So the Christmas Sherlock called his brother (although he prefers to text) because he needed his help …
the Christmas of danger nights and caring not being an advantage …
the Christmas of telling John not to leave Sherlock because Mycroft was afraid his brother would relapse …
… is the same Christmas Mycroft gave his brother’s worst enemy as a Christmas present to their dangerous sister who wanted Sherlock dead and killed his best friend.
There has been so much amazing meta regarding EMP since S4 aired that I feel it should be somehow collected and catalogued for reference. If anyone else agrees, then I would love to set up a blog to house and tag those metas. (And with my recent health issues, I just have a lot of time on my hands)
I have reserved @sherlock-emp to store and house all meta anyone would like to submit. They will be tagged according to contributor and subject.
If you are at all interested in contributing- or know of anyone writing about EMP theory- my messenger is always open.
I think this is a
very important question that often gets ignored when discussing the
starting point for EMP.
Sherlock cannot have memories of
people, places, and things that he’s never seen.
So if HLV is where EMP begins, it must
pass the POV test. It doesn’t.
CAM’s MP is introduced at the end of
TEH. How does Sherlock know that CAM has a MP? How does Sherlock
recreate that same MP in his own mind in HLV?
The bomb fire video is not a video when
it’s shown in TEH. It’s inside CAM’s MP so it’s a thought or a
memory. How does Sherlock take CAM’s memory and turn it into an
actual video or a thought of his own in HLV?
Why does the line “Put that on a t-shirt” repeat?
When Mary points the gun at Sherlock,
he does a quick deduction.
How can Sherlock have a memory of this
scene from TEH? He wasn’t there…
If HLV is EMP, then TEH is EMP as well.
POV matters. It can’t be ignored.
Take TAB out of the equation. Fucky
HLV leads directly into fucky TST. And with it goes the POV weirdness. Balloon John and the changes to John’s flat further prove that
TEH/MHR is EMP. Sherlock can’t know what he doesn’t know.
S4 is telling us that this entire show is EMP. HLV is not where EMP begins, it’s the
beginning of the end.
Much has been said about John in S4, his anger, his changed personality, his distance, his resentfulness, his brutal treatment of Sherlock – I could go on. Sure, in TEH we got angry John, violent John, but then it could be excused – at least up to a certain extent – and knowing Mofftiss they might have found it even funny to correct Canon by having not just one, but three physical attacks. After all they clearly stated that to them Canon Watson’s reaction was not very believable. Anyway, we are shown that John has not forgotten the fall but has forgiven Sherlock by the end of TEH.
Then TAB happens and we get the above scene in the cemetery, a scene that is modern AND happens in Sherlock’s mind without a shadow of a doubt. John being angry, John choosing to leave with Mary, refusing to help Sherlock on his case. And there is also the short moment in the carriage when Victorian John is substituted by modern John, saying: “Sherlock, tell me where my bloody wife is, you pompous prick, or I’ll punch your lights
out!” Both scenes are not real. Both times John chooses Mary over Sherlock, leaving him, threatening him with violence.
And then, in S4, in two episodes we are supposed to take for real, we get the same angry John, the John who is distant, who leaves Sherlock, who blames and rejects him, who saves him only because his dead wife tells him to do so.
In my humble opinion – since I do not believe that Sherlock suddenly has turned into a prophet or a clairvoyant – Sherlock is processing all that has happened to him after the fall: John’s anger, losing John to Mary, being almost killed by Mary, realising and accepting his feelings, trying to ensure John’s happiness at the cost of his own, overcoming his self-loathing and repressed emotions. And this processing is still going on S4, making John’s behaviour more believable. This is not the real John Watson we see but Sherlock’s inner worst case scenario: a John who blames him, cuts him out of his life, brutally beats him while being high and weakened by drugs. This would also explain why there is no apology during the hug scene. While making progress, Sherlock still believes that he does not deserve an apology. He has still got a long way to go.
Lots of great comments on this one. Sherlock’s chairs, with architecture and window reminiscent of TAB – I’m totally convinced now that Sherlock is doing therapy in his mind palace. (I love everyone in this bar.)
WHAT!!!!!!!!!
