Sherlock
The Reichenbach Fall
By Steve Thompson“Every fairytale needs a good old fashion villain.”
It is here we see the showdown between Sherlock Holmes and Jim Moriarty. Finally a solution to the “Final Problem” is here and we are the lucky ones that get to see it. But are we the lucky ones? Was The Reichenbach Fall worthy of all the hype that it builds up during the past week?
Well in my opinion I thought this was a remarkable story
and a fitting end to series 2. I loved
how the people in charge of writing Sherlock were able to incorporate
Reichenbach Falls into new continuity.
It was pretty clever to have the falls be a famous painting that
Sherlock found. Finding that painting
more or less catapulted Sherlock Holmes into superstar status. Otherwise making Sherlock Holmes a famous
detective in which Jim Moriarty wants to take down. Hence how they came up with the title. The Reichenbach Fall doesn’t mean the
waterfall in the Conan Doyle story but instead and quite cleverly refers to
Sherlock Holmes as the Reichenbach hero whose career falls apart at the hands
of Moriarty. 
The Reichenbach Fall was a very tense and emotional
story. You had to feel for
Sherlock. I mean his whole world was
coming down around him. His friends at
the police didn’t trust him anymore, the press was making him out to be a fake
and his own brother Mycroft even betrayed him to Moriarty. Just watching it all unfold and seeing how
Holmes and Watson deal with the situation was sort of cat and mouse. Which was brilliant as it appeared that
Moriarty was always one step ahead of Holmes.
The story for me didn’t get going for me until after the
court scenes. Which were pretty
predictable anyway. You knew that
Moriarty was going to be found not guilty.
This sets up the rest of the episode with the classic meeting between
villain and hero. What a scene it was
too as two intellectual and arrogant people having a battle of wits to
determine who was better than the other. How cool was that. It was the classic my unit is bigger than
yours scenario that alpha males often participate in. 
There was some good character building for Sherlock. Most notably the scenes with Molly in which
she stood up to him. It was good to see
her say something to Sherlock and to tell him how much of a sad and lonely
person he was. Maybe that is why he
smartened up and asked her for help towards the end and actually coming to his
senses about her. You know he asked her
to make up a cadaver to look like him for that apparent suicide. 
The ending was not really jaw dropping for me as I had
read “The Final Problem’ and did have an inkling of what would happen at the
end. But what surprised me was how they
did do the ending. By having Sherlock
die to save his friends was pretty good since he needed Moriarty to give the
signal to not kill his friends. Having
Jim Moriarty put the gun into his mouth and blow his own brains out as the only
way to prevent Sherlock from getting the code word to abort the killings of his
friends was quite the surprise to me.
Loved how they threw that twist in there making the choice for Sherlock
all that more difficult. Jump off the
roof and plummet to his death by hitting the pavement to save his friends or
save his life and let his three friends die. Plus having to confront Watson and convincing
Watson that he was dead couldn’t have been easy for Sherlock to do. Not just on the trickery but having to lie to
his only friend. This made watching that
scene very emotional as Sherlock was actually crying and Watson powerless in
helping his friend.
The ending was good as we saw Watson and Mrs.
Hudson at the cemetery. Here we see
Watson doubting what is in front of his eyes as he is hoping for one more
miracle and hoping that Holmes is still alive.
The viewer then sees Sherlock
Holmes standing far off in the distance watching his friend walking out of the cemetery
and leaving the gravesite. That was a pretty cool and chill inducing
scene. Hurray he’s not dead and now we
need to know how he will make his triumphant return.
The Reichenbach Fall was a great story and a fitting end
to a great second series of Sherlock.
The Reichenbach Fall had a great story and had great performances. Even though it was 90 minutes it didn’t seem
like you were sitting watching a show that was that long. The Reichenbach Fall was a truly wonderful
story that requires return watching. A
true gem that really stays true in a sense to the original Sherlock Holmes story “The Final
Problem” . So bring on the adaptation of “The Empty House”.
I wonder why there was a truck full of trash bags sitting right in front of where Sherlock fell? Does that have anything to do with his escape?
ReplyDeleteyes. it has everything to do with the escape. there are many theories people have formed and one of them is the "truck theory" which i myself have found to be the best fitting. theory says that SH jumped and landed onto the bags in the truck which immediately drove away while molly hidden behind the truck was placing a dead body (possibly moriarty's but more probably some unknown body molly arranged to get from the morgue since moriarty's death was a total surprise to SH too guessing from his reaction when M shoots hinmself on the roof)
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