On playing Rizla in The Sign of Three

 (Sherlock Meta by beautifulfic and oldgrimalkin)

beautifulfic:

All right, so I know they’ve both had far too much to drink, and the context of these lines was, superficially at least, to do with the game of 20 questions, but I think it’s a brilliant choice of games to play (both logically, it doesn’t require much thought or even sitting up straight when inebriated, it’s comfortable and intimate, and for the storyline.)

It’s a game about trying to figure out your own identity through the medium of another. You’re relying on their image of the character you’re supposed to be to give you an accurate portrayal.

John chose Sherlock himself. Why? Because it’s easier? Because it’s one person he knows well enough to answer questions about when he’s drunk? Or because he doesn’t know Sherlock as well as he thought did and he’s hoping to find some answers in the questions Sherlock asks and the guesses he makes?

It seems like a reflection of both John’s certainty of Sherlock from before and the uncertainty over the man who came back to him. It almost seems like “I know who you are, or at least who you were. Do you?”

Sherlock’s not used to playing games at all and picks someone at random, because it doesn’t matter. That’s not the mystery to him (and us) throughout this series. The biggest case of all in the whole show is John. John’s reactions and behaviour. It’s about the cracks that Sherlock helped narrow when John got back from Afghanistan and split open again when he jumped off Bart’s. It’s about how everything John thought he ever wanted (domestic life and a family) wasn’t ever going to be enough - even at this point, before the wedding, we suspected as much, and I believe Sherlock did too.

And Sherlock can see all those differences, and he’s confused. A man so easily deduced when he met him in a lab at Bart’s is now clouded by Sherlock’s own sentiment and perceptions, and he doesn’t know what to do for the best.

From almost the moment he came back, he can see things are not how they were, and he’s poorly equipped to deal with that. So he relies on Mary to smooth the way (and she does, for a while at least) He never challenges her. Whether he loves John platonically or more, even Sherlock Holmes knows that creating a rift between Mary and John in the aim of returning him and John to their old life will only alienate John further, and that’s not what he wants. He doesn’t want to be any more to blame for where they now stand than he already is.

He doesn’t know that man that John has become, and maybe he even questions the image he’d built up of John over their friendship. Is he now wondering if that man he thought he knew, who shared Baker Street with him and was by his side from A Study In Pink to the Reichenbach Fall was a mask or an illusion?

It’s certainly always been his blindspot (remember John stepping out in the bomb jacket at the pool, and the look on Sherlock’s face? He believed, just for a moment, that John had fooled him all along.)

There are echoes of that now, in this scene. It’s got nothing to do with Madonna, and everything to do with John and Sherlock.

"I don’t know who you are. I don’t know who you’re supposed to be."

oldgrimalkin:

Ah, but Sherlock does nothing but play games: chess, Operation, deduction, even Cluedo. His whole life revolves around solving puzzles. The game goes ever on and on.

The great lacuna in his understanding—that John takes strategic advantage of in this particular game—is that Sherlock doesn’t know himself.

And that’s his quest (though he doesn’t even know that yet): Who is Sherlock Holmes? What does it mean to put on the deerstalker and assume the mantle? What qualities does he possess, positive and negative?

In the mini episode, he wasn’t even clear about what are his qualities and what are John’s. (“All his friends hate him.”) He’s so self-blind that he conflates himself and John.

During this game, he misidentifies himself as John, and then tells John “I don’t know who you’re supposed to be.” (Reading this on a different level than simply identifying Madonna.) I think I’m you, but then who is left for you to be? His own identity doesn’t enter his (inebriated) calculation.

By the time of the wedding he is indeed able to separate John from himself—at least John’s positive qualities and his own negative ones. It’s not a complete picture, but it’s a start.

Does Sherlock improve his self-comprehension in TLV? I’m not sure. I don’t think this is an Achilles’ heel for adversaries to take advantage of (like John does in the game), but maybe I’m overlooking something? I suppose there’s something of a Joseph Campbell heroes quest here, but will it ever be explored further in future eps?