The Hurt Sherlocker
lioncel:
This Molly slapping Sherlock thing. Ooooh, everyone’s so delighted it happened! Molly’s finally gotten strong! She’s standing up to Sherlock! I even read one comment that said something to the effect of - I don’t truly understand why she did it but it’s wonderful that she did, I really enjoyed it. It’s about time.
About time for what? About time that Sherlock was punished for being unpleasant? Or about time that Molly demonstrates what seems to be the new trend of “strength” in women - the ability to commit violence, just like men. If a woman can slap someone, brutally, three times, in the face, she’s “badass.” If she were a man, she’d be abusive, but I guess that’s kind of the point. Men have abused women for so long that if a woman can abuse a man right back, that makes her strong. Wait, what?
Just like Mary being a killer for hire makes her UBER-badass, sexy, a strong woman, complex and compelling. Listen, as someone who has lost a loved one to a murderer, I can tell you with authority that all it makes her is beneath contempt. Lower than shit. But again, a woman’s capacity to wreak violence is suddenly a beautiful thing. It’s Trending on Tumblr. Weird.
Well, Sherlock DESERVED IT you say, throwing away the beautiful gifts he was born with. But does anyone else have the right to tell us what we should do with our beautiful gifts? SHOULD they have the right? Sherlock has spent his whole life agonizing with those “beautiful” gifts. They’ve brought him a lot of grief. He struggled to find a way to use those gifts in a way that would allow him to live with them, but nobody helped him do that. Should he be beholden to anyone else as to how he uses them?
Ok then, he deserved it for “betraying the love” of his friends. Well, it seems to me that the love of his friends is pretty thin on the ground for Sherlock this season. John wants excitement, but he’s not willing to turn to Sherlock for it now. Before, John would have just gone on a case with Sherlock, but John himself says, after the wedding. “I’ve not seen him in ages.” And, remember, Sherlock gave Molly a go at replacing John, but she didn’t want the gig. So he’s alone again, back where he was before John, doing The Work by himself.
See, everyone else seems to think that Sherlock just accepts the abuse because he knows he’s in the wrong, but I have a totally different read on it. I think he just stands there and takes it because he’s back where he was before, trying to do The Work by himself. He’s doing it according to his own rules. Is he high? Yes. But he’s pretty controlled about it. I don’t think he’s using recreationally, he’s using FOR EFFECT. And he’s a chemist, he knows how to do that. But of course, everyone around is yarping on about politically correct claptrap, and he’s just standing there and letting them get on with it until they let him go so he can get back to what he was doing. They won’t actually help him do The Work, but they’re always whining on about HOW he should be doing it. Stupid and boring.
And there’s a little bit of something else in there too. Molly helped Sherlock with The Fall, so she has some proprietary interest in him. Fair enough, she gets one slap. One. But three? Seems to me that’s overkill. There’s a little edge of hysteria creeping in there. Molly is obviously frustrated with Sherlock, but I feel it’s less to do with his wasting his beautiful gifts and more about Molly’s inability to get over him, no matter how hard she tries. I think Sherlock feels that too, because she tells him to say he’s sorry, but what he DOES say, wryly, is, “I’m sorry you’re not engaged any more.”
Maybe he feels, like I do, that by slapping him, Molly is displaying her weakness, not her strength. She’ll never be her own person until she gets over Sherlock. Maybe SHE’S the one who should be slapped a bit. Knock some sense into her.
Bet John would like to slap to Mary, too. If he attacked Sherlock THREE TIMES for lying to him, you’d think he’d at least like one go at Mary. But he can’t, of course, because she’s a woman. Oh, but wait!!! Mary has a long history of cold-blooded, ruthless violence! That makes her John’s equal! She’s a strong character! She should be able to engage in a full-blown knock-down drag-out fight, let alone be slapped a bit. Oh, but she’s pregnant …
Sorry, then, as you were. Back to beating up on Sherlock. But why?? Is it because we both love and hate beautiful people? We love them in that we idolize them, and advantage them. But we hate them, too, don’t we, we want to drag them down and punish them for the beautiful gifts they were born with. Especially if, like Sherlock, they’re doubly-blessed with both brains AND beauty. (Not to mention that voice!)
We’re horrified that Sherlock uses Janine, but when John proves he has no more idea about who his girlfriends are as people than Sherlock does (in Belgravia, when he stands his gf up because he has to babysit Sherlock and says he’ll make it up to her by walking her dog, but wait, sorry, she doesn’t have a dog, it was THE OTHER ONE!!), well, that’s not disgusting, that’s just funny.
Let’s give Sherlock a bloody break! This season he’s been tortured by the baddies, slapped by Molly, strangled, punched and head-butted by John and shot by Mary. He’s laid his soul bare in front of a room full of wedding-guests and exposed all the humble feelings of a “ridiculous man”. He’s had no one to dance with, no one to work with and no one to share takeout with. He’s become human and now has all these emotions that are eroding the beautiful gifts that he was born with, in exactly the same way that cocaine does, but no one’s worried about THAT. And all this has availed him is exactly NOTHING. He’s even more alone than he ever was.
So let’s get off his back, ok? He’s had way, way more to contend with this season than one person can comfortably handle. He should be praised, not brutalized. Sherlock deserves some love!
alabellecreation:
What went through my head during that moment on first viewing was the horrible thought of, “I wonder how many time Sherlock’s torturers did that to him?”
With John, well we all had ‘we want a punch then a hug’ thing going on, but to me it felt more like John was spoiling for the fight and he was expecting Sherlock to join in and then they’d fight it out, ‘man to man’ to coin the old phrase. I agree he did go too far headbutting Sherlock, because it was obvious by then he wasn’t going to fight back. Molly’s slapping of Sherlock more than once though felt a lot colder, and more like stand there and take this because you deserve it. And he just looks completely resigned to the fact she is hurting him. (And if he was using again well then that’s not how you help an addict to recovery.)
Later on when he attacks Mycroft, I think people are also forgetting Mycroft actually stood by and watched him get tortured, so I see some residual affect of Molly causing him physical pain causing Sherlock to then channel that pain onto his own brother instead to remind him what pain feels like. The sad fact then here is that violence has bred violence.
anybannannie:
I think that’s precisely why he manhandled Mycroft later at 221B Baker Street. He surely must have been growing more and more frustrated and feeling more isolated and misunderstood than ever before. And then there’s John, who’s basically abandoned him after the wedding (at least from Sherlock’s POV), now not believing him that he’s under-cover, and then even Molly taking out her own frustration over her broken-up engagement and everything in such a physical way, while Sherlock could just stand there and take it. (Granted, I think Molly slapping him once was okay. I think it was more of a drastic measure to get his attention and get his focus on her, than anything else, so it was fine for me, considering how he must have treated her for years before John came along (which would be frustrating enough in itself, without her unrequited interest in him) - but I agree the other slaps were a bit over the top.)
Sherlock must have felt like everyone was just letting him down, and then Mycroft being patronising to him, when he was already feeling vulnerable was just the last straw, I think - especially Mycroft who had sat there, watching him getting beaten into a bloody pulp in Serbia and possibly even enjoyed it… to be honest, I wasn’t surprised that Sherlock snapped and grabbed him, he needed an outlet for all his pent-up frustration and hurt and Mycroft was just the perfect punching bag there (and maybe deserved some of it, too).
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