Sherlock and Irene and one night in Karachi

 (Sherlock meta by mae-jones)

Q: Hi I just saw a post here which said that Sherlock slept with Irene in Karachi and it's canon but was it actually stated in the show? I'm kinda confused here coz from what I saw in TFP when Eurus asks if he's had sex ( isn't there an inflection in her tone) he retorts with "why do you ask?" instead of a 'yes' and also isn't Adler's theme a sappy sad song, so from where is this sex part coming from? I kinda got the vibe that he still hasn't crossed that line. Your thoughts? If you don't mind.

A: [...] Sherlock and Irene getting it on was not canonized on the show. However, the ‘one night in Karachi’ was a direct answer to a question about whether Irene and Sherlock had sex during an interview with that Ben guy. He was adamant it happened. Now, if you ask me, I would say that Ben’s comments are a confirmation of them having had sex. You have to remember, he played the character with this in mind. It’s as close to canon as one can get without Sherlock admitting it or us seeing a hot and heavy montage on the show.

But, if you want to envision Sherlock as not having jumped in the sack with Irene (or anyone else), I suppose there’s a wee bit of wiggle room for it. In fact, I am quite certain that the writers wrote conflicting indicators into this show just to preserve some mystique about Sherlock and to make us question what we think we know about him. You are free to believe what you like, just don’t tell others they’re wrong, okay? No one has the definitive answer on this. It is all a matter of interpretation. Unfortunately, people are too hasty assign motivations to interpretations and that’s where these things get testy.

If you want my opinion on it, I have never really envisioned the Sherlock I saw on screen as a virgin. Nor does it bother me to imagine that he and Irene got it on because even though they’re not my otp, I don’t see why him having sex with her would diminish any other relationship. It’s here nor there for me. In the end, Sherlock told my Molly - my fave, fave character - that he loved her and she has the only claim that really matters to my shipper heart, the one on his affections.

The Interpretation of Dreams: 

A Freudian reading of The Abominable Bride (Part 1) 

 (Sherlock meta by notagarroter)

In The Abominable Bride, Sherlock makes reference to “an Viennese alienist”. "Alienist“ is an archaic word for a doctor who treats the insane, or what we would now call a psychiatrist, which makes this a clear reference to the father of modern psychology, Sigmund Freud, who was busy developing his psychoanalytic practice and theories in the 1890s in Austria. In this scene, Sherlock is complaining about John asking questions that are inappropriate from anyone but one’s psychoanalyst. But is there another reason Sherlock might have Freud on the brain?

Possibly it’s because Freud was notoriously experimenting with cocaine at almost exactly the same time the original Sherlock Holmes was concocting his 7% solution.

Or perhaps because most of The Abominable Bride is an elaborate, extended dream sequence, and one of Freud’s most significant works from this era is called The Interpretation of Dreams.

For Freud, dream interpretation is a way of accessing the unconscious mind. What does Freud mean by the unconscious? According to the theory, the unconscious is a part of the mind kept hidden from us under most circumstances. Freud believed that humans are excellent secret-keepers, and there is no one we are more inclined to deceive than ourselves. The unconscious mind holds all of our darkest desires, fears, and obsessions. It affects our daily lives and the choices we make, and yet we only get occasional glimpses of its workings.

Freud argues that dream analysis is one method of uncovering the secrets of the unconscious. Would Sherlock Holmes agree? It’s tempting to assume that Sherlock would dismiss Freud’s ideas as a lot of untestable, pseudo-scientifc blather (plenty of real humans have!). The Abominable Bride, however, gives us some indications that Sherlock is at least willing to play with Freud’s approach.

Freud’s interest in dreams comes from the idea that in sleep, the mind lets down some of its carefully constructed defenses, and allows usually hidden material to rise to the surface (if only in weirdly altered forms). If we believe Sherlock’s claim that he deliberately self-administered a cocktail of drugs in order to unearth clues and make connections about Moriarty’s death, well… that sounds like a pretty similar approach.

That Sherlock should be interested in navigating the unconscious is itself a bit surprising. In Freud’s understanding, the unconscious mind is totally amoral, irrational, chaotic, and pleasure-focused – in other words, everything Sherlock Holmes consciously abhors. Nevertheless, Sherlock appears to recognize that the key to Moriarty’s return is already contained in his own mind, though inaccessible by normal means. This is what Mycroft means when he says "The Mind Palace is a memory technique.” 

The mind palace is a mnemonic device for accessing memories using the conscious mind. What Sherlock is doing in The Abominable Bride – digging deep into unconscious mind for repressed thoughts and memories – is very different.

In order to understand what Sherlock uncovers in The Abominable Bride, it’s helpful to know a bit about how Freud approaches dream interpretation. For Freud, dreams are incredibly personal and dream imagery is built out of the objects and experiences specific to the patient. There may be symbolic resonances, but they can’t be universalized. It is NOT about simple, generic symbolic readings, i.e. “if you dream about fish that means good luck.” Similarly, he avoids trying to read the whole dream as a coherent narrative and finding meaning in that. It’s more productive to take every object, character, event, and impression in a dream separately than to try to make sense of the whole. This involves talking to a patient and getting to know them well enough to tease out the repressed anxieties and desires that may be represented in altered form in their dream. Since we don’t have Sherlock on the couch in front of us, we can’t exactly pick at his brain to find hidden associations. Instead, we have to rely on what we already know of his character from previous episodes and maybe a dash of ACD canon.

Another caveat: Freud specifically talks about fictional dreams and how little they generally resemble real dreams. Fictional dreams usually contain glaringly obvious symbols because they are the creations of conscious minds, not unconscious, repressed ones. In The Abominable Bride we clearly have a fictional dream constructed by a couple of conscious minds: Sherlock’s dream in The Abominable Bride is WAY more coherent and complete than real dreams normally are. (Necessarily so – if the dream had been as bizarre and incoherent as a real dream, it would have been unwatchable as a story.) So we must be careful of getting carried away with our analysis. That said, the fact that the dream includes a direct reference to Freud suggests that writers were expecting and even encouraging a Freudian-style interpretation of their invented dream. We owe it to them to at least give it a shot! '

In Interpretation of Dreams, Freud puts forward the theory that every dream is the expression of an unconscious wish. This is an extension of his theory of the Pleasure Principle, which states that all human action is governed by the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. In dreams, we can do whatever we want, so naturally we would seek out pleasures unavailable to us in waking life. While in some cases (sex dreams, food dreams), the dreamer’s pleasurable wish may be obvious, in the case of anxiety dreams and nightmares, the wish has been disguised because our conscious minds find it shameful for some reason. For example, if you have a test tomorrow, you might dream that a million little obstacles prevent you from getting to the test. People normally interpret this as anxiety about getting to the test on time, but Freud claims this dream is really the expression of your wish not to take the test at all.

So going by this theory, what might be the wish at the heart of The Abominable Bride? The Abominable Bride contains a nightmare scenario where Sherlock fails to prevent the murder of a client’s husband.

Read simply, this could be an expression of Sherlock’s anxiety over failing at his profession. Read as the fulfillment of a wish, however, we might conclude that Sherlock actually wants Sir Eustace eliminated because he has repressed desires for Eustace’s wife, Lady Carmichael. And (Johnlockers, cover your eyes!) there is plenty of support for this reading in the dream: Sherlock directly accuses Sir Eustace of being unworthy of his wife, John later suggests that Sherlock has taken a fancy to her, and Sherlock himself – despite all his denials – admits that she has “admirably high arches”.

But all of this is still surface interpretation and doesn’t get us close to the deeper levels of the dream. According to Freud, when the mind has something it feels guilty or uncomfortable about, it will go to extraordinary lengths to bury the idea and keep this repressed material from becoming conscious.

