Series 4 and The John Problem 

 (Sherlock meta by mild-lunacy)

[...] Previously, we had thought that John was going to have to have an arc that was resolved in Series 4, in part because of the arc framework we had of the whole narrative, and in part because Sherlock changed in Series 3 and John kinda regressed, at least in his relationship to Sherlock. Specifically, we expected some movement, and ideally a resolution or major development of John’s sexuality. So, all that… did not really happen. If it did, it did not happen the way we expected. In my opinion, before casting judgment, this means one has to reevaluate one’s analysis to some degree, and this is my attempt at a start of that process.

My initial impressions of the first two episodes were that John’s response to Mary’s death was closer to rage than grief. I still think comparing it to Reichenbach too closely (let alone with the implication that Mary’s death had more of an impact, since he didn’t hallucinate Sherlock as far as we know) seems counterproductive. Further, I thought that this was John’s belief that Sherlock’s superhuman coming to bite him and Sherlock on the ass, big-time. It seems completely irrational because it was completely irrational, as he implicitly acknowledged by telling Sherlock Mary’s death wasn’t his fault in The Lying Detective. In any case, clearly John always thinks Sherlock can ‘solve it’ and/or is the master of any situation, or at least that’s the attitude he normally develops under stress. See: The Sign of Three and his demand that Sherlock just ‘solve it’. And, of course, John’s guilt over his behavior toward Mary is no minor factor.

John was also kinda drifting further away from Sherlock in The Six Thatchers, which is what I thought when Sherlock chose Mary as the better or more useful partner early on in the episode. Sure, that’s correct on the merits, but it’s not suggesting any sort of understanding or valuing of their dynamic as partners and/or John’s value (to John, anyway). At no point in The Six Thatchers does Sherlock directly demonstrate to John he values and trusts him, even though you could argue everything he does is for John. This is a continuation of the issue he had in His Last Vow (where he continued to help Mary because of John, or even instead of John). So John clearly felt pretty alone and even isolated.

As I said, I liked how subtly the infidelity and John’s continuing unhappy life with Mary was handled: it continued the tendencies we saw in His Last Vow and developed them by having John have the emotional affair with Eurus (yikes!), though it’s unclear how much of that was manipulated. Of course, he still chose to follow up, so clearly it’s a sign that John continued to feel trapped. The ‘Antichrist Rosie’ conversation in The Six Thatchers did show a certain ease and some bantery dynamic with Mary, but the intimacy was a sham, since he just started texting and flirting with someone else right after. However, we do see that the surface His Last Vow narrative was more or less intact. There was no ‘secret plan’ to deceive Mary, and John really did his best to follow through on Sherlock’s insistence that he forgive Mary. (This doesn’t mean that there’s no subtext, by the way, just that they don’t make a habit of returning to and/or redoing the plot of previous episodes.) As of the beginning of The Six Thatchers, it seems that John was, just barely, coping with his new role as a husband and father, but not very well. However, he blames himself and (by extension) Sherlock, rather than Mary or perhaps the situation he’s (partly manipulated to be) in.

Anyway, as I’ve said, given that John believes that it’s his and particularly Sherlock’s fault for allowing Mary to die, his complete (semi-psychotic?) mental break in The Lying Detective makes sense. We never do get an explanation, so we’re left with John’s Mary hallucination being apparently unrelated to the other hallucinations and/or unusual mental phenomena in The Lying Detective. I have to run with the assumption that it’s more or less a contrast or mirror plotline than something causally related to Eurus or Culverton Smith. Since there’s no ‘plot thing’ to mitigate this as I had initially supposed, it’s just that John is struggling with seeing himself (and Sherlock) as monstrous. There’s definitely some projection going on, if you go by the last conversation in The Lying Detective, where John talks of Mary idealizing him. Anyway, he definitely has Sherlock’s Otherness on his mind (Sherlock as a ‘monster’ tying in with the ‘superhuman’ thing). Sherlock’s a monster, but his Mary avatar says it’s ‘our’ monster (in other words, John’s initially repressing the idea that Sherlock’s his monster).

My thought process was that clearly John doesn’t think he’s Mary’s John (as he tells Sherlock), but he’s also not Sherlock’s John. And we see that quite clearly: he acts quite differently and/or ‘OOC’. He’s not acting like our John, because he doesn’t see himself that way. John’s having a significant identity crisis as well as a crisis of faith in The Lying Detective, essentially. Faith in himself as well as faith in Sherlock, as these two seem to be connected. We know that Sherlock knows him– he predicted John’s behavior 2 weeks out! he demonstrably knows him much better than Mary– but then, from John’s pov, Sherlock’s just that good. He could do that with anyone. Yes, it’s surprising, but it’s not really proof he’s known by Sherlock to John. Certainly, it doesn’t go both ways at that point.

As I said in my review of The Final Problem, S4 has John moving toward his own version of Sherlock’s claim that he’s ‘not a saint, not a hero’ in His Last Vow. Obviously, John’s not even pretending to be a ‘high-functioning sociopath’, which is probably (in part) why people would say this is somehow character assassination and/or OOC for John. However, in The Lying Detective, John was focusing on Mary’s idealization of him, much like the sociopath persona is Sherlock’s idealization of himself, more or less. These personas (both of Sherlock and of himself) were haunting him– sort of literally, given Mary’s hallucination. John being haunted is perhaps a better description of what was going on than John having a ‘semi-psychotic break’, since there were no other symptoms of an altered mental state except for being a lot more stressed (and angry– at Sherlock, at himself). You can take ‘haunted’ as a metaphor that is being made literal: John is haunted by unresolved issues, more than he ever had been. We’ve heard before that he’s ‘haunted’ by the war (because he misses it). And now he’s literally haunted by all the things he can’t accept about himself, about Mary and about Sherlock, which helps explain why Mary tends to say stuff about Sherlock that John denies or won’t admit. One benefit of this reading is that the Mary hallucination isn’t automatically a sign John cared more in some absolute sense about Mary’s death than he had about Sherlock’s. The fact is, John simply– literally!– cannot be with Sherlock anymore as long as he has these mental blocks and idealizations in place.

So anyway, apparently Mary predicted John’s mental state after her death, and told Sherlock to ‘go to hell’ so that John could rescue him. In retrospect, her claim in His Last Vow that John can’t know that she’s lied because that would “break” him and she’d “lose him forever” wasn’t simply self-serving bullshit as many people have thought. In other words, it always pays to pay attention to surface narrative, or it bites you on the ass. It was still primarily selfish, but Mary’s power over John (born of manipulation as it may be) is real. Regardless, it’s clear that Mary’s solution for John’s predictable issues was a further sign of her not understanding John. I was struggling with this initially– isn’t it a given that they rescue each other, save each other, as Sherlock said in his wedding speech in The Sign of Three? If the show is making us question this, surely something is wrong, and we cannot take the ep at face value. But no, we’re supposed to question this, I think, at least insofar as assuming John’s always ‘the hero’ is also more idealizing John, which John says outright that Mary’s always done. So, Mary’s theory that John needs to save Sherlock was born of that idealization, even though (of course) in the end John did rush to save Sherlock in the hospital.

Of course, this brings us to the extremity of John’s violence in the morgue, which people have apparently flagged as OOC. Initially, as in my post on Johnlock in S4, this hadn’t really struck me as starkly as it did others. My John has never been super-fluffy, and as I said, I agree with @thecutteralicia’s point that this is consistent with John’s adrenaline-driven desire to keep hitting Sherlock after the one time in ASiB (and in TLD, he’s obviously under a lot more stress, as well). For many people, it seems that John’s physical assault is a dealbreaker for Johnlock (given that no plot-based or other extenuating circumstances appear). That’s fine: that’s always the viewer’s prerogative. For me, it’s enough that I see the characterization as being consistent and a believable progression from past behavior, and I believe this fits that criteria.

It may seem like more of a (temporary) regression, of course. This hasn’t been unusual so far in the show– in fact, we’ve had multiple regressions coupled with any progress for the characters (The Hounds of Baskerville regressing after A Scandal in Belgravia, His Last Vow regressing after The Sign of Three, etc). However, here we come back to the issue of John’s arc (or the lack thereof). In retrospect, I agree with @birdymary that Series 4 confirms that BBC Sherlock has primarily been concerned with an arc for Sherlock Holmes, showing his progression from ‘great man’ in A Study in Pink to a ‘good man’ in The Final Problem, as proclaimed by Lestrade, and it should be judged on those merits. Sherlock’s journey to forgiveness has often been seen as having gone too far (as in, he forgives too much, is too self-sacrificing, has too much of a ’heart’, even), but I think those concerns all ignore the whole point (and existence) of the humanization arc in the first place. John, on the other hand, does not have an arc so much as character development. That is, his characterization involves periods of growth and regression, but it is not formally structured as an arc. The Johnlock arc does still exist even in S4, in my opinion, and it remains tied to John– but it is an indirect thing, largely tied to the subtext and interstitial places in the narrative. John’s growth and his relationship to and with Sherlock still drives the story but isn’t the primary focus. Further, in my current analysis, that joint growth in John’s characterization and in Johnlock culminates in The Lying Detective, rather than the final episode of Series 4. I believe this fits in with the expected point for the climax as suggested by the arc meta narrative, but I’m not sure and would appreciate further input on this point.

