Their Beautiful Friendship Starts Here

 (Sherlock Meta by sherlockcharacteranalysis)

(It’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything of my own. I am currently working on a few of the more “official” entries, but they take a lot of time to write and I’ve been rather busy in my offline life recently. In the meantime though, I thought I’d post a few short scene analysis. Might help me with the main posts as well.)

This is absolutely one of my favorite scenes in the series. (Actually, the whole lead up to this is wonderful in general.) I see this as the moment when Sherlock and John become friends, when they first become aware of the each other’s potential.

Up until now they’ve both been intrigued by the other, but it’s not until this scene that they finally understand just what the other person is capable of. When John first meets Sherlock in the lab, he’s astounded by how much Sherlock knows about him. Sherlock rattles basically every salient fact about John’s recent past (which, as an ISFJ, is what John would most strongly identify with). Sherlock even points things out that John would have thought were only known to himself, such as the fact that Harry leaving her wife bothers him more than her alcoholism (loyalty is tantamount to John, after all), or the fact that his limp is psychosomatic.

In fact, Sherlock seems to know things about John that even John doesn’t know, despite the fact that John would consider himself a pretty self-aware person. For right now thanks to Sherlock, John is sitting in a cab going to a crime scene and thrilled about it (despite himself), even though it probably would have never occurred to him that this was something he wanted to do. To John, it seems like Sherlock has seen him for who he really is.

However, John didn’t know how Sherlock knows these facts. Here, he finds out. It’s through logic, something that John deeply respects (he is a doctor). It’s what John also uses to understand himself and the world (not that he ever knew it could be used like this!) As a man of honesty and integrity, John care more about how Sherlock came about his information than the fact that Sherlock knows the information itself. Had Sherlock gotten his information through illicit means, such as spying, I doubt John would have been so full of admiration.

(Which is why, by the way, I almost always find fanfiction where John becomes emotionally invested in Mycroft rather unbelievable. It’s not just Sherlock’s intelligence that John admires, but his particular kind of intelligence. John does not and would not respect the kind of sinister manipulations that Mycroft thrives on.)

Meanwhile, Sherlock himself is also impressed by John. Up to this point, he’s already been impressed by John’s composure. Not once during the scene at Bart’s does John appear unsettled by Sherlock’s deductions the way that I’m pretty sure almost everyone else does. (By the time John looks uncomfortable, Sherlock has already left the room.) Here, John finally reacts, and Sherlock is surprised not by John being impressed so much as what John is impressed about.

Whereas most people are impressed (positively or negatively) by the results of Sherlock’s deductions, John seems completely unaffected by them and is instead  impressed by the process itself. What John Watson admires is the elegant tying-together of seemingly disparate facts through logical connections. That is what surprises Sherlock, that here is someone who, though maybe not as clever as himself, also shares the same appreciation for the beauty of logical analysis of everyday facts. Here is someone who can love what I love, with whom I can share with what I love, he realizes. That is an amazing discovery to make about someone else, for anyone.

In that moment, Sherlock lets his guard down. Up to this point, he was always playing  the role of the aloof, mysterious, somewhat mad and possibly dangerous genius; but when he asks “you think so?” it is Sherlock the actual person who is talking. In that brief moment he shows his vulnerability to John. I don’t think Sherlock realizes the full emotional implications of what he says after that moment either, when he tells John that most people just tell him to piss-off. Sherlock basically just told John that John “gets him” in a way that other people don’t.That John is special.

But John gets it, so he turns and grins. He’s over the moon by this point. Just yesterday, John was feeling useless and hopeless, and suddenly this person unlike anyone he’s ever known before turns up and completely transforms his previously-dull world.John didn’t know what to do with himself, and while other people had ideas for him, he didn’t trust any of them because John felt like they didn’t understand him or he didn’t trust their methods. However, Sherlock seems to completely understand John and uses methods that John highly respects, so John can trust him. Decides to, actually in this moment, trust him, even if Sherlock’s ideas for John’s future seem completely crazy.

On top of all this, this extraordinary person more or less just told John that John also understands him like no one else does. So in one day John has gained a new life, a new view on the world, and a new friend. No wonder he’s grinning like mad. In that moment in the cab, John catches a glimpse of the future, a glimmer of hope of something new, of exciting possibilities in his life where none had seemed to exist before.

As for Sherlock, for a brief moment, he finally feels a genuine connection to another person, something he’s longed for so long that he’s completely given up hope. He tries to tamp his feelings back down, stuff it back into his aloof shell, but you can see it in the traces of his own grin that he’s trying hard to not show.

Here, in the cab, both Sherlock and John realize that they have found someone special. Someone who understands them in a way that other’s don’t, in a way that they had long yearned to be understood. While it takes a few more incidents to cement their commitment to each other, it is here that it begins. Their beautiful friendship starts here.