Sherlock: Thoughts on Series Three, Part Two - What John Watson Likes
So I actually hadn't intended to write about this at all - my brain is still stewing about Mycroft and the Mind Palace and Janine, and some interesting speculations about Moriarty or whoever was behind that eerie television message.
However, I've been thinking a lot about John and Mary, Irene and Sherlock, and how John's interactions with both women have some interesting parallels and actually reveal a lot about John's relationship with Sherlock, among other things. I was re-inspired tonight by this wonderful gifset and this one (which was actually done for me by request, over on Tumblr, so thank you to sherlockbbcgifs!).
Let's start from the beginning and see if I can make sense of this. (An incredibly grateful thank you goes to arianedevere for her wonderful transcript, which is copied in part below.) In that incredibly painful conversation in 221B, during "His Last Vow," we have this:
JOHN: What have I ever done ... hmm? ... my whole life ... to deserve you?
SHERLOCK (now leaning against the right-hand door post): Everything.
JOHN (in the same tone as he turns to face him): Sherlock, I’ve told you ... (he walks towards him) ... shut up.
SHERLOCK (quietly): Oh, I mean it, seriously. Everything - everything you’ve ever done is what you did.
JOHN (very softly and dangerously): Sherlock, one more word and you will not need morphine.
SHERLOCK (still softly): You were a doctor who went to war.
(John’s eyes are fixed on him and he is breathing rapidly and deeply.)
SHERLOCK (a little louder but still quieter than we’re used to hearing his voice): You’re a man who couldn’t stay in the suburbs for more than a month without storming a crack den and beating up a junkie. Your best friend is a sociopath who solves crimes as an alternative to getting high.
(He pauses for a moment.)
SHERLOCK: That’s me, by the way. (He raises his left hand and waves at him.) Hello.
(He points towards Mrs Hudson.)
SHERLOCK: Even the landlady used to run a drug cartel.
MRS HUDSON: It was my husband’s cartel. I was just typing.
SHERLOCK (looking at her): And exotic dancing.
MRS HUDSON: Sherlock Holmes, if you’ve been Youtube-ing ...
SHERLOCK (louder, talking over her): John, you are addicted to a certain lifestyle. You’re abnormally attracted to dangerous situations and people ... (his voice becomes quieter again) ... so is it truly such a surprise that the woman you’ve fallen in love with conforms to that pattern?
(John grimaces briefly and then, with his eyes still fixed on Sherlock, he points towards his wife at the other side of the room.)
JOHN (his voice full of suppressed tears): But she wasn’t supposed to be like that.
(Mrs Hudson looks across to Mary in shock. Mary lowers her head.)
JOHN (to Sherlock, pointing again across the room, his voice a little stronger): Why is she like that?
(Sherlock looks away towards the sofa wall for several seconds and then turns to look directly into John’s eyes.)
SHERLOCK: Because you chose her.
And then this:
JOHN (lifting his left hand and gently punching the arm of the chair): Perfect(!) So that’s what you were? An assassin?
(He looks towards Sherlock.)
JOHN: How could I not see that?
(He turns back towards Mary.)
MARY: You did see that.
(John’s humourless and slightly murderous smile is back on his face.)
MARY (pausing for a moment): ... and you married me.
(She pauses again, then tilts her head towards Sherlock.)
MARY: Because he’s right.
(Sherlock looks down a little, unusually not looking pleased about being correct.)
MARY (softly, to John): It’s what you like.
And all of that together got me thinking about Irene Adler, and what kind of Woman she is, and that she gets her way by knowing what people like. Essentially, I ended up rethinking the entire Sherlock/Irene/John triangle in "A Scandal in Belgravia." My assumption generally was that John is both jealous of the attention Sherlock gives Irene (and the attention she gives Sherlock), but also very, very protective of Sherlock, because he seems to instinctively feel that Irene will hurt Sherlock. All of that may be true, but now I also think that John sees Irene for what she is - in contrast to Sherlock, who can't read anything off of Irene at all. She is dangerous, and John responds to that danger, probably against his own better judgment. As Irene says, John "knows where to look" when he sees her naked; he finds her attractive both for her physical body and for the danger she brings with her.
