Have you ever thought about how terrifying Molly Hooper actually is?
The girl’s got an encyclopedic knowledge of human anatomy and pathology that makes Sherlock jealous, regularly processes murder victims as part of her routine job, is closely acquainted with police investigative procedure and when she helped Sherlock fake his death she played her part so convincingly that Scotland Yard was completely fooled.
If she wanted, she could easily be the deadliest character on this show. Your ass is just lucky she prefers kittens and fluffy sweaters to recreational murder.
So let’s put on our magnifying glasses and see what’s wrong with this post:
“what is this crap about Molly being a weak character” (I don’t know, perhaps because she’s pining over a man that keeps treating her like shit and instead of growing a pair and moving on to live her life as an “independent woman” who cares fuck all and is happy, she hangs on to him and hopes he’ll change his mind. Unrequited love is the worst and makes its victims abso-fucking-lutely miserable.)
“Sherlock needs her for everything” (Okay, this isn’t a fair quote, since OP isn’t being really specific in how the times Sherlock has *needed* her. She shouldn’t be letting him examine bodies when he’s not allowed to, but she’s Molly Hooper and she can’t turn her crush down. Sherlock manipulates her into believing he “likes” her but offering her compliments to get ahead and get what he wants. And the Christmas scene was brutal. Damn right that boy apologized. And in The Empty Hearse, John wasn’t around, and even when he asked Molly to help him solve crimes, who was he thinking of in the middle of a crime scene? Who was he hearing in his head?)
“Molly doesn’t need him at all” (Then why does she keep hanging on him? If she didn’t *need* him, why hasn’t she gotten over him?)
“She doesn’t pine for him and or wait for him to love her back” (…….. Oh god, I had to bury my face in my hands reading that. She doesn’t pine? Correct me if I’m wrong, but when did we start talking about another woman? Oh, we’re still talking about Molly? Oh hon. Of course she pines for him.)
“Sherlock is just in her blood” (You just contradicted your last statement. You say that she doesn’t pine, but here you say that Sherlock is in her blood. I’m going to brush aside my sarcastic response of how this sometimes means you’re related to the other person and tell you that it also means that when you’re obsessed with someone and want to adopt all their habits and think of them constantly because you feel you are connected – hell you are fucking pining. You’re like Heather Locklear pining.)
“She doesn’t become bitter about it” (See morgue scene in The Abominable Bride.)
“Both Sherlock and John rely on her for everything” (*wiping away tears from laughing*) Since I already covered the “Sherlock needs” part, I’m going to cover the John part. Molly doesn’t give a shit about John. She forgets who he is in The Great Game, probably to just get under his skin. They’ve never talked. John is never alone with Molly unless someone else is in the room. And we all know how much you Sherl0llies hate John – one of you even threw out a suggested URL title called “thewrongwatsondied”) – so I don’t know, sweetheart, don’t try to cover your own tracks by suddenly including John in your apparent heart-filled speech. It must have taken you quite the effort to write his name in your post.)
“She is a strong, independent woman and that’s final.” (And yet, there she is in her kitchen in The Final Problem, unhappy, what – 39, 40 years old, probably bemoaning her sad fridge, and yet she gives in when her crush calls her and demands that she say I Love You. It’s for a case, but she says it anyway. I’m going to say this as gently and carefully as I can: Molly is weak and she needs to buck up. Instead of moving on with her life, splurging on a vacation, meeting some new people and maybe a new lover, and practically glowing with happiness – she’s eating a pathetic snack and still in love with someone who, for the past 7 years, never returned her affections. Does that sound like a strong, independent woman to you? Do you even know what a strong, independent woman looks like? Or sounds like?)
Wonderfully stated. Molly is the embodiment of the pining woman, and while I rooted for her in S1-3, in S4 she’s just ridiculous and pathetic. One more reason why I pretend S4 never happened.
I agree but I don’t blame Molly herself as she’s a fictional character. This shit is all mofftiss. They probably think it’s totally normal for a 40 year old woman to spend her time forlornly cutting lemons while pining over a man who doesn’t return her affections. Yeah. It’s not. It’s gross and pathetic and Molly is better than that.
Don’t forget Moffat thinks women are to quote–needy husband hunters. Also, why is the OP so large? I’ll still think it’s rubbish, however big it is. Sorry.
Molly is as pathetic in her pining for Sherlock as Sherlock is in his for John. Molly should have gotten over Sherlock when he told her her breasts and mouth were too small in ASiB. Sherlock should’ve gotten over John that night at the restaurant in TEH. Would’ve saved him a lot of misery if he’d told the ungrateful jerk to fuck off for good.
If I wanted to be charitable, I’d say Mofftiss wanted to show how unrequited love and one-sided friendships make people unhappy. Without the syrupy ending of TFP, it could even be true.
