S05.E08: How the Sausage Is Made

[ElectricBoogaloo]

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Joan worries Sherlock's sobriety is at risk when she learns he has been lying to her about attending recovery meetings. Meanwhile, the sleuths discover a man's death that was caused by ingesting poisoned sausage is connected to a lab working on a breakthrough in the artificial meat industry.

Promo:

[j5cochran]

I've never noticed this before, but . . . 

There were at least three references to original Doyle stories in tonight's episode - Sherlock's note at the beginning references the Six Napoleons, Mr. Holder leaves Sherlock a Beryl Coronet as payment for a case, and a person named Musgrave is mentioned (no mention of a Ritual). Did I miss any?  Do other episodes have this sort of Easter Egg that I have never before noticed?

As for the episode itself, I'm squicked out about the human sausage and "shmeat".  And I loved Watson's coat, that she wore while trailing Sherlock to the impromptu park concert.

[galax-arena]

I really should not have watched this episode while eating... Sherlock's reaction to sniffing the dead guy's stomach contents pretty much mirrored my own. 

[Vermicious Knid]

So just FYI, I've only ever heard pareve (פרווה) pronounced as pah-rev, or parv, and not how they said it. It's also a transliteration so can be spelled more than one way. They are correct it means something neither meat or diary and can therefore be eaten with any meal. Fish is actually pareve. And many observant Muslims will buy kosher food because there are relatively few certified halal brands and they know there won't be any pork in a kosher item.

As to the actual story it seems like they're going for as twisty and convoluted as they can, regardless of whether the storytelling is particularly good or not. Corporate hitman, no a hitwoman, no they didn't actually kill him, but it was his wimpy coworker, except it was really the company president. Uh...

[GaT]

2 hours ago, galax-arena said:

I really should not have watched this episode while eating... Sherlock's reaction to sniffing the dead guy's stomach contents pretty much mirrored my own. 

I also was eating when that scene came on. Not cool.

[fauntleroy]

Props for the lab-grown meat idea, but I missed the point of going to the trouble of breaking into a place to grind the body into sausage as opposed to just killing him and disposing in the you know, regular ways. Why bother! Seems like way too much trouble, to what end? Presumably that sausage restaurant will go out of business but it was not a target was it?

[paigow]

1 hour ago, fauntleroy said:

Props for the lab-grown meat idea, but I missed the point of going to the trouble of breaking into a place to grind the body into sausage as opposed to just killing him and disposing in the you know, regular ways. Why bother! Seems like way too much trouble, to what end? Presumably that sausage restaurant will go out of business but it was not a target was it?

CEO remembered the Sopranos episode where Christopher ground up a guy in Satriale's....

[fauntleroy]

Thinking about the sausage making more - imagine the work to kill a guy, break into a place, haul the body in, chop into pieces, grind grind grind throughout the night, add the signature anise (!) to the product, and clean up so well that the owner doesn't notice the mess you have made, operating equipment presumably you have never used before. And storing the result in the fridge so carefully that the owner doesn't notice.

Thus the conversation: Human in my sausage, an outrageous accusation! Well have you noticed anything out of the ordinary lately? No. Hmm well depends. Does somebody breaking in last week and using the machinery all night count? Does a 150 lbs or so of sausage that I didn't make appearing in the fridge count? Well in that case, I guess yes.

Or I missed a scene or two.

Also, anise as a flavoring in Italian sausage is not so unusual is it? The sausage I get from the supermarket is flavored with it I think.

[beadgirl]

Yeah, the sausage shop bit was the weakest link.  I mean, an adult human male would generate a lot of ground meat -- what happened to the rest of it?  The shop-owner didn't notice?  Did other people buy and eat the human sausage, and if so why didn't they die from the horse tranquilizer? Or was the original victim unusually susceptible to it?  Or was Sherlock able to pull that sausage off the market before anyone else bought it?

God knows I'm no apologist for capitalism, but I am getting tired of "the evil CEO did it."

I like how Watson handled Sherlock's decision to stop going to meetings, and that she was able to get him to reconsider.

[possibilities]

"Better Off Ted" did an episode about lab-grown "meat"-- I remember them saying it tasted like despair.

I am having increasing trouble discerning what any of the people on this show are mumbling. It's not happening on other shows, so there's something about this one that must be mic'ed differently.

