How in the Freddy Mercury has no one yet pointed out that the yellow feather duster moment is a huge shoutout to one of the most Good Omens coded Queen songs of all time: I Want To Break Free.
I can't unsee it. This is now Gabriel's fight song. He's fallen in love for the first time and needs to break free. Just check out these lyrics if you've never heard it...
So, I finally found and listened to the entire play “The Secrets of Sherlock Holmes” (Starring Jeremy Brett and Edward Hardwicke)
And…wow.
I don’t know what it is about the play, aside from the fact that it is centered around their friendship, but some parts just…got me.
It alternates between canon and the moments in between, that Watson does not write.
Most importantly, it deals with Holmes’s treatment of Watson, and his own darkness.
Holmes is not a villain in this story, he’s just lost. He apologizes to Watson again and again. (“I crave your forgiveness”)
The narrative is about one thing: they need each other.
Holmes says, “I would have been dead within two years without Watson”. He also said something about Watson keeping him from his addiction and out of depression, though the audio was choppy so I can’t quote it exactly.
At the end the secret is revealed (I won’t spoil) though the drama of the secret is hardly the drama of the play, just a factor.
At the end, there is a line spoken by Holmes that just…got me. He says:
“Watson, you are the only fixed point in a changing world.”
Watson replies with a soft:
“Thank you, Holmes.”
I don’t know why, it was just kind of beautiful.
So yeah, this was my review thingy lol.
Link to the recording is in the notes. I had no idea there was a recording of this. And it’s fantastic. 🙏🙌
I’ve been meaning to write about Secret since I first heard it, and I don’t have the time to do this properly, but I’ll just say:
Remember TFP, and the whole “I’ve fallen in–” and then the music cuts off? and it’s that line from I Want to Break Free, and the missing word is love?
WELL.
THERE IS A PARALLEL MOMENT in The Secret of Sherlock Holmes, which I think is meant to indicate the secret itself, where Holmes says, “If music be the food of–” and then he cuts himself off.
The entire quote is “If music be the food of love, play on.” It’s from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. The man who speaks the line has been pining for his neighbour for a long time. (Sidebar: he ends up falling in love instead with the heroine of the play while she’s dressed as a man–Twelfth Night is pleasantly queer.)
What’s been giving me that particular oh-mofftiss-you-filthy-dogs feeling ever since I listened to The Secret of Sherlock Holmes is that they would make such a deep cut reference to this extraordinarily bizarre and dare I say romantic play, and specifically to the one line that screams LOVE without actually saying it.
ANYWAY carry on, and thanks for bringing this up!
That’s a great parallel catch. (And nice tags) I listened to it with the continuities and divergences from ACD canon in mind and hadn’t even begun to think how it might relate to Sherlock. But yes. Yes.
I don’t want to give any spoilers to the plot of the play for those yet to hear it so I will keep this vague but it occurs relatedly there’s a mega strong theme of secrets and more specifically choosing what to reveal, or indeed conceal, with, or in, words. It has therefore a lot of connectivity to the idea of the unreliable narrator in ACD canon (and by extension, beeb Sherlock) and plays with that notion. This aborted Shakespeare quote cut off incomplete is but one example of self-editing in the play, which comes in various guises.
Twelfth Night’s fingerprints are all over canon (especially in The Empty House, but in other stories, too); this has been gone over pretty thoroughly by a lot of past Sherlockians. Twelfth night is also the main reason that January 6 is generally accepted as Sherlock Holmes’s birthday, which is a meta unto itself, given that Sherlock’s birthday should signal the end of twelfth night, yet none of us believe that the narrative becomes more real by the end of TLD.
So, it would make sense for Jeremy Paul/Jeremy Brett and Mofftiss to independently reference Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night – but oh, what an interesting way for Mofftiss to do it, by invoking The Secret of Sherlock Holmes. I looked for this scene in my copy of the play and couldn’t find it, so I’m wondering if it might have been a late addition, and also what the context for the quote was within the play.
I’ve written a bit about The Secret of Sherlock Holmes here (very spoilery), if anyone is interested; possibly my favourite thing that Mofftiss pulled from it is Moriarty’s insane train impression in TFP, which is a delightfully obscure reference!
Now, I haven’t written meta on Sherlock for centuries, to be honest I don’t even read them and barely open Tumblr … there are times when RL absorbs you and leaves very little more time and energy for anything else. However, my Sherlockian brain sometimes twitches, and if exercises is needed to keep it active, does it still manage to have … spasms? So this exchange between Sherlock and Moriarty, in which Sherlock says that he cannot yet prove that Moriarty has created a false identity, suddenly and clearly sounds to me like Sherlock’s “accusation” against the one who has woven lies around his truth. That is Conan Doyle, the author who wrote a story, but wrapped it up in a lie. It is no coincidence that Moriarty’s false identity is that of the story teller. Moriarty is the one who creates cases for Sherlock, who enjoys making him dance, because the audience loves to see him do it. 90% of readers love Sherlock Holmes because he is a detective who solves cases. In this narrative, John Watson has been reduced to his shoulder, his voice has been moderated, otherwise he could have … exploded. But is it true that history is a lie and the truth is hidden? Is it true that the Canon is full of codes and subtexts? the legions of people who have taken apart each story to find a subtext have done it in vain? of course I think the answer is a big no, that the Great Game has its own legitimacy and is super fun. But I also believe that what most interests us, and the Moffits in primis, is the relationship between the two, is that less hidden piece of the game, is the truth that is more in full view. We can also try to complicate things, denying the evidence, because basically it’s funny to think that it’s more complicated / intelligent than it is, but basically it’s clear from the start. Doyle / Moriarty said it but few listened. We’ve probably noticed this juxtaposition between Doyle and Moriarty already and I, as I do with everything, have already forgotten it, but it’s nice to have felt a sparkle again by looking at a random gif. And my dear friends, even if I have not been able to better articulate my thoughts, and if this is a only a thought diluted in the nothing of the last year, know that I often think of you, and I miss you.
@possiblyimbiassed @gosherlocked @ebaeschnbliah @sarahthecoat @sagestreet
Interesting thoughts @raggedyblue ! (And yes I miss you all too, even if real life and its grievancies has been occupying my thoughts too much recently to write here). To be honest I can’t really remember if we’ve maybe discussed this particular juxtaposition between Moriarty and ACD already, but at least it seems new to my rather muddy memory. And if it’s not, I still think it’s worth another round. :)
The whole point of TRF seems to be Moriarty’s storytelling about Sherlock, so yes: this should indeed lead our thoughts to ACD. Especially since Moriarty talks a lot about ”fairy tales” in TRF. And it’s known that ACD came to believe in fairys; fooled by a clever hoax fabricated by two young girls, he thought he actually had scientific evidence for the supernatural (X). Reading this article about fairies that ACD published in the Strand magazine in 1920 (X) - both funny and interesting in my opinion - his reasoning seems to differ considerably from the scientific method: he commits logical fallacies such as ’appeal to authority’ and ’confirmation bias’ regarding the evidence presented and waves away the critics of his conclusions as ’unhappy’ and ’absurd’. Quite unlike Holmes in his own stories if you ask me. ;-)
An interesting thing with the conversation above is that Jim claims it’s much easier for Sherlock to ’just’ kill himself than to prove that the identity which Jim (=ACD) has made up of him is false. And I tend to agree with him; it seems easier for the detective to ’kill’ himself in various ways in this show (and even in canon - the letter he leaves to Watson in FINA seems very much like ’leaving a note’ to me), than to prove that his identity is different from what it appears to be. Because in TRF, even if Sherlock is right, the public will still probably believe in Moriarty’s lies, backed up by media. And something similar goes for us the audience, right? Even if many people (Mofftiss included) may see Sherlock Holmes differently, and even if there’s actual textual evidence to the contrary in both canon and BBC Sherlock once we actually think about his actions rather than Watson’s evaluations of him, the vast majority still appears to see Sherlock like the cover story; a cold, rational, machinelike and indestructable detective with intellectual superpowers and a funny hat. And of course, regarding a fictional character, this isn’t exactly easy to disprove. :D
As for the relationship Holmes-Watson as the actual key part, you’re right @raggedyblue; it’s being said again and again in the show that the best place to hide is in plain sight. And again and again the issue of a possible ’Johnlock’ is brought up in plain sight - always with a comment of denial, though. So people will bend over backwards to explain away any sign of actual intimate feelings between the two, mainly backed up by the official fairy tales of heteronormativity.
