During @inevitably-johnlocked wonderful watchalong today the chat in our hilarious insanity began to notice similarities between Penguins of Madagascara and our favourite episode of Sherlock: The Final Problem.
I found this whole concept hilarious to try and find as many parallels as I could. This is the shit post to end all shit posts for TFP and frankly, I laughed so much while making this that I almost peed. I hope this can help my friends to smile and heal from the train wreck that was The Final Problem.
Let’s start at the beginning… Meet our two Villains. Dave, and Eurus. Masters of Disguise.
Dave and Eurus also share the same trait of being a genius. Wow.
Oh look, similar themes… North Wind, meet East Wind.
Both villains are introduced in the most over the top horror-type dramatic fashion.
There’s an explosion, which our heroes miraculously escape from.
Without even a scratch.
Our heroes steal a boat so they can get to our villain’s evil lair…
A REMOTE ISLAND FORTESSS!
BUT… They need to sneak in, in disguise.
Looks like Penguins won this round… Guess we don’t get to see Mycroft in a mermaid suit.
Where they are confronted by our villain via a TV
Our villains both have magic remote controls for their evil dastardly plans!!
And they both like to make things scary by switching all the lights to RED.
Always use nonlethal force to subdue heroes. Tranquilisers are a must for any budding super villain.
HOW DO YOU LAND THIS THING??
OH SHIT WE ALMOST FORGOT ABOUT THE BABY!!!!
What motivates our villains you ask? Why, it’s loneliness of course!
Oh hello sinister water… what are you doing here?
How do we defeat our villain? GIVE THEM A FRIEND, DUH!
Finally, we come to the moral of our stories… I think Penguins also wins this round. While TFP says: “Who you really are, it doesn’t matter.“
Penguins of Madagascar says: “If there’s anything we’ve learned from this delightful adventure… Kowalski… It’s that looks don’t matter. It’s what you do that counts. And look at what you did. […] you are the most meaningful and valued member of this team.”
Life on Mars" is a BBC series of 2006. It’s already been highlighted, I’m sorry I don’t remember by who, similarities between Sherlock and Ash to Ash. Ash to Ash is a spin on Life on Mars, so I thought I’d take a look at number one. With calm… And surely it’s interesting. This is a dream that is making the protagonist in a coma. His reality often bleeds into the reality he is dreaming of. Mirrors of the protagonist are used. Surely there is much more … but meanwhile ….
Sam tyler is investigating on a serial killer, who has just kidnapped his girlfriend and colleague, when he is hit by a car and he wakes up in 1973.
Here, while helping police investigate a crime identical to what he was investigating in the future, he glimpses a man who talks to him, presents himself as an ipno-therapist, tells him that he is in a coma, that everyone is worried about him, that his phone is never stopping ringing (really odd line), which has to step back and wake up.
And so he climbs on a roof and he thinks about jumping of but is stopped by a colleague, who makes him doubt what is true or not, and that he tells him maybe he is there for a reason.
From time to time he hears the doctor’s voices of the present time.
He works in a very strange office. It’s seems to be in a basement, whit dark walls an a particular cellar, like a chessboard (hello Mycroft office).
the interrogatory room is in a sort of storage closet, full all stranger things (Hello Magnussen’s MP).
He has a nightmare with a blond girl and a clown’s rag doll
In the second episode a girl working in the police department finishes in a coma after a shootout. She’s blond, thin and with delicate features. She has a boyfriend, like he in present time. While she’s in the coma, in her hospital bed, we hear the sound of the monitor but the monitor is always off. She’s a mirror?
in the next episode he heard his mother’s voice, the voice of an elderly woman, who talks to him as if she was in his sickbed, through television.
In the same episode, following his red cat, what he had as a kid, meets the young version of his mom.
There is a scene where his colleagues are talking but he hears the beep of a monitor and voices that talk about medical conditions.
He continue to get in touch with his reality, occasionally independently, but more often through the television or phones that ring and he just seems to hear.
