Thank you, Todd!! Posts will follow shortly.

This series comes to America in October on PBS.

I’m very aware that I have written way too much about these first three episodes and that, if ever there were tl;dr (“too long; didn’t read”) entries on Nitcentral, these are they. Not even the most dedicated (well, second most dedicated after me!) fan of the series is likely to sit and read through everything I’ve written, but I felt the need to write anyway. So, if only to get it all off my own chest, here we go:

“Sherlock Holmes is a great man, and I think one day – if we’re very very lucky – he might even be a good one.” (D.I. Lestrade)

How does Sherlock know what’s being said at the police press conference? If the cameras at the back of the room are broadcasting the conference live, then Sally’s coughed “Daily Mail” warning to Lestrade is too late.

John and Mike Stamford sit in the park drinking coffee from cups which say “Criterion” on the outside. This is a nod to the Conan Doyle story A Study in Scarlet where Watson met Stamford in the Criterion Bar before the latter introduced Watson to Holmes. [And in the pilot episode, which is an extra on the DVD and is an hour-long version of this same story, they do have the same conversation in the actual Criterion Bar.]

However much Molly fancies Sherlock, allowing him to beat up a corpse, especially one of her former colleagues, just for research seems a little brutal. It’s not until he’s finished that he tells her that the evidence is vital to an ongoing case. It would have been better if she had said that the man had bequeathed his body to the hospital. [She actually does say this in the pilot episode and it’s a shame that it wasn’t repeated here.]

I don’t know whether people outside the UK can access it, but Sherlock’s website The Science of Deduction exists and is at thescienceofdeduction.co.uk. It was set up in conjunction with the series and explains in full the reason behind the “If brother has green ladder, arrest brother” text that Sherlock sent from John’s phone. However, be careful because the site contains messages which could spoil – in particular – the third episode of this season. It’s all right to read the Green Ladder link but stay away from the Forum until you’ve seen all three episodes. John’s blog is also online here – again, beware spoilers and possibly avoid it until after you’ve seen all three.

The boys meet outside 221B Baker Street at 7 p.m. If the date of their first meeting was the same as in the Conan Doyle canon, this second meeting takes place on the 30th January (John’s blog also confirms that they first met on the 29th). By 7 p.m. it should be pitch-dark.

Lestrade arrives at Baker Street to collect Sherlock after the woman in pink has been found, and comes straight upstairs to the flat. How did he get in the front door? Mrs Hudson is in the flat with the boys, and I never get the impression that the front door is left on the latch.

Great line:
Sherlock: “The game, Mrs Hudson, is on!”

There’s a gorgeous crane shot as Sherlock and John leave the flat to go to Brixton: the camera follows Sherlock out of the flat, pans around behind the boys, then rises into the air as they leave in the taxi. It’s totally ruined by the crane being reflected in the rear of the taxi(!) but I doubt it could be avoided, and it’s still a fabulous shot.

Ignoring my earlier comment about how it should be dark by now, the boys leave Baker Street in broad daylight. It’s just over 5½ miles to Brixton by road (I am such a rabid nitpicker that I googled this to find out!) and, despite the fact that some taxis don’t like going south of the river and no matter how bad the traffic might be at the time, they would only get there after it’s fully dark if they’d stopped off for a meal or went shopping en route. In fact, it’s already dark when they’re talking in the taxi during the journey. This is another of several occasions during the season when timing goes awry and can only be caused – I suspect – either by careless directing or by clumsy editing.

Great lines:
(After Sherlock has explained how he worked out so much about John and Harry)
John: “That was amazing.”
Sherlock: “You think so?”
John: “Of course it was. It was extraordinary. It was quite extraordinary.”
Sherlock: “It’s not what people normally say.”
John: “What do people normally say?”
Sherlock: “‘P*** off’.”

It’s also very sweet the way that Sherlock bites his lip after he has finished his explanation, as if he’s expecting John to react the same way as others have, and I like his look of surprise when John is awestruck instead.

Great line:
Donovan to Sherlock: “A colleague?! How did you get a colleague?! (To John) Did he follow you home?”

