how much money do you want to bet that those were the first words Greg said to Sherlock ever? when Sherlock was a drug addict and Greg found him somewhere? and probably it wasn’t about cigarettes but it was about whatever Sherlock’s drug of choice was???
Interesting additions, @ebaeschnbliah. There are so many fake things in this show. And the fact that Jim and Eurus are so closely associated confirms my belief that only Jim was real and Eurus is a part of Sherlock that is connected to him. Just think of all the video messages and both killing a boy by making him drown – so many coincidences …
Is there also something about the lens covering the eye, so not only does it contribute to the disguise (surface level) but also affects how the eye perceives (subtext, see/observe, interpretation)?
@sarahthecoat, I’m wild about the idea that it’s all about disguise and perception.
Isn’t this Anderson’s fantasy, in teh? Just to throw yet another wrench in the works?
Idk about the idea that it’s Sherlock’s, though, since he isn’t in the room when the confrontation with Eurus takes place, although who tf knows. (I mean, OR IS HE, if he is Eurus?) tfp Eurus seems too John-ish to me–I can’t get past baby Eurus’s John sweater…
@sarahthecoat@may-shepard I love that idea. I’ve been kicking around the idea that John having one eye covered is the same sort of thing – that he remains blind to one part of his dual nature, rather than a literal blindness.
Allow me to add little Victor to the mix!
One-eye John = Moriarty, Sherlock-in-exile, Eurus, and little Victor aka John-look-alike? In TGG, John was the voice of Jim Moriarty for a few minutes there…… and the voice of Jim Moriarty announced the arrival of TFP 👀
So, very belatedly, I just finally watched the Granada Holmes “The Empty House,” with Jeremy Brett and Edward Hardwicke. As followers of the Granada rewatch will know, I quit watching the first time around after they changed Watsons following “The Final Problem.” I will do a separate post that’s just about that episode soon. But first: I could not help but watch “Empty House” with “The Empty Hearse” in mind. Gatiss at least must have been a Granada Holmes fan, so I know he had “Empty House” in mind when he was writing “Empty Hearse.” (Indeed, there are specific things in “Empty House” that I think show up in TRF/TEH, such as the framed print of the Reichenbach Falls hanging above the mantel in 221b ( –>the oil painting of same that Sherlock is supposed to have helped recover in TRF), the champagne celebration with Mrs. Hudson at the end (–>champagne celebration in 221B with Mrs. Hudson, Lestrade, and Molly and her new boyfriend). And yet, I think when you put “Empty Hearse” up against “Empty House,” it reveals some interesting things about why Sherlock went off the rails after the hiatus. (If you don’t think it went off the rails, you might not enjoy what’s coming up very much.)
The short story is: there’s good and bad in both adaptations. But in “Empty House,” most of what’s bad was more or less unavoidable. In “Empty Hearse,” the bad–or at least what I consider the bad–is deliberate. “Empty House,” like the canon story it adapts, basically resumes Holmes and Watson’s pre-”Final Problem” relationship. “Empty Hearse” inaugurates a completely new one–one which, even within the context of that episode, doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
The first bomb is actually attached to John. Sherlock and John are present at all three incidents. Mycroft is personally at 221b and metaphorically at Westminster. Is he perhaps somehow at the pool as well? If AGRA was employed by the government, and Mary was a sniper at the pool? Who did call Moriarty off? We are to believe it was Irene, but is that true? Three people, again and again… Whom will Sherlock choose? Mycroft or John? Saint or sinner? Family by blood or by choice?
John’s words have power. John misreads Sherlock and it shapes the text, it shapes how Sherlock sees himself, it shapes how he behaves.
HOLMES: […] all emotion is abhorrent to me. It is the grit in a sensitive instrument … HOLMES and WATSON (almost simultaneously): … the crack in the lens. WATSON: Yes. HOLMES: Well, there you are, you see? I’ve said it all before. WATSON: No, I wrote all that. You’re quoting yourself from The Strand Magazine.
I love this meta, and I love this show.
John criticizes Sherlock carelessly on the presumption that he’s incapable of being hurt by it. Sherlock takes in all of John’s criticisms, strips them of all their context, and uses them to punish himself.
I’ve often wondered if John’s easy forgiveness of Sherlock after being drugged in Baskerville ended up hurting them both more than helping.
Sherlock drugged John. A man with PTSD. A man that could have easily hurt himself or others while he was under the influence of the drug. John was terrified. And yet? He forgives him without even a moment’s hesitation.
