One of the ways that Sherlock deduces that David still has romantic feelings for Mary is that in all his Facebook pictures of John and Mary, John is, ‘always partly or entirely excluded’. This shows that he wants John, ‘out of the picture’, so to speak.
Then we see director Colm McCarthy’s approach to framing his shots during the best man speech. During Sherlock’s speech, Mary is, ‘always partly or entirely excluded’, in any shot that also includes Sherlock. Janine, a character we’ve only just met, and of much less importance to the proceedings, seems to have plenty of room to fit in shots that exclude Mary.
If excluding half of a couple is a sign that someone wants them to not be a couple, then, here, the show is explicitly telling us that John and Mary are not the right couple. The compositions escalate from merely cutting Mary out to having Sherlock actually physically block her from the audience’s view. We are meant to not see John in relation to Mary but Sherlock. It’s always Sherlock.
And here’s yet another issue I have with this season–this bit here, it was a gorgeous moment (and gif’d beautifully, thank you).
Then, inexplicably, later they decide to have her more or less torture him, this kind man who didn’t even know he knew her (by no fault of his own, which she recognized as true) who spent all night with her and then requested her gun as payment so she wouldn’t kill herself. Because yeah, let’s go back to the asylum, set up an elaborate ruse that will kill innocent people, and make this kind soul either kill his brother or his best friend.
And no, “because she is mentally ill” is not an excuse. It is a lazy cover for inexplicable writing choices.
It is a meaningless, hollow moment, not only because of what she does later, but because she’s just making an appearance here so that people get to not recognize Sian Brooke in one of her multiple disguises. Eurus is not really in any danger, is she? It’s basically all about mocking Sherlock because he’s so stupid he doesn’t know he has a sister, nor does he recognise her or even just the fact that the woman he’s talking to is pretending.
It’s like the writers were going for the “must immediately watch the whole series again to see the clues” effect but forgot to include why Eurus did the things she does. At least I don’t have a clue why she was pretending to be interested in John, sought out Sherlock and then decided to play John’s new therapist too. Or maybe those things were explained in TFP and I’ve forgotten.
It’s a meaningless, hollow moment – but only in retrospective.
When you watch that moment in the here and now for the first time without knowing what will happen later, it’s gorgeous. And moving. And breaks your heart.
And that’s what’s so infuriating about the whole thing. They make an idiot out of Sherlock and out of you. And I don’t forgive that. Ever.
They make a victim out of Sherlock. It turns out that his whole life was struggling make something more of himself in the face of lifelong abuse from everyone around him. It’s breathtaking…ly horrible. I find this need to tear down Holmes to be a very strange place for self-avowed fanboys to go to “correct” the deficiencies and errors of ACD.
Agreed. I loathe this scene in retrospect. In part because it reminds me that all of this ridiculous Eurus backstory is meant to be the fix-it explanation of why Sherlock is the way he is (older brother conceals fact for decade there’s a crazy sister in the attic causing the deaths of hundreds of people for sport because she wants a hug) & further that his evolution into a good man is *not* down to John. S4 undoes that golden thread of ACD canon. That Sherlock matures and grows precisely because of his relationship with John and the loyalty and care of that defines that relationship. John’s influence in this adaptation by s4 becomes about blame and guilt. In this scene, in retrospect you realize what is beautiful is an experiment in emotional and psychological sadism – on Eurus’s part but also at the hand of those that created her. Moffat and Gatiss treat these characters like lab rats. Something ACD never needed to do to create one of the most iconic and enduring pairings in all of literature.
The more time goes by, the more time we have for in depth analysis into just how awful and heartbreaking and thoughtless and insulting and contradictory and cruel and just wrong S4 was.
