The Case Against John and Mary
archipelagoarchaea:
So once again, my Long Meta is unfinished and I’m itching to publish something. It’s been bothering me that a considerable portion of the ‘romantic’ chapter of my meta has been devoted to yammering on incredulously about the way John and Mary’s relationship was written, so perhaps it makes sense to pull that out and post it separately, anyway. After, y’know, completely re-writing it. Without further ado, here is my opinion on John and Mary’s romance in the show.
It doesn’t exist.
Now, this might seem harsh, so let me word it another way: John and Mary have precisely enough romance for the viewer to assume, upon introduction, that she is meant to be John’s long-term romantic partner, but that the writers don’t care about romance (it’s a detective show! they think) and therefore didn’t bother with it beyond the bare essentials. The problem with this point-of-view, even ignoring the events of His Last Vow, is that the writers have been very much interested in writing John and Sherlock as a romance. A score sheet of romantic tropes should help illuminate this. Clarification: for unidirectional tropes (e.g. jealousy, rescue) the possible score is one per person for a total of 2. For bidirectional tropes (requiring both partners’ active involvement, e.g. meeting, kissing) the total possible is 1.
Romantic Trope Score Sheet
The ‘meet cute’ is almost obligatory to romance, and certainly helps the audience latch on to their relationship quickly. It’s that scene where the characters meet for the first time and we get to see how much chemistry they have from the very first moment.
❤︎ John and Mary: 0 John and Sherlock: 1
Domestic scenes always help reinforce romantic relationships, as they allow us to see how comfortable the characters are with each other even when tripping over each other’s socks. Personally I believe that John and Sherlock’s home life — and bickering — were more comfortable than John and Mary’s, but I’m going for relative objectivity here, so:
❤︎ John and Mary: 1 John and Sherlock: 1
I’ll go ahead and give John and Mary a freebie: kissing!
❤︎ John and Mary: 1 John and Sherlock: 0
Dancing is always romantic. Especially ballroom dancing.
❤︎ John and Mary: 1 John and Sherlock: 1/2 for being explicitly mentioned but not seen.
Shared interests! What do our happy couple do or talk about outside of work and/or Sherlock? No, seriously. What do John and Mary have in common besides the clinic and drinking? We don’t know. Meanwhile, we have references to and entire montages of John and Sherlock pestering each other about their blogs, eating together, reading together, playing board games together and generally just being happy around each other.
❤︎ John and Mary: 0 John and Sherlock: 1
The dragon slayer and the damsel in distress. Rescue is very romantic.
❤︎ John and Mary: 1/2 John and Sherlock: 2 Mary gets half credit for her involvement in the bonfire rescue, but that’s being generous.
The marriage proposal!
❤︎ John and Mary: 1 John and Sherlock: 0 if we’re being conservative, but the best man scene is very suggestive.
Exchange of vows. Almost obligatory for a wedding episode.
❤︎ John and Mary: 0 John and Sherlock: 1 Wait, what?
Jealousy. Clearly not a healthy thing to act on in a real relationship, but a popular romantic trope nonetheless, as it allows romantic interest to be expressed implicitly in the narrative.
❤︎ John and Mary: 0 John and Sherlock: Hahahaha 2
Finishing each other’s sentences. A good sign of intellectual intimacy.
❤︎ John and Mary: 0 John and Sherlock: 1
Declarations of love in each other’s presence (and on screen), i.e. not described to another person.
❤︎ John and Mary: 0 John and Sherlock: 2
Descriptions of each other’s good qualities (not just their vague positive roles).
❤︎ John and Mary: 0 John and Sherlock: 2
Shared understandings (e.g. John helping control Sherlock’s addictions, John helping Sherlock socially). Again, a sign of emotional/intellectual intimacy.
❤︎ John and Mary: 0 John and Sherlock: 1
Playing music for / singing for each other.
❤︎ John and Mary: 0 John and Sherlock: 1
Meeting the family.
❤︎ John and Mary: 0 John and Sherlock: 1 Harry didn’t even make it to the wedding!
Overcoming impossible odds (e.g. death) to save the other. This is incredibly romantic as a trope, but these scores are unweighted, so…
❤︎ John and Mary: 0 John and Sherlock: 1
This is by no means an exhaustive list, but I’ve always felt it was unsportsmanlike to keep scoring in a blow-out, and the majority of the remainder are not in Mary’s favor. The total score of this brief list?
