OK, @sagestreet, so you said you wanted pain? Anyone else wants pain? Anyone?
I wonder if, in TLD, Sherlock is slowly starting to get in touch with his own feelings?
If Culverton Smith is a John mirror, then this scene looks a lot like jealousy, hurt and resentment to me. Sherlock doesn’t quite recognize it in himself, though, that’s why he needs a mirror in his EMP; someone to project these feelings on.
He does regard John as a ’cereal killer’ – not a real serial killer, but a heart breaker, someone who goes from partner to partner, consuming them faster than a hurricane. And what he leaves after him is disaster.
So in this scene Sherlock gives John back his heart (=phone) and thanks him for the only hug he ever got from him (at John’s wedding reception – when it was already too late).
Because a painful post about this very scene was the next one in my drafts.:) I had originally planned to post it today. So, I’m just gonna put the content of that draft post underneath yours if that’s all right.
I absolutely agree that we have to read Culverton as a John!mirror here and that Sherlock is (in his mind) trying to express something he feels towards John by addressing Culverton. In fact, I have never read this scene in any other way.
There is one small detail, though, that I would like to add (and this is what my post was originally supposed to be all about). I think this scene gives us a little more than just that. It puts a particular twist on everything that’s happening and makes the morgue scene every gay man’s personal idea of hell.
Sherlock (as you’ve pointed out above) has John’s phone (heart!) in his hands. But I think it’s not just important to note that he talks about the hug as he holds said phone (heart); there’s more!
It is important to keep in mind what Sherlock DID with John’s Culverton’s phone (heart): Sherlock send a message to Faith!
In other words, Sherlock took John’s heart and connected it to faith. He basically gave John’s heart faith!
Since a lot of TLD (as is visible from the whole appearance of Faith with the walking stick and the gun) is about the first day Sherlock and John knew each other in ASiP, this has a particular meaning:
Sherlock (in his mind) is absolutely convinced that what he did on the very first day he met John was re-connect John to faith. Sherlock is 100% certain that he gave a (deeply depressed and repressed) John back some faith, ie, stopped him from being suicidal, gave him his friendship, made a lonely, stony-faced John smile and laugh again.
And here comes the kicker: In TLD, we now find out that Sherlock actually thinks that this message in Culverton’s phone to Faith (this faith he put into John’s heart in ASiP), this message to faith is going to solve everything. This connection to faith in the phone (heart) is the whole solution! Or so Sherlock believes…
I mean, don’t even get me started on how farcical that is on a mere textual (surface) level. It obviously makes no sense at all to read it textually. What was Faith even supposed to do in that morgue, in Sherlock’s opinion?
This is all about the subtextual level here: When they met in ASiP, Sherlock re-connected John’s heart to faith. And then he came to expect that faith appearing in John’s life would lead to John confessing to his ‘crime’ (aka love).
In TLD, Sherlock is deeply, deeply convinced that what he did by messaging Faith from Culverton’s phone will lead to Faith appearing and Culverton definitely, absolutely, surely, certainly, 100% confessing.
Sherlock seems to think that the faith he gave John’s heart back when they met should, at some point, lead to John confessing his feelings. TLD goes out of its way to tell us that Sherlock is really, really convinced that this is how it works!
But it doesn’t!
And that’s what makes that morgue scene so horrible. Faith isn’t who Sherlock thought she was and everything goes off the rails there. In other words, Sherlock is suddenly faced with the idea that HE NEVER EVEN MET FAITH, the faith that Culverton’s phone (John’s heart) messaged (connected with) was never real to begin with.
Sherlock is horrified to discover that what he always thought was true was actually never real: He never re-connected John’s heart with faith, and now John refuses to confess.
What makes the morgue scene so very, very poignant is that Sherlock never doubts the fact that Culverton is a killer! I.e. Sherlock still KNOWS that John has feelings for him! But he is horrified to discover that Culverton will never confess to it. Sherlock is horrified at the prospect that John will rather live in repression than confess to what is completely obvious to Sherlock.
And Sherlock blames himself for that.