I have never heard "albino" pronounced al-BEAN-o (always heard al-BYE-no). I thought it might be a Britishism, but then Joan was doing it too.

I liked Joan's clothing again.

I appreciate that they regularly blame the crimes on financial motives. If they're going to have a crime every week, they need to blame it on something. I think greed is as realistic a motive as any other, and it makes the villains very unsympathetic.

[shapeshifter]

The squicky parts just served to fuel my obsessions with Joan's wardrobe and Johnny's diction.

Joan did have a wider variety of outfits than she did in many other episodes this season. She even had a variety of sleepwear, including one top that coordinated with the comforter. One possible mistake: When Sherlock announces that he is going to a meeting, Joan starts buttoning up the pink blouse she fell asleep in. But then when we see her tailing Sherlock, the blouse from the next scene is shown beneath her coat. Of course, maybe she decided off screen to put on a fresh blouse. Regardless, I appreciated the costume changes distracting me from any of the meat shots.

@Vermicious Knid, maybe the odd pronunciation of pareve is British?

[jaigurudeva]

3 minutes ago, beadgirl said:

Did other people buy and eat the human sausage, and if so why didn't they die from the horse tranquilizer? Or was the original victim unusually susceptible to it?

In the very beginning, the M.E. said he died from an allergic reaction to the horse tranquilizer, so presumably others could have eaten the man-meat without dying like the first victim we saw.

So the 'Salieri' guy gets off 'scot-free,' even though he defrauded the FDA? Holmes and Watson didn't even need to go to the kosher and halal certification boards about removing the chance for Next Gen Meats pareve labeling and niche market. Bringing to light that 'Salieri' falsified the data would change the FDA's ruling on the lab meat from 'meat substitute' to non-pareve meat and remove the financial gain just as well. It would take a stab into Big Meat, too.

Like many others, I'm really digging Watson's clothes this season more than other recent seasons. Much more flattering and practical than the avant-garde, sore-thumb runway outfits from the previous season.

[iMonrey]

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As to the actual story it seems like they're going for as twisty and convoluted as they can, regardless of whether the storytelling is particularly good or not. Corporate hitman, no a hitwoman, no they didn't actually kill him, but it was his wimpy coworker, except it was really the company president. Uh...

Sometimes I think this show would be more successful if it was just a tad less ambitious. By the time they got to the part with the corporate hitman, then deduced that he had a daughter in each city where the murders were committed, then it turned out she was not responsible for this crime . . . it just sort of went nowhere. It was like one twist too many. I really have a hard time following the thread sometimes - I managed to stay on top of it this time but I felt like the story made too many unnecessary turns just to be "twisty." 

It's the little moments that make the show so enjoyable: Sherlock having to perform stand-up on open mic night and saying he was told he needed to be more approachable. Joan pointing out that he really seemed to like saying "Big Meat." The way she took an interest in his sobriety meetings without being confrontational or accusatory about it. Those are the things I like. 

It doesn't really make sense to have the weekly mysteries too convoluted because it's impossible to guess the outcome, and that's half the fun of watching a mystery in the first place. Plus the fact that it's a 10:00 show and even later with football - people are too tired by then to keep up with something like this.

[fauntleroy]

Yes. It would have been fun to have seen his standup for example, instead of the went-nowhere hit-family diversion.

[MaryHedwig]

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It's the little moments that make the show so enjoyable:

I could probably watch the show if it was just about Sherlock waking up Watson and Clyde crawling on the floor.

[GaT]

12 hours ago, Vermicious Knid said:

So just FYI, I've only ever heard pareve (פרווה) pronounced as pah-rev, or parv, and not how they said it.

 

3 hours ago, shapeshifter said:

 

@Vermicious Knid, maybe the odd pronunciation of pareve is British?

I've always thought it was pronounced pah-rev too, & the show had me wondering if I had been saying it incorrectly all my life, but I think SHAPESHIFTER is correct & that it's the British way of pronouncing it. Like al-loo-MIN-ee-um or ad-VERT-iz-ment.

[Clanstarling]

6 hours ago, jaigurudeva said:

Bringing to light that 'Salieri' falsified the data would change the FDA's ruling on the lab meat from 'meat substitute' to non-pareve meat and remove the financial gain just as well. It would take a stab into Big Meat, too.