oh yes @possiblyimbiassed, old Arthur and his fairies! You’re right, fairytales are mentioned too many times, it may very well be a not too veiled suggestion. And at the end, the ACD episode is about stubbornly wanting to believe in something, denying (scientific) evidence. It is a deliberate and stubborn choice to believe by looking at a photo, more to a figure added to artifice, for the purpose of deception, than to what the photo alone represents. Doyle has deliberately chosen to believe more in the photo of a little girl with a fairy than in the already perfect photo of a child. And he did it because the fiction fit better into that idea of reality that he had chosen to be true (I understand, I also prefer to believe in fairies, and I don’t care about any evidence). Similarly, the heterosexual reader, raised in a homophobic society, chooses to see the artifact as real rather than the mere image. Leaving the path of values now traced seems so impossible that it is better to erase everything, as Doyle himself seems to have tried to do. However, it is not impossible to dismantle established beliefs, but it is a very long process. We know very well that we have been working on it and waiting for more than 10 years.
Exactly @raggedyblue - the process is long. And basically, in TFP, the last episode this far, Moriarty is trying the same trick as we see above: enjoying himself in watching ’Holmes killing Holmes’ - the seemingly easiest way out from Sherlock’s dilemma: either Sherlock shoots himself or the storyteller (Mycroft = Gatiss). And once again, we’re presented with an image of Sherlock seemingly killing himself - without actually doing it. Instead, he wakes up inside a giant cardboard box (full of memories) from which he breaks free, to be able to solve the puzzle and ultimately rescue John.
But let’s not forget that TFP is also the episode where the same Jim Moriarty is enthusiastically illustrating a song with the lyrics ”I want to break free [from your lies]”. The song is interrupted just before the word ’love’, and then Jim continues with his usual trick of trying to make Sherlock give up his own life (which he also had repeated in HLV).
In the official video of this famous song (X) by Queen (’queen’ = Mycroft = Gatiss the storyteller?), we see Freddy Mercury vacuum cleaning in a suburban household that appears boring and artificial. Then - as soon as he starts to sing about love - Mercury ’breaks free’ out of a giant cardboard box and into a dream world where he is loved, caressed and uplifted by a large crowd of people. With total confidence he throws himself into their hands. Neither of the scenarios are realistic, but one seems far more satisfying than the other. So - since this is fiction - we can indeed choose which scenario we prefer.
This video inspired by Moriarty seems suspisciously apt for the plot line of TFP, where we have Sherlock breaking free from a cardboard box and we even see Mrs Hudson vacuum cleaning in 221B moments before a big explosion. In the previous scene, we had seen how the storyteller Mycroft was forced by his own main character brother to tell the truth. Then Sherlock and John make an impossible jump out of the window, to save themselves from dying inside 221B, and then they immediately go out to the sea on a pirate adventure to find Eurus. A bit like in FINA, isn’t it? When Watson learned that Holmes was in danger, he instantly decided to leave his wife at home and go out with Holmes on a vacation to central Europe.
And yet, at the end of TFP we’re told (by Ghost!Mary) that John and Sherlock are still, eternally, sitting there inside 221B. And it’s always 1995. But that’s not actually how ACD’s Holmes stories ended, is it? At the end of LAST, already in the 20th century, Watson drives Holmes away in a car, and ACD never tells us what happened next. 221B is not even mentioned in that final story.
All in all, it’s as if we’re strongly hinted that we don’t have to believe in the (cruel) fairy tales we see in this show, just as it’s not very wise to stubbornly believe in ACD’s claims of fairies being real in the Strand magazine. Or in Moriarty’s repeatedly suggested ’solutions’ for the Final Problem. Because now we know that he - the storyteller - actually wants to break free. ;)
rb for more discussion!
One of the things that don’t exactly behave normally in BBC Sherlock is time. And this is not limited to S4, but can be found all over the show. We see people perform things that would be highly questionable, or even wouldn’t be physically possible, to do in our real world, considering the time it would take. Like Sherlock and John climbing over rooftops and still arriving in time to shortcut a taxi in ASiP. Or Moriarty in TRF, arriving to have a chat with Sherlock at 221B from having been in custody at The Old Bailey (at least 15 minutes apart with car, according to the maps), basically within the time it takes for Sherlock’s kettle to boil.
Or Mary showing up in the top apartment of a sky scraper in HLV, knocking out people and wreaking havoc, within the time it takes for John and Sherlock to ascend there with the only elevator. Or Sherlock, when Mary shoots him, having three seconds of consciousness left, and yet he’s able to notice how many minutes it takes for John to get there and call the ambulance. It really doesn’t add up, does it?
We also see and hear these specific elements (along with other, similar examples that I won’t bore you with now) being repeated again and again in the show, in a seemingly haphazardly and meaningless manner. In TSoT we see a sequence from Sherlock’s best man speech where he and John are chased over rooftops by Cupid a short man with a blow pipe. A rooftop is also where Sherlock chooses to meet Moriarty in TRF, and consequently then uses for his fake suicide.
Apparently Sherlock had predicted the exact method of Moriarty’s blackmail from start. But if he knew beforehand, why even put himself in this situation? Couldn’t he thus prevent it? Or is he some kind of oracle that can predict but not interfere with the course of the events? And who was he really planning to con here - Moriarty or John? From the angle they were standing, Jim would have seen the whole theatre from above, had he not opted for a sudden - supposedly unpredicted - suicide on the rooftop. Logic fails when time is twisted here, I believe.
The boiling kettle is mentioned by John in another not too dissimilar context in THoB (thanks for the transcripts, Ariane De Vere X), when Sherlock and John are trying to fake their way into Baskerville’s military facility:
SHERLOCK: What’s the matter?
JOHN: We’ll get caught.
SHERLOCK: No we won’t – well, not just yet.
JOHN: Caught in five minutes. “Oh, hi, we just thought we’d come and have a wander round your top secret weapons base.” “Really? Great! Come in – kettle’s just boiled.” That’s if we don’t get shot.
John is ironic here of course, ridiculing the idea that the military would immediately welcome their intrusion by offering them tea. But this is exactly what Sherlock absurdly does with his arch enemy the very next episode. He even uses precisely the same words: ”Kettle’s just boiled” to greet Moriarty. It’s almost as if he would aim to fulfill John’s ironic ‘prophecy’, isn’t it?
If it was strange in HLV how an unconscious Sherlock could know how long it took for John to find him after he was shot, it’s even weirder in TST to see Mary perform a long speech after being shot. And the way she throws herself in front of the bullet after it has been fired is physically impossible. In real life with a real time frame, she wouldn’t have the time to move, because no human being can move faster than a bullet.
In the show we can also see scenes shifting forwards and backwards in time, where later events are superimposed over former events without any explanation. Like in HLV when John and Mary are being welcomed as Christmas guests at Sherlock’s parents’ house, shown before the trio had even attempted to sort out the horrible event when Mary had tried to kill their son (which they actually didn’t sort out - they were interrupted by Sherlock’s second heart failure).
And in S4 we have these inexplicable ’jumps’ in time where big chunks that would be explanatory for the story line are simply skipped over. What happened, for example, in TST after Mary had ordered John to ”pull over” - did she give birth in the car? Or was little Rosie born on the sidewalk in the middle of London? Or was this just another labour pain after which they could continue to the hospital? We don’t get to know, because suddenly it’s time for the baby shower. Or in TFP, John and Sherlock jump out of an exploding 221B Baker Street in London, but next moment they’re suddenly hijacking a fisher boat out at sea, perfectly unharmed. How did they even get there? And what happened in between? We never get to know.
This is not how you construct a believable story, is it? All in all, time and space are being handled in a very sloppy manner in BBC Sherlock - actually from start, but increasingly so until it gets really absurd at the end of TFP. Which is a bit illogical in a story about a detective where the facts and details are supposedly essential to his crime solving. In this show one can get the impression that time is not a linear chain of events, and space is not even relevant. But maybe it’s all just a matter of perspective?