❤︎ John and Mary: 4.5 John and Sherlock: 17.5
Now, some of this difference might be excused by the fact that John and Sherlock have simply had more screen time together, but several occurred during what should have been Mary’s time to shine, e.g. the exchange of vows. In fact, Sherlock and Mary are set against each other by the narrative multiple times, allowing us to make direct comparisons. Some are short: Mary doesn’t give John her real name, but Sherlock does. Sherlock apologizes to John even though he doesn’t understand what he’s done. Mary refuses to apologize even though she does. Mary is willing to make John miserable to keep him (shooting Sherlock). Sherlock gives up John to make him happy. Others are longer, but still very clear: both Mary and Sherlock are involved in the bonfire rescue, but Sherlock does most of the work and he’s the only one to actually risk catching fire. It wouldn’t have been difficult to show both of them pulling John out, so that they could be more ‘equal’. In fact, her failure to get unduly close to the fire puts her behind Sarah, who helped fight off Sherlock’s attacker despite barely having met him or John and presumably having no experience with a weapon. Other comparisons are more complex and tap into a broader story: Sherlock is the dragon slayer, John is his damsel in distress (at least for now: it’s been the other way around before). Mary is neither. Some are subtler: Mary shows how far she’ll go for John by shooting his best friend. Sherlock does so by shooting the man who’s threatening him and, more importantly, by dragging himself back to life.
John himself always places Mary on the same level as Sherlock when speaking of his love for her. This starts with Mrs. Hudson when he equates his relationship with Mary to ‘moving on’ from Sherlock. It continues when he asks Sherlock to be his best man and describes them as ‘the two people I love and care about most’, conveniently failing to actually say he loved Mary more. There was absolutely no reason for the ambiguity, either from John’s perspective or the writers’, unless it’s meant to conceal something. It would have been very easy for him to describe Sherlock as the person he loved second only to Mary. After all, it’s culturally expected that one’s spouse is the person one loves above all others. To be loved second only to a fiancee or spouse is tremendously flattering. And yet John uses an ambiguous phrase that allows Sherlock to infer the culturally acceptable ranking without forcing John to lie if it’s not true. This happens again when John describes Mary ‘turn[ing his] life around’, then goes on to say she’s not the only one to do that. These conversations in which John triangulates his feelings for Sherlock with Mary as cultural buffer are the only ones on the show in which John openly and willingly addresses his emotions without drinking alcohol first. (Aside from the reconciliation scene: and isn’t that interesting?)
For another simple comparison, have a look at the following picture.
Show this to someone who’s never seen Series 3 and ask them which faces — there are four, if you’d like to make it easier — are for John’s wife/girlfriend. Did they get them all right? Here’s the key:
1. John about to propose to Mary. He downed a glass of wine first. ✓
2. John hugging Mary, but only smiling like this when he starts talking about how ‘it’s always the unexpected’ with Sherlock.
3. John about to propose ask Sherlock to be his best man. He just walked in on Sherlock torching an eyeball.
4. John dancing with Mary while Sherlock plays violin. At least one glass of champagne was involved. ✓
5. John reacting to Sherlock inviting him on a case.
6. John’s face as he’s about to talk to Mary about the flash drive. ✓
7. John reacts to Sherlock’s best man speech. At least one glass of champagne was involved.
8. John seeing Sherlock walk out of his bedroom at the end of The Empty Hearse. The champagne hasn’t been opened yet.
9. John dancing with Mary. Yes, I had to use the same scene twice to get enough good pictures of John looking happy with Mary. Again: champagne. ✓
Bonus drunk round:
John smiling at Sherlock after telling him he’s important ‘to some people’.
Another extremely important element to a romantic story is that of ‘romantic obstacles’, situations which must be overcome for the couple to come together or to stay together, thus proving the strength of their regard and the narrative importance of their love. Aside from the reconciliation after shooting Sherlock — which Mary did nothing to contribute to, and which may not even be real — Mary faced no obstacles. In fact, she was given quite the opposite: a playing field skewed heavily in her favor from the very beginning. She starts by dating an emotionally compromised, grieving man who has isolated himself from at least some of his friends to avoid the reminder of Sherlock. She then distracts him from his grief with dating and (going by the blog posts) drinking, thus earning his gratitude and a potential source of emotional blackmail. When Sherlock returns, she alternates between taking John’s side and taking his, verbally reinforces her superiority to Sherlock when John is not around (‘I’ll talk him round’ implies that she has more emotional power over John than Sherlock does, though we have absolutely no evidence this is true) while simultaneously positioning herself as ally. This encourages Sherlock to see her as the gatekeeper to his relationship with John, thus also encouraging him to support their relationship. She is now the only romantic partner John has had whom Sherlock has actively supported, and she has the single greatest potential obstacle to their relationship on her side. She plays up her suitability as a partner by claiming to like Sherlock — something rendered dubious by her later shooting of him. At the wedding she further diminishes Sherlock (again when John is not around) by suggesting that he is not special, and later implying that he is holding back on saving Sholto because he’s a ‘drama queen’ (John’s words, but Mary’s suggestion), thereby further implying that Sherlock is incapable of understanding John’s feelings the way she does. She only starts openly showing her antipathy toward Sherlock to John after they’re married and she’s pregnant and he has a cultural obligation to make an extra effort for her (in addition to needing to support her so he can maintain his rights to the purported child). In short, she takes or is given every possible cultural bulwark against John leaving her. She faces the exact opposite of a romantic obstacle.