Sherlock thinks he got the whole faith thing wrong. He thinks there never was any faith. He never gave John’s heart faith. He never gave John anything. What Sherlock is doubting here is not John’s feelings (Sherlock still knows that Culverton is a killer). No! What Sherlock doubts here is the fact that he ever did anything to help John. Sherlock (in his own mind) is telling himself here that what he thought helped John as they met (curing his limp, becoming his friend, giving him laughter, warmth and friendship) never, in fact, existed!
Sherlock is faced with a dark gaping abyss: The idea that all the things he thought he gave John were never real to begin with. That John’s heart never connected to faith. That Sherlock fucked up on a gigantic level and John never got anything out of their friendship. And it’s all Sherlock’s fault.
And because John never got anything out of their relationship, John will now never confess to his ‘crime’ (love). Sherlock knows everything, everything about what John feels for him, but because ‘faith’ wasn’t real to begin with, Sherlock now knows John will never confess. They will live on the way they do now forever, in a perpetual hell, where John never confesses to loving Sherlock because John never felt trust and optimism to begin with. Because Sherlock (or so Sherlock tells himself) never gave John any of this.
The idea that you continue to live side by side with the man you love and that this man even loves you back, but will never ever confess to it, this idea is every gay man’s idea of hell.
And that’s what the morgue scene is about.
I mean, it’s slightly different in my personal life: But if you told me that my boyfriend never left his wife and four kids because he still loved her, that would be painful, yes, but ultimately I would be okay with that. Because, you know, in the end, what counts is that he’s happy and all that. So, if he stayed with her and the kids because he was in love, I would at some point be able to accept that and move on.
But the idea that he would have stayed with her and the kids DESPITE clearly being in love with me. That would be hell!
If I knew 100% that he loved me, but would never confess to that because nothing about my friendship, trust and loyalty was ever real to him, if I knew that he loved me forever and ever and would remain in love with me throughout his life, but would never ever admit to that, that would be my idea of hell: To have to see someone you love suffer for the rest of his life, unable to confess to you, even though you KNOW for certain what he feels, that is the stuff nightmares are made of.
And that is what this nightmare of Sherlock’s is all about.
What makes this scene so poignant is not that Sherlock thinks John doesn’t love him. Sherlock still knows Culverton is a killer. Sherlock KNOWS for a fact that John loves him. But he is suddenly faced with the fact that John will never admit to that and will keep living a lie. All because Sherlock himself fucked up over the course of their friendship.
No, nonononono, @sagestreet. Stop this. I don’t want to think about this because this is where my mind goes with all of this-
The thing about Smith is that he isn’t a serial killer.
Sherlock just decides that he is, right there, in the street, when he ‘sees’ him. Sherlock saw what he wanted to see in order to ‘save John Watson’.
So, doesn’t it stand to reason that what Sherlock saw about John to begin with, wasn’t real either? Is this not TPLoSH all over again? Sherlock’s one-sided love, unrequited and unreciprocated. Because Faith never was in Sherlock’s flat. It was Sherlock’s own sentiment that was there, blinding him, filling him with chips hope. It could’ have been anyone that saved John in that moment. It didn’t have to be Sherlock.
Sorry, I can’t stop thinking about this, @sagestreet. But, what then does it mean that Smith couldn’t stop confessing? Once he was caught- in the act- as Lestrade is keen on saying. Is this what is going to happen? What will need to happen? John will have to be caught red-handed, in the act of- what? In order to confess to Sherlock his ‘true’ feelings??
I don’t think it’s anything as complicated as this. It’s really all rather simple when you think about it.
The show has just done what it has done 1.000 times before: It split one character in two. Because in this episode we get more than just dark!John (Culverton); we get John!John too.
The episode is telling us that Sherlock is horrified to realise that Faith (ie, all the two of them had between them) was maybe not real. Not just that…that it might never have existed in the first place. (A very dark thought, indeed.) If that were truly the case, then Culverton (ie, John) would never ‘confess’ (his love!). And we already know this confession is symbolic. The thing that can’t be unsaid once you say it to your very best friend, the thing that Sherlock imagines as something monstrous and horrible is actually nothing of the kind (there never was a monster!); it’s a love confession. In the morgue scene Sherlock is confronted with the fear that, if there never was any faith connecting them, then John might (might!) never confess.