He seems to be conscious of being in a coma, only one of his colleagues knows about his real situation.
There are honking cars and a man asks, “Are you drunk?”
This always seemed strange to me. Because the only person where we get these drunk/alcohol problem/etc. references is usually John. So, what if this isn’t about Sherlock at all? What if it’s about John?
Sherlock is in a coma, and reality is bleeding through. So maybe John couldn’t bear to sit next to Sherlock’s hospital bed for…what hours, days, weeks (we don’t even know how long this has been going on). So, John went out and got drunk to drown out the pain. He got really drunk, then returned to the hospital room and some nurse or doctor called him out on it: “Are you drunk? Do you know where you are?” and in his coma Sherlock heard that.
What if the ensuing dialogue between Billy Wiggins and Sherlock is actually something else?
Sherlock isn’t asking Billy Wiggins, “What are you doing here?” This is Sherlock in his own mind asking John, “What are you doing here? You should be at Baker Street.” Although Sherlock bungles it all up and reconnects it in a different way because this is a dream. Or maybe the other doctor or nurse is asking John that. Or maybe Mrs Hudson.
And then, as @monikakrasnorada just pointed out to me, we actually hear John’s voice at min. 26:17. John’s voice says, “Sherlock!”
So, what if a drunk John actually returned to Sherlock’s hospital room, got scolded for drinking by somebody (nurse, other doctor, whoever), was maybe even told by that other person to go home (Baker Street!), but then just as that argument between John and that other doctor or nurse or whoever played out, John turned around and saw something was off about Sherlock and he shouted, “Sherlock!”
Seeing as this is the moment where the whole episode starts to tilt on its head, and seeing as this happens before Sherlock’s ‘coagulation’ comment later on and also before the ‘beyond viral’ comments, it could easily be that a drunk John, to his utter horror, recognised at that very moment that something could have potentially hit Sherlock’s brain. (Maybe Sherlock’s face was ‘stroking’ or something?) So, John cried out, “Sherlock!”
Aaaand you know the rest, they start to test what is going on with his brain and talk about ‘coagulation’ and an infection and push Sherlock in the MRI machine and so on and so forth.
If you need any more angst. There’s loads more where that came from. I can assure you, I can give you a top off any time.:) My pleasure…
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):
Ah, yes. Another one for the ‘general’ audience, to see if they can dig a little deeper than the obvious. I wish everyone would conclude the solution that’s spelled out by Sherlock himself –just the insult: ‘idiot’– is way too easy for this complicated show, so it has to mean something else. If anyone were only to apply an intuitive meta level 1 to this, they could get very far. It just takes to remember that Sherlock can, in fact, get it wrong; how important it was in the plot when John told Sherlock he’s “missing the obvious” or that sometimes he can be “remarkably thick”; or when Sherlock called himself “a blind idiot”, for it took him so long to realize the answer was staring him right in the face. Sherlockology is even helping the noobs there prompting them to ‘do their research’ and find out the basic ‘language of flowers’. I mean, takes you less than 5 minutes: a quick reading of the google search result for every flower is enough to get the idea. This is how I wish every casual fan would go about it:
Iris = literally translates to the Greek word for ‘rainbow’. Huh. Interesting, just like the gay flag. Actually, ‘Greek Goddess Iris personified the rainbow’. Depending on colour, varies between ‘faith’, ‘hope’, ‘intellect’, and even ‘cherished friendship’– oh gosh! But John is Sherlock’s best friend! Nothing but lovely compliments, positivity and the gay flag somehow over that one.
Daffodil = ‘friendship’ again, but also ‘faithfulness’, ‘new begginings’, and– oh boy: ‘unanswered love’! So I got ‘unanswered gay love’ in that bouquet so far!
Tulip = ‘perfect love’, ‘deep love’, ‘true love’… ohh my. This is nothing but a love confession! Could it really be his best friend Watson is in love with him? Well, John’s name gets thrown into the conversation– hold on. Let me check… yes! It’s actually the first name Sherlock says after seeing the gift for some completely unnecessary reason! Wow, did they write that in on purpose for us to have John’s name in mind and make the connection? Anyway, John’s love surely must be totally platonic, nothing romantic about it at all, right? What’s next?