In fact, Mary never wins against Sherlock. Ever. There are two instances that are generally cited as John choosing Mary over Sherlock: the marriage, and his reconciliation with Mary at the end of His Last Vow. Even if we accept the reconciliation as real, however, this is objectively untrue for one simple reason: Sherlock isn’t competing with Mary, he’s supporting her. He supported John’s engagement to Mary both verbally and in the form of planning their wedding, and (if the forgiveness is real), supported their reconciliation using the confrontation scene in 221b. If you score a goal in a game, the person cheering you from the stands doesn’t lose. It doesn’t matter if they want to play the game or if the umpire wishes they were in the game, they’re still not in it. Subjectively (in my interpretation), John only ‘chooses’ Mary in the first case because he believes Sherlock is unavailable, and because she is the only love interest he’s had that has not clashed with Sherlock. It is, from his perspective, his best chance at happiness with both Sherlock and romance. Sherlock, likewise believing John unavailable, also supports the marriage because he thinks it’s the best thing for John’s happiness and their continued friendship. In case you haven’t noticed, miscommunication is a major theme in their relationship. In the second case, I believe the forgiveness isn’t real. However, if it is, then it is done under duress by a man who’s suffered severe psychological trauma and betrayal and who has been told by the two people he loves most, including Sherlock, that it’s what he wants. Again, I don’t think Sherlock truly trusts Mary, but if he did it would again be based on his flawed understanding of both John’s feelings and his own worthiness of them (relative to Mary).
One of the better arguments in John and Mary’s favor is that for ‘realism’. In other words, it’s entirely normal for people of John and Mary’s age to lack the same level of passion and flirtatiousness we expect from younger people (or romantic fiction). It’s also normal for reconciliations to be slow and awkward rather than eager or ‘Hollywood’ dramatic. And if this were a quiet drama, or a naturalistic love story focused on John and Mary and covering their whole lives together, then that would be a strong argument. Unfortunately for Mary, this isn’t a quiet drama and in the context of the actual show it falls flat. Sherlock, for the last three seasons, has been a show about ‘two men and their frankly ridiculous adventures’. It’s a genre show, a bit pulpy and styled with ‘heightened’ reality. There are no emotional conversations, not really. Aborted attempts and dramatic confessions fit, but none of the sort of rational, adult heart-to-hearts that always look so out-of-character in fan fiction. John and Sherlock’s relationship is fraught with miscommunication and reticence, their progress written mostly between the lines. That’s not to say it’s hidden — not at all — but it lacks the foreground it would be getting in a true relationship drama (think Downton Abbey). It’s also the central relationship in the show, regardless of whether it’s interpreted as romantic or platonic or something in between. In other words, John and Mary’s relationship is having to stand up against John and Sherlock’s — and John and Sherlock’s relationship has all the drama and passion and romantic iconography that John and Mary’s lacks. The writers will certainly not have missed this. So, had they wished to convey a sense of truly deep love between John and Mary, they would have let it win against John and Sherlock in some meaningful way. And they haven’t.
In short, Mary was introduced as a comfortable, loving partner, a seemingly insurmountable obstacle to John and Sherlock being together. She’s given no particularly unusual traits compatible with John (claims of him loving psychopaths notwithstanding), but made to seem too kind and charming and comfortable with Sherlock for John to ever want to leave her. Then, slowly, this characterization is dismantled. Little negative traits are allowed to seep through, though perhaps not obviously at first. She takes Sherlock’s side against John when it’s clear she shouldn’t. She makes little digs at Sherlock that slowly dismantle his self-image in his relationship with John. Then, finally, we get to see the ‘real’ Mary: a woman who is irritated by her husband’s attachment to Sherlock, and who would — at the very least — rather risk Sherlock’s life than her marriage, proof that she is ‘unworthy’ of John’s love (or it would be in almost any story). This is not the characterization of a romantic lead. This is, in fact, a classic romantic false lead. Which implies rather strongly that there is a true romantic lead. Hello, Sherlock.