Not so long ago, I saw this post from 2014 on my dash (X), now with an addition by @sarahthecoat (X) which in turn linked to this very interesting meta by @impatient14 (X). The latter is about BBC Sherlock seen from a space-time continuum, a concept which I find truly mind-boggling and very fascinating - thanks for the link, @sarahthecoat! Here’s Wikipedia’s representation of the space-time continuum (X):
This idea originates from Einstein’s theory of relativity. The speed of light is constant. If space has three dimensions, time can be seen as the fourth dimension. In the representation above, space has been reduced to only two dimensions, leaving the third for time. The observer is placed at an event in Origo (O), the null point where all the time and space axes and the two ’light cones’ of future and past events meet. A signal with equal or less speed than light can travel from O to a position and time within the future light cone. Therefore it’s possible for event O to have a causal influence on this future event. The future light cone contains all the possible events that could be causally affected by O.
Likewise, a signal with equal or less speed than light could have travelled from a position and time within the past light cone to O. The past light cone contains all the possible events that could have had a causal influence on O.
But what has this to do with BBC Sherlock? Years ago, we had this really interesting discussion based on a meta by @gosherlocked about ill-treated children in BBC Sherlock (X), where we tried to explore what could be seen as ’real’ events in BBC Sherlock, and what could be seen as purely metaphorical representations. @ebaeschnbliah made a good point explaining how things only happening inside Sherlock’s head would still appear just as ’real’ to him, since every action from a person always starts from within their own brain. I think this idea of a ‘inner universe’ might also be consistent with space-time continuum: within the light cone of possible, future events even absurd things can occur, because in our fantasy everything is possible. So if Sherlock is setting up scenarios within his mind palace, separated from other people’s reality, he might get to absurd conclusions that appear very true to him. And to him the time-line might even seem logical and normal, even if it would appear twisted to an outside observer.
In light of more recent discussions around @sagestreet’s analyses of possible starting points for Sherlock’s extended mind-palace - EMP - (X), I felt inspired to try to apply @impatient14’s idea of the space-time continuum to my own view of this show.
As far as I can see (with my very limited understanding of the topic, because this ’timey-wimey’ stuff is a bit confusing, and a far cry beyond my ’event horizon’ :D) the space-time continuum idea seems to correspond with EMP theory and also with a lot of other stuff we’ve been discussing for the last few years after S4 aired.
However, when it comes to the observer’s point in the space-time continuum, the moment when Sherlock presumably enters his EMP and starts running scenarios of possible future events, I like to see things a bit differently. I’m still inclined to hold on to the ’possibly-raggedy-theory’ as @sagestreet calls it, which places this moment right after John’s wedding.
I have several arguments for this, and some of them involve John’s online blog, which we can all still find on the wayback-machine (X), and also in the mirrored version on tumblr (X). I’ll try to describe my view here, followed by an attempt at argumentation. It might be a bit much to read, but I’ll do my best to point out the main components, so please bear with me 😊. But first of all I recommend you to read @impatient14 ’s space-time meta (X).
Now there are things I have to admit, after years of self-knowledge, they are beyond me. Like common logic (lol) and things like physics, even basic one. So I’m not going to pretend that I really understand this. However, I infinitely appreciate that what I now know I have understood on an instinctive level has a scientific explanation. @possiblyimbiassed you always manage to make more clear and technical what I usually throw there by intuition.
In the end it always comes back to the idea that we are literally looking at Sherlock, that we are seeing not what is happening to him, but what is going through his head, and not necessarily while it is happening to him. And it’s not a blind shot from the Moffits, it’s how Doyle told us his character thinks (x).
I love when you say that the observer is Sherlock but that he is making an effort to see things from John’s point of view.
This kind brings together our little corner of interpretation with those who see the show through John’s eyes, and if I can link things I’m always happy!
Whichever way you look at it, Moriarty and John are closely related. The day Sherlock begins his association with John is the day he learns about Moriarty. The enemy to defeat to get what he sensed suddlenly he wanted. Love.
Sherlock Holmes is his own worst enemy. On an intimate and meta level. To be able to love he must fight not only against those barriers that the author has built for him as a miserable defense against the prejudices of the time in which he was created, but also against all those superstructures, that rigid armor in which subsequent adaptations have locked him up.
Moriarty is his free potential and for that him appears at the exact moment Sherlock sets his gaze on John. Moriarty’s purpose is to burn Sherlock’s heart, to set it on fire, but not in the sense of annihilating it in the sense of making it burn, the same “end” that Dracula does. It does not burn, it burns with love. But I think I’m moving away from the subject.
Inserting all the things that do not are rational before and after the hypothetical (but probable) OD, inserting them in the cones of light of the past and present, seems to me only a possible confirmation of what we have intuited. And while we’ve never seen Sherlock overdose after TSOT, we know from TAB that this has happened to him, and it’s also strongly suggested in TST. And in hindsight, six is only double three, it’s just the same story, three, repeating itself.
Sherlock is possible (if not probable) that he cannot compute all the past and future variables, untangle them and manipulate them to get a certain result or a specific answer, but that’s what Sherlock Holmes does. He works the hypotheses, works out the consequences, and the most probable, owever if impossible, is the right answer. It’s his way of working, of thinking. No wonder that things really work in this way in his brain, except for now the answers he has bring up, are still not satisfactory. But he has discovered a lot, that he has to be more sincere, that he has to pay more attention, that he has to expose himself, that he has to trust the possibility that he and John can longer be no just characters, but human beings.
that’s a great point that sherlock meets john, and hears of moriarty, the same day (or thereabouts). in terms of his “function in the narrative”, moriarty is the flaw that must become the strength. as the flaw (internalized homophobia), he must be overcome. as the strength, he is then simply sherlock’s sexuality. repressed and denied, he’s a dangerous loose cannon. we have yet to see what the integrated aspect will look like.
@raggedyblue if we are to believe Sherlock in TST, “Intuitions are not to be ignored. They represent data processed too fast for the conscious mind to comprehend”. So maybe you’re actually a genius. 😀 I’m certainly not pretending to comprehend the concept of space-time continuum either. This is complex stuff and physics was not exactly my favourite subject in school. (I struggled with it, but I remember once in high school we had a practical test on time to connect a simple light bulb with cables and a battery and a switch and whatnot. I managed to make the bulb shine, while the high-grade students in my class failed. 😆) But it’s still great fun to play with the concept of space-time and try to put it to test, isn’t it?
I really love your idea of the Mind Theatre, @raggedyblue, it fits so well with how I imagine Sherlock’s brain works in canon as well as in our show. And as for trying to see it from John’s POV, Sherlock explicitly says so in TAB:
MARY: You’ve been reading John’s blog – the story of how you met.
SHERLOCK: Helps me if I see myself through his eyes sometimes. I’m so much cleverer.
It’s all there in the text, it’s just the timing of it that is confusing; when did he manage to read it if he was in his Mind palace all those five minutes on the plane? (Bad timing as usual - Sherlock often tends to say the right things at the wrong moment, doesn’t he? Like in THoB when he expresses happiness over having solved Henry’s intriguing case, John says:
JOHN: Sherlock …
SHERLOCK: What?
JOHN: Timing.
SHERLOCK: Not good? )
But what exactly would John’s POV help Sherlock see? I don’t know, but maybe himself in an emotional context? Hence the water metaphor taking prevalence in S4? When you describe what Sherlock has to fight against, @raggedyblue , I also imagine him struggling desperately under water, trying to breathe (even if ’breathing is boring’ 😅), like when he’s fighting with Ajay at the pool in TST.
Even if Sherlock cannot fully control his own future (no one can), not even inside his Mind Theatre, he sure as h*ll can influence it. But, as you say, he needs to be more sincere and dare to expose himself to Sentiment. Because the main problem with Mycroft is that he’s wrong; caring is definitely an advantage.
