because he said he was going to wait! that's what targets do! That explains it all!

"However, calling him a "problem solver for the Ruling Class" is too extreme in the other direction."

"By the time Mary shoves Sherlock out of the way of a *completely forseeable situation* and takes a cliche to the heart"

Heh, actually, at first I thought the same - then he *went back and used the hacker anyway* (to magically find out who bought those particular six Thatcher figures)! Why not just introduce him then, if the point was to introduce him so we can come back to him later in the season? It's just weird. Maybe it was a detail…

Eh, most people count at least 4 (episodes 1 and 3 of seasons 1 and 2). Just about everyone seems to hate S1E2, S2E2 is more divisive, and S3E3 has fans (I quite like it).

yeah, it's a trap a lot of detective-ish media fall into - they think the fans like the main cast, so suddenly the main cast is involved in EVERYTHING. every week one of them is IN DANGER! or MURDERED! or there's a NEW TWIST! or something. But we didn't need all that stuff to happen to them to be interested in the…

There should be a special corollary of the Chekhov's Gun law which deals with the rules about how much more you have to pay actors who get speaking lines…

I think we all had Loose End Fatigue by that point.

Sure, that I can buy - except doesn't it just make the problem of how the hostage takers know the name even worse? If amo is Smallwood's codename, but it was the secretary who tipped off the hostage takers about AGRA, why would they know or care about Smallwood's codename at all?

No, it's still a pretty ridiculous coincidence that someone just happened to die at the right time and in a sufficiently interesting way for Sherlock to get involved at one of just *five houses in the country* where these six statues with incredibly dangerous significance for Mary happened to be.

Well sure, but that only makes it more infuriating, because:

I find it a bit hard to compare because they're pretty different. Blind Banker wasn't this grand mess caused by a show getting seriously off the rails with its long-term planning, it was just a poorly-written episode of what was, at the time, a pretty straightforward show. Ditto Hounds of Baskerville. Empty Hearse I…

Who cares! Just hand-wave it away with some quick cuts!

Her justification was purely that it was about distancing herself from her baby and Watson and Holmes so they wouldn't be in danger. Which was about as plausible as the rest of the plot, and doesn't actually explain why she had to go to such ridiculous lengths about it. Unless it was to make sure Holmes didn't follow…

I liked His Last Vow too, FWIW.

OK, fine - I just don't quite see what you're saying. Sure, the show had to accommodate its own choices about Mary in some way. But so what? AFAICS mostly we're not complaining about the fact that Mary died, but:

yeah, could be that. yeesh.

For bonus points, compare and contrast with the scene where similar agents bust in on the Ajay / Mary confrontation and just straight up shoot him dead.

Yes, it was weirdly specifically edited in exactly that sequence: *first* bullet fires (from, like, three metres away!), *then* Mary jumps. The scenes are so long and the sequencing so clear that you can't really call it just an oversight or anything, it seems like it must have been on purpose. It's a small thing, and…

So, uh, what you're saying is that the show initially made a huge mistake in the whole "Mary's actually a super-spy!" plot twist? How is that *better*, and why should we therefore give them a pass for proceeding to kill her off in ludicrous fashion because they couldn't think of any other way to resolve their own…