Sherlock Fandom Archive

watsonshoneybee:

wiscolina:

watsonshoneybee:

john 👏 watson 👏 deserves 👏 nuance 👏

Canon Watson is incredibly nuanced, which is why Martin’s acting style was perfect for the modern role. Any warping or diminishment of the modern character is the fault of the writers, not the actor.

oh sorry let me clarify – this post is 100% intended as a defense of the modern bbc character, not as a renunciation of it. i am basically short-handing the “john” version of this post: sherlock holmes would be a boring character without flaws.

acd’s stories are written from john’s perspective, and therefore he is at the advantage with himself – he can edit, basically, and leave out that which makes him look weak or ill-tempered or what have you. he can scoot over the depth of his emotions and hide the call of his heart simply by skating over events relying on dialogue between characters instead of inviting us into an inner dialogue with himself. he is, in short, the quintessential unreliable narrator, and the most successful one of all time: he tells us what he wants us to know, and for the last hundred+ years, sherlockians have been satisfied with his interpretations of self. 

not so with bbc. moftiss has previously been lauded for this “catching out” of the character, specifically in asip – that while acd’s john takes sort of a clinical, self-recriminating approach (lumping himself in with those “idlers and lounger” which are irresistibly drained into london, etc etc), and almost laughs at himself (that same paragraph: “I was as free as air – or as free as eleven shillings and sixpence a day will allow a man to be.” but the modern character confronts what john watson must really have been going through at the time – lost, alone, broke, without work, without health, without purpose. our john watson has nightmares, our john watson cries, our john watson contemplates suicide. and it is into this dark, grief-stricken truth that sherlock holmes comes crashing in. 

so that tells us right from the off that this adaptation is an interrogation of character, and of the canon. first step to bbc is to really dig in and see what acd’s john failed to say. and that continues throughout – the fall, for example. acd’s john basically writes himself, in the face of holmes’ revelations of betrayal and deception, basically clapping his hands and saying “goodness! how wonderfully smart! right on chap!” bbc’s john feels the full weight of the consequence. he is allowed to be betrayed. he is allowed to be angry. feelings which acd’s john must have felt and which have been denied him. the audience basically is left to fill in the gaps with acd john’s emotional state, because characters who don’t feel betrayal when betrayed, who can’t feel righteous anger when appropriate, are one-dimensional dullards and a bore. 

we have also previously lauded moftiss – and before them, granada holmes’s watson – for bringing john’s intelligence and competence to light. many adaptations over the years have basically reduced john to cartoonishly buffoon-ish sidekick (tplosh, howard, etc), and we recognise now that of course this interpretation is not supported by the canon. and yet the canon does contain elements of exclamation and wonder – john writes himself as being stunned and shocked by holmes’ brilliance, even as he allows holmes to tell him that he discounts himself and never gives himself credit. 

but competence and intelligence are not the end of watson’s nuance, and bbc has explored that and allowed that. grief, betrayal, irritation and annoyance, anger, even violence. things that the depths and nuance of real people generally allows for, considering background, history, context. we can sit around and say well i’ve never hit my best friend! ya, well, my best friends have also never faked their deaths for literal years and then revealed themselves in a fake french waiter outfit in the middle of my marriage proposal, so i guess i can’t really say how i’d react! extraordinary circumstances beget extraordinary reactions, right? what bbc has allowed john to do is to lean into these reactions, to explore the depth of them, and to disallow john to continue hiding behind his narration. out in the open. bringing the truth of john out into the open. 

which brings us to series four, which seems to be the crux of the whole issue. there are a lot of hints about unreality in the series, but even if you don’t buy that and you take the whole thing at face value, there’s really nothing to imply that john and sherlock’s relationship has been irrevocably harmed and that the path john’s character takes is in some way diminished in sherlock’s life. so john pulls away from sherlock when mary dies. if you take it at face value, john reacts not just to losing a wife but also to the exchange of one life for the other – that mary chooses sherlock’s life over her own, when john struggled with that choice and struggled with mary and failed to make a decision himself. so of course he pulls away from sherlock. that makes sense!! that. makes. logical. reasonable. sense. having an emotional reaction to your own life is not a betrayal of your friends. denying help from someone with whom you are currently having some emotional upheaval is pretty normal!! and yet he still comes when sherlock shows up in tld and says that he needs him. follows him. and of course i am of the opinion that taking the morgue scene at total face value is the warm-paste version of watching the show, given that it is preceded generally by one-on-one therapy sessions with a mind-controlling genius that wants to kill and/or harm sherlock and is preceded immediately by an implication that td-12 was ingested and subsequently revealed to be told through john’s statement to police – that is to say, stepping back into the unreliable narrator for a moment. to me, face value must include all these considerations. but even if the morgue scene happened that way, it’s immediately followed by john taking responsibility (admitting it to lestrade in an official statement to police which obviously began as a report of assault), john’s subsequent goodbye to sherlock at the hospital which imo reads as intended to be a permanent “i can’t do this anymore, for either of us” goodbye, and then john’s submission to mycroft’s will – mycroft calls, says for john to get into the car waiting, and john goes, knowing that mycroft could totally be about to black-bag him for crimes against his little brother. and john still saves sherlock’s life, and throughout tfp you have john and sherlock on the same side. john is family. there is never any doubt to sherlock and mycroft that sherlock will choose john. sherlock is desperate to save john throughout. any diminishment of their relationship in tfp is actually on sherlock’s part when he ignores vatican cameos. by series end, face value, they are utterly together – and although it’s platonic, there’s really absolutely nothing in series four that implies that they couldn’t or won’t ever be romantically attached, and plenty to imply that being romantically attached “would complete them as human beings” – that is to say, would bring their characters fully to life.   

i’m getting away from myself. the point is: bbc john interrogates the text of acd’s john and brings forth the things that acd’s john didn’t want us to know. to read john watson as always the devoted, always the loyal, always the follower, always the supporter, always the dear watson, is boring. it’s oatmeal. warm paste. it’s a much more interesting story to give that boy some heckening nuance and let him be complicated. that’s when a character passes from stereotypical sidekick into towering, incandescent light. bbc john is an attempt to ease acd’s john out from behind his pages and his edited narration and to breathe life and truth into him. and you have to interrogate his character and interrogate his true depth of emotion in order to discover what is hidden within – that is, that john watson is capable of more than simple warm-paste levels of devotion. he is capable of adoration, and of being adored. he is capable of passion, and passionate love, and being passionately loved. and that’s really one heck of a story.