Oooo, I hadn’t noticed the chairs!!!! He’s talking to himself.
UGHGH SORRY I’M NOT GETTING MY NOTIFICATIONS ANYMORE. D:
THIS IS FUCKED!!! Nice.
Not only are the chairs like “sherlock chairs” in the second image, but they are kind of like “john chairs” in the first, only white and a little more “bony” (pun not intended? or??) HMM, what were the chairs like in the pilot,i forget…
Another case in point that Series 4 is fake. I even was telling my partner they were Sherlock’s chair. He didn’t notice.
Jesus, Paige. I knew this was coming. You told me you were writing ‘something’, but you didn’t tell me I’d need life-support after reading it!!!!
THE GLASS
That breaking glass in TAB has haunted me since it aired. Honestly. I couldn’t make sense in the whole expository scene showing us exactlyhow it was done when it didn’t matter and they couldn’t be bothered to explain the fucking fall! But, it was just a red herring. There was no gang of murderous brides so there was no ‘magic trick’ performed, hence no broken glass. For a while, I entertained Pepper’s ghost was the fall explanation, since Sherlock told John it was just a magic trick (and there still might be some double hidden meaning behind it, who knows??) But, reading this. OMG, reading this almost convinces me how right we are that time is frozen at that moment. Did he hear glass break or didn’t he? Did the bullet travel through him, or is it still inside him? Is it because this is an instantaneous thought process happening in that moment in time??
And then bringing the invisible glass back full circle. Does it disappear and reappear because Sherlock doesn’t know if it’s broken or not??
Then, breaking down each episode as a callback to forwards or backwards, one or two and the East wind. Honest to god. You have blown my mind with this and if anyone thinks they haven’t got this shit on lockdown and tight as this, I don’t know what to tell them. This show is a marvel.
I wrote basically this on Jan 8th this year. About the mirror in CAM’s office actually breaking, being symbolic of the exposing of a lie, just like the women conspirator’s glass in TAB does, and how the mirror in fact shattering could mark the return of the narrative to a frozen moment in time in HLV. Here’s the link and what I wrote (It’s in the PART TWO).
Holy shit @tjlcisthenewsexy you are an extremely efficient genius! Here i am going “I thought of something new!” and I’m like 9 months late! THIS MUST BE THE CASE. WHY WOULD THE GLASS ALWAYS COME UP.
So we’re in that exact same moment Sherlock got shot. Time has stood still. That’s where we left them.
I’ve seen a lot of anti-EMP-people argue that EMP doesn’t make any sense because it wasn’t in the original ACD!stories:
“Why would Mofftiss even go for this? Just because they like ‘Inception’? Isn’t BBC ‘Sherlock’ supposed to be read on a meta level, as well? As more than just an adaptation of the original ACD!stories, as a commentary on all the other adaptations that have been done before, as a commentary on the relationship between author, audience, and the Sherlock Holmes character that has existed for more than 120 years?”
Well, I think I just had a little epiphany about that.
EMP actually makes a lot of sense not just in-universe, but also on a meta level!
But first of all, let’s remember how they foreshadowed EMP right at the very start of the show in ASiP in that very first scene that establishes Sherlock as a character for us:
In this screenshot Sherlock visually becomes one with the dead body lying on the slab. And that’s no coincidence. That dead body represents Sherlock Holmes (the man who, as Molly points out, “used to work here”).
So, we have a dead body who represents Sherlock Holmes, and a Sherlock who peers down on ‘himself’ from above.
You know…like in a near-death experience! (Thank you @monikakrasnorada, for this idea. This wouldn’t have occurred to me if you hadn’t pointed out how much TFP is like a near-death experience in our recent collaborative creative ‘shouting match’: here.:))
So, this is some nice foreshadowing of a near-death experience right there.
It tells us that Sherlock will, at some point in the show, be in two places at once: lying somewhere unconscious/in a coma (almost dead), yet also experiencing a lot of things outside his own body at the same time (or rather deep inside his own brain, as near-death experiences go).
He will be lying down, near dead, but also be very alive in his mind palace. Just like in the ASiP screenshot above.