That bit from The Truman Show plays in my head every single time at this exact point in this godforsaken scene! We’ve ALL noticed it (eg. x, x, x). We’re not crazy. We know it was a deliberate choice. #frustration
The violin scene at the end of The Final Problem is truly one of the most impactful moments (if not the most) in all of BBC Sherlock. I honestly am still speechless that Moftiss wrote something so profound. Eurus was beyond communication with the outside world after the events of this episode, back to the untouchable genius in her glass cage. But Sherlock. Sherlock, this incredible and kind man, who had lost so much to this woman, understood her and still reached out to help. He wasn’t encouraging her to play her own song, he was initiating a duet–so she wasn’t alone, even in her music. It was a conversation, it was understanding, it was connection. This man went beyond words, where others had failed and stopped trying, and showed her that she wasn’t alone. Sherlock has become- or perhaps he always was- one of the best men I’ve ever seen.
I completely agree. The beauty of it made me cry, it shows what a great heart Sherlock has.
One of the reasons I’m sad a lot of TJLC keep on considering S4 only dream, is that by doing it they fail to appreciate how pivotal TFP is for Sherlock, how much it tell us about the man he has become.
That’s one of the many reasons I loved S4 more than S3 – I feel like it gave us more unexpectedly profound moments like that. I mean, TFP was OTT and weird – but it has such a bizarre jagged beauty to it for all that, and the violin duet scenes are some of the most gorgeous in the whole series. I like the way they kept showing him arriving – like, he didn’t just go once or twice. He persists. He’s committed. And he’s starting to heal the gigantic rifts in his whole fucked-up family because of it, in a way only he could do.
“Love conquers all”: absolutely, that was total truth in advertising. There’s a LOT of love in S4. It’s primarily family love – family of blood and family of choice. And that’s what the resolution is all about, Sherlock with all his family members – not just his biological relations but also John and Rosie and Molly and Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson, this weird loving cluster of people who’ve coalesced around a frustrating but remarkable man, and the way he’s learned to love them back.
I love reading everyone’s thoughts on this! I like hearing other perspectives on things, and I have adjusted my own thinking accordingly. I’ve found new things to appreciate, but of course new things to be perturbed over as well, lol.
Of course I had disappointments with this episode and other parts of the series. But I tell you what. The Final Problem made me cry, and that doesn’t happen often for me. That tells me something, about myself if nothing else.
Okay, Nonny, so this is the entire sequence, just broken up to fit the gif limit on Tumblr, but yeah, wow, okay I never noticed this until you mentioned it. Like… where did John go?? He was literally almost on top of Sherlock, and then he just disappears until his input is required.
Also notice how BRIGHT that skull painting is glowing too. Hmmmmmm. More proof that this is from Sherlock’s POV for the Alibi Theory?
Oh god that’s true! Good anon!
Also, that’s the last time we see Hopkins. Very useful.
What. The. Fuckdjfkdhs
I can’t rewatch now, but I believe that in these scenes John interacts only with Sherlock? So Sherlock is making this up and it’s one more point to the John’s alibi theory? Or is Sherlock hallucinating John because he’s not there?
And that freaking skull, Jesus. It’s the brightest part of the scene, there is no way you can not notice it. It’s like they are showing it straight to our faces.
It’s related to the possible variables, and thirteen possibilities. 1) EMP, 2) MP or Sherlock makes up all the places John should be, compared to where he actually is. It could be because of the need for an 3) alibi, **although DI Hopkins supposedly would recall if John were there, but it might also be due to 4) John going against his promise to Mycroft about looking after Sherlock post-TAB. If John is already away from Sherlock, even before Mary’s death, then Sherlock spending all his time on cases with his phone, makes more sense. He’s imagining the things John must be doing, while they’re apart.
Hopkins is working on The Duplicate Man, and we see John suggesting twins, just as he did in TAB. But, **if this situation came first, then it was the concept that caused Sherlock to imagine it in TAB. Which would be why we never see Hopkins again. She worked the cases before what we thought was the chronological timeline, back when the old cases were being blogged, filling in the blanks.