@sarahthecoat I do like your observation that Moriarty is both a flaw that must be overcome and a strength that must be recognised. Jim may be seen as ’the virus in the data’, but he’s also the information that wants to break free and has the potential to change the story into being modern and ’alive’, as opposed to circular and ’always 1895’. In TST the counter on John’s blog is no longer stuck on 1895 - let’s hope that we’ll see in S5 how that plays out in Sherlock’s and John’s shared ’reality’.
yes!
[This was completely missing from my tumblr, via every search function and everything! So I’ve reuploaded - thanks anon for letting me know!!]
This section of the meta is going to deal with the events at Sherrinford – I’ve broken TFP up into three sections to try and get the most out of it. This isn’t just a read through like the first part of the meta, it has a specific structure, much like Eurus’s trials for the boys, so it’s really important to take this bit in one chapter. My hypothesis is thus – that each episode of s4 has been a different obstacle to be broken through in Sherlock’s mind, and that each of them is represented by one of the different Sherrinford tasks. It’s essentially an illumination of Sherlock’s progress through his mind – but it’s set up by Eurus, who is Sherlock’s mental barrier, so these are going to represent Sherlock’s darkest fears about each of the obstacles. Ready? Let’s go.
We take up the episode at the pirate hijacking, which is quite BAMF, but also illuminates a couple of things that we should bear in mind going into this episode. The first is that the transition from a blown up Baker Street to Sherlock and John hijacking a boat without a scratch on them is absolutely bizarre and leaves SO many questions – it’s dream-jumping of the most obvious kind. The second is that water has played a long role as a metaphor through the show, particularly in the EMP sequence, and it’s climaxing now – we are in the deepest waters of Sherlock’s mind.
Mycroft and John working together in the disguise sequence is metaphorically lovely – in the Oscar Wilde scene of the last part we saw Sherlock’s brain and heart finally coming together, and here for the first time they’re working together to give Sherlock the ability to go and confront Eurus. This is what makes Mycroft’s line so powerful. He says:
Say thank you to Doctor Watson. […] He talked me out of Lady Bracknell – this could have been very different.
Comic throwaway? Maybe. But given what we know about Lady Bracknell from the first part, this also has a more powerful meaning – heart!John finally stopped brain!Mycroft from being an obstructive force in Sherlock’s psyche, and they started working together instead to save him. This could have been very different is far more loaded than it sounds. All this whilst creating an image of Mark Gatiss as a Victorian aunt – wonderful.
When we first meet Eurus proper, her similarity to Sherlock is striking. She plays the violin – this isn’t a Holmes thing, because Mycroft doesn’t – it’s Sherlock’s motif throughout. Her hair is like a feminine Sherlock, her pallor and cheekbones match Cumberbatch. For reference, this is a picture of Sian Brooke and Benedict Cumberbatch together in real life.
I’ve done a section on why I think Eurus is the most repressed part of Sherlock’s psyche, and his traumatic barrier to love and life – I sometimes glibly refer to this as gay trauma, but that’s its essence. The similarity between Brooke and Cumberbatch in this scene is really compelling, looking the same but lit and dressed in opposite colours. Similarity and difference both highlighted. Even nicer, the white of Sherlock’s shirt is the same notable brightness as Eurus’s uniform, but it’s hidden under his jacket – a visual metaphor for her being hidden inside him.
Eurus gives Sherlock a Stradivarius as a gift. This should set alarm bells ringing for anybody who has seen TPLoSH. If you haven’t seen The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, please do so immediately because my God you are missing out, but TLDR – a Russian ballerina offers Holmes a Stradivarius to have sex with her so she can have a brainy child, and he declines because he’s gay. (This is not just my interpretation, this is genuinely what happens, just to be clear.) Eurus giving Sherlock a Stradivarius is a deliberate callback to the film which Mofftiss cite as their biggest inspiration; just like the ballerina tempted Holmes to feign heterosexuality, so does Eurus – and both make clear that it’s not without its rewards, which is unfortunately true for real life as well. This moment in Sherlock’s psyche also recalls the desperate unrequitedness of Holmes’s love for Watson in TPLoSH, a reference to our Sherlock’s deepest fear at the moment – he has realised his importance but not John’s romantic/sexual love for him, as we’ll see. So here, trauma!Eurus isn’t just referencing closetedness, but is actively drawing on a history of character repression with which to torment Sherlock – metafictionality at its finest.
The Stradivarius is specifically associated with closetedness, but violins more generally in the show are used to show expressions of love that can’t be voiced out loud – think of John and Mary’s wedding, or the desperate bowing of ASiB. So Eurus, gay trauma that she is, telling Sherlock that she taught him to play is a moment of distinct pain – she is the reason he can’t speak his love aloud, but instead has to speak in signs.
When Sherlock plays ‘him’, rather than Bach, to Eurus (he has a big Bach thing with Moriarty in s2, take from that what you will because I don’t know!), he’s playing Irene Adler’s theme. As a fandom, we’ve generally agreed on associating Irene’s theme with sexual love, which ties in nicely with Eurus’s question – has Sherlock had sex? It’s unanswered. At the end of ASiB, Irene calls Sherlock the virgin, suggesting that he hasn’t.
My favourite moment in s4 without a doubt is Jim dancing to I Want To Break Free. I know it’s the most boring thing to say, but my two greatest loves are Andrew Scott and Freddie Mercury, so it was like Christmas. Here it is also Christmas, but there are two possible timelines. I hypothesise that this refers to Christmas 2010, but it’s absolutely conceivable that it could be Christmas 2009. If we acknowledge that Sherlock is in a coma in 2014, then five years ago is Christmas 2009; however, given that we’ve jumped to 2015 in dream time, I’m going to make the guess that Jim’s visit to Sherrinford is supposed to take place in 2010. This ties up with the idea that this is when Moriarty first started taking an interest in Sherlock, who had never heard of him before ASiP, particularly as this is all in the EMP.
I firmly believe that Jim represents the fear that John is in danger – I highlight this in the chapter on HLV, where you’ll recall we first encounter Jim in the EMP and he sends Sherlock on his journey through the EMP with the words John Watson is definitely in danger – a pretty big sign. Even without this, though, his biggest threat to Sherlock has always been hurting John, whether in TRF or with the idea of burning the heart out of him with Semtex. It’s not unreasonable then to assume that MP!Jim first getting inside Sherlock’s subconscious to represent this fear happens in 2010, when he first meets John. He slips in and stays there, and he melds with Eurus. We see this in the powerful visual of the two of them dancing in front of the glass as Jim’s image slowly becomes Eurus’s reflection – the fear of John dying embeds itself into the gay trauma that Sherlock has stored up, even without him realising it. This ties in nicely with the choice of I Want to Break Free, which is famous for its use of drag in the music video – Jim melding into Eurus is the dark side of queer genderbending that we hate to see. It’s also a pretty fitting song name for an intensifying of repressed gay trauma, even without the association with queer king Mercury.
[A side note to all of this – there were wonderful TEH metas about trains in tunnels being sexual, which isn’t just a tjlc thing but is a well-established idea in cinema – Moriarty’s consistent train noises here seem like a horrifyingly inverted version of that sexual longing.]
Task 1 – The Six Thatchers
The governor is set up as a mirror for John in this task, which provides some helpful context for the episode as a whole. Heart!John makes this comparison himself, by drawing out the similarity between the situation with the governor’s wife and his with Mary, though in this case the governor does kill himself because of his wife – or so it seems. The suicidal instinct matches with everything we’ve learned about John in s4, but I want to hypothesise, perhaps tenuously, that he’s more connected with Eurus than we might think. We know that Eurus has had control of the governor for quite some time, and one of the things we hear her saying to the governor in the background of the interrogations is that he shouldn’t trust his wife. This is an odd thing to pepper into the background when he’s about to commit suicide for her, and perhaps suggests that he’s more of Eurus’s pawn than he lets on, though I grant this may be spurious.
The idea that he distrusts his wife because of Eurus is important, however, because we’ve already seen John engage with Eurus in various forms, but this seems like an extension of E; Eurus, aka Sherlock’s hidden self, has been making John doubt Mary, even before she shoots Sherlock. John cannot know she’s a spy at this point, so it’s unlikely he’s doubting her goodwill; he’s simply doubting her.