In s4, people will try to wake Sherlock up. (As has been said before, this is probably what John beating Sherlock up in TLD and screaming, “Wake up!” is all about.) People will literally try to get a reaction out of his unconscious body.
Which again was foreshadowed in the same ASiP scene when Sherlock is literally trying to ‘get a reaction’ out of the body that’s lying there. (On the surface level of the text, Sherlock beats this dead body with a riding crop to see if bruises will form after death. But on a metaphorical level, he is trying to get a reaction out of himself, the ‘dead’ body. Just like John is when John is beating him in TLD. John, too, will be trying to get a reaction out of Sherlock in s4: He will try to wake him up.)
I’m actually astounded by how well the foreshadowing works here: Molly (the John mirror No. 1) is looking at Sherlock beating himself from outside of the room.
This means that this ASiP scene can read like this:
The room=Sherlock being trapped by walls, ie, trapped inside his own body (in a coma)
Both Sherlock and the dead body=two different aspects of Sherlock (the awake one in his mind palace and the unconscious one lying there)
Molly=John who is forced to look at coma!Sherlock from the outside, but can’t actually interfere with what’s going on inside the ‘room’, ie, inside Sherlock
Nice.
So, now that we have established that this scene neatly foreshadows Sherlock’s EMP, let’s go one step further.
We have now looked at two levels expressed in this scene: 1) the literal (textual) surface level and 2) the metaphorical/symbolic (foreshadowing) level of this scene.
But we haven’t looked at the third level yet.
3) The third level is the overarching meta level: the level that examines the relationship between author, audience, adaptations and the Sherlock Holmes character that has existed for more than 120 years.
I’m sure I’m telling you nothing new when I say that the dead body in this ASiP scene represents the Sherlock Holmes character that we’ve known for more than a 120 years.
What are we shown in this ASiP scene? Sherlock (who represents our BBC-Mofftiss-Sherlock show) beating that ‘dead horse’ (with a riding crop:)) that is the 120 year-old Sherlock Holmes character.
This is actually quite a nice commentary on what Mofftiss, in their usual sarcastic way, think the Sherlock Holmes character has become over the last 120 years: dead! A dead body.
That’s their verdict.
‘Sherlock Holmes’ as a sujet has been done to death. There have been more than 200 adaptations all over the world. The character has literally become a dead body with no pulse.
He has been shown with his typical attributes so often that we can’t think of him as a living human being anymore.
Sherlock Holmes has become the pipe and the hat and the horse carriages and the gas lamps and the cases, the man who frowns on love and/or falls in love with Irene Adler, the man who says, ‘Elementary, my dear Watson,’ even though he never did that in the books.
In short, Sherlock Holmes, the 120-year-old character, has become a dead body stuffed with all sorts of attributes that make it impossible for us to see him as an interesting, living human being. He has literally been done to death.
And (I’m sure I’m telling you nothing new here) this BBC Sherlock adaptation turns up and beats the shit out of this dead body to see if it can maybe, maybe still get a reaction out of this dead body, if it can make that dead body react like a living, breathing thing.
This has all been discussed amongst fans before, and it’s all shown to us in that one ASiP scene: Sherlock (representing the BBC Sherlock show) is trying to get a reaction out of Sherlock Holmes, the dead body (the character that has been done to death).
But what has this got to do with EMP?
Well, if this ASiP scene foreshadows Sherlock in an EMP at some point in the show, then the meta reading of this ASiP scene has to extend to EMP, as well.
So, what Mofftiss are telling us is that Sherlock, in a coma, represents the 200 or so adaptationsthat have been done over the past century.
It’s quite cheeky and self confident. But that’s how Mofftiss are, after all.
Sherlock in a coma/unconscious/almost dead Sherlock is a Sherlock without a pulse, a Sherlock who isn’t living up to the potential of his character anymore.
EMP!Sherlock represents the 200 adaptations that have been done before this one.
If Mofftiss manage, in s5, to wake Sherlock up, then this is a general commentary on how they have ‘woken up’ the Sherlock Holmes character after his 120-year-long, Zombie-like state of being near-dead.
They (Mofftiss) are the ones to breathe new life into the Sherlock Holmes character. That’s what the waking up of Sherlock, in s5, will mean.