Next, Hopkins is working on The Canary Killer case. Sherlock reviews it with her, but we suddenly get a piece from a visiting client.
Sherlock: The heart medication you are taking is known to cause bouts of amnesia. (Foreshadowing TD-12).
After that, we get the case The Cardiac Arrest, but it’s what comes afterward that’s potentially more important…Showing on John’s blog.
… we could never have known there was a potential assassin lurking close by. An assassin who turned out to be…
*cut to John coming up the stairs of 221B, with Sherlock behing him, and John talking about the jellyfish* (Another foreshadowing of events to come in this episode, as we later end up in the aquarium, where Mary is shot.)
By the end…It fits with the conversation Sherlock and Mrs. Hudson have after Mary
dies, right before the part where Mrs. Hudson oddly doesn’t seem to
comprehend the significance of “Norbury”.
Sherlock: I’m just going to, um… look through these things. There might be a case.
Mrs. Hudson: A case? Oh, you’re not up to it, are you?
Sherlock: Work is the best antidote to sorrow, Mrs Hudson.
OMG, this is amazing. I never even noticed John magically disappearing / reappearing. This is eerily reminiscent of TSoT and the stealth MP scene. Is John even really there? At all in S4?? Is Mary?? I remember when we got the stairway scene with John, Lestrade and Sherlock from Jimmy Kimmel (iirc??)- when we were still in the throes of anxiousness and trying to decipher it all before the series aired- I imagined for a second that Sherlock wasn’t really there. There was never any real interaction between Sherlock and John / Lestrade, so I thought maybe the ep would have Sherlock “imagining” by eavesdropping via mp. But then T6T aired, and it seemed as if Sherlock WAS present but then the weirdness of those scenes at the beginning- Sherlock manically tweeting, working simultaneous cases- John and Mary just seemed to be in the background, so I entertained the idea that Sherlock was imagining them, and now??? Was he?? Were they REALLY present?? Makes me wonder what could have happened to them?? What happened in the tunnel we never really saw? It doesn’t make sense, but it sort of does??? Is it possible John and Mary were not in S4 at all??? @tjlcisthenewsexy@gosherlocked@loveismyrevolution@ebaeschnbliah@may-shepard
I’ve been deaded along with most of the rest of the fandom, so I haven’t done much of my own writing on the finale. Howeverrrr, Louise Brealey’s tweets in response to Steven Moffat’s interview with EW got me going, and, alas, here we are. The first half of this piece has been published on Bustle, but I had to cut it significantly, so I’m posting the extended version here.
In “The Final Problem,” one contentious scene stood out among the many, many, many (Tumblr is making lists) other contentious parts of the episode: the forced love confession scene between Sherlock Holmes and his pathologist friend Molly Hooper. The scene – which was actually a last-minute addition to the script – has polarized the fandom because it seemingly reduces Molly to a one-dimensional, love-sick sop, while proving to Steven Moffat’s staunchest haters that the “Sherlock” writer and creator is a diabolical misogynist.
On the Steven Moffat front, I happen to love his female characters. Even when I hate them – cough Clara Oswald cough – I love that I hate them, because it demonstrates that they’re real and layered enough for me to approach them in an ambivalent way. Molly Hooper is actually one of Moffat’s more complex female characters, both in personality and narrative arc – the latter of which is why people are so irked by the Molly Hooper scene. I have other problems with the scene (which I will get into later) but I do not think it necessitates a reductionist view of Molly’s character, despite the implication that Molly has not progressed past her season one self.
Molly starts out as a Sherlock fangirl of sorts, fostering an unrequited affection for the great detective. In season two, we learn that she is more than her love for Sherlock – she stands up to him, gains his respect, and becomes an integral part of Sherlock’s plan to fake his death. Season three moves her further into the friendzone (which, in the context of the “Sherlock” universe, is a huge step for both of them), while establishing that she has – or tries to have – a life outside of the pathology lab and the morgue.
