There’s something about Irene in this scene. As she says later on, John’s been gone for hours. She’s been all that time, until nightfall, safe in Sherlock’s flat with Sherlock himself, even though he doesn’t notice her presence for some time. She might’ve been around their apartment once in a while, but by her clothing she clearly hasn’t left. And once he breaks from his concentration, a sort of light comes into her eyes, they come alive, and a confession slips out. This is perhaps the first time Irene doesn’t make the conversation all about sex, or Sherlock for that matter. In that moment, when she asks “is it nice?”, there seems to be a sad resignation to her current form of living, but deep down a kind hope for a normal life, where her record is set straight and she can be, truly, free.
This post gave me a lot of emotions, all jumbled up. I agree – there’s something wonderful about this scene. Irene’s so much softer, so much more real. She’s always unapologetically and completely herself, but there’s a lot of artifice in the work she’s done. A lot of makeup and masks and being what she’s being paid to be, so many things along those lines. But here – this scene just really got to me. She let her hair down, and look what happened.
Thank you so much for posting this up tonight. It really made me smile.
Actually I consider this her moment of greatest artifice. She’s put all this work into getting at Sherlock, and now she “lets the walls come down.” Except she doesn’t, not really. She’s conning him, turning her truth and vulnerability and personhood into a weapon. This is her penultimate seduction.
Of course it doesn’t quite work, because he’s playing the game too. Neither of them wins here. Not till the end, when he finds he doesn’t have it in him to let her die in Pakistan.