If John had been more livid, more upset, asked Sherlock “why would you ever think that is okay to do that to me?” and stayed angry for some stretch of time, Sherlock would have not come back from TRF thinking all would be forgiven in a moment’s notice.
Sherlock would have known that jumping off the roof at St. Bart’s in front of John, and staying dead for two years, is not something easily forgivable. John was betrayed. Yet Sherlock comes back expecting the easy forgiveness he saw in Grimpen.
John does forgive Sherlock in TEH but marries Mary because he knows he can’t trust his heart to Sherlock.
What would have happened if the forgiveness after Baskerville wasn’t as easy? I think the entire jump and aftermath would have changed.
Their play with one another, and the affects that has on their mutual trust does interest me a great deal (yes I have a half finished meta on it). I think that HoB, was the first instance of Sherlock pushing John almost beyond what he could bear, and you can see that Sherlock is angry at himself for it.
In HoB John told Sherlock, “Get me out, Sherlock. You have got to get me out!” But Sherlock kept pushing, and pushing, when he really should have dropped it right there, should have just comforted John and been done with it. But he didn’t. John told him to stop, and he pushed through anyway. He knew he’d done wrong the minute he saw John’s face, but it was too late to take it back, and Sherlock, being Sherlock, didn’t quite know how to fix it, so he just turned that anger on himself and the situation.
I think his anger in the lab, when he throws the microscope slide against the wall, is as much anger and frustration at himself, for where he took things with John earlier, just to prove a point, as it is frustration over not finding any trace of a drug in the sugar (which further underscored the fact that he pushed john that far for absolutely no reason at all).
But, I agree with you that John needs to learn to speak up for himself, or that dynamic can go south fast. Part of John not doing so may come down to his (I suspect) abusive upbringing. He’s used to just taking the kind of treatment that undermines trust, and is used to making himself small, and to brushing things off and just getting on with it. But he can’t keep doing that. He really should have said, “That was not in any way okay! Don’t you ever push me that far again, do you understand!”
For lack of a better term, I don’t think that they have ever really set a ‘safe word’ with one another in this game they play (john doesn’t know his limits or when to say stop, he just let’s sherlock push him, even when it goes past what is bearable), and that is going to lead to trouble.
TRF DEFINITELY broke trust, almost irreparably. I do think that John felt he forgave Sherlock in TEH after the train car thing, and as weird as it may be to most people, the thing with the bomb really was a smart thing on Sherlock’s part. He pushed John to the edge again, right to the edge, almost too far, but then he had that big ‘ta-dah!’ moment where he revealed that he had been in control all along, that he had a plan, that he had called the police. It was Sherlock’s way of saying, “See, you can trust me. I do have a plan. We can go back to our play, I’ll give you the danger, the adrenaline rush, but I won’t ever push you that far, too far, again. I will never make you feel that your trust in me was misplaced. I’ve got you, John. You’re safe with me.”
So John forgives him, and is willing to go back to their old dynamic, their old play, but there is still a part of him left bleeding, and that loops back again to the point I think you are trying to make here, that John forgave, truly forgave, but that the trust wasn’t fully repaired, even if they both thought it was. It’s going to take a lot to fix that.
And remember, what does Sherlock turn around and do AGAIN in HLV? He shuts John out, he lies to him to keep him safe, he makes his own plans with Magnussen, and he fails at those plans, and the result is John having to watch Sherlock go to his death all over again, as he is shipped off to Eastern Europe. HLV was just TRF all over again. Even if John had been starting to let himself trust again a little bit between TEH and his wedding, all of that started to unravel again in HLV.
I hate HLV, so much. But then I think that is where Seasons 4 & 5 are going to have to take us, it’s what those seasons will have to address. How on earth do you repair a breech of trust so huge, and especially with a man who came to the table with trust issues in the first place?!
Sherlock and John have their work cut out for them, that’s for sure.
This is why I love HLV though. I think it’s actually a step in the right direction for them both, not a repeat of TRF. Sherlock doesn’t shut John out entirely. He doesn’t go off to confront Mary on his own. He doesn’t show up later and say, oh by the way your wife is the one who shot me, but it’s already been taken care of. He doesn’t put himself in yet another situation that might get him killed (because he knows that Mary isn’t going to shoot him with John there). Instead he asks John to trust him again. He puts John in that chair and says sit and listen, you need to be in on this, I want you to be part of this. John places an awful lot of trust in Sherlock to just sit there quietly while his wife aims a gun at him, a lot more trust than he probably has allowed himself to show since Sherlock came back really, but he does as Sherlock asked because he is allowing that trust between them to start to grow back to where it once was. And in doing so, it allows him to be in on all the secrets for once, to see that Sherlock trusts him, too. When Sherlock came back in TEH, he said he hadn’t been in contact because he was afraid John would let the cat out of the bag, and here in HLV he is literally opening the bag right in front of him and trusting John not to let the metaphorical cat escape. And that is a huge step in the right direction, and John even cements his regained trust in Sherlock in the domestic scene. “Your way. Always your way.”
