"Sherlock, episode 1x01: A Study in Pink"
(with scenes from the unaired pilot)

Starring: Benedict Cumberbatch, Martin Freeman, Rupert Graves, 
Una Stubbs, Louise Brealey, Vinette Robinson, Jonathan Aris and 
Philip Davis as the killer who only seems to have a name in the 
credits of the episode and not the episode itself for some damn 
reason.


I have decided that I can only forestall the inevitable for so 
long. Sooner or later I will end up recapping this series 
anyway. Might as well give in to it.
   Chrissy: I would like to note that I am here under false 
    pretenses. I was told we were doing “The Hobbit”.
   Diandra: Trust me, this’ll be fun!
   Chrissy: You really need to stop saying things like 
    that.

We open on a chaotic battle scene in some indiscriminate 
location that looks nothing like the Middle East. I’m just 
saying. More on that later. There’s a lot of jerky camera 
movements and shooting and then we cut abruptly to Martin 
Freeman sitting up in bed with a gasp. 
   Chrissy: I just dreamt I was in a movie version of 
   “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” and it was AWFUL!
He lays back down, makes crying faces for a few breaths and 
pulls it together. 

Sometime later, he hobbles up to a desk in the other corner of 
the room, a cane under his right hand and a coffee cup in his 
left. He sits and pulls a laptop from one of the drawers, 
revealing a handgun underneath. He opens the laptop, which 
apparently goes right to a web page that says “The Personal 
Blog of John H. Watson” and has a blinking cursor in the box 
under where it says that he’s logged in. A woman’s voice asks 
how his blog is coming along and we shift to a therapist’s 
office where he clears his throat nervously and answers that 
it’s going very well, actually. “You haven’t written a word, 
have you,” she asks knowingly. Worked with writers before, have 
you?
   Chrissy: It’s about 500 words, but I haven’t written any 
    of them down yet.
   Diandra: It has a title though!
He notes that she just wrote down “still has trust issues” on 
her pad. Nice deflection there. I’m sure that’s not suspicious 
at all. She notes that he’s kind of proving her point by 
reading everything she’s writing upside down. Well, maybe if 
you didn’t tilt it in that direction and make it so easy. It’s 
not like reading upside down is THAT impossible of a talent. 
The Exposition Fairy makes sure the therapist reminds everybody 
in the audience that he’s a soldier (just in case we couldn’t 
guess that much from that first scene). She says it’s going to 
take him a while to adjust to civilian life and insists that 
writing in that blog about whatever is happening in his life 
will help. He grumbles that nothing ever happens in his life. 
Oh, honey. You will remember this moment fondly.

Opening credits. Isn’t London pretty?

We come back on the more industrial side of town. The chyron 
says it is the 12th of October. In an office building 
somewhere, a pretty blonde is on her cell phone telling a guy 
to just get a cab because “he” took the car to Waterloo. The 
guy she’s talking to, who is making his way through crowded 
streets, grumbles about how much he hates cabs, but smiles when 
she says she loves him. He hangs up and we cut to him sitting 
in what looks like an abandoned office somewhere opening a tiny 
jar with pills in it. He holds up one of the pills, looks at 
someone off camera, and puts it between his teeth. 

Cut to what is clearly a different woman (brunette) giving a 
statement to the press, a picture of the man showing on a 
screen behind her. She says her husband loved his family and 
his work (and I’m guessing his secretary) and everyone who knew 
him is just baffled that he would kill himself like this. The 
blonde he was talking to hovers on the sidelines, quietly 
crying.

Cut to “November 26th", a kid tries and fails to pick up a cab 
in a rainstorm. He tells his buddy he’s going back for an 
umbrella and then we shift abruptly to him holding a similar 
pill bottle and crying, followed by a newspaper with his 
picture under a headline about an 18 year old committing 
suicide.

January 27th...okay, we get the pattern here. Victim number 
three is a woman whose friends take her keys from her on 
account of she’s had too much to drink. She disappears from the 
bar and a woman’s voice reports that the body of “Beth 
Davenport, Junior Minister for Transport” was found at a 
building site.

And we’re in another press conference as the voice continues 
that all indications are the woman committed suicide. Except 
the suicide follows exactly the same pattern as the other two, 
so...you know...obviously there’s a connection between these 
three and the police are looking into it. She points at the man 
sitting next to her and says Detective Inspector Lestrade will 
take their questions now. The first reporter asks how suicides 
could possibly be linked. Dur...obviously they’re not really 
suicides. What, is this your first rodeo? Lestrade says well, 
since they were all found in places they had no reason to be in 
and none of them had any prior suicidal tendencies, the deaths 
were pretty suspect. Also, they all took the same poison. That 
was kind of a big clue. The reporter argues that there’s no 
such thing as serial suicides. Oh, because nobody has ever been 
coerced into taking poison? Do me a favor and go Google “Jim 
Jones”. I’ll wait.
   Chrissy: You’re already doing a terrible job of 
    pretending you haven’t seen this before, sweetie.
   Diandra: Oh, come on. I’ve seen something like twenty 
    years worth of CSIs and CSI knockoffs. But even if I 
    hadn’t, any idiot would think it was suspicious if 
    three random strangers suddenly committed suicide in 
    the exact same way. 

Actually, I guess the “random strangers” thing isn’t all that 
clear because another reporter asks if there’s anything that 
links the victims. Lestrade says they haven’t found anything 
yet, but they’re looking for a connection because they’re 
confident there has to be one. All the mobile phones in the 
room buzz and the word “wrong!” hovers over them as everybody 
goes to check the incoming text. The woman tells them to just 
ignore that. That happens sometimes. Doesn’t mean anything. 
Probably just some kid pulling a prank. A third reporter asks 
what they’re investigating, exactly, if these are just 
suicides. Lestrade repeats that there’s clearly a link between 
them and it’s an “unusual” case, but they have their best 
people investigating. All the text alerts beep again with the 
same “wrong” message. Damn kids these days. A fourth reporter 
asks if there’s any chance these are actually murders, in which 
case they would clearly be the work of a serial killer. Yes. 
Lestrade shifts uncomfortably and (yes) says he knows how much 
they would like that (yes) because, you know, the press is all 
about (yes) sensationalism, but (yes) these do, in fact, appear 
(YES) to be suicides. He says he realizes this is frightening 
for people, but there’s no reason to suspect danger at this 
point as long as they “exercise reasonable precautions”. All 
the phones scream “wrong” again, which...yes, obviously, but 
that’s not exactly helpful. Lestrade’s phone has a different 
message: “you know where to find me. – SH”. He shoves it in his 
pocket, mumbles a thank you and gets up to leave. 

Outside somewhere, the woman tells him he has to do something 
about this because “he’s making us look like idiots.” Lestrade 
says yeah, he’ll get right on that if she can tell him HOW he’s 
doing it.

Park. John is walking down the path for...some indeterminate 
reason...when a guy on a park bench recognizes him and calls 
his name. He stops and looks confused until the guy introduces 
himself as Mike Stamford. “We were at Barts together.” John 
apologizes and shakes his hand. “I heard you were abroad 
somewhere getting shot at. What happened?” John looks at his 
cane and says “I got shot.” I think the “you tactless idiot” is 
kind of implied here.

Cut to them sitting on a bench together, sipping coffee from 
paper takeout cups. John asks if Mike is still at Barts. He 
says yeah, he’s teaching now. “Bright young things like we used 
to be. God, I hate them.” Yep, he’s definitely a teacher. He 
asks if John’s staying in town. John says nah, he can’t afford 
London on his army pension. Mike says the John Watson he 
remembers couldn’t stand being anywhere else. John kind of 
snaps that he’s not that John Watson anymore, but then he 
trails off and glowers at his lap. Mike asks if Harry could 
help out. Or, you know, he could get a flatshare or something. 
“Who’d want me for a flatmate,” John asks. Mike chuckles and 
says John’s the second person to say those exact words to him 
today. “Who was the first?”

To answer that, we switch to a funny looking guy with curly 
dark hair opening a body bag. The woman hovering at the other 
end of the autopsy table says the body just came in, but the 
man used to work here. He died of natural causes, which is 
somewhat odd because she says he was 67. Sherlock – because I 
really don’t think it’s worth the effort of pretending I don’t 
know that’s who this is for the next scene or so – doesn’t seem 
all that interested. He turns to her and says “okay, we’ll 
start with the riding crop.”
   Chrissy: Well, you could at least offer to buy me dinner 
    first. 
   Diandra: *sigh*
   Chrissy: What?
   Diandra: They’re in a morgue.
   Chrissy: So?
   Diandra: You need help.

So the next thing we see is him flogging the hell out of the 
body (presumably...not that we ever actually see the body at 
any point in this whole scene). She tentatively slips close 
again when he stops and jokes “so...bad day was it?” He barely 
looks at her as he says he needs to know what sort of bruises 
form on the body in the next twenty minutes because somebody’s 
alibi depends on it, but, you know, he can’t be bothered to 
stick around that long to find out himself so she’ll have to 
text him the details. “Listen,” she continues awkwardly. “I was 
wondering...maybe later...when you’re finished...” He finally 
looks at her and interrupts to note that she’s wearing 
lipstick, which she apparently wasn’t in the last scene. She 
smiles flirtily and says she just refreshed it a bit. Anyway, 
“I was wondering if you’d like to have coffee.” He says yeah, 
sure, he’ll take it black with two sugars and he’ll be waiting 
upstairs. He stalks off and she kind of stares into space 
wondering why she has to be such a walking cliché of low self 
esteem that she’s practically throwing herself at someone who 
may or may not remember her name (it’s Molly, by the way). 
“Okay,” she says meekly.

Upstairs, apparently, Sherlock is futzing with some slides and 
a microscope when Mike enters, followed by John. Sherlock asks 
if he can borrow Mike’s phone because he can’t get a signal on 
his. Mike asks what’s wrong with the landline. He says he 
prefers texting. Mike says well, his phone is in his coat, 
which he doesn’t have, so too bad. John offers his and Mike 
introduces John to Sherlock but completely neglects to do the 
opposite. Sherlock takes the phone and flips it sideways to 
open the full keyboard because this aired five years ago so 
it’s already using technology that is mostly outdated. 
“Afghanistan or Iraq,” he asks absently. John is slow to react 
and Mike looks back and forth between them and smiles. Just 
what is he expecting out of this anyway? “Afghanistan...sorry, 
how did you...” Molly interrupts to bring Sherlock’s coffee. He 
asks what happened to the lipstick she’s now wiped off again. 
“It wasn’t working for me,” she says. “Really? I thought it was 
a big improvement. Your mouth’s too small now.” *headdesk* Oh, 
honey, just do yourself a favor and GIVE THE FUCK UP. You’ll 
save yourself so much on psychiatric bills. “Okay,” the doormat 
repeats before slipping out again.

Sherlock asks how John feels about violins. John, watching 
Molly go with a baffled expression, shakes himself and says 
what now? Sherlock thinks potential flatmates should know the 
worst about each other before moving in. “I play the violin 
when I’m thinking and sometimes I don’t talk for days on end. 
Would that bother you?” If that’s how you talk to people 
normally, I can’t imagine why it would be anything but a 
blessing to shut you up. John concludes that Mike must have 
told Sherlock about him already. Mike says nope, he didn’t say 
anything. Sherlock says he was talking to Mike this morning 
about how difficult it would be to find someone willing to live 
with him and hours later Mike shows up with a friend who has 
just come home from military service in Afghanistan, so, you 
know, OBVIOUSLY. John blinks and asks how the hell he knows 
about Afghanistan anyway. Sherlock completely ignores him (a 
first of many times no doubt) and mutters that he’s got a place 
in central London that he thinks they can afford and they 
should meet there tomorrow evening. “Sorry, got to dash. I 
think I left my riding crop in the mortuary.” John stares at 
the wall for a second like ‘great, Mike’s trying to set me up 
with a human tornado’ and calls “is that it?” Sherlock stops 
like ‘what? What could you possibly want now?’ John thinks it’s 
odd that they’ve barely met and they’re already going apartment 
hunting. “We don’t know a thing about each other. I don’t know 
where we’re meeting. I don’t even know your name.” Well, that 
first one isn’t entirely true. You know he’s an acquaintance of 
Mike, he plays the violin and he clearly has some form of 
Aspergers. And possibly ADHD. Sherlock stares at him and vomits 
up a stream of facts: John’s an army doctor who was invalided 
from Afghanistan. He has a brother who worries about him, but 
John won’t go to him for help either because he’s an alcoholic 
or because he “walked out on” his wife. Also his psychiatrist 
thinks – correctly - that his limp is psychosomatic. He goes to 
leave again, then leans back in the room to add “the name’s 
Sherlock Holmes and the address is 221b Baker Street.” Then he 
winks at John and disappears into the hallway. John looks at 
Mike who nods and says “yeah, he’s always like that.” And yet 
you decided to inflict him on your old friend anyway, huh? Are 
you still holding some sort of grudge or something?

Shot of beautiful London, which – as is requirement – contains 
at least two double-decker buses. John goes back to his tiny 
apartment (wherever it is) and checks his sent messages for the 
one Sherlock needed his phone for. It reads “if brother has 
green ladder arrest brother. SH”. 
   Chrissy: Can’t form whole sentences busy.
   Diandra: Confucius say blue ladder bring good luck.
   Chrissy: ...what?
   Diandra: I don’t know.
John frowns at it for a moment, then pulls out his laptop and 
uses a generic TVLand search engine to look up Sherlock Holmes.

Brief shot of a woman in a pink skirt and pink shoes reaching a 
pink nail-polished hand for another jar of pills. 

Baker Street, Westminster. A double decker bus drives by in the 
background because OF COURSE IT DOES. John arrives at the door 
beside an awning labeled “Speedy’s” café just as a cab pulls up 
and Sherlock tumbles out. John notes that this looks like a 
prime – expensive – location. Sherlock says the landlady Mrs. 
Hudson gave him a special deal seeing as she owed him a favor 
from a job he did a few years back. “Her husband got himself 
sentenced to death in Florida. I was able to help out.” John 
says oh, you saved her husband from execution? Sherlock says 
no, he made sure they went through with it. Yeah, well, seeing 
as Florida hardly needs extra incentive to put a man to death, 
I’m not sure that would have been difficult.
   Chrissy: Hey, Florida isn’t THAT bad. You’re probably 
    thinking of Texas.
   Diandra: Hmm, maybe. Didn’t those states have something 
    in common for a while there?
   Chrissy: Yeah, their governors used to share a brain.
   Diandra: Used to?
   Chrissy: They had to return it when they were done with 
    it. Probably got a full refund since it had hardly been 
    used.
Before John can comment, Mrs. Hudson opens the door and hugs 
Sherlock.