To reiterate, the lack of an explicit arc for John is due to the primary focus being on Sherlock’s growth, and his adventures with John as his partner, as Mary’s narration and/or the framing monologue at the end of The Final Problem tells us. John’s own development– being tied to the subtext– is thus also shown indirectly.

Initially, my main problem with The Lying Detective was that the purpose of John and Sherlock’s conversation at the end was unclear to me. It seemed vaguely like hetero-baiting. After all, John pushes Sherlock to pursue a romance (with Irene) and insists on its importance. John’s role in the show has often been to be the voice in support of human (including romantic) feeling, which is one reason for the tie between John and Johnlock in the narrative. Anyway, my conclusion so far has been suggested by Ivy’s reading of the gap between The Lying Detective and The Final Problem: that Moffat and Gatiss intended the viewers to fill in the blanks, and for the act of understanding the narrative to be highly collaborative. Thus, I’ve said in my Johnlock-focused meta that I feel that the The Lying Detective conversation was meant to be suggestive of the kind of subjects John and Sherlock covered, and the kind of emotional release and resolution that’s suggested by John finally crying, Sherlock finally hugging him, and so on. John admitted, painfully, that he wasn’t perfect, and he was haunted by Mary’s idealization and her putting him on a pedestal. By his final acquiescence to Sherlock’s gentle touch, John accepted that both he and Sherlock were only human, and he saw that Sherlock accepted that as well: “it is what it is”. In the end, that was all that John needed to start to resolve the main issue he was struggling with.

My initial read of the last scene of The Lying Detective was that John was ‘still breaking’ and needed to be saved; I presumed that this would somehow be the focus of The Final Probelem. Instead, The Final Problem resolved Sherlock’s arc, with both John and Johnlock being resolved in The Lying Detective. Basically, I’m leaning toward the idea that John was firmly on the road to healing both himself and his relationship to Sherlock as of their final conversation in The Lying Detective. 

I agree with @ivyblossom‘s interpretation in that they’ve clearly turned a corner in The Lying Detective (as indirectly evidenced by The Final Problem), mostly due to John’s development. That is, yeah, it doesn’t have to be seen as a corner turned in a romantic direction, but there are multiple cues in The Final Problem that it has been. I find John’s calm response to Sherlock’s calling him ‘family’ and Mary saying they ‘could become’ something more than they are, as well as his unusual use of casual touch at Sherrinford to be particularly telling. One can certainly argue about whether this is ‘enough’ or good representation, as I’ve said, but that’s beside the point when evaluating the best reading that would fit and explain all the facts, as presented in the narrative. Basically, what I’m saying is that a newly romantic relationship between John and Sherlock does best fit and explain all the facts, particularly what Ivy called the ‘rifle on the wall’ presented by Sherlock and John explicitly being stated as needing a romantic connection at the end of The Lying Detective. The rest of it is left for the viewer to figure out, but I believe it’s mainly heteronormativity preventing that. Otherwise, that’s the main obstacle to John and Sherlock’s relationship (implicitly) resolved.

[...] It is not within the scope of this meta to critique the way that all this was portrayed and accomplished, so much as to outline my reading of John’s characterization and his progression in Series 4. It’s indisputable that a critique can always be made, and further, that it certainly already has been and will be made by enough people that I need not weigh in on the subject. I’m left with an increased appreciation and an ongoing interest in the subtlety and the nuanced nature of John’s growth in Series 4. I would be thrilled to see fandom explore this further, but I am also satisfied with the canon as it stands.

On John’s violence to Sherlock in TLD

 (Sherlock meta by materialofonebeing and mild-lunacy)

The scene of John’s battery of Sherlock was plausible but disappointing.

Before S4 I praised the update of John as a badass because it adjusted the old sidekick-to-hero power difference. What we got in The Lying Detective was the reduction to absurdity of that stance. Seconds before we witnessed John’s violence, John told Greg about Sherlock – and not about Sherlock – “We did see it coming. We always saw it coming, but it was fun.” We saw John’s violence coming; he shot a man in the first episode. Except for the head butt in The Empty Hearse, I, for one, didn’t bat an eye.

The violence expressed John’s rudderless distress but was not the only way to show us this; he already was hallucinating. It was, though, a conventional choice. Given both the prevalence of intimate partner violence and our acculturation, my need to explain John’s crime with PTSD, or in any way, might seem even a bit naïve.

Can we consider any Watson beating Holmes? I respect that others find it beyond the pale. I, however, can imagine a violent crisis between the men – one high and skilled in boxing and baritsu and one otherwise mentally faltering – which could have resulted in the rift Watson described in "The Final Problem" and Watson’s leaving 221B for the second time, as some interpret. I’ll think of this when reading Watson, about a year later, tended to the bloody fist of a frightened Holmes in the same story.

So, John’s battery of Sherlock existed within the realm of possibility. Still, there were other possibilities, and the creators’ choice was disappointing. First, the scene of John’s violence screwed up something beautiful, maybe motivated by a modern, jaded impulse about what’s smart. (x) Intelligent earnestness, characteristic of the relationship in S1-3 (and not warm paste), is what I expected instead.

Second, making love too difficult to work echoed a sad tradition. In treating John’s crime seriously, The Lying Detective left us with a version of John and Sherlock who should not have gotten together as things stood. Graham Robb, on literature of the 1800s and early 1900s, wrote of the “wretched end of most homosexual heroes,” attributing this to writers’ moralizing, self-censorship, and suffering. A happy ending today still would be (will be?) subversive.

In the end, my mulling over all this fails. I irrationally love the characters of John Watson and Sherlock Holmes and want them to be happy.

mild-lunacy:

[...] My own view is probably closest to Ivy’s, in that I can’t think they’re ‘making love too difficult to work’ because even in this, John and Sherlock parallel each other. In their difficulty, their brokenness, their painfully sharp edges. I mean, we definitely love their idealized selves in fandom, and create new legends around them as much as we psychoanalyze and decide when something is 'too much’. But it’s the characters who could really tell you when it’s too much, and I think that finally, in The Lying Detective we see that Sherlock and John see and accept all of one another. You could say that *theoretically* this should break them, but in fact it makes them stronger. If nothing else, by the end of The Final Problem, it seems they’re happy. It’s not a tragedy, after all. It’s just a brutal thing to watch, they’re definitely both traumatized, by this and many other things. Their brokenness is supposed to be something they can use, though. As Ivy said, John’s flaws are part of what Sherlock needs and can use. The violence is part and parcel of how it works, because Sherlock knows how to help John channel it, how to make London into John’s warzone. And sometimes it’s all too much, but that’s been true for Sherlock, too. Sometimes Sherlock himself is way, way too much. But somehow they’re exactly what the other needs and can handle. That’s the secret of their dynamic.

Of course, I agree, it didn’t have to explore this possibility, even if it always existed in the realm of the possible for this or any Holmes and Watson. But at the same time, this started in Series 3, 'cause they kept not dealing with the old traumas enough, ever since Reichenbach, and then piling on complications. John was set on a collision course with himself as soon as he married Mary and she turned out to be the worst possible option. It was a bad decision compounded by her pregnancy and further exacerbated by the ensuing series of events– that unfortunate vow, the shooting, Sherlock back on drugs and saying he killed Magnussen 'cause he’s a sociopath, Sherlock pushing them back together and John choosing to do it without dealing with any of their problems. Everything kept being swept under the rug, with the only explanation being that John 'chose her’ and he should just deal with it. So he let it go, and let it go, and controlled himself and held back. And then (as Martin Freeman said), he just needed an excuse when he failed again (this time to protect Mary). In John’s mind, someone has to be in control: usually that’s Sherlock 'cause as Ivy said earlier, Sherlock can do anything. Sherlock is his superhero; his 'commander’. Alternatively, of course, John *himself* expects to be in control, or it’s a personal failure. Remember how he took it in His Last Vow, with Sherlock telling him (ruthlessly, from John’s perspective) that he chose Mary: it’s his 'fault’. John automatically jumps to the question of whose *fault* it was that Mary was the way she was, and he wasn’t ready to take responsibility and accept this, but Sherlock pushed and so he did. Then, when another traumatic event happens, John doesn’t have any reserve left, I guess.

What I’m saying is, I think many of us knew that some kind of reckoning had to be coming for John in S4. But all the talk about John’s arc was mostly supposed to be about John getting better, not worse. And if he got worse, we expected to see him recover, step by step. And that didn’t happen. We got a hint, a first step, and I understand why that’s not enough for many people. At the very least, though, I don’t think it’s the same as the 'tragic gays’ trope would have it. In The Lying Detective, even if they didn’t show us everything, they showed enough that it’s clear they do always save each other, even if it’s not in the ways that Mary or anyone else would expect. Even if John can’t see it anymore, or thinks he’s not that person, he’s still the person who makes Sherlock better. And when John stumbles, Sherlock would believe it enough for the both of them. And I do think, in the end, that it is enough.

The love that “conquers all” and who idealises who

 (A Sherlock meta conversation by unreconstructedfangirl and mild-lunacy)

"If there was one single theme that ran through this entire season, it’s family. Tackling both the families we’re born into and the ones we create, season 4 reveals the dynamics between members to be as intricate as the deductions that Sherlock makes. John and Mary play perfect partners and parents, but their hidden insecurities do not a happy ending make. The tightknit relationship between John and Sherlock is built on shared experiences and mutual trust, but as soon as they are challenged they fall apart. The three Holmes siblings share exceptional gifts of intelligence and social inadequacies, but the streak of madness that runs through them forms rifts between them all.  