Before we look at how the actual task impacts the governor and how that illustrates what’s really going on in TST, it’s worth pointing out that it is the governor’s engagement with Eurus which prompts the entire shutdown of Sherrinford and forces Sherlock (with brain!Mycroft and heart!John ever at his side, of course) to engage once and for all with Eurus. This points to everything that s4 has been telling us – that Sherlock’s understanding of the relationship between him and John, including his power to save him (we’re going to see the governor play the foil here) is what sends his brain into stay-alive-overdrive. Sherrinford is the peak of this.
Summary of the task, for those who hate TFP: Sherlock is given a gun and told he can pick either John or Mycroft to kill the governor, otherwise the governor’s wife will be killed by Eurus. As I’ve written about in its chapters, TST is about Sherlock trying to get to the bottom of Mary and why she tried to kill him – and, of course, the impact this will have on John. In brief, by displacing the shot onto Mary in his mind, he’s discounting his own importance and instead thinking about what it will mean for John to lose Mary. His greatest fear is that losing Mary will break John, and it isn’t until the end of TLD that he recognises that the return of John’s suicidal ideation isn’t over Mary, but over him. TFP presents the horror version, the version of TST that Sherlock’s trauma wants him to believe but which he has to overcome. In this case, Mycroft and John resolve to keep the governor alive in their passivity, but that passivity – Sherlock’s coma – is not enough to keep the governor from killing himself over Mary. This is the most feared outcome from Mary’s death that Sherlock can think of – his fear of losing John combined with John’s love of Mary, which in TST Sherlock is still taking as read.
Double naming in this show should never be neglected, and in this case we learn shortly before the governor dies that his name is David. Again, the dramatic manner in which we learn this (on the moment of execution) draws our attention to it – we know another David in this show.
Yup – Mary’s ex who’s still in love with her from TSoT. So even though Sherlock is experiencing the panic of John killing himself for loss of Mary, his subconscious is still pointing out to him that that’s not what’s happening here. This mirror version of John that he has set up, who is broken by the loss of Mary as Sherlock fears in TST, is actually the other man in Mary’s life – even with Eurus forcing the worst possible scenario onto him, this still can’t quite fit John’s character. And so we move onto the second task.
Task 2 – The Lying Detective
This section of the Sherrinford saga is the three Garridebs, the closest thing that the fandom has ever got to a collective trauma. I do think, however, that it’s fully reclaimable for tjlc and means the same as we always wanted it to; I also think that it’s possibly the most gutting part of Eurus’s metatfictional power play.
If you haven’t read The Adventure of the Three Garridebs, it’s quite short and the most johnlocky of the Holmes canon, so I’d thoroughly recommend. For the purposes of mapping bbc!verse onto acd!verse, however, here’s the incredibly short version. A man called Evans wants to burgle Nathan Garrideb, so he calls himself John Garrideb and writes an advertisement from a man called Alexander Hamilton Garrideb (make of that what you will, hamilstans) declaring that he wants to bequeath his fortune to three Garridebs. “John” gets someone to pretend to be a Howard Garrideb to get Nathan out of the house to meet him – he comes to burgle the house but Holmes and Watson are lying in wait. He shoots Watson, and Holmes thinks Watson is seriously injured and so we have this wonderful section:
“You’re not hurt, Watson? For God’s sake, say you are not hurt!”
It was worth a wound–it was worth many wounds–to know the depth of loyalty and love which lay behind that cold mask. The clear, hard eyes were dimmed for a moment, and the firm lips were shaking. For the one and only time I caught a glimpse of a great heart as well as of a great brain. All my years of humble but single-minded service culminated in that moment of revelation.
“It’s nothing, Holmes. It’s a mere scratch.”
He had ripped up my trousers with his pocket-knife.
“You are right,” he cried with an immense sigh of relief. “It is quite superficial.” His face set like flint as he glared at our prisoner, who was sitting up with a dazed face. “By the Lord, it is as well for you. If you had killed Watson, you would not have got out of this room alive. Now, sir, what have you to say for yourself?”
Mofftiss have referenced this moment as being the greatest in the Holmes canon for them, the moment when we see the depth of Holmes’s affection for Watson, and so it seems odd to waste it on such a tiny moment in TFP. Many fans, myself included, were really upset to see Eurus drop all three Garridebs into the sea, the implication being that tjlc would never be real, and it was that moment that caused many (including me) to walk away. I came back, obviously, but I completely understand why you wouldn’t. However, I want to map one Garridebs story onto the other to show how they might match up.
The Garridebs that Eurus presents us with are not the three Garridebs from the story. In the story, there are three physically present Garridebs – Nathan, John and Howard – although admittedly only Nathan is an actual Garrideb. Alexander was completely invented by John and existed only in a newspaper advertisement. Evans, alias John Garrideb, is the criminal in the Garridebs story; Alexander is an invention.
So – what happens if we substitute John for Alex in bbc!verse, as in canon they are the same person? This is interesting, because double-naming means that John becomes the killer. Whilst it’s true that John Garrideb is known as Killer Evans for his murder of a counterfeiter back in America, in canon he is done for attempted murder – of John Watson, of course. Here we have a situation where a John is set up killing John. This is exacerbated by the victim in bbc!verse being called Evans; Roger Prescott, the counterfeiter, would have been a much more canonical nod to the books, so we can assume that the choice of Evans is therefore significant. It should be noted that Evans and John/Alex Garrideb are the same person in acd!canon - so killing Evans is a representation of suicide. But, in case we weren’t there yet, the reason that Evans took the name ‘John’ is acd!canon is very likely to be because Evan is Welsh for John – so whatever way you look at this situation, you have Sherlock deducing John killing John.
This is, of course, exactly what Sherlock deduces at the end of TLD, far too slow, when we see Eurus shoot John in an exact mirror of the shot from TST – I explained in a previous chapter why this means that John is suicidal without Sherlock. However, much like the passivity of Sherlock, John and Mycroft in the first task, here we see that Sherlock’s act of deduction is good, but can’t actually save anyone; Eurus kills off our Garridebs moment as Sherlock is left to watch, and it’s notable that heart!John is the most distressed about this. Remember, in the first task Eurus left Sherlock with an image of a John who was suicidally devoted to Mary, and although the Garridebs moment is one which metafictionally highlights the relationship between Sherlock and John, she’s still presenting him with a Garridebs moment in which he is fundamentally unable to save John. This is a direct result of the Redbeard trauma that Sherlock has experienced – helplessness is key to that, and this is what Eurus has come to represent in his psyche. But – Eurus isn’t real, Eurus is testing Sherlock, trauma trying to bring him down, and Sherlock’s job in TFP is to break through the walls that his consciousness has set up for him.
The power in Sherlock saying I condemn Alex Garrideb is heartbreaking, then, because it is Sherlock recognising that he is the reason that John is going to die. Eurus is there to make him confront that reality, which she explicitly makes him do. We get the split-second moment where he thinks he’s saved Alex, and then he’s plunged into the sea – but remember, this is Eurus taunting Sherlock, presenting him with worst-possible-scenarios. TFP is set up as a game for a reason – it is a series of hypotheses cast in Sherlock’s mind by his trauma that he has to break through one by one. Remember, although she’s ostensibly trying to hurt Sherlock, Eurus’s ‘extra’ murders in the first two tasks are aimed at hurting John, which wouldn’t make sense if he weren’t the mp version of Sherlock’s heart.
Task 3 – The Final Problem
Pretty much straight after this episode aired, people were pointing out that Molly is a clear John mirror and that pretty much all of the deductions Sherlock makes here could be about John. Again, we’re seeing Sherlock’s emotions being resolved in a heterosexual context – the presence of Eurus means that he’s unable to process them in their real, queer form. However, if we take Molly to be a stand-in for John in this scene, it may tell us what TFP is about – and the scenario that Eurus presents will be the worst one, the thing that is causing Sherlock the most pain.
