Sherlock/Recap/S01/E03 The Great Game: Difference between revisions

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{{quote|''Dear Jim, please will you fix it for me to get rid of my lover's nasty sister? Dear Jim, please will you fix it for me to disappear to South America? [...] Consulting criminal. Brilliant.''|'''Sherlock Holmes'''}}

 

The third episode of the first series of Sherlock. The episode starts in Belarus, with Sherlock declining a case from a grammatically challenged prisoner. Return to London, and Sherlock is bored. Very bored. So bored that he starts shooting walls which, naturally, John isn't very happy about. John decamps to Sarah's house just before a massive explosion rips through 221b.

 

 

In the flat is a pair of shoes, Sherlock's examination of which is interrupted by a phone call from a woman in a bomb in a car - or, more accurately, someone using a woman in a bomb in a car as a voice to disguise their own. Sherlock has twelve hours to solve the mystery of the shoes before the woman blows up.

Sherlock goes to the lab at Bart's to analyse the mud on the shoes, where he is joined by John and, later, Molly. Molly has brought along her ostentatiously camp new boyfriend, Jim from IT. Sherlock breaks Molly's dreams of romance by informing her that her Jim is gay in a typically Sherlocky manner, causing her to run from the room. Poor lamb. However, don't let that keep you down for long, as Sherlock solves the case and informs the bomber via blog post. The woman is saved and cut loose, and Sherlock receives another message.

 

 

{{quote|'''Jim:''' Sorry boys, I'm soooo changeable!}}

Cut to the credits and an eighteen-month wait.

 

* [[Ambiguously Jewish]]: [[Golem|The Golem]] is named after a creature of Jewish folklore.

* [[Bald of Evil]]: The Golem again.

** For those who don't know, it's a posh Dublin 4 accent.

* [[Brilliant but Lazy]]: Sherlock makes John pass him his phone from his jacket pocket. The jacket he was ''wearing''.

* [[The Cameo]]: The voice of the kid {{spoiler|strapped to the bomb jacket}} is [[Steven Moffat]]'s son.

* [[Casual Danger Dialogue]]: Everybody involved in the last scene. Most notably, of course, {{spoiler|Sherlock and Moriarty, who have quite the civilised conversation and for a while almost forget about the bomb and the gun. Though, to be fair, John is the one who has enough gumption to crack an actual joke once he's free to use his own words. Even parroting Moriarty's, however, he does wind up with a peculiarly sarcastic tone of voice with "stop his heart".}}

* [[Chekhov's Skill]]: Almost reverse example: {{spoiler|Sherlock's ''lack'' of knowledge about the solar system (because he doesn't consider it necessary) nearly causes him to lose the fourth 'round' with Moriarty. It's only a [[Chekhov's Classroom|convenient slideshow at the planetarium]] that clues him in on the answer he needs.}}

** John gets in an epic one:

{{quote|'''John''' [opens fridge innocently, sees human head, slams fridge door shut]: Oh FFFFF-!}}

* [[Disproportionate Retribution]]: {{spoiler|Moriarty}} claims he was laughed at by Carl Powers... which is why he was poisoned.

* [[Evil Plan]]: {{spoiler|Moriarty}} was responsible for all the riddles Sherlock had to solve, and did it just to {{spoiler|draw Sherlock out in the open.}}

** John, after finding a head inside the fridge.

** John again, during the intensely awkward meeting between Molly, Sherlock and Jim near the beginning. Molly is trying to provoke Sherlock to jealousy, Jim is unashamedly fawning over Sherlock while tripping over his own feet, Sherlock is being outrageously rude to both of them, and everyone is ignoring John. Good times.

* [[Hey, It's That Guy!]]: The voice in the planetarium is an uncredited Peter Davison, the Fifth Doctor.

* [[Hostage Situation]]: A recurring plot.

** The way Sherlock was swinging John's gun around at the end of "The Great Game," the series could very well have ended with Sherlock accidentally shooting himself in the head before Moriarty got the chance to come back and finish the job. He '' rubbed his temple'' with the barrel of ''[[Artistic License Gun Safety|a loaded gun!]]''

*** He also waves it at John as a careless gesture as he's trying to blurt out a thank you to him.

** Another example can be found at the beginning of the same episode where Sherlock is so bored he's using a handgun to shoot holes into the wall forming a smiley face. This is incredibly reckless and dangerous because it would only take one resilient bullet to make it through that wall and hit someone on the other side -- one of the reasons you are not allowed to practice shooting in a residential area outside of a shooting range. This was, of course, a call back to the original Sherlock Holmes stories, in which a bored Sherlock used his pistol to spell out "VR", meaning "Victoria Regina", on his wall.

* [[It's Personal]]: For most of the episode, Sherlock treats the bomb threats as an interesting and hugely enjoyable diversion. That changes once {{spoiler|John gets targeted and subsequently put in a bomb-rigged jacket}}.

* [[Jerkass Has a Point]]: Knowing what the Earth revolves around wouldn't have helped Sherlock solve the puzzle.