I think it’s interesting that Molly becomes John’s default childcare, along with Mrs. Hudson.
Why?
When were they ever such good friends??
And John’s able to use Molly to hurt Sherlock by giving him his note and extremely hurtful message– “Anyone but you.”
Meanwhile, Molly is still pining for Sherlock. Really unhealthy model for women.
This thread (which is interesting in its own right, you should read it!) made me reflect for a bit on why I find this scene so damn annoying.
My first instinct is yeah, this is wildly out of character for Mycroft. The man is responsible for many deaths, in the tens of thousands if we’re to believe the jokes about him starting wars. For him to say “I will not have blood on my hands!” is not only hypocritical but silly. And sure, I’ll buy that Mycroft’s a hypocrite – that he avoids legwork precisely because he can’t handle this sort of thing – but I don’t buy that Mycroft’s unaware of his hypocrisy. A truthful response would be “I can’t do it” or, if that’s too vulnerable, “I won’t do it”.
And this is where the annoyance comes in. Because: why do the writers have him say something so transparently hypocritical? Why do they have him vomit when the Governor ends up killing himself? It seems almost like they’re mocking him. Fucking Mycroft, they want us to think. Willing to order people killed but not willing to kill people himself. They want us to see him as a weak hypocrite.
But where does that leave us? It leaves us rooting for murder, narratively. It leaves us thinking, “If Mycroft were a better man, he’d have killed the Governor.” It leaves us comparing him to John, and esteeming John in comparison, because he comes closer to killing the Governor, because he actually tries to do it, because he doesn’t vomit afterwards. Of course, John can’t do it either. I’m glad of that. Just as I’m glad that Mycroft is being a hypocrite. But I find the whole thing very distasteful.
The series of moral dilemmas at the heart of TFP is incredibly trite, not just in themselves but also in the context of a show that let’s people kill without consequences or reflection. To be fair, we knew this going in. In the very first episode, John kills a man, the ethical dilemmas resolved with a joke: “He wasn’t a very nice man.” Given that, it’s hard to expect a reckoning for Mary shooting Sherlock, or Sherlock killing Magnussen, or Mycroft starting wars and abusing state power. I mean, we complain about Eurus being forgiven for murdering a bunch of people but at least she ended up back in prison. That’s more consequences than any of the other characters got.
I’m just so sick of plotlines where people commit crimes and we’re meant to approve of them or find them badass. (And oh, the irony of writing this sentence about a Sherlock Holmes adaptation!) I’m sick of fiction where we’re meant to think less of people for not being able to kill. I was willing to ignore it when I first watched BBC Sherlock but I’m over it, I’m done with it. There are too many high-functioning sociopaths in real life for me to want to spend any more time with them in fiction.
It never sat well with me in ASIP that John kills Hope and there is no reckoning, simply because it wasn’t credible IRL that there wouldn’t be a reckoning. Hell, a firearm was discharged: a man died. Of course there’d be an investigation. In retrospect, perhaps that should have been a warning that the show’s moral compass was off.
From then on, things became steadily less credible. As long as the show focused on the developing love and tenderness in the relationship between Sherlock and John, and how they changed for and with each other, it was possible to – and I now regret that I did – ignore some of the loose ends, unaddressed moral issues, and plot holes.
Once that focus shifted and the Mary arc began, the lack of moral focus, the incredibilities, the inconsistencies become more glaring and more intrusive and more jarring until John takes Mary back after she’s killed his best friend – the act of a man with no moral compass whatsoever – and Sherlock shoots Magnusson, becoming a murderer, the very thing he has always fought. At that point, we have been inducted, beguiled into a world where wrong is right, both our beloved characters have walked too far away from themselves to be themselves, and the chaos of Season 4 becomes inevitable.
I feel more than slightly soiled now. “Facile descensus Averni” indeed: easy is the descent into Hell. And I’m not happy that I allowed myself to be led, or willingly walked that ‘primrose path to the eternal bonfire’ without sufficient moral compass of my own to guide my own steps.
Who knew? My inner Puritan, or more likely my inner Catholic, was always out to get me. 🙄
This is so disturbing to consider, the callback to ASiP especially. Thanks to a number of critical analyses like this, a thought keeps intruding the past few weeks. It’s the idea that one of the foundational tenets of romantic Johnlock readings of the show – that John killed Hope to save Sherlock’s life the day after they met – is patently false. The truth is that Sherlock had just gambled his life to beat Hope at his “game” and prove himself clever. Making that exchange, we get John killing Hope to prove that Sherlock is clever. And in the end, this is what the creators did repeatedly: murder after murder to prove that their show is (they are) clever. There seems to be little other purpose to any of it.