No matter what the relationship (and possible history?) between Sherlock and Sergeant Donovan, her referring to him as “the freak” over the radio is incredibly unprofessional, and I’m surprised that Lestrade hasn’t pulled her up on it. There has been much conjecture online that Sherlock may have ‘used’ Sally in the same way that he uses Molly: he may have flirted with her to get information that he needed and then blanked her, and that’s why she resents him so much.

Great lines:
Sherlock: “Shut up.”
Lestrade: “I didn’t say anything.”
Sherlock: “You were thinking. It’s annoying.”

I love the onscreen text showing Sherlock’s deductions as he examines Jennifer Wilson’s body; and I adore his tiny magnifying glass.

Great line:
Sherlock: “What is it like in your funny little brains? It must be so boring.”

There’s been enormous online controversy over the choice of actor to play Mycroft. Much of this is because of the somewhat incestuous fact that Mark Gatiss is the co-creator of the series, but there’s also the fact that, in the stories, Mycroft is a heavily built man. However, he couldn’t have been that way here without giving away his identity to every viewer who has read the stories in his first scene with John, and we’re obviously supposed to wonder whether he might be Moriarty until he is identified at the end of the episode. They clearly try to make up for the difference between the canonical Mycroft and this one by Sherlock’s later question about whether he’s putting weight on again, and there’s further similar reference to this in the third episode.

I adore the battle of wills between Mycroft and John. Mycroft demands to see his left hand, then leans nonchalantly on his umbrella like someone who is used to being obeyed and who expects John to come closer. Instead, John stubbornly stays put and forces Mycroft to come to him.

I love the beginning of the scene where John arrives home after his encounter with Mycroft. It looks so much as if Sherlock is out of his head on drugs, and is great fun to find that he’s actually stoned on nicotine patches!

Martin Freeman does a brilliant job of depicting John’s controlled fury when Sherlock reveals that he called him all the way to Baker Street just to borrow his phone, and then wants him to send a text because he’s too lazy(/busy thinking) to do it himself.

I like the way Sherlock looks bewildered when John says he met a friend of his, then his face relaxes when John corrects himself and says it was an enemy.

Great lines:
Sherlock: “Did [my arch enemy] offer you money to spy on me?”
John: “Yes.”
Sherlock: “Did you take it?”
John: “No.”
Sherlock: “Pity – we could have split the fee. Think it through next time.”

Knowing some of the areas where this takes place was particularly annoying and totally shattered my fourth wall when Sherlock dictated the address “22 Northumberland Street.” I spent the next several minutes repeatedly telling the TV, “I work in Northumberland Street – there isn’t a 22!” (There is, however, a well-known tourist pub called The Sherlock Holmes in that road, so maybe Moff and Gatiss chose it deliberately as an homage, particularly as they changed it from Northumberland Terrace in the pilot episode.)

Great lines:
John: “Why didn’t I think of that?”
Sherlock: “Because you’re an idiot.” (Off John’s hurt expression) “No, no, no, don’t look like that. Practically everyone is.”

In the restaurant in Northumberland Street, Sherlock suggests to John that he should eat because they may have a long wait. Angelo brings a candle to the table, then suddenly John is eating from a plate in front of him, but there’s no proper indication of a passage of time during which John ordered the food and it arrived.

Sherlock plots out a mental route to intercept the taxi – except that the map in his head starts in Wardour Street, not Northumberland Street. But the chase itself is fantastic, and I love the way the traffic lights on the ground coincide with John’s journey across the rooftops!

I adore the incidental music during the scene where they’re chasing the taxi. It has a gorgeous Victorian tinge to it that seems to hark back to earlier TV adaptations of the books. The tune has been stuck in my head for weeks and I’m constantly whistling it without even realising it and annoying other people at work.

The long shot of the Californian tourist talking to the policeman shows that the taxi has stopped at a place where the road is about to become a pedestrianised area. Why would the driver go up a dead end? (I imagine that, in the real world, this was the only convenient place to film that moment, but it looks odd.)