Sherlock bounds up the stairs and then waits at a door for John 
to hobble up behind him. The door opens onto the main living 
room of the apartment, which already has a couple pieces of 
furniture and several half-unpacked boxes. A union jack pillow 
is perched neatly on the top of one and the bookshelf built 
into the wall in the corner is already full of books. Also, 
there’s a bunch of lab equipment piled on the kitchen table 
around the corner. John notes that this could be very nice... 
Sherlock agrees and then they say the following lines at 
exactly the same time.
   Sherlock: So I went straight ahead and moved in.
   John: Soon as we get this rubbish cleaned up.
They stare at each other for a second before Sherlock mumbles 
that he can “straighten things up a bit”. He picks up a 
newspaper and tosses it in one of the boxes, then stabs another 
piece of paper to the fireplace mantle with a pocket knife. How 
this helps is clear to absolutely nobody but him. John points 
worriedly at the skull perched on one end of the mantle. “A 
friend of mine,” Sherlock says flippantly. Well, maybe not a 
FRIEND per se, but... He’s saved from having to explain further 
by Mrs. Hudson interrupting again to ask what John thinks of 
the place. “There’s another bedroom upstairs...if you’ll be 
needing two bedrooms.” John scoffs that of course they’ll need 
two bedrooms. Why wouldn’t they? Oh, dear, sweet John. So 
naïve. Mrs. Hudson says oh don’t worry – they’re very open 
minded around here. “Mrs. Turner next door’s got married ones.” 
I love Mrs. Hudson for bringing the hoyay here, but...what 
exactly does she take John for? Obviously she knows Sherlock, 
but he brings home a guy he’s just met and she automatically 
thinks they’re fucking? Sheesh. Give it a couple weeks, at 
least. 
   Chrissy: Well...maybe one week.

She grumbles about the mess Sherlock has made of the kitchen 
and goes to rearrange a little. John sits on one of the chairs 
and says ‘so...I Googled your name last night.’ Sherlock says 
yeah, about that video...he was young and they offered him 
money... No, not really. John says he found Sherlock’s website: 
“The Science of Deduction”. Sherlock smiles and asks what he 
thought of it like a child asking for praise on an art project. 
John makes a face and says Sherlock claims he can identify a 
software designer by his tie and a pilot by his left thumb. 
Well, you can also identify a doctor by his handwriting and a 
high school nerd by the frequency with which he/she is shoved 
in a locker. Sherlock says yes, and he can read John’s military 
career in his face and “bad” leg and his brother’s drinking 
habits by looking at his phone. He doesn’t get a chance to 
elaborate because Mrs. Hudson comes in with a paper to ask what 
Sherlock thinks of these suicides because it sounds like his 
sort of case. Three identical suicides? Sherlock looks out the 
window at the sound of a car pulling up outside and corrects: 
“four”. He turns as Lestrade comes through the still open door 
and asks “where?” Lestrade isn’t at all surprised and just 
rattles off the location. Sherlock asks what’s different about 
this one because he wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t something. 
Apparently, unlike all the other “suicides”, this one left a 
note behind. Sherlock asks who’s working forensics. “Anderson”. 
Sherlock makes a face and says Anderson doesn’t work well with 
him. Lestrade scoffs that it’s not like he’ll be his ASSISTANT 
or anything. Sherlock thinks he NEEDS an assistant. But yeah, 
sure, as long as he doesn’t have to get in the police car. 
He’ll be right behind him. 

John watches Lestrade leave, baffled. Sherlock waits until he’s 
safely out of range before literally jumping up and down 
excitedly. “Oh, it’s Christmas,” he burbles, warning Mrs. 
Hudson that he might be late and he might be needing food. “I’m 
your landlady, dear, not your housekeeper,” she gently reminds 
him. He says that’s okay, something cold will do. He tells John 
to have some tea and make himself at home. “Don’t wait up!” He 
runs out the door and Mrs. Hudson marvels at the way he’s 
always dashing off somewhere. She looks at John and theorizes 
that he’s more the “sitting down type” and she’ll just go make 
him that tea while he rests his leg. “DAMN MY LEG,” he explodes 
suddenly and quickly apologizes when she nearly falls over in 
shock. Well. Somebody’s on a short fuse. She says it’s okay, 
she has a bad hip: she understands his pain. She’ll go make 
that tea now but “just this once, dear, I’m not your 
housekeeper.” “Couple of biscuits too, if you’ve got ‘em,” he 
adds as he picks up the newspaper she left on the chair. “Not 
your housekeeper,” she calls back. Might need to plaster 
reminders about that to every available surface. John looks at 
the article about the last suicide, which has a picture of 
Lestrade beneath one of the victims. Sherlock suddenly 
reappears in the doorway to note that John is a doctor. That’s 
what he did for the army, in fact. “Seen a lot of injuries 
then? Violent deaths?” Yes. “Bit of trouble too, I bet?” John 
says yes, “enough for a lifetime.” “Want to see some more?” 
“Oh, God, yes,” John fires back without hesitation, following 
Sherlock back out the door, calling to Mrs. Hudson that he’ll 
be passing on the tea after all. 

Taxi. 
   Chrissy: You’re just going to ignore the part where he 
    says one of the most famous lines from Sherlock Holmes 
    cannon?
   Diandra: Seeing as the only reason for that whole 
    conversation about nothing is to clunkily force him to 
    deliver that line? Yes.
Taxi. Apparently the crime scene is very far away because it’s 
dark outside already. There’s a minute of awkward silence 
before Sherlock sighs and notes that John has some questions. 
“Yeah, where are we going?” You just eagerly followed him into 
the back of a cab and you don’t know what you’re doing?
   Chrissy: Here, just put this scrap of cloth over your 
    mouth and nose and breathe deeply. Don’t ask any 
    questions.
   Diandra: Just SHUT UP AND GET IN THE BACK OF THE 
    UNMARKED VAN!
Sherlock says they’re going to the crime scene, duh. John asks 
who he is. “What do you do?” Well, aren’t we just full of 
stupid questions now?
   Chrissy: There’s no such thing as a stupid question. 
    Only stupid people asking shit they would already know 
    if they were PAYING ATTENTION, like, EVER.
   Diandra: You’d make an awesome teacher.
   Chrissy: Shut up and write.
   Diandra: *salutes* Yes, ma’am.

Sherlock asks what John thinks he is. John says he’d guess 
private detective, but police don’t usually seek out private 
detectives. Sherlock says he’s a consulting detective. “Only 
one in the world. I invented the job.” Please feel free to 
ignore the approximately five billion movies and TV shows from 
the past hundred years that suggest otherwise. Basically, he’s 
the one they go to when they’re in over their heads “which is 
always”. John says the police don’t usually consult amateurs.  
Sherlock gives him a silent “are you serious?” look, then 
reminds him of the first thing he said when they met: 
Afghanistan or Iraq. “You looked surprised.” John, eager to 
finally get back to the question he asked YESTERDAY and again 
today, asks how he knew that. We flashback to the scene in the 
lab, the camera doing a few fancy spins around John as he 
stands frozen in place. Sherlock explains that based on his 
haircut and the way he holds himself, John is obviously 
military. The way he noted to Mike how different the place 
looked since he last saw it makes it bleeding obvious he was 
trained there, so...doctor plus military means army medic. The 
camera spins around a frozen image of John handing the phone 
over to Sherlock as he notes that John has a tan on his face, 
but the one on his hands doesn’t go past his wrists so he 
obviously wasn’t sunbathing (and you don’t get a suntan like 
that in England, clearly). He has a bad – almost exaggerated - 
limp when he walks, but he just stood there for that entire 
conversation without asking for a chair “like you’d forgotten 
about it”, so whatever injury he has is at least partly 
psychosomatic which means it was pretty traumatic which means 
he was wounded in action and all of those things add up to 
either Afghanistan or Iraq. Except the dream he was having at 
the beginning of the episode had more grass and foliage in 
general than sand, so I’m guessing it was actually filmed 
somewhere in the UK and the UK is too fucking green to ever 
pass for the vast desert that is the Middle East. Here’s where 
American productions have a leg up: most Hollywood productions 
film, like, an HOUR away from a huge desert. John blinks. “You 
said I had a therapist.” You have a psychosomatic limp 
resulting from a traumatic injury incurred in a GODDAMN 
WARZONE. The fact that you have a therapist is really the least 
surprising part of this deduction.

Sherlock turns to the phone. It’s an expensive, e-mail enabled 
MP3 player, which John probably couldn’t afford if he can’t 
afford an apartment on his own, so it must be a gift. Somehow 
said phone apparently jumps into Sherlock’s hand because he’s 
suddenly turning it over and noting the scratches all over the 
casing. It has been kept in the same pocket as keys and coins 
and other assorted crap over time, gradually accumulating 
damage. He’s pretty sure John wouldn’t be so careless with an 
expensive item like this, so the scratches must have come from 
the previous owner. He flashes the engraving at John: “Harry 
Watson, From Clara XXX”. He theorizes that an older man 
wouldn’t have a fancy gadget like this, so Harry isn’t his 
father. “Could be a cousin, but you’re a war hero who can’t 
find a place to live. Unlikely you’ve got an extended family. 
Certainly not one you’re close to, so brother it is.” Obviously 
the three “kisses” after Clara’s name means she’s romantically 
involved with Harry and a wife is more likely to buy something 
expensive like an engraved phone than a girlfriend and she gave 
it to him recently because the model is only six months old. 
Okay, hold on. The phone he was using back at the lab 
definitely had a full flip-out keyboard. He was pushing the 
screen aside to get to it. Which would make this conversation 
baffling (it was clearly older and probably cheaper) if not for 
the fact that the phone seems to have magically transformed 
into an iPhone (the most cost prohibitive on the market) since 
that scene.
   Chrissy: Eh...nobody’ll notice. It’s not like this show 
   revolves around attention to detail.

He concludes that the brother’s marriage must be in trouble if 
he’s giving up a gift from his wife after only six months. If 
she had left him he would have kept it (“People do. 
Sentiment.”), so he must have left her and wanted to get rid of 
any reminders. Wait, how does...what? He gave the phone to John 
because he wants to stay in touch with him, but John didn’t go 
to him for help with living arrangements so there’s some sort 
of problem with their relationship. “Maybe you liked his wife. 
Maybe you don’t like his drinking.” John asks how he could 
possibly know about the drinking. Sherlock admits that’s kind 
of a guess, but it’s based on the fact that there are scratches 
around the power connection. “Every night he plugs it in to 
charge, but his hands are shaking. You never see those marks on 
a sober man’s phone, never see a drunk’s without them.” I would 
like to point out that I currently own a device that has 
scratches all along one side and another that has dings all 
over the case that I wisely elected to put it in and I’m not an 
alcoholic. I only drink when I recap.
   Chrissy: No, but I’ve seen you drop both of those 
    devices on numerous occasions because you’re an 
    inveterate klutz.
   Diandra: Am not.
   Chrissy: I’ve seen you accidentally throw an iPod 
    because it was in your hand while you were talking and 
    you gestured too wildly. 
   Diandra: Okay, you can stop now.
   Chrissy: I’ve also seen you walk into a closed door 
    without even attempting to reach for the handle. And 
    fall off a chair in the middle of a sentence.
   Diandra: But the IMPORTANT PART HERE is that I was never 
    drunk any of those times.
   Chrissy: No, you can’t blame your embarrassing behavior 
    on any sort of chemical impairment independent of your 
    brain.
   Diandra: I hate you.
   Chrissy: No you don’t.

I would like to point out that in the last three paragraphs 
Benedict seems to have taken approximately two breaths and set 
a speed record for words per minute spoken outside of an 
auction house. I have been mostly following the closed-
captioning, but it’s obvious that there are points when the 
person typing it just said “fuck it, CLOSE ENOUGH!” so I’m kind 
of adding some of the stuff I actually hear. I’m getting dizzy.
   Chrissy: Luckily, dizzy you obviously isn’t all that 
    different from normal you so I don’t think anyone will 
    notice.
   Diandra: This again? In related news: I’m not getting 
    you a Christmas present this year. 
   Chrissy: I’m Jewish.
   Diandra: I know.
Sherlock concludes that John was right: the police don’t 
consult amateurs. “That...was amazing,” John says without a 
trace of irony even though Sherlock is basically deliberately 
showing off and bragging about how smart he is. Sherlock 
blinks. “That’s not what people normally say.” John asks what 
people normally say. “Piss off.” It’s okay. He’s new. I’m sure 
he’ll learn eventually.

Sherlock asks if he got any of that wrong as they arrive at the 
scene. John says he and Harry have never gotten along very 
well, Clara and Harry split up three months ago and are 
planning to divorce and Harry does drink. Except the reason he 
keeps saying “Harry” instead of “he” is because Harry is short 
for Harriet. Sherlock stops walking for a moment and curses his 
inability to figure out that John’s lesbian sister just happens 
to have a masculine nickname. John tries to redirect by asking 
what he’s doing here. I don’t know, John, YOU’RE the one who 
insisted on coming, but you’ve been acting like he forced you 
at gunpoint ever since. What ARE you doing here?

“Hello, Freak,” the woman who was working with Lestrade earlier 
greets Sherlock. Well, fuck you too, lady. He brushes off the 
blatant hostility and says he’s here because Lestrade invited 
him. “Why,” she asks, still openly hostile. “I think he wants 
me to take a look.” She says yeah, well, you know what I think? 
“Always, Sally,” he mutters, ducking under the police tape to 
stand beside her. He pauses, inhales and announces that she 
didn’t go home last night. The nearly forgotten John tries to 
follow him and Sally turns her attention to trying to shove him 
back, but Sherlock introduces him as a “colleague” of his. He 
introduces “Sergeant Sally Donovan” to John. She wonders aloud 
how he managed to get himself a “colleague”, turning to John 
and asking “did he follow you home?” John offers to just wait 
outside, but Sherlock ushers him through. Sherlock wanders a 
couple circles, looking at the outside of the building, the 
street, the cars, whatever until a guy in sterile clothing 
cover comes out to meet him. Sherlock identifies this as 
Anderson, who grumbles that he will NOT have Sherlock 
contaminating his crime scene. Sherlock’s like ‘uh huh, so how 
long is your wife away from home?’ Anderson scoffs that there’s 
no way Sherlock just “worked that out” – somebody told him. 
Sherlock says he got that from his deodorant. “It’s for men.” 
Anderson thinks that’s hardly unusual. Sherlock agrees, but 
notes that Donovan is also wearing it. He then politely asks if 
he can go inside now. Heh. Anderson snarls that whatever he’s 
trying to imply... Sherlock interrupts that he wasn’t implying 
anything. “I’m sure Sally came round for a nice little chat and 
just happened to stay over.” He pushes past Anderson and pauses 
beside Donovan, glancing down. “And I assume she scrubbed your 
floors, going by the state of her knees.” 
   Chrissy: No, but she polished at least one knob.
   Diandra: It was just the one, but she was very thorough 
    about it.
He gives her a little smile and disappears inside the building. 
John trails after him and utterly fails to be subtle as he 
looks down at her legs.