You have all expressed thoughts i have had since HLV. I was always kind of disappointed that Hope got turned from a vigilante hero into a minion of moriarty, but at the time i accepted the scene as a piece of the overall story structure. and in the other early episodes, when someone died, there was recognition that this was bad/sad/wrong. But in HLV, that all got turned around, and suddenly we had “mary” shooting sherlock for no reason, and sherlock being manipulated into murdering CAM, which was even worse. Villains shooting people helps mark them as villains, in story logic. But heros shooting people to solve problems is precisely the wrong sort of image to be televising into people’s brains. i had hoped s4 would address that, get us back to a sherlock holmes who solved problems with his brain (and heart), but… no. So my shift from being a fan of the show, to being a fan of the fandom, continues.
I can’t disagree with anything anyone jas posted here. ALL of this is one of the core reasons that there is more to come. I am not a tinhatter, I do not believe there is an ARG, but what I do believe is this story is I am not delusional. I believe I have a little understanding of storytelling as I believe Mofftiss do as well. They are not infallible, but I find it unbelievable that they lost the plot so spectacularly.
Reblogging for the interesting discussion, but I don’t think I agree with you, monika. I think it’s entirely possible they had different plans for this show right from the start, but for whatever reason, the production team was allowed to put heavy emphasis on the wrong things. We already know for a fact that Moftiss keep their lead stars in the dark about character arcs, so all those scenes of eye-sex and sexual tension between Ben and Martin are just as likely to have been the actors playing what they thought was appropriate for their characters. “We all saw it as a love story” – except Moftiss. We weren’t the only ones led astray, but they allowed it to happen because they saw the ratings and figured, innacurately, that the audience was simply enjoying their particular brand of queerbaiting.
They ended s4 on such a ‘final’ note with that montage, that for them to do a complete 180 and go “Surprise, that was a fake ending!” now (months/years after TFP aired) would simply confuse and disenchant the majority of their audience. And they’ve already done that. Doing it twice in a row would be complete suicide.
I think they had a chance to do something like that immediately, but they’ve already waited too long.
Not to derail the discussion, but I do want to re-emphasize one of the points of my original post, which is that this “killing people is badass if you’ve got a good enough reason” motif they’ve got going is not new to S3 or S4 – it’s there from literally the first episode.
I don’t rule out S4 being fake, I’ve been analyzing and appreciating the “you can’t trust stories!” imagery for like six months, so I’m open to it. I really am. But I also think folks downplay how many of the problems of S4 have been there from the beginning. I see this with people pointing out the plot holes in S4 and TFP especially. I get the urge, I mean it’s a terribly written season, but Bond Air and Delayed Action Stabbings and the solution for the Fall are all pretty cracky plotlines too.
It reminds me a bit of when I used to work as a researcher. Due to publication bias we were always rooting for positive results more than negative ones, despite our attempts to be objective. And so when we got a negative result, we’d go over the study with a fine-tooth comb, wondering if we’d messed up somewhere – mixed up the data, made an error in the code, etc. Sometimes we’d find something, ‘cause we’re human and everyone makes mistakes. But when we got positive results, we wouldn’t be quite that diligent. We’d look for mistakes, but we wouldn’t look as hard. I wonder sometimes if that isn’t what’s happening here. If folks looked for silly plots, incontinuities, bad characterization in S1-S3 with the same energy that we’re (rightfully) tearing apart S4, what would we find?
If I may… I’d like to offer a different perspective for your consideration.
In all of ACD Sherlock Holmes stories, the crimes were not so much about law and order, but the mystery of human nature – in all its fragility, flaws, absurdity, and promise. Sherlock Holmes may insist his methods were purely scientific to Dr. Watson, but without the ability to observe human heart through the deductions of human behaviors, he couldn’t have been the detective he was. I think Sherlock has been pretty consistent in the portrayal of canon-Holmes-in-progress throughout the entire series.
I railed against TFP for a couple of weeks when it first aired because it was simply too ridiculous and bizarre. But since then, I’ve come to see TFP as self-referential, a Sherlock Holmes parody about Sherlock Holmes parodies (there were simply too many elements of film/screen within a film/screen). Which provided a very different context in reading the surface narrative as well as subtext.
In the scene you mentioned above, for me, Mycroft and John were not so much Mycroft and John the characters we know them, but their roles as the British Government and the Soldier (as John kept reminding us). Regardless of one’s interpretation of Eurus, we were told that she was used in aiding British Intelligence at one point. So in this scene, we have an outsourced intelligence agent telling Sherlock Holmes the detective and sometimes MI6 (which is ACD canon compliant btw) that either the British Government or its Soldier must kill the Governor, a civil servant, or risk having his wife, a hostage, killed instead. All this while the trio attempting to rescue a-girl-on-a-plane that very much resembled a failed mission from an earlier episode (Bond Air). Sounds familiar? Western powers refuse to get their hands dirty as they conduct failed missions one after another by deploying their soldiers and outsourced intelligence, but couldn’t stomach the consequences of deaths?
