Discussion about John Watson in S3
and Pretty Arbitrary)
ravenbasslady: I think I may finally have figured out why Season 3 left such a bad taste in my mouth. Well, obviously— no resolution of The Reichenbach Fall. No real reunion between Sherlock and John. All the punching. After a while, it seemed unnecessary...
cantpronounce: Yes! If John’s forgiveness of *that woman* is genuine, and not part of a plan, then the writers have effectively ruined his character for me, and I am done. But I don’t think this is the case. Hope not, anyway.
Sorry, I just have to address the John thing. Because John is my baby and I just am compelled.
I really don’t see John as out of character in S3. Hurt? Yes. Devastated? Yes. Confused about his feelings? YES.
But he wasn’t out of character. He’s always gotten off on danger, on being in charge, on being the BAMF in the room. And now he’s angry and upset and confused and of course he’s going to be violent. He’s violent. He is. He punches and shoots and gets angry, he’s got a temper…
Did it seem amped up in S3? Yeah.
Because John is a fucking emotional disaster.
The Reichenbach Fall fucked him up beyond belief. Then he finally finds someone who kinda maybe a little bit fills the void Sherlock left - you know, after the year+ of drinking himself into oblivion and grieving. And then Sherlock waltzes back in, seemingly as if he’s been on extended holiday - John doesn’t know what he endured. WE do, but John doesn’t. - and mocks him, actually MOCKS him for his grief and pain and anger.
I hated John punching Sherlock, I hated it with every fiber of my being. But I put myself in John’s shoes, and I get it. He was in so much pain. His life was over. Then he tries to start again, while still grieving Sherlock, and what happens? Sherlock is back from the dead, and he’s laughing in John’s face.
John had committed to this man. He didn’t date anymore by The Reichenbach Fall. He was completely devoted to Sherlock. He watched him commit suicide right in front of him. He was DESTROYED by Sherlock’s death.
He’s not over it yet. Sherlock being back doesn’t make the grief and sadness and anger just evaporate.
And now he’s confused. He’s committed himself to someone else, but he wants Sherlock, but he hates Sherlock, but he loves him. I mean, he’s a mess.
Instead of getting the time and space and calm he needed to sort this all out, he got an unplanned pregnancy, almost losing Sherlock again, finding out it was his wife who did it, and then being forced to pretend to forgive her. He’s so fucked up. I can’t even begin to imagine what this man has been through.
As I see it, John was completely in character for a John who’s a disaster.
wmsscottholmes: I get what you’re saying, and you’ve said it beautifully, but I still keep getting stuck on something:
As per viewing the show itself, yes I see grief, but I never got that John was (or realized that he was) in love with and fully committed to Sherlock , as a spouse would be.
And again , I keep getting hung up on this point; John’s deeply hurt, crushed , broken, angry, love/hates Sherlock by the end of His Last Vow. How can this man, so ethical , who is always reining Sherlock in for doing immoral things— this guy — who (in the context of this conversation) is behaving like a jilted, abused spouse, how can he take Mary back?
It’s just hard for me to buy it. I am probably thinking way too hard about this….
Pretty Arbitrary: Hahahaha, as you are about to see, if you’re thinking too hard about this, you are in good company!
I don’t see any hate in John toward Sherlock at the end of His Last Vow. Of course he’s angry at Sherlock in The Empty Hearse, and near the end of His Last Vow he’s furious with Mary. He does transfer some of that anger onto Sherlock in the heat of the moment, but it’s not truly Sherlock he’s angry at. He’s just lashing out at someone he trusts to be able to handle it. And during the confrontation at 221b, Sherlock is inviting and, in fact, actively encouraging John to direct his anger at him rather than Mary.
Note when Sherlock speaks in that scene, how he draws John’s attention back at the points when John is angriest. Note how he deliberately compares and associates himself with Mary, saying, “She and I are alike, and we are what you like.” That does two things: it simultaneously encourages John to transfer his angry from Mary to Sherlock, because implied is if they both have the trait that is pissing John off then he should be angry at both of them, yes? But it also implies that if John does not hate Sherlock, then he shouldn’t hate Mary either.
But it’s not hate. Not for Sherlock and not even for Mary. It’s just anger born of his feelings of hurt and betrayal. We see in that scene that far from hating Sherlock, John trusts him. In his anger, John allows Sherlock to guide his decision—“Your way, Sherlock, always your way” (a graceless but total acquiescence)—and Sherlock is the one John sides with at the end. The closing frame is Sherlock and John in their chairs, a matched set of bookends, while Mary sits uncomfortably in the outsider’s chair between them, with the attitude of a defendant on the stand—or a client. Like Sherlock said at the beginning of the season, “Just us against the world.”