Lestrade meets them inside and asks who the hell this new guy 
is. Um...the one who was sitting next to you when you invited 
Sherlock to help the investigation? Or were you not paying 
attention to anything back there? Not exactly a desirable trait 
in a detective. Sherlock just says “he’s with me”, 
which...doesn’t really answer the question now, does it? John 
obediently puts on the same sterile clothing covers Anderson 
was wearing, but Sherlock flatly refuses and just puts on a 
pair of gloves. Lestrade says he can give them two minutes. 
Sherlock says they may need longer. Well, you certainly have a 
lot of confidence in your endurance.
   Chrissy: Eh, it just takes that long to get past all 
    those layers of clothing.
   Diandra: Is it sad that both of our minds immediately 
    went in the same direction here?
   Chrissy: A slash writer and a pervert going right for 
    the hoyay? No. Honestly, I find it a little more 
    alarming that you started this recap chastising Molly 
    for throwing herself at Sherlock and now you’re eagerly 
    throwing him at John.
   Diandra: Molly is obviously tragically low in self 
    esteem and desperately trying to impress Sherlock. John 
    isn’t. Also, he was FLOGGING a dead body and she was 
    joking about him having a bad day like this was a 
    perfectly normal, healthy outlet for him. In what world 
    is that not a red flag?
   Chrissy: Well, it can be fun as long as the other party 
    is consenting and, you know, conscious. 

Lestrade shows them up to what looks like the top floor of the 
abandoned building where the lady dressed completely in pink – 
identified as Jennifer Wilson – is laying face down in the 
middle of a dusty, empty room. Sherlock stares at her silently 
for a moment, then tells Lestrade to shut up. Lestrade protests 
that he didn’t say anything. “You were thinking. It’s 
annoying.” Lestrade and John look at each other and John 
probably wonders again what the hell he’s doing here. Sherlock 
leans over the body and notes that the word “Rache” is scrapped 
into the wood under her left hand. Obviously we’re supposed to 
think she used her nails since they’re a bit chipped, but...I 
would think they would be broken and possibly bleeding if she 
had carved into wood with them enough to form that many 
letters. We focus on the chipped nails and the words “left 
handed” hover over them. Dur, you think? The word “Rache” is 
identified in what I will from here on out refer to as 
Sherlockvision as the German word for “revenge”. He shakes his 
head and the definition blows away, replaced by “R-a-c-h-e-l”, 
which makes a whole lot more sense and I don’t care what Arthur 
Conan Doyle thought. Sherlock feels along her dress and notes 
that it is damp, even under the collar, but the umbrella he 
finds tucked under her is neatly secured and dry. He notes the 
state of all of her jewelry (which items are polished versus 
which are not) and Sherlockvision concludes that she has been 
unhappily married for at least ten years. He pulls off the 
wedding ring and notes that the inside is cleaner than the 
outside, which means it has been regularly removed. “Serial 
adulterer,” Sherlockvision announces. 

Lestrade finally gets tired of watching him crawl around the 
body in silence and asks if he’s found anything. Anderson 
appears in the doorway to announce that she’s obviously German 
because, you know...rache. Sherlock, eyes fixed to his phone 
where the hovering text says he’s pulling up a weather report, 
distractedly thanks him for his input and slams the door in his 
face. Lestrade asks if she is actually German. Sherlock says 
no, of course not. She’s from Cardiff and only intended to stay 
in London for one night. Lestrade asks what the message means 
then. Sherlock turns to John, who has been watching this whole 
thing dazedly, and asks what he thinks. “Of the message?” he 
splutters stupidly. Sherlock says no, of the body. He is a 
doctor, right? Lestrade points out that they have a whole team 
outside. Sherlock dismisses that they won’t work with him. Gee, 
I wonder why? Lestrade says he’s already breaking the rules 
letting Sherlock in. “That’s because you need me,” Sherlock 
says. Lestrade grumbles that yes, actually, he does...”god help 
me.” He goes back outside and John and Sherlock squat beside 
the body. John the broken record asks again what he’s doing 
here. Sherlock says he’s helping him make a point. John says 
he’s just supposed to be helping pay the rent. And again, I 
would like to remind you that YOU were the one who agreed to go 
with him so eagerly in the first place. Sherlock says this is 
more fun. John thinks he has a strange definition of fun seeing 
as they are currently looking at a dead woman. Sherlock is like 
‘brilliant diagnosis, doctor’ but “I was hoping you’d go 
deeper.”
   Chrissy: Oh, yes, deeper John! Get in there!
   Diandra: You know, we might want to slow down with the 
    slash subtext or we’ll never get through this show.
   Chrissy: Pfffttt. Where’s the fun in that?

John bends over her, putting his face close to hers and 
checking her fingers. He concludes that it’s probably asphyxia. 
She passed out and choked on her own vomit. But he can’t smell 
alcohol, so it was probably a seizure or drugs. Sherlock points 
out that he READ the damn newspaper articles so he KNOWS what 
killed her. Lestrade returns to impatiently prompt them to give 
him whatever they have. Sherlock recites that the victim is in 
her late 30s and a working professional “I’m guessing the 
media, going by the frankly alarming shade of pink.” She 
travelled from Cardiff today and only planned to stay for one 
night judging by the size of her suitcase. He rattles off all 
the stuff he concluded about her marriage earlier and says none 
of her several lovers knew she was married. This all based on 
the fact that her ring is less polished than the rest of her 
jewelry except on the inside because she’s constantly removing 
it. Her nails suggest she doesn’t work with her hands, so she’s 
not removing it for work reasons. Didn’t you just say she was 
in the media? Oh, forget it. He assumes there were several 
lovers because she couldn’t have maintained the illusion that 
she was single for that long with just one affair. 
   Chrissy: Oh, sure you can. It just takes a bit more 
   creativity.
John blurts that that’s brilliant, then apologizes when 
Sherlock looks at him like ‘do you MIND?’ Lestrade prompts him 
to explain the Cardiff thing. Sherlock scoffs that this is 
obvious. John speaks for both him and Lestrade when he says no, 
actually, it isn’t. Sherlock looks back and forth between them 
and mutters “dear God, what is it like in your funny little 
brains? It must be so boring.” Before anyone can respond to 
that, or...you know, punch him...he says her coat is damp, but 
there hasn’t been any rain in London in the past few hours. 
Also, the fabric under her coat collar is damp like she had it 
turned up against the wind, which must have been really strong 
because she didn’t try to use her umbrella. Her suitcase says 
she came a good distance and planned to stay overnight, but she 
couldn’t have travelled more than two or three hours or her 
coat would have dried. He flashes the weather report he pulled 
up on his phone at them and says Cardiff is the only place 
within that radius and travel time that has had rain and strong 
wind. “That’s fantastic,” John blurts. Sherlock whirls on him 
and asks if he realizes he’s doing that out loud. John 
apologizes and swears he’ll shut up. “No, it’s...fine,” 
Sherlock mutters. 
   Chrissy: Yeah, he really likes it when people stroke his 
    ego.
   Diandra: Doesn’t that describe most men?

Lestrade asks why he keeps talking about a suitcase that is 
clearly not in evidence. Sherlock spins around and asks out 
loud where it is, anyway. And she must have had a phone, too. 
Oh, and they should find out who Rachel is. Lestrade asks if 
that’s what she was writing on the floor. “No, she was leaving 
an angry note in German,” Sherlock says sarcastically. (See? 
Sounds crazy, doesn’t it, Doyle?) The real question is: why was 
she sending a message about this Rachel when she was dying? 
Lestrade is still hung up on the suitcase. Sherlock, realizing 
they’re not going to get anywhere if he doesn’t go through this 
explanation, points to the mud splashes on the back of her 
right leg, indicating she was dragging a small wheeled suitcase 
with her right hand. Too small to hold much so hence she was 
only staying the one night. Lestrade says well, there was never 
any suitcase that they saw. Sherlock gets excited because this 
means all the suicides are actually the work of a serial killer 
because SOMEBODY had to be present to take the suitcase. Also, 
the fact that they all took the same poison and had no history 
of mental illness was a clue. He is running out of the room and 
down the stairs as he talks, stopping occasionally during this 
exchange. Somewhere in the barrage of words, he concludes that 
the killer must have driven her here and forgotten the suitcase 
was in the car. John offers that she could have checked into 
the hotel already and left the case there. Sherlock says she 
didn’t get to the hotel yet because, you know, look at her 
hair. She color coordinated absolutely freaking everything 
she’s wearing including her lipstick and nail polish, she would 
never have left the hotel with her hair looking like... He 
trails off suddenly, gasping “oh!” Lestrade and John ask what 
happened. He just babbles about serial killers being tricky but 
this one has finally made a mistake. “Find Rachel,” he says 
again, racing down the stairs. Lestrade calls after him ‘yeah, 
sure, WHAT MISTAKE?’ Sherlock stops and shouts back “pink!” 
before running off. Yes, that explains everything. 

Lestrade’s team trickles back into the room and John slowly 
makes his way back down to the street all by himself. Sally 
Donovan sees him looking around like a lost dog and says 
Sherlock already took off and he does that all the time. John’s 
like ‘oh, great. Day one and he totally ditched me in an 
unfamiliar part of town, completely forgotten. This bodes well 
for our future.’ Sally begrudgingly directs him to the nearest 
place he can call a cab and says “you’re not his friend. He 
doesn’t *have* friends. So who are you?” John stammers that 
they just met so he’s nobody. In that case, she offers him a 
little advice: “stay away from that guy”. John asks why. She 
says they don’t pay him to do what he just did – he actually 
enjoys doing it. “He gets off on it. The weirder the crime, the 
more he gets off.” She psychoanalyses that one day just going 
over the crime scene won’t be enough for him: “one day we’ll be 
standing round a body and Sherlock Holmes will be the one that 
put it there” because he’s a psychopath. Lestrade calls her 
back inside the house and she repeats her warning to John to 
stay away before leaving him standing in the street wondering 
what is happening to his life. 

A public phone rings as he passes it on his way to the main 
road, but he ignores it. This happens two more times before he 
is finally curious enough to climb into the phone booth and 
answer. A voice addresses him by name and directs him to look 
at a security camera on the corner of one of the buildings. The 
camera spins around to point at nothing in particular. The 
caller repeats this process with two more cameras and then 
orders him to get into the car that is pulling up outside the 
phone booth. “I would make some sort of threat, but I’m sure 
your situation is quite clear to you.” A man gets out of the 
car and opens the door to the backseat. Well, shit, you didn’t 
need to do all that stuff with the cameras. Obviously he has no 
reservations about getting into cars with total strangers if 
the last few scenes are any indication.
   Chrissy: It really is amazing he’s lived this long so 
    far. 
   Diandra: I can only assume he is such a badass that he 
    knows if he got in a strange car with a shady character 
    and it turned out to be a trap, the bodies of all the 
    occupants of the car but him would be found the next 
    day.

It turns out there’s a pretty woman sharing the back seat with 
him, though she’s mostly ignoring him because she’s busy 
texting on her phone. She is polite enough to answer his 
questions about her name (Anthea), whether or not that is 
actually her real name (no) and whether there is any point in 
him asking where they are going exactly (nope). “Okay,” he says 
in a way that is just so BRITISH. Oh, sure. Whatever. Just do 
whatever you want then. Don’t let me bother you. The car 
arrives at a warehouse where Mark Gattis is standing next to a 
chair, leaning casually on an umbrella. And again, I really 
don’t feel like pretending I don’t know who he is, but clearly 
we’re not supposed to know yet. So, for various obvious reasons 
(and reasons that will only be obvious later), he will for the 
foreseeable future be referred to as “Big Brother”. He 
indicates the chair and invites John to sit. John ignores the 
chair and stands in front of Big Brother defiantly, noting that 
he HAS a phone. They could have just called him instead of that 
whole elaborate thing with the payphones and cameras. Big 
Brother says when one is avoiding Sherlock Holmes’ attention, 
one learns to be discreet. And one usually insists on referring 
to oneself as one when one is working for the British 
government. Big Brother invites him to sit again because his 
leg must be hurting. John refuses. Big Brother notes that he 
doesn’t seem afraid. “You don’t seem very frightening,” John 
fires back, his expression suggesting that he’s just pissed at 
this point, which is perfectly understandable. Big Brother 
thinks this is a manifestation of the bravery that pegs him as 
a former soldier. “Bravery is by far the kindest word for 
stupidity, don’t you think?” I like this guy. 

He asks what John’s connection is to Sherlock. John repeats 
that he only just met him yesterday. Big Brother notes that 
even though they just met they’re already moving in together 
and solving crimes together. “Might we expect a happy 
announcement by the end of the week?” No, seriously, I really 
like this guy. John avoids this suggestion again and asks why 
this guy is so interested in Sherlock’s business because he 
doubts they’re friends. “You’ve met him,” Big Brother says. 
“How many friends do you imagine he has?” Yes, we’ve been over 
this. He is a friendless psycho and yet everyone seems eager to 
assume that he and John are fucking even though they barely 
know each other yet. Big Brother says he’s the closest thing to 
a friend Sherlock is capable of: an enemy. At least that’s how 
Sherlock would describe him. In fact, he’s probably call him 
his “arch enemy” because, you know, he’s a drama queen. John 
sarcastically notes that Big Brother clearly wouldn’t stoop to 
being so overly dramatic. Big Brother blinks at him like ‘well, 
shit, the little snot has some brass ones’. John is distracted 
when his phone beeps. It’s a text from Sherlock: “Baker Street. 
Come at once if convenient.” 