Freud gives the example of what he calls “kettle logic”. This comes from a story about a man who is accused by his neighbor of having broken a borrowed kettle. The man replies that

1) the kettle isn’t broken
2) it was already broken when he borrowed it
3) he never borrowed the kettle at all.

Any one of these justifications might make sense, but together they become absurd. This is the way logic works in dreams: these kinds of excessive, overlapping, and contradictory rationalizations are a sign that there is a submerged idea or desire that the dreamer isn’t ready to face yet. We see this “kettle logic” at various points in the The Abominable Bride  dream, but most frequently it occurs whenever the subject of Moriarty comes up.

When Sherlock asks himself, “How could he survive?”, Dream!John immediately replies “She, you mean” – a sign that Sherlock’s mind is trying to paper over the momentary inconsistency and distract Sherlock from the buried content of the dream. And again:

The “miss me” note appears out of nowhere on Sir Eustace’s corpse, and its message bears no relevance to the case at hand.

Then in the Diogenes Club, when Sherlock says, “His body was never recovered”, Dream!Mycroft replies, “To be expected when one pushes a maths professor over a waterfall”, even though that’s not relevant to the modern mystery Sherlock’s actually trying to unravel.

But Sherlock’s dream self participates in this misdirection too. Sherlock says, “He’s trying to distract me, to derail me”, presumably from the “real” case of Mrs Ricoletti. But in fact, Ricoletti doesn’t matter at all. The whole Ricoletti case was only ever intended as a tool to get him closer to Moriarty.

Within the dream, the only one who really gets this game of repression and revelation is Moriarty himself. Sherlock tells Moriarty that he chose to come here, and Moriarty replies, “Not true. You know that’s not true”, suggesting that they both know nothing happens in this dream space without Sherlock wishing for it. Then Moriarty proceeds to lecture Sherlock on what we’ve called “kettle logic”. He points out the logical impossibility of him showing up at the scene of Sir Eustace’s murder. He emphasizes all the points that don’t add up, that don’t make sense. He insistently reminds Sherlock that the whole Ricoletti case is little more than a screen over what really draws Sherlock: Moriarty himself.

But why is Moriarty’s appearance in 221b, in the crypt, and at the waterfall a fulfillment of Sherlock’s unconscious wish?

There are a lot of ways we could take this. The most transparent is that Sherlock needs to solve the mystery of Moriarty’s apparent reappearance, and for that, he needs to consult Moriarty. That makes sense, but it’s a little dull, and it’s not clear why Sherlock’s mind would go to such lengths to disguise this motivation.

The most fannishly appealing explanation is that Sherlock wants Moriarty for ~sex stuff~, but can’t admit it. And hey, let’s not pretend there isn’t a TON of evidence for this reading:

Plus, it would be pretty typical of Freud’s patients to be repressing sexual desires with a very inappropriate person: an arch-enemy, say, or better yet, a corpse. So far, still pretty obvious. But what if we went deeper still… Is there anything else?

Oh, yes. Read more in part 2: The Pleasure Principle and the Death Drive.

The Pleasure Principle and the Death Drive: 

A Freudian Reading of The Abominable Bride (part 2) 

 (Sherlock meta by notagarroter)

A continuation of my meta on TAB and The Interpretation of Dreams. 

In my previous meta, I talked about Freud’s theory that every dream is the expression of a wish. If so, what is the unconscious wish hidden in Sherlock’s drug-fueled dream in The Abominable Bride?

Sherlock’s in kind of an unusual situation here, because where most of us dream as an accidental side-effect of sleeping, Sherlock has consciously set out to have this dream to serve a particular purpose. According to Sherlock (when conscious), the purpose of this whole exercise is to figure out whether it’s possible for Moriarty to have survived their encounter on the roof of Barts.

So that’s Sherlock’s conscious wish. But what about his unconscious?

Officially, the question Sherlock is asking in The Abominable Bride is, “How could Moriarty return from the dead?” But underneath that question, I want to suggest a deeper concern of Sherlock’s: “Why did Moriarty kill himself?”

In a way, Sherlock’s world would make more sense if Moriarty did fake his death, just as Sherlock did. We might not know how, but we would certainly understand why. But if Moriarty really and truly did kill himself just to force Sherlock’s hand on that rooftop… the real mystery is, why? What pleasure or satisfaction could Moriarty hope to gain from all his carefully laid plans if he is dead?

As many other meta-writers have eloquently observed, Sherlock has personal reasons to be interested in this question: there have been many indications throughout the show that Sherlock has at times considered suicide.

He might well believe that understanding Moriarty’s motivations could help him better understand his own.

But how could suicide be the fulfillment of an unconscious wish? According to Freud, wishes are supposed to be about pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain, right?

Well, this is where I need to complicate that idea a little. Because it turns out, Freud didn’t stand by the ideas in The Interpretation of Dreams all his life. Interpretation of Dreams was written early in his career. Years later, towards the end, Freud posited the existence of something he referred to as The Death Drive. He invented this idea to account for the fact that, over the course of his career, he ran into a lot of human behaviors that did not seem to fit his model of pleasure-seeking/pain-avoiding. Why, Freud asked, do people sometimes do things that cannot bring them any pleasure, and actually cause them more harm than good?

In his book Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Freud guesses (and believe me, this idea remains plenty controversial) that there might be some other drive competing with the Pleasure Principle, and causing us to seek our own destruction. The reason why this might be and the mechanism for how it might work are pretty flimsy, as even Freud acknowledges. He’s really just putting this forward as a hypothesis for discussion. But whether or not this is a real drive that exists, it may nevertheless be of interest to Sherlock as he contemplates Moriarty’s apparent suicide.

And indeed, the conversation between Sherlock and Dream!Moriarty is haunted throughout by the specter of death.

MORIARTY: That’s all people really are, you know: dust waiting to be distributed. 

This idea actually gets very close to Freud’s theory of the death drive – that people are irresistibly drawn to the state that they are destined to become: ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

The cannibalism angle just adds a disturbing element of pleasure to the idea of destruction. It suggests that death itself serves a pleasurable purpose—that it can feed our secret urges as much as other physical indulgences.

Dream!Moriarty goes even further than Freud, suggesting that death and pleasure might not be opposing drives at all, but inextricably linked. Death is pleasure… and maybe pleasure is itself a kind of death.

Which brings us to another player in Sherlock’s dream who has something to tell him (and us) about the relationship between pleasure and death:

Dream!Mycroft gives us a few more clues to the mystery at the heart of Sherlock’s unconscious. On a simple level, we get John’s admonition that Mycroft’s gluttonous behavior is unhealthy and, pleasurable though it may be, could result in his early death. This falls in neatly with Freud’s early theory of life as a balance between pleasure-seeking and pain-avoidance, and could be construed as merely a warning to avoid pleasurable excess.

But what’s particularly interesting is the way Mycroft doesn’t balk at the threat of death, but embraces it. Like dream!Moriarty, Mycroft isn’t interested in avoiding death or even ignoring it. He is actively courting it.

In fact, one gets the idea that chasing death (i.e., the death drive) may actually be the greater motivator for Mycroft than whatever dubious pleasure he receives from devouring three plum puddings in a sitting.

Some readers have read elements of this scene as foreshadowing Mycroft’s death in some future episode, but it’s important to remember that this Mycroft has very little to do with the actual character. Instead, he has everything to do with Sherlock’s repressed desires, anxieties, and fixations.

Despite Sherlock’s grand plan to use this dream to solve a real life mystery, ultimately a dream can only lead the dreamer back to himself. As Dream!Moriarty insistently reminds Sherlock, there is no new information to be gleaned from a dream:

In other words, a dream can only give very limited information about someone else – a regurgitation of what the dreamer already knows. The real revelations are necessarily going to be about Sherlock himself.