TLD/the previous task have shown us that John is in imminent danger, so the transition to Molly Hooper’s flat being rigged with bombs is not a difficult one; we must assume this to be the suicidal ideation that we’ve just deduced. The time limit suggests that Sherlock is running out of time to save him (fucking right he fell into a coma SIX YEARS AGO). Putting Molly in a bad mood isn’t really necessary for this scene – they make her seem a lot more depressed than she would necessarily need to be, and they emphasise her aloneness and her ability to push people away, which isn’t something we know Molly to do. These traits are all much more important in the context of a suicidal John – they paint a much clearer picture of someone who is depressed and alone than we really need for this scene, where it’s not relevant to the surface plot.
Sherlock and the audience believe he has won this task, but of course he hasn’t - there were never any explosives rigged up in Molly’s flat, and it was a ruse to destroy his relationship with Molly. This is what he fears then – what if he’s wrong? What if coming back to life because he loves John won’t save him – it will destroy him and their relationship? The problem to be wrestled with is how to save John – according to the symmetry of these tasks, that is the final problem. We know that the scenario Eurus has presented isn’t real, but Sherlock doesn’t; he is being held up by his inability to cope with interpersonal relationships, and to get to the bottom of that we’re going to need to understand what he’s been repressing – part 3 of this meta.
There’s a wonderful shot just as Sherlock is destroying Molly’s coffin which zooms up and out through a ceiling window, all the way above Sherrinford, as though to emphasise not how remote Sherrinford is but just how deep inside it Sherlock is. Given what we know about the height metaphor as well as the water metaphor, this shot is a pretty clear way of telling us – this is as deep inside Sherlock’s mind as we go, this is the nub. But Sherlock smashing up the coffin has another powerful connotation – he’s refusing death. In terms of metaphor, he’s refusing John’s death – there will be no small coffin, because he will not let it happen – but the visual of him smashing the coffin also suggests that he is rejecting his own death. The two are, of course, inextricably linked. Our boys’ lives are tied together.
Epilogue: The Hunger Games
I can’t watch this without thinking of The Hunger Games, I just can’t! But regardless of how much Sherlock seems like Katniss in this section, let’s press on. I don’t count this as one of the typical tasks, because this isn’t Eurus presenting a ‘haha I tricked you scenario’ - far from it. This is Sherlock’s way into unlocking his repression. The key takeaway from this scene, as we’ll see is that trauma has hurt Sherlock, and it’s going to try pretty hard here to mutilate him – but it can’t kill him.
We get a great line from Sherlock at the beginning of this, where he tells John that the way Eurus is treating him isn’t torture, it’s vivisection. Because it’s an experiment? Perhaps. But the more logical way to phrase this would be that it isn’t vivisection, it’s torture. Torture is much more emotionally charged than vivisection as a phrase – from a writer’s perspective, this phrasing is strange because it seems to negate rather than intensify the pain our characters are undergoing. Why, then, would vivisection be more important than torture? Well, put simply, vivisection is the act of cutting someone open and seeing what’s inside – and that’s what we’re doing. This isn’t just an analogy for experimenting on people, it’s an analogy for going literally inside somebody. In EMP world, then, these words are well chosen.
Sherlock is offered the choice – John or Mycroft? Heart or brain? We might initially think that this is Eurus pressuring Sherlock into death, but that’s not the case at all – we know from the early series that Sherlock has survived before (although very unhappily) with just one of these two dominating the other. It has taken his EMP journey to unite them into a functioning entity, and Eurus is bent on destroying that, mutilating either his emotional capacity or his reasoning, the two parts that make him human. This is a good sign, as well, that trauma has been acting on Sherlock through the first three series, when his psyche was dominated by brain!Mycroft - Eurus is keen to revert to that state, when trauma had control. It is touching, then, that brain!Mycroft is willing to relinquish that control and leave Sherlock with his heart, perhaps because this new unity allows him to recognise how damaged the Sherlock he created was. We should also note that this diminishing of Sherlock’s heart is compared to his Lady Bracknell, which we know to be his repression of all Sherlock’s romantic/sexual impulses – except this time it’s less convincing, because his brain doesn’t believe it anymore. What is also devastating is heart!John’s lack of self-esteem or knowledge, the sense that he isn’t useful to Sherlock, which of course will be proven wrong.
[if anyone has thoughts on the white rectangle on the floor, do let me know. It’s bugging me!]
Mycroft says that he acknowledges there is a heart somewhere inside of him – again, this is emotionally powerful in the context of the brain/heart wrangling that we’ve seen inside the EMP. Just as Sherlock’s psyche has tried to compartmentalise them all this time and they’re finally working together, now there’s an acknowledgement that the compartmentalisation into personae is maybe inaccurate as well – brain!Mycroft’s pretence to be emotionally detached is not in fact correct, as we’ve been suspecting for a long time.
Brain!Mycroft also states that it’s his fault that this has all happened because he let Eurus converse with Jim. If you spend any time thinking about the Eurus + Jim meeting, like many elements of this show it doesn’t make sense. There isn’t a feasible way this could have been planned, recorded etc in five minutes, and although it’s true that Jim could have come back to shoot the videos under the governor’s supervision, it’s not clear why he’s so important. Unless he takes on the metaphorical significance that we’ve assigned him, letting Jim see Eurus seems pretty unimportant – he is only the garnishing on Eurus’s plan. Instead, Mycroft is at fault for letting John be in danger – not only did Sherlock misdeduce Mary (although we can lay the blame for that at the feet of heart!John - see meta on TST), his reasoning was blinded and so he missed John’s suicidal urges and the danger to his life. Brain!Mycroft holds himself responsible – all of these EMP deductions are way late, comprised of things Sherlock should have noticed when his brain wasn’t letting his heart in.
Five minutes. It took her five minutes to do this to all of us.
The lighting is dramatic, so I can’t properly gauge Ben’s expression at this moment, but his eyes look crinkled in confusion, just like they are at the moments when a sense of unreality starts to set in in TAB. Indeed, these aren’t very appropriate words for when you’re about to kill your brother; it’s like he’s being distracted, like there’s something important that he’s missing. Mofftiss are drawing attention to the sheer impossibility of the situation – and Sherlock’s nearly there. His Katniss Everdeen move, threatening to kill himself, is the recognition that his trauma doesn’t have that power – it can hurt him and deform him by twisting his psyche into unbalance, like it has before and like Eurus is trying to here, but it cannot kill him. We can see that Sherlock has risen above the one-sided dominance that he began the entire show with when Eurus shouts at him that he doesn’t know about Redbeard yet – that’s not going to change his mind today, but it’s a direct throwback to the days when it would have, in ASiP with the cabbie. Character development, folks.
The shot of Sherlock falling backwards into the dark water links to two aspects of the EMP. One is the continued metaphor of water to represent sinking into the depths of his mind. The water is so dark it looks oily – it could be argued that this is the oil that is corrupting the waters of his mind as we finally cut to the repressed memories. I quite like this reading, though I have little other oil imagery to link it to in the show. The other notable point is the slow-motion fall backwards – instead of showing Sherlock, John and Mycroft all falling, we cut to Sherlock falling backwards exactly like he did in HLV when he was shot by Mary. This is a really clear visual callback. Even though we’re going deeper, we’re linking back to the original shooting, back in reality, suggesting that this depth is paradoxically going to lead us back to the start. To go back to the oil imagery, don’t forget that oil floats on water – although it looks like we’re sinking, there’s a real sense that these repressed memories are actually pulling us to the surface of Sherlock’s subconscious, quite unlike the deep zoom out we saw when Sherlock was destroying the coffin.
And that’s it for part 2 of the TFP meta! Part 3/3 will deal with such highlights as John not being able to recognise bones and presumably getting his feet pulled off by chains. Good thing this is just a dream. See you then!
This is beautiful. I love this! (TGG)
Er, beauty is a construct based entirely on childhood impressions, influences and role models. (TSOT)
SHERLOCK (in reference to the music): Beautiful. GUARD: Kills you in the end. SHERLOCK: Aye. Still beautiful, though. (TFP)
EURUS: What do you think? SHERLOCK: Beautiful. EURUS: You’re not looking at it. SHERLOCK: I meant your playing. (TFP)
(All quotes courtesy Ariane DeVere)
So we have this impressive sentence in the best man speech:
I am dismissive of the virtuous, unaware of the beautiful and uncomprehending in the face of the happy.