As dysfunctional as these families are, they do shape who our heroes become. With Mary’s death and becoming a single father, John steps up to the challenge to be the man she imagined him to be. Sherlock, in his attempt to save John, ends up saving Eurus and himself as well when he finally connects with his emotions. Mycroft comes to realize that he does care for others more than himself, and reveals his vulnerability when he offers to be the one who dies. Even Eurus ultimately reveals that it is her desperation for familial love that drives her madness, and Sherlock’s empathy salvages what little humanity she had left. We get a chance to see that each one’s love for biological and chosen families make them better people in the end. " 

- tvafterdark (via renniejoy) 

unreconstructedfangirl:

This is nice commentary. I felt like the plot was all over the place, but the emotional story rang true for me, so I enjoyed it. People who refuse to see what Benedict Cumberbatch meant when he says “love conquers all” were anticipating a narrower definition of love.

mild-lunacy:

I agree with the theme of Series 4 being families in large part, as in @stephisanerd’s meta, and at least it’s a positive review, but…. Man, I’m used to a deeper and higher quality analysis in fandom. So this is… not cutting it for me, particularly the simplification of the dynamics and heteronormativity involved. Like, John ‘steps up to the challenge to become the man she imagined him to be’? Hell no. With Sherlock’s help and acceptance, he accepted that he *can’t be* that man, and that’s okay. Mary idealized him and didn’t really know him. John became more *himself*, not some projected ideal of a father and soldier, thanks to the faith of a good woman! That is a cliche, but it’s not the story here (thankfully).

And of course, I take issue with the description of John and Sherlock’s relationship as falling apart ‘as soon as they are challenged’. They’ve been challenged many, many times already and survived, not least in The Empty Hearse. That suggests it’s actually weak, or that falling apart was somehow a sign of how they didn’t really know or really trust each other in the end. The Lying Detective shows both of them know the other deeply, with Sherlock’s predictions being spot-on, including knowing John would leave the cane with the recording device Sherlock slipped inside, because he hated himself after beating him. That’s actually some amazing insight and closeness with another person, even at their lowest point. And of course, the fact that John’s back at Sherlock’s side by The Final Problem suggests their trust and ‘tightknit relationship’ was as strong or stronger than before and equal to the heaviest challenge.

This isn’t to say, of course, that the *overall theme* of hidden faultlines in seemingly happy families, or the potential hidden even in the most broken of bonds, wasn’t part of it. And naturally, Sherlock’s success with Eurus and ability to tap her remaining human feeling was definitely a sign that he 'finally connects with his emotions’. I just like the more nuanced narrative. This surface description is probably not enough to make people see what was really poignant and powerful in Series 4 if they’re not seeing it already.

Definitely think that 'love conquers all’, though. John and Sherlock’s, even, haha.

unreconstructedfangirl:

Do you really think MARY idealised him? I don’t. I think Mary knows him and loves him for a damaged, morally complicated man who is trying to live up to his own ideas of himself. I think Sherlock idealises John to some extent, but not nearly to the extent that John idealises himself. John has an idealised, perfectly upstanding version of himself in his mind, a man who meets every metric, and whose image he compares himself to, and continually comes up short, and hates himself for not being. I definitely see nothing in it at all to indicate that Mary is guilty of idealising John. Perhaps she sees him with the eyes of love, that expand every good and minimise faults, and perhaps she knows what kind of man he can be, but I don’t think she idealises him.

But Sherlock, though. Sherlock sees his every fault magnified in John’s eyes, and sees John as the arbiter of whether or not he is worthy of BEING ALIVE. He bets on John in the biggest way possible and he does so straight out of the depth of his oceanic feelings of unworthiness.

So, we’ve got one man who can’t accept himself because he never manages to live up to the idealised version of himself he has in his mind, and another who has dissociated himself from his own emotional life out of self-defense and who can’t imagine he deserves what he wants, and from this they are supposed to have an unassailable bond? Something that doesn’t fall apart when TRULY tested? How can they really know and trust each other when neither of them is willing to admit what he really, really is?

Sherlock’s insight into what John will do shows he DOES know John, but to know that John would say goodbye forever and leave him that stick? WOW. Bummer. Plus, all of that insight, apparently, is on Sherlock’s side… because that’s what he does.

Personally, I would say that there is no question of HIDDEN fault lines. The fault lines are big, obvious and yawning, and that’s been true from episode 1. I’ll agree that the Eurus plot was a bit ham-handed, but the Sherlock who could succeed in finding and comforting her only got there because every single person in his life who loved him brought him there and helped him see how much he needs and loves them back.

In fact, the more I think about it, the more I feel like every single thing that happened after Reichenbach is a resolution of the rupture of Reichenbach. They did fall apart, and it took all of this to put them back together. What they were together before that was built on shaky foundations, but what they have at the end of season 4 is honest, realistic and survived the fire.

mild-lunacy:

I definitely agree that everything that happened post The Reichenbach Fall have been repercussions from Reichenbach; I just wrote extensively on it yesterday. I also think that John and Sherlock’s relationship was built on some shaky foundations, because Sherlock tried to embody the 'high-functioning sociopath’ persona (or more like, used it as a 'disguise’), and to some extent John believed it, as @stephisanerd described in her classic meta. At the same time, it’s John who’s always telling Sherlock he’s 'flesh and blood’, asking him what he’s feeling on ASiB, still telling him to take a chance while he has one with Irene. He knows Sherlock for real if anyone does; it’s himself John has real issues with. Still, I think those shaky foundations don’t justify the review saying 'as soon as they are challenged they fall apart’, and I also think that John clearly forgives Sherlock fast enough and often enough that it’s worthwhile to focus on their strengths *because* of the fact that there are also these impressive weaknesses or issues standing in their way.

With regards to Mary, I just had a discussion with @airstyledraconos about these issues in The Lying Detective. I don’t think it’s that Mary is the source of John’s issues; clearly they predate her or anything she said. However, I was replying to the article, which did say that in The Final Problem, John chose to live up to her challenge of being 'the man she imagined him to be’, which is idealization. That directly states it’s about Mary’s narrative, with which I disagreed. Yes, definitely, it’s about the issues John has with himself. I simply think it’s canon that *John* was frustrated with and ashamed of Mary’s faith in him (that he’d rescue Sherlock if Sherlock went to 'hell’, for example). That’s what he told Sherlock: he went to the hospital since it was Mary’s certainty that he’d do it, but he still didn’t believe in the two of them (or himself) being salvageable before Sherlock embraced him and said it was okay. 'It is what it is’. Not to mention, you can certainly argue that since the whole point of Sherlock’s efforts in The Lying Detective was to save John from himself, as per Mary’s instructions (not just defeat Smith), he also had to know leaving the cane wouldn’t be their last goodbye. Basically, I simply think Sherlock’s the bigger catalyst in John’s growth and progression in The Lying Detective, and the review totally ignored this (heteronormativity or too shallow of a reading, take your pick).

I realize I didn’t really address how and why I think John does know Sherlock, and of course, it’s just Sherlock’s nature to be much, much better at deduction than John. A lot of it’s kinda sublimated because we primarily see into John’s mind in The Lying Detective through hallucinated Mary as the conduit and/or 'inner voice’, but as Ivy said, a lot of it’s about what Mary says (Sherlock’s 'our monster’) or how she looks at him when he’s talking about the old case to the children at the hospital, or the way he deduced it’s Sherlock’s birthday at the end. And then there’s the way he *knows* he’s Sherlock’s family in The Final Problem, and gives a private little smile to himself: they definitely did talk and have come out of it stronger than ever. Even so, I think it’s simply canon that in fact, they have always had an unassailable bond (whether or not John or Sherlock believes or accepts it at any given time). I just don’t think John’s break was purely due to the weakness of his relationship with Sherlock, certainly not predominantly. It was also about weaknesses within *himself*, unaddressed issues even with Reichenbach, a lack of self-acceptance and a huge helping of projection and guilt.

My point: some relationships are definitely meant to be seen as stronger than others. John and Sherlock’s bond is canonically extremely strong, the central thread that binds it all together for both of them and triumphs. I’m honestly not being shippy, that is really how I read Series 4. However, I’ll admit that both John and Sherlock had certainly had unhealthy aspects in how they related to each other and themselves; as @notagarroter wrote recently, for example, Sherlock’s reckless relationship with his own mortality has been pervasively problematic since The Reichenbach Fall, and probably earlier. Realizing that his death is 'something that happens to everybody else’ was a sign of growth for him; his *fake* suicide was certainly something that nearly destroyed John, and he was rather blase about this initially in The Empty Hearse. And yes, I do think he lives for John, or that’s where he was in His Last Vow after Mary shot him. But Sherlock’s grown too: he didn’t want to die (for the first time ever on the show) when Culverton Smith was strangling him. He’s slowly learning to value his existence, just as he is, and if he still uses John, then it’s just because John’s someone who loves him. It is what it is, and I still think that’s beautiful.

unreconstructedfangirl:

@mild-lunacy, you say in your post that you’re really honestly not being shippy, but… I don’t mind a bit if you were, and if you were, you’d be preaching to the choir in your reply to me. I ship it, as I always have! I don’t need convincing that John and Sherlock are two halves of an unbreakable whole – that’s canon, and that’s embedded in the very DNA of the characters from their inception.

