There are spoilers for “A Scandal in Belgravia”, the most recent BBC Sherlock ep in both the link and the blockquote below. Stop reading if you give a damn.
I really like the new BBC Sherlock, and I’ll say that I really enjoyed the most recent episode, “A Scandal in Belgravia”. But on later analysis, the episode was not without its flaws.
Everything goes horribly wrong at the end. Out of nowhere, Adler reveals that much of her security arrangements and her outfoxing of Holmes is down to advice received from Moriarty. That’s right. Irene Adler goes from being the fierce, resourceful, clever woman to being somebody who had to ask a man for help in order to succeed. She is not allowed to be brilliant in her own right, only through the advice from a dude who has some tension with the main dude in the show. In the space of a few lines, Adler is reduced from an active force to a passive pawn in Moriarty and Holmes’s ongoing cock-duelling.
I had initially thought that Irene Adler was always Moriarty’s accomplice/pawn, but a quick Cliff’s Notes check of “A Scandal in Bohemia” shows that wasn’t the case—that’s largely an invention of the Guy Ritchie Sherlock movies, repeated here.
