The Pain Of Season 3
xistentialangst:
I read this post this morning from a Russian fan so disillusioned with Season 3 that they have decided never to watch the show again.
It’s an interesting read and makes some good points about the creator—inspiration vs form, etc. But fortunately, I don’t have the same level of pathos against Season 3 as this writer does, nor am I anything like close to abandoning the series.
Season three is both brilliant and profoundly frustrating. And I think to the casual viewer it can leave a general sense of wrongness or malaise, a sense of ‘not getting it’ or even ‘it’s jumped the shark’. For fans who really love the characters of John and Sherlock, it’s even more disturbing on an emotional level.
We never see in Season 3 the level of absolute intimacy and closeness and ‘two halves of a whole’ between Sherlock and John that we saw in S1 and 2. And we want to see that. We’ve been waiting two fucking years for more of that. It’s what we love about the show, what feeds our souls.
There are glimpses of it—in the scene where Martin asks Sherlock to be his best man, in the best man speech where Sherlock is so horribly, adorably, complimentary of John. But ultimately there is a gulf between them throughout S3—both emotionally and in the form of Mary, who redirects John’s loyalty and interest. Our desire to see John and Sherlock truly reunited after TRF is never satisfied. And the most painful thing is that the gulf only widens by the end of HLV. Horribly, catastrophically so. At least in TRF, although we knew Sherlock and John were going to be separated for a time, there was no doubt that they loved each other deeply and that they’d eventually be reunited.
At the end of HLV we don’t even have that solace. We know Sherlock loves John but he seemed resigned to giving him up. We’re not sure what John feels for Sherlock anymore. He seems distant and prepared to go off with Mary as his new attachment.
After TSoT, I really expected the last episode of season 3 to resolve the John/Sherlock distance and to end with John having truly forgiven Sherlock. But that didn’t happen. Instead HLV puts even more distance between our guys, in the Janine misunderstanding, in John going back to Mary, and in the end where they are literally saying goodbye to each other, Sherlock leaving John in the hands of Mary (whom we know is dangerous), and John doesn’t even appear that moved. Forget about meta or whether or not you think Sherlock has a plan (I don’t, personally). That’s what we get as an ending to the season on a canon/text level.
That is so fucking disturbing.
I suspect that, once we have five seasons under our belt, we will see that there really was nothing wrong with S3. Angst points, separations, obstacles, and misunderstandings are part and parcel of romances. Crisis/resolution is what makes a good story. What’s wrong with S3 is that it ends on a the worst possible angst point, with John and Sherlock as distant from each other as they have ever been. After a two year wait, and knowing we have another long hiatus to come, that’s just frustrating as hell.
I think the writers underestimated how much the audience would hate that, how deeply that seems to go against the entire raison d’etre of the show. The show is John and Sherlock, together. It’s almost painful to watch it not be that.
If I believed that Sherlock would continue with Mary remaining in the picture, and the three of them solving crimes, maybe with a baby at home, I would absolutely never watch another episode.
Fortunately, I don’t believe that. I have to believe in S4 they will finally truly reunite Sherlock and John emotionally. And I’m not talking about johnlock here. I’m talking about John and Sherlock back in Baker Street with the emotional distance between them gone.
I just hope we don’t have to wait too long to get it and that the writer’s make it worth all they’ve put us through. Because, in so many ways, S3 was just fucking brilliant. They are telling a very complex story here, one that puts the audience through the wringer, but I choose to believe they know what they’re doing.
Please.
XA
Loudest Subtext In Television:
The usual brilliance from XA. This deserves to be spread around more widely. I got a few alarming asks from people who said they had given up on Sherlock after watching series 3 until they read my and others’ metas, so I’m concerned that people aren’t picking up on some important things and are abandoning the show just because the writers put up big obstacles for John and Sherlock. Those obstacles are what has made the show good, in my opinion. I’m not saying everyone has to like them, just to be aware that putting up obstacles for characters is generally considered an important part of writing a narrative, and it’s something that’s going to happen, and it doesn’t mean John and Sherlock are going to be distant forever. It actually means that whenever they come back together, they’ll be stronger.
And I mean even if you don’t think about it going as far as Johnlock, it doesn’t matter either way: the writers aren’t going to put a permanent wrench in the biggest dynamic of the show. I don’t think Moftiss sat around, imagining how their modern adaptation of Sherlock Holmes was going to go, and said, “You know what was really missing in the originals? Mary Watson helping, or getting in the way of, solving crimes.” Everyone who adapts Sherlock Holmes is drawn to it in large part by the Holmes-Watson dynamic. They’ve gone on to make Mary into an excellent, three-dimensional villain instead of a one-dimensional placeholder wife, and that’s to be commended. But they’re not going to disrupt John and Sherlock’s dynamic permanently.
There was a post going around saying something along the lines of remembering that television shows aren’t like fanfics where you get warnings. I hope people try to keep that in mind. A good story will rip your heart out in the middle, and you’re not going to have the creators beside you telling you this is just the angsty part and it will all be better soon. You’re supposed to be heartbroken right now. If you weren’t, they wouldn’t have been doing their job. It would be a shame to abandon the show just because it’s well-paced in that regard. I totally get the frustration of the ending of series 3 — I think XA is right that it was underestimated how upset people would be at the distance between them, and it’s completely understandable — but that’s exactly where you’d want to put a series break.
Also on the Johnlock note, it’s worth noting that while hardcore fans are feeling frustrated, some casual viewers think Sherlock is in love with John. Hardcore fans can invest so much in it that when it doesn’t just happen now now now, and instead more obstacles are put in the way, it can feel like you’ve gotten nothing when this series gave us so much more Johnlock than ever before. I personally love series 3 for that reason, and would have been a bit dissatisfied if they’d shoved John and Sherlock together too hastily. I can’t tell anyone else not to be frustrated, but I hope that at least XA’s post will convince some people to give series 4 a chance when it comes out.
And I completely agree that once we’ve got series 4 and 5, people will probably like series 3 more.
mildredandbobbin:
Oh yes, wonderfully put. We will have to wait and see if the writers come good on all the emotional turmoil they’ve created in this series.
I know it feels like the emotional place we were left in after series 2 hasn’t changed, but remember at the end of series 2 we were hoping Sherlock did actually care about John, that he would come back and appreciate John? Well he did. Except John’s moved on and series three gave us all that angst in spades and then left us, this time, wondering about John’s emotions and motivations. To me series 3 felt like their estrangement and Sherlock spent the whole series trying to prove his friendship/love to John. And this is a good thing to happen if it’s planned that way. The darkness before the dawn.
I think part of the problem is we all anticipated Mary and we all thought Mary would be resolved by the end of this series, but instead the show is pretty much where a lot of us were at the start of the series - waiting to see what happens with Mary, dreading a distance between our two heroes. If this was a different series, with 12 episodes or even 6 episodes instead of 3, it probably wouldn’t be so bad. It’s just the thought of another 12 months at least before we find out if the writers follow through on the emotional arc they’ve created or if our hopes will be dashed that’s difficult.
We have to trust and after trusting so much for the last hiatus that’s easier said than done. I’m going to try.
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