So, Sherlock has to choose a different route! A different way to ‘extract’ the confession, so to speak.:)
Sherlock has to make sure that it comes to a struggle between dark!John and John!John. Hopefully John!John will win the upper hand in that fight. (A fight that, by the way, will be brought on by Sherlock laying it all out to the John!mirror that is Culverton by telling him, “I want you to kill me”…so basically, Sherlock has to TELL John that he really wants John to love him. Nothing else will do. John won’t ‘confess’ of his own volition.) Then the struggle between John!John and dark!John will ensue, but if everything works out, John will save not just himself, but Sherlock too. He will save himself by saving Sherlock in the process. If it works out, John!John will win the fight, and dark!John, no matter how hard he fights it, will let ‘it’ slip somehow. And then John (as a whole) will be able to ‘confess’. And then (and this is the lesson No. 1 for us obsessed Sherlockians!), once John has confessed, he will never stop confessing to Sherlock how much he loves him! He will just go on and on and on confessing. That’s the part where we should all cheer!:)
In a show that has metaphors like being-stabbed-in-the-back-by-someone=falling in love…or a-ruthless-vindictive-killer-like-Jonathan-Small-who’s-obsessed-with-killing-Sholto=a metaphor for John’s love for Sherlock, in a show like this, we really shouldn’t be surprised that Culverton (no matter how disgusting and ugly he is) is a metaphor for John’s darkest, best hidden side, of the side of John that sorta, kinda wants to confess, but is also scared of not being able to take it back once it’s out there.
This show has shown us cold-blooded, violent, horrible murder as a metaphor for falling in love. So why wouldn’t it use someone like Culverton to convey this message about John’s inner struggle?
And seeing as this all happens in Sherlock’s mind: It’s Sherlock who is playing around with these concepts, trying to work out how John ‘ticks’. And the good part is: He works out that once John will confess, he won’t be able to stop confessing over and over and over again. Sherlock just has to get him to that point.
And to work this out Sherlock has split John into two characters (a mirror and John himself). It’s pretty much the same thing Sherlock does to himself when he splits himself into Euros and himself to understand himself better. He does that all the time with characters. After all, he even splits his own doubts about ever being able to ‘leave’ his coma into two characters (into the ambassador and her husband or whoever that man is in the Tbilissi hostage scenes).
Yes, it’s all very dark. TLD is a very dark episode. But we knew that, right?
And the great thing is there is hope at the end of the episode. And that’s why, when Sherlock and John discuss Culverton being unable to stop confessing at the end of TLD, the whole discussion so quickly veers into a discussion of ‘Irene Adler’ (Sherlock’s libido) and into hugging and stuff. Because John’s mirror being unable to stop himself from confessing over and over and over again is actually directly linked to what Sherlock’s libido will be doing with John once Sherlock gets that confession out of him, and to hugging, too…well, Sherlock needed a hug, right?;)
If someone’s gonna tell me that there is a better reading of TLD, I won’t believe in it.
Nothing makes more sense.
“I want you to kill (= love) me” is Sherlock’s first step to John. And then John literally won’t be able to stop confessing his feelings towards Sherlock! Can you imagine it? And “Irene” is here, like, do you understand what is gonna finally happen?
By the way, @sagestreet, I love how you formulated your thought that John is split into his dark and ordinary parts, precisely the same way Sherlock’s personality is split into Eurus and himself.
I almost never stopped seeing S4 from Sherlock’s perspective, but all these discussions are the last evidence for me. S5 looks very promising.
Thank you, @sagestreet , for restoring the dark and gloomy Halloween feeling that was first intended with this post. Because things were becoming a bit too soft here, don’t you think? It’s dark and rainy outside, and the wind is cold. We need more pain and angst! >:)
And ofcourse I am a mind reader who could foresee that you were going to expand on the same topic. I correctly anticipated your response to scenarios I had devised; can’t everyone do that? 😛 And may this post, with all its wonderful additions and pieces of analysis, be a testimony that we have indeed learned to read Mofftiss. Pain, angst and horror. But also a hopeful note at the end, right?