Thus, the Mycroft figure in the dream is really just a tool to allow Sherlock to investigate his own repressed urges without admitting to them. It’s not really about Mycroft’s weight or his pleasure or his health, but about Sherlock’s repressed desires and what might happen if he gave into them.

And what are those desires? Drugs? Food? Sex? Love? I’d argue: yes, all of the above. Dream!Mycroft is the literalization of Sherlock’s fears about what might become of him if he lost control and allowed himself to indulge in any or all of his various urges. Sherlock fears he could become something grotesque – too big, too much.

Perhaps even to the point of death.

Or is that death not merely an unfortunate side effect of indulgence, but what Sherlock ultimately desires most of all? Sherlock, who takes drugs that “usually” aren’t fatal, and who fantasizes about jumping into an open grave?

Sherlock, who ends his dream by throwing himself, alone, off of a waterfall:

A triumphant moment within the context of the show, but surely a somewhat morbid one as well.

Why does he do it? Yes, he says he “always survives a fall". But he is also subtly invoking the common superstition that if you die in a dream, you won’t wake up. This is no idle risk for Sherlock, as we know that in real life, he is actually overdosing on a drug cocktail. There is a very real threat that he won’t survive this “fall”.

We don’t get a really firm answer to this “final” problem – indeed, I doubt one is possible. But there may be a hint in Sherlock’s certainty at the end of The Abominable Bride that Moriarty really is dead. That suggests that Sherlock’s unconscious has convinced him death did have a compelling appeal for Moriarty, against all logic. And if for Moriarty, why not for Sherlock too?

"If I wasn't everything that you think I am"

 (Sherlock meta by notagarroter and vulgarweed)

notagarroter:

This is a favorite sherlolly moment for me, because of the contrast with John.

The key to John is that John never doubts Sherlock. Sherlock asks him in The Reichenbach Fall if he is 100%, if he has any doubts at all, but even when Sherlock is on the roof, John never questions for a second that Sherlock is the genius he always claimed he was.

But Molly… Molly doesn’t care. Molly will take care of him, will protect him, even if he *is* a fraud. No questions asked. I think for John, it is at least important that Sherlock be one of the Good Guys. He couldn’t tolerate it if his hero, his idol had actually kidnapped and poisoned children. But Molly… Her loyalty extends even beyond morality.

And that’s why she’s the one who matters.

It’s also why I hate to see this ship dismissed as cute fangirl fluff, as nothing more than the “heterosexual option”.

There is something dark and tragic and a little twisted going on between these two. And I like it.

vulgarweed:

Molly kept Sherlock’s secret. She knew how John was grieving, and probably Mrs. Hudson too. She knew that Lestrade blamed himself and Anderson descended into madness to the point of losing his job. She knew all sorts of fallouts and repercussions of Sherlock’s “death,” including ones that deeply hurt people she knew and liked.

And she kept the secret anyway. No doubt she too played the grieving friend, probably put on a little extra devastation-performance for those in the inner circle who knew how she really felt about Sherlock.

She faked his death certificate. She prepared the lookalike corpse. Whatever witchcraft had to be done with DNA and whatnot to make Sherlock Holmes as “dead” as a living man can be, she did it. She broke so many laws and risked her own career, stone cold, and got away with it even after the truth came out.

She played them all. With her sad little sniffles.

Molly is that ‘best friend’ who REALLY WILL help you hide the body - or the lack of one if the death is your own. Girl is STONE COLD SCARY and it’s all the more effective because she looks mousy and normal and cute. She will be the last one to break at the end of the world.

Shipping aside, how do people not see what a great compelling character she is? I would watch BBC Molly so hard.

Romantic Entanglement

 (Sherlock meta by celticmoonbeam)

SHERLOCK: As I think I have explained to you many times before, romantic entanglement, while fulfilling for other people … 
JOHN: … would complete you as a human being. 

This line in The Lying Detective hit me so hard. Because, it’s true! Over 4 seasons, we’ve seen Sherlock learn to let friends into his life. We’ve seen him improve his family relationships, particularly with Mycroft.

But, he’s never really opened himself up to romance. He seemed to have some feelings for the Woman, but as he says, he hardly texts her back. His relationship with Janine was a lie to get access to Magnussen.

To complete his character development arc, to become complete as a human being, this is the last hurdle Sherlock has to cross. He has to open himself up to romance. This line resonates because of its truth. And why plant that idea and then do nothing with it in the narrative?

In my mind, this line helps set up Sherlock’s character arc–and it’s evidence that Sherlock meant it when he admitted his love for Molly Hooper. It takes that idea to a conclusion. We see Sherlock become more complete as a human being. When he finally says, “I love you,” he’s opening himself up to romantic entanglement. He’s admitting he can have those feelings, and he DOES have those feelings. Eurus’s vivisection rips him open and shows his heart… and this new side of him can fill that last gap and complete his character development arc.

Yes, he admits it under duress… but that’s part of the beauty of the scene! At times in the past, he’s taken Molly for granted (although I would argue that changed in season 2). But now he’s faced with the possibility of her death–of losing her forever. He’s absolutely frantic and panicked. I think facing her impending demise, imagining what life would be like without her, makes him realize more than ever how much he cares. You can see in his eyes that her loss would destroy him.

For me, this scene fits best into the narrative if Sherlock does love Molly. He’s cleared that last hurdle and he’s about to become more complete as a human being.

What was going through Sherlock's mind during TLD?

 (Sherlock meta by Ivy Blossom)

Q: [...] I was just curious as to what you think was going through Sherlock's mind during TLD. How do you think he understood John deserting him? Like, why do you think Sherlock never seems to doubt John, or lose faith, as John himself did? What must he have thought of John to assume or calculate that John would seriously hurt him? Why would he think that? And yet, how did he still imagine John could or would return? Was he always actually able to predict John all along, or....

A: I’m not sure it’s clear that Sherlock was planning for John to seriously hurt him in The Lying Detective; his plan doesn’t require that. Sherlock doesn’t end up in Culverton Smith’s hospital room because of John’s violence. He’s there because he’s drugged himself to within weeks of his own demise.

That said, I don’t think Sherlock is especially surprised that John hit him. John has a well-known tendency towards violence, particularly when coupled with strong emotions he can’t process. When that incident occurs, John is already sideways coping with the sudden death of his wife by blaming Sherlock and pushing him away, so I don’t think it’s a huge deductive leap for Sherlock to suspect that some level of violence against him might ensue.

When John hits Sherlock in The Lying Detective, it isn’t even the first time John’s deliberately hurt Sherlock: Sherlock incited him to it in A Scandal in Belgravia, and John hit him in anger multiple times at the beginning of The Empty Hearse. Sherlock has every reason to expect a violent reaction from John, but to be honest I don’t think he was factoring it in as part of his over all plan in The Lying Detective. It wasn’t required.

It’s interesting to consider the premise of your question: what do you think Sherlock never doubts? That if he needs John enough, John will definitely be there to save him?

I’m not sure Sherlock is convinced of that. While John is riddled with self-loathing through The Lying Detective, I think Sherlock is, too. The Norbury reference tells us that Sherlock considers Mary’s death to be his greatest failure and miscalculation. He clearly believes that he deserves to be blamed for it.

It’s not clear to me that Sherlock is so confident that John will run to his side. But he’s prepared to pull out all the stops anyway. The plan isn’t for John to save Sherlock; Sherlock is trying to save John.

I think Sherlock is very much aware that he might fail in that task, and that if he does, it will probably cost him his life. He is in the middle of this potential suicide mission even while telling Eurus-as-Faith that suicide isn’t an option. Sherlock has decided to save John, or die. His very last plan, his own death recorded via the device in John’s cane, wouldn’t have saved him. It would only have been evidence to solve his last case.