Big Brother asks if John is planning to continue his 
“association” with Sherlock. John thinks his “associations” are 
really none of Big Brother’s business. 
   Chrissy: Yeah, he’s a doctor. He should know about safe 
   sex.
Big Brother finally stops hedging and offers to pay John a 
“meaningful sum” on a regular basis if he decides to move in 
with Sherlock. What, like a dowry? “In exchange for what,” John 
asks. Big Brother assures him that he’d just need information. 
“Nothing you’d feel...uncomfortable with.”
   Chrissy: I’m not interested in what you do with that 
    riding crop.
   Diandra: I just want to know who’s wielding it.
   Chrissy: Oh, I think we ALL know the answer to that.

John asks why he’s so interested in Sherlock. Big Brother says 
he worries about him, but for “various reasons” he would rather 
nobody else know about that. “We have what you might call 
a...difficult relationship.” Yeah, we got that from the arch 
enemy thing. John’s phone beeps again. “If inconvenient, come 
anyway,” Sherlock adds. Okay, YOU’RE the one who ditched him at 
the crime scene, jackass. Why don’t YOU come get him if you 
need him so urgently? John tells Big Brother thanks but no 
thanks. Big Brother thinks he’s awfully quick to declare such 
loyalty to Sherlock. He holds up a little notebook and reads 
the words “trust issues” from it, wondering aloud if John has 
decided to put his trust in Sherlock of all people. “You don’t 
seem the kind to make friends easily.” John gulps and eyes the 
notebook worriedly, then recovers and asks if they’re done 
here. He starts to walk away and Big Brother calls after him 
that he’s pretty sure people have already warned him to stay 
away from Sherlock “but I can see from your left hand that’s 
not going to happen.” John sighs, shakes his head and takes the 
bait, whirling around to ask what the hell that’s supposed to 
mean. Big Brother prompts him to hold out his hand and says he 
has an intermittent tremor that his therapist thinks is PTSD. 
He says John should fire her because she’s obviously wrong. 
“You’re under stress right now and your hand is perfectly 
steady. You’re not haunted by the war, Dr. Watson. You miss 
it.” So he’s a psychopath too is what we’re suggesting? I’m 
pretty sure being able to be calm and steady handed in times of 
stress are things soldiers are TRAINED to do. John’s phone 
beeps again as Big Brother walks away, smugly telling him that 
it’s time for him to choose a side. Anthea, eyes still glued to 
her phone screen, approaches and announces that she’s supposed 
to take him home. John checks his phone to find another message 
from Sherlock, trying to tempt him by saying that whatever he’s 
doing “could be dangerous.” He says he needs to stop somewhere 
first.

John’s apartment. John retrieves the gun from his desk drawer 
and tucks it into the back of his pants. And I use the word 
“pants” in the American sense. I assume as a former member of 
the military he would not actually be stupid enough to stick a 
loaded weapon in his underwear.
   Chrissy: Even though he’s stupid enough to get in cars 
    with strangers and sass back at shady characters who 
    may or may not work for the British NSA?
   Diandra: Yeah, I’m sticking with my badass theory.

Anthea STILL has her eyes fixed on her screen as the car pulls 
up outside 221B because I guess she’s one of THOSE people. John 
asks if there’s any chance she could NOT tell her boss that he 
came right back here. She glances up to say yeah, sure, 
whatever. He says she already told him, didn’t she? Yep. John 
then proceeds to hit on her awkwardly, asking if she ever gets 
any free time from her job and staring at her when she says she 
does and goes right back to her phone obliviously. Oh, honey. 
Two people assume you’re fucking the guy you’re moving in with 
and you feel you need to reaffirm your sexuality by hitting on 
the first woman you see even though she won’t even look at you. 
Maybe I was wrong when I said he isn’t as insecure as Molly.
   Chrissy: Not sure that’s insecurity so much as defensive 
    behavior masking possible denial. 
   Diandra: I’m not gay! See? I am just as able to flirt 
    with women who clearly aren’t interested and get shot 
    down as ever!
   Chrissy: Something like that, yeah.

John enters the flat to find Sherlock sprawled on the couch, 
clutching his arm and sighing. “Nicotine patch,” he explains 
when John asks what the hell he’s doing. He says nicotine helps 
him think, but it’s impossible to sustain a smoking habit in 
London these days. John notes that there are THREE patches 
currently attached to his arm and Sherlock says “it’s a three 
patch problem.” Okay, so with the near-direct quote from the 
books we can assume that the patches are a modern replacement 
for the pipe Sherlock Holmes is always pictured with. But I’m 
pretty sure it’s also a way of getting around having to show 
him shooting cocaine on national television which, you know, 
Doyle’s version of him could totally be doing just as easily 
right now because Doyle subscribed to the same school of 
medicine as Sigmund Freud. Remember that line Robin Williams 
had in “Good Will Hunting” about Freud doing enough cocaine to 
kill a small horse? Yeah, it wasn’t just a throw away joke. 
Sherlock steeples his hands under his chin and closes his eyes. 
This has become known in fan circles as “Sherlocking” and it’s 
kind of creepy. 

John stands on the other side of the coffee table for a few 
beats before reminding Sherlock that HE called him here and he 
said it was important, so...what is it? Sherlock jolts from his 
meditative state and says oh, yeah, can he borrow John’s phone? 
He doesn’t want to use his because there’s a chance somebody 
would recognize the number. Especially since he put it on the 
website. John notes that Mrs. Hudson has a phone. Sherlock says 
yeah, he tried shouting for her, but she couldn’t hear him. No, 
dear, she’s just ignoring you. John snarls that he was on the 
other side of LONDON. Sherlock says well, it wasn’t like there 
was a RUSH or anything. John clenches his teeth, reminds 
himself that shooting Sherlock with the gun he just went back 
to his apartment for would probably be a bad thing, and fishes 
his phone from his pocket. He says so this is about the case 
then? Sherlock says yes, obviously, it’s about the suitcase: 
the killer’s first mistake. He mutters that they’ll have to 
risk it and orders John to send a text to the number he left on 
his desk. John gives a pained smile and notes that Sherlock 
dragged him here from the other side of London to send a text. 
Because the landlady wouldn’t respond to his shouting.

He clenches his jaw and glances out the window. Sherlock asks 
what’s wrong. John says he just met a “friend” of 
Sherlock’s...well, an “enemy” really. In fact he called himself 
his “arch enemy”. Sherlock asks if he offered John money to spy 
on him. John says yes, but he didn’t take it. Sherlock says 
that’s a pity because they could have split it. Next time he 
shouldn’t be so hasty. John makes a face like he’s seriously 
considering braining Sherlock with his cane and asks who the 
guy really is. “The most dangerous man you’ve ever met and not 
my problem right now,” Sherlock non-answers. He urges John to 
send that text already. John stomps over to the desk and picks 
up a business card. “Jennifer Wilson,” he reads and notes that 
that was the name of the dead woman. Sherlock impatiently tells 
him to just enter the number already, waits barely two seconds 
and asks if he’s done it yet. John barks at him to keep his 
panties on, damnit. Sherlock dictates a message: “what happened 
at Lauriston Gardens? I must have blacked out. 22 
Northumberland Street. Please come.” John hesitates mid-message 
like hold on...”you blacked out?” Sherlock says what? No! Just 
send the damn message. He climbs right over the coffee table, 
presumably because going around furniture just takes too long, 
and goes to retrieve a small, bright pink suitcase from the 
kitchen, barking at John to hurry up and send the message 
already. He pulls up a chair and sets the case on it, unzipping 
it. 

John finishes the message and turns to see what Sherlock is 
doing, reeling backward when he realizes he’s opening a small, 
pink suitcase and asks if that’s the dead woman’s. Sherlock 
says no, he just happens to have an identical bright pink 
suitcase where he stores all his bondage gear. Yes, obviously, 
it’s the dead woman’s. He notes the way John is looking at him 
warily and adds that HE didn’t kill her. “I never said you 
did,” John protests. No, you just jumped backward and looked 
ready to run for the door. Perfectly reasonable reaction when 
somebody you barely know suddenly produces a piece of evidence 
that you’ve been told was last in the possession of a serial 
killer. Sherlock notes as much. John calmly asks if people 
usually assume Sherlock is a crazed killer. Eh, only sometimes, 
Sherlock admits. John just shrugs and goes to sit in the other 
chair across from him. He asks how Sherlock got the case then. 
Sherlock rambles that the killer must have driven her to 
Lauriston Gardens and obviously the case was in the car if he 
didn’t realize he had kept it. And a bright pink case like this 
really stands out, especially if a man (which, statistically is 
at least 95% of serial killers) is carrying it, so he had to 
get rid of it once he noticed he still had it which couldn’t 
have taken more than five minutes so Sherlock checked every 
alley wide enough for a car to go down within a five minute 
radius of the crime scene. We get a brief flashback of him 
digging the case out from under a tarp. John notes that he got 
all of this when he realized that the case Jennifer Wilson was 
carrying would naturally have been pink. “Why didn’t I think of 
that?” “Because you’re an idiot,” Sherlock fires back 
instantly. John looks at him, wide eyed and Sherlock brushes 
off the wounded look by assuring him that it’s okay because 
nearly everyone is. 

He points at the open suitcase and asks John if he can see 
what’s missing from it. John’s like ‘no, obviously I am not 
smart enough to starch your shirts, Herr Asshole, why don’t you 
tell me?’ Except his version is nicer. Sherlock says her phone 
is missing. And it’s probably in a bright pink case because 
this woman was ridiculous. She obviously had one since John 
just texted the number, but it wasn’t on her and it wasn’t in 
her bag. John offers the weak explanation that she could have 
left it at home. Do people in England still leave home without 
a cell phone on them? I’m beginning to think that goes against 
some sort of unwritten law here in America these days. 
Apparently, this is a perfectly logical assumption for a Brit 
because Sherlock only shoots it down because a woman with a 
string of carefully managed lovers would never leave her phone 
at home (where presumably her husband could answer it). John 
considers this, then frowns and asks why he just sent that 
text. Sherlock has apparently decided this is a teachable 
moment and tries to lead John toward coming up with the answer 
himself. He says the question is: where is the phone now? John 
says she could have lost it. “Yes, or...” He thinks the 
murderer has it, John concludes. Sherlock thinks either she 
left it with her suitcase or he took it for some reason, but 
either way, yeah. John, ever one to cut to the chase, asks why 
the hell he’s texting a murderer, exactly. Before Sherlock can 
answer, the phone rings. The number is blocked. Sherlock thinks 
the killer is justifiably shaken to be receiving a text that 
sounds like it came from his last victim hours after he killed 
her. And this could ONLY be the murderer because anyone finding 
the phone by the side of the road would not understand the 
message and just ignore it. Or, you know, call back once and 
give up instead of trying two more times like this guy has been 
doing while Sherlock was talking. 

Sherlock jumps up and grabs his coat. John asks if he’s talked 
to the police already. He says there isn’t time to talk to the 
police. John asks why he’s taking the time to talk to HIM then. 
Sherlock nods at the fireplace mantle and whines “Mrs. Hudson 
took my skull.” John looks at the empty spot and concludes that 
he’s just a replacement for the inanimate object Sherlock would 
normally bounce ideas off of. “Relax, you’re doing fine,” 
Sherlock dismisses. Oh, well, that’s okay then. Then he invites 
John to come with him because he likes company when he walks 
and he thinks better when he talks out loud, which looks less 
crazy and draws less attention if he’s not carrying a skull. 
“Problem?”
   Chrissy: That I could basically replace myself with a 
   cardboard cutout and it would take you hours, if not 
   days, to notice? Nah. Why would that be a problem?
John says yeah, Sergeant Donovan warned me you enjoy this more 
than could conceivably be healthy. “And I said ‘dangerous’ and 
here you are,” Sherlock snits back, giving him a look like “so 
there” before stalking out the door. John blinks, grumbles 
“damnit it” and hobbles after him like a good little lapdog.
   Chrissy: Aww. They’re equally damaged and crazy.
   Diandra: Well...maybe not EQUALLY.

Again, John waits until they’re already walking down the street 
to ask where they’re going. You really need to learn to start 
asking follow up questions BEFORE you agree to do things.
   Chrissy: Nah, it’s more fun this way.
Sherlock says Northumberland Street is a five minute walk. John 
marvels that the killer would be stupid enough to go there to 
meet whoever is texting him. Sherlock thinks that’s not 
stupidity – it’s brilliance, and he so LOVES the brilliant 
killers who are desperate to be caught so they can get the 
attention and appreciation they crave. “That’s the frailty of 
genius, John, it needs an audience.”
   Chrissy: Yeah, you’re not helping your “I’m not a 
    psycho” case here.
   Diandra: Weren’t you listening back there? This is what 
    JOHN is here for. Sherlock likes the fact that John is 
    prone to just blurting out praise every time he says 
    something brilliant. 
   Chrissy: So basically, Sally was wrong. What he really 
    gets off on is John worshipping him.
   Diandra: Yes. Although John might want to make sure he 
    doesn’t overdo it TOO much. Or he should at least start 
    wearing knee pads. Because apparently that shows.

Sherlock rambles that the fact that all the victims were 
abducted changes everything because they all disappeared from 
busy streets. “Who do we trust, even though we don’t know 
them?” Doctors, police officers, military personnel (assuming 
it’s your country’s military). “Who passes unnoticed wherever 
they go? Who hunts in the middle of a crowd?” John, assuming 
this is some sort of test or something again, asks “who?” “I 
haven’t got the faintest,” Sherlock says. “Hungry?” He cuts 
right suddenly, crossing the street and John, disoriented, 
follows him into a restaurant. Sherlock greets the host by name 
and they sit at a table just next to the door and beside the 
large front window that apparently has a view of the address 
they were headed for. Sherlock sits so he can see out the 
window. John sits with his back to it because whatever, it’s 
not like the guy is just going to go up and ring the doorbell.

