Call Me What You Like

wellingtongoose:

Part 2 of an analysis of the Reichenbach Fall, how Lestrade’s decision to allow Sherlock to work on his crime scenes has set the Met police up for a huge scandal.

Please read part 1 first to find out why Sherlock is not an official consulting detective and what Lestrade has done is highly illegal.

I examine:

• Why Donovan and Anderson hate Sherlock – it is much more complicated than just petty jealousy.
• Why informing the Chief Inspector about Sherlock was an incredibly brave thing for Sally to do.
• Reasons why Sally felt she had to report Sherlock at that time
• Why Sally Donovan is a very human, flawed and brilliant character. 

 

Read More

I really enjoyed reading this, knowing that someone took the time to get all this information straight and put it down in one place, because police procedure is tricky and everybody likes to learn something new, right?

I also agree with the description of Sally Donovan and her actions. She might not act professionally towards Sherlock as a person, with all the name calling and such, but if you hate her for that I hope you have something to say about Sherlock as well. He can be quite a dick, as John so eloquently puts it, and if you’re going to call her out for being a bitch, you better note that Sherlock’s just as much of one.

It makes me kind of sad whenever I watch/discuss the program with somebody new and the only thing they have to say about her is “she’s a bitch.” We, as viewers of the show, have the luxury of knowing that she’s wrong in her suspicions and that Sherlock actually is just that brilliant. There’s a bit of dramatic irony in The Reichenbach Fall, because we have to sit and watch this whole explosion of suspicion and arrests and lost faith while knowing that besides Sherlock, John and ourselves, nobody has concrete evidence that Sherlock isn’t actually a criminal.

Sally doesn’t know any of that, and for her to bring her (reasonably grounded, in her eyes) suspicions to her superiors is just doing what’s morally right, her personal dislike of Sherlock nonwithstanding. She does care about her work, and she cares about the victims of the crimes she investigates, from what we see of her. 

I’m actually pretty cool with her. I mean, Sherlock says completely awful things much more often than she does, and i’m cool with him. They’re both good people, when you get down to it.