between "I would like to use a riding crop on you until you begged" and "I want you to put your penis in me".

[coloredink.livejournal.com]

Well that is...pretty par for the course for the Daily Mail. I cannot say I am surprised.

A surprising number of people have difficulty grasping how it is possible to be kinky and nonsexual! Or kinky in a nonsexual way! I mean you'd think fandom of all places would understand this, it being a very kinky place and all, but then again a lot of the kink in fandom is sexual. Not like I see a lot of prompts on the kinkmeme asking for kink without sexuality. I mean, yes, there are plenty of prompts asking for asexual!Sherlock not having sex, but if you see any specifically kinky prompts it is all COCK AND BALL TORTURE and BDSM AU with assumed sexings in. Rare to see a combination of the two. Maybe I will write some now, just to be defiant.

[pere-chan.livejournal.com]

Just doing a last pass over flist before watching Hounds of Baskerville, heh.

Looking at people who are missing the point (http://thisrecording.com/today/2012/1/6/in-which-we-boomerang-across-the-pond.html), I feel as bewildered as Sherlock in that stumbling-home scene. Just...are we rabid fangirls the only ones having actual nuanced discussions re. the fluidity of sexuality and power dynamics &c? Does fanfic actually make you smarter? Or am I leaping to conclusions based on the fact that 89% of discussions I've read on these eps are fannish? ACTUAL PAID REVIEWERS, I AM DISAPPOINT.

[pere-chan.livejournal.com]

YESSSSSS the blog comments. Yes the sexuality convo with Sherlock as catalyst AND passive listener, are you actually really just writing fanfic now. Every second of John's face when he's faced with the reality of their interaction = entire fanfic. Just stamp the whole thing with the AO3 logo and watch the kudos roll in.

I agree with coloredink; one of the most intense 90 mins of my life to date. PHEW.

Also: MOLLY. OH, MOLLY. *HUGS FOREVER*

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Every scene with Mycroft. SO MUCH FANFIC. The only way it could have gotten more AO3 is if Dame Judy Dench actually cameoed.

[pere-chan.livejournal.com]

She cameoed in my mind :D Which reminds me of one of the moments I personally treasured most as fanfictional:

John: What are we doing here, Sherlock, seriously, what. [He even talks like a Tumblrite occasionally; side effect of blogging?]
Sherlock: I don't know.
John: Here to see the Queen?
*ENTER MYCROFT*
Sherlock: Apparently, yes.
Both: FFFFFFFFFHAHAHAHAHAAASNRK

It was so immature and really kinda offensive, and yet. Also THE SHEET-STEPPING REVENGE, my God those two are so petty it makes me giggle uncontrollably.

I suppose you've read the blog; purer audience-trolling I have yet to find from anyone not in Supernatural fandom.

[bladderwrack.livejournal.com]

in a hijab, about to be beheaded, and texting yeah no that lost me. The plane of the dead also counts as a digression into fantasy, I mean just think about that for a minute, wtf.

Well, I am cross that she didn't win! Or at least get away, you don't just waste an intellectual opponent of that caliber.

IMO the lesbian-dominatrix stuff has a structural purpose, in that it makes Irene more of a mirror of Sherlock because it marks her out as odd - it makes a balance that wouldn't be the same if she were doing straight vanilla seduction. I am actually v impressed to see a m/f version of an intense, competitive relationship built on power play; you don't see that very often.