Her character in “The Abominable Bride,” is the most interesting: “Molly” is known to all as “Hooper,” the “man” who runs the morgue and takes no shit from anyone, least of all Sherlock. When we find out that the whole plot of “The Abominable Bride” is a fiction concocted in Sherlock’s head to help him figure out a case, it makes Molly’s re-characterization as a man even more fascinating – not because Sherlock would only respect her as a man, but because he now recognizes her inner steel, and believes that if Molly did live in those more, ahem, genteel times, she would have had to pretend to be a man in order to be respected as the smart and capable person that she already is.
Season four shortchanged a lot of characters, Molly included, and she only appears in the first two episodes to help take care of John’s baby and to remind Sherlock that he’s too doped up to function. Then came “The Final Problem.”
“The Final Problem” centers on the sudden, psychopathic appearance of Sherlock’s secret sister, Eurus, and her desire to understand Sherlock’s “emotional context.” To do so, she puts him through a series of Escape Rooms and presents him with a different ethical conundrum in each. One room contains an empty coffin, which Sherlock deduces is meant for Molly Hooper. Eurus tells Sherlock that Molly’s flat is rigged with explosives, and unless he can convince Molly to say the code phrase “I love you” before the timer runs out, Molly will die.
It’s cruel. In a way, that’s what makes the scene brilliant. For Molly, it’s a painful phrase to utter “because,” she says, “it’s true.” And even though Sherlock succeeds in the challenge – “I won! I saved Molly Hooper!” – the cost is high, and, Eurus explains, unnecessary. Eurus reveals that Molly was never actually in any danger, so Sherlock hasn’t actually “saved” her, and whatever he thinks he has “won,” he’s now lost much, much more. “Look what you did to her,” Eurus points out. “Look what you did to yourself.”
“Look what you did to yourself”:
Immediately afterwards, Sherlock Hulk-smashes the coffin with his fists in a primal rage, an indication that, as the entire series thus far has aimed to show us, the most impressive aspect of Sherlock Holmes is not his brain, but his heart. Sherlock is deeply, deeply emotional, and it’s gut-wrenching to see him so distraught over causing emotional harm to someone else, someone he used to slight without a moment’s hesitation or afterthought. Now that’s character growth. Plus, this scene is a callback to “A Scandal in Belgravia,” when Sherlock humiliates Molly at a Christmas party, completely blind to her affection for him. Sherlock is surprisingly chastened when he realizes his mistake, and the moment marks an important crack in his emotionless facade.
The scene in “The Final Problem” is so agonizing because we know how much Sherlock has grown since then. But what about Molly? It seems she hasn’t changed a bit. In “A Scandal in Belgravia,” Molly plays the part of the pining, unrequited lover, and she is thrust into the exact same position in “The Final Problem.” Many fans are furious over this static characterization of Molly, a woman who seems to exist only to support the emotional growth of the main, male character. In fairness, the show is called “Sherlock,” ergo, every character – male or female – essentially exists to support the emotional growth of the main, male character. However, is it fair to say that this scene indicates that Molly is nothing but a stock female character with no internal growth or struggle?
Yes and no. No, because Molly is far from being a prototypical damsel in distress of yore or a one-dimensional, ass-kicking heroine. In fact, what I love most about Molly Hooper is that she turns the dreaded trope of the Strong Female Character (™) on its head. Here is an original female character (she does not appear in the Arthur Conan Doyle stories) who is pure-hearted yet complicated, emotional yet entirely competent. Though she has some form of a relationship with the main, male character, she also has her own career, dating life, living space, and stressful days unrelated to said main, male character. What stood out to me most about Molly and Sherlock’s exchange in “The Final Problem” was Molly answering the phone with “Hello, Sherlock. Is this urgent? Because I’m not having a good day.” Those six words – I’m not having a good day – hint at an entire life outside of whatever’s going on with Sherlock Holmes, and imbue her character with immediate depth.