None of this is meant to suggest that John didn’t truly love Mary, or that he didn’t feel that marrying her was the right decision for everyone involved. It is meant to suggest that Mary wouldn’t have been his first choice, or even a serious challenger, if he’d thought Sherlock were available. In my opinion, Sherlock, to John, was the great love of his life, but also the aromantic, asexual, possibly even sociopathic best friend who would never want a romantic relationship. Mary seemed like a gift: someone he loved who also loved Sherlock, allowing John to have the best of both worlds: a stable, loving home life and adventure with his best friend. No doubt he thought he would grow to love her as deeply as he loved Sherlock, perhaps more so as the flame of passion dwindled. But John was wrong. He and Sherlock are binary stars, orbiting each other as inexorably as gravity, and Mary was only ever a satellite. She pulls John away from a Sherlock a little at times, but the perturbations are mild. John tried, but in the end his wedding wasn’t the magic bullet both he and Mary seemed to expect. Sherlock is crucial to John’s complete happiness in a way Mary simply isn’t. Their marriage, and relationship in general, only works when it revolves in some way around Sherlock. So while John and Sherlock have been set up for a great love story, the kind we’re meant to root for even when they screw up or hurt each other, John and Mary have not. Sherlock is simply in a league of his own, and the show runners told us this by minimizing John and Mary’s romance.
I’ll let the show sum it all up: when Sherlock and John dance, it’s alone, at home, working against social pressure rather than with it. When John and Mary dance, it’s to the tune of Sherlock’s violin.
mild-lunacy:
When the exact right mix of clarity and insight purifies the merely obvious until it’s self-evident, you might think, ‘omg I know this! of course!’— it’s still a revelation. That’s the pleasure of really good analysis, for me. Anyway, although there’s a certain purity to a finely proven, perfectly made point, my joy in life is messing with things like that, so. I was thinking about the idea that John and Mary are (literally, in The Sign of Three, and metaphorically in His Last Vow) dancing ‘to the tune of Sherlock’s violin’. I think it’s important: the larger question of, ‘who is in control of the narrative in Series 3’?
Because there’s a narrative in fandom, I think, where Sherlock is a passive subject or even a victim of the events in series 3 (of Mary’s manipulations and her relationship to John, of Mycroft’s schemes in The Empty Hearse, even of his own sentiment). And of course, his pain is rather obvious. But I think Sherlock’s learning to feel, not to fear his own pain with the Mind Palace!Moriarty was equivalent to him learning to use it; to control it and master the situation more consciously. I was always attracted to netherworldvineyard's reading of the wedding walk-out, for example: not because it minimized Sherlock’s pain, but because it emphasized his agency, his learning process.
Sherlock chose to organize the whole wedding, and then he specifically wrote their dance and deduced the baby into existence, pretty much. That is probably the biggest argument against the idea that Mary manipulated Sherlock into the deduction, and there is no baby, just as the AGRA treasure is empty: that’s not really the way this game has been played. It’s not Mary’s game-board. That doesn’t mean that Mary’s and Mycroft’s manipulations don’t still exist, but I don’t think either of them have been able to control the composition of the narrative. That’s Sherlock’s tune, quite literally (and also probably Moriarty’s). This comes up again in mid0nz's musical analysis of the Baker Street confrontation in His Last Vow; musically as well as thematically, then, the waltz, their talk at Baker Street and John’s reconciliation with Mary at Christmas are unified. Sherlock’s influence is everywhere, from the gun John carries to the suspiciously ‘prepared words’. All the confrontations in His Last Vow after Sherlock is shot are on Sherlock’s turf where he controls the variables (the empty house he owns, his flat, his parents’ house). I don’t think this is accidental.
John and Mary’s whole relationship is filled with references to deflections and facades: there’s the empty house, the (potentially empty) flash drive, and Mary Morstan herself is essentially a null set. Indeed, yes, their relationship itself is empty as well, not shown as valid or developed in the same way as John and Sherlock’s. Of course, this connects to salsify's meta on ‘facades as both theme and method in series 3’, since violethuntress responded that Mary would work as a ‘metonym for the series as a whole’. As Sherlock said to John, ‘you can trust Mary’, except of course we can’t. Similarly, we can trust the relationship we seemingly see on screen between an ordinary doctor and veteran and a kind nurse, but of course we can’t: neither Mary, nor John, nor their relationship is really what they seem. And instead of the theory that Mary will be the conduit between John and Sherlock in Series 3, what we really have is Sherlock being the necessary conduit between John and Mary.