But if you looks closely, at least the middle part is complete bullshit. From series 1 on Sherlock has definitely known what he thinks is beautiful and has expressed it clearly. He is not unaware of the beautiful, never was. Of course his concept of beauty may vary between traditional (the stars, music) and unconventional (admiration for a clever case of art fraud) but he knows quite well what is beautiful.
The famous TSOT quote has traditionally been applied to male beauty as a construct based on the image of Sherlock’s own father that is reflected in Victor and later in John. So may we infer from this that someone in his life told him about astronomical and musical beauty as well? Probably.
And this made me think. If one part of the sentence is wrong, what about the others?
Now virtue may seem an old-fashioned concept so maybe we should replace it with morals or ethics. Sherlock clearly knows right from wrong and good from evil and usually applies his considerable skills to support the former and fight the latter. When did he ever dismiss moral or ethical people or behaviour? Even when he dismisses the concept of caring, one second later he states that he wants to help people:
SHERLOCK: Will caring about them help save them? JOHN: Nope. SHERLOCK: Then I’ll continue not to make that mistake.
I never understood how anyone could see Sherlock as amoral or cold. He saves people. And if something keeps him from doing so, he chooses not to adhere to that behaviour.
In short, Sherlock is not dismissive of the virtuous as long as you define those as people acting in a moral and ethical way and not as some hypocrites who just take on the semblance of virtue.
Now for the last one - uncomprehending in the face of the happy.
This is not something Sherlock talks about often but you cannot doubt that he wants to ensure John’s happiness (whatever that may be). And there are his words to Molly:
I hope you’ll be very happy, Molly Hooper. You deserve it.
It does not matter that neither Mary nor Tom succeed in making people happy, what matters is that Sherlock thinks they do and that he understands happiness very well. At least in others. Sigh.
So what is the conclusion? Sherlock either does not know himself (which I cannot really believe) or people have brainwashed him into thinking that he is dismissive, unaware and uncomprehending. Which with regard to Mycroft’s behaviour seems very plausible. And this is something he has to break free from, he has to liberate himself from this trap. Which, again, leads me to the idea that we are experiencing Sherlock’s self-experiment on how to break free of the limitations of 130 years.
Tags under the cut
„Which, again, leads me to the idea that we are experiencing Sherlock’s self-experiment on how to break free of the limitations of 130 years.“
Very much agreed @gosherlocked ! I think this is exactly what the show is about. Stripping the story of its facades, dismantling the mechanisms of „brainwashing“, confronting the character Sherlock Holmes with the misconceptions of his own character that were shaped by simplified adaptations and wrong understandings of the original canon. Because I came across a gifset from THoB yesterday: Sherlock was conditioned to fear. Reminds me of Pavlov‘s dog. And ghost stories are gay stories, but there are no ghosts. It‘s just all very gay I guess.
And about the best man speech: I still think it’s not just a love letter, but a confrontation between cases vs. drama, coverstory vs. lovestory, Lestrade vs. Sherlock culminating in the realization of Hamish. Fits very well with your quote I think.
yes
I want to break free since 1893
Okay but - being serious - these are two really distinctive moments, arguably the most famous Holmes illustration and then a completely superfluous stylistic choice by Mofftiss. I already think I Want to Break Free is about breaking free from the narrative, and we know from TAB that is bound up in the fall - what might this tell us about Moriarty’s part in that narrative???
@lukessense @sarahthecoat @raggedyblue @possiblyimbiassed @ebaeschnbliah @therealsaintscully @helloliriels tagging in case you have thoughts ?!
@thewatsonbeekeepers instead of imprisioning Moriarty in his tight grip and going over the edge with him, in TAB Sherlock jumps after Moriarty with a smile on his face. He realizes that he is after all a man out of his time. So why not let Moriarty break free? Free him off the chains, let him off the leash, break the glass. Might very well turn out that Moriarty isn’t as villainous as he seems to be, because „there are not ghosts […] save those we make for ourselves“ (or others make for us).
As for TFP: „I want to break free. I‘ve fallen in love.“ The last part of the lyrics is missing, but maybe that’s exactly the part Sherlock finds on the 13th floor of Sherrinford. Moriarty is supposedly dead but people tend to magically reappear on BBC Sherlock, don‘t they?
Queerness, that doubled side of the self (so many times over in Sherlock, as well as the doubles in ACD canon, and the drag doubles in I Want to Break Free Queen vid) is no longer an enemy! No longer to be drowned inside us. Echo everything you’ve said, absolute *chef’s kiss*
and then a second addition - @frothyrothy pointed out in the tags that it also echoes one of Mercury’s best loved poses! I’ve just attached one image but if you stick him into google images half of the images are him doing this:
so it’s vital to mix the original homophobia with something which is so wonderfully unabashedly queer!
ooh, love the idea of moriarty becoming no longer an enemy! in the metaphorical reading, he is by turns “mr sex”, homosexuality, and homophobia, all tied up together. truly breaking free could mean shedding the phobia aspect, leaving only the love. which could mean resolving the antagonistic relationship, instead of the simplistic “defeat”.
way back during the run up to s4, when mofftiss were saying “expect the unexpected”, i was trying to think of any scenario that hadn’t already been explored thru meta or fic. all i could think of was, what if john and sherlock had to team up with moriarty (and maybe “mary” too) to solve or survive something? i guess that would actually be an act 5 story rather than act4 though.
Yes to all of this! Also: I love the fact that ’the damn hat’ is falling off in Sidney Paget’s illustration. But in TAB Holmes is literally throwing it away. And then in TFP Jim tells us he wants to break free. Getting rid of the stereotypes and breaking free from the hetero norm is what I’m reading from this. In canon Moriarty is supposed to have died in FINA and is never allowed to show up again, even if he’s mentioned and his body was never found. But in BBC Sherlock he’s constantly popping up as an ’unsolved problem’. ”Welcome to the Final Problem”. ;)
and in any case? what way to (not) die? literally hugging your worst enemy, fall in the worst possible way. If it’s not about love what? Has who archenemies in real life? Nobody. Not even Sherlock Holmes has only one, Moriarty, the infamous villain that we know exists only because Holmes himself told us. On the show Sherlock only has one friend. One archenemy, one friend, two sides of the same coin. That part of Sherlock that loves (and loves men) and the beloved. Connected because everything is connected and I have the distinct impression that this is a game that Doyle started. There was no Moriarty in the original stories because Moriarty was already that part of Holmes that was not accepted, by him but above all by society. A criminal. He was extremely tall and thin … He was clean-shaven *, pale, and ascetic-looking. Moriarty FINA
*the love and the object of love have necessarily things in common
A criminal for his inclinations. Eventually Holmes returned from the waterfall, but Moriarty still lies in the bubbling waters. And it’s time he founds his freedom. No villain is really this in Sherlock Holmes, except himself (according to the Moffits themselves) The other villains in the story are Doyle who covered it up (albeit understandably) and those who perpetrated and stubbornly perpetrate this situation. Freddy Mercury is a common thread that unfolds along this story of liberation (x).
I want to break free since 1893
Okay but - being serious - these are two really distinctive moments, arguably the most famous Holmes illustration and then a completely superfluous stylistic choice by Mofftiss. I already think I Want to Break Free is about breaking free from the narrative, and we know from TAB that is bound up in the fall - what might this tell us about Moriarty’s part in that narrative???
@lukessense @sarahthecoat @raggedyblue @possiblyimbiassed @ebaeschnbliah @therealsaintscully @helloliriels tagging in case you have thoughts ?!
@thewatsonbeekeepers instead of imprisioning Moriarty in his tight grip and going over the edge with him, in TAB Sherlock jumps after Moriarty with a smile on his face. He realizes that he is after all a man out of his time. So why not let Moriarty break free? Free him off the chains, let him off the leash, break the glass. Might very well turn out that Moriarty isn’t as villainous as he seems to be, because „there are not ghosts […] save those we make for ourselves“ (or others make for us).
As for TFP: „I want to break free. I‘ve fallen in love.“ The last part of the lyrics is missing, but maybe that’s exactly the part Sherlock finds on the 13th floor of Sherrinford. Moriarty is supposedly dead but people tend to magically reappear on BBC Sherlock, don‘t they?