Orchid =
‘virility’, ‘sexuality’, ‘love’, what the FUSKDJFLKAJDS! ‘Sexy, sultry, capable and totally enchanting’?!?! OMG JOHNLOCK IS REAL. I knew John complimenting his cheekbones sounded weird. Oh! And that knee grope! OMG How did I not see it before! (…)
Sorry, I just needed to let that wishful thinking out of my chest. I just think it’s lovely how the writers even took care of the order in which they mentioned the flowers so the researcher would progressively get the idea.
Of course, there’s also the “W or M?” thing going on there, which I think plays on “James or John? Saint or sinner?” Because of course Moriarty is in psycho-love with Sherlock, and John is his romantic rival in the plot. But since the meaning of flowers says this is about true friendship and love, those are indeed from a ‘W’, not an ‘M’. (I won’t even get into anyone daring to think they’re from ‘The Woman’, because that’d be insulting. She’s gay. Get over it.) They’re meant to be from the ‘nice’, ‘very polite’ and ‘very respectul’ John Watson, “upright and honourable”, like Magnussen would say.
Oh and, I love how we can interpret this story as 1) John really finally started to woo Sherlock like this and told Mrs. H. to keep the secret, so she has to bite her tongue seeing Sherlock being “a blind idiot” again, or 2) Sherlock ‘leapt up’ from that couch because he was really excited to know it was from John, but since this narration may also be as hijacked as S4 is, the writers made Sherlock appear not to like the flowers, while also leaving in the text everything the reader needs to conclude the sender is John and his message is nothing but an adorable, flattering and passionate love confession.
Either way, it gets better when you remember “idiot” is actually their established mutual name-calling, which they use as a tease rather than an insult. That’s the one that prompted Sherlock to invite John to dinner the night John saved his life for the first time; the moment ‘where it all began’, according to Mofftiss.
So, maybe John did mean it to spell ‘idiot’ as well, or maybe it’s just another ironic coincidence for our characters, who knows. But of course, just like in the show, I think there’s nothing coincidental in the writing of this clever little story.
Throughout queer
history and queer fiction, there is a well-developed motif of the “chosen
family”. This concept grew up as an
act of resistance against the traditional notion that we should feel closest
and most loyal to our biological relatives.
Historically, many queer people were disowned, cast out, or otherwise
poorly treated by their relations, so understandably enough, they took refuge
in non-familial bonds. Some of these
bonds grew strong enough to replace the broken biological ones, and these
became the so-called “chosen family”.
The premise was that the family you choose could be more important to
you than the people randomly assigned to you by nature.
In many ways, BBC Sherlock participates
in this queer tradition. As any number
of gifsets have demonstrated, Sherlock has surrounded himself with people who
care deeply about him, despite having no genetic connection to him: John,
Molly, Mrs Hudson, Lestrade, etc. The
show itself seems to canonically cement this point in TFP, when Sherlock
insists that John be recognized as part of his “family”.
MYCROFT: This is
family. SHERLOCK: That’s why he stays.
Chosen family is clearly very
important to Sherlock—both the character and the show. I’d argue, however, that there is a counter-motif
woven into the narrative: the idea that the biological family can be queered as
well.
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?
Of course it is. And it first aired on 19th December, 1964. Interesting. Possibly just a coincidence, but the episode of Sherlock in which The Duplicate Man featured was The Six Thatchers for which the blog post is also dated 19th December. Yep. Coincidences are cool.
The Outer Limits was an American sci-fi series in the 60s (I feel like I remember watching reruns of it as a kid actually). The intro to each show was this Orwellian-themed voice over. Which possibly feels familiar to you.
Anyway. Just thought I’d share to relieve myself of needing to throw things. I suspect this cute old show has a lot more to tell us.
Sherlock Fandom Archive 