Great lines:
John: “That was the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever done.”
Sherlock: “And you invaded Afghanistan!”
(Followed by the most adorable giggle from John!)

Sherlock only moved into the flat yesterday (at the lab he told John he’d “got my eye” on the flat which didn’t sound like he lived there yet), so surely he would know whether he’s brought in any drugs or not, and Lestrade should know that Sherlock knows, so his question about whether Sherlock is sure that the flat is drugs-free doesn’t make sense.

Sherlock and Lestrade compare nicotine patches. Aren’t those usually worn on the upper arm? (Obviously they were on their lower arms because they were quicker to reveal, but it looked corny.) However, slash shippers and fanfic writers will no doubt have a field day with the fact that both the men wear their patches in the same (unusual) way.

Great lines:
Sherlock: “This is childish.”
Lestrade: “I’m dealing with a child.”

Sherlock: “I’m not a psychopath, Anderson, I’m a high-functioning sociopath. Do your research.”

(Referring to Jennifer’s use of her stillborn daughter’s name)
Sherlock: “That was ages ago. Why would she still be upset?”
(Then, realising that everyone in the room has gone very silent, he turns to John)
Sherlock (quietly): “Not good?”
John: “Bit not good, yeah.”

Sherlock: “If you were dying – if you were being murdered – in the very last few seconds, what would you say?”
John: “‘Please, God, let me live’.”
Sherlock (irritably): “Use your imagination.”
John (with an awesomely pained expression which reminds us what he’s been through overseas): “I don’t have to.”

Sherlock: “Look at you lot. You’re all so vacant. Is it nice not being me? It must be so relaxing.”

Sherlock: “Anderson, don’t talk out loud. You lower the IQ of the whole street.”
(That one is so going to become a standard catchphrase!)

The Mephone website has a misprunt, saying, “Please select an option from the side pannel.” But kudos for the map showing the location of the phone – that really is an accurate map of Baker Street and the surrounding area.

When Sherlock goes out onto the street to meet with Jeff, the cabbie, there’s no sign of any police vehicles parked nearby. Did the volunteer ‘drug squad’ all turn up in unmarked cars? Why? It’s not like they would think that Sherlock would do a runner if he knew they were there.

What excuse did Jeff give to the Californian tourist for diverting to Northumberland Street? Why didn’t he wait until he had no-one on board before going there? The tourist might have said something to Sherlock which would arouse his suspicions of the driver.

There are, I think, three repeated musical themes in these first three episodes. The first is the Victorian-style music mentioned above. The second one features as Jeff drives Sherlock to the college (not for the first time but this is when it’s most prominent).

I love Sherlock’s look of exasperation at himself when Jeff walks away from the taxi, confident that he’ll follow.

Why did all the previous bottles contain three pills each, but these two only contain one each? Even assuming that Moriarty is providing the pills on an as-needed basis and that he intends Jeff to die after this, he won’t have told him that, and Jeff fully intends surviving if he can but might get suspicious at the difference this time. And why are the pills so bloody big?!

Actually, there’s a thought: is it possible that, unknown to Jeff, both bottles contain ‘bad’ pills this time?

If Jeff’s such a genius, why is he just a taxi driver? Too lazy to do anything better with his life?

Why does Sherlock keep insisting that it’s a 50:50 chance? Illusionists like Derren Brown use this kind of trick (persuading someone to make the choice they want them to make) all the time, so why is Sherlock saying there’s no way to work out which is the good pill? With his observational skills he should be able to read Jeff easily, regardless of Jeff’s genius status.

I also noticed on the umpteenth time of viewing that, on two separate occasions during their conversation, Jeff tells Sherlock that he has to make his choice, and nods towards the bottle closest to Sherlock. That seems like the sort of gesture that someone as smart as Sherlock would immediately be able to interpret.

Great lines:
Sherlock: “Because you’re dying, you’ve just murdered four people.”
Jeff: “I’ve outlived four people. That’s the most fun you can have on an aneurism!”

It’s been done before in other programmes, but it’s still clever the way we’re led to believe that John has arrived in the room, only to find that he’s actually in the other building.