Your analysis is intriguing and brilliant (as usual). If Culverton is Dark!John, then I do agree that Sherlock is going through hell. If that’s how it’s going to be I imagine Sherlock thinks Dark!John better just keep his heart phone for himself. But, as it turns out, his confession was impending. And, by going through hell, the way you describe it @sagestreet, Sherlock has figured out how to coax it out from real John now. The only problem is that he needs to wake up first.
One thing that occurs to me is that not only Dark!John, but also John!John did start to confess at the end of TLD. Here’s his confession (under the cut):
The set design of the lab at Bart’s when John and Sherlock first meet shows us their feelings towards each other with regards to their emotional availability.
In front of John the tableau reads like something out of TBB: “always in pairs, John”. (Thanks to LSiT for talking about the importance of that line in TBB, and that theme in the whole show). When we look at John we see sets of two identical things in front of him and behind him symbolic of a couple. We see a green light behind him signalling his readiness to pursue a relationship.
Two blue dots flank the opening of the door: circles represent their feelings towards each other, the blue represents that we are seeing them and they’re representing themselves as straight. and we see the door as a new begging. They’re both walking through this relationship door on the way out.
*
How we see Sherlock
What we see about Sherlock is very dissimilar. When we see him, the tableau of objects directly between him and John is a jumbled mess: chaos, busyness, there seems to be no pattern, at all, only unrest.
Behind him, from left to right: we see a lamp, symbolic of feelings via its solar system like quality, and the lamp is mustard yellow, the colour of cowardice and lies. He will not pursue a relationship because he’s afraid and he will pretend he is not interested.
Then to the right, the explanation, the cabinet of emptiness and fears. We see here, this contrastingly barren cabinet with slight allusions to the couples theme but with unevenness and difference. The pairs that are identical are filled with a different colour liquid, the ones that are filled with the same colour liquid are very dissimilar and the colour is very dark and opaque. This shows his alienation, he doesn’t feel that anyone is equal to him, whether he’s different from them due to his intelligence or whether he feels beneath people and unworthy of them. The dark liquid is pessimistic and foreboding: his impression of relationships is that they’re something to be avoided. Yet, he’s lonely as the cabinets is relatively empty. We can see why he’s afraid and wants to hide it.
*
What they see about each other
How Sherlock sees John
The camera works shows us John and Sherlock’s separate states of mind as well as their perceptions of each other.
Sherlock sees John how we see him: ready to couple up, open, his green light on. This is John wearing his lipstick,
This show us that Sherlock has a realistic view of people and that it is he, ironically, not John who’s being emotionally perceptive, here.
How John sees Sherlock
First off John doesn’t get to see the things between them from our point of view: he is robbed of the perspective that shows a jumbled mess of obstacles between them.
The cabinet is cut in half by John himself. He is the reason he can’t see more. Maybe he projects too much. Maybe, it’s because he’s a romantic, he doesn’t want to see his bad side. He does see the lamp of lies, though.
To further the idea of John as a romantic who can only see Sherlock but not things about Sherlock, we get,
This is the romantic, ‘all I see is you’, viewpoint. We can read this a clear indication of John’s romantic interest but must also note the obvious disadvantage to being a romantic: he’s editing out information about Sherlock that he does not want to see, because it’s negative.
Note that Molly sees Sherlock similarly,
This is the price you pay for your rose-coloured glasses: you can see the best of someone and love and appreciate them but if you don’t understand the background, the circumstance, the terrain, you’re in for a world of hurt and confusion.
We see here that Sherlock is guarded and John is open. Sherlock sees John how he is. John sees Sherlock in an idealised way, through the prism of his attraction.
In the end, a sad epitaph: Sherlock puts on his scarf and turns away,
John is here, open, though wounded, wearing his plaid shirt of bisexuality, with couples symbolism and a green light on. Sherlock is attracted, in kind, but his desk is a confusing mess and his background a sad, fearful, desolate place. Nonetheless, they make a connection. But, then he puts on his blue scarf straight façade and winks at a door with two blue dots on it. Their feelings, here, must be platonic, straight feelings because the dots are blue. Because he scarf is blue, because Sherlock’s desk is a mess and his shelf is sad and empty.
