His Last Vow squee: the top 10
I was thinking about favorites and, of course, Series 3 (because everything ends up being about Series 3) and realized that my many of favorite bits of the series are in HLV. In many ways, that’s my favorite episode of the three. TEH was fresh and exciting and TSoT was funny, melancholy and touching, but HLV was unforgettable, intense, full of reversals, villainy and question marks— and passionate, epic love. This doesn’t mean it’s easy— or that I’m in a hurry to rewatch it— but nevertheless, I think it’s my favorite, the episode that was the most up my alley in terms of themes, angst-level, romanticism, and mood.
Of course, it’s also got some of the scenes I hated most in all of BBC Sherlock. My feelings about HLV were very intense in both directions, but my issues were all due to the misdirections and the emotional wallop is quite intentional, I think. It fades with time, though, but the fondness remains, at least for me. And so, I thought that given that this episode won more than one Emmy (woo-hoo!), it deserved some celebration.
So, why not: I thought I’d try to see what my favorite 10 scenes are. Or maybe just indulge in some gratuitous screen-capping, ‘cause that’s always fun, too.
1.
Sherlock looks so ridiculously, epically attractive in John’s dreams, doesn’t he? And I find it so cute that he’s dreaming about this: their beginning, Sherlock looking fabulous and untouchable as he literally hovers over John’s pillow, telling John he needed him, and he was going to show him the world. Ella would have a field day. And John’s breathing ‘oh god yes’, as if Sherlock had just propositioned him. I suppose he had.
2.
Well, John’s not going to wait around for Sherlock to come and show him a good time. BAMF!John can take care of his own needs, quite literally. One of my favorite John scenes ever. He’s the BAMFiest, and the rampant dry sarcasm makes me giggle. I also think it’s quite important that this is clearly a side of John that’s dying to come out, and logically, he’s had to have consciously repressed it recently (and that can’t last). This is the man who misses the war, and who didn’t want his wife here to see this— he wanted Sherlock. But nothing really goes John’s way in HLV, does it.
i had a dream that the Christmas special was Sherlock hijacking a one man show of The Christmas Carol to solve a case, and John just running along behind as the beleaguered stage manager. It was pretty great.
I’d watch that
Director Guillermo del Toro talks about Rinko Kikuchi and her character Mako Mori in Pacific Rim:
“I was very careful how I built the movie. One of the other things I decided was that I wanted a female lead who has equal force as the male leads. She’s not going to be a sex kitten, she’s not going to come out in cutoff shorts and a tank top, and it’s going to be a real earnestly drawn character.” Noting that the other actors were exhausted and “destroyed physically” by filming in the intensive Jaeger cockpit harnesses, del Toro said: “The only one that didn’t break was Rinko Kikuchi, the girl. She never complained… I asked Rinko her secret and she said ‘I think of gummi bears and flowers.’ I try to do that in my life now” (x).