I’ve never thought of Sherlock as overtly political (aside from the potential canon Johnlock and its implications) as imperialism in ACD canon was often fraught with contradictions. After series 4 I did go back to all the previous episodes, and one of the biggest surprises was actually TBB. I didn’t have much to say about the racial stereotypes (being asian and came to the west first as an international student many years ago), I personally didn’t think it was offensive but perhaps just… lazy, as it often happens in the portrayal of poc in Western media. But upon rewatch (and believe me I did multiple times before in the seven years since it aired), I realized the whole black lotus narrative was actually a commentary about Opium Wars and Imperialism. I don’t know if anyone has written about it before, but personally, I could not believe it was sitting there right in front of my face without me seeing it for seven years.
Perhaps I am biased and want to see the best of a show I still love. And being in the creative field myself, I know there is simply no way to predict whether the story you tell will be the same story the audience see. But damn if we don’t try, and to make sure every move has a purpose – rather the audience misses it than not doing our jobs. So I tend to give the creators and the creative team more lead way, and it is the same case here.
So what of all the murders and deaths in Sherlock? Just as ACD canon was filled with allegories and allusions, I suspect the creators of Sherlock has been doing the same; it’s to do with love and desires that meant certain death in the Victorian era. The medium made the allegories and allusions much more difficult to swallow – at the same time, the medium has been a part of the message since day one. I don’t know if it’s been the creators’ intention all along, but by making TAB, this is a conversation they know they will not be able to avoid going forward; one that involves the queer reading of Holmes and Watson in ACD canon. I know TFP doesn’t look it at first glance, but there is simply more than meets the eyes, just as all the other episodes did and especially TAB. But as you’ve written one of my favorite meta in the Sherlock fandom ever @delurkingdetective – you were the one show me where to look, you know?
I’ve been deaded along with most of the rest of the fandom, so I haven’t done much of my own writing on the finale. Howeverrrr, Louise Brealey’s tweets in response to Steven Moffat’s interview with EW got me going, and, alas, here we are. The first half of this piece has been published on Bustle, but I had to cut it significantly, so I’m posting the extended version here.
In “The Final Problem,” one contentious scene stood out among the many, many, many (Tumblr is making lists) other contentious parts of the episode: the forced love confession scene between Sherlock Holmes and his pathologist friend Molly Hooper. The scene – which was actually a last-minute addition to the script – has polarized the fandom because it seemingly reduces Molly to a one-dimensional, love-sick sop, while proving to Steven Moffat’s staunchest haters that the “Sherlock” writer and creator is a diabolical misogynist.
On the Steven Moffat front, I happen to love his female characters. Even when I hate them – cough Clara Oswald cough – I love that I hate them, because it demonstrates that they’re real and layered enough for me to approach them in an ambivalent way. Molly Hooper is actually one of Moffat’s more complex female characters, both in personality and narrative arc – the latter of which is why people are so irked by the Molly Hooper scene. I have other problems with the scene (which I will get into later) but I do not think it necessitates a reductionist view of Molly’s character, despite the implication that Molly has not progressed past her season one self.
Molly starts out as a Sherlock fangirl of sorts, fostering an unrequited affection for the great detective. In season two, we learn that she is more than her love for Sherlock – she stands up to him, gains his respect, and becomes an integral part of Sherlock’s plan to fake his death. Season three moves her further into the friendzone (which, in the context of the “Sherlock” universe, is a huge step for both of them), while establishing that she has – or tries to have – a life outside of the pathology lab and the morgue.
Her character in “The Abominable Bride,” is the most interesting: “Molly” is known to all as “Hooper,” the “man” who runs the morgue and takes no shit from anyone, least of all Sherlock. When we find out that the whole plot of “The Abominable Bride” is a fiction concocted in Sherlock’s head to help him figure out a case, it makes Molly’s re-characterization as a man even more fascinating – not because Sherlock would only respect her as a man, but because he now recognizes her inner steel, and believes that if Molly did live in those more, ahem, genteel times, she would have had to pretend to be a man in order to be respected as the smart and capable person that she already is.
Season four shortchanged a lot of characters, Molly included, and she only appears in the first two episodes to help take care of John’s baby and to remind Sherlock that he’s too doped up to function. Then came “The Final Problem.”
“The Final Problem” centers on the sudden, psychopathic appearance of Sherlock’s secret sister, Eurus, and her desire to understand Sherlock’s “emotional context.” To do so, she puts him through a series of Escape Rooms and presents him with a different ethical conundrum in each. One room contains an empty coffin, which Sherlock deduces is meant for Molly Hooper. Eurus tells Sherlock that Molly’s flat is rigged with explosives, and unless he can convince Molly to say the code phrase “I love you” before the timer runs out, Molly will die.