We see that open John Watson is going to go for it at Angelo’s, however obliquely. He’s got nothing left to lose but maybe there are too many pairs in front and behind John. Maybe being in a couple is too much on his mind. Maybe that level of symbolism implies fixation and neediness. (He does also feel out Anthea in a similarly indirect way and similarly quickly) John is so vulnerable here that while he does like Sherlock he is also lonely and desperate. It may be unhealthy to get involved when it seems like the only thing that will make you feel like you’re not broken.
When he does hit on Sherlock he will not only not be surprised from what he’s seen, which he liked btw, but we can see that turning him down is a foregone conclusion from what we’ve seen of both of them here.
Finally, all of this would seem to support Sherlock’s idea that sentiment does cloud the analytical mind. We can empathise with him, here, because it’s illustrated by John’s view so well.
Thank you for this @tendergingergirl! – in addition to the religious connotation of “vatican cameo” in ACD canon, we have an actual puppet, or a ventriloquist dummy materialized in the final minutes of TFP…
Which of course brings us all the way back to TGG…
But remember the twitter storm with Kermit the frog right before series 4 aired?
Here’s another question, why the hell would Culverton Smith show anyone the letter to begin with??? He could have just torn it up and Faith would have forgotten about it. It doesn’t make sense.
Moriarty was the person I thought of, too, @hufflepuffpentaholicinthebau. Especially given how the entirety of S4 was billed to be some sort of ‘showdown’ concerning him. I believe it was @loveismyrevolution that thought it was meant to be Mycroft? I’m still on the fence with just how ‘bad’ he might have been, but that is another possibility that I think might hold water.
Because your question, @sherlock-meta-collection is one that has bugged me as well. What exaclty was the point of ‘whomever’ it was giving the note to ‘Faith’? Culverton took the letter from the ‘real’ Faith (though, how do we know that really since TD12 compromises memory, and how did Sherlock know about that whole meeting? To recreate it on the street perfectly? Are we to infer ‘Faith’ described it in such detail?) So, Smith took the letter to keep his daughter from ‘remembering’ (almost a kindness, in his twisted way) But, then gave it to ‘fake Faith’ in order to have Sherlock come after him? WHY? And how did Smith and ‘fake Faith’ know each other in order to be of use to one another??
All this is to me is another case of Sherlock re-using events, playing them out over and over in his head because haven’t we had this sort of thing before?
HOLMES: One small detail doesn’t quite make sense to me, however. Why engage me to prevent a murder you intended to commit?
It never made sense that distraught Lady Carmichael went to Mycroft for help with her husband, who then sent her to Sherlock in order to prevent his murder by ‘the bride’ only to actually go through with it herself. It didn’t make sense because Lady Carmichael didn’t kill Sir Eustace.
So, why would we believe Smith had, in a roundabout way, asked Sherlock for help in ‘preventing’ more murders?
(Pre-warning, this got a bit longer than I had intended)
@monikakrasnorada I also think that most, if not all of S4 is taking place in Sherlock’s head/MP. Even before I heard about EMP, I always got the feeling that the note in TLD was somehow from Sherlock and the deductions he was supposedly making about Faith, he was actually making about himself:
SHERLOCK: Well, you’ve changed. You no longer top up your tan and your roots are showing. SHERLOCK: Letting yourself go?
Says the scruffy, unkempt Sherlock who is usually immaculately dressed and primped.
SHERLOCK: Oh, of course you don’t own a car. You don’t need one, do you, living in isolation, no human contact, no visitors.
Remember what John just told his therapist in the beginning of the episode?
JOHN: I haven’t seen him. No-one’s seen him. He’s locked himself away in his flat. God knows what he’s up to.
Then, Sherlock goes on to deduce:
SHERLOCK: Cost-cutting’s clearly a priority for you. Look at the size of your kitchen: teeny-tiny. (He walks past her towards the right-hand window then turns back to her.) Must be a bit annoying when you’re such a keen cook.