When Culverton Smith is about to kill him, Sherlock says he doesn’t want to die, and he means it. He can only mean it in that moment because he thinks it’s imminent. He isn’t expecting John to break through the door, is he? Does that mean he lost faith in John?

Sherlock’s constructed crisis wasn’t a test of John’s heroism, which is frankly never in question. When Sherlock looks at Culverton Smith and realizes there’s no way out, it’s not John who failed. It’s Sherlock’s rescue mission that failed.

Could Sherlock predict all of John’s actions? He knows John very well, and he can predict many of his choices. But not all of them, as he admits. Sherlock thinks he’s about to die, but John makes a choice Sherlock didn’t count on: he saves Sherlock in spite of everything.

The Missing Reichenbach Solution 

 (Sherlock meta by notagarroter)

Moftiss et al love a cliffhanger, don’t they? It’s an old trick, beloved to writers and filmmakers since the early days of serial adventure dramas. In its most classic form, the hero is shown hanging off the edge of a literal cliff as the episode comes to a close, leaving the viewer desperate to find out if he will live or die in the next installment. Of course, the sophisticated viewer knows that the hero will almost always live (unless the actor’s contract has been canceled). But that doesn’t necessarily detract from the drama.

The last scene in The Great Game is a good example of this – our heroes are in a deadly situation, snipers behind them, explosives in front, and a semi-suicidal madman presiding over it all. How will they possibly get out of this? Tune in two years hence!

From a distance, the end of The Reichenbach Fall looks like another standard cliffhanger, the viewer breathlessly anticipating the promised resolution. But it’s doing something a bit different.

Contrary to tradition, this cliffhanger doesn’t end with our hero on the cliff. Instead, we get to watch him fall. We watch him hit the ground. And even more remarkably, we watch him come back to life.

Roll credits.

That’s not the usual order of things when creating a cliffhanger, but in this case it was necessary – this was a nod, of course, to the fact that the audience has known for over 100 years that Sherlock Holmes survives the fall. Moftiss have shifted our emotional energy from, “what is going to happen?” to “how did he do that?” That in itself is a neat trick, but that’s not all that’s happening here. Sherlock’s appearance at the end of The Reichenbach Fall marks a shift in the way this story is being told. A shift that was anticipated as early as the first episode, but is only now coming to full fruition. The Reichenbach Fall is a crucial moment not only in the narrative, but in the meta narrative of the show: Moftiss are forcing us to examine what it means to update this hero to our own era.

In the first season, it was possible to watch the show and believe that all you needed was a handful of mobile phones to bring the iconic Victorian detective into the modern age – very little else had to change.

But already in series 2, Moftiss started showing us the cracks that result from this uneasy melding of the old and the new: something about Sherlock Holmes doesn’t quite fit with our world. Mobile phone in hand, he nonetheless remains a bit of a throwback, not quite in step with the way we tell stories today.

Why is this? Season 1 Sherlock is the very model of the rational, coherent subject. This creature is a fantasy that has been with us since at least the Enlightenment, and was much beloved by Victorians as well. The rational subject may not have achieved complete mastery of the world around him, but he knows it to be possible. He (and he is always, necessarily a white male) believes in science and technology and progress, and that these tools will be enough to eventually unlock every mystery. The rationalist trusts his reason and he trusts his senses, especially vision – to properly see something is to understand it.

JOHN: Yes, how did you know? 
SHERLOCK: I didn’t know, I saw. 

Those who fail to understand have failed to see. The rational subject is also stable – he knows who he is, he understands himself, and he behaves predictably, reasonably, and coherently.

With the development of the Moriarty arc in season 2, we see that rationalist fantasy start to fall apart. We could argue the end of A Scandal in Belgravia marks the beginning:

The first sign of the irrational creeping into Sherlock. Then in The Hounds of Baskerville, we see a Sherlock who no longer understands himself.

He is not in control of his body, and can no longer trust his senses – particularly his eyes. He is becoming fractured, and he doesn’t handle it well. Then in The Reichenbach Fall, Moriarty, the imp of the postmodern, steals the show by deconstructing the mythology of Sherlock Holmes. Moriarty robs Sherlock of his good name, but even more damningly, demonstrates to him that his reason and intelligence cannot protect him.

Sherlock saw, but he didn’t hear – his reason failed when up against the clever, unpredictable madness of Moriarty.

Given this deconstructive narrative, what kind of “solution” to The Reichenbach Fall could we possibly have expected? As viewers, we like to imagine that we would have been satisfied with a single, coherent, perfectly explicated solution. But I’m arguing that such a solution would have been a betrayal of the larger critical work the show is doing, and would have been a disappointment in its own right. Many fans wished for a solution that brought us back to S1 Sherlock, perhaps to reassure us that reason will triumph over madness, and Sherlock Holmes may once again be the iconic, crime-solving master. But that was never really possible, nor should we want it to be – any more than we should want to return to the simplistic, dishonest, phony rationalism of the Victorian era.

Instead, Moftiss challenged us with a series overlapping, contradictory and unresolvable explanations for Reichenbach. We are teased with two that seem patently ridiculous before getting a third which *seems* like it will satisfy our yearning for a simple, straightforward “truth”.

And left unexamined, it does – a casual viewer can walk away from The Empty Hearse feeling like he got the answer to the problem.

But anyone who looks more closely will discover that even the third solution, in all its wondrous complexity, simply doesn’t work. The S1 fantasia of a Sherlock who can always explain what happened with perfect, rational precision has been broken down into fractured perspectives, a tension between public and private truths, logic that isn’t logical, mania (in the form of Anderson) that may be quite sane… Everything Moftiss taught us to trust about this universe has been questioned and unsettled.

Which brings us to the fourth Reichenbach solution – the one that was right in front of us all this time, but is rarely recognized or acknowledged:

Of all the solutions, this is the only one that “works”, but it’s anything but rational. And what’s most telling about this solution is something that happens only a few moments earlier:

In this moment, Sherlock is dwelling in undecideability. He doesn’t like it, he tells us he doesn’t like it. Rationalist that he is, he wants there to be answers. And yet, in this moment he is acknowledging that there aren’t always answers. Not merely that he hasn’t figured out the solution yet, but that the truth may not be certain – that there may not even be a single, coherent truth.

And so it’s no surprise that when John finally demands to know what really happened when Sherlock jumped off the roof, the answer is both impossible and inevitable – what we didn’t want to accept and yet knew all along: Sherlock Holmes is indestructible. Even his own creator couldn’t kill him. And writers like Moftiss, and like me, and like you, will keep reviving him until the end of time.

An in-depth analysis of the Mind Palace sequence in HLV and what it means for Sherlock and Molly

 (Sherlock meta by creamocrop)

I got carried away in analyzing Sherlock’s mind palace and Molly’s presence in it.

Yes, it has been pointed out again and again that Sherlock envisioned Molly, a pathologist who works with the dead, as his saviour when he could have imagined John who is actually an army doctor and who, I imagine, has more practical experience with bullet wounds, because of you know…being from Afghanistan! 

So going by the fact that his mind resorted to an image of Molly rather than someone who is an expert in dealing with life and death situations, he clearly feels something for her. Right? right? Because you know…he associates her with safety and survival. -

[...]

But I don’t think that’s just it - although to be honest, associating someone with safety is actually kind of a big deal, but let me just backtrack a little.

I might just be over-analyzing things but I have always been fascinated with the concept of mind palaces so I am just going to go ahead and give a little analysis.