(Note that, for this meta reading, it is totally irrelevant when EMP started. The starting point could be HLV or TRF or the pool or even the pilot.)
The point Mofftiss are trying to make is that at the beginning of the show, Sherlock (read: BBC Sherlock, the show) was trying to get a reaction out of a dead body (read: the Sherlock Holmes character).
And at the end of the show (s5), Mofftiss will do more than just that: They won’t just get a few reactions out of the character. They will bring him back to life. They will give him a beating heart again.
And since I’m almost certain that John Watson will be the one to wake Sherlock up in s5 (or to be involved in his waking up somehow), this will also mean that this new awakening of THE ‘Sherlock Holmes character’ will happen through love, through gay love, to be precise!
In short, what Mofftiss are telling us is that Sherlock Holmes without his gay identity and without the love for John that comes with it is an almost dead, comatose Sherlock Holmes.
The Sherlock Holmes character that has been adapted on screen (and on stage) more than 200 times across the world is a zombie, a dead body, a comatose entity BECAUSE HE IS DEVOID OF HIS GAY IDENTITY as represented by his love for John Watson!
That’s what EMP means. That’s why it’s there.
Coma!Sherlock is the 200 adaptations. Because these adaptations took away his reason to live (his gay identity, ie, his love for John).
In short: Anti-Emp-fans are right in a sense: Because, yes, EMP was never in the ACD!canon.
But that’s not the point!
EMP has nothing to do with Arthur Conan Doyle.
EMP is a commentary on what has been done to Sherlock Holmes for the last 120 years in adaptation after adaptation after adaptation.
All of these adaptations have turned Sherlock into a dead character that can only be gay on the inside (in his mind palace), torturing himself on the inside, but being dead, comatose and without a pulse on the outside.
That’s what EMP is.
The Mofftiss adaptation, however, will bring this character back to life. They will wake him up! By giving him his gay identity, his heart, his John back.
@sagestreet, let me love you. This. All of this. I mean, what is there to say?? I love absolutely every word.
For EMPers here from the beginning, it’s been a long hard year and a half of ridicule and dismissal. I really never have understood exactly why EMP theory has been so derided. It was never a theory to dismiss or excuse what we didn’t like about anything in the show. It was literally what we saw happening.
BBC ‘Sherlock’ supposed to be read on a meta level, as well?
Why does one exclude the other? Maybe there is something about reading on a meta level that I don’t get because I thought we were reading it through subtext and the ‘meta level’. Through intertextual readings like the film Stay and a theatre of the absurd in order to tell the story of Sherlock’s inner self. Is that not meta enough? Just because you don’t have a phd in English lit or something to even understand this theory, then it isn’t worthy of being considered?
Sometimes I really believe that Moriarty was speaking to this fandom when he told Sherlock he was wrong to want everything to be so clever. The key code was never anything. It was simple daylight robbery.
“Sometimes a deception is so audacious, so outrageous that you can’t even see it when it’s staring you in the face.”
It’s hard to imagine a deception more audacious and more outrageous as EMP, and it’s been staring us in the face this whole time. 🙂
What could be more meta than the opportunity to actually see inside the world’s foremost deductive mind. It’s certainly something that’s never been done before.
I, for one, can’t believe i didn’t notice the fact that both ASIP and TLD had similar “corpse-beatings in the morgue” scenes. This is such a good meta, thank you for this
Anytime we’ve been shown John writing up his blog- onscreen- it has looked like this:
However, in T6T, whenever we see the writing of John’s blog, it appears like this:
Nothing about the “Blog of John H Watson” or date, merely the title (we know how much Sherlock really loves the titles, no matter what he says because that is not the face of a man who could care less about the title)
Why change the format?
We also see that John isn’t even present for some of the cases, when clearly the ‘write-ups’ reflect that who ever is writing them was there when the client showed up:
For each and every case we see in this montage, the text of the blog posts coincides with Sherlock being on his phone, typing away, making it look as if he is writing them.
AND, the only time we see John ‘writing’ anything, it is a fake:
You gotta be kidding me pls look at this tho: these are screenshots from TST (Ajay being tortured) …….I mean honestly?! When I saw this scene I immediately thought of the “Jack the Ripper” scene. I think there is no other scene in the whole series that has these kind of lights and the blueish/greenish lighting.