That said…

I said that Sherlock seems – to me! – to be the one with all the insight in The Lying Detective, and that the insight he has is… pretty sad really. I stand by that. I think Sherlock HOPES John will come back to him, but I don’t think he KNOWS he will. He’s taking a chance. He does bet on John, which to me indicates that he has some measure of faith in him, but without the true peril of the possibility of John making another choice, the whole thing falls apart a bit, doesn’t it?

I think John ends The Lying Detective having made a breakthrough, but he’s still pretty deluded in some ways – cases in point, his apparent belief that Mary idealised him, and his suggestion that Sherlock take up with Irene don’t strike me as particularly insightful. Your examples of John’s insights, like suggesting that Sherlock take his chances with Irene, strike me as instances in which (unless they are viewed metaphorically, with Irene as stand-in for Sherlock’s sexuality) John kind of proves he still does not quite understand Sherlock. Also, what kind of advice is that! Go experience love and high expectations from… Irene? That does not strike me as a particularly good perscription, Doctor. All in all, I feel a bit… unconvinced by John’s insight into his friend’s heart of hearts, and whatever realisations about it he has come to by the time of The Final Problem must have been reached in a moment we do not see on screen. A room for us to fill, I guess, as fans.

I mean, I even have a very different reading of John’s little half smile when Sherlock insists he stay on the basis that he is family – I read it as John being gratified and a little… not surprised, but perhaps still in the process of accepting that THAT is is place in Sherlock’s heart. Something he is still learning is true. I see that as a moment in which he is reassured of his place and smiles wryly at himself for still needing it. John is always in need of reassurances and finally Sherlock has reached a place in which he is able to give them in a meaningful way.

I think the point of the whole series thus far was building a characterisation and a backstory that could explain the depth of Sherlock and John’s friendship, and the lived-in strength of it that we see in ACD canon. I think the point is that before all of this, they are VERY assailable. Both of them are very unstable and mired in self-doubt and self-hatred of different provenances, and don’t know how to properly love anyone. John holds himself and Sherlock both to impossible and unrealistic standards, and Sherlock is so busy pretending to be a thing he isn’t and preening his pretty feathers of genius and/or drowning his sorrows and then hating himself for not being the man he imagines John is, or the man John imagines he is… I mean… I think THE POINT is that none of that is any kind of basis for an unassailable bond.

I think you’re absolutely right that John is deeply ashamed of not living up to the man he imagines Mary imagines he is (because, seriously, there is no real evidence ANYWHERE that Mary is unrealistic about John and plenty of evidence that she isn’t) and I think he is even more ashamed of not being worthy of being called the bravest, wisest and kindest man Sherlock has ever had the pleasure of knowing, because let’s also remember that John is pretty unrealistic about who Sherlock is in lots of instances, and appears to believe he is capable of actual magic tricks. All of this builds up into John’s finest moments at the end of The Six Thatchers and The Lying Detective, in which he behaves in a nigh-on unforgivable manner that he SHOULD be ashamed of.

And, in fairness to him, HE IS. Good.

I’ll agree that the review we are both responding to could be more nuanced on the subject of who idealises who, but even so, I think it shows some insight into the kind of love that “conquers all” in series 4, and the fact that it’s not narrowly defined by romantic love between John and Sherlock, which is something I, personally, am tremendously RELIEVED about in the story, and further, it does nothing to negate that notion, if it’s the hill you die on.

Nor, I would argue, does it particularly point to any kind of “heteronormativity” either in the story, or that I can identify in the reviewer’s thinking. It’s just that the romance you are saying that you are not championing is beside the point in a discussion of all the other forms of love that are the explicit focus of the discussion and the story. They told a story about how the love in a person’s life can make them whole, and give them the strength that allows them to forge a bond based on real things instead of imagined ones. They declined to make romantic love the only form of love that can do that. They opened all the rooms, and closed no doors, and they refused to authoritatively privilege one reading over alternatives. At the same time, they made them, finally, people who might be capable of that kind of love.

I think that despite some arguably messy narrative shenanigans, they managed to tell a story that had, for me, some emotional resonance, and I think it was the right decision not to force it to a single point. We are all free to have our reads, and as you know, @mild-lunacy, I have mine. Nothing that happened had jossed it. I have no need to prove it or torture it further. It is what it is.

The Deconstruction of John Watson

 (Sherlock meta by mild-lunacy)

I’ve been thinking about the John characterization in Hubblegleeflower’s post-S3 fic ’In the Dark Hours’, in the context of S4 and specifically The Lying Detective. It really seems on-point, even prescient. I was also thinking about what Ivy said about John’s inherent violence, how “when John is bad, he is terrible”, and how disappointed in himself he was in TLD. The fic makes me think about what John must have wondered about himself *before* Mary’s idealization to have the dissonance hit him *so* hard, that he’d have to punish himself and Sherlock and lash out so extremely. In the fic, a younger John sounds like shades of Sherlock– wondering if there something ‘wrong’ with him for being addicted to danger, for getting off on the rush, enjoying these things to make himself feel alive. That tendency to say and act the right way in order to 'seem normal’– he actually has that in common with Sherlock, except that (of course) John is much better at it.

On the other hand, I agree with John’s own conclusion in the fic and with Ivy that John is actually not 'like that’. He’s definitely not like Mary (as per all those endless debates post-HLV); he *is* a good moral compass after all *because* “he knows exactly what it means to be pointed the wrong way”. At the same time, the fact that he’d wondered about himself seems realistic. Seems *likely*, even. If Sherlock is someone who has tried– and ultimately failed– to make himself into a high-functioning sociopath after Eurus, as I wrote recently, John is coming at his persona from the other direction. Trying to be *normal*, trying to do good, trying to be someone he thinks– he knows– he’s not.

A lot of people depended on John to be Series 1 John even after Series 3, essentially, even though Sherlock told us in His Last Vow that John is addicted to a 'certain lifestyle’ and 'abnormally attracted to dangerous situations and people’. John is not surprised, he just says *Mary* wasn’t supposed to be 'like that’; he’s not happy about his attraction to all these things but he was *aware* of it, and he wanted to get away from it. It seems to be that instead of an arc, what we have here is a sort of deconstruction. We started out with John and Sherlock in opposite corners in Series 1, and they’re in opposite corners again in Series 4, except they’re the flipside of each other. Sherlock is the 'good man’ even though he’d shot someone to protect someone else, and John… John is a bit 'not good’, but he has a heart. He’s still human. On the abstract level as well as implicitly, being truly established partners in The Final Problem, they’ve met in the middle.

I know I’ve said yesterday that my problem is that Sherlock’s arc encompasses and sort of *consumes* John’s role, with John not really being able to match Sherlock’s growth due to being the deuteragonist. I agree with @plaidadder’s comment on @ravenmorganleigh’s post, about the growing fannish consensus that “John and Sherlock’s emotional arcs are no longer intertwined” in Series 4. I do still disagree that this means Sherlock’s growth in Series 4 is somehow more about Eurus and Mycroft (and Mary!) instead. Certainly (but more subtly), John’s arc also didn’t suddenly become about Mary either, if nothing else then because everything (but everything!) in this show has always been about Sherlock. Although this means Mary’s not the *point* in The Lying Detective, in many ways it also means that unfortunately, John is not the point either. I do agree with the analysis in that the plot of The Lying Detective is essentially *all* orchestrated by Sherlock (including John’s beating, which was demonstrably part of Sherlock’s plan to stop Smith). The only bits Sherlock didn’t predict were to do with Eurus, and more broadly the fact that Mary was shown to be wrong, because she didn’t know John the way Sherlock did. As I said, and I cannot emphasize this enough, this is because everything is about Sherlock. 

Basically, Sherlock never had to manipulate John into saving him. Rather, he needed to save John Watson in a different way– and in the end, Sherlock did.

I think a lot of this confusion has to do with a misreading of Mary, and Sherlock and John’s relationship to her, or a sort of… overcompensation, I think. Like, a lot of us thought (or rather, hoped) that it’s all going to go to hell after S3, in a way that would justify the fandom’s suspicion and dislike of Mary as well as the fandom’s resistance to the surface reading of His Last Vow. In other words, she’s going to pay, somehow. We were so deeply polarized by His Last Vow, with such a long and bitter fandom divide forming on Mary, that virtually no one actually took the time to synthesize a Mary characterization that actually *included* the facets of devoted (but unfortunately unsuitable and unhappily married) wife and the cold assassin. People were *so* certain that either she *couldn’t* have shot Sherlock if she truly cared about John, or the whole attempted murder thing was genuinely nothing, simply 'surgery’ as Sherlock claimed, because what’s a little murder between friends? Neither option made sense by itself. And so, Series 4 broadly made no sense to people (without really extreme rationalization) because the answer was always 'both’, and The Six Thatchers went as hard in the direction of sacrifice as His Last Vow went for armed assault and implied threats. There was no bridge, and so a lot of connections were just never made, it seems.