The first thing I noticed when she entered was that she wasn’t immediately all sciencey, which is what I expected at first because it was after all, Sherlock’s analysis of his own wound and he is merely projecting people in his mind - basically he is just speaking to himself. If he was as ramrod-straight-purely-logical human being, as he always claims, Molly would have immediately launched an explanation and formulated a course of action, but instead, she opened with stating how it’s not like the movies. Notice how she was moving in true Molly fashion - wriggly, quirky and lively. This, I think, is a wonderful way of introducing her as part of Sherlock’s mind palace, because I can see this scene as a parcel of Sherlock’s memory wherein they had discussed a bullet wound while they were in the morgue. In short, he wasn’t just projecting a Molly-the-pathologist-who-has-seen-a-lot-of-bullet-wound-and-knows-how-it-causes-death, he was remembering Molly.

He was dying and the first thing he sees is a memory of Molly.

What was that they say about seeing your life flash before you when your dying? Yeah, I think this is a form of it. I once read that this flashes are all usually happy memories because it is the brain’s way of comforting the body as it goes through a traumatic experience. This is the first sign that confirms how Sherlock’s consciousness associates Molly with safety.

The next scene was more Sherlock. 

(Before we move on, let’s just appreciate the fact that Sherlock’s mind palace includes a morgue.) 

Anyways, as I said, the next scene in the-too-bright morgue has more Sherlock element in it. Now this, is Sherlock analyzing his body. Molly was talking faster, was more serious and is delving into more sciencey stuff, talking about the physics of the bullet and how it could affect his body. She concludes by saying that he’s almost certainly going to die. Notice how she became fuzzy all of a sudden before she said this? It was his body showing him that death is near but he needed Molly to say that to him in the face. Her stating it, allowed him to move past the first stage: denial.

So, if your body is already saying bye bye using the face of someone you know deals with death, what happens next?

You panic.

And so he does, which is why Molly told him to focus. Que the slapping. Twice. By now, I bet slapping is already the rig of our little ship-that-could, and so it should be, because it clearly made an impact with Sherlock. He retained the memory of Molly slapping him and he associated it with maintaining focus. In real life, Molly slapped him three times because she wants him to remain focused with all the beautiful things he has - his born gifts and his friends. Although he had been a bit of a douche afterwards - not really saying sorry in the way she wants him to - and being seemingly unaffected by the slap by making a joke about how he’s glad that she did it without a ring, his mind palace clearly showed us that the slapping had made its mark - can I say pun intended in this part?. Anyway, I bet from now on, when he needs to focus, he’ll just see Molly slapping him, instead of having to slap himself like the way he did in The Sign of Three. 

Speaking of The Sign of Three, remember how Mycroft was there in Sherlock’s mind palace to talk him through solving the case? Oh look, Molly was talking him through staying alive! Parallels, anyone? See, the importance of this is that if Sherlock sees Mycroft as his equal (or greater than, based on how he is on a pedestal and Sherlock has to look up to him) when it comes to thinking logically, enough that he seeks him out when trying to solve a case, then clearly he also sees Molly as an equal when it comes to medical and science knowledge, enough for him to discuss with her how he is dying. Take that, people who thought she was just a lab tech/assistant - which she really isn’t for she’s a Specialist Registrar, and from what I’ve read so far, we should probably kowtow to her for being that. 

Going back, the following scenes however, highlights the contrast between how Sherlock sees Molly and Mycroft. If we put his interaction with them side by side, we’d see a lot of differences. His subconsciousness always put Mycroft on a pedestal. First, in The Sign of Three where Mycroft was in the judge’s table, high above where Sherlock was. Now in His Last Vow, Sherlock reverted into his younger self and the camera angle shows him looking up to Mycroft. With Molly however, they were always equal - except maybe for that time when he was lying on the slab and she was looking down at him, which I think does not connote any feelings of inequality because as said earlier, that was the time when he was panicking and his consciousness acknowledging the fact that when it comes to death, Molly has the authority.

Another difference, is that If Sherlock associates Molly with the too-bright morgue, he places Mycroft in a dark, shady office where his intelligence was belittled. Molly’s presence was comforting, and although they were both analyzing what he should do, there was no restrictive atmosphere. She allows Sherlock to come to his own conclusion and there were no insults involved. With Mycroft however, even though Sherlock’s also consulting with him, our dying consulting detective reverted into being that kid who thought he was an idiot. 

Really, the whole mind palace sequence was a gold-mine! I’m quite glad they added this because it allows us a peak in the complex mind of Sherlock.

I’m just going to fast-forward to their next interaction -which is also one of my favorite in the whole sequence - wherein Sherlock now has to decide which way to fall. Oh hi, Anderson!. You see, I love how they added Anderson in the whole element simply because his presence and actions highlighted something important - probably the most important thing and the one I really want to emphasize in this post: Sherlock’s trust with Molly.

Before, when they were discussing how he should fall, Anderson was behind Sherlock while Molly was in front of him, but when it was time to fall *ahem The Reichenbach Fall ahem* , they switched places! It was almost as if Sherlock was about to perform a trust fall with Molly (again) - which in essence is actually what he was about to do. He was putting all his trust in his and Molly’s analysis that falling on his back will save him.

Oh The Reichenback Fall, it was almost as if it was just yesterday… 

So he falls…and goes into shock.

But he did not recognize it at first. You know, for a genius like him, one would think that he would know what happens next, but he didn’t! He had to ask Molly what was happening! This is another significant development because Sherlock, in real life, doesn’t always ask the opinion of others. He just assumes that he knows and that he is correct. In his mind palace, at the moment when his mind is having a hard time focusing and getting the answers right (as was demonstrated by his and Mycroft’s talk about the gun and the exit wound), he finds the right answer with Molly! This shows the reason why Molly is Sherlock’s pathologist.

He believes in her analysis - and he doesn’t question it.

(While we’re at this, let us take a moment to remember how he - a chemistry graduate- asked her help to develop algorithms to ensure that he and John would have a nice stag night, when he could clearly do it by himself.) 

Okay, fast-forward a little bit and we see Molly telling him to control the pain. Again, Molly sets him straight. In fact, for the entire episode, this is what Molly does - showing him what he really needs to see and telling him what he really needs to do.

You know what that makes Molly?

His ego.

She is the perfect balance between logic and sentiment and no matter what he had said and done to her before, I think that Sherlock knows this too. It is why in the moment when his body (sentiment) and his mind (logic) were both vying for control over him, it was Molly that he saw.

It was Molly that he needed.

On Mycroft, Molly and Sherlock 

and the Christmas scene at Bart's

 (Sherlock meta by penelope1730 and theleftpill)

penelope1730:

How do Mycroft and Molly know one another? I understand this is Mycroft, who has greater vision than the All Seeing Eye of Sauron, but he seems rather comfortable – all things considered – in thanking Molly for her help. [...]

The Christmas scene from ASiB is the awkward gift that keeps on giving. Mycroft tells Sherlock he had Irene’s body brought to Bart’s, Sherlock’s “home away from home.” Molly is there to present the body for identification, with Sherlock telling her she didn’t have to come in.

Sherlock’s comment has always bothered me, though, beyond the lingering weirdness shared between he and Molly. Maybe it’s just me, but I thought it was a bit pretentious to tell Molly she didn’t have to come to work and, like, do her job. Although he’s self-employed, it’s doubtful Sherlock doesn’t understand that people actually have to show up for their employment when expected, even if he somehow feels entitled to tell them they don’t. Nice of him to want to spare her his presence, tho.

Molly’s reply also doesn’t make sense — “It’s okay, everyone else was busy with…Christmas” — if it’s actually her job to be there. Something along the lines of —- “Ummm, Sherlock, I’m not simply showing up for your convenience, especially as you were rude as fuck to me. This is my job and while it sucks to have to work on Christmas, it’s double-time with holiday bonus pay — cha ching! Let the other schmucks enjoy their turkey or goose – I’ll still be able to fit into my skinny jeans tomorrow.” would seem more appropriate.