It’s cruel. In a way, that’s what makes the scene brilliant. For Molly, it’s a painful phrase to utter “because,” she says, “it’s true.” And even though Sherlock succeeds in the challenge – “I won! I saved Molly Hooper!” – the cost is high, and, Eurus explains, unnecessary. Eurus reveals that Molly was never actually in any danger, so Sherlock hasn’t actually “saved” her, and whatever he thinks he has “won,” he’s now lost much, much more. “Look what you did to her,” Eurus points out. “Look what you did to yourself.”
“Look what you did to yourself”:
Immediately afterwards, Sherlock Hulk-smashes the coffin with his fists in a primal rage, an indication that, as the entire series thus far has aimed to show us, the most impressive aspect of Sherlock Holmes is not his brain, but his heart. Sherlock is deeply, deeply emotional, and it’s gut-wrenching to see him so distraught over causing emotional harm to someone else, someone he used to slight without a moment’s hesitation or afterthought. Now that’s character growth. Plus, this scene is a callback to “A Scandal in Belgravia,” when Sherlock humiliates Molly at a Christmas party, completely blind to her affection for him. Sherlock is surprisingly chastened when he realizes his mistake, and the moment marks an important crack in his emotionless facade.
The scene in “The Final Problem” is so agonizing because we know how much Sherlock has grown since then. But what about Molly? It seems she hasn’t changed a bit. In “A Scandal in Belgravia,” Molly plays the part of the pining, unrequited lover, and she is thrust into the exact same position in “The Final Problem.” Many fans are furious over this static characterization of Molly, a woman who seems to exist only to support the emotional growth of the main, male character. In fairness, the show is called “Sherlock,” ergo, every character – male or female – essentially exists to support the emotional growth of the main, male character. However, is it fair to say that this scene indicates that Molly is nothing but a stock female character with no internal growth or struggle?
Yes and no. No, because Molly is far from being a prototypical damsel in distress of yore or a one-dimensional, ass-kicking heroine. In fact, what I love most about Molly Hooper is that she turns the dreaded trope of the Strong Female Character (™) on its head. Here is an original female character (she does not appear in the Arthur Conan Doyle stories) who is pure-hearted yet complicated, emotional yet entirely competent. Though she has some form of a relationship with the main, male character, she also has her own career, dating life, living space, and stressful days unrelated to said main, male character. What stood out to me most about Molly and Sherlock’s exchange in “The Final Problem” was Molly answering the phone with “Hello, Sherlock. Is this urgent? Because I’m not having a good day.” Those six words – I’m not having a good day – hint at an entire life outside of whatever’s going on with Sherlock Holmes, and imbue her character with immediate depth.
The fact that she is still pining for him arguably makes her feel even more real. In response to fan criticism, Louise Brealey tweeted her own assessment of the scene: “Loving someone after years is not reductive, retrograde, antifeminist or weak.” (The actress views herself as a proud feminist and has been outspoken about women’s rights and her own struggle with body image issues.)
All of which makes the fallout – or lack thereof – from this scene at the end of the episode so shocking. We see how this conversation has profoundly affected Sherlock (“Look what you did to yourself”), but not how the conversation has affected Molly (“Look what you did to her”). Molly appears in one subsequent scene in the episode, as part of an ending montage that shows her happily skipping into 221B Baker Street. Wait, what?
In a post-finale interview with Entertainment Weekly, Moffat addresses fan concern with the careless treatment of Molly in this episode with a repressive: “She gets over it!” He then goes on to explain that their resolution obviously occurs off-screen, and ends with: “She probably had a drink and went and shagged someone, I dunno. Molly was fine.”
Oh, Steven. If anything, this makes matters even worse, and Louise Brealey herself tweeted that she disagrees with Moffat’s assessment of Molly’s reaction to this scene:
The Molly Hooper scene in “The Final Problem” is supposed to feel horrible. It’s supposed to feel brutal, and it feels that way because of the careful development of both Sherlock’s and Molly’s characters over the course of the series.
We witness Sherlock’s agony, but Molly’s is completely brushed aside. That’s the real tragedy of the treatment of Molly’s character – not what happened to her within the “emotional context” of the episode, but what wasn’t explored by the writers afterward.
But there’s another ick-factor as well, and that’s the larger issue of the whole “no homo” feel of this episode. This scene bothered me on a more meta level because it felt like it was capitalizing on Sherlock’s one heteronormative relationship. If the words “I love you” mean so much, why not have Sherlock say it to John? (Sherlock himself says “I love you” to Molly because she will only say it if he says it first.) I could write – and obviously many of you have written – hundreds of pages on how Sherlock’s love for John Watson drives nearly every episode, so that’s another essay entirely. But if you’ll take it on good faith that Sherlock and John’s relationship is what powers the heart of the entire series, why have Sherlock utter such a sincere-sounding declaration of love not to John, not even to his brother Mycroft, but to the one straight female character on the show? (Apologies to Mrs. Hudson.)
