Sherlock: 10 Ridiculous Plot Points Lifted Straight From The Books
8. A System Of Japanese Wrestling
While Sherlock was toying with his friend's emotions, Gatiss and Moffat were having some fun with their audience and the years of speculation they had been stuck with since the last episode, The Reichenbach Fall, aired. This two year gap is nothing compared to the Great Hiatus the original Holmes audience had to suffer as ten years passed between Holmes' apparent death in The Final Problem and an explanation of his resurrection in The Empty House (although they at least had The Hound of the Baskervilles to keep them entertained in the meantime). In the end, audiences were disappointed by the myriad jokey takes on the fevered internet theorising about Sherlock's survival. The closest thing we were given to an actual explanation was couched in such a way that cast plenty of doubts on its veracity, both for the characters in the show itself and the viewers at home. For the record, Sherlock suggested on a few occasions in the episode that there were actually 13 possible ways he could have survived once he was up on the rooftop with Moriarty. John interrupts part way through this explanation at one point, but not before Sherlock has rather implausibly proposed "a system of Japanese wrestling" as one of those methods. This throwaway remark is a reference to the fact that, however unsatisfactory Gatiss and Moffat's solution for their hero's survival might be, it won't match up to the unconvincing story Doyle's Holmes put forward in The Empty House: "I have some knowledge, however, of baritsu, or the Japanese system of wrestling, which has more than once been very useful to me". And Another Thing: The story The Empty House involves Holmes' plan to capture Sebastian Moran, re-imagined here as Lord Moran, using a dummy of himself in an empty Baker Street house. This is referenced in His Last Vow where Mary is tricked by what she thinks is a dummy of Sherlock at the literally empty house that is just a facade in Leinster Gardens. Here, though, the "dummy" turns out to be John.