Okay, so Molly probably wouldn’t say that – she hasn’t quite got her righteous snark down yet – but you get the drift.

Unless, of course, she wasn’t scheduled to work or on-call, which Sherlock might know, and someone (ahem, Mycroft) called her personally. Then Sherlock’s comment “You didn’t have to come in, Molly” makes sense, along with Molly’s “I don’t mind, everyone else is busy with…Christmas.”

So, if that’s what happened (and not saying it did), why would Mycroft call Molly, or have her on speed dial? Why not let the morgue attendant deal with the body, especially when one is always working? What difference would it make? It’s not like the morgue attendant would care. Was it about convenience? Mycroft circumventing normal channels? Moffat and Gatiss just wanted to give us one more angsty / awkward scene between Sherlock and Molly?

Or, did Molly decide, having just experienced the *worst Christmas party* in history, that going to work was like the best thing ever?

I gotta give Molly props for wanting to know who the dead, naked women was – and actually asked, without hesitation. She asked Mycroft, Mister Warm and Fuzzy, and people don’t think this chick has got a spine, or that she only grew one post Reichenbach. HA! And, then, later on – when she pumped Sherlock for info about whose phone he was x-raying. Seriously – how many people actually pump Sherlock for information, where he actually answers? This girl is far from spineless.

Any thoughts anyone???

theleftpill:

I think it’s clear from the context of this scene and the one before it that Molly’s presence in this scene is out of the ordinary - she’s not just “doing her job.” Since she was just at the party it’s clear that she had the night off, so simply fulfilling her duty isn’t at play here.

On a superficial, basic-viewer level, Molly’s there for subtle comic relief. She’s just been humiliated by her crush, (presumably) leaves the party when it breaks up with Sherlock’s departure, and takes a “hey can you come in to work, we’ve got a situation” call to get her mind off things. And is immediately confronted by same crush who identifies a woman by “not her face.” On the surface it’s another sucker-punch. But as I’ve asked before - Why Molly? Why is it Molly attending the viewing? Why not the on-duty attendant, or, given the political sensitivity of the matter, a government official? You’ve hit another key moment showing Molly’s importance, which I think goes deeper than quick comic relief.

I think you can safely draw the conclusion that Mycroft had Molly called in (I doubt he would have called her himself.) He’s working very hard to control the situation; he has control over the location and therefore would also have control of personnel. This is not just his brother’s conflict; it’s also a security risk. Mycroft trusts her with this rather delicate security situation - in a small way, she’s in the inner circle. He trusts her to be discreet and professional.

But the biggest reason, if you’re digging deep, is clear from Mycroft’s establishing line: “We had her brought here, your home [away] from home.” Mycroft understands that this moment is going to throw Sherlock. He’s trying to soften the blow as much as possible - putting him in a comfortable environment, surrounding him with people he trusts. Mycroft knows that Molly will handle the situation with delicacy and care. She can be trusted not only with the security risk but more importantly with Sherlock’s psyche. He must be aware of some emotional connection Sherlock has to Molly; in this delicate moment, if he’s controlling the environment, he’s not going to bring in someone who would upset Sherlock. He’s going to bring in someone who represents grounding and comfort: Molly.

And note who’s already present in the scene when Mycroft says “home (away] from home.” Home is not just a location, a structure. Home is where those you love reside. Home is where the heart is. Molly is the one who lives in that “home.”

And I love your points about Molly confronting both Mycroft and Sherlock in the following moments/scenes. I never gave much thought to this scene between Molly and Mycroft, but it goes so much further to prove Molly’s importance to Sherlock. Beautiful catch.

From a Joke to the End Game - 

The Evolution of Molly Hooper: 

 Molly the Tool: A Study in Pink 

 (Sherlock meta by mychakk)

Hello Everyone!

Thanks so much to all who had read the introduction to this meta posted a week ago. Today, I’d like to start on Season One and the first episode of it: A Study in Pink. I’ve already addressed the importance of Molly being introduced alongside Sherlock in the previous part of this huge meta, so today I’ll focus only on the scenes in ASiP themselves.

[...]

Please remember that I write this with the view, that the aired episodes we’ve been given are a sum of Moftiss’ initial ideas, their screenplay, the director’s interpretation, the actors’ portrayal, music composers’ creations AND the editing crew’s choices. All of that created the show as we know. And it got Moftiss’ final approval to be aired as something they want to share with us.

Season 1: Molly Hooper the (writing) Tool: A Study in Pink. 

Being a writing tool is Molly’s initial role in s1. That’s her purpose and the reason behind her reappearances in the following episodes. In A Study in Pink Molly’s role was to introduce Sherlock, in The Blind Banker she’s used to show more of his characteristics and tactics, while in The Great Game she serves as a means to introduce Jim Moriarty. That’s her initial reason for existence: The Tool. And yet, each scene she’s in is enriched by the actors’ interpretation and portrayal, which in turn creates so much more nuances regarding her character and her relationship with the protagonist, Sherlock Holmes.

Let’s have a look at the scenes in the first episode and see what we can learn about her:

In the first camera shot of Molly and Sherlock we see Sherlock peering at the corpse in the body bag. He and Molly share a short dialogue:

S: How fresh?
M (cheerful): Just in. Sixty-seven, natural causes. He used to work here. I knew him. He was nice.
S (smiling): Fine. We’ll start with the riding crop. 

In that short exchange we already can learn a lot about Molly and her relationship with Sherlock. First of all, we learn about Molly herself. She’s nice. And cheery. And she’s totally unaffected by death, corpses and all things morbid. We can also see she’s pleasant during her dealings with Sherlock.

The way the two of them are with each other in this scene clearly suggests this is not a new situation for them both. She’s not nervous at all about him needing a body, she doesn’t ask him what he plans on doing with it, why he demanded this from her. She pleasantly answers his questions providing additional information. She’s used to this.

And Sherlock?

He just accepts her finding (the corpse) and tells her how the experiment will start. And he smiles at her. I think this smile is more on the giddy-at-doing-an-experiment side than on it being a fake; and he aims this smile at Molly, sharing said giddiness with her. They are both clearly comfortable with the, quite frankly unusual, situation of flagging down a corpse. They are comfortable with each other in the working/experimenting environment of st. Bart’s.

Notice also the use of “we” in Sherlock’s final comment:

“We’ll start with the riding crop.“ (emphasis mine) 

The pronoun clearly indicates Sherlock includes Molly in the making of his experiment, they are both going to work on it. Does it mean the experimenting is actually from the beginning theirs instead of being just his? Did he plan from the beginning to do it with her? We do not know explicitly but the possibility is there.

The next camera shot shows us Molly observing Sherlock while he beats the corpse with the riding crop.

 Is she there out of her own decision or does she need to supervise him? We do not know that either. What we do know is that Molly is both slightly disturbed and yet turned on by the sight. Kudos to Loo for portraying it as such (but who can blame her, really? XD Ben beating a corpse with a riding crop? Hot! Period. :P). Sherlock is unaffected by her presence, and definitely doesn’t mind it. (I bet he was proud as a cock for having her admire him while he did it.) 

After the beating is done Molly comes down to Sherlock.

She makes a joke as an opening to start a talk with him, but Sherlock just instructs her:

“I need to know what bruises form in the next twenty minutes. A man’s alibi depends on it. Text me.” 

This innocent sentence gives us tons of information partaking to Molly and Sherlock’s relationship (whatever it is exactly at the time). He trusts her to continue his experiment and providing him later with accurate notes, maybe as good or even better than his own would have been? This indicates he trusts her as a scientist, trusts her working ethics and precision in conducting lab work. Sherlock values Molly as a reliable working lab partner to the point of leaving her with completing his experiment on her own. If we tie up this trust in Molly the Scientist with Sherlock’s first instruction:

"We'll start with the riding crop.” (emphasis mine) 

It may actually mean that this experiment was supposed to be theirs from the very beginning. He had factored her help while devising it. This would also explain why was Molly observing him while he conducted the beating.