However, Sherlock becomes an interesting element in all this, because John has also made it his mission to protect Sherlock, to keep Sherlock safe. He doesn't keep him away from danger, per se, but he does try to prevent him from being hurt, either physically or mentally. John's instincts seem to scream at him, the entire time they interact with Irene, that Irene is a compromise to Sherlock's well-being - not in a "we're running down a jewel thief in a dark alley" kind of way, but in a "this woman could emotionally and physically damage the person I hold most dear" kind of way.
If John, even instinctively or subconsciously, realizes that he is Sherlock's emotional place of safety, it's really interesting that he would see dangerous women (women he likes) as a threat to Sherlock. He chooses those women for himself - twice, as Irene would say - and yet he would never choose them for Sherlock, seeks to protect Sherlock from them. Ultimately, I think, he chooses Sherlock over them, both times. Certainly he does it in Irene's case with very little struggle. He "begs for mercy" for Sherlock, not himself - he tells Irene (even though he thinks she's Mycroft at the time) that Sherlock is suffering, that he is heartbroken, and then demands that she tell Sherlock she is alive.
Mary, of course, fulfills her threat of being dangerous to Sherlock before John even knows the threat exists, before John knows that the worst case scenario has happened - Sherlock is shot and bleeding on the floor before John comes in, and it takes Sherlock's setup at Leinster Gardens and his explanations at 221B to reveal the truth to John. John realizes simultaneously that he completely overlooked a threat to Sherlock that was even more dangerous than Irene, and that he has this unconscious pattern of behavior that means "normal" is never going to be a part of his life. He doesn't actually want normal, even if he thinks so in his conscious mind. I think he does think so - he's saying to Sherlock in the above scene that Mary wasn't supposed to be dangerous, she wasn't supposed to hurt him (John), she wasn't supposed to shoot Sherlock and nearly kill him. In a way, in that scene, John is begging for mercy the second time: begging for it all not to be true. He wants to continue to believe the lie, about both himself and Mary, because the lie is so much easier than all of these horrible truths.
You can also interpret John's "She wasn't supposed to be like that" as "she wasn't supposed to be like you" - like Sherlock. She wasn't supposed to break his heart, she wasn't supposed to be dangerous, she wasn't supposed to emotionally destroy him. However, whether John can see it or not, I think the major point of this season is that Sherlock isn't like Irene or Mary. He might be dangerous, in a "chasing down bombers and assassins" way, but not in an emotionally destructive way. Sherlock has told John lies, but he has never lied to John about who he is. He has never hidden behind a facade in front of John; he has never been anything less than painfully truthful, except during the Fall and its subsequent events. And even during that last conversation before Sherlock jumped, John didn't believe him. Sherlock tried to convince John that who he was was a lie, and John wouldn't believe it. In Sherlock's case, John has never believed all the lies. He deciphers most of the lies Sherlock tells him, and he never believes the many lies of the press, or any of Moriarty's lies about Sherlock. He has never wanted, needed, or begged to believe them. He believes in Sherlock, and (as his girlfriends confirm), he always chooses Sherlock. At the end of the 221B scene, he chooses Sherlock again:
JOHN: ... the people who come in here with their stories. Th-the clients - that’s all you are now, Mary. You’re a client. This is where you sit and talk ... (he gestures towards the armchairs) ... and this is where we sit and listen, then we decide if we want you or not.
John aligns himself with Sherlock and The Work, again, trusting and believing in Sherlock and Sherlock's judgment and care more than he trusts either himself or his wife.
So what does all of this mean? I'm not sure, except that if John spent S1 and S2 being Sherlock's protector and emotional place of safety, it seems that he is finally realizing that Sherlock may be those same things for him, as well. (Of course, we all knew this already, but we are outside observers.) ;)
Also, does anyone care to speculate about this? Irene states very vehemently that Sherlock and John are a couple (even if they're not a romantic or sexual couple), and acknowledges that Sherlock is, in a way, her "exception," despite her lesbianism. She's attracted to Sherlock. If we take Irene at her word, what does it mean that Sherlock is somehow an exception for both John and Irene, the man attracted to danger and the dangerous woman? Does it also make Sherlock an exception for Mary in some way? The one target she got attached to? The one time her emotions got in the way? The one kill shot she deliberately missed? And if John always chooses Sherlock, over his (two) dangerous women, and the dangerous women always find Sherlock to be an exception in some way, doesn't that make Sherlock John's emotional epicenter as well?