This. Pretty much everything in this episode was so convoluted and over the top that it ultimately didn't make much sense.

4 hours ago, iMonrey said:

I felt like the story made too many unnecessary turns just to be "twisty." 

Yes. There were enough complications for a "impossible "heist movie, only instead of the action, we get the explanations.

That being said, the idea of grown meat (as opposed on the hoof) is both enticing and revolting at the same time. I am distinctly carnivorous, however an alternative that actually is the same thing, but never had a face, sounds like a good thing. But the idea of laboratory grown cells is a little too...Soylent Green. Yes, this is an utterly faulty analogy - I'm speaking more of the ick factor.

4 hours ago, fauntleroy said:

Yes. It would have been fun to have seen his standup for example, instead of the went-nowhere hit-family diversion.

I was so hoping they would show it, but alas, too much explaining to do.

[johntfs]

6 hours ago, jaigurudeva said:

 

So the 'Salieri' guy gets off 'scot-free,' even though he defrauded the FDA? Holmes and Watson didn't even need to go to the kosher and halal certification boards about removing the chance for Next Gen Meats pareve labeling and niche market. Bringing to light that 'Salieri' falsified the data would change the FDA's ruling on the lab meat from 'meat substitute' to non-pareve meat and remove the financial gain just as well. It would take a stab into Big Meat, too.

 

It wouldn't remove the financial gain, though it would reduce it.  Big Meat hired the couple to murder Joachim because they didn't want shmeat competing with their product in grocery stores, restaurant, etc.  Figure since shmeat doesn't need to be raised, fed on grass, given medical treatment, housed, slaughtered, etc, it's a whole lot cheaper to produce and can be sold at much cheaper prices.  So, meat-shmeat would make money for the CEO, just not as much as potentially marketing the stuff to Jews and especially Muslims.

[Slovenly Muse]

18 hours ago, Vermicious Knid said:

As to the actual story it seems like they're going for as twisty and convoluted as they can, regardless of whether the storytelling is particularly good or not. Corporate hitman, no a hitwoman, no they didn't actually kill him, but it was his wimpy coworker, except it was really the company president. Uh...

Yes! But then, what's the point of throwing in unnecessary twists and turns if you're going to fall back on the old "the recognizable guest star in a seemingly-small part did it" trope? Props for going off the beaten path for Fran Kranz ("Salieri"), as he's more niche-famous than universally-recognizable, but Joss Whedon fans threw their hands up in the air and gave up on following the rest of the story the instant he appeared. I know it's a pretty unavoidable trap for procedurals, but as soon as you see someone with multiple starring role credits on their resume standing around handing out "shmeat" samples while the "important" characters talk, the mystery is over. I get that they want really good actors to play the more challenging roles, but they need a better strategy for keeping the audience guessing than keeping the audience totally confused and unsure what's even happening. It's not helping their storytelling OR their predictability problem.

[MisterGlass]

There was a recent news article about the first lab meatball, so this episode is timely.  The linked article goes into some of the gory details.

My knowledge of what qualifies as pareve is really limited, but could meat grown from animal cells actually qualify?

[Vermicious Knid]

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imagine the work to kill a guy, break into a place, haul the body in, chop into pieces, grind grind grind throughout the night,

Have you seen Fargo season 2? There's most of an episode about exactly that.

I don't know if it's the British pronunciation or just a matter of Johnny Lee reading it as spelled. It's the most commonly used spelling but again, transliterations don't follow any particular rules. It's why a certain holiday that occurs in December has like, 16 different spellings. Also a letter with no equivalent in English.

I don't keep kosher, except during Passover, but if fake meat isn't really meat then yeah, I can see an argument for calling it pareve. Actually, thinking about it more, the laws of kashrut are pretty strict in defining the kind of animals allowed, and then how the animal has to be killed and butchered, so meat grown in a lab may not qualify as kosher anyway. No matter what the FDA says the Ultra Orthodox certification agencies are going to make their own decisions. Food has to be certified as pareve too. They might even decide it's trayf (treif, treyf), unclean. Oh look, a real life example: shr!mp.

[theatremouse]

21 hours ago, Vermicious Knid said:

So just FYI, I've only ever heard pareve (פרווה) pronounced as pah-rev, or parv, and not how they said it. It's also a transliteration so can be spelled more than one way.

