Just read your graveyard domestic... Question for you. Few friends and I are starting to wonder if he whole bloody episode is actually ALL MP. from start to finish. Thoughts?

Oy. This is a question that is still hotly being debated, and there’s no one accepted answer out there. People arguing different ideas each have at least some data to back up their arguments. Honestly, I think this will be one of those things we’ll continue to quibble over until we get series 4.

Here’s what I can tell you. From what I can see, there’s a general consensus that the graveyard scene and the hospital scene are mind palace. There are some people who think the first plane scene is real but not the last; or the last plane scene is real but not the first; or that what we see fades between mind palace and reality fluidly among both scenes; or, like you, that the whole damn thing is in his head. So no matter what you’re thinking, there’s a reading of that.

For my two cents, my gut feeling is that both plane scenes are real. (But I’m open to hearing different readings and getting more data, of course.) Here’s why:

1) the physical anomalies that would indicate mind palace on the plane don’t convince me (yet). Mary looks pregnant to me. Sherlock hands Mycroft a list, and the same list shows up in Mycroft’s hands again at the end. The hospital scene and the graveyard scene were clearly not real, as evidenced by the sudden location shift, and you know, the skeleton suddenly animating itself and attacking Benedict Cumberbatch.

2) The characterizations that people are saying are different could just as easily be season 4 foreshadowing as it could be an inconsistency indicating mind palace. As a reminder, we don’t know what the hell Mary or Mycroft have been up to since she shot Sherlock. We don’t know what they know about each other, if they’ve worked something out behind the scenes, or what. Mary doing the phone hacking thing could just as easily be a hint of her as Moriarty as it could be mind palace. Then, there’s Mycroft. People are saying that a blatantly emotional Mycroft is out of character, but consider this: Sherlock’s perception of Mycroft is as the nagging, overbearing, big brother. We see it in reality (think ASIB), and we see it in his mindpalace (the fatcroft scene, and HLV). However, Mycroft in reality is somewhat gentler with his brother. Remember the phone call to mycroft in TSOT? He isn’t all that antagonistic. Mycroft’s reaction on the plane strikes me more as character development than anything else.

3) Think about the script as if you were one of the writers. This is what really settles it for me, but it is based outside of the episode itself, so bear with me. The whole “it was all in his head” trope is one that needs to be used very sparingly, and very judiciously, because if you fuck it up it can easily become a cliche or a crutch on which to hang bad writing, and generally a cheap trick which runs the risk of truly pissing off your viewing audience if you go astray. Basically, I think the writers have spent the available collateral they have on this one. Most viewers aren’t going to assume the plane scenes were fake. So for them to come back in 4.1 and basically say, “ha ha the modern bits were actually fake! Tricked you again!” simply would not fly for the vast majority of the audience. I think they’re more sophisticated writers than that. This is less of an argument and more of a gut feeling, but there we go.

Of course, on the other hand………..there is tie hell, which is very, very real. (Thanks so fucking much for that, @skulls-and-tea) Basically, who fucking knows. Not me.