I’ll admit that His Last Vow set things up in a way that was (in retrospect) difficult to fix, and I agree with the other point that S4’s characterization issues started in His Last Vow. I just don’t think that Sherlock’s acceptance and forgiveness as well as John’s intense anger (and projected guilt) at Sherlock about Mary are meant to whitewash absolutely everything about Mary’s behavior, *including* things like her abandonment and drugging Sherlock in The Six Thatchers. As The Abominable Bride showed clearly, Sherlock has *issues*; he has severe self-esteem issues in terms of relationships, and specifically in regards to John. Obviously, we can’t just take him at face value when he says Mary’s actions 'conferred a value’ upon his life; I don’t know, I think it’s obvious that this isn’t rational or somehow deserved. Anyway, the kindest interpretation is that she *shot* him but wanted to atone, to do better, to do the right thing in the only way she could. Otherwise, this is about Sherlock and John and their existing issues, although the narrative simply focuses on Sherlock’s agency… to a fault, really.

It’s true (I think) that Sherlock genuinely tried to include Mary because he liked her, and I even think Mary honestly did like him (though of course that didn’t mean she wouldn’t shoot him), but it was always about John. As Ivy said, John is the central figure in both their lives, so both of them have had to accommodate the presence of the other. They’ve *both* done that. I know it requires a certain kindness to Mary to accept this, which may not come naturally, but I think you really cannot parse John or Sherlock’s motivations anymore at this point without accepting that point. To say that Mary (or Mycroft) *replaced* John’s place in Sherlock’s narrative is going much too far, although I do think Eurus did take over and expand on *Moriarty’s* place as Sherlock’s Shadow and antagonist. Anyway, the problem is indeed that Sherlock and John’s arcs are clearly not intertwined in Series 4, which is why John doesn’t get a full, explicitly shown climax. But this is because as I’ve said, John lacks an arc (as deuteragonist), not because it’s now remade in Mary’s image. If he had an arc with Mary, we’d see an actual resolution *through* Mary; instead, Sherlock’s actions and reactions make the difference. That is not to say Mary (and Irene, and Eurus) haven’t mediated and acted as conduits for both characters’ development. Of course, I still agree with @delurkingdetective’s response to Raven’s post. I just think there’s a big difference between a conduit and a focal point. Mary may be a *motivation* for John or Sherlock’s actions, but that doesn’t mean she’s the underlying *reason*. It’s one thing to critique the show for using women as conduits, or Moffat and Gatiss for being too conservative to write this arc between two men explicitly. It’s another thing to mistake a conduit for a character of true importance, a character whose agency truly makes a difference rather an *obstacle*, even if it’s not about Mary or Irene being *romantic* obstacles. They are definitely still treated by the narrative as something for the male protagonist to deal with and ultimately defuse or overcome.

Unfortunately, although I’d like to use the Mary of 'In the Dark Hours’ for insight, the fact is that she is something like a dark conduit herself, a presence mainly felt through her absence from John’s life. In that sense, she is similar to S4 Mary, although I suppose most readers would say it’s very different because this fic’s version is clearly an emotionally abusive character who’s *labeled* so. The truth is, of course, Mary is just as problematic in Series 4 as ever, and John’s relationship to her never improved while she lived (and in fact, he cheated on her, just as he did in the fic, although it was always indirectly). It’s more satisfying to see Mary labeled and understood as abusive, but at the same time… I don’t know if it’s realistic. More importantly, I think this is the flaw of focusing so entirely on Sherlock, and avoiding a truly joint arc and/or canon Johnlock. If Mary *was* abusive, John would need an independent arc to deal with it; more realistically, Mary would have to actually stay longer on the show. In the fic, Sherlock tried to heal him emotionally just as he tries in The Lying Detective, except this goes a lot deeper, and they talk a lot more (and it involves touching, claiming, binding John to himself). Not that I’d ever need or expect the show to go there, but my point is that Mary’s impact *couldn’t* be too deep because then you couldn’t hand-wave it by Mary simply giving her blessings by The Final Problem. In Series 4, John’s issues are more about his self-image, his conception of himself as a moral man, as someone who’s capable of being his 'best self’. Sherlock doesn’t *clearly* say it’s John who makes him better, but Mycroft already said it as far back as ASiP. It’s obvious. It’s also obvious that it’s *Sherlock* who makes John better and he always had. John is just doubting that; doubting himself, doubting Sherlock. He’s ashamed, lost, angry at himself, wishing he could have been the kind of man who Mary had envisioned (even though he’s already the right man for *Sherlock* and is exactly what Sherlock needs– as he implicitly recognizes by The Final Problem). I just think the show expects us to know that implicitly, to understand that without spending the time to spell it out… and they also use female characters as tools to communicate all this, unfortunately. It doesn’t quite… work.

Anyway, the John of 'In the Dark Hours’ struggles very much with that sense of shame, with all the guilt issues. Even if The Lying Detective  John had somewhat different motivations for it, I still think it’s a source of ongoing fracture for John, and it seems critical to all his worst, most violent and stonewalling behavior in the show. Remember in His Last Vow, John exploded into violence (frightening Mrs Hudson) when he assumed Sherlock was implying Mary was his *fault*. He clearly has a severe reaction to that idea, a violent reaction, and specifically with Mary, with his choices. He thinks everything is always his *fault*, and then, of course, he also thinks Sherlock is brilliant, superhuman, can do anything. Could have saved Mary if he wanted; he promised. So, that was Sherlock’s fault. An excuse, as Martin Freeman said. An excuse to let all the anger out, to succumb, to dissociate. And Mary’s hallucination is a sign of dissociating, isn’t it? Not that she’s literally a split personality like with Eurus, of course, but she’s always saying the things John thinks but can’t or won’t say: monster. Posh boy. One of the reasons I do think John has progressed in S4 ('cause even if it’s not a full arc, neither is it a *retread*, in other words), is because of this new insight into John. Series 3 was about Sherlock’s Dark Night of the Soul, and John’s S4 version is a bit condensed: sparked by Mary and mediated by Sherlock. We see John’s darkest corners, but in the end they are simply accepted and integrated because they always have been, by Sherlock. With Sherlock, John is always safe. With Sherlock, John is contained, and even his worst violence is both expected and accounted for.

I think I just continue to struggle with the execution, in part because of the differences between written work and film, as well as issues of genre. 'In the Dark Hours’ is a supremely internally focused fic, in a way that the show could never be. Everything had *always* been mediated by metaphor and external action on the show, from the very beginning. Women were used as the markers and conduits since the start– not just Irene in A Scandal in Belgravia, but Soo Lin Yao in The Blind Banker, who’s a really blatant Sherlock mirror. Perhaps… as much as I wish we could have continued on track with The Lying Detective, and as much as I accept the many valid critiques of the execution and Moffat and Gatiss’s self-indulgence and narrative conservativism in Series 4, this is what fanfic is for, in the end. These conversations.

Eurus and Mycroft’s Gambit in The Final Problem 

 (Sherlock meta by mild-lunacy)

I was thinking of the recent @thepurplecarbuncle post about what Mycroft told Sherlock at Baker Street in The Final Problem: “the man you are today is your memory of Eurus”. I agree with her incredulous response, in that I can see how it sounds false, like a pure retcon– it sounds ridiculous– because it *is* ridiculous and it’s meant to be, on one level. Obviously, if it’s taken to be literally about Sherlock’s deepest self, his best self, that can’t be true. Sherlock is a kind man, a ‘good man’, as Lestrade says later in the same episode. So it’s textually not *literally* true. But at the same time, Sherlock’s not *only* that man that he’d become thanks in part to John Watson, is he? As Ivy told me so eloquently, the whole point, whether here or in Mary’s reference to who Sherlock and John 'really are’, is about the *duality* in Sherlock and John’s natures.

Sherlock is kind and good, but that hasn’t always been the persona he’s been inhabiting, is it? Him standing with Moriarty on that rooftop, promising Moriarty that he’s not one of 'the angels’ wasn’t all that long ago, and Sherlock had shot Magnussen while proclaiming himself to be a 'high-functioning sociopath’ just recently. And that persona, including Mycroft’s spiel in A Scandal in Belgravia about heartbreak being inevitable and how 'caring is not an advantage’, had always seemed to be tied to Mycroft and his influence. Still, you can’t just take Mycroft at face value, 'cause he’s playing the role he’s always played. If anything, he’s more obvious about it in The Final Problem than ever before, explicitly taunting John to Sherlock’s face 'cause he knows Sherlock would always choose John– would always choose *sentiment*– and he wants to make it easier on Sherlock. As usual, Mycroft tests and prods both John and Sherlock at Baker Street, rather than being straightforward. Mycroft certainly isn’t simply saying that Sherlock is some kind of Eurus lite™, and he always has been his whole adult life. He’d just called Sherlock a 'dragon slayer’ in His Las Vow; he *knows* Sherlock for real. The point is that he *hasn’t* been like Eurus, but Sherlock’s made some deeply unnatural and unnecessary choices to shut himself off from friendship and emotional intimacy because of trauma from events related to Eurus he cannot remember. Of course… that’s not established text, at least until The Final Problem. We just have clues and foreshadowing. In The Abominable Bride, Sherlock insists 'I made me’ (although he then thinks of Redbeard when there’s a dog barking in his Mind Palace). And indeed, Sherlock’s choices in response to Eurus– at the beginning and the end, in The Final Problem– are shown to be very much his own. He certainly made himself what he is by *choice*, even if he’s not conscious of it afterwards.