The fact that she is still pining for him arguably makes her feel even more real. In response to fan criticism, Louise Brealey tweeted her own assessment of the scene: “Loving someone after years is not reductive, retrograde, antifeminist or weak.” (The actress views herself as a proud feminist and has been outspoken about women’s rights and her own struggle with body image issues.)
All of which makes the fallout – or lack thereof – from this scene at the end of the episode so shocking. We see how this conversation has profoundly affected Sherlock (“Look what you did to yourself”), but not how the conversation has affected Molly (“Look what you did to her”). Molly appears in one subsequent scene in the episode, as part of an ending montage that shows her happily skipping into 221B Baker Street. Wait, what?
In a post-finale interview with Entertainment Weekly, Moffat addresses fan concern with the careless treatment of Molly in this episode with a repressive: “She gets over it!” He then goes on to explain that their resolution obviously occurs off-screen, and ends with: “She probably had a drink and went and shagged someone, I dunno. Molly was fine.”
Oh, Steven. If anything, this makes matters even worse, and Louise Brealey herself tweeted that she disagrees with Moffat’s assessment of Molly’s reaction to this scene:
The Molly Hooper scene in “The Final Problem” is supposed to feel horrible. It’s supposed to feel brutal, and it feels that way because of the careful development of both Sherlock’s and Molly’s characters over the course of the series.
We witness Sherlock’s agony, but Molly’s is completely brushed aside. That’s the real tragedy of the treatment of Molly’s character – not what happened to her within the “emotional context” of the episode, but what wasn’t explored by the writers afterward.
But there’s another ick-factor as well, and that’s the larger issue of the whole “no homo” feel of this episode. This scene bothered me on a more meta level because it felt like it was capitalizing on Sherlock’s one heteronormative relationship. If the words “I love you” mean so much, why not have Sherlock say it to John? (Sherlock himself says “I love you” to Molly because she will only say it if he says it first.) I could write – and obviously many of you have written – hundreds of pages on how Sherlock’s love for John Watson drives nearly every episode, so that’s another essay entirely. But if you’ll take it on good faith that Sherlock and John’s relationship is what powers the heart of the entire series, why have Sherlock utter such a sincere-sounding declaration of love not to John, not even to his brother Mycroft, but to the one straight female character on the show? (Apologies to Mrs. Hudson.)
BBC deliberately mislead fans by including Sherlock’s “I love you” in one of the promotional trailers for the season – and that, I believe, was cruel. Not cruel towards fictional characters, but cruel towards real-life fans who devote so much of themselves to this show. A large proportion of “Sherlock” fans were exhilarated by the prospect of seeing John and Sherlock finally get together as a couple, despite the fact that Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss have repeatedly denied that that was ever going to happen. For my part, I didn’t need to see the two of them engage in a dramatic, public display of affection to close out the season, and I believe something that grandiose would have been out of character for these two emotionally repressive men.
But that’s why the final hug between Sherlock and John at the end of “The Lying Detective” was so meaningful and so cathartic. That’s why Sherlock saying “I love you” to or at John (hey, I would have been happy with a Mind Palace love confession too) would have been a natural follow-up to the emotional vulnerability finally laid bare at the end of “The Lying Detective.” And that’s why it felt so cheap to have Sherlock say it to Molly. “I’m not an experiment,” she angrily scolds Sherlock, as he desperately tries to get her to say those three words. But in the larger, “emotional context” of this show, she might as well be.
.
What a wonderful, balanced review of that scene! Covers some of the same ground as my post on the ‘I love you’ scene, but more broadly and thoroughly. It’s true that Molly– like Mary, too– ‘feels’ real in a really low-key and subtle way. I don’t think that it’s blatant, but moments like Molly’s not-so ‘good day’, or the way Mary told John in HLV that ‘you can’t go. I’m pregnant’. The moments of realistic portrayal and the often great performances exist in a rather stylized artificial world, however. As some people have said about Mary’s antihero portrayal, the over-the-top back-story can easily prove too distracting to appreciate the little touches.