Plane of the dead = v. v. Doctor Who handwave

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Nobody liked the ending. XD I dunno, I was pissed that Irene lost (that Sherlocked fucked her over so cruelly, stripping her of all agency and protection and pride) but literally five seconds before that I was POed that she was fucking him over. Afterward, thinking it over, I was increasingly convinced that Irene was hamming it up for his benefit, and if she hadn't hurt his pride so badly in front of Mycroft (he knew it was a performance, anyway, c/o all the pulse-taking and whatnot) he would probably actually have let her get away with it. So in the end I have to interpret this as two people who are not used to being emotionally invested, who probably don't entirely realize how emotionally invested they are, behaving more badly because of it and escalating a situation beyond the point where it is Any Good At All. So after that, structurally, you did need a scene that was like "well in fact Irene lives and she and Sherlock forgive each other and part as friends, sorta", it's just that Moffat's actual idea was completely daft. XD;

Or to put it another way: "FFS agree on a safeword first or take this somewhere else, preferably to a planet that is NOT EARTH" (this came to mind straightaway but I had to think 10min on who I actually said that about... the Master and the Third Doctor, it transpires XD;;).

[ampersandals.livejournal.com]

but the fact is, she almost did win comprehensively, and it was such a vicious win, it felt devastating. It was a more emotionally vicious length, I got the impression, than this Irene Adler would have gone to to take down your average joe. Not just the "haha I was suckering you with the damsel in distress gambit", but that she 1) framed the goal as being about Mycroft instead, and 2) explicitly handed Moriarty his goal assist points, both of which are direct low blows to Sherlock's ego.

THIS. I too felt kind of cheated that she didn't win - because wasn't that the point of Scandal In Bohemia - but I loved that it was a blow against Mycroft, with Sherlock's ego as collateral damage. And now that you mention how her victory was so close and so vicious - it makes sense, I guess. But after that - "Sherlocked" and the whole Sherlock-saves-her thing was hard to swallow. But still very entertaining to watch, with enough suspension of disbelief.

4b: I think people are justified in having strong feelings about Adler's misrepresented lesbialism, I just operate under a different headcanon (ie. that Adler was responding to the ~braininess~ of Sherlock, which she admitted was a turn-on; or that Sherlock misread the dilated pupils/quickened pulse thing as love/attraction when it could easily have been just excitement) and anyway we've established that Sherlock has a sexuality-nulling force field. (I ship Sherlock with neither John nor Adler, but at least they set it up right.)

5: Sherlock was totally high. I love how they dealt with that! Plus the fact that sex is like an explicit thing now - it's just interesting, is all.


Also loved how power play was the running theme throughout the ep, even w/r/t Mycroft. And that Lestrade's "least annoying man" is... Lestrade! (Ep def. needs more Lestrade.)

[petronia.livejournal.com]

I expect there will be a great deal more Lestrade in Baskerville, per canon! If this is not the case I will definitely complain. XD

The "Sherlocked" thing was definitely odd, because Sherlock has to be WRONG about why she set that as the password - I was talking about this with sub_divided, and she pointed out that that is the sort of thing you do with the name of a silly crush only if you expect to be the one entering the password every day. But what Irene did was set that as the password and send the phone to Sherlock, as a setup to her faked death (because she no longer has "protection"). Because Sherlock assumed she was dead and this was a final gift, he thought she wanted him to be able to get into it, and it was just passworded to be cute. That's why he tried stuff like "1895" and "221B". But if that were the case, the fact that he didn't realize it was his name is completely daft, basically equivalent to how he didn't figure out the taxi driver thing in S1E1 when about half the viewers did (including me). XD;

The only way I can fanwank the whole thing to make sense is to assume Moriarty's consultancy provided Irene with several options for The Big One, depending on what the key piece of data turned out to be, and she did her own research and it was her decision to use Sherlock as the lever, in the event that the target turns out to be Mycroft. And then the plan changed a second time when she realized she had to come back from the dead in order to explicitly make Sherlock solve the thing for her, and that allowed her to make an even bigger play.