The Final Problem has various callbacks and parallels (the big one to The Hounds of Baskerville, for example, that I’ve discussed recently). Besides the differences in the vector (Sherlock’s own mind rather than a hallucinogenic drug with Henry), I think it’s important to note that Sherlock *chose* to forget in a way Henry didn’t. Sherlock isn’t just a victim of a crime, but still the active protagonist. His conversation with Mycroft at Baker Street can also be a callback to A Study in Pink. That’s where we first heard Mycroft say John could be the 'making of’ his brother, 'or make him worse than ever’. As Ivy summarized, The Final Problem works as the resolution of Sherlock’s arc, and so we had to answer the question of why does Sherlock actually say he’s a 'high-functioning sociopath’? Why does he say being alone 'protects’ him? When people dismiss the entirety of The Final Problem, it’s easy to miss the issues of characterization continuity and the sense in which things may actually make sense in unexpected ways.

I should emphasize that I don’t think Sherlock’s trauma is meant to be definitive to his personality. The question of whether Mofftiss always intended this reveal since Series 1 is interesting but ultimately irrelevant in practice. It’s enough to say that Sherlock’s always worn part of his 'Sherlock Holmes’ persona, the 'high-functioning sociopath’ self, as armor. It’s never been natural. It’s not because he’s naturally a misanthropic loner (like Mycroft), who thinks of other humans like goldfish. This doesn’t mean that he’s *not* different in his own way, or that he didn’t mean it when he told Mycroft in The Empty Hearse 'why would anyone mind?’ But unfortunately, Sherlock struggles to fully accept or accommodate his own humanity even after The Empty Hearse (though the process has begun at that point). In His Last Vow, he regressed from his touching, emotionally open wedding speech to tell John that romantic love was 'human error’, and in The Abominable Bride he actually cries, overcome when Watson acknowledged his humanity. John has had a tendency to believe Sherlock could work miracles– in The Reichenbach Fall, he wanted him to not be dead as 'one more miracle’– which had long been an ongoing issue, as @stephisanerd described in her classic meta. So it’s more like this childhood trauma is just the specific trigger to what was always an ill-fitting illusion of all-knowing supremacy that Sherlock put on as a defense mechanism. And *that* is Eurus’s fault (indirectly, at least); essentially, Eurus herself is the DFP personality with nothing underneath, in a much more personal, less metaphorical way than Moriarty had been. If Moriarty is the 'virus in the data’ in The Abominable Bride, Sherlock’s response to Eurus had corrupted his operating system in this metaphor.

Whether Eurus was intended from the start or not, I essentially think she is simply the mechanism. It was always pretty clear that Sherlock was carrying around some pretty toxic ideas about what kind of things he should aspire to for himself. There were some unrealistic standards he held himself to, but he also has some extreme convictions about sentiment and 'romantic entanglement’ leading only to heartbreak. In a sense, we’d always blamed a sibling for this: we’d just blamed *Mycroft*. Mycroft said lots of insensitive things and provided a sense that Sherlock’s family life was cold, or at least complicated (especially pre-S3). Then we met the Holmes parents, and it seemed like Mycroft and Sherlock were actually a product of a 'normal’, happy home… if one with a math genius mother. But Mycroft’s clear resentment at Christmas (and his 'file’ of complaints about his parents) and Sherlock’s avoidance and awkwardness still seemed… a bit odd. Clearly, some kind of issues were not being addressed. A lot of issues, as it turned out, although in some ways the Holmeses really were a supportive, even ordinary family. The parents just really didn’t know what to do with Mycroft and Sherlock, let alone a girl like Eurus, it appears.

I think it’s clear that Mycroft always felt he had to take care of things invisibly, to be 'the adult’ (even if Mummy didn’t appreciate it in the end: another statement there’s no need to simply accept at face value). He couldn’t just tell Sherlock that he thought he wasn’t dealing with the issue properly; if anything, sentiment really isn’t Mycroft’s area, as he said in The Empty Hearse. But he worries about Sherlock… 'constantly’, as he told John from the start. Mycroft has always placed a lot of stock on other people’s potential influence on his little brother. He’s seen how sensitive he is; how deeply he can be hurt. So of course, if he thought John Watson could be 'the making of’ Sherlock after 24 hours, he’s the type to blame Eurus’s bad influence for Sherlock’s unfortunate conviction he was a 'high-functioning sociopath’ (a descriptor he’d be most likely to have heard applied to Eurus, not himself). Mycroft’s gambit in A Study in Pink was that John could break through to him, somehow, though this didn’t mean he’d start suggesting Sherlock open his heart anytime soon. Both brothers had been burned, and Mycroft was very, *very* protective (after Eurus came the drugs, after all). Mycroft always knew how much both John and Sherlock resisted and doubted him and anything he said, so he *couldn’t* be straightforward even if he wanted to. It’s true that even at the wedding, Mycroft still warned Sherlock not to 'get involved’. It’s not that he meant the opposite, necessarily– but he really does worry about Sherlock and his tendency to have 'danger nights’, after all, and this wasn’t baseless, as His Last Vow demonstrated. However, surely Mycroft still believed John to have been a good influence. Even if both of them admired Eurus a little too much, surely Mycroft knew Sherlock would need to choose John, and could be counted on to choose John in The Sign of Three.

In the end, Mycroft asked John to 'take care’ of Sherlock after his overdose in The Abominable Bride: the ultimate sign of trust. He definitely thinks John has fulfilled his early promise in A Study in Pink, and could be trusted with Sherlock’s future– Mycroft’s only pressure point. Even so, in The Final Problem Mycroft suggests Eurus remained a hugely formative influence, primarily in negative ways. And in certain ways, I’m sure that’s true. The man Sherlock is today is a product of his past, just like any other man. However, that’s not *all* he is, and I think that by the end of The Final Problem, Sherlock’s made peace with that.

On Reading Sherlock’s Face 

 (Sherlock meta by mild-lunacy, leapingcat and renniejoy)

mild-lunacy: 

I’m not a fan of metas based on reading faces. I’ve seen other people do it well, but I’ve never liked actually basing conclusions off expressions alone. Everything exists in context, but especially facial expressions. They’re also the easiest thing to project onto– you can read a lot of things into a facial expression, and I’m very wary of that sort of thing in analysis. I am particularly wary when shippers do it and/or there’s an agenda involved (and usually there is an agenda involved, in fandom). My point: I don’t really do facial analysis if I can help it, and certainly not alone. But there’s definitely a point in TFP where the show kinda begs you to look at Sherlock’s face, and I can’t deny it’s interesting.

In a general sense, I’m also kinda going through the things that seem off or are interesting in Series 4 (in no particular order), and of course, I haven’t addressed this yet:

 I remember being struck by this when I saw it in the trailer, and analyzing it a bit. It was obvious to me it wasn’t to John, because John is behind Sherlock. In thinking about it before I knew the context, I thought it was weird, because Sherlock looked so unhappy. His whole expression is… tense, disturbed at something. It’s not the kind of face (or set-up) one associates with an ‘I love you’, so I thought something rather dark must be going on.

Now, I agree with the analysis that this isn’t Sherlock’s ‘lying face’, or the over-the-top acting Sherlock was doing with Janine in His Last Vow. This is definitely different. But the only two options aren’t ‘he’s lying’ vs ‘he’s just realized he means it’. The difference between The Final Problem and His Last Vow is context: in His Last Vow, Sherlock went on to dismiss John’s horror at his callousness, and say love was ‘human error’. In The Final Problem, Sherlock no longer thinks so. That is the point.

A lot of people (no matter what they ship) don’t understand this scene– they either seem to think it’s gratuitous emotional torture, bad Molly characterization (because she’s apparently not gotten over her feelings, though as I’ve said, there’s no reason to think she had), or– I suppose– there to show us that Sherlock just loves Molly back, all appearances to the contrary. Of course, many fans essentially believe there doesn’t really need to be a reason for that last option, particularly seeing as it’s about a heterosexual couple, so I’ll just say that no, there actually does need to be a reason, not to mention build-up. Besides, if Sherlock simply… meant it, that would kill the drama (and the intended darkness) of the scene. In general, no matter what Sherlock’s face says, the narrative has to support it or it makes no sense and constitutes bad writing. But for what it’s worth, his face doesn’t really say ‘I love you’. He looks sad and disturbed, but I do believe he also looks like he’s realizing something on some level. It’s a form of his serious deduction face, except we don’t get as much of an inward look as we did the last time this happened, during the wedding speech in The Sign of Three (as I once wrote extensively about).

So what is Sherlock realizing, in context? 

That question is closely tied to asking why that scene is there. I mean, I’ve seen plenty of Johnlock shippers sort of riff on the fact that the deduction of the person meant for the casket could have been about John– he too is short and practical, and he loves Sherlock! But I think bringing John into it is a derailment. It’s not about John, but it’s not about Molly, either, not directly. Like I said in my John analysis in The Lying Detective, it’s not about John ‘cause it’s about Sherlock. Obviously, this applies to this scene: we’re focused on Sherlock’s face here, full screen. That certainly suggests that we’re meant to be focusing on him (and his arc).

