History Headscratchers / Sherlock

** [[spoiler: Also, saying someone is gay is not the same as saying they’re bisexual. As someone who is bisexual, while I wouldn’t be offended if someone thought I was gay, I would certainly correct their misassumption. By sheer definitions, someone who is only attracted to their own gender is not the same as someone who is attracted to both genders. Irene specifies that she’s gay. She sleeps with women only. She never states that she wants to have sex with Sherlock. She wants to throw him down, tie him up, and make him beg for mercy. Twice. The definition of a professional Dominatrix. When Sherlock reads her pulse and pupil dilation, he does not find out that she wants to have sex with him. He finds out that she cares about him in some way. In fact, that’s the whole point of her and John’s little conversation:]]

* It seems the reason why Eurus pretended to be the daughter of Culverton Smith in the previous episode was because Sherlock was slowly killing himself with heroin, and she wanted to give him a case that would get him back on his feet. But that doesn't explain why she played the red-haired Scottish woman Watson had an "affair" with? Or Watson's therapist? In this episode she doesn't show any kind of interest towards Watson, except for how to use their friendship to manipulate Sherlock. But she would've already learned the fact that Sherlock would do anything John years ago from Moriarty, so the charade wasn't really needed for that. What was the point of playing those two women then? She may have just wanted to meet them before it all went down, maybe test their observational powers in person, but why would she need to test Watson's observational powers to the extent of playing two different women in his life? Watson's observational powers had nothing to do with the trap she had planned.
** Even the best manipulators need to interact with their intended victims to know what makes them tick. Eurus knew Mycroft and Sherlock very well from her childhood, but John was an unknown variable that she wanted to acquire more information on. The therapist was likely a last-minute decision; we know that John interacts with Eurus as Red-Haired Scottish Woman before going into therapy. As soon as Eurus realized when and where this would happen (if Sherlock could deduce it, she definitely could) it was too good a chance to pass up. John would talk far more to his therapist than to a random woman on the bus, and Eurus could also quiz him extensively about Sherlock and, to a lesser extent, Mycroft without seeming suspicious.

* Like a couple of others, this is more a fandom headscratcher for the series (not fanfiction, since that's all about exploring other interpretations). Why do some viewers refuse to respect John's sexual orientation? We've seen him in several relationships with women; okay, none of them last until Mary, but that's because he's implied to be a lousy boyfriend and not really serious. John repeatedly states that he's not gay (and he ought to know!) yet some viewers got upset that he and Sherlock never entered into a relationship. Irene Adler has her LGB sexual orientation immediately accepted by viewers with one announcement, despite being an ''extremely'' UnreliableNarrator who could have been lying, yet some viewers' repeated reaction to John's insistence on his own orientation seemed to be, "No, you're not ''really'' straight! You just haven't met the right man yet!" It works as a RunningGag, but it just seems like a double standard to me.

* It seems the reason why Eurus pretended to be the daughter of Culverton Smith in the previous episode was because Sherlock was slowly killing himself with heroin, and she wanted to give him a case that would get him back on his feet. But that doesn't explain why she played the red-haired Scottish woman Watson had an "affair" with? Or Watson's therapist? In this episode she doesn't show any kind of interest towards Watson, except for how to use their friendship to manipulate Sherlock. But she would've already learned the fact that Sherlock would do anything John years ago from Moriarty, so the charade wasn't really needed for that. What was the point of playing those two women then?
** She may have just wanted to meet them before it all went down, maybe test their observational powers in person.
** Why would she need to test Watson's observational powers to the extent of playing two different women in his life? Watson's observational powers had nothing to do with the trap she had planned.

*** First, there is no "the well" - it is implied that the well in question is well-hidden somewhere on a large premise and most likely long forgotten. Eurus might have discovered it by strolling along on her own. Sherlock clearly does not know about it and John's rescue takes place after Eurus revealed the exact location to Sherlock. Second, it's in England, so the sea is never too far from anywhere. First thing I suspected was that Eurus discovered a hidden cave which would be flooded by the tide, and that's most likely what any runaround police officer might also deduce, so the search would have focused on the (presumably) nearby coast. The possibility that the body would be washed away by the outgoing tide would drastically limit such a search. Remember, Eurus is clever beyond reason, so she might have played fully intentionally on the obvious misconceptions about where exactly a 5-year-old could leave someone to drown.