So actually, Sherlock thinks he wins because he's less emotional, but it's the exact opposite: Irene's win snowballs because he was incompetent, and it's actually his emotional involvement that gives him the intuition to grok hers and solve the problem. XD;

[ampersandals.livejournal.com]

Because Sherlock assumed she was dead and this was a final gift, he thought she wanted him to be able to get into it, and it was just passworded to be cute. That's why he tried stuff like "1895" and "221B". But if that were the case, the fact that he didn't realize it was his name is completely daft, basically equivalent to how he didn't figure out the taxi driver thing in S1E1 when about half the viewers did (including me). XD;
That sounds more legit, actually, since A Study In Pink was a precedent. XD I'm more inclined to think "Sherlocked" is a joke, as opposed to a crush/love thing - it's so easy to remember and also the last thing that Sherlock - who is romantically/sexually oblivious - would think of, since his head is full of cases and codes and facts. I don't think Irene meant for him to figure it out at all, but I still think Sherlock misread her intentions when she set her password to his name.

I like your headcanon better, it's the only one that makes sense in line with the show's canon even though I'd rather believe that Irene was ahead of Sherlock the entire time. Re: emotional!Sherlock - I'm not sure what to think of this. I'm totally onboard with those scenes with Molly and Mrs.Hudson, but with Irene I think his only emotional involvement comes from the place of professional pride, because that's where she hits hard.

[incandescens]

I see Irene setting the password to SHER as a demonstration of the same sense of humour/urge to totally score off an adversary as the setting of her safe combination.

It's something that she can gloat over in an "if only they knew" way. It makes her win over an opponent that much more intense. It is, as Sherlock points out, a demonstration of personality which loses her the game, where she would have won if only she'd picked a random selection of characters. And I think it's because of the safe combination that he finally realises what the phone combination has to be.

Sherlock plays the game for the game's sake.
Moriarty plays the game in order to make his opponents lose.
Irene plays the game... well, mostly for the game's sake (I think), but also because she can't bring herself to stop.

[sub-divided.livejournal.com]

I had the opposite impression of energy of the episode, not because the episode didn't have energy, but because I'd just come from seeing the Sherlock Holmes movie XD. It's not really a fair comparison, TV acting and TV writing versus RDJ and Jude Law in an action movie directed by Guy Ritchie. The show was very good for what it was - Irene Adler was better than in the movie, even, I thought. I thought it was a brilliant choice to make her an infamous dominatrix, because her reputation does half the work for her before she even steps on screen - you ALREADY have the characters/audience primed to think about sex & power, without even seeing her face.

(Especially if you assume, as Moffat apparently does, that all people/men are intrigued by dominatrixes. Check the reaction shot he gives Sherlock and Watson after Mycroft delivers the news. Kind of juvenile, but maybe he is right.)

I was telling Zoe that if you put an "ordinary" woman in that role, she would have to be a really charismatic actor to get across the same stuff in just one hour. And she and Benedict Cumberbach would have needed to have had serious chemistry, together. This way, it's enough for each actor to have individual chemistry, and then for the writers to create the intellectual chemistry between them.

And the writers are really up for it! Having Irene start out naked with her hair up and obvious makeup, and then later turn up clothed, with her hair down and in more natural makeup, was a really smart move - you know most men think women look better when they "aren't wearing makeup". So obvious, but so effective, XD.

On the other hand, Zoe thought it was cheap to go the sex route, as if this is the only way women can be powerful. She thought it would have been better if she'd been a politician or a lawyer instead. I guess a high-powered female attorney could have fit the same role - had an established reputation for being an amazing bullbuster - without invited the same criticism as a blackmailing female politician ("she slept her way to the top" etc).

Scene between Adler and John about sexuality was one of the best in the episode, second only to "why are we like this, Mycroft". I can't believe the lesbian thing is even an issue. Maybe she likes to call herself a lesbian because submissive men are intrigued by lesbians and she's a 5 on the kinsey scale rather than a 6? Maybe she's intellectually or kinkily attracted to Sherlock, or is physically attracted to him because he has a feminine face and is perceptive about others, 'like a woman'? Or maybe he is just that charismatic, who knows. There definitely are people who can create that kind of attachment in others without sleeping with them (see also Guy Ritchie Sherlock Holmes movie). Anyway, rant over XD.