The third regular musical theme plays as Jeff talks Sherlock into taking the pill, and is my favourite of the three, though all of them are fabulous. And it wasn’t until about the fourth time of watching that I noticed how Sherlock’s hand begins to tremble in anticipation and excitement as he starts to lift the pill towards his mouth.

After going to the window to try and see who shot Jeff, Sherlock picks up his own pill off the table and asks Jeff whether he chose correctly. When Jeff refuses to tell him, he angrily throws the pill across the room. Presumably after that he loses track of which pill is which and so never knows whether he guessed correctly or not. If he’d only put the pill into his coat pocket, he could have got it analysed later and put his mind at rest.

Great lines:
Sherlock: “They keep putting this blanket on me.”
Lestrade: “Yeah, it’s for shock.”
Sherlock: “I’m not in shock.”
Lestrade: “Yeah, but some of the guys wanna take photographs.”

Sherlock tells Lestrade that the mystery shooter had strong moral principles because he didn’t shoot until Sherlock was in immediate danger. But even if the shooter thought that Jeff might be holding a gun and forcing him to take the pill, why did he feel the need to shoot to kill? If he’s as much a crack shot as Sherlock believes he is, a wounding shot should have been enough. So it’s strange that Sherlock seems so confident that John wouldn’t serve time if the police ever found out it was him.

Continuity glitch: as Sherlock realises that John was the shooter, a white-haired paramedic steps down from the ambulance behind him. The camera viewpoint shifts momentarily to Lestrade, then back to Sherlock – and behind him the paramedic steps down from the ambulance again.

Great lines:
Lestrade: “I’ve still got questions for you.”
Sherlock: “Oh, what now? I’m in shock! Look, I’ve got a blanket!”

John: “We can’t giggle, it’s a crime scene!”

Sherlock to Mycroft: “Try not to start a war before I get home. You know what it does for the traffic.”

John suggests dim sum from the Chinese restaurant. Apparently, so I’ve heard, dim sum is usually only available as a daytime meal.

Those of us who’ve never read any Conan Doyle were a bit bewildered by the sudden reference to John being shot in the shoulder while on active duty after all the earlier emphasis on his limp. Apparently this is a brilliantly affectionate reference to the fact that Conan Doyle himself kept forgetting whether Doctor Watson had been injured by a gunshot wound to the leg or the shoulder and therefore unintentionally varied it in different stories.

People wondered what was the point of Mycroft’s aide ‘Anthea’ because her sole purpose seemed to be to deliver the corniest line of the episode just so that Mycroft could end the episode with the words, “Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson.” It also led to much theorising that maybe she will turn out to be Moriarty.

The cast of this show is utterly fabulous. Phil Davis was creepily wonderful as Jeff. I love Rupert Graves as Lestrade. Benedict Cumberbatch was put on this earth for the sole purpose of playing Sherlock (and it doesn’t hurt that he’s knicker-meltingly gorgeous), and Martin Freeman is brilliant as John and, with this role, has finally left behind his role of Tim from The Office. And despite his size problems, Mark Gatiss is a wonderful Mycroft.

There's a summary of the DVD commentary for this episode here.

Not even the most dedicated (well, second most dedicated after me!) fan of the series is likely to sit and read through everything I’ve written

I read the whole thing and agreed with pretty much everything you wrote (at the time of writing this I have only watched episode one so i appreciated the non-spoilers....)

This is me being really nitpicky, but that’s never stopped me before : in the cab to Brixton, Sherlock tells John how he worked out so much about him and Harry. The beginning of the description is interspersed with flashback clips of John as he walked into the lab at Bart’s and commented about how it was different to how it was in his day, and there’s a freeze-frame of Sherlock observing John while holding a pipette in mid-drip onto a slide. It’s a lovely shot, but in the original footage Sherlock straightened up as soon as John walked into the lab, so he didn’t hear John’s comment and didn’t see how he stood until after he had used the pipette.

John picks up the newspaper to read at 221B after Mrs Hudson leaves to make him a cup of tea. He folds it in half, then we cut to a close-up and the paper is unfolded again. Sherlock speaks from the door and the camera angle changes again to show that the paper is half-folded.