The waiter/owner comes up and shakes Sherlock’s hand, smiling 
warmly and offering anything on the menu on the house. “For you 
and for your date.” Sherlock isn’t really interested in 
ordering, but asks if John wants anything. John doesn’t hear 
him because he’s busy looking the waiter in the eye and saying 
slowly “I’m not his date.”
   Chrissy: Journal entry number one – whenever he finally 
    gets around to writing it - is going to be just a long 
    rant about how EXHAUSTING it is to explain to FUCKING 
    EVERYBODY that they are not a couple.
   Diandra: Journal entry number twelve will just say “why 
    did I wait this long?” Journal entries thirteen through 
    twenty will basically read like the Kama Sutra.
   Chrissy: Or, given the presence of the riding crop, 
    “Fifty Shades of Grey”. Except this version would 
    actually be good.
The waiter doesn’t care. He tells John that Sherlock got a 
murder charge against him dismissed. Sherlock, already fixated 
on the place down the street, introduces the guy as Angelo, who 
he convinced Lestrade was breaking and entering in a completely 
different part of town from where a triple homicide was 
happening three years ago. Angelo swears to John that he’d be 
willing to go to prison for Sherlock.
   Chrissy: Sorry, did I say for? I meant with. He’d 
    totally be my bitch.
   Diandra: What makes you think Sherlock would be 
    the...never mind. 
Sherlock mutters that Angelo did, in fact, go to prison, just 
not for murder. Angelo ignores him and offers to get a candle 
for the table because it’ll be more romantic. “I’m not his 
date,” John calls after his retreating back. 
   Chrissy: Oh, save your strength, dear. You’ll be needing 
   it later.

Sherlock tells John to go ahead and eat because they might be 
here a while. John looks at the menu for a moment, then decides 
to go back to an earlier discussion: arch enemy? Really? That’s 
not normal. Sherlock realizes John has said something he’s 
supposed to respond to and tears his attention from the window 
like ‘what? I’m paying attention!’ John says people don’t have 
arch enemies in real life. Sherlock says really? That sounds 
dull. John asks who that was then, really. Sherlock, possibly 
deflecting or possibly trying to guide John to the answer 
again, asks what “real” people have then. John says friends, 
acquaintances... girlfriends, boyfriends. Sherlock says yeah, 
well, that’s still dull. “You don’t have a girlfriend then,” 
John asks.
   Chrissy: Oh, smooth, John. 
Sherlock, eyes fixed out the window again, says no, that’s not 
really his area. A light bulb seems to go off over John’s head 
and he says oh, uh...okay. So you have a boyfriend then? 
Sherlock tears his eyes from the window as John quickly fumbles 
to add that that’s fine if he does. Sherlock says he knows it’s 
fine. John smiles and, when he realizes Sherlock is just 
staring and not volunteering any further information, asks if 
he does have a boyfriend then. Sherlock says no almost before 
he finishes the question. John says okay then. “You’re 
unattached. Like me. Fine. Good.”

There are two ways to read that last exchange. The first (and 
likely intended cannon) way is that John is just trying to find 
out more about the guy he’s moving in/working with and is being 
incredibly awkward and uncomfortable about it. The second (and 
likely intended subtext because Steven Moffat is a tease) way 
is that John is testing the waters and flirting awkwardly, 
although doing that after repeatedly telling anyone who will 
listen that he is NOT Sherlock’s DATE would make him a pretty 
good candidate for bipolar disorder.
   Chrissy: No, John doesn’t KNOW what he wants. I thought 
   we established this earlier. 
Whatever. Point is, John might be reading it the first way 
(totally innocent), but Sherlock is reading it the second way 
(what the hell? Is he HITTING on me?). 

Sherlock watches out of the corner of his eye for a minute 
while John eats the food that somehow appeared on the table 
during one of the cutaways during this last part of the 
conversation because the editors seem to enjoy making the 
audience think things happen by magic on this show. Finally, 
Sherlock says that while he’s flattered, um...”I consider 
myself married to my work” so he’s not really looking for a... 
John coughs and says no, he wasn’t asking for...NO! 
   Chrissy: I’m asking for...uh...a friend!
   Diandra: I totally don’t care if you like sucking off 
    other men! Um...you do, right? Not that I’m picturing 
    what that would look like or uh...anything...just 
    curious.
“I’m just saying. It’s all fine,” John finishes weakly. 
   Chrissy: Although if I catch you with enough people to 
    legally qualify as a rugby team and one of you is 
    wielding that riding crop, we need to talk.
   Diandra: Sounds like a typical Wednesday night for you.
   Chrissy: Shh!
“Good,” Sherlock mutters. “Thank you.” Luckily, before this can 
get any more awkward than it already is, Sherlock is distracted 
by the taxi that has stopped across the street without anybody 
getting in or out. He does his thinking out loud thing again 
where he appears to be outwardly projecting both of the voices 
arguing inside his head: “why a taxi? Oh, that’s clever! Is it 
clever? Why is it clever?” 
   Chrissy: I’m guessing this is what he was doing with the 
   skull.
John turns to look and asks if that’s the guy. Sherlock tells 
him not to stare. John’s like ‘right, because they’ll never 
notice the tall, freakishly pale guy staring at them, but 
they’ll notice me.’ Sherlock grabs his coat and runs out the 
door. John follows him, completely forgetting his cane, which 
the camera lingers on.

Okay, I would like to point out that this is where the unaired 
pilot episode and this official variant significantly part 
ways. There are two scenes that are affected and I would like 
to recap both versions of both of them because I kind of like 
the unaired version even if it doesn’t really fit with the rest 
of the cannon of the series. 
   Chrissy: What, the recap isn’t long enough as it is?
   Diandra: Quiet.
By the way, in the unaired version, when Sherlock was 
describing the killer needing an audience to acknowledge his 
brilliance he said “to you it’s an arrest. To them, it’s a 
coming out party.”
   Chrissy: Okay, never mind. Why are we not recapping that 
    version? That whole comparison between Sherlock and a 
    serial killer could have been SO much more fun!
   Diandra: We’re doing it NOW, okay?

So, in the unaired version, Angelo is played by a completely 
different person. This one is much friendlier and more...what’s 
the word I’m looking for here?
   Chrissy: Exuberant? Demonstrative?
   Diandra: Ah, yes. Italian.
After he leaves to get a candle and John insists – again – that 
he’s not Sherlock’s date, Sherlock deliberately shoves his menu 
to the side and tells John to go ahead and eat. John asks if 
he’s going to eat. Sherlock asks what day it is. Wednesday. 
“I’m okay for a bit,” Sherlock decides. John realizes this 
means that Sherlock hasn’t eaten all day and says he needs to 
eat something. Sherlock says no, John needs to eat. He needs to 
think. “The brain’s what counts. Everything else is transport.” 
This leads to the whole “are you dating anyone” debacle, this 
time with the slant that John thinks Sherlock needs someone 
around who will feed him occasionally and ending with John 
babbling that it’s all fine... ”whatever...shakes your...boat. 
I’m going to shut up now.” “I think that’s for the best,” 
Sherlock says mildly. 
   Chrissy: And since Mrs. Hudson is NOT their housekeeper, 
    I’m guessing the job of feeding Sherlock occasionally 
    falls to John.
   Diandra: The job of shaking his boat may or may not 
    follow.
   Chrissy: Oh, it definitely does, but that comes later.

A necessary evil of going back and forth between versions is 
that we’re about to reveal the identity of the killer even 
though that doesn’t come up for a couple more scenes in the 
official version, so this could potentially get confusing from 
here on out. John recalls that in a previous scene (which was 
obviously different than the version I recapped), Sherlock said 
he didn’t know WHO the killer was, but he knew WHAT the killer 
was. Sherlock says John knows to if he thinks about it. “Why 
don’t people just think.” “Because we’re stupid,” John says 
flatly, shoving a forkful of whatever that is into his mouth 
and staring defiantly at Sherlock. Sherlock sighs inwardly like 
‘why do people always take that the wrong way?’ and explains 
that they know the killer drove the victims, but there were no 
signs of a struggle so they got into a stranger’s car 
willingly. They go through the “who do you trust even though 
you don’t know them” thing again, but this time they each come 
up with part of it. None of the victims (of which there are 
apparently five in this version) had any connection to each 
other, plus Lauriston Gardens is pretty well known for being 
full of gossipy little old ladies with nothing better to do 
than spy on people and nobody reported seeing a strange car 
that night parked outside an empty house. 

John decides to become the idiot Sherlock already thinks he is 
by saying “I see what you’re saying. No, I don’t. What are you 
saying? That the killer’s got an invisible car?” Yes, John. 
You’re looking for Wonder Woman. Superman, under the control of 
a supervillain, firebombed the Amazon and, fed up with this 
happening so freaking ALWAYS, she just snapped and went on a 
killing spree. The invisible jet was taken.
   Chrissy: You put way too much effort into that joke.
   Diandra: Bite me, Blondie.

Sherlock rambles about how there are cars that nobody sees and 
nobody remembers. People we trust and turn to when we’re alone 
or lost or drunk or...for god’s sake, you’re looking for a 
taxi! The killer drives a fucking taxi!
   Chrissy: You know those online quizzes you take to find 
    out which character of X cannon you would be?
   Diandra: Yeah.
   Chrissy: You know how you complain that the ones for 
    this cannon always tell you you’re Sherlock unless you 
    give completely crazy, dishonest answers?
   Diandra: Yeah?
   Chrissy: You just cut off Sherlock Holmes to give the 
    answer to solving the case because you felt he wasn’t 
    getting there fast enough.
   Diandra: Well, in my defense, we already knew the answer 
    because of the scene in the official episode.
   Chrissy: I’m just saying, there is a reason nobody was 
    shocked by that result.
   Diandra: So you’re saying you think I’m mildly autistic 
    and possibly psychotic?
   Chrissy: No, I’m saying you’re brilliant.
   Diandra: Oh, thanks! Hey, wait a minute...
   Chrissy: And possibly a bit ego driven and impatient and 
    annoying, yes.
   Diandra: Still not getting you that Christmas present. 
   Chrissy: Still Jewish.

When the taxi stops across the street and nobody gets in or 
out, Sherlock has Angelo bring him a glass of white wine. John 
argues that they don’t know this is the guy they’re looking 
for. Sherlock says they don’t know he isn’t. He accepts the 
glass of wine and promptly splashes it into his face. He tells 
John to watch, but not interfere. Then he turns to Angelo and 
says “headless nun”. Angelo, recognizing this as something like 
a code word, grabs him by the lapels and tosses him out the 
door, screaming at him to get out. “Cretino! You’re drunk!” He 
throws in a few Italian curses too, but they’re pretty garbled. 
Sherlock staggers a bit and stumbles toward the street, swaying 
and tripping over the curb on his way toward the cab. He knocks 
on the window and the cab driver rolls it down and says he’s 
off duty. Sherlock just slurs the Baker Street address at him, 
hiccupping halfway through. The driver repeats that he’s off 
duty and points at the unlit sign as evidence. Sherlock sways 
and nearly falls over as he gestures and insists that it’s 
‘just around the corner!’ The driver tells him to get another 
cab. Sherlock staggers and actually does fall against the cab 
as he repeats the address. (Admittedly, one of the reasons I 
wanted to recap this version of the scene is that I like the 
way Benedict plays it.) The driver says he doesn’t do drunks. 
Sherlock, now huddled against the side of the cab behind him, 
pulls out his phone and dials. The driver pulls a bright pink 
(OF COURSE IT FUCKING IS) phone from his pocket and answers. 
   Chrissy: It’s also a flip phone, which I’m pretty sure 
    nobody other than you still had in 2010. 
   Diandra: Yeah, I’m thinking all the weird 
    inconsistencies are just artifacts from this trial run.

“How do you make them take the poison,” Sherlock asks. The 
driver is like what? Who is this? Sherlock reaches through the 
window, grabs him by the lapels and repeats the question, 
snarling and shaking him a bit. The killer asks who he is. 
Sherlock tells him. “Do a lot of drugs, Sherlock Holmes?” No, 
not recently, Sherlock pants. The cabbie says he’s only asking 
because most people would have passed out by now. He jerks his 
arm pointedly and Sherlock staggers backward, revealing a 
hypodermic needle still stuck in his arm. Back in the 
restaurant, John frowns as Sherlock flails wildly. Angelo 
assures him this is all part of the plan and he’s fine. The 
cabbie gets out, tells nearby onlookers that everything is fine 
and the guy staggering around and moaning incoherently has just 
had a few too many. Sherlock shouts “John!” as he’s being 
manhandled into the back of the cab. The cabbie sticks his head 
in and says, with all the subtlety of a Bond villain, that his 
friends can’t help him because they think he’s just acting. 
“That’s the thing about people. They’re all stupid.” Sherlock 
passes out as the cabbie gets back behind the wheel.

Angelo is still assuring John that this is all part of the 
plan. Sherlock always has a plan. The cab pulls away and John 
says yes, but this one just went wrong. He goes running out of 
the restaurant, leaving his cane hanging on the back of his 
chair, forgotten. 
   Chrissy: So in this version Sherlock is basically a 
    damsel in distress.
   Diandra: And John forgets his limp not because he’s 
    focused on chasing a lead but because Sherlock is in 
    danger.
   Chrissy: If this were a romance novel, this scenario 
    would totally end in frantic, adrenaline-fueled, “oh my 
    God, I thought you were going to DIE” sex.
   Diandra: And that is why we write fan fiction.

And now that we know who the killer is, let’s go back to the 
official version, which, as you may recall, I left with 
Sherlock and John leaving the restaurant.

The man already in the back of the cab (who I’m sure we’re 
supposed to assume is the killer and not a victim in this 
version) glances back at Sherlock and the cab suddenly pulls 
away. Sherlock is nearly hit by a car as he runs toward it. He 
just slides over the hood and keeps running. John sort of jumps 
over it without touching it, mutters an apology to the driver, 
and announces that he got the number on the cab. Sherlock 
mutters “good for you”, then grabs his head and we get a brief 
flash of a line moving along a London map. Sherlock dictates 
the movements rapidly: “right turn, one way, roadworks, traffic 
lights, bus lane, pedestrian crossing, left turn only, traffic 
lights”. Then he goes running through a gap between nearby 
buildings, John following and apologizing to people the whole 
way. 
   Chrissy: Congratulations, John! This is going to be the 
    bulk of your job from now on.
   Diandra: Apologizing for Sherlock? Yeah, probably.
They run up and down several staircases, including some big 
spiral ones and jump across a few roofs - John hesitating on 
one jump until Sherlock yells back at him to “come on! We’re 
losing him!”. We keep flashing back to the map, which now has a 
red line showing the cab’s path and a green line showing the 
boys’ path. They intersect briefly when the cab drives past the 
end of the alley in front of them. John goes to follow it, but 
Sherlock redirects the other way so they can intercept again. 
   Chrissy: This is an awful lot of running for a guy who 
    JUST figured out he doesn’t need his cane.
   Diandra: And jumping. And stairs. As I pointed out, I 
    think his reasons for forgetting in the other version 
    made a bit more sense.