Now we don’t know a lot about what happened before Christmas and how much of the CAM plan John was or wasn’t in on, so maybe that was a step backwards for them. But either way, I think that while Sherlock shooting CAM and subsequently getting sent off to Eastern Europe was obviously not something John would have wanted him to do, it isn’t really the same as TRF. Even in the midst of things, it was clear to John that whatever plan Sherlock had come in with, whether John was in on it or not, it had gone wrong. He was hoping Sherlock maybe had a backup plan (”Sherlock, do we have a plan?”), but Sherlock just closes his eyes and John knows he doesn’t. And so of course Sherlock improvises and does something drastic to try to get them out of it, to try to save John, but it isn’t the same as TRF because it wasn’t part of the plan. It’s shocking, yes. It’s likely the wrong choice, yes. But it wasn’t the huge betrayal of trust that TRF was because Sherlock didn’t intentionally manipulate him and lie to him about what was happening. Again, a step in the right direction. A small one, but one going the right way nonetheless.
I agree about Sherlock telling John that Mary shot him being a step in the right direction. A huge step in the right direction, actually. But, the only way I can see the Magnussen fiasco as not being another TRF, is if we find out in Season 4 that there was a plan all along, that Sherlock telling John that he could trust Mary during the 221b domestic was part of some deception that the two of them had arranged ahead of time, that John forgiving Mary was also a part of that deception, that there was some sort of mutual arrangement going on there, and that the thing with Magnussen was supposed to be the capping off of the whole plan, but for some reason went wrong.
Thing is, that John seems truly, and sincerely shocked when Sherlock drugs his entire family on Christmas day, and a helicopter shows up to take them to Magnussen’s place. John really seems to not have a clue what Sherlock’s got up his sleeve when they get there. I really think it was all a huge surprise to John. So, I don’t know…
I… don’t want to put a Tin foil hat on but in the same time… what the fuck
In that same article we get the gem above.
So they do, in fact, shoot actual fake scenes to confuse their fans. Hmm.. wonder how many other such scenes there might be out there.
Also, what the hell happened between writing S3 and S4 if, in TEH, they used external experts (I’m presuming a physicist of some sort, in this case), to ensure that the story makes logical sense that can be replicated in the real world, and then left TFP full of emmentaler-sized plot holes and things that make no sense whatsoever. Seriously, something dire must have occurred for such a drastic change to take place.
Okay, I really want to respond to the posts about Mycroft and how he reacts to violence and guns in TFP.
There is a huge difference between defending yourself and watching a man commit suicide. When Mycroft is in his home, he goes into defense mode. He’s being attacked and, in his mind, that is a good enough reason to pull a gun. Also we don’t know what kind of shock he could have gone through after killing the clown. At that moment, he was in fight or flight mode and he did the first thing that came to mind to protect himself.
At Sherrinford, the man is completely innocent. Mycroft will not shoot a man who has not done anything to hurt him. Watching someone blow their own brains out is an extremely terrible thing to witness. Also, with all of the adrenaline going through his body, he went into shock and began to get sick. We know he doesn’t involve himself much in casework and he’s probably only seen gruesome videos where he is not really involved or emotionally compromised. The combination of terror, horror, and his body’s natural reactions lead him to behave differently in these two scenarios.
I understand that it may not make sense at first, but his reactions are completely valid and are understandable for the different situations.
As with a few of my other posts, the one you screenshotted has a dash of hyperbole and is distinctly shitpost-y. There’s no room for nuance in it.
The thing is I actually agree with all of what you’ve written here.
I guess my issue is, his reaction to what happened in TFP isn’t completely outrageous or “wrong”, it just felt a tad unexpected to me given that in the past he’s kept it together in the face of torture and death. Again, they were very different scenarios though and the scenes in TFP involved prolonged exposure to stress of all kinds – I get that. It’s apples and oranges and no one can predict how someone will react in such a horrifying scenario.
Personally, I just felt on first watch that his reaction came out of left field, it was unexpected to me given what I thought I knew of the character.
But hey, I was wrong (probably in part down to some of my headcanons as well as what occurs in canon) and I’m now attempting to adjust my Mycroft-y world view by making stupid posts about it. I’ll get there in time.
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