Really, there's a lot of "not good" going on in the series if you look for it. There's Mycroft's shennanigans, Irene attempts to steal information that could be used by terrorists (plus blackmail, etc.), Sherlock lets a victim suffer longer in a vest of explosives in "The Great Game" because he wants to get a leg up on Moriarty, John brags about killing people (and we've seen him do so once), Lestrade organizes a (possibly) baseless drugs bust in Sherlock's apartment to try to make Sherlock do what Lestrade wants (and his underlings help), Sarah covers up for a doctor that falls asleep on the job—the only recurring character who doesn't bend their position or abilities in questionable directions is Mrs. Hudson.

I love the show, and I can't wait for the next episode to hit iPlayer, but I'm not sure I'd look to most of the characters for moral guidance.

Oh, definitely, Plei. I like that Sherlock used the pronoun "us" in the conversation with the cigarette. Lord, I'd love to meet Mummy.

I feel like I should go back and read Bohemia after I finish Baskervilles (It's where I was in the publishing order. I didn't jump ahead or anything)

Having watched it twice, I'm both hoping and worried that we'll see Irene again.

Has anybody else poked around the online stuff?

I don't see her as having enough characterization to draw the conclusion that she's kind and compassionate.

Her actions towards Sherlock when he was pretending to be a clergyman before she identified him.

What's wrong with bragging about killing people? That seems entirely harmless, unless they were murders.

I do think that talking to Sherlock about killing people is not the same as talking about it with other people, which we haven't seen John do, that I recall.

It doesn't seem like a moral issue to me at all. That's why I'm confused. He was a soldier, and he's comfortable with and sometimes reliant on his reputation as having done so. That seems ethically legit to me--it's not like mentally torturing someone in a bomb vest or orchestrating fake police action.

Maybe not a moral issue, but it does have an air of cold-blooded-ness, I think. Someone else is going to have to work on verbalizing why, as I'm not coming up with much.

The bragging isn't the problem (although I wouldn't call it a great thing to do). But we don't know that he did kill other people, aside from the cabbie, we just know that he says he did, so I modified "John killed people" with "bragged about" to acknowledge that. Taking him at his word, he's killed people. We could, and probably should, assume he did so in defense of his military unit, but he didn't say that. He just bragged that he killed people, and in the process suggested that Sherlock—not quite a lethal enemy, although an assailant—should knock it off. It did imply he'd be willing to use deadly force to deal with a non-lethal situation. We weren't suppose to take him seriously. We probably weren't supposed to take the drug bust seriously or Sarah's covering for John's work issues seriously, either (although I sure wouldn't have wanted to be the last patient just before he conked out at his desk—heaven knows what he might have missed). But taken at face value, using implied threats based on previous killing to attempt to influence a current non-lethal situation is a bit not good.

If John wasn't fucked up too, the show wouldn't be half as much fun.

If John wasn't fucked up too, the show wouldn't be half as much fun.

Oh, yes. It's all glorious, interlocking dysfunction.