They miss it at the next intersection too, forcing them to go 
around ANOTHER block in the hopes of finally getting the timing 
right on the third pass, the red and green lines forming what 
looks like a very badly drawn DNA strand. The cab screeches to 
a stop inches from Sherlock, who yells “police! Open her up!” 
Don’t the English have laws against impersonating a police 
officer?
   Chrissy: Like Sherlock hasn’t seen the inside of a jail 
    cell before?
   Diandra: Good point. 
Sherlock opens the back door to look at the passenger and 
slumps dejectedly upon realizing – based on the guy’s (probably 
unnaturally white) teeth and tanned skin – that he’s from 
California. “Just arrived today,” he pants. John asks how the 
HELL he could possibly know that. Sherlock points to the 
luggage the guy has with him that is clearly stamped “LAX”. 
   Chrissy: Yeah, but you could tell by his tan. Sure.

He guesses by the route the cab is taking that this is his 
first trip to London. The American says um...yes, you guys are 
police? Really? Sherlock waves what could very well be a 
library card (for all an American would know) at him and says 
yes, is everything okay so far? Good, welcome to London. He 
walks away. John adds that he should let them know if he has 
any problems. Then he shuts the door and goes to join Sherlock 
and, possibly, collapse from exhaustion. The American, if he 
survives (never saw the cab driver, so it could well be a 
mislead), will use this story back home as an example of how 
the British are really, really nice, but WEIRD.

John says so basically that wasn’t the murderer - it was just a 
cab that just happened to slow down. As far as you know, yes. 
John grabs for the card Sherlock waved at the guy, which is 
still in his hand, asking what this is anyway. Apparently it’s 
Lestrade’s ID. “I pickpocket him when he’s annoying,” Sherlock 
explains. Which is always because he says John can keep that 
one since he has plenty back home. You’d think the guy would 
have learned by now. John just starts laughing at the 
ridiculousness of what they just did. Then he notices that the 
cab has stopped up the street and a real officer is talking to 
the American, who is pointing in their direction. “Got your 
breath back,” Sherlock asks. “Ready when you are,” John says 
and they run off before anyone can ask any questions.

Back at 221B...
   Chrissy: Sherlock and John are frantically tearing each 
    other’s clothes off.
   Diandra: Not YET.
...John sags against the wall at the foot of the stairs and 
gasps that that has to be the most ridiculous thing he’s ever 
done. They both laugh and I’m reasonably certain that Benedict 
just slid out of character and started genuinely laughing here 
because Martin’s giggle is ridiculous. They recover quickly and 
John asks why they didn’t go back to the restaurant. Sherlock 
thinks “they” can keep an eye on it and it was a long shot 
anyway. John asks what they were doing there then. I believe 
it’s called “eye-fucking”, John. Sherlock says they were 
killing time and “proving a point”. John asks what point that 
would be. Instead of answering directly (and really, when does 
he ever?), Sherlock calls out to Mrs. Hudson that John will, in 
fact, take the upstairs room. John is baffled until somebody 
knocks on the front door. John opens it to find Angelo, holding 
out his cane. He says Sherlock texted to tell him John had left 
this behind. John looks surprised, looks over his shoulder to 
find Sherlock smiling at him, and thanks Angelo.

Mrs. Hudson comes out of her room under the stairs, looking 
distraught. She asks what Sherlock has done. Sherlock asks what 
happened. She just gestures toward their part of the flat and 
says “upstairs”. Sherlock runs up the stairs to find Lestrade 
sitting in his chair by the fireplace while a forensics team 
crawls around the place. Lestrade says he knew Sherlock would 
find the suitcase. Sherlock spits that they can’t just break 
into his flat. Lestrade fires back that he can’t withhold 
evidence in a murder investigation. Also, he didn’t break in. 
Sherlock says really? Then what is this? Lestrade looks around 
and announces that it is a drugs bust. John scoffs that 
Lestrade would think Sherlock – of all people – is a junkie. I 
mean, really! What would give him that idea? “I’m pretty sure 
you could search this flat all day, you wouldn’t find anything 
you could call recreational.” Sherlock moves over beside him 
and mutters that he should probably shut up now. They stare at 
each other for a beat and John’s like ‘no...really?’ Sherlock 
tells him to shut up again, then barks at Lestrade that he 
isn’t his “sniffer dog”, which...makes no sense. Lestrade 
agrees as he says no, Anderson is his sniffer dog, actually, 
and he’s over there rooting through the kitchen cabinets. 
Sherlock asks what the hell ANDERSON is doing on a drug bust. 
Anderson slimes that he volunteered because, you know, anything 
to take Sherlock down a few pegs (although most of that is just 
implied). Lestrade says all these people digging through his 
stuff volunteered even though none of them are, strictly 
speaking, actually on the drug squad. Who needs friends when 
you have so many enemies?
   Chrissy: That’s not how the expression goes.
   Diandra: Shut up.

Sally comes around the corner, holding up a covered jar, and 
asks if the eyes in here are human. Sherlock just orders her to 
put it back where she found it. She says they were in the 
microwave. “It’s an experiment,” he says like he is trying to 
explain to a small child that fire is hot. Lestrade says he can 
order them to stand down if Sherlock agrees to start helping 
them “properly”. Sherlock says this is childish. Lestrade says 
yeah, well, I know who I’m dealing with. He reminds him that 
this is their case and he can’t just go running off on his own 
like a freaking vigilante. Sherlock says just so we’re clear: 
“you set up a pretend drugs bust to bully me?” Lestrade says 
it’s not pretend if they find something. Sherlock insists he’s 
clean. Lestrade says sure, but is the flat? Sherlock tellingly 
avoids this answer by saying he doesn’t even smoke anymore. He 
rolls up his sleeve to show Lestrade the nicotine patch on his 
arm (only one this time). Lestrade says yeah, he doesn’t either 
and rolls up his own sleeve to show Sherlock an identical 
patch. Lestrade says by the way, they found Rachel. She’s 
Jennifer Wilson’s sole offspring. This gets Sherlock’s 
attention. “Why would she write her daughter’s name?” Because 
the first and last thing a parent is likely to think about when 
they’re dying is their child? Especially if it’s their only 
child? Anderson would like to remind everyone that SOMEBODY 
told them the murderer would have Jennifer’s suitcase and guess 
what? They found it in the possession of a known psychopath. 
“I’m not a psychopath, Anderson,” Sherlock snarls. “I’m a high-
functioning sociopath. Do your research.” Um...you may want to 
check that definition again, because I’m pretty sure 
“psychopath” is a better fit.
   Chrissy: You would know best, I’m sure.
   Diandra: ...what is that supposed to mean?
   Chrissy: Nothing, Sherlock.

He turns to Lestrade and says he needs to question Rachel. 
Lestrade says that’s impossible because she’s dead. Sherlock 
thinks that’s even better – is there a connection? How? When? 
Why? Lestrade says she’s been dead for fourteen years and 
technically she was never even alive because she was stillborn. 
John winces. Sherlock is even more confused at why Jennifer 
would have scraped her dead daughter’s name into the wood floor 
with her nails as her final message. It would have been painful 
and pointless. The wheels are obviously turning in John’s head 
and he reminds Sherlock that he said the killer makes his 
victims take the poison themselves. Is it possible he used the 
death of the daughter somehow as leverage with her? Sherlock 
blurts that that was AGES ago “why would she still be upset?” 
Everyone stares at him silently for a couple beats. “Not good,” 
he asks, looking around sort of uncomfortably. “Bit not good, 
yeah,” John mutters. Sherlock asks what John would say in his 
last few seconds if he were dying. “Please, God, let me live,” 
John says quickly. Sherlock scoffs at him to use his 
imagination. John says he doesn’t have to. Sherlock blinks and 
says okay, fine, BUT Jennifer was clever enough to be able to 
manage multiple affairs so she must have been trying to send 
some sort of message.
   Chrissy: Yes. Revenge!
   Diandra: No. I’m not doing this again.

Mrs. Hudson appears at the door again, complaining that the 
doorbell isn’t working and announcing that Sherlock’s taxi is 
here. Sherlock waves at her dismissively and says he didn’t 
order a taxi. She bemoans the mess the police officers are 
making and asks John what they’re looking for. He says it’s a 
drugs bust. “But they’re just for my hip,” protests my favorite 
character. “They’re herbal soothers!”
   Chrissy: Yeah, and the marijuana is just for your 
    glaucoma, I bet.
   Diandra: I don’t think the British have the same 
    distinction of medical versus recreational marijuana 
    use. Either way it’s illegal.
   Chrissy: The most famous detective in literature was 
    openly shooting ‘Caine, but weed is illegal?
   Diandra: Oh, because OUR laws make sense?
Sherlock, who has been pacing like a caged animal and getting 
increasingly agitated, suddenly shouts for everybody to just 
SHUT UP ALREADY! “Don’t move, don’t speak, don’t breathe! I’m 
trying to think! Anderson: face the other way, you’re putting 
me off.” Anderson is confused by this – is Sherlock suggesting 
his FACE is putting him off?
   Chrissy: Well, that’s pretty understandable, actually.
   Diandra: Donovan would disagree, but then Donovan is 
    apparently a jerk so who cares what she thinks?
Lestrade goes with it and orders Anderson to turn around and 
everyone else to be quiet and still for a minute.

Mrs. Hudson asks what about the taxi and Sherlock barks at her 
so angrily that she goes running off. Then he has a realization 
and smiles, announcing that Jennifer was “cleverer than you lot 
and she’s dead.” He says she didn’t lose her phone, she 
INTENTIONALLY planted it on the killer when she realized what 
he was planning, knowing it would lead the police to him. 
Lestrade – and probably everybody else – doesn’t see how he 
came to this conclusion from “Rachel”. “Look at you lot. You’re 
all so vacant. Is it nice not being me? It must be so 
relaxing.”
   Chrissy: You know, Sally was right. One day they will 
   find a body and Sherlock will have put it there. Because 
   one day somebody is going to kill him.
Sherlock says Rachel isn’t a name. John, who has been shaking 
his head at Sherlock’s theatrics, snaps “then what is it?” 
Sherlock points to the suitcase beside him and tells him to 
look for the e-mail address on the luggage tag. John reads it 
and of course it also includes the word pink. Sherlock explains 
that she didn’t have a laptop on her so she must have done her 
e-mailing from her smartphone. He logs into her account on his 
laptop (password: RACHEL). Anderson grumbles that all this 
means is they can read her e-mails and so what? Sherlock 
requests that he not talk out loud anymore as “you lower the IQ 
of the whole street”. He points out that a smartphone also has 
GPS and enters the “find my phone” function.

Mrs. Hudson returns to say something about the taxi driver 
again, but Sherlock just brushes her off again, rounding on 
Lestrade and telling him to get the cavalry ready because the 
phone battery won’t last too long. John sits at the laptop as 
the map gradually zooms in and calls Sherlock over with a 
worried look on his face when he realizes that the blinking dot 
has settled over 221 Baker Street. Sherlock frowns at the 
screen and wonders how that’s possible. Lestrade suggests it 
was in the case and fell out somewhere. To be fair, he wasn’t 
in the room when Sherlock and John were calling it, so he 
doesn’t realize how dumb that sounds. John explains this to 
Lestrade. Sherlock goes quiet and looks past Mrs. Hudson at the 
cab driver who has climbed the stairs and is hovering behind 
her. His voice over asks again who you can trust despite not 
knowing them and who “passes unnoticed” wherever they go. We 
get quick flashes back to all the victims flagging down taxis. 
The cabbie in the hallway pulls an iPhone with a pink case from 
his sweater pocket and presses “send”. Sherlock gets a text 
that just says “come with me”. The driver turns and goes back 
downstairs. John finally notices that Sherlock has been staring 
into space for a while and asks if he’s okay. Sherlock mutters 
yeah, he’s fine and starts out the door with some excuse about 
needing fresh air. 

The cabbie – this time the same actor – is waiting next to the 
taxi when Sherlock steps outside. Sherlock says he didn’t order 
a taxi. “Doesn’t mean you don’t need one,” the cabbie says. 
Sherlock says it was him driving the cab that stopped outside 
that address on Northumberland street, wasn’t it? We get a 
brief flashback of the American looking out the back window at 
Sherlock, but this time we actually see the driver glance back 
too (which we definitely didn’t see the first time). Sherlock 
notes that he had the right cab, he was just focused on the 
wrong occupant. The cabbie says nobody ever thinks about who is 
DRIVING the cab. “It’s like you’re invisible.” Which, you know, 
is awesome for a murdering psycho because nobody could possibly 
suspect that the common variable in a string of murders where 
the victims were being picked up by taxis is the taxi driver. 
Oh, wait...no, that would be the first guess after “they’re 
being picked up by taxis”.
   Chrissy: Didn’t one of the CSIs do this exact plot?
   Diandra: I think it’s safe to assume – given the ratio 
    of taxis to any other kind of car in Manhattan – that 
    it was CSI: New York. And yes.
Sherlock asks if this is a confession. The cabbie says yes and 
he won’t even run if Sherlock calls the cops crawling around 
his flat right now. Except he’s pretty sure Sherlock won’t. 
Because he didn’t KILL those people. He just talked to them and 
they killed themselves. You now, like that guy in “Airplane”. 
And if Sherlock sics the cops on him right now he vows he will 
never tell him what he said to make them do that. Sherlock says 
yeah, but nobody else will die, which is kind of the goal of 
arresting killers. The cabbie says yes, but never knowing how 
or why isn’t exactly the result Sherlock wants now, is it? He 
climbs back in the driver seat of his cab and waits. 

Sherlock debates for a moment, then bends to talk to him 
through the open side window. He asks what he would do if he 
wants to understand what happened. “Let me take you for a 
ride,” says the cabbie.
   Chrissy: Dear God, it’s like an after school special. 
   Diandra: Don’t get into cars with strangers, kids, even 
    if they offer you candy!
Sherlock says what, so he can kill him too?
   Chrissy: No, I’m sure he has better plans for you, 
    pretty boy.
   Diandra: It puts the lotion on its skin...
   Chrissy: Okay, no. Not what I meant. Ew.
Cabbie says he doesn’t want to kill Sherlock. He just wants to 
talk to him...at which point he’ll kill himself. Sherlock 
thinks about this for a minute and then, because he’s just as 
bad as John when it comes to running toward danger like a 
suicidal idiot, he gets in the back of the cab.