Finally, there is also that little titbit at the end of Sherlock’s instruction:

“[…] Text me.” 

This clearly means that they have each other’s phone numbers and that texting each other is not something new to them, but a regular occurrence. Even being Sherlock Holmes you won’t say “text me” to a new acquaintance you’ve just convinced to let you beat a corpse. You’ll at least explain what you’d like her to text you exactly. Here, this instruction is short and to the point. “text me”. Molly already knows what he would like to receive in her text and how he prefers she write it. As I wrote above, they have to have known each other for a while and are quite accustomed to each other quirks in the working environment that is st. Bart’s. This is their usual interaction. And they clearly have fun together. (Molly is enjoying herself for sure, but Sherlock is also giddy at the beginning of the whole sequence and quite enthusiastic in his greetings her later on in the lab when she brings him coffee. Clearly he enjoys working with her, too).

Now, we come to the most interesting part of their interaction in this episode:

M: Listen, I was wondering: maybe later, when you’re finished-
S (a double take): Are you wearing lipstick? You weren’t wearing lipstick before.
M: I, er, I refreshed it a bit.
S (oblivious): Sorry, you were saying?
M (intent): I was wondering if you’d like to have coffee. 

Notice Loo’s facial expressions as she walks up to Ben and start this exchange.

 She portrays Molly as still being affected by Sherlock, her Molly’s still slightly turned on, and yet there is this determination on her face. This focus as he gazes at him heading toward him. It’s clear Molly’s already decided she’s going to ask Sherlock out. And she isn’t discouraged at all by his initial instruction to complete the experiment. She’s determined, and confident, she’s not stuttering when she starts her first question. She isn’t even that much thrown off by his lipstick comment.

 She’s quite quick with her reply, and she’s positively intense in her determination when she finally asks him out:

M (intent): I was wondering if you’d like to have coffee.

It’s all there in Loo’s body language. As a viewer you don’t think much about it, but subconsciously you pick it all up. And since the show is aired (and available to be viewed over and over again), you can consciously pick on it, notice all the details, and like me - analyse. :)

In that very first scene, when we were supposed to learn about Sherlock’s obliviousness to social indications, we learn so much more about Molly, the Tool, who is actually already being fleshed out as a real and quite strong character. In this exchange with Sherlock, when she asks him out, Molly is shown as a confident, independent, and determined woman. She is completely undeterred in her pursue of what she wants. And here it’s asking Sherlock Holmes out.

Molly’s aplomb attitude fades only after Sherlock’s reply of:

“Black, two sugars, please. I’ll be upstairs.” 

 And I don’t blame her, because it takes you aback when someone can be this oblivious. And Sherlock is oblivious, but I’ll address his character in the later part of this meta. Let’s stay with Molly for now.

We don’t see what Molly does after Sherlock leaves her in the morgue, stumped and kind of stupefied. We see her later on while she’s bringing the said coffee to Sherlock in the upstairs lab. Notice, that Sherlock didn’t explain where exactly upstairs he’ll be, just that he’ll be “upstairs”. This also points to a familiarity with the place and with each other and each other’s usual habits. Sherlock doesn’t need to add more for her to know what he means, and where he intends to be. She’ll just know from that small titbit of information he gave her.

In the final scene with Molly, she enters the lab with a smile as she brings Sherlock the coffee.

This itself is quite interesting. If she were embarrassed by Sherlock’s initial rebuttal and dismissal of her asking him out, she’d probably stay away and definitely not carter to his coffee needs. But she brings it to him as if nothing happened. She even smiles. This tells me, she’s not that much affected by his rebuttal. She finds him attractive so she has decided to give it a go but it didn’t work out. Oh, well, will find someone else then. Molly is quite chilled out about this whole situation. (I can see her going to the loo, looking at the mirror, wiping off the lipstick, then shrugging her shoulders, and leaving to make Sherlock the coffee.) She might be attracted to him and even having a slight crush on him, but she isn’t defined by it. Even in this very first scene we see her, she’s already so much more.

What a marvellous and strong character Molly is! She’s already shrugged her shoulders, whipped the lipstick off and decided to move on. That’s why I think she’s a little taken aback when Sherlock again brings the lack of said lipstick up.

 I think that she assumed – like some, (most?) viewers – that the question about the lipstick earlier in the morgue was supposed to distract her from asking him out in the first place. As it didn’t work out, Sherlock had found a different tactic to indirectly let her down (Black, two sugars). If that was the case, why would he bring it up again, right? But he does and it throws Molly for the loop, yet once again she takes all Sherlock-ness in stride and gives a sardonic kind of self-depreciating comment of:

 “It wasn’t working for me.” 

This quip is also aimed at his expense, at his obliviousness, but like before Sherlock doesn’t catch her meaning. Also, there is the coffee. Why is Sherlock grimacing? Maybe she’s a little vindictive and didn’t doctored it to his liking? Alas, the answer of the latest questions is of course to be found only in our imagination. Nevertheless, Molly is passively sassy during this exchange. She matches his inquires and shots comebacks without any trouble. That doesn’t scream to me: here is a dejected little wisp of a woman to be broken at a moments’ notice. Here is a woman who - if given the chance - will be come your match, your equal.

Molly’s screen time in A Study in Pink last for about 1 minute and 20 seconds. In this short time we’ve learned that she’s acquainted with Sherlock enough to feel comfortable with his experimenting; she finds him attractive; she’s determined and intense in her pursuit of something she wants; she’s not easily deterred when she’s on her way to her goal; she’s confident, self-assured, sassy in a passive way; and she doesn’t let minor failings affect her. Of course, she’s also cheery, happy, pleasant and nice.That’s quite a list for a one-time character indeed.

In those 80 seconds of her screen time we have learned Molly is AWESOME. Duh :)

Now let’s take a look at what we have learned about Sherlock thanks to Molly’s interactions with him.

Sherlock the One Who Observes But Doesn’t See 

First of all, thanks to the scenes with Molly we’ve learned that Sherlock is oblivious in the social cues. And that he has completely no clue what Molly was about in the morgue. He totally missed the point of Molly’s actions and her questions. Let’s take a look at him and we’ll see why this is the most probable if not the only interpretation of his actions here in this scene.

In the morgue Sherlock is immersed in the experiment, he has just finished applying the beating and starts taking his notes.

 Then comes in Molly bantering as she usually does in her pleasant manner. He doesn’t really tunes her out, but he’s not really focused on her either. Then she says, “listen” which finally catches his attention enough to give her a look.

And he does a double take.

Why? Because this is the reason for this whole scene in the first place: to show the audience that he notices all the details, even such as an applied lipstick, and yet he’s completely missing the social cue.

So Sherlock sees the lipstick and so he just need to ask Molly about it and he does it in his self-absorbed manner. Or maybe it was a distraction that needed to be addressed immediately? [Why had she changed her looks? I must know right away or it won’t stop bugging me! And wow, but doesn’t her lips looks nicer now! Silly boy]. He asks, and she provides an answer, which isn’t exactly what he excepted but it’s enough to satisfy his immediate curiosity for him to return to his original task: notes taking while listening to Molly:

“Right. You were saying."

He’s just finishing them when Molly talks about coffee. Coffee sounds good – so bring it to me at the lab where I’m about to be off to. Bye!