Queerness, that doubled side of the self (so many times over in Sherlock, as well as the doubles in ACD canon, and the drag doubles in I Want to Break Free Queen vid) is no longer an enemy! No longer to be drowned inside us. Echo everything you’ve said, absolute *chef’s kiss*
and then a second addition - @frothyrothy pointed out in the tags that it also echoes one of Mercury’s best loved poses! I’ve just attached one image but if you stick him into google images half of the images are him doing this:
so it’s vital to mix the original homophobia with something which is so wonderfully unabashedly queer!
ooh, love the idea of moriarty becoming no longer an enemy! in the metaphorical reading, he is by turns "mr sex", homosexuality, and homophobia, all tied up together. truly breaking free could mean shedding the phobia aspect, leaving only the love. which could mean resolving the antagonistic relationship, instead of the simplistic "defeat".
way back during the run up to s4, when mofftiss were saying "expect the unexpected", i was trying to think of any scenario that hadn't already been explored thru meta or fic. all i could think of was, what if john and sherlock had to team up with moriarty (and maybe "mary" too) to solve or survive something? i guess that would actually be an act 5 story rather than act4 though.
So today I began thinking about the two thumb drives, the Bruce-Partington missle plans and the AGRA drive, both which were procured at great cost and then thrown away without being read; one into water and one into fire.
From here my brain (as it is wont to do) spiraled into an extensive essay on how the thread of technology that runs through this modern adaptation of Sherlock Holmes depicts technology (and how it's exploited) largely as a force of evil, often leading to or significantly contributing to the downfall of our heros.
Man vs. Machine is as much a source of conflict as the real life villians - to the point that Sherlock is equated to a machine and the main villian (Moriarty) is a virus. As I mentally traced this thread - the way technology was used - I couldn't help but wonder if John's blog ceasing to function before the end of S4 is a good thing.
Man has broken free from the machine. No longer is he held hostage by the persona transmitted through the blog. No longer can the information shared (like lack of knowledge of the solar system, or a description of the pink phone, who their friends are, etc.) be used to attack them. No digital ghosts talking from beyond the grave. No cameras from hired assassins spying inside their flat. No altered records that change them into the enemy. No public that is always waiting to turn on them.
Maybe Sherlock and John have soured the milk with some unpalatable stories (to wean us from our interest in them), given us the two finger solute, and went to live their best lives outside the purvue and power of the Machine.
Good for them.
Good for them.
hmm!
… All it can do is delay it for a while. Whilst Westley’s hair in that film horribly resembles my lockdown hair, more happily the fantastic movie The Princess Bride continues to resemble Sherlock – there was a very popular meta on the links between the two for a while there that can be found here: X.
This chapter is going to run through EMP theory as it begins, covering mainly the second half of HLV. It’s important to note, however, that the first half of the episode provides a lot of clues about the way certain images function in the mind palace, which backs up EMP theory quite nicely – the last ideas that Sherlock has going around in his brain before he is shot inevitably swirl around in there whilst he’s unconscious and form an important part of the train of association.
I toyed with the entirety of HLV being in EMP, because parts of it are weird (think Magnussen pissing in Baker Street, or the fucky MP glasses), but I ultimately dismissed it, though I’m willing to be challenged on this. I dismissed it as being a part of Sherlock’s post-wedding drug abuse for a few reasons. The first is that we only see Sherlock wake up from his drug abuse, not go into it – EMP is something that’s going to be hard for viewers to swallow, and Mofftiss are actually quite good at dropping big hints and drawing attention to the important bits along the way. That’s really not the case in the crack den, which is well integrated into the plot and has no traces of Sherlock’s mind palace. The second is that, actually, the premise of HLV is far too integrated into the main plot of s3 to be entirely MP – the CAM stuff and Janine at John and Mary’s wedding could be Sherlock extrapolating, but it seems like a bizarre extrapolation to make given how much fuckier the s4 mysteries are (London aquarium, Culverton’s drugging, the entirety of TFP) - the only MP fuckiness we get in HLV really takes place after Mary shoots Sherlock, like the restaurant scene with CAM or the Appledore Vaults being his MP. Mary shooting Sherlock also has far too many throwbacks with Norbury and Eurus in s4 to be completely irrelevant. So, with that in mind – let’s go.
To understand what’s going on in HLV, we’re going to need to understand the metafiction going on – and this is where a good knowledge of acd canon comes in. Most of HLV isn’t actually based on His Last Bow, but on Charles Augustus Milverton X. To give a brief synopsis (although I would thoroughly recommend this story, not least because it’s incredibly queer) Holmes is engaged by Lady Eva Brackwell (Lady Smallwood in our world) to stop Milverton (Magnussen) from showing her husband some indiscreet letters she wrote to a squire some years ago. Holmes realises he can’t get Milverton under the law, so gets engaged in disguise to Milverton’s housemaid (Janine) in order to break in and burgle him. Watson agrees to come too. When they break in, Milverton is talking to another woman (Mary) who shoots him in revenge for Milverton’s use of information causing her husband’s suicide. She escapes and Holmes and Watson burn all of Milverton’s letters, and then escape. They refuse to help Lestrade solve the murder.
All of this lines up pretty evenly with HLV until the moment when Sherlock is shot. Admittedly there are minor changes to the Smallwood plot line (who committed what indiscretion), but these are minor and seem to be to make the plot work in the modern day – nobody cares if someone has a working-class ex anymore. But we get huge canon divergence from the shooting scene onwards.
Sherlock believes that Mary is Smallwood because of her perfume. This is a rational enough assumption to make, but it’s not just based on perfume. We know that since Lady Smallwood has engaged Holmes, Lord Smallwood has committed suicide – so she fits the profile of the blackmailee from Charles Augustus Milverton perfectly. She fits the patterns that Sherlock expects to see in his deductions. Mary does not – our first point of canon divergence. It sets up a painful parallel between John and Mary and the couple from Charles Augustus Milverton; they never name the indiscretion that led the husband in acd canon to kill himself, and given the company that Doyle kept (Wilde, Douglases including Lord Francis Douglas, who was thought to have killed himself shortly after being ennobled – much like the unnamed nobleman - because of his sexuality) it seems reasonable to assume this silence is euphemistic. Let that mirror linger in your thoughts, because it’s important.
Mary is the housemaid who has broken in to shoot Magnuessen/Milverton – so far so good. Although Holmes was hidden in the original stories, he was still present and sympathetic; the logical canon-following route here is for Mary to kill Magnussen, and that’s exactly what Sherlock expects her to do – but she doesn’t. She shoots him instead, and Sherlock can’t understand this. As we’ll see, he spends the rest of HLV trying to justify this pattern-breaking to himself, and is finally unable to.
Once Sherlock has been shot, the Molly/Anderson/Jim/Mycroft section which sets up EMP is fairly self-explanatory – the only thing I want to dive into here to point out is that this is the first appearance of Jim in the EMP, as a kind of restrained beast, and his most pivotal line is the fear he represents: John Watson is definitely in danger. This sets up what he’s going to represent for the rest of the EMP sequence. Other people have delved into the rest of this section before, and extensively – I don’t have a huge amount to add. We know John is in danger from Magnussen, because that’s ostensibly why Mary was there, but she didn’t seem to care as much as the housemaid from the initial stories did. We also know from the original stories that Magnussen has the power to make John suicidal, but in this story he hasn’t yet – but because of this, Sherlock senses that the danger is much more than a loss of reputation. It’s heart-re-starting-ly important.
The next bit I want to jump into is Sherlock’s conversation with Janine in the hospital. A lot of people have argued that this is one of the only real moments following Mary shooting Sherlock, and that Janine fiddling with the taps is part of what induces Sherlock’s fucky mind palace wanderings. I don’t buy into that theory – the more I think about this scene, the less it makes sense as being real in the context of EMP theory. The first reason for this is, very simply, that it means Sherlock has woken up after the realisation that John is in danger. The driving idea behind EMP theory is that Sherlock has to spend s4 making that realisation and trying to wake up – having that actually happen at the very start of EMP, only