Upstairs, John notes that Sherlock just left in a cab. Donovan 
grumbles that he’s always doing that: just up and leaving with 
no explanation. John tries to call Jennifer’s phone again. He 
says it’s ringing.

Death Cab for Serial Killer. The cabbie completely ignores the 
ringing phone.

Lestrade notes that if the phone is ringing and they can’t hear 
it then it obviously isn’t here after all. John goes to check 
the GPS again while Donovan rants that Sherlock is just a 
lunatic who will always let them down and Lestrade is just 
wasting everybody’s time with this. Lestrade sighs and 
announces to the team that they can stop now.

Death Cab. Sherlock asks how the cabbie found him. The cabbie 
says he recognized him the minute he saw him chasing after the 
cab like a crazy person. “Sherlock Holmes. I was warned about 
you.” Sherlock asks who would have done that? Is there some 
sort of social club for murderers? “Just someone out there 
who’s noticed,” he says cryptically. Sherlock looks at the 
photo of a couple smiling kids he has pinned to the dashboard. 
There’s a woman half out of frame who may or may not be their 
mother. He asks who would notice him. Cabbie says he’s too 
modest. Sherlock’s like hahahaha! No, seriously, who was it? 
Cabbie, still in cryptic non-answer mode, says Sherlock has got 
himself a fan. 
   Chrissy: Her name is Annie Wilkes and she has a fondness 
    for sledgehammers.
   Diandra: Oh, I can’t reference “Silence of the Lambs”, 
    but you can bring up Stephen King adaptations?
   Chrissy: I’m just saying this guy is planning to talk 
    him to death, not make a suit out of his skin. Those 
    are completely different levels of crazy.
Sherlock tries to prompt him for more, but Cabbie says that’s 
all Sherlock will ever know about that, because, you know, he’s 
totally going to kill himself.

Back at the ranch, Lestrade asks John why Sherlock would just 
leave like that. John shrugs and says Lestrade knows him better 
than he does. Lestrade says he’s known him for five years, but 
no, he really doesn’t. John asks why he puts up with his shit 
then. Lestrade says desperation. And “because Sherlock Holmes 
is a great man. And I think one day, if we’re very, very lucky, 
he might even be a good one.” So, John, your job if you stay is 
going to be to try to domesticate him.
   Chrissy: Hmm...a former military officer training and 
    socializing a madman with all the restraint of an ADHD 
    child...
   Diandra: You’re thinking about that riding crop again, 
    aren’t you?
   Chrissy: Oh, he’s gonna need more than that.

The Death Cab arrives at an old looking building. Sherlock asks 
where they are. The cabbie knowingly points out that he has 
every street in London memorized so he knows exactly where they 
are. Sherlock identifies it as Roland-Kerr College, but he has 
no idea WHY. Cabbie says it’s open. “One thing about being a 
cabbie: you always know a nice quiet spot for a murder.” 
Sherlock says he just walks his victims into these places how 
then? The cabbie points a gun at him and he grumbles 
“oh...dull.” He says he can’t possibly force people to kill 
themselves at gunpoint. Well, not without the right leverage 
anyway. The cabbie says he doesn’t and decides he doesn’t need 
the gun in this case because he’s sure Sherlock will just 
follow him. He walks toward the building and Sherlock hesitates 
all of two seconds before following.

221B. John is just grabbing his cane and heading out the door 
when the laptop beeps. The find my phone app is still open and 
has located Jennifer’s phone again. John frowns at it, then 
goes running off with the laptop but NOT his cane. Again.

Cabbie shows Sherlock into a classroom and asks what he thinks 
of it seeing as it will be the last thing he sees along with 
the Cabbie’s face when he dies. The person who has a series of 
over fifty literary works written about him and this is only 
the FIRST book argues that he won’t. Cabbie says yeah, they all 
say that and sits down at one of the tables. Sherlock sits 
opposite him, leaning back and crossing his legs and basically 
conveying the message via body language that he could just as 
easily be talking to an elderly professor right now for all the 
terror he’s conveying. Sherlock notes that the cabbie took a 
big risk kidnapping him from right under at least half a dozen 
police officers. Also, Mrs. Hudson will remember his face. Oh, 
that’s great. Bring up the fact that there are witnesses who 
remember what he looks like. Are you trying to get her killed? 

The cabbie pulls a little jar with a pill in it from his 
sweater pocket and puts it on the table. Sherlock stares at it. 
The cabbie taunts that he loves this part because they never 
quite understand what’s happening yet. Then he pulls out a 
second identical jar with an identical pill and sets it next to 
the first. Then he rambles about how that fan told him about 
Sherlock’s website: “The Science of Deduction”. He says 
Sherlock is brilliant and a “proper genius” and he’s just 
frustrated that people can’t seem to THINK anymore. Sherlock 
squints at him and says “oh, I see...so you’re a proper genius 
too.” Cabbie says nobody would ever think that because he’s a 
funny little guy on the downhill side of middle aged driving a 
cab. Also, the lower class Michael Caine accent is pretty 
misleading. But he says Sherlock will know better in a minute. 
Ugh...could you get on with it and stop dragging this out? It’s 
getting TEDIOUS.
   Chrissy: You do hear yourself right now, right?
   Diandra: What?
   Chrissy: “I’m so BORED, could you just GET ON WITH IT 
    and KILL HIM ALREADY?”
   Diandra: Ugh, fine. I’m Sherlock. What does that make 
    you? Irene Adler?
   Chrissy: That’s cute that you would think that. No, I 
    took the same test as you and it told me I’m Moriarty.
   Diandra: ............
   Chrissy: Yeah, I don’t see it either.
   Diandra: That’s not what I said. I’m just going to back 
    away from you slowly now. Don’t worry about it – it 
    doesn’t mean anything.

Cabbie says the pills are different. One is a placebo and one 
will allow him to see the Matrix. Oh, wait...no, I’m thinking 
of something else. The other is poison. Sherlock looks at the 
two identical bottles with identical pills and says the cabbie 
knows which is which then? The Cabbie says of course he does, 
but Sherlock can’t know because then what fun would there be in 
making him choose? Sherlock asks why he would bother choosing 
either one – “what’s in it for me?” Cabbie says oh, this is the 
best part: whichever pill he DOESN’T choose, the Cabbie takes 
himself. He swears he won’t cheat and they will both take them 
at the same time. Sherlock says this is what he did with all 
the other victims then? Cabbie says ‘yep, take your time 
deciding. I’ll wait.’ Sherlock says this isn’t a “game” so much 
as dumb luck. Cabbie points out that he’s played it four times 
and he’s still breathing. He calls it a game of chess with one 
move. No, more like a game of poker where you force the other 
guy to call your bluff. He slides one of the pill bottles 
toward Sherlock and asks if he just gave him the good one or 
the poisoned one, reminding him that he can still choose either 
bottle.

John, meanwhile, is in the back of a cab, directing the driver 
to the little dot on the map on the laptop which...can’t be 
getting a signal anymore. He has a phone pressed to his ear and 
he’s begging to speak to Lestrade because it’s REALLY 
important.

Sherlock is still arguing that this is a 50/50 guessing game. 
Cabbie tells him to stop playing the numbers and start playing 
HIM. Which pill did he give him? Is it a bluff or a double 
bluff or a triple bluff? Four people in a row, he says, wasn’t 
just luck. He knows how people think and how they think HE 
thinks. Sherlock rolls his eyes.
   Chrissy: And now you know how everybody else feels, 
    dear.
   Diandra: Are you talking to him or me?
   Chrissy: I’ll let you figure that one out yourself, 
    genius.
   Diandra: Keep going and I won’t get you a Christmas 
    present next year either.
   Chrissy: You’re really not getting the Jewish thing, are 
    you?
Cabbie posits that compared to his massive intellect everyone 
is just SO stupid, including Sherlock. “Or maybe God just loves 
me.”

John arrives at the college and runs toward one of the two 
buildings, but it’s unclear which one.

Sherlock (finally) asks why the cabbie would risk his life four 
times just to kill some strangers. Cabbie tells him to just 
shut up and play. Sherlock says he is. He noticed back in the 
cab that he has some shaving cream behind his ear that he 
missed and “traces of where it’s happened before” whatever that 
means. He says he must live alone if nobody is around to point 
this out to him. He also saw the picture of his kids with their 
mother “cut out”. He wouldn’t have done that if she’d died – 
that’s something people do to pictures of people they hate. And 
the photo is old, but the frame it’s in is new so he obviously 
still thinks of them, but he hasn’t seen them much since she 
took them in whatever divorce or separation. Also, his clothes 
have been washed recently, but they’re all at least three years 
old which tells Sherlock he’s “keeping up appearances, but not 
planning ahead.” He has some sort of realization and asks if 
three years ago is when they told him he’s dying. He concludes 
that the cabbie doesn’t have much longer. The cabbie says he 
has an aneurism in his brain that could blow up any minute. 
   Chrissy: It could also explain his behavior. Just 
    saying.
   Diandra: I think you’re thinking of a tumor. This guy 
    obviously already had psychotic tendencies.

Sherlock summarizes that because he’s dying he’s used a 
kamikaze battle of wits to kill four people. The cabbie thinks 
this is the most fun he can have with an aneurism. No, 
that’s...okay, yeah, he’s crazy. Sherlock says there’s got to 
be something else because he didn’t just kill four people out 
of bitterness – “bitterness is a paralytic. Love is a much more 
vicious motivator.” He determines that this is about the 
children. The cabbie concedes that Sherlock is really good at 
this and says his kids don’t stand to inherit much when he 
dies, because...you know...cab driver. Sherlock notes that 
serial killing isn’t likely to make much more for them. Cabbie 
says he’d be surprised: “I have a sponsor.” Somebody is sending 
his kids money for every person he kills. Sherlock wonders who 
the hell would “sponsor” a serial killer. “Who’d be a fan of 
Sherlock Holmes?” the cabbie fires back.
   Chrissy: The answer to both of those questions is 
    “another psychopath”.
   Diandra: Or a sociopath, apparently, because Stephen 
    Moffat isn’t all that clear on the distinction.

The camera gets right up in Sherlock’s face so we can see his 
face twitch as the cabbie says there are other people out there 
like him except they are SO MUCH BETTER because Sherlock is 
just a MAN and they are much more. Sherlock asks what they are 
– an organization? “There’s a name that no one says. And I’m 
not gonna say it either,” the cabbie says cryptically. I’ll do 
it! Voldemort. There. That wasn’t so difficult, was it? Cabbie 
says enough stalling tactics - it’s time for Sherlock to choose 
one of the bottles.

Meanwhile, John is running down empty hallways shouting 
Sherlock’s name.

Sherlock asks what happens if he chooses neither of the bottles 
and just walks away. The cabbie sighs and pulls his gun out 
again, offering him a 50% chance of taking the wrong pill or a 
100% chance of being shot in the face. “Funny enough – no one’s 
ever gone for that option.” Sherlock says oh, okay, then in 
that case he’ll take the gun. Cabbie, probably getting sick of 
this shit now, asks if he’s sure. Does he want to phone a 
friend? Sherlock just smiles and repeats the request to go 
ahead and shoot. The cabbie pulls the trigger and a little 
flame pops from the end of it. “I know a real gun when I see 
one,” Sherlock explains calmly. The cabbie says nobody else 
noticed that which...uh, yeah, why is the novelty gun shaped 
lighter made to look so realistic? My grandfather had one of 
those and it was small and metallic silver. What is the purpose 
of this?
   Chrissy: What is the purpose of making water pistols 
    that look like that? 
   Diandra: I thought this was an American thing.
   Chrissy: Why? Because we have the largest population of 
    gun humpers?
   Diandra: Because we’re stupid enough to think carrying 
    something like that won’t get us shot.
   Chrissy: Pfftt. Cops don’t look for the realistic 
    looking weapons. In fact, they might actually be more 
    likely to freak out if you have a neon colored plastic 
    water pistol or a particularly threatening looking beer 
    can.

Sherlock says this has been fun and he looks forward to seeing 
what happens with the court case. He heads for the door and the 
cabbie asks – just out of curiosity – if he figured out which 
bottle has the poison. Sherlock says of course he did – any 
child could figure that out. Cabbie asks which one he would 
have picked then, just so he knows if he would have beaten him 
or not. “Come on...play the game!” Sherlock swaggers back over 
to him and snatches the bottle in front of the cabbie – the one 
he didn’t give Sherlock. Cabbie purrs that this is 
“interesting” and asks if Sherlock thinks he’s clever enough to 
bet his life on having made the right choice.

John, still opening doors all down the hallway, finally bursts 
into one that we are momentarily led to believe is the one 
Sherlock and the killer are in, but then we see that it is 
actually in the other building across the way. John can see 
Sherlock and the killer talking and screams his name, but 
Sherlock can’t hear or see him since he has his back to the 
window and is IN THE OTHER BUILDING.

Cabbie is still taunting Sherlock. He says he must get bored, 
what with being surrounded by idiots all the time. “What’s the 
point of being clever if you can’t prove it.” He says Sherlock 
is still an addict, but instead of drugs, he’s addicted to 
this. “You’ll do anything. Anything at all to stop being 
bored.” Sherlock holds the pill up to the light like this will 
tell him something. They both go to put the pills in their 
mouths and at the last possible second there’s a gunshot and 
the cabbie falls over. In the other building, John lowers his 
gun. Sherlock goes over to the window to see where the shot 
came from, but John is already gone. Sherlock hovers over the 
gasping cabbie and says he was right, wasn’t he? He chose the 
right pill? Oh, jesus, you really think he’s going to tell you 
now? Apparently, he realizes this because he just throws the 
pill on the ground and says okay, will he at least tell him who 
his sponsor is? Cabbie says uh...no thanks. Sherlock says he’s 
already dying, but there’s still time for Sherlock to make him 
suffer, so, you know, talk. With a crazed look in his eyes he 
grinds his shoe into the bullet wound and the cabbie yowls. 
“Moriarty,” the cabbie shrieks after a couple rounds of this 
and then slumps, dead.

Okay, time to switch versions again. If you will recall, we 
left the experimental pilot version with the cabbie throwing a 
drugged Sherlock in the back of the cab and taking off, John 
running after them.