And yes, that’s what I think it’s about. I realize most people who’re not Johnlockers seem unaware there’s an arc, but even though we’ve been wrong about various things, the one thing I’ve been right about is the importance of Sherlock’s arc. Moffat has explicitly referred to it and its relevance to The Final Problem, too. This is Sherlock’s test, his final test (as administered by Eurus, the embodiment of the ‘high-functioning sociopath’ persona). The Final Problem is becoming human.

So what does that have to do with Molly? He’s already told Eurus that he realizes his life is not his own: “Your own death is something that happens to everybody else.” So he’s learned the lesson of Reichenbach. The ‘human error’ thing is about people like Janine and Molly though, in the show. He doesn’t really have a problem accepting his feelings about John (however you want to read them); as soon as he realized them, around The Empty Hearse and The Sign of Three, he accepted them. John is always the exception. It’s everyone else’s feelings– and feeling in general– that Sherlock hasn’t taken seriously or accepted as valid, as important, as worth empathizing with. So this is the final step: he’d already felt bad for Molly in The Empty Hearse, but he didn’t take her feelings fully seriously, because then there was Janine. Love was still ‘human error’… but then Sherlock kept making that error. You don’t have to read this romantically, though it’s certainly not been about Molly. He’s made the error about John, about Mary, and even about Eurus (in The Lying Detective). That’s what he was telling Mrs Hudson with ‘Norbury’. He knows that ‘human error’ is something he has to take into account. Heartbreak is something Sherlock is now very familiar with. He has to feel it, but he doesn’t have to fear it (as Moriarty said).

Sherlock fake-smiled when he proposed to Janine because he was dissociating, essentially. Here, he wasn’t. But that doesn’t mean he was confessing his love. It means he was fully feeling the awfulness of what he was doing to Molly, and that he was aware he was using his real feelings– because he really does care about her as a friend– to hurt her, essentially. This is the realization he started to have at the end of The Abominable Bride, about how many women he’d hurt. This is the consequence: it hurts. It burns. It aches, being human. But it allows him to reach his sister, in the end, so the point is not about avoiding the pain but embracing it.

leapingcat:

So basically you are reducing Molly into nothing more than a plot device.

There are several ways to read this and they don’t all lead to the same conclusion. You also negate the concept of Platonic love. Love doesn’t come in just one flavor and yet you always go for romantic love as being that between John and Sherlock. This is too simplistic an explanation and it’s clear to me anyway, that your endgame is no matter what, Johnlock. Yet the truth of the matter is that a lot of what happened in this show, have two and three meanings, if not more. When you put it all together, how do you know that you went down the “right path”? Before The Final Problem, its really is clear as mud. The things that are stumbling blocks to Johnlock being the end game, are many, and many which have been conveniently brushed away, ignored taken out of context, or thrown, under the proverbial carpet..

It doesn’t explain why or how Anderson “knew” before Sherlock ever told him that Molly was involved in his fake suicide. There are things in this show that seem to “happen” completely off screen. Even Louise Brealey in her interview with Masterpiece said as much. Yes, the actress who plays that part. You’d think she’d know more than us “out here”, yes? Anyway, these things aren’t shown, only subtly hinted at, blink and you’ve missed it; if we are to believe that nothing happens in a vacuum, that idea that Molly and Sherlock shared a kiss must have come from some where. It doesn’t matter that it wasn’t real. The foundation for that idea exists “somewhere”. Anderson didn’t just pull it out of thin air. He saw or heard something, maybe the “grapevine”?

The whole episode of A Scandal In Belgravia, say what you will, generally also gets the once over. Yet there is something to be said for the grieving that Sherlock apparently undergoes… John describes it as doesn’t eat, doesn’t talk, writes/plays sad music. Sounds like situational depression to me. It took up a large part of the episode. If he was “in love with John” why would he travel a long distance, risk life and limb to rescue Irene from the executioner’s sword? That’s a lot of work for someone he couldn’t care less about. Not only that, he kept her phone as a memento. If John is his one and only true love, what would he want with her phone. Yep sure give it back to Mycroft.

Now, the stairwell scene with Molly, the expression on his face, on spotting her engagement ring. Why the forlorn expression? He wished she would be happy, but he really didn’t look happy or do you think he’s just given to bouts of melancholia for no reason? And there’s the business with the bolthole and who knows how that arrangement came about or what happened behind closed doors? Again it’s all off screen. Much of their “relationship” how ever you want to characterize it, is off screen.

So you see, why so many people read this differently?

I don’t feel Molly was simply a plot device and nothing more. The “I love you” scene. Much has been written about this, but simply the second time he says is significant. It’s how he said it, and the fact he did not have to say it twice to just to get the job done. Oh sure why not, that’s what men do, they are goal oriented and they get the job done. But the thing no one in this fandom pays any attention to is male conversational styles even though there whole books written on the subject. When men say things there is no subtext, unless they are blatantly trying to get away with something. Generally, they mean what they say. When John says he’s not gay, he’s telling you the truth; you don’t need to question it. When the second ''I love you'' came freely flowing out of Sherlock’s mouth, he wasn’t dissembling. He meant it. That was the point behind the supposed genius of all geniuses, Eurus’ wanted to get across or did you not get the meaning behind her words, “It will be a tragedy, so many days un-lived, so many words unsaid…”. On Molly suddenly turning the tables on Sherlock’s request; how do you extract an “I love you” from someone who is nothing more than a friend? Most people would not go there. If there’s nothing there and you did that, they’d laugh in your face… unless, there was something more that happened between them that we were not privy to… again, off screen stuff.

Molly is key to what I think is a “hero’s journey” type of story, Love in all its forms is the elixir that the hero emerges at end of his ordeal/cycle… The last scene with her walking into 221B with that wide sunny smile. Open to interpretation, yes, but maybe the more likely explanation is that she’s with him. Or as Moffat said, "she got over it". Oh give me a break! She was in love with the man. You don’t get over that just like nothing…

renniejoy:

How insulting to say that only Johnlockers realize that Sherlock has a character arc. No shit he has an arc, that’s the whole point of the entire show!

Why can’t that scene be about Sherlock *and* Molly? That is how it’s shown, a conversation between (and therefore about) *two* people. Oh right, you have decided that Molly doesn’t count. Well, the story has told us the opposite since S2.

There is no in-text reason to believe that it is not romantic. Declarations that Sherlock couldn’t possibly love Molly in that way are based on pre-conceived notions that dismiss an awful lot of textual evidence that Sherlock does take her seriously (including the agreement between John and Sherlock that Molly sees through *all* Sherlock’s bullshit).

But yes, once you’ve decided that Sherlock doesn’t mean that he’s in love with Molly, because he’s in love with someone else or he’ll never be in love with anyone, then you can find all kinds of reasons to back up your opinion.

Molly Hooper and Continuity vs Development 

 (Sherlock meta by mild-lunacy)

It’s not really a point of emotional investment to me, but it struck me that for all the fan criticism about Molly’s apparent lack of resolution in TFP, the fact is that the show never really showed her moving on. Note, I’m only interested in this from the perspective of characterization continuity; I have no personal interests at play with Molly or her infatuation. If pressed, I’d say I relate to the pining but don’t actually feel that she’s had enough character development for me to be invested. As Ivy wrote recently, there’s only so much you can expect from minor characters in a show focused on the main protagonist and his… significant other, and Molly’s definitely a minor character who did not have an arc. Then again, even John didn’t have an arc, as I’ve said. However, regardless of your *opinion* of Molly still not being over Sherlock, there was actually little enough reason to think she was. That is an example of reading into things and ‘confirmation bias’, much like the divergent interpretations of Mary after HLV, like I referred to earlier.

Basically, I think there’s a fundamental difference between character *continuity* and character *development*. Molly (and every other minor character) has had continuity without development, except (arguably) for Mary, who seems to have some development in TST without the benefit of retaining full character continuity. John and Sherlock are the only two characters on the show who *definitely* show both continuity and development. A lot of people mistake one for the other or assume they always go together. They do not. In fact, there’s also a third level of growth and that’s a development *arc*, which only Sherlock himself has had on the show.

To sum up, we had this set of ‘new and different’ responses from Molly in Series 3:

• Molly was quite willing to be Sherlock’s 'John substitute’ in TEH, and even dressed and tried to take notes like him for Sherlock, but it didn’t really work out. When she realized it wasn’t working and Sherlock kept calling her John, she begged off from dinner and mentioned having a fiance. 
• She’s still willing to help Sherlock no matter what, even when it comes to weirder and/or less romantic things than helping on cases, like helping with Sherlock’s Stag Night preparations for his best friend. This is a bit of a subjective thing, 'cause I suppose helping Sherlock with John could be used as proof of a lack of jealousy. She made a face when she saw the Vitruvian Man page of Sherlock’s little John binder, so maybe she also realized he’s gay (but this doesn’t mean she’d now have to get over him, 'cause that’s just a different reason for him to be unavailable as always). Still, Molly had never previously implied Sherlock was gay or into John romantically. Sure, she said he looks 'sad’ when John can’t see him, but that’s not necessarily romantic. Anyway, no reason to think she helped Sherlock with any small task for any different reasons than the ones established in ASiP, when she got him coffee. 
• Then we meet her fiance in TSoT, and he’s a Sherlock clone to the point of copying his coat and scarf. Still, he showed himself to be a bit of an idiot, and Molly stabbed him with a fork when he embarrassed her. In other words, she was apparently looking for a smart bloke who looked and dressed like Sherlock. 
• When we see Molly in HLV, she’s acting tough on Sherlock’s drug relapse and seems angry and disappointed enough to slap him. She definitely feels close to him in a way that’s not shown to be going both ways (that is, Sherlock cares but doesn’t interfere or offer opinions on her life). Molly’s shown taking Sherlock’s behavior personally and including herself and John as the 'people who care about you’, though this approach clearly doesn’t work on Sherlock, who makes a sarcastic remark. Anyway, she’s certainly more feisty, but not thinking rationally about Sherlock or able to see him as he is, unlike the flash of insight she showed in TRF. If anything, you could say she’s as attached as ever but a bit more bitter or conflicted about it and/or about Sherlock in general, whom she’d clearly idealized. The implication is that she’s angry he’s not living up to her ideals. 
• Finally, we see Molly in TST, and she’s taking care of Rosie and clearly feeling awkward about delivering such bad news about John, and feeling sorry for Sherlock. She’s not really acting like a close friend, in the sense of trying to *help* Sherlock with his grief and pain somehow, but she’s clearly still emotionally invested and as awkward about it as ever. Then of course we have proof she’s not over her infatuation in TFP. 