I particularly appreciate the reminder of the subtle development Molly did have. Although she’s still a minor character who really didn’t have an arc, I feel that my earlier summary of her behavior through S3 into S4 wasn’t generous enough, as it lacked this sense of the necessary context of her overall shift into greater self-confidence and maturity. Of course, this show is well known for not showing explicit consequences for anything characters do, but particularly minor characters such as Mary, as Ivy described. It doesn’t mean it’s *okay* or anyone has to consider it ‘good writing’, but the implicit orientation of the narrative does seem to mean that one is meant to fill in the blanks between what we see and what ‘has to have happened’ in between.
Basically, I think you could argue that both Moffat and Loo could be right, in that Sherlock and Molly are okay by the end, but they weren’t *immediately* or automatically okay, and Molly didn’t somehow *magically* get over it. They must’ve had a conversation about feelings– and we know Mofftiss hate showing those if they don’t have to, even with the main characters– and it worked. Of course Molly forgave Sherlock if she really did love him, ’cause John certainly forgave him for worse things by far. Of course, YMMV as to whether that’s enough for you.
that’s how i interpret it as well! that’s john saying, he is leaving sherlock so he will stop hurting sherlock. because he did, in the morgue, and when mary died, and throughout tst and the end of hlv, and all the way back to tsot, and even teh, and john knows that, you know? he knows. i think he had a lot of time between tst and tld to understand what mary was to sherlock – not just his would-be killer, but the choice john never should have made. he hurt sherlock from teh on by choosing mary when he didn’t really want mary, and john is realizing all that between tst and tld. and so john comes to say goodbye so he’ll stop hurting sherlock, and he gives this cane as a good memory of himself. remember me this way. remember me the way we were in the beginning, when things were good. and then mycroft calls, and john has no idea what mycroft will do to him, and he just. accepts it. and he goes.
favourite scene… sherlock’s fleeting release of laughter in the face of unfathomable tragedy…
I was so focused on Mycroft’s noble attempt to take a bullet that I didn’t pay attention to Eurus’s face. That does not look like someone taking pleasure in coercing one brother into killing another. This really was a test she wanted Sherlock to pass somehow.
I thought that at first, that she’s feeling remorse. Now I’m wondering if she just isn’t feeling excluded. Sherlock and Mycroft love each other, and this scene makes that abundantly clear. They are fucking *bonding* over the torture she’s putting them through and she’s excluded. Just like she was excluded when Victor and Sherlock played without her.
I noticed it the first time and i didnt understand why wouldnt she be pleased D: it makes sense
eurus looks fucking distraught, her two brothers are standing at her mercy and she couldn’t be farther away from them than now….fuck I’m hurting inside now
She’s feeling something, and she doesn’t like it. (“Which one is pain?” This one. It’s this one right there!) It’s a crack in her armor too.
Can we also give Loo Brealey a standing fucking ovation for that performance, like holy shit I’ve always admired that mix of strength and utter raw vulnerability she gives to Molly Hooper, but that last episode just blew everything out of the water. Every twitch and blink meant so much and you could see grief and pain and YEARS of heartbreak coursing through her, and when her voice broke when she was trying to tell him it was true, and that she couldn’t say it BECAUSE it was true, I swear she made my heart burst with how much empathy she gut-punched out of me, and even in the midst of this hellish power play with Eurus she ensured Molly still stood tall with strength and dignity, she showed that her love and vulnerability wasn’t weakness, it was strength AND YOU COULD SEE IT ALL IN LOO’S BEAUTIFUL FACE, 10/10, A+, someone give her her own tv show asap thanks
12/10 from me. I was gutted when she drew the phone away from her ears the moment she heard what Sherlock wanted her to say.
It might have been the only moment I was emotionally connected to the story.
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