I’ve been so busy admiring the cross-over between the hand-held camera shot and the crane shot when the boys leave Baker Street to go to Brixton, that I totally missed that there’s an even bigger error than the crane being reflected in the rear of the taxi. If you look to the right of Sherlock as he walks to the edge of the pavement, there’s a man crossing the road, and parked on the other side of the road just beyond him are two silver cars. As John crosses the camera lens, both silver cars magically disappear and are replaced by a single black one! Presumably the change happened in the minutes while the crew were attaching the camera to the crane, but you would have expected someone to notice and for them to re-set the scene and start again with the hand-held.

I did a macro cartoon sequence about it here.

When Sherlock goes out onto the street to meet with Jeff, the cabbie, there’s no sign of any police vehicles parked nearby.

Except for the two police cars parked directly on the other side of the road to the cab! I would slap myself with a wet lettuce for not having noticed them before, but my TV has always been very dark and I only recently found out how to improve the picture. It's amazing what I can see on it now!

But apparently Sherlock didn't notice them when he and John came home, because I'm sure he would have reacted to their presence and wondered why they were there.

Is this really going to be an ongoing series? I ask because my Blu-Ray doesn't say 'Series One' or anything of the sort, simply 'Sherlock,' leaving me with the impression that this is pretty much it.

This is a case where I would definitely prefer to be wrong, of course.

People wondered what was the point of Mycroft’s aide ‘Anthea’,

All in all, Mycroft doesn't figure in the series much at all. He's a red herring in the first episode until the end when it's revealed that he's not Morarity. He's not in the second episode, and in the third he's mostly just a distraction (to Holmes, not to the viewer). This is partly why I'm assuming/hoping there will be another series: he wasn't really needed if this was all there is.

Back to Athena, she's surprisingly ditzy. Is Moffat sentimental for 80s sitcoms?

I'm surprised Sherlock didn't figure out who the shooter was until he did. He knew all the facts but needed to look at Watson to put it all together?

Sepeaking of which, this interpretation of Holmes has to talk out his thoughts more than others (well, at least Jeremy Brett).

The actor would have made a great Doctor (Who), but I'm happy to have him as Sherlock.

There really are going to be three more episodes next year (*Callie does the happy dance*). Maybe if they start doing several episodes a year, they'll begin to refer to them as "seasons" but this wasn't considered to be "Season 1" when it was released because the DVD was already in production before the second set of episodes was confirmed.

Mycroft, I think, was kind of shoehorned in after they made the original one-hour pilot episode and then needed another thirty minutes to pad it out. I liked his inclusion, even though he wasn't necessary to the plot.

As for Anthea, I have to say that although there was no point to her at all, I rather like her. And after having watched this episode four hundred bajillion times, the one line that still makes me laugh out loud every time is her blank "Oh!" when John reminds her that they met earlier that evening, and John's reaction to her not remembering him. I don't think she's anywhere near as ditzy as she's made out to be - maybe she'll be included in future episodes and turn out to be a bit kick-ass.

Sherlock's a bit slow on a couple of occasions during this episode, not only in who the shooter is, but who the killer is. The whole, "Who hunts in the middle of a crowd?" routine, when followed by Sherlock saying, "Haven't a clue," is not really what we would expect of the greatest detective in the world!

Yes, Cumberbatch would definitely have been a great Doctor if Matt Smith hadn't got the role, although I believe that he has said he wouldn't have wanted the job.

Thanks, Callie. Very happy that there will be more of these.

Since you're not familiar with the references to the original series, here are some that occurred in this story.

The first Holmes story, one of the four novels, was called 'A Study in Scarlet.'

The meeting of Holmes and Watson was pretty much the same as it appeared here. A mutual friend tells Watson that he's the second person that day to say he was looking to share a room.

A murder victim wrote RACHE in blood.

Lestrade is pretty much the same as here.

Mycroft appears in only two short stories. He's considerably smarter than Sherlock but simply lacks the energy to be bothered to go out and search for clues, expecting his brother to do the actual work. He does work for the government and is also a founding members of an old boy club where he spends most of his time. (I think he founded it.)

