What I quite like is, as in the real world, pretty well everyone that matters is hopelessly dysfunctional - if not obsessed with power and influence then lost in their own social detachment.
Like Holmes’ protege - deserves a mention!
Don’t forget Holmes used the media to get the drug stuff out where Magnussen would see it, though. It’s not a secret that can be used for blackmailing.
I found it kind of weird that the pressure point was “opium,” rather than “heroin” or “morphine.”
Are we sure about how much Sherlock is in control of the drug thing? He was fiddling a lot with his drip. It’s canon that Holmes wasn’t seriously impaired by his drug habits, but it’s also canon that Watson worked hard to discourage him from using them.
I thought he was fiddling with the drip whilst in company?
I hope that’s just it. The smoking thing is a good running joke, but serious addiction would be tedious.
I did find it amusing that Benedict Cumberbatch conveys that Sherlock is high by talking at a normal speed.
OK, so is this Sherlock actually a drug addict? I mean beyond smoking cigarettes. I thought he was clean beyond smoking.
It’s been hinted once or twice in the other seasons. Like Scandal in Belgravia, where John and Mrs Hudson are searching the flat for some unspecified substance at Mycroft’s behest since he believes it’d be a bad time for Sherlock (who was, in John’s words ‘clean’), or in A Study in Pink, when Lestrade is turning the flat on the pretense of a drug bust and Sherlock keeps interrupting John when he’s going on about there being no way Sherlock would have drugs. (That latter can also be interpreted as being about Mrs Hudson’s ‘soothers’ - and I think the fact that she brings them up was supposed to suggest that - but John wasn’t just talking about drugs in the house, but particularly about Sherlock’s using them.)
As far as we know he’s been clean during the period the episodes cover, until this last one.
I thought smoking was Sherlock’s equivalent of the cocaine the original Holmes likes to use.
I also assumed, partly based on the fact that it didn’t seem to end up being important to the plot, that the “opium” was somewhat shoehorned in as an excuse for the story to start in the same manner as The Man with the Twisted Lip. In that story, Watson is sent to an opium den to recover the husband of Mary’s friend, where he initially overlooks a man who appears to be a long-term opium addict but is actually Holmes, disguised as part of a case.
i enjoyed the whiny way he said “not now” when john “helped” him out of the crack house.
the way that the bbc show has handled the drug thing is that he had drug troubles in the past, and that mycroft keeps an eagle eye on him going back to the troubles.
i also enjoyed the way he said “morning” to janine in the loo.
I thought it was a possibly-brilliant episode. It explained how Mary had used her “decided genius” in this universe. Nice play on Google Glass. “Sherl” and his lady friend used each other and enjoyed it with no regrets. Holmes pere et mere are charming. And…
HOW THE FUCK DID MORIARTY TURN INTO HAROLD SAXON?
Ahem. Perhaps the Moffitt/Gattis/Davies crowd is just a little too small.
You have to be kidding. The episode was garbage. Just full of stupid writing and plot holes.
Would you please expand your thoughts more? Your brief and unexplained posts kind of read like minor threadshitting. Please analyze things in more detail. Thanks. 
He was the substitute photographer. And probably a late - and self-selected - substitute.
See, this is what I missed. He was clearly targetting specific women to date, but I missed what marked these women out and what specifically he got from them.
Bond isn’t Sherlock. We expect Bond to shoot people, because applied violence is the essence of what he does - the licence to kill. We expect Sherlock to defeat people by outwitting them, and in that context a bullet to the head doesn’t really seem like a display of intellectual mastery.
It feels like they wrote themselves into a corner. It could have been explicit that Sherlock (and Mycroft) had outthought Magnusson if they’d made Sherlock’s gambit with the laptop a strategic fork:
- If there are vaults and Sherlock sees them, then Mycroft and his team turn up, destroy the vaults and arrest/humiliate Magnusson, as initially threatened.
- If there are no vaults, Mycroft in his role as shadowy security potentate eliminates Magnusson. He “dies in an accidental fire” and no-one ever asks too many questions.
But this requires Mycroft to be in on it; there’s no hint that he wasn’t drugged unconscious for real, and by the time Sherlock takes it on himself to kill Magnusson, we can pretty much rule out that Mycroft was in on it.
As an alternative, it would have worked well for John to be the killer. We know he’s killed to protect Sherlock so clearly he’d do it for Mary. Once Magnusson reveals that he is the sole repository of all the secrets, it’s good for simple (but not stupid) John to see the direct, soldierly way out that the two chessmasters in the room overlook.
Having Sherlock kill him not as a plan but as a desperate improvisation is probably the least satisfactory way to eliminate Magnusson.
Also, Magnusson’s attitude to security is a gaping plot hole. Telling people who want to eliminate your secrets that they only exist in your head is self-evidently risky even to a non-genius like me. It could be claimed to be hubris but for the earlier scene in Baker St. Magnusson arrives unexpectedly, but brings two goons to shake down Holmes and Watson for weapons although he had no specific reason to think they’d try violence.
Later, when he meets them with every intention of revealing the secret of Appledore, there are no guards, no weapon checks, not even the faintest nod to the possibility of physical risk. It would be ludicrous even if there hadn’t been an attempt on his life by their associate only weeks ago.
He sure displayed more intellectual mastery than the guy he outwitted – and the fact that you didn’t expect it just means he, uh, outwitted you, too.
Besides, wasn’t this just a rehash of how he dealt with Moriarty, only less so? The solution there was Sherlock pointing out that he was perfectly willing to do something worse than killing the guy, prompting Moriarty to kill himself instead; the fact that Sherlock is willing to do something – er, not worse than “worse than death” is, y’know, milder.
(For purposes of this argument, ignore the last ten seconds of the latest episode.)
Given he doesn’t have Sherlock’s skill set, how does Mycroft square the murder with his peers so that Watson isn’t charged?
It worked fine. Effectively, the whole writing team (Moffat, Gattis and Thompson) got to kill Rupert Murdoch. Proper ‘left-wing’ (see Daily Mail article) conclusion.
As I said, Magnusson’s failure to consider the possibility of physical violence,even though he guarded against it from these same people previously and even though he came this close to being shot earlier is unutterably stupid - which at that point makes “outwitting” him by shooting him no great achievement at all. If you have to nerf your super-smart antagonist to that extent to get your hero to win, your hero is diminished too.
Case in point - as soon as Magnusson revealed that all his threats would collapse on his death, I thought “Well, just shoot him then. You’ve got a gun. Somehow.” You probably did too. But the point of the show is for Sherlock to come up with a solution that doesn’t immediately occur to the average viewer.
It is kind of rehash of how he dealt with Moriarty - be utterly outmanoeuvred at every turn until the bad guy decides to make it absurdly easy for you just so you get to win. I didn’t think much of it then, and even less now.