* Why does Sherlock keep referring to himself as a High Functioning Sociopath? There is no such thing, and he's misdiagnosed himself; you check the guidelines for diagnosis of a sociopath under the DSM, and...well...he's not. However, the usual term using "High functioning" is High functioning Asperger's Syndrome. Check Wiki/TheOtherWiki for that info, and Sherlock fits right down the line with classic Asperger's.

** "A person of significance to Harry's (Mycroft's friend's) employer [[UsefulNotes/HMTheQueen (who owns three small dogs and lives at the Buckingham Palace)]]." It's strongly, strongly suggested to be Kate Middleton (!!)

* Microft and Sherlock look at least several years apart, how could there have been a time when Sherlock was old enough to talk but Microft hadn't been exposed to other children yet?

* Why did Sherlock need a human to talk to well he was on cases, before John he made do with a skull to bounce ideas off?

** Moffatt and Gatiss have confirmed in a few interviews that it's the third scenario, where Sherlock flat out tells Anderson how he did it. Anderson comments about how precise the timing and placement of everyone would have to be in order for that to work and Sherlock practically looks in to the video camera when he sighs and says "everyone's a critic", because they knew no one would be satisfied. They've said they made some adjustments to the explanation over the past two years but they didn't incorporate fan theories, though they admired how much work the fans put into it, and they don't think every fan is writing slash fiction instead of trying to solve the mysteries themselves (Moffatt says he included the Sherlock/Moriarty kiss because he thought, before he was corrected, that it was [[FoeYay the ONLY pairing people DON'T do!]]). They can't believe how many professional reviewers think the explanation was never given when it's right there in the episode.

** ^ It's still the same thing, though. Irene ruining the Bond project basically proves, from the perspective of any sane government official trying to sort out her motives, that she did not have any other information on the phone she could more efficiently make use of, coded or not. If her plan was merely to say "I have something and and I won't show you or tell you what", she didn't need to crack the code at all. If she was just trying to prove she had information the British government might want, it would have been enough to show them the ''uncracked'' Bond project code (or seating arrangement, as it turned out to be). Actually knowing what the information on her phone means only becomes relevant if she's trying to prove that she can cause trouble with the information, but as I've said, she only proves the opposite by conspicuously going to a lot of probably-unreplicable effort over the course of many months to crack a single code. If there was unencrypted information on the disk she knew how to make use of, the government ought have assumed she'd have used ''that'' for her demonstration instead rather than hanging out for several more months while her life was in danger. And lastly, Irene implied the phone is evidence of Sherlock's treason, but it never answers the question of ''how'' it's evidence of that, which is a huge huge omission if nothing about her plan makes sense without that being the case. Surely, it's not supposed to be her word against his?

* Rich Brook. Is Kitty Riley a very shitty journalist (even by Sun standards), or did Moriarty have an acting career under the alias of Rich Brook? If the first, then debunking Moriarty's claims should prove easy, if the latter, then... [[CrazyAwesome Wow.]]

*** First, there is no "the well" - it is implied that the well in question is well-hidden somewhere on a large premise and most likely long forgotten. Eurus might have discovered it by strolling along on her own. Sherlock clearly does not know about it and John's rescue takes place after Eurus revealed the exact location to Sherlock. Second, it's in England, so the sea is never too far from anywhere. First thing I suspected was that Eurus discovered a hidden cave which would be flooded by the tide, and that's most likely what any runaround police officer might also deduce, so the search would have focused on the (presumably) nearby coast. The possibility that the body would be washed away by the outgoing tide would drastically limit such a search. Remember, Eurus is clever beyond reason, so she might have played fully intentionally on the obvious misconceoptions about wehere exactly a 5-year-old could leave someone to drown.

** It is pretty likely that Mr. and Mrs. Holmes didn't want to accept that their beloved daughter actually killed someone. Maybe telling themselves "She didn't meant it" or something like this. That is pretty normal for parents because let's be honest, nobody would want to believe that a child, especially his/her own child had done something like this. When the arson happend, it became just to obvious to ignore it away.