The Reichenbach Fall

So i saw the finale of sherlock season 2 today thinking it would be another good episode of sherlock, but i was wrong in all ways possible! Good is an understatement, this was definitively the best episode of television i will see this year unless of course breaking bad would pull off a stunner. Season 2 tried to portray the sherlock as more "human" and this finale completes the arc brilliantly. The acting, the direction and the writing( oh god the writing!!) were simply outstanding. The episode had a brilliant blend of drama, emotion and edge of the seat suspense. In most of sherlock episodes you know that sherlock is going to solve the crime , its just about how he does it and who is the main culprit, but this episode just kept me guessing. I had no idea what was going to happen, every second was a " will he or wouldn't he" type of moment. The final 20 minutes took the show from brilliant to whatever is much better than that. Martin freeman was brilliant in the emotional moments completely justifying peter Jackson wanting him for the hobbit and even Benedict cumberbatch got a chance to show the emotional yet reserved side of sherlock, which i think he did beautifully. All i can say is season 3 -"where are thou?"

Thanks to this episode, Andrew Scott is one of my favourite actors of all time. He portrays such a charming meets evil meets pure genius version of James Moriarty. What an incredible performance. Incredibly written from start to finish. All characters play a vital role which isn't always initially detected. No review will quite do it justice - just watch it for yourself. A masterpiece.

Prior to the start, I was thinking that this episode would not live up to some of the greatest TV seen in the UK despite the previous episodes being fantastic. How wrong I was. My summary line says it all and for those of you that haven't yet seen it, it's a must. I have too many superlatives to mention for this series and particularly this episode.

Out of curiosity I looked on Twitter when it had finished, only to find that it was the No.1 trending topic for about two hours. People tweeting like mad for there to be a series 3 were not disappointed as the writers held us in suspense too, revealing about half an hour after this episode had finished that series 3 had already been commissioned at the same time as series 2.

Looking forward to the next tranche of episodes and I hope I don't have to wait too long.

Quote from the series Sherlock Holmes: Shut up. Inspector Lestrade: I didn't say anyth — Sherlock Holmes: You were thinking. It's annoying.

Brilliant!!

oh my word!This is indeed the one of the most beautiful adaptations i have seen for a long time.It was fast paced,juicy but then very much intriguing.

Actually i was left disappointed by the third episode of first season-'the great game',so obviously i was expecting something similar till i saw this and the hell i do rather i wish the story never ends.It has all the ingredients of a perfect sherlock story plus the emotional quotient that we don't often see in Holmes narratives and this for me was the best part of it.

One of the interesting thing in this episode was that it used the humane part of Holmes-he did crumble or appear to crumble under pressure from his age old nemesis Moriarty .And my review won't be complete without acknowledging the contribution of freeman as Watson-he donned the role with such command that i can't imagine sherlock without the assistance of him.

As with everybody else am waiting for the next series to unfold........

»Every fairy tale needs a good old-fashioned villain«, Andrew Scott's Jim Moriarty informs Sherlock Holmes early on in "The Reichenbach Fall". It's an intriguing quote, but doesn't reflect their situation. No beautiful princess needs to be rescued, and no dragons are blocking the way. Neither is Moriarty a witch, nor an evil stepmother. This story is the psychological showdown of two geniuses and it's as good as television gets.

The reason for that is clear: Andrew Scott. Of the six episodes of Sherlock, the three in which he was provided with dialogue were outstanding, while of the other three, only one was. You could ascribe that to chance, but there is no denying that the confrontations between him and Benedict Cumberbatch are the very best thing this programme has to offer. In "The Reichenbach Fall", the consulting criminal and the consulting detective meet on several occasions, each of those scenes trumping the precedent with regard to its entertainment value. At the Old Bailey, the two share subtle grins, as Sherlock lectures the prosecuting barrister in properly questioning witnesses; during teatime in 221B Baker Street, they chat about Johann Sebastian Bach, how adorable ordinary people are, and how Moriarty could potentially throw the entire world into disarray; and on a taxi TV screen, 'Jimbo' Moriarty addresses 'Boffin' Holmes in his most certifiable appearance yet, cheerfully telling the story of Sir Boast-a-lot.

But then, there's the rooftop scene. Nearly ten minutes long and without a deus ex machina intervening, it's one of the cleverest and most engrossing head-to-heads between hero and villain in the history of moving pictures. For a long while, the two parties just talk – although 'talk' is quite an understatement in that sentence, seeing as Scott is equipped with right about the best dialogue an actor could ever wish for (»I read it in the paper, so it must be true. I love newspapers.«, »There is no key, DOOFUS!«, »Oh, just kill yourself, it's a lot less effort.«) and that Cumberbatch is truly sensational when leading his nemesis into believing to have the upper hand. Though once Moriarty suddenly shoots himself in a twist more shocking than all the hounds of Baskerville combined, it's more than words flowing on the top of St Barts. Now, Sherlock's got his go at kicking the bucket, something he elegantly does by plummeting off the building and confirming what Moriarty had previously said about him: he's on the side of the angels.

As a result of that fatal hop, Sherlock shows its dramatic side, and especially Martin Freeman plays a pivotal part in that turning out well, giving one of the best acting performances of his career when experiencing Sherlock's suicide, talking to his psychiatrist, and addressing his deceased friend via tombstone. Of course, the programme's protagonist isn't actually dead – the outcome of Arthur Conan Doyle's source material and the fact that the BBC has renewed their biggest accomplishment in years for a third series strongly suggest that. However, it still feels like a bizarre decision by screenwriter Stephen Thompson to prematurely solve the 'mystery' by showing the consulting detective alive and well at the end of this episode already. Someone should mail this man the link to the Wikipedia entry on cliffhangers.

I'm not driven up the wall by that, however, and Thompson has done an otherwise exquisitely fine job at devising "The Reichenbach Fall", combining humour and suspense and giving a specific purpose to every single scene. In my opinion, this is the best Sherlock instalment up to that point, and even if the third series unexpectedly made a muck of delineating its eponym's faked suicide, my stance on this wouldn't change a bit.

My detective scribblings: • »In a twist worthy of a Conan Doyle novella, Mr Sherlock Holmes was yesterday revealed to be an expert witness at the trial of 'Jim' Moriarty.« - The fictional newspaper articles couldn't possibly get any better than that. • Sherlock claiming to never have liked riddles is in a bit of a contrast to his profession, isn't it? Unsolved cases are a sort of riddles, if you ask me. • Some excellent soundtrack choices at the beginning of this episode: firstly, the classical music playing while Moriarty stages his break-ins and then, a wonderful jazz song by Nina Simone in the moments before the trial. • In this episode more than ever, Mycroft shows a lot of disagreeable character traits – indirectly contributing to his brother's supposed death, for example. But the final straw is really him reading The Sun. Also: there just has to be some way in which he is connected to Sherlock surviving that jump, since he is on the good side of characters after all. • Sherlock having to kill himself in this episode obviously sets him thinking. For an easy way out, he should have just listened to the useful advice Inspector Lestrade gave to those worrying about the cabbie/suicide assistant getting to them in the pilot: »Don't commit suicide.« • Best quote: any random sentence uttered by Moriarty.