Says the man that, although his family seems to be wealthy, needs to have a flatmate for some reason, and so far as the small kitchen/keen cook goes, I’ll just submit these stills from later in the scene:
Then, later when Sherlock and Faith are sitting at the bus stop eating chips
SHERLOCK: You see the fold in the middle? For the first few months you kept this hidden, folded inside a book. (He looks at it closely. Beside him, Faith is eating from the carton of chips on her lap.) SHERLOCK: Must have been a tightly packed shelf, going by the severity of the crease. (Brief flashback to the folded piece of paper being put inside the pages of a book.) SHERLOCK: So obviously you were keeping it hidden from someone living in the same house at a level of intimacy where privacy could not be assumed. (As he speaks there’s a flashback of a hand putting the closed book back in its place on a shelf amongst many other books.) SHERLOCK: Conclusion: relationship.
This is referring to when John was living with Sherlock in 221B. So if the note is real, Sherlock kept it hidden away.
P.S. Does anyone else think that those hands look like they belong to Benedict Cumberbatch???
Also, that shadow sure as shit looks like Dr. John H Watson by the way, and I think others have addressed this fact, but I’m not sure who at the moment.
(More under the cut, this got reeeeeeeaaaaalllyy long)
So, there are some of the Sherlock
comparisons, but what about the note, what exactly is the note and what is it
trying to tell us? That’s where I’m having a difficult time. I have noticed
that there is a list/note theme in the show (others as well, I think there are
even meta’s, but I’ll have to check later). We have the conversation between
Mrs. Hudson and Sherlock in TSoT:
MRS HUDSON:
Your mother has a lot to answer for. (She takes the cup and saucer over to him.)
SHERLOCK: Mm, I know. I have a list. Mycroft
has a file.
And of course the many instances of list
conversations in TAB:
MYCROFT HOLMES:
You’re in deep, Sherlock, deeper than you ever intended to be. Have you made a list?
HOLMES: Of what?
MYCROFT HOLMES: Everything.We will need a list.
And in the “real world” on the plane:
SHERLOCK: Maybe there are one or two things that I know that you
don’t. (He looks across to Mycroft, who returns his gaze.)
MYCROFT (pointedly): Oh, there are. (He
pauses for a moment.) Did you make a list? (Sherlock has looked away again and is chewing on a thumbnail. He
turns to look at his brother again.)
SHERLOCK: You’ve put on weight. That waistcoat’s clearly newer than the jacket
…
MYCROFT (angrily): Stop this. Just stop it.Did you make a list?
SHERLOCK: Of what?
MYCROFT: Everything, Sherlock. Everything you’ve taken.
…
MYCROFT (his face turned away): We have an agreement, my
brother and I, ever since that day. (Sherlock bites his lip. In a cutaway flashback, a much younger
Sherlock is lying on a mattress on a floor. Nearby, candles are burning in
bottles. Sherlock is writhing and grimacing under the influence of the drugs
he’s taken. Mycroft, apparently in his early/mid-twenties, is sitting on the
mattress near his brother’s feet and now reaches down to a piece of paper lying
next to Sherlock’s legs.)
MYCROFT (voiceover): Wherever I find him … (In the present, Sherlock closes his eyes.
In the past, Mycroft picks up the piece of paper and unfolds it to read it
while his young brother continues to writhe in agony.)
MYCROFT (voiceover): … whatever back alley or doss house … (In the present, Mycroft sinks back in his seat.)
MYCROFT: … there will always be a list.
I am not sure exactly what to make of it, but
it does seem to me that Faith’s note actually looks like a list. If you try to
imagine for a minute that you don’t know the story behind Faith’s note
It says:
Police Office
Judge
Broadcaster
Me
I need to kill
someone
Who?
That looks like a list of people that someone
needs to kill, and notice that ME is crossed out in blood, like the person has
chosen to kill themselves from the list.
I don’t have concrete conclusions, I just
wanted to put down all of my thoughts on Faith’s note. I will have to clean
this up later and make a proper meta out of it.
What kind of pumpkin would John and Sherlock carve with Rosie?
Um, most definitely John would go out and buy a nice round, solid orange pumpkin and carving tools and set about craving a cute, tradtitional Jack-O-lantern with Rosie, holding her in his lap and letting her play with the pumpkin guts.
Meanwhile, Sherlock gets the most gnarly and hideous warty pumpkin he can find and watching YouTube videos teaching him how to intricately shave-carve pumpkins and make caricatures that are truest terrifying. And Rosie would love it.
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