Wow. I feel like I'm trying to wrap my brain around the fourth dimension of space. I think there's a lot of interesting thoughts in here, though, and I would welcome anyone else's additions or speculations. :)
However, I've been thinking a lot about John and Mary, Irene and Sherlock, and how John's interactions with both women have some interesting parallels and actually reveal a lot about John's relationship with Sherlock, among other things. I was re-inspired tonight by this wonderful gifset and this one (which was actually done for me by request, over on Tumblr, so thank you to sherlockbbcgifs!).
Let's start from the beginning and see if I can make sense of this. (An incredibly grateful thank you goes to arianedevere for her wonderful transcript, which is copied in part below.) In that incredibly painful conversation in 221B, during "His Last Vow," we have this:
JOHN: What have I ever done ... hmm? ... my whole life ... to deserve you?
SHERLOCK (now leaning against the right-hand door post): Everything.
JOHN (in the same tone as he turns to face him): Sherlock, I’ve told you ... (he walks towards him) ... shut up.
SHERLOCK (quietly): Oh, I mean it, seriously. Everything - everything you’ve ever done is what you did.
JOHN (very softly and dangerously): Sherlock, one more word and you will not need morphine.
SHERLOCK (still softly): You were a doctor who went to war.
(John’s eyes are fixed on him and he is breathing rapidly and deeply.)
SHERLOCK (a little louder but still quieter than we’re used to hearing his voice): You’re a man who couldn’t stay in the suburbs for more than a month without storming a crack den and beating up a junkie. Your best friend is a sociopath who solves crimes as an alternative to getting high.
(He pauses for a moment.)
SHERLOCK: That’s me, by the way. (He raises his left hand and waves at him.) Hello.
(He points towards Mrs Hudson.)
SHERLOCK: Even the landlady used to run a drug cartel.
MRS HUDSON: It was my husband’s cartel. I was just typing.
SHERLOCK (looking at her): And exotic dancing.
MRS HUDSON: Sherlock Holmes, if you’ve been Youtube-ing ...
SHERLOCK (louder, talking over her): John, you are addicted to a certain lifestyle. You’re abnormally attracted to dangerous situations and people ... (his voice becomes quieter again) ... so is it truly such a surprise that the woman you’ve fallen in love with conforms to that pattern?
(John grimaces briefly and then, with his eyes still fixed on Sherlock, he points towards his wife at the other side of the room.)
JOHN (his voice full of suppressed tears): But she wasn’t supposed to be like that.
(Mrs Hudson looks across to Mary in shock. Mary lowers her head.)
JOHN (to Sherlock, pointing again across the room, his voice a little stronger): Why is she like that?
(Sherlock looks away towards the sofa wall for several seconds and then turns to look directly into John’s eyes.)
SHERLOCK: Because you chose her.
And then this:
JOHN (lifting his left hand and gently punching the arm of the chair): Perfect(!) So that’s what you were? An assassin?
(He looks towards Sherlock.)
JOHN: How could I not see that?
(He turns back towards Mary.)
MARY: You did see that.
(John’s humourless and slightly murderous smile is back on his face.)
MARY (pausing for a moment): ... and you married me.
(She pauses again, then tilts her head towards Sherlock.)
MARY: Because he’s right.
(Sherlock looks down a little, unusually not looking pleased about being correct.)
MARY (softly, to John): It’s what you like.
And all of that together got me thinking about Irene Adler, and what kind of Woman she is, and that she gets her way by knowing what people like. Essentially, I ended up rethinking the entire Sherlock/Irene/John triangle in "A Scandal in Belgravia." My assumption generally was that John is both jealous of the attention Sherlock gives Irene (and the attention she gives Sherlock), but also very, very protective of Sherlock, because he seems to instinctively feel that Irene will hurt Sherlock. All of that may be true, but now I also think that John sees Irene for what she is - in contrast to Sherlock, who can't read anything off of Irene at all. She is dangerous, and John responds to that danger, probably against his own better judgment. As Irene says, John "knows where to look" when he sees her naked; he finds her attractive both for her physical body and for the danger she brings with her.
However, Sherlock becomes an interesting element in all this, because John has also made it his mission to protect Sherlock, to keep Sherlock safe. He doesn't keep him away from danger, per se, but he does try to prevent him from being hurt, either physically or mentally. John's instincts seem to scream at him, the entire time they interact with Irene, that Irene is a compromise to Sherlock's well-being - not in a "we're running down a jewel thief in a dark alley" kind of way, but in a "this woman could emotionally and physically damage the person I hold most dear" kind of way.