Sherlock blinks awake in the living room of 221B, which looks 
much less modern in this version, but the skull is still on the 
mantle even though it’s a different mantle. There’s a fire 
roaring in the fireplace which...really? The cabbie decided 
that instead of taking him to a quiet, deserted place to kill 
him he’s just going to bring him into his own apartment that he 
SHARES WITH TWO PEOPLE and make a fire first? He says he hopes 
Sherlock doesn’t mind that he’s using his place because, you 
know, he DID give him the address. Also, his keys were in his 
jacket. Oh, and he’s only been unconscious for ten minutes, 
which was somehow enough time for the cabbie to drag him up 
here and get the fire started. Yeah, not. Sherlock half falls 
out of the chair he’s draped over and slumps against the 
mantle, holding himself up. The cabbie says he’s impressively 
strong and encourages him to go ahead and get nice and warm and 
comfortable. Sherlock tries to stagger away from the fireplace 
and splatters face first into the floor. The cabbie says the 
drugs are still in his system so he’ll still be weak for at 
least an hour. “I could do anything I wanted to you right now, 
Mr. Holmes,” he menaces.
   Chrissy: Oh, THAT’S what the official version was 
    missing! Rape subtext.
   Diandra: Yep. Lesson number one on this show: a 
    disturbing amount of deleted footage contains scenes 
    like this. 

So to recap: in the official verison, this guy offers to give 
Sherlock “a ride” to get him to a secluded location. In this 
version, he drugs him, throws him in the back of the cab, 
drives him to HIS OWN HOUSE, starts a fire in the hearth and 
tells Sherlock to get comfortable because he can do anything he 
wants to him for the next hour and he’ll be too weak to stop 
him. Yeah. That’s barely even subtext. That’s practically 
putting on some Barry White and saying “I’m gonna make you 
squeal like a pig.” 
   Chrissy: Are we sure this is written by Stephen Moffat 
    and not Diana Gabaldon?
   Diandra: Oh, she wouldn’t have been so subtle. If she 
    had written this, Sherlock would have woken up tied 
    face down on the table and the cabbie would be heating 
    metal objects on the fire to torture him with before 
    raping him.
   Chrissy: Yeah, scarily enough that sounds about right.

Sherlock discourages this suggested context not at all by 
attempting to get up and winding up with his face still on the 
floor and his ass in the air. The cabbie watches him for a 
minute and seems to consider the possibilities here before 
adding “but don’t worry. I’m only going to kill you.” Then he 
picks him up and shoves him into a chair set up by a table next 
to the couch. Sherlock sways and makes vague motions toward the 
door. The cabbie tells him not to bother calling for help 
because the house is empty – even the landlady is gone. 
Sherlock slurs that this is a bit of a risk isn’t it? Taking 
him here? Cabbie pulls the pill bottles out of his pockets and 
they launch into a similar version of the scene I just 
recapped. Except in this version Sherlock is dazed looking and 
slurring and delivering a couple of lines directly into the 
table after crashing face first into it. Also, in this version, 
the cabbie doesn’t seem to have a gun, so when Sherlock asks 
what happens if he doesn’t choose, he says he’ll choose FOR him 
and just shove it down his throat because he’s still weak, 
remember? “Right now, there’s nothing you could do to stop me.” 
   Chrissy: And yet all you want to do is force him to take 
    poison? So uncreative.
   Diandra: Yeah, I’m starting to see the Moriarty thing. 
   Chrissy: Says the person who was talking about torturing 
    him with red hot pokers.
   Diandra: No, Diana Gabaldon would do that. I would have 
    just gone right to the rape, interrupted by John 
    running in to rescue Sherlock and then hold his hand 
    and keep him calm until the paramedics arrive.
   Chrissy: Are...are you actually writing a story like 
    this?
   Diandra: No, why?
   Chrissy: Just checking.

Cars pull up outside, lights flashing, and the phone on the 
desk on the other side of the room rings. Sherlock says that 
would be the police. Cabbie says no, really? I thought somebody 
was testing some red and blue disco balls outside the flat. No 
shit it’s the police. I’m crazy, not BLIND. Sherlock murmurs 
that he underestimated John and turns like he’s going to go 
answer it, but the cabbie says if he does that he’ll kill him. 
Sherlock says nah, that’s not his kind of murder. Cabbie asks 
if he’s willing to take that chance. Then he appeals to his ego 
again to goad Sherlock into choosing one of the pills. And just 
as Sherlock goes to take it, a bullet explodes through the 
cabbie’s chest and somehow manages to miss Sherlock on its way 
toward the wall. Sherlock staggers over to the window as 
Lestrade pulls up outside and comes out of the car shouting. 
“Did anyone see it? Where did it come from? Who is firing?” 
Sherlock sees an open window across the street, but we don’t 
see John doing the actual shooting in this version. Also, the 
cabbie dies immediately with no mention of Moriarty. Probably 
because they weren’t sure if the show would be picked up and 
they would have a chance to actually introduce him.

Back to the official version. We’re outside a college instead 
of the apartment and Benedict has darker hair that is curly and 
doesn’t look like it has been carefully and inexplicably formed 
into a helmet.
   Chrissy: I was wondering when you were going to mention 
   that.
Sherlock is sitting on the back of an ambulance when a 
paramedic puts a blanket over his shoulders. Lestrade comes 
over and Sherlock asks him why the hell the paramedics keep 
putting this blanket on him. Lestrade says it’s for the shock. 
Sherlock scoffs that he isn’t in shock. “Yeah, but some of the 
guys want to take photographs,” Lestrade says. Sherlock makes a 
face, then asks if they’ve found the shooter yet. Lestrade says 
no, he left before they got here. So far he’s going with the 
theory that a killer like that had enemies and one of them just 
happened to be following him on the night Sherlock was 
abducted. But so far they don’t have a lot to go on. Sherlock 
says oh, they hardly have NOTHING. The bullet they dug from the 
wall was from a handgun. Only a crack shot could have killed 
somebody that accurately from that distance with that sort of 
weapon. And obviously, this person’s hands couldn’t have shaken 
at all so they’d be looking for somebody who’s “acclimatized to 
violence”. Also, he waited to fire until Sherlock was in 
immediate danger so he must have a strong moral principle. So, 
someone with a military history and nerves of steel... He 
FINALLY notices John hovering near one of the cop cars and 
stops talking. John pointedly looks away. Sherlock mutters that 
actually he has no idea what he’s saying. It must be the shock 
talking. He starts toward John to “talk about the rent”.
   Chrissy: I’m using this as a euphemism from now on, just 
   to warn you.
Lestrade protests that he still has questions and Sherlock 
complains that he JUST caught them a serial killer...sort 
of...and he’s in shock. “See? I have a blanket!” Lestrade 
agrees to wait until tomorrow for his statement.

Sherlock chucks the blanket into the police car as he comes up 
to John, who says Officer Donovan explained the whole thing 
about the pills to him. It sounds horrible. “Good shot,” 
Sherlock says. John plays stupid and says yes, it must have 
been to have hit him from that window over there. Sherlock 
doesn’t play along and tells him to get the powder burns off 
his hands because he’s not sure he’d serve time for this, but 
it really would be better if they could avoid having to go to 
court. Then he asks if John is okay. John says he’s fine. 
Sherlock points out that he just killed a man. John points out 
that that man wasn’t exactly a pillar of the community. And he 
was a bad cabbie, too. Sherlock snickers and says that’s 
actually true because “you should have seen the route he took 
to get us here.” John giggles, then tells him to stop because 
they shouldn’t be giggling at a crime scene. Then he says 
Sherlock was really going to take that pill, wasn’t he? 
Sherlock scoffs that of COURSE, he wasn’t. He was just killing 
time because he knew if he waited long enough John would show 
up to save him. This would be a logical assumption in the 
version where John saw the cabbie throw him into the back of a 
cab, but there was absolutely no reason for him to assume such 
a thing here, so obviously he’s just trying to spare his ego. 
John totally calls him on this obvious bullshit and says this 
is how he really gets off, isn’t it? “You risk your life to 
prove you’re clever.”
   Chrissy: Well, I don’t see you offering any sort of 
   alternative means of “getting off” yet, JOHN.
Sherlock asks why the hell he would do that. “Because you’re an 
idiot,” John says almost affectionately. 

Sherlock smiles and asks if he wants dinner. What, again? He 
just ate.
   Chrissy: He needs more food than most humans. His people 
    usually eat two breakfasts.
   Diandra: You’ve been waiting to make a Hobbit reference 
    for a long time, haven’t you?
   Chrissy: It was KILLING ME.
He says there’s a good Chinese place at the end of Baker Street 
that stays open late. “You can always tell a good Chinese by 
the bottom third of the door handle.” This is either an 
observation about the quality of a Chinese restaurant based on 
wear and tear/staining of the door handle or a mildly racist 
joke (because, you know...Asians are short and as a general 
rule a good ethnic restaurant is frequented by customers of 
that ethnicity).
   Chrissy: Yeah, probably the latter.
   Diandra: Ugh.

John suddenly notices Big Brother pulling up at the fringe of 
the crime scene and stops Sherlock mid-sentence to point him 
out. That’s the guy – the one he was talking about before. 
Sherlock says yep, he knows exactly who that is and crosses to 
stand in front of him. Big Brother notes that Sherlock’s solved 
another case, which would be very “public-spirited” of him if 
there was any reason to believe he was actually doing this for 
the public good. Sherlock impatiently asks what he’s doing 
here. Big Brother says he’s concerned about him. Sherlock says 
yes, he’s heard. Big Brother asks if it ever occurred to 
Sherlock that they are on the same side. Sherlock says um...no. 
Big Brother says they have more in common than he chooses to 
believe and he’s getting tired of this petty feud between them. 
“And you know how it always upsets Mummy.” Sherlock is like 
‘oh, *I* upset her? I wasn’t the one always spying on the 
neighbors!’ ‘Oh yeah? Well, *I* wasn’t the one doing 
experiments on the family dog!’ ‘That was ONE TIME. His hair 
grew back!’
   Chrissy: Are you having fun?
   Diandra: Only a little.
Sherlock grudgingly introduces a baffled John to his brother 
Mycroft. “Putting on weight again?” he adds snottily. Mycroft 
says he’s LOSING weight, actually, in a tone that suggests 
Sherlock is never too old for a spanking.
   Chrissy: No, but John will be handling that from now on.
   Diandra: Wow, that joke came out of you almost before I 
    was finished setting the stage for it.
   Chrissy: I’m sorry, did you say something else? I got a 
    little distracted picturing Sherlock bent over that 
    little table in the unaired pilot again. Except this 
    time it was John looking at him like he’s barely 
    restraining himself from tearing his clothes off and... 
   Diandra: You do remember that he was drugged in that 
    version, right? 
   Chrissy: Yeah, well, not in my version. Also, in my 
    version, John is holding that riding crop.
   Diandra: I wouldn’t have expected anything less.

John splutters ‘wait, what? He’s your BROTHER?’ “Not...I don’t 
know...criminal mastermind,” he adds lamely. Sherlock says eh, 
close enough actually. Mycroft says he occupies a MINOR 
position in the government. Sherlock corrects that he IS the 
British government “when he’s not too busy being the British 
Secret Service or the CIA on a freelance basis.” He says 
goodbye and “try not to start a war before I get home. You know 
what it does for the traffic.” Then he stomps off like the brat 
he obviously always has been. John goes to follow, but 
hesitates and notes that when Big Brother said he was worried 
about Sherlock...he actually meant it then? Mycroft frowns and 
says of course he is. “He’s always been so resentful. You can 
imagine the Christmas dinners.” “Yeah,” John says, eyes on 
Sherlock’s retreating back. Then he corrects “no, God no!”
   Chrissy: It’s okay, sweetie, he wasn’t asking whether 
   you could imagine him naked.
He says he’d better...um...”hello again.” Anthea, also standing 
beside the car, tears her eyes from her phone screen to say 
hello. He reminds her that they met earlier this evening. She 
blinks and says “oh!” like ‘yeah, I have some vague memory of 
that’. “Okay, good night,” John grumbles and runs off, catching 
up with Sherlock in about two steps because apparently he 
didn’t actually leave and was just hovering nearby waiting.

They continue their walk toward the Chinese restaurant and 
Sherlock decides to bring up the subject of John’s fake limp. 
He says there must have been an actual wound or John wouldn’t 
have been sent home. John says yeah, he was shot in the 
shoulder. Because Arthur Conan Doyle could never remember where 
Watson had been shot and kept changing it. Lesson number two on 
this show: there are several in-jokes that revolve around 
Arthur Conan Doyle’s inability to keep track of shit like this. 
Sherlock says yeah, he thought that’s where it was. John calls 
bullshit. Sherlock says it’s the left one, right? John rightly 
points out that this could very well be a lucky guess because 
there would be a fifty percent chance of him being right no 
matter what he said. Sherlock scoffs that he NEVER guesses. 
“Yes, you do,” John says dismissively. Then he asks what 
Sherlock looks so happy about. “Moriarty.” John asks what that 
is. “I’ve absolutely no idea.” 

Anthea, actually looking up from her phone for longer than a 
couple seconds, asks Mycroft if they should go now. Mycroft 
notes that this “soldier fellow” is an interesting development. 
“He could be the making of my brother...”
   Chrissy: More likely the unmaking.
   Diandra: I believe a more accurate term there would be 
    “disheveling” or maybe “debauching”.
...or make him worse than ever, Mycroft adds. Either way, he 
thinks they should upgrade the surveillance on them. Of course. 
This is probably his answer to everything. Anthea, who was 
probably distracted by her phone again, says ‘wait, who are we 
surveilling again?’ 
   Chrissy: Never mind, dear, just go back to playing Candy 
   Crush.
This is Mycroft’s cue to clunkily say “Sherlock Holmes and 
Doctor Watson” while said couple walk toward the camera and 
music plays.
   Chrissy: They’re totally going to get that food to go 
    and then barely make it back to the flat before ripping 
    each other’s clothes off and “discussing the rent” 
    right on the couch. Or possibly even the floor next to 
    it. [pause] You didn’t stop me that time.
   Diandra: If you’ll recall, I said “not YET” before. That 
    sort of implies that there is a point where all slash 
    references become fair game. Also, that sounds kind of 
    hot.
   Chrissy: The recap of the next episode is going to 
    devolve quickly, isn’t it?
   Diandra: Probably. You up to it?
   Chrissy: Oh, god, yes.