BBC deliberately mislead fans by including Sherlock’s “I love you” in one of the promotional trailers for the season – and that, I believe, was cruel. Not cruel towards fictional characters, but cruel towards real-life fans who devote so much of themselves to this show. A large proportion of “Sherlock” fans were exhilarated by the prospect of seeing John and Sherlock finally get together as a couple, despite the fact that Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss have repeatedly denied that that was ever going to happen. For my part, I didn’t need to see the two of them engage in a dramatic, public display of affection to close out the season, and I believe something that grandiose would have been out of character for these two emotionally repressive men.
But that’s why the final hug between Sherlock and John at the end of “The Lying Detective” was so meaningful and so cathartic. That’s why Sherlock saying “I love you” to or at John (hey, I would have been happy with a Mind Palace love confession too) would have been a natural follow-up to the emotional vulnerability finally laid bare at the end of “The Lying Detective.” And that’s why it felt so cheap to have Sherlock say it to Molly. “I’m not an experiment,” she angrily scolds Sherlock, as he desperately tries to get her to say those three words. But in the larger, “emotional context” of this show, she might as well be.
.
What a wonderful, balanced review of that scene! Covers some of the same ground as my post on the ‘I love you’ scene, but more broadly and thoroughly. It’s true that Molly– like Mary, too– ‘feels’ real in a really low-key and subtle way. I don’t think that it’s blatant, but moments like Molly’s not-so ‘good day’, or the way Mary told John in HLV that ‘you can’t go. I’m pregnant’. The moments of realistic portrayal and the often great performances exist in a rather stylized artificial world, however. As some people have said about Mary’s antihero portrayal, the over-the-top back-story can easily prove too distracting to appreciate the little touches.
I particularly appreciate the reminder of the subtle development Molly did have. Although she’s still a minor character who really didn’t have an arc, I feel that my earlier summary of her behavior through S3 into S4 wasn’t generous enough, as it lacked this sense of the necessary context of her overall shift into greater self-confidence and maturity. Of course, this show is well known for not showing explicit consequences for anything characters do, but particularly minor characters such as Mary, as Ivy described. It doesn’t mean it’s *okay* or anyone has to consider it ‘good writing’, but the implicit orientation of the narrative does seem to mean that one is meant to fill in the blanks between what we see and what ‘has to have happened’ in between.
Basically, I think you could argue that both Moffat and Loo could be right, in that Sherlock and Molly are okay by the end, but they weren’t *immediately* or automatically okay, and Molly didn’t somehow *magically* get over it. They must’ve had a conversation about feelings– and we know Mofftiss hate showing those if they don’t have to, even with the main characters– and it worked. Of course Molly forgave Sherlock if she really did love him, ’cause John certainly forgave him for worse things by far. Of course, YMMV as to whether that’s enough for you.
just talking to @dumblewald and we both mentioned how weird the scene in TEH is with Sherlock and his parents.
Mrs. Holmes waits until John shows up (KNOWING WHO HE IS) to expose that they also knew that Sherlock was alive for two years.
I am sure that they knew John didn’t know. I think Sherlock purposefully kicked them out because he knew what damage they could do, being the manipulative parents they already are (evident from Mycroft and Sherlock’s manipulative tendencies that are probably learned behaviors).
And look at poor Sherlock’s reaction to his mom manipulating him.
He keeps glancing back at John while his mom goes on and on about knowing he was alive – hoping John doesn’t hear.
And being manipulated like that makes sense for his outburst where he yells “Sorry! Sorry again!” because that’s normally how apologies worked in his household. Until he remembers its John and he apologizes for real.
That is all.
PS I realize I didn’t talk about the dad much. He says, “she worries,” digging that manipulative knife a little deeper. He’s in on it too.
here’s the problem with john and i think he knows it’s a problem: BECAUSE of the way things used to work before reichenbach like before sherlock left he could be like “don’t follow me!!!” and sherlock would follow him anyways or show up at his date or whatever like. he would tell sherlock not to come and sherlock wouldn’t listen. and even though he put up a fuss, john sort of loved it. so when sherlock came back, john said “fuck off” and he expected sherlock to show up at his surgery. he tells sherlock to leave him alone, and sherlock listens and john is like What Is This Fuckery because he never expected sherlock to listen
I’m trying to think of a single television moment when any character, let alone a male character, cried as honestly and humanly as John Watson in TLD, and I can’t. Not only did Freeman show raw emotion, he showed it as a vulnerable, broken, quiet release that his character has been physically repressing since episode one. While talking about his need to be the man that people expect him to be. This is so important.