Contrary to popular misconception, Holmes only meets Moriarity in only one short story where he is killed off along with Holmes (although Holmes is later shown to have survivied). Moriarity briefly appears in another, written later but set earlier, but they don't meet.

I'm no doubt missing some. I wasn't making a list while watching it. The third episode had many references, at least in the beginning. Forthcoming.

Sherlock: “I’m not a psychopath, Anderson, I’m a high-functioning sociopath. Do your research.”

You call that a great line????

That was the best line of the entire series!

After listening to the commentary track, I realize the plot is more closer to the original that I had thought. I thought it was a completely different story except for the 'Rache,' but actually they just tweaked it enough to make it barely recognzable. (And in my defence, I read the story once, in the 80s, and haven't watched Brett's version since the 90s.)

In the original, someone was going around poisoning people, but they were former associates, and 'Rache' did indeed mean 'revenge' here. He was a cabby (completely forgot about that) named Jefferson Hope.

The Baker Street Irregulars were used, but they were beggar children whereas in the new series (though not this episode) they were a network of homeless people, not children.

Doyle's Holmes putting an ad in the paper about a ring is echoed in Moffat's Holmes calling the victim's cell phone.

Not sure, but I think the argument about the Earth revolving around the sun was from this story. If I'm wrong, it's the next one.

>and haven't watched Brett's version since the >90s.

Actually, "A Study in Scarlet" was one of the few Holmes stories which wasn't adapted for the Brett series.

Absolutely right. It began with Sign of Four. Boy is my Holmes rusty. Thanks.

Just reread "A Study in Scarlet" because of the show. I'm amazed at how well they told an almost completely different story in "Pink" while retaining so many elements of "Scarlet": It's not only that a cab driver was doing the poisoning, as Kevin pointed out, it's a cab driver with an aneurysm and a short time to live, and he offered his victims a choice of pills, saying he'd take the other. The murderer has a completely different motive, and there is a different meaning of Rache, and other differences and details make for a new story, but it's fascinating noticing.

Incidentally, am I the only one who thinks that the cab driver is the scariest of the villains they created? I thought (spoilers, highlight to read): the secret Oriental Society in The Blind Banker was pretty standard-issue and Moriarty is (so far) another character in the Joker line, completely nuts, giggly, unpredictable, and one wonders how he manages to think straight, while the cab driver's completely sane, cold-blooded decision to play out the game was chilling, as was his ability to manipulate Sherlock.

Don't get me wrong: I enjoyed all 3 episodes, but I think this had the strongest villain.

Yeah, I'd agree. And although I love the series, I was a little disappointed with Moriarity. While being nuts adds to his scariness, it detracts from his cerebralness. Maybe it's just an act as his gay co-worker role was to unsettle his opponents, but his encounter with Holmes had a masks-off feel to that undermines this theory.

And if Moriarity is a consultant criminal, why is he sponsoring murderers? That's overstepping the role he claims to play. (The idea of sponsoring murders is a great one though.)

But I do agree that this it's brilliant how they built a new story from so many elements borrowed from the original.

Benedict Cumberbatch was put on this earth for the sole purpose of playing Sherlock (and it doesn’t hurt that he’s knicker-meltingly gorgeous)

i agree...on both accounts.

This is a real “You do see. You just don’t observe” moment: during the taxi chase there are all sorts of flashes of road signs, both metallic upright ones and painted ones on the road. The latter in particular are often spinning around to emphasise the speed of the chase, but it’s taken me all these months to actually properly notice that, as Sherlock finally crashes into the front of the taxi yelling, “Police!” and thereby ending the chase, there’s one final spinning flash of a sign painted on the road, which reads simply, “END”.

Now that I know it’s there, I can’t help but hug myself with delight each time I see it, as I consider it one of the most brilliant and inspired (and yet really simple) moments in the series.

Sherlock is very cocky about working out that “Rachel” is Jennifer’s password, but she never finished scratching it on the floor – it could have been the name followed by several numbers. I’m sure he would have worked out what the numbers were fairly quickly but he doesn’t seem to even consider that possibility.

