The Reichenbach Fall: Act 1 (part 2)

I really adore it when Sherlock is in “dressing gown” mode. It reminds me that the writers really do understand the source material very well. It’s also a chance for us to see Sherlock at his most human and exposed. He really tends toward the childish at these moments. He’s not down to his pajamas like we saw him back in The Great Game, but he’s thrown his dressing gown on over his trousers and shirt. Vulnerable, but his guard isn’t completely down.

He tosses a newspaper on the coffeetable, complaining the whole while about the nickname the press has given him. (“Boffin” for my fellow Americans who aren’t familiar with the term, means a highly technical, usually scientific or computer-related person. A geek, really, though it’s not quite as derogatory a term from what I can tell.) John’s been following the tabloids, reading the papers, and he’s getting concerned (and not just about his own “confirmed bachelor” status).

While we’re on the subject: let’s talk about the newspapers.

The Reichenbach Fall: Act 1 (part 1)

Opening: Three Closed Cases

Act one officially opens by showing us three different cases that Sherlock has solved, and the media frenzy that surrounds his growing fame. It’s easy to assume that the entire reason these three cases are shown to us is just for humor and establishing Sherlock’s incredible new popularity in the tabloids. But what happens if we look a little closer?

This show often presents us with two kinds of clues. The first are in-universe clues: these are the things that Sherlock usually notices, the hints that will help him solve crimes. They make sense within the universe of the show. The second kind of clues are for the audience alone: sometimes they are specific lines, words, imagery. They are things like a room with a giant chessboard for a ceiling–something that in-universe is completely ordinary and meaningless, but to those of us watching it conveys a whole extra layer of meaning. Sometimes these serve as in-jokes, references, foreshadowing–they are clues for us, the viewer, to find. They make the entire show that much more layered and rewarding.

What’s In A Name?

The Reichenbach Fall

The Great Fall of the Reichenbach by J.M.W. Turner

Before we even begin to examine this episode under Sherlock’s magnifying glass, let’s take a moment to talk about the title itself.

The Reichenbach Fall is based (mostly) on the Conan Doyle novel The Final Problem (a phrase we’ll see crop up multiple times in the episode). To any ACD fan out there who hasn’t even seen the episode yet, the title will be a clear reference to the Reichenbach Falls: the location of the original celebrity death-match between Holmes and Moriarty, and the place where the original Holmes faked his death.

Within the first few minutes of the episode we’re also given something else to relate it to: “The Falls of the Reichenbach”, a classic painting by J. M. W. Turner, based on the same (real life) location from The Final Problem. Interestingly, the Tate Gallery lists this painting as “The Great Fall of the Reichenbach.”

So let’s examine the episode title: The Reichenbach Fall. “Fall” not “Falls”, singular not plural. Similar to how, in the title The Hounds of Baskerville the subject is plural, rather than the traditional singular, (a clue to the two “hounds” in the Sherlock version), the singular “fall” points us toward the resolution of this episode.

Beginnings

Something I’ve observed in every Sherlock episode to date: you can find almost everything you need to solve the case in the first act of the episode. If not solve it, then you’ll have a really big hint as to where you should be looking for answers.

For example, in A Study In Pink, when we finally get past John’s character introduction, we get a glimpse of the first three “suicides.” In the first scene we have a man in a business suit talking to a woman. She tells him to “get a cab.” The next scene is a teenage boy walking home in the rain with no umbrella. The third is a woman at a club; her friends have taken her car keys and she wants to go home.

What ties these three scenes together? Taxi cabs. They are all in a position where they would need to get a cab. (I’ll note that this is probably the easiest of all the episodes to guess at the identity of the killer.)

In The Blind Banker we’re given, within the first few moments: the teapots that will become crucial to helping Sherlock find Soo Lin, Soo Lin herself, the museum location, the wind ruffling the sheet on the statue (a clue toward how the killer gets in), John having a row with a machine (ciphers? and funnily enough the word “pin”) while Sherlock has a sword fight with a foreigner. John picking up Sherlock’s bank card, books, and the importance of secretaries wiggle their way into the first act. There is even, if we’re looking close enough for it, a shot of the very thing that caused all the trouble (not to mention some hints at what it is).