Now, we can argue that Sherlock’s done it this way on purpose, to avoid openly turning down Molly’s invitation. Let’s examine this scene with 3 different scenarios:

1) Sherlock immediately realizes why Molly has put the lipstick on. In this case, he calls her on it in order to throw her off, to deter her from her plan: asking him out. This is actually quite a cruel way to do as it purposefully brings the attention to her efforts and consequently purposefully embarrasses Molly. And if there is one thing we can say about Sherlock is that he’s not intentionally cruel (without any good reasons). Also we’ve already established he enjoy his time with Molly, why would he jeopardize it and his time at st. Bart’s? If it’s not this: him asking with full knowledge of the reason behind the lipstick, than he must have asked her about it because he’s got no clue why she put it on. Scenario no. 1 - busted.

2) Sherlock has no clue and is puzzled by the lipstick appearance so he asks Molly about it. When she replies, he catches on on the purpose of it (as in her preparing herself to ask him out) and allows her to continue while quickly coming up with a way to gently and indirectly let her down. This is actually quite a sound possibility if we had had got only the morgue scene between Sherlock and Molly. But we’ve got another short exchange between them in the lab. And this is the defining factor here. Scenario no. 2 - plausible without the lab follow-up.

3) Sherlock is oblivious to the lipstick’s purpose and doesn’t catch up at all during the morgue exchange. In this case, when Molly brings him his coffee upstairs in the lab, Sherlock once again – puzzled – asks her about the lipstick. If he had realized what Molly had been trying to do earlier in the morgue (as in asking him out) and as a result had successfully let her down in an indirect way, then bringing the lipstick up again in the lab is not only counter productive, but once again a cruel (in its embarrassment to Molly) thing to do. I’ll point out once more: why bringing it up if he’s just masterfully avoided the issue in the first place? Therefore, in the lab he is genuinely puzzled by the another change in her looks in such a short period of time, which of course means he still has no clue of the lipstick’s purpose.

Sherlock doesn’t even catch on Molly’s sardonic reply:

“It wasn’t working for me.”. 

He’s totally oblivious here. He had accepted her poor explanation and quickly justified in his mind why she had put it on: refreshing it a bit, ‘cause it makes her look better. It makes sense in his mind, because he likes the lipstick on her lips. Why? Because of the backhanded compliment:

"Really? It thought it was a big improvement." 

He’s of course totally clumsy in his verbal diarrhoea, just saying what comes to his mind without any thought how he phrases it. But that actually means he’s genuine in the thought behind his poorly worded comment. The lipstick makes her look better. (Nicer.)

Then of course he tries to find the reason why it’s feels off with the lipstick being gone. Look how he tries to puzzle it out. Why does it feels off?

 "Your mouth is- too small now." 

Notice also the small pause in his comment. He’s searching for the way to verbalise his unease. And of course the clueless boy does it in a poorly fashion. Still so much to learn for that genius. XD

Sherlock notices the lipstick on Molly’s lips and cannot resists commenting on it. He notices the lack of it and once more cannot resists throwing his two cents. It bothers him. It bothers him much. Molly’s lipstick in general is quite the focal point of his focus. He even does it again in A Scandal in Belgravia during the Christmas scene. This is the very first scene in many to come when he pays attention to Molly’s look. And this is one of the clear indications of his attraction to her on a physical level. Why else would he pay so much attention to the changes in her look if he wasn’t looking in the first place (even if its on a subconscious way at this point in time)? She’s one who matters the most, indeed. Form the very beginning in fact.

Of course, Sherlock did embarrass Molly and probably hurt her a bit with the poorly worded and casually spoken comment in that very scene, but we have to keep in mind everything points out of it being not intentional on his part. He doesn’t want to hurt her. He comments things as he sees them and doesn’t care how he says what he thinks. At the same time I think he’s doesn’t realize Molly’s interested in him.

We don’t know the origin of Molly and Sherlock relationship (however it’s defined at the beginning of A Study in Pink) but I think her crush on him might have grown slowly and quite more subtly for Sherlock to notice. That’s why he hasn’t got a clue about Molly’s feelings for him at that point in time. He always misses something.

Here, also, lies the difference between Sherlock’s reactions to John openly asking him about girlfriends/boyfriends, Irene openly hitting on him and yet never really directly letting Molly down when she’s asking him out. Both John and Irene are new acquaintances of his. And they ask him/hit on him without beating around the bush. While I just don’t see Molly doing it like that at the beginning of their acquaintance. By the time Molly asks him out in A Study in Pink Sherlock, hm, categorized Molly as an acquaintance/friend. What’s more I think that Molly’s a part of the net of his safe places: Mrs H at Baker Street, Lestrade at Scotland Yard, and Molly at Bart’s. Those are people he trusts. His close ones. His friends. I think Molly is kind of unintentionally friendzoned at this time of their interactions. He just doesn’t see her as anything potentially more than a friend, because, at this time in his life, it is something that just doesn’t enter his brilliant mind, that someone who knows him for who he is, who deals with him on daily basis, might actually find him worth being interested in. (I think it’s tied up with his deeply rooted low self-esteem and lack of belief in being lovable, but that’s a topic for a different meta.) In this case it’s actually a compliment to her, as Sherlock doesn’t look for love, he actually quickly and efficiently shots down any openly romantic overtures toward himself (John and Irene), and he’s reluctant in his friendships, yet she is an integral part of his daily comforts.

Sherlock just doesn’t think about Molly in a romantic sense toward himself at at this point in time and that’s why he’s oblivious to her advances.

But he does see her as a friend. And an important one as that. He’s happy to see her. Look at Ben’s portrayal of Sherlock when Molly enters the lab. John speaks out, but Sherlock totally shifts his focus onto Molly the moment she enters the lab.

 “Ah, Molly, coffee. Thank you.” 

“Thank you”? When has Sherlock thanked anyone? Apparently Molly in one of his very first dealings with her in the show. She’s something else and it’s obvious from the very beginning ;)

But let’s focus on Ben’s portrayal: Sherlock is quite happy to see Molly. But then again, it could have just been the coffee ;) His tone of voice is pleasant. He thanks for the coffee, he even makes an inquiry about her looks – by which I mean is him asking about the lipsticks. ;) He shares his opinion with her, backwardly complimenting her that she looks better with the lipstick. (And let’s stop here for a moment: if Molly’s mouth looks smaller without the lipstick, it must have looked bigger with it. Didn’t I mention that said lipstick might have been a distraction for our silly boy and that’s why he noticed it in the first place in the morgue? – he liked what he saw but instead of telling her he likes it, he just asked her why she put it on. Si-lly Boy, I tell ya. Now, she’s without it and he’s actually not happy with it. XD) 

And there is the grimacing after taking a sip of the coffee.

Why doesn’t he say anything? Sherlock is quite opinionated and he doesn’t sugar coat anything. Especially this early in the series. And yet here he’s silent. Hadn’t he earlier told her how he takes his coffee? So something must be wrong with it if he’s grimacing. Yet no comment from him. I wonder if it’s because Molly has brought it to him. And like we’ve already established, he doesn’t want to intentionally hurt her, so he keeps quiet even though he clearly dislikes what he tastes.

To sum up, Sherlock’s interactions with Molly showed us that he’s oblivious to people (who had known him for a while) having a crush on him, that he’s unable to see himself as someone worth having crush on. It also showed us Sherlock trusts Molly as his lab partner, he considers her a person able to continue his experiments, and one he likes working with. We learned he probably subconsciously finds her physically attractive, and that he definitely doesn’t want to hurt her intentionally. Even in this very first scene you can see the trust between them. “I have always trusted you”, indeed.

Molly the writing Tool served its purpose in A Study in Pink: she helped introducing Sherlock Holmes. In the process she became her own character, interesting enough to be explored in the upcoming episodes. We’ll see how exactly, in the following part of this meta partaking to The Blind Banker. I should publish it within a week time.

Thank you for reading and see you next week!