Sherlock asks John to read out Jennifer Wilson’s email address from the label on her suitcase. John narrates it and Sherlock types it as “jennie.pink@mephone ...” That’s an unusual spelling of “jenny.” Clearly Sherlock remembered the unusual spelling from looking at the label earlier in the episode, and it’s the sort of thing that I would have expected him to have remembered. However, I would also have expected him to have automatically memorised the whole thing, so he shouldn’t really need to be reminded.

How come Watson can walk without limping after he forgets his stick?

I liked the scene where Watson asked Anthea, "Are you doing anything tonight?" & Anthea answers, "No." followed by an uncomfortable silence as Watson realizes she didn't realize he was hitting on her & leaves.

I also wondered why Mycroft hadn't sacked her, then I thought, "Maybe he did 'sack' her & that's why he can't fire her?" ;-)

It annoyed me when the villain claimed he gave his victims a choice.
It's not a choice when you're holding a gun at someone's head.

Watching the pill scene I wondered if both pills were poison & the murderer just had an immunity or had taken an antidote previously.
I mean really, what is there about a serial killer that says the guy is to be trusted?

WolverineX - How come Watson can walk without limping after he forgets his stick?
Because he didn't really need it. His limp was psychosomatic, or all in his head.

Having finally seen the series I think this was the best episode of the lot. Not to say the other episodes were bad, they weren't, but they just didn't grab me the way this one did.

Two years late, but I finally wrote transcripts for this series.

What did Watson know when he made the decision to shoot Jeff?
He could see Sherlock and Jeff, but he couldn't hear what they were saying.
Did he see Jeff's gun-that-was-really-a-lighter?
Did Jeff make some threatening move that I can't remember?

If I'm remembering correctly, Watson basically saw Sherlock having a pleasant conversation with an old man and shot the geezer with no proof of evil intent.

If Sherlock had been talking to a witness, a future client, a girl scout selling cookies, would Watson have shot them as well? ;-)

Well, PBS is airing this again and I just rewatched the scene in question.

Sherlock & Jeff are standing there, Jeff is trying to talk Sherlock into taking the pill, and Watson shoots Jeff with no idea what was going on.

How long before Watson broke his habit of shooting random people who are talking to Sherlock? ;-)

Why do so many people refer to them as "Sherlock and Watson"?! It's happened since the series started: Mofftiss said that no matter how many times they advertised the show before it aired, and no matter how many times they referred to the boys by their first names, or by both names, all the publicity still called them "Sherlock and Watson"!

Anyway, in response to your question, Keith: I can't think of a proper explanation. John knows that they're looking for a serial killer but the last time he was with Sherlock in 221B, Sherlock hadn't yet said anything about the killer being a cab driver. As you say, it's entirely possible that Sherlock has slunk off to talk to someone who might help find the killer; and John hasn't arrived when Jeff produces the fake gun. All John can see - from quite a distance away - is the two men holding up a pill each and moving it towards their mouth. This is hardly life-threatening behaviour from Jeff.

Sherlock later says to Lestrade, "Kill shot over that distance from that kind of a weapon – that’s a crack shot you’re looking for." If John is such a good shot, why did he shoot to kill? If he was so (inexplicably) convinced that Jeff was some kind of threat, why not shoot him in the arm?

I think the actual answer - and sadly this is something that Mofftiss relied on far too much in later seasons - is, "It's drama; it doesn't have to make sense as long as it looks good."

Because Sherlock & John doesn't seem right?

Right ... So you and I can never set up as a crime-fighting duo because we'll only ever be referred to as Keith and Sullivan?? ;-)

Callie & Morgan?

That has a nice ring to it

The final shooting script of this episode is now available online here.

It includes an interesting additional short scene just after Lestrade's press conference about the 'serial suicides' which was cut from the final version. I don't know whether it was actually filmed.

Keith! Finally here's the evidence for why John shot the cabbie. (scroll down to the third pie chart)

:-D

To quote John (A. Lang): Hands off! He's mine!!!

;-)