It’s all fake. Whole s4 = EMP or at least somoehow twisted, We just don’t know the specific way yet…
Also, the shadow of the person does remind me A LOT of Sherlock in Serbia but that’s no news…
“You seem so much better, John.” “Yeah, I…I am. I think I am. Not all day, not every day, but, you know.” “It is what it is?” “Yeah.” […] “And Sherlock Holmes?” “Back to normal.”
But, why is John so much better, and Sherlock “back to normal”? Well, they tell us: IT IS WHAT IT IS (says love). Love is the answer.
(An aside: of course that again confirms someone’s been spying on John and Sherlock’s private moments, and if the therapist is actually Mary (seeEurus is fake: MARY is the true EAST WIND)…then Yikes at her taunting John with “it is what it is.”)
The thing is, John doesn’t share everything with his therapist, he holds details back. I always thought it was weird that straight after The Hug scene we get this establishing exterior shot of 221B:
Why do we need this? We already know that we’re inside 221B for the hug, why do we need to fade out to this if we’re just going right back to the living room?
Because, it implies some distance. (Literally and metaphorically). Something’s being held back from us- temporarily. And here’s some proof: see this post by @waitedforgarridebs. We know that there was likely a scene in between that hug fadeout and John and Sherlock getting ready to go out to ‘the cake place.’
And, disregarding this missing scene, didn’t you get the impression that John was going to… say Something Else? He ‘seems so much better’- perhaps he had decided that the therapy sessions with a new face had run their course- time to go back to Ella?
And, of course, we have John smiling up there at the thought of his Sherlock doing well, too. I don’t know about you, but I was half holding my breath, expecting them to show us John and Sherlock, smiling and chatting while having cake or something.
The hug felt like a bridge on their road to proper communication: we almost had Sherlock finish this loaded sentence: “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…” (x); We had John admit he “still wanted more”, ranting about ‘missed chances’ and how ‘romantic entanglement would complete Sherlock as a human being.’; We had Sherlock get frustrated at John’s wrong assumption about him and Irene: “Oh, for God’s sake, I don’t text her back!”
We knew what all of this was signposting towards: a romance between John and Sherlock finally blossoming, and being recognised for what it is. And we still know. The Final Problem is the horror film temporarily hijacking and interrupting our beautiful love story. (x)
My prediction is that the next episode will open on John being shot in TLD, and we’ll get a ‘life flashing before his eyes’ moment: including these missing scenes, moments where they are much closer than normal- not a couple, not yet, but the audience will see their relationship is undeniably heading that way. And that will make the Garridebs moment even more gutwrenching, John lying there, thinking he will never be able to say the things he wanted to say and couldn’t…
And, of course, Sherlock will experience the same when he finds John. His “I love you” confession will save John Watson, and bring him back to life.
Yes, this, thank you very much @jenna221b! Honestly –and I’m sure I’m not the only one who felt like this– that bit in TLD before the hug, had me on the edge of my seat feeling exactly the same as when watching the tarmac scene in HLV. I thought that was it, that I was about to see a love confession; but again, it derailed into something else.
And adding to your analysis of John’s mood when talking to Eurus–actually the bit of dialogue that ellipsis refers to– he implies having spent quality time with Sherlock and Rosie. I wrote about it HERE, it’s clear John’s quoting Sherlock in the way he talks about Rosie, and he does it with the warmest smile on his face. Add to that what Sherlock told John about wanting to go to his house to see Rosie, and you can see it’s left implied that there’s quite a
meaningful time-jump in there which was very important for both of them, and given that this is “The Sherlock and John Show”, if it was ommited, it’s because showing it would give something away… seems to me it’s the same reason why they told us Sherlock taught John how to watlz, but chose not to show it.
¯_(ツ)_/¯
Interesting. Not quite agree with everything, but interesting. I still think that only EMP stretching back to HLV (or preferably TRF) could redeem the show. But I’m starting to give up faith. “Sherlock” is dead and “Dracula” news pretty much confirmed it. It’s heartbreaking and I will never be over it.
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