Without Sherlock’s tune to direct their movements, it would (it will) all fall apart.
graceebooks:
I love a lot of this but I just can’t cotton to the idea that Sherlock is pulling strings in any even remotely effective large-scale way by His Last Vow. Obviously he starts out the series seeing himself that way; the master manipulator, about to sweep back into John’s life after dismantling Moriarty’s network and have everything fall back into place etc. And obviously he is still trying to pull the strings in His Last Vow, but I think the point is that he drops back into London wildly in over his head and tries to play puppet master in a landscape of incredibly complex and fraught emotional dynamics that he can’t even begin to understand or navigate. I think that’s part of what Mind Palace Moriarty was telling him - that feeling and understanding these emotions actually has the potential to make him MORE effective, not less so. But he isn’t there yet.
There is a difference between a passive subject and an active but ineffective one. I would certainly never call s3 Sherlock passive, but I think a lot of his action was of a kind with icarus flying off toward the sun. He isn’t a passive subject; I wouldn’t even call him a victim, barring the obvious on Mary’s part, and I also think a huge amount of the characters’ true motivations’ during s3 remain unrevealed to us currently, but it’s extremely difficult for me to envision Sherlock as “in control of the narrative” represented by those three episodes, particularly since balancing the power and control in John and Sherlock’s relationship strikes me as an ongoing project the writers’ began in earnest in s3.
I think ultimately we’re meant to see Sherlock a bit like a phoenix burnt in the ashes of his own drastically unforseen ignorance and utter inability to navigate the landscape of the human emotional experience, which he has suddenly found himself thrust so mercilessly into. I think you’re right that Sherlock is in the middle of a learning process that has begun to and will eventually fully culminate in his regaining his confidence and agency in a new way that includes emotional consciousness and literacy, but I think his rising from those ashes has only just barely begun. This isn’t to say that Mary HAS manipulated Sherlock into deducing the baby - although I do think it’s one of a very limited number of strong possibilities, it isn’t the ONLY one - but I just don’t see the compelling macronarrative argument against it that you do. That isn’t how Sherlock THOUGHT the game was played, but Sherlock is coming to realize that he didn’t even know the rules.
Façades are definitely a strong theme throughout the series, and I think virtually every main character has on one kind of façade or another during this series (if not multiple), but my read on the main façade motif around Sherlock is his crumbling façade of sociopathy and sexlessness.
Misunderstandings have also long been a running theme in John and Sherlock’s relationship, so I don’t think conscious, intentional control/maintenance of John and Mary’s relationship on Sherlock’s part is necessary for his actions to represent the “music” by which the “dance” of John and Mary’s marriage is conducted. I think the point being communicated during the first dance scene is that John is dancing the moves Sherlock taught him to the music Sherlock wrote with an unsatisfying replacement partner. Combined with the establishment of dancing as a metaphor for romance/sex and Molly’s eyes on Sherlock throughout his piece, for me this is our clearest “Mary and Molly’s fiancé are mirrors” moment.
Reading back through this it kind of seems like I am trying to argue that Sherlock had no hidden motivations and/or wasn’t pulling any secret strings or controlling anything behind the scenes this series that we aren’t privy to yet, but that isn’t actually what I’m saying. What I mean is that I also expect - or at the very least, very strongly hope - that Sherlock has a seriously incomplete perspective, that there is also a lot going on that he is utterly clueless to, and thus that he still has another rude awakening in store. My feelings about whatever machinations Sherlock was engaged in that are as of yet hidden from us is similar to your take on those of Mycroft and Mary; it’s not that they don’t exist, and yes, obviously Sherlock’s fingerprints are everywhere in this narrative, but personally I expect him to have wildly underestimated the extent to which his own plans and manipulations represent the whole picture and to be unaware of what others are planning. I mean to me, his drastic underestimation of Magnussen and subsequent unplanned killing communicate exactly that idea and in my opinion represent his “burning phoenix” moment.
For all their faults, the writers have shown a strong grasp of the need for balance in John and Sherlock’s relationship, and from where I’m sitting another “hiatus clusterfuck” resolution in which Sherlock has pulled the strings and John has danced is just utterly narratively prohibitive if any emotionally satisfying reconciliation between these two men is ever to be reached. You may be suggesting a situation in which John is privy to Sherlock’s plans, which I do agree is possible. However, it just seems unlikely to me that their real reconciliation would take place offscreen, so if that’s the case I think we have some serious flashback ground to cover. Either way, at this point Sherlock has spent what little “manipulating and keeping John in the dark for his own good” capital he ever had, and he knows it. This is why I actually suspect that the events of s3, and of His Last Vow in particular, were in part a set-up to demonstrate that John DOESN’T just dance to Sherlock’s tune, and that sometimes he can even be the one pulling the strings.
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