Watch every Watson moment leading up to this scene, watch for him pursing/flinching his lips and thrusting his chin upward. This is a man who has been trying not to cry his whole life.
Sherlock
Holmes has become such a beautiful, strong man.
Look how
he patiently listens to John Watson telling him to make a move on a woman he
has zero interest in.
Oh, he
tries to tell John: “As I think I have explained before…” he starts, but John
interrupts him. John knows him better now. Romantic entanglement would complete
Sherlock as a human being, he thinks, and John Watson is right, he’s always
right, it’s boring, isn’t it?
It doesn’t matter if you think that
John is talking about himself and Mary
John is talking about himself and the bus lady
John is talking about himself and Sherlock (…obviously…)
Sherlock thinks John is talking about himself and Mary, whom he lost
The point
that comes out clearly in this gif-set, is that whatever we or anyone else
thinks either of them is thinking about, Sherlock is clearly reacting to one
thing.
That
chance doesn’t last forever. Trust me, Sherlock, it’s gone before you know it.
Before you know it!
This is
what Sherlock reacts to, with a face so heartbroken it chokes me up, because…
This is
the same face. That chance doesn’t last forever. Trust me, Sherlock, it’s
gone before you know it. Before you know it!
John,
Sherlock knows that very well. He has lost you so many times over and over
again, and he’s let you go each time because he thought you’d be happier that
way. He let you go to Mary, because you chose her. He let you go at the tarmac,
because he knew his death would destroy your life, just like what he wanted to
say wasn’t “Sherlock is actually a girl’s name,” but very probably, “I’m in
love you, thank you for all you’ve done for me.” But he didn’t.
Because
he knows if you knew that chance would have been there–only to see it
irrevocably go this time, to Serbia, to death–this would have broken you, too.
So he
chose to be kind instead. He may have left you, first, but he paid the price.
Multiple times. You probably began thinking this up there after his fall…
You said
it now. You said it years later; you’ve been thinking it the entire time. It
has haunted you.
Don’t you
think it’s haunted Sherlock, too, once he realised he had been in love with you
all this time? The self-loathing, John, that you have not been privy to
in TAB, must have been intense. Gone before you know it. Yes,
Sherlock has been there, too.
But he’s
been kind to you, and he is being again, now. Oh, he tries to tell you…
“Forgive me, but you are doing yourself a disservice,” he starts, and is about
to tell you that it is you, that it has only ever been you, who
is his fulfillment of ‘romantic entanglement,’ but just like before at the
tarmac and at your wedding, he lets you go. He lets you choose. You interrupt
him by confessing “I cheated on her,” because it’s something you need to get
out. It’s something you need to resolve, and this is the right moment for you.
“Forgive
me but you are doing yourself a disservice. I have known many people in this
world but made few friends, and I can safely say–”
So he
lets you speak. He lets you interrupt. He lets you, once again, not let him say
it. He lets you once again silence him.
He is
being kind. He knows you need this. He knows this is the wrong moment. He lets
you. He allows it.
He wants
you to know, I think. He is so ready to say it here. But his last face in that
gif-set? He may not know where he is standing with you–do you hate him? are you
okay to be friends with him again? you said he didn’t kill your wife but you
still harboured strong resentment towards him for various reasons–but he will
will not allow you to belittle yourself, because you are so much more, to him.
You’re human, even you, and he is done letting you beat yourself
up. You’re doing yourself a disservice. Out of all the people in this world,
there has ever been you. You’re human, and you’re imperfect, but you’re
perfect for me.
He wants
you to know that. And, wanting that, he makes that face in the last gif-set,
listening patiently to you telling him to make a move on a woman he has zero
interest in. Maybe he’s thinking about how little you realise things, still,
even though you’re so clever. You’re an idiot, after all.
He is
hurting, he is resigned. This pains him. He wants you to stop talking about it.
“It was just texting.” Texting means nothing. Texting Irene is your bus lady
moment. It’s nice to know you are being wanted. It’s nice to allow yourself to
feel wanted, sometimes, to try it out, even if you may not want that person
back.
But this
isn’t it. This isn’t ‘more.’ You wanted more, and you still do.
Now look
at Sherlock in this gif-set and tell me he hasn’t wanted more, for years, and still does.
Please,
let him speak, next time, John. Let him speak. You will want to hear what he
has to say.
Try not
to beat yourself up too much after that though: you could have had it long ago.
I scream every time the moaning text alert goes off because
John goes absolutely still while his subconscious walks around saying
things like, “posh boy and dominatrix,” taunting and provoking him while he walks towards Sherlock
like a fucking predator totally intent on–?? on what?? I don’t even know.
Everything vanishes from John’s head when he hears that noise, and it isn’t curiosity.