And there’s certainly no anger in the final scene on the tarmac. They’re squinting because of the sun, but their body language is an almost exact duplicate of their talk in A Study in Pink after John shot the cabbie—right down to the head motions. (I think they actually rewatched the footage to do this.) That body language is very intimate and faux-cordial. It’s putting on a show of stoicism for the people around them (don’t let the police see! Don’t let Mary and Mycroft see!) with hands clasped primly behind backs, while in reality they are facing one another squarely, mirroring each other’s body language, and looking alternately deep into one another’s eyes and at other things entirely when that’s just too emotional.
And their actual conversation is to agree that they’ve got nothing left to say—because they’ve already said it all! These two have been in a position to overhear one another’s most heartfelt, private and honest opinions of each other. What does John need to say to Sherlock when Sherlock saw him break over his tombstone? What does Sherlock need to say to John when John’s seen Sherlock pull him out of a fire?
When it comes to taking Mary back, I’m surprised that anybody is surprised about it when John already forgave Sherlock for a similar betrayal. Yes, Mary shot Sherlock—and John might be royally pissed about that, but Sherlock himself is saying, “Pff, whatever, it’s fine, she was doing what she had to do,” so how is John supposed to feel about it? (I’d be confused and pissed, myself, which you’ll note is precisely the reaction John has.)
This may go far toward explaining the months it took for John to make up his mind. Remember, this wasn’t an overnight decision. It can’t have been later than September when they fell out, and then John finally accepted her back at Christmas.
And we don’t know why. He might have decided that if Mary has gone to such lengths to reinvent herself, he should give her the chance to become that new and, hopefully, better person. Or he might have done it to keep his unborn child in his life. Or who knows? Maybe she’s actually a bad guy and he and Sherlock are putting on a sting operation. We do know that Sherlock is invested in getting John back together with Mary. He worked hard in that first argument to keep John engaged and make sure he didn’t just get angry enough to dropkick Mary out the door, and at Christmas he primps around and bustles his dad off so that John and Mary can have alone time. It’s entirely possible that the reason John finally took Mary back is because Sherlock talked him into it.
"I never got that John was (or realized that he was) in love with and fully committed to Sherlock , as a spouse would be."
I left this till last because it’s actually the most complicated. The nature and status of Sherlock and John’s relationship always comes down to a matter of interpretation. However, largely leaving aside the knotty ‘who felt what for whom when’ questions, this is what I see.
Nobody in their right mind would argue that John doesn’t love Sherlock deeply, in the more general friendship sense. Before S3, did he know/think he was in love with Sherlock? I don’t know. But what we do know is that by The Reichenbach Fall, John seems to have given up his day job. He’s not really dating anymore either, that we can see. We know that he is defensive and protective in response to attacks on Sherlock, the way a person would normally be about attacks on themselves. He punched a cop, for god’s sake. You don’t take a swing at a police superintendent just because you’re a little annoyed.
And the implications: If John is not working as a doctor, then his primary source of income is his work with Sherlock. They might split the checks and go separate ways to spend them, but I’m betting that they’ve started pooled funds for the bills. It’s just common sense when you’re going to be paying out of the same check anyway. Furthermore, John is clearly taking a proprietary interest in the work as a business for the two of them. He’s thinking of his blog as PR and considering himself as manning the social angle. Being business partners—especially in an arrangement where you can’t just split up and continue to keep the business going—is an intimate, committed relationship in its own right. Your fortunes are joined to this other person and they can’t easily be parted without significant destabilization.
And if John has stopped dating, then that seems to be an indication that he is no longer actively seeking (at least for the time being) a future away from Baker Street and Sherlock. At the beginning of The Reichenbach Fall, do we have any sense that he imagines somewhere he would rather be, where he would be more satisfied than this? He seems so contented that I certainly can’t imagine a life where he’d be happier.
Thus, by The Reichenbach Fall, whether John thinks he’s in love with Sherlock or not, he has certainly settled into a committed relationship with him. (I’m interested in the question of whether Sherlock has noticed. He doesn’t give a damn what things ‘mean’ to people emotionally. He could well figure, “John lives with me, this arrangement is convenient” while everybody else is going, “Whoa, what do you mean you have a shared bank account?”)
And now, if nothing else, I hope I have assuaged your concerns of thinking about it too much. :D
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