I realize there a lot of opinions and responses that people have to this, whether it’s happiness or disappointment, but my point is that the one thing it’s *not* is surprising. I also realize that people *were* surprised, but this is mostly due to projection or 'real life behavior’ assumptions, which rarely apply (particularly on BBC Sherlock, which typically picks the more dramatic over the more realistic response). You may or may not think Molly 'should have’ been over it by now, or maybe you think it’s great that she isn’t. Either way, I mostly don’t have an issue, although I probably disagree regardless. Essentially, there’s really no reason for characters to do the 'healthy thing’ when people so often don’t, but on the other hand, there’s nothing cool or special or even romantic to me about endless pining for a person you’re idealizing and can never have *or* grow much closer to unless you stop pining. Regardless, it is what it is, and furthermore it is what it’s been since we were introduced to these characters, more or less.

OK, so that was my understanding of the text as it stands, but I just wanted to add that I understand @jedilock’s critique and comparison to Doctor Who (at least in broad strokes, 'cause I don’t watch Doctor Who). The feel-good ideal is certainly 'very affirming’, as Sherlock would say. The woman who’d been pining– for the sake of that woman– should grow as a person and realize her own worth, and (essentially) move on with her life. That would be best. Fixating on someone who cannot give you what you want isn’t romantic, admirable or satisfying to watch (except for either people who project onto the character and insert their own happy ending, or people who just… like angst). However, I can excuse and/or dismiss the argument if it’s made on those grounds *alone*. I’m not particularly interested in fiction portraying the healthy and/or best case scenario, nor do I have a problem with all minor characters being fodder for Sherlock’s growth, as Ivy described. Except those aren’t the only grounds for critique by far.

One, there’s the issue that while it’s fine that Molly’s not really that important to the narrative and doesn’t need an arc, her continued fixation is simply… hard for many viewers to swallow because it doesn’t ring true. Even if a character doesn’t get an arc, their responses *do* have to change and develop with time to some degree, and we *have* seen some movement in Series 3 (even if my original post clearly shows that it’s easy to overstate the nature and the degree of Molly’s development). As I said, her motivations didn’t *change* in any fundamental way. However, she was not completely divorced from the effects of time, either. So it’s easy to feel that a real person (who is not a minor character created for a certain purpose) would not feel as Molly feels, not to the degree and *intensity* we see in TFP, most of which was there purely for the drama. That sort of forced drama is definitely a concern in terms of writing.

Two, there’s the use of a woman to further a man’s emotional growth and give him cathartic suffering, to the detriment of that female herself, which is definitely problematic. This has been a theme with Molly, Irene and even Mary in BBC Sherlock, as @delurkingdetective has discussed. That is probably excusable with Molly or even the category of 'minor characters’ in general, but definitely worth critiquing when it’s actually an example of a trend with the treatment of women specifically in Moffat’s writing.

The larger issue is primarily a certain laziness, a reliance on tropes and reusing old, comfortable characterizations. This isn’t to say that tropes are *bad*, really… but used carelessly, they may confuse the audience and mess up the characterization of the protagonist (which is presumably not what anyone wants). One example is obviously all the extensive usage of romantic tropes in Sherlock, which certainly helped give some of us the impression the show’s structure meant to follow through on those signals. Perhaps even *more* problematically, the writing reuses some of Sherlock’s *own* mistakes and blind spots for plot convenience in ways that don’t entirely make sense in context. It’s not just *Molly* who keeps making her old mistake, over and over again, in ways that aren’t fully believable. The bigger issue is something like Sherlock’s behavior with Norbury in TST, as @delurkingdetective described. To have Sherlock trust that Norbury won’t or couldn’t kill him after being in a similar situation with Mary, *and* going on to be super-predictive detective again in TLD might explain why *John* lost faith in him, but it could easily justify the *viewer* losing faith in the show, as well. He wasn’t emotionally compromised with Norbury the way he was with Mary, so there’s no real excuse for his arrogance overriding his ability to predict and understand murder and murderers except pure plot necessity.

In essence: Mary had to die. Molly had to be in love. Sherlock had to suffer. And that is simply not good enough writing.

Janine, reconsidered 

 (Sherlock Meta by mild-lunacy)

I was rewatching HLV in preparation for The Reckoning (aka Series 4), and I noticed something off about the Janine scene at Baker Street. As we know, Sherlock was acting weird, but then, he was *acting*. People have various explanations of how/why Janine was acting weird. Most people point to her willingness to forgo sex with Sherlock as the odd thing, or alternatively her willingness to believe he was really proposing. The usual point is, how could a savvy, smart woman go for that?

Well, that’s what I’d call an example of an ‘argument from real life’, which is almost always a dead end when analyzing genre fiction. I realize it’s really, really popular for a reason, and that is that it comes really naturally and is part of how most people process and relate to stories. That being said, I’m inclined to dismiss it. If you think these points suggest Janine isn’t believable or coherent as a character, fine. That simply means you’re not satisfied with the show, but that’s not offering a useful critique for further analysis. Nor is it a good reason to go against explicit canon and insist she did have oral sex with Sherlock at least. Anyway, the oddness in Janine that I’m speaking of is the stuff John canonically found weird himself, based on his scandalized, weirded out look: coming out without her bottoms, calling Mycroft ‘Mike’ and blatantly helping herself (staking a claim) in the kitchen. In other words, she was both forward and rude, in context: not acting very British. Then she was super-demonstrative, sitting in Sherlock’s lap later; people have theorized that this is because she knows about Sherlock’s plans, but there’s a simpler explanation. One that doesn’t require breaking a plot point in HLV (always important).

Janine’s inappropriate behavior fits if she was actually *trying* to make John uncomfortable, hoping to rub it in with her new relationship to Sherlock. Not to help Sherlock for whatever reason, but because *she* was jealous. Remember, she knows how important John is to Sherlock because of their conversation at the wedding. Sherlock made his fixation on John clear by his behavior there, and in fact Sherlock rejected her at the time (both sexually and as a candidate for the position John’s marriage represented an end to). The walking around half-dressed makes sense if you essentially want your lover’s ex to suffer. It really is that simple sometimes, and it also makes sense as a mirror with Mary’s dynamic with Sherlock and John in HLV, as well. Mary was starting to resent Sherlock’s role in John’s life as well, sniping at him earlier in the episode about some people not having heard of Sherlock.

The whole performance being directed at discomfiting John becomes truly obvious when she tells Sherlock right in front of John, “I’m the only one who really knows what you’re like, remember?”

That’s just *blatantly* a reference to John as well as John’s (presumably former) role in Sherlock’s life. It’s the sort of thing you don’t say in front of someone’s questionably-ex 'partner’ if you don’t have to, or you’re being friendly. If you’re not trying to score emotional points, you don’t say that sort of thing even to 'play along’ (assuming she’s doing that, rather than Sherlock, which I think is the actual reality of the situation). We know that Janine is canonically nasty and vengeful (from her going to the newspapers about her sex life with Sherlock), so this behavior is totally understandable. Further, if she was taunting John right then, it makes sense she’d been in that mode the entire time.

Not to say that this is somehow an anti-Janine post, but I’m guessing that one reason fandom hasn’t really talked about this before is that it’s not particularly flattering to Janine. We tend to be a bit protective about female characters in the show. In Series 3, however, every female character– Molly, Janine, Mary, even Mrs Hudson– repeatedly acted somewhat insensitively, and everyone except maybe Mrs Hudson was also manipulative and even emotionally abusive to various degrees. With Molly, I’m referring to the contentious yelling episode at the lab, and with Mrs Hudson, I’m mainly referring to the multiple times in TSoT where she mysteriously stomped over Sherlock’s apparent anxiety about John’s impending nuptials. Mary, on the other hand, exemplified every single aspect of this sort of insensitive, manipulative behavior throughout the Series, of course.

The other reason I haven’t seen anyone mention this interpretation before in the Johnlocker circles I travel in is probably because it treats Janine’s canonical heterosexual/heteroromantic feelings seriously. There’s not much I can say about that except that it’s my best judgment that they were indeed real.