If you were curious about this you’d stop, maybe turn around and say,
“Oh, so you’re still on with her, then?” Throw in an impish grin or two,
give a thumbs up. Good on you, mate. Go for it! It’s time.
What does John do? He’s going stupid on the inside while trying to keep it cool. But he’s going around the bend.
And, “Seriously, we’re not going to talk about it?” ??? What is there
to talk about, John? Why are you so intent on this? You’re even worse
than TAB Watson, and he already was… you know. Quite intent. There’s nothing to talk about… but that doesn’t stop him.
He
can’t believe Sherlock doesn’t text her back. She’s alive, for one.
Everyone else seems to be dying these days, but the Woman is alive,
right? And she’s good for Sherlock. Beats him professionally, not
when she has psychotic breakdowns. They’re the same level of weird.
She’s just as clever as he is, he’d never call her an idiot, would he?
Not like John. With his psychotic breakdowns, his stupidity, his
constant trying to be normal; God, no, not like John, with all his bloody
issues. (Quite literally bloody, too. Like Sherlock on the floor in a morgue.)
Irene
is better for Sherlock. Could maybe be the only one for him–there
aren’t many psychopaths around, though John has met quite a number of
them–so why doesn’t Sherlock go for it?
John’s self-loathing is
incredibly strong here. Let’s throw in a ‘mate,’ there, he has the
necessary distance now. It’s not weird if he rants about her now, is it?
He is pushing Sherlock towards her, right? No one can make this
into anything it isn’t, because–well, it isn’t anything else. John just
dislikes the noise. He can’t stand it. Had to listen to it 57 times, Christ, and–
no. No, that’s not good. It doesn’t matter. The point is Irene is good for Sherlock, even if she’s Irene Adler.
Anyone but John.
If
only Sherlock weren’t staring up at him with his eyes–wet? are they
wet?–like they are, silent, just letting John go on. When he wants to say something, it’s good that John can just cut him off. Isn’t it?
Sherlock “texts a restaurant owner specifically to go out of his way and come to the flat with John’s abandoned cane to prove his limp is psychosomatic” Holmes
Sherlock “lemme just put up my dukes and fight this enormous golem dude ” Holmes
Sherlock “goes to Buckingham palace wearing nothing but a sheet just to annoy his brother” Holmes
Sherlock “proves a huge frickin’ hell hound was just a hallucination by mixing a fear-inducing drug into his friend’s coffee and scaring the shit out of him in a lab” Holmes
Sherlock “gets placed in a jail cell due to excessive showing off” Holmes
Sherlock “pretends to take his best friend hostage to avoid being arrested” Holmes
Sherlock “literally fakes his own death” Holmes
Sherlock “dresses up as an over the top French waiter to surprise his friend with the fact that he’s not actually dead” Holmes
Sherlock “vaults over a table, bounces around the room, and talks about murder during his best man speech” Holmes
Sherlock “breaks out of a hospital, does a bunch of elaborate shit I’m not even gonna get into, then mediates the weirdest marriage counseling session ever with John and Mary, all while bleeding internally” Holmes
Sherlock “has a drug-induced dream about himself and people significant to him in the Victorian era, with maximum gothic drama” Holmes
Sherlock “calls his infant goddaughter by her last name” Holmes
Sherlock “walks around in such a way that he spells out the words “fuck off” with phone tracking just to mess with his brother” Holmes
Sherlock “aggressively recites Henry V while high off his ass and waving around a loaded revolver” Holmes
Sherlock “tosses said revolver to the side just to catch a falling cup of tea in midair can you say BRITISH” Holmes
Sherlock “finds out he has a sister, decides to get the truth out of his brother with the aid of a horror scenario complete with a creepy little girl, a fucking CLOWN, and portraits bleeding from their eyes” Holmes
Sherlock “steals a boat, calls himself a pirate, and jumps into the air with his coat flapping in full grandiose fashion” Holmes
Cool but remember in TGG when Moriarty put the little kid on the phone and he became frantic and was visibly relieved when the kid didn’t get blown up? Or in ASiB when the little girls come to him about their grandad’s death on the plane and while he was quite harsh in his wording, he told them the truth unlike the rest of the adults in their lives? Or in TRF when he does his best to be calm and gentle with the kidnapped girl and looks horrified when she starts screaming in fear? Or in TSo3 when he’s in 221B alone with Archie and they get on well enough that he’s willing to show him case photos, and Archie gives him a hug when they see each other at the wedding, and he listens to Archie’s opinion on the case they’re trying to solve? Or in T6T when he agrees to be Rosie’s godfather, and hands her rattle back to her with a smile when she throws it? Or in TFP when he does his best to be calm so he can help the ‘little girl’ even though he’s being out through a series of extremely stressful tasks designed to destroy him emotionally? Or at the very end when he’s shown looking completely comfortable holding and interacting with Rosie?
Sherlock Fandom Archive 