 

12 hours ago, shapeshifter said:

@Vermicious Knid, maybe the odd pronunciation of pareve is British?

 

8 hours ago, GaT said:

I've always thought it was pronounced pah-rev too, & the show had me wondering if I had been saying it incorrectly all my life, but I think SHAPESHIFTER is correct & that it's the British way of pronouncing it.

I'm really glad y'all said this. They also had me briefly wondering if I'd been pronouncing it incorrectly my entire life, but this reminds me that, were it a British pronunciation, it means my Londoner Jewish relatives, for reasons unknown, say it like Yanks. Plus if it's Hebrew you'd think it's pronounced how it's pronounced and Jews anywhere would just...know how to say it. It's not really like an Ashkenazi vs Sephardic "t" vs "s" thing. So I suspect what happened here is probably that JLM pronounced it funny, LL went along with it (or Watson did if we buy the character didn't know the term, in which case it's logical she'd just repeat his pronunciation). And there happen to be no Jews on set to correct it. Or maybe it's a common British goy pronunciation.

[possibilities]

It's just really noticeable when SHERLOCK HOLMES is explicating something while mispronouncing it.

[thuganomics85]

I knew the other scientist was going to be involved somehow, since it was Fran Kranz (Topher from Dollhouse), so there was the whole "Obvious Guest Star" thing, but I should have figured it would be the CEO too.  You can never trust those CEOs on this show!  I am surprised that Sherlock was telling the truth, and Fran's character did manage to dodge any jail time after turning on the CEO.

I enjoyed this one compared to the past few, but I did think that CEO went way overboard with how he killed and disposed of the victim's body. There had to be a much easier way to do that, I would imagine.  Granted, it was random chance that he ended up on Eugene's table and Sherlock's just that damn good, but man.... the logistics of it alone sound tiring!

I actually kind of loved the corporate hitwoman and her being like "Yeah, I killed the other eight guys, but that one wasn't me!  I may be going to jail for the rest of my life, but dammit!  I have standards and we must treat my bodycount with accurate representation!"

Joan convincing Sherlock to go back to meeting, even if it is to admit to everyone he is bored with them due to his intelligence, was a nice small moment.  I alway like when they touch on his battles with sobriety.

[MaryHedwig]

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It's just really noticeable when SHERLOCK HOLMES is explicating something while mispronouncing it.

I developed an new theory about this. I have known brilliant people that taught themselves to read before kindergarten who even now mispronounced words all the time.  I think it is because they tried to sound out words before they heard them spoken, and some of their guesses were wrong. Sometimes I wonder if that is what is also going on with Sherlock, along the British accent.

Edited November 29, 2016 by MaryHedwig

[johntfs]

6 hours ago, MaryHedwig said:

I developed an new theory about this. I have known people who taught themselves to read before kindergarten who mispronounced words all the time.  They tried to sound out words before they hearing them spoke, and some of their guesses were wrong. Sometimes I wonder if that is what is going on with Sherlock, besides the British accent.

If Sherlock pronounces something a certain way, that's the correct pronunciation.  Remember, he's much cleverer than the rest of us.  Now, if you'll excuse me I must feed some paravay to my albeeno zehbra.

[iMonrey]

Yeah - I've never heard the pronunciation "albeeno" before.

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There was a recent news article about the first lab meatball, so this episode is timely.  The linked article goes into some of the gory details.

Thanks for the link. I knew that it was really a thing and I'd seen it somewhere before.

[beadgirl]

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I developed an new theory about this. I have known people who taught themselves to read before kindergarten who mispronounced words all the time.  They tried to sound out words before they hearing them spoke, and some of their guesses were wrong. Sometimes I wonder if that is what is going on with Sherlock, besides the British accent.

That's actually a thing.  Not that I'm brilliant or anything, nor was I an early reader, but I am a big reader and a lot of my vocabulary (at least the words one does not often hear in casual speech) comes from books.  Which means I often mispronounce them; moreover, because Spanish was technically my first language (even though I speak English much more fluently), I tend to pronounce words I don't know following Spanish rules, which leads to more errors.  My husband gets a big kick out of it, but I guess it's only fair given how I mercilessly correct his grammar.

And yes, I thought it was pronounced "par-EV" too.

