Review: Sherlock’s “The Six Thatchers” ruined John Watson’s characterization

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this is like….. so funny

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I was just thinking about this with the gifset about John and his ongoing misunderstanding or projection onto Sherlock, which came to an end in TLD (well, it’s more like it crashed and burned violently, really). And just as John thought Sherlock wasn’t ‘like that’, many viewers thought John wasn’t like that either, in a different way. As the article says, he’s ‘not that kind of dick’.

I realize I just answered the question of why Eurus had to text John recently, but it occurs to me that the real issue most people have is why John had to text Eurus. Of course, John has that issue himself, and John was doing the soul-searching and angsting himself– so he realizes it’s ‘out of character’, or the character he’d like to be– and surely, the whole point is just that he’s human. Sherlock is also human. That’s the whole point. The purely, absolutely loyal John Watson was never the reality.

This is clearly something that the fans have a really hard time with. I can empathize. We all have our hard limits, things we can and cannot accept about others. Perhaps it’s impossible to truly rationalize it, even in fiction, or perhaps especially in fiction. Like, for example, I can accept John no matter what, but I have more of a hard time with Mary and sometimes with Sherlock’s reactions. As I told Ivy recently, his absolute acceptance of the blame John heaps upon him after Mary’s death (and his acceptance of the shooting earlier) is really hard for me to accept or even fully understand. Clearly, I mean, Sherlock has really different standards of what he can accept from the people he really loves.

Maybe it’s just that Sherlock (unlike Mary, unlike John, unlike fandom) sees John truly, and isn’t surprised. That’s why he’s not angry or resentful after John rejects him so radically in TST: as @ivyblossom told me earlier, Sherlock accepts and understands John just that much, that deeply, that radically. To Sherlock, John is a ‘loaded gun’, and he knows exactly how far John can go and exactly how much John can hurt him. How much John has hurt him in the past. So he simply makes the decision that John is worthwhile. He even agrees with John that he deserves it in the morgue scene, which I don’t agree with, but my point is that Sherlock is always with John even during the time that John isn’t with him. He knows that it’s not John’s loyalty that broke but John himself.

Fan (especially female fans’) reaction to John’s texting affair takes it a bit personally, I think, and treats the situation a bit like John had betrayed them, or their own image of him. This is definitely why I still disagree with @unreconstructedfangirl’s insistence that there’s no evidence Mary idealized John. It seems to me that everyone but Sherlock (including John!) has idealized John, maybe without even realizing it. Not in an extreme, obvious way. More of a well-meaning, admiring way. No one said John was absolutely extraordinary like they’d imagine Sherlock to be (except maybe Sherlock, actually), but he’s loyal, he’s a good man, he does love Mary– stuff like that. Of course, even people who could see what a disaster Mary and John’s marriage was tried to justify John and Mary continuing with it, either by saying John had a plan or Mary’s just waiting for John to wake up and smell the coffee. In reality, it was a case of both of them deluding themselves. It’s not really surprising that John snapped. No one could be perfectly loyal to a partner who’s already betrayed them, after being pregnant with a child neither wanted, and having to go back and try again after adding the caveat that one is still angry. The frustration has to go somewhere. He can’t even complain, because Sherlock is Mary’s friend too, and encouraged him to go back to her right after revealing it was Mary who shot him. ‘Mixed messages’, indeed. Repressing all that– anyone would crack. John is human, isn’t he?

Likability, of course, is a tricky affair. I was just talking about this in regards to Mary’s storyline: in my opinion, the way the narrative unfolded with Mary– primarily the lack of obvious consequences for her (excepting her relationship with John, which isn’t narratively acknowledged as being Mary’s fault), and the use of her as a constant mirror and conduit– made her character ultimately unlikable. But at the same time, that’s just my opinion, my response. Obviously, this isn’t the intended response, and nor is the response of plenty of people who see canon Johnlock. This is just an issue of expectations and needs, which has a complicated relationship to the actual story. As I said, I’m aware we’re supposed to like Mary, and I enjoyed a lot about her character, but I can’t fully overcome the issues I have with the portrayal. That’s a valid response to John, too, even if I didn’t have any issues relating to him or accepting him, and you could even argue John didn’t face enough consequences from Sherlock, either. So there’s a similarity there. You could argue there’s no actual reason to accept John’s humanity in TST but resent Mary’s portrayal in the same episode. You’d probably be right. In the end, though, just like the characters– we’re all only human.

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