If John, even instinctively or subconsciously, realizes that he is Sherlock's emotional place of safety, it's really interesting that he would see dangerous women (women he likes) as a threat to Sherlock. He chooses those women for himself - twice, as Irene would say - and yet he would never choose them for Sherlock, seeks to protect Sherlock from them. Ultimately, I think, he chooses Sherlock over them, both times. Certainly he does it in Irene's case with very little struggle. He "begs for mercy" for Sherlock, not himself - he tells Irene (even though he thinks she's Mycroft at the time) that Sherlock is suffering, that he is heartbroken, and then demands that she tell Sherlock she is alive.
Mary, of course, fulfills her threat of being dangerous to Sherlock before John even knows the threat exists, before John knows that the worst case scenario has happened - Sherlock is shot and bleeding on the floor before John comes in, and it takes Sherlock's setup at Leinster Gardens and his explanations at 221B to reveal the truth to John. John realizes simultaneously that he completely overlooked a threat to Sherlock that was even more dangerous than Irene, and that he has this unconscious pattern of behavior that means "normal" is never going to be a part of his life. He doesn't actually want normal, even if he thinks so in his conscious mind. I think he does think so - he's saying to Sherlock in the above scene that Mary wasn't supposed to be dangerous, she wasn't supposed to hurt him (John), she wasn't supposed to shoot Sherlock and nearly kill him. In a way, in that scene, John is begging for mercy the second time: begging for it all not to be true. He wants to continue to believe the lie, about both himself and Mary, because the lie is so much easier than all of these horrible truths.
You can also interpret John's "She wasn't supposed to be like that" as "she wasn't supposed to be like you" - like Sherlock. She wasn't supposed to break his heart, she wasn't supposed to be dangerous, she wasn't supposed to emotionally destroy him. However, whether John can see it or not, I think the major point of this season is that Sherlock isn't like Irene or Mary. He might be dangerous, in a "chasing down bombers and assassins" way, but not in an emotionally destructive way. Sherlock has told John lies, but he has never lied to John about who he is. He has never hidden behind a facade in front of John; he has never been anything less than painfully truthful, except during the Fall and its subsequent events. And even during that last conversation before Sherlock jumped, John didn't believe him. Sherlock tried to convince John that who he was was a lie, and John wouldn't believe it. In Sherlock's case, John has never believed all the lies. He deciphers most of the lies Sherlock tells him, and he never believes the many lies of the press, or any of Moriarty's lies about Sherlock. He has never wanted, needed, or begged to believe them. He believes in Sherlock, and (as his girlfriends confirm), he always chooses Sherlock. At the end of the 221B scene, he chooses Sherlock again:
JOHN: ... the people who come in here with their stories. Th-the clients - that’s all you are now, Mary. You’re a client. This is where you sit and talk ... (he gestures towards the armchairs) ... and this is where we sit and listen, then we decide if we want you or not.
John aligns himself with Sherlock and The Work, again, trusting and believing in Sherlock and Sherlock's judgment and care more than he trusts either himself or his wife.
So what does all of this mean? I'm not sure, except that if John spent S1 and S2 being Sherlock's protector and emotional place of safety, it seems that he is finally realizing that Sherlock may be those same things for him, as well. (Of course, we all knew this already, but we are outside observers.) ;)
Also, does anyone care to speculate about this? Irene states very vehemently that Sherlock and John are a couple (even if they're not a romantic or sexual couple), and acknowledges that Sherlock is, in a way, her "exception," despite her lesbianism. She's attracted to Sherlock. If we take Irene at her word, what does it mean that Sherlock is somehow an exception for both John and Irene, the man attracted to danger and the dangerous woman? Does it also make Sherlock an exception for Mary in some way? The one target she got attached to? The one time her emotions got in the way? The one kill shot she deliberately missed? And if John always chooses Sherlock, over his (two) dangerous women, and the dangerous women always find Sherlock to be an exception in some way, doesn't that make Sherlock John's emotional epicenter as well?
Wow. I feel like I'm trying to wrap my brain around the fourth dimension of space. I think there's a lot of interesting thoughts in here, though, and I would welcome anyone else's additions or speculations. :)