[theatremouse]

Oh, it's certainly a real thing with avid readers, especially young avid readers who otherwise don't encounter terms outloud, only in writing. But I don't think it's consistent with the Sherlock Holmes character for that to apply to him. Even if he had only ever read and not said a word, given what we know about that character (both historically and in this show), I expect him to be the type to look up the correct pronunciation of a word and/or to be familiar enough with the language of origin to say it correctly.

Plus, in the context of this episode, when he was saying it to Watson, unless my memory is going, was after he already had the salon of religious officials going. So presumably he'd spoken to them, and even if his original invitation to discuss the subject were in writing, I cannot imagine he had not at least heard the word spoken aloud by those gentlemen in the previous however-long-they'd-been-in-the-house.

Which leaves me with the choice of either: JLM/the show effed it up OR this is somehow a weird Briticism. Although I guess no more weird than hearing American non-Jews butcher the word "challah"...

[Vermicious Knid]

"It's spelled Raymond Luxury Yacht but it's pronounced Throatwobbler Mangrove..."

I've been seeing 'H̱' instead of 'ch' lately, mostly in the Conservative movement.

[rhys]

Gentile here. How do you pronounce pareve? Dictionary.com audio says:

Pa--re--va

Sherlock &Joan said: pa--rev?

[Eneya]

I am irritated at the anti-labgrown meat sentiment. And from a person with scientific education, nonetheless... I am calling shenaningans.

[theatremouse]

11 minutes ago, rhys said:

Gentile here. How do you pronounce pareve? Dictionary.com audio says:

Pa--re--va

Sherlock &Joan said: pa--rev?

If that's what Dictionary.com audio says, it is wrong and may be where the show got it from.

"Parv" or "pa-rev" are the only ways this Jew (and a few other people upthread) has heard it pronounced.

Edited November 30, 2016 by theatremouse

[UncleChuck]

Seems to me that they wasted that plot line about the father/daughter killers.  That might have filled an entire episode, chasing the obvious killer who always had an ironclad alibi being out of town, only to find that the real assassin was his innocent-looking daughter. 

[Clanstarling]

19 hours ago, UncleChuck said:

Seems to me that they wasted that plot line about the father/daughter killers.  That might have filled an entire episode, chasing the obvious killer who always had an ironclad alibi being out of town, only to find that the real assassin was his innocent-looking daughter. 

I know, right? It's like they came up with the idea during a brainstorming session, couldn't figure out a whole story (or didn't want to) and decided to chuck it into this one for no particular reason.

[MissLucas]

The coat of awesome made an unexpected return - that makes this a great episode by default.

Okay, the main plot had too many twists and turns but I loved all the shout-outs to canon Sherlock and every scene with Sherlock and Watson about his failure to attend meetings was fabulous. I love how their relationship is written (outside a ship-yard) and Lu and Miller make emotionally complex scenes look so easy. Watson's graceful calm even when he's at his most annoying is a thing of beauty as was the unexpected vulnerability expressed by Sherlock in the last scene. They've got all the emotional beats right so I don't mind the convoluted crime-plot too much.

[shapeshifter]

2 hours ago, MissLucas said:

...Okay, the main plot had too many twists and turns but I loved all the shout-outs to canon Sherlock...

I'm not a scholar of ACD's Sherlock Holmes; is there a story in which a murderer disposes of his victim in a similar manner?  

[alias1]

In addition to the different pronunciation of albino, I was struck by the word anise.  I have always heard it as anniss (emphasis on the ann).  Sherlock and Joan both said Ahneese (emphasis on neese).  I thought that was stranger than albino.

[Athena]

18 hours ago, SierraMist said:

In addition to the different pronunciation of albino, I was struck by the word anise.  I have always heard it as anniss (emphasis on the ann).  Sherlock and Joan both said Ahneese (emphasis on neese).  I thought that was stranger than albino.

The "Ahneese" prounciation is common in the UK and I have heard it in Canada and certain parts of NA. Though the "neese" is a Britishism really. I actually find the ANN-niss stranger since in the original French, the "ann" is quite softer. Here's a page which compares English pronunciations of it.  Here is the French one.

In the UK, I have heard albeeno and ze-brah. I'm quite sure David Attenborough uses that pronunciation in his documentaries.

I do think that considering the Holmes wealth and Sherlock's boarding school background, his accent could be way more posher sounding.

[kay1864]

So how did the horse tranquilizer get into the sausage, and why?  Was that ever explained?

[Trey]

56 minutes ago, kay1864 said:

So how did the horse tranquilizer get into the sausage, and why?  Was that ever explained?

I don't think it was ever really explained.  I assumed the victim was given the horse tranquilizer to subdue him while he was being fed into the meat grinder.

[theatremouse]

I interpreted that he was horse tranquilized either to immobilize him before murdering him some other way, or given enough that it would kill him. And then the meat grinder was just body-disposal, rather than murder weapon. If he were not dead before being ground, wow that is even more fucked up/convoluted/psychotic than I thought they meant to imply.

[Trey]

4 minutes ago, theatremouse said:

If he were not dead before being ground, wow that is even more fucked up/convoluted/psychotic than I thought they meant to imply.

I know.  I was really just being a little silly there:) He was probably killed with a blunt instrument or something after being sedated.

[orza]

The ME said second guy who died from consuming the human sausage died of an overdose of horse tranquilizer, and they deduced that the first gut died that way, too, given the amount of the stuff in the sausage.

[Captain Stable]

Maybe the murderers didn't make the sausages - they just ground him down and left him for the butcher to make into sausages?

[possibilities]

Do butchers leave ground meat lying around? I think the local place grinds fresh every day, and often on demand. I like to buy in bulk and freeze and they won't even grind it for me the night before, for an early morning pick up the next day, saying it won't be fresh that way and I should call it in the day I want to pick it up.

It's been nagging at me, because a human adult volume of ground meat is a lot. You'd think that if you showed up and saw that much more meat than was there when you left, you'd wonder what was going on. So I'm telling myself that the murderers stole enough meat to even it out, but that still doesn't address that ground meat is usually not left around unpackaged or unprocessed.

And did they grind the bones with the meat? Or were those disposed of elsewhere? For sure any fancy sausage maker (or eater of sausage) would notice the difference in texture (and flavor) if the bones were ground with.

I'm not going to even think about what happened to the victim's hair or feces that happened to be in his colon.

We are thinking about this far more seriously than the writers of the show, but because of it being a Holmes story, it's hard to not feel justified in nitpicking.

[fauntleroy]

Not nitpicking! The premise was preposterous and ridiculous.

[John Potts]

Was the writer(s) of this episode in the pay of "Big Meat"? Because everyone (other than Sherlock, who is, well, weird) seemed to react to the idea of fake meat with revulsion. Look, I'm a carnivore, but I have a hard time believing the characters would go, "Eww, artificial meat? If it wasn't a cute animal that was killed and then ground up to make my burgers I'm not eating it!" Personally, I'd prefer to believe my food grows on supermarket shelves (I do know it doesn't).

On ‎28‎/‎11‎/‎2016 at 4:26 PM, possibilities said:

I have never heard "albino" pronounced al-BEAN-o (always heard al-BYE-no). I thought it might be a Britishism, but then Joan was doing it too.

As a Brit, I can say that I've heard both, but then a lot of British pronunciation is polluted influenced by what we see on TV. I'd never heard the term "pahrev", so can't comment on that.

On ‎29‎/‎11‎/‎2016 at 6:36 AM, thuganomics85 said:

I actually kind of loved the corporate hitwoman and her being like "Yeah, I killed the other eight guys, but that one wasn't me!  I may be going to jail for the rest of my life, but dammit!  I have standards and we must treat my bodycount with accurate representation!"

But - why? Assuming she's a professional, she'd know to make it as hard for the cops as possible. And the first thing you do is send your lawyer and use your right to silence. Particularly in an episode that featured Topher (sorry, I recognised him from Dollhouse and picked him as the killer right away - so I was half right), presumably a much less accomplished criminal doing just that. Why are TV criminals so quick to confess? Let the cops work for it!

[Clanstarling]

1 hour ago, John Potts said:

But - why? Assuming she's a professional, she'd know to make it as hard for the cops as possible. And the first thing you do is send your lawyer and use your right to silence. Particularly in an episode that featured Topher (sorry, I recognised him from Dollhouse and picked him as the killer right away - so I was half right), presumably a much less accomplished criminal doing just that. Why are TV criminals so quick to confess? Let the cops work for it!

Just got off Grand Jury duty (2 months), and I was amazed by the fact that 98% of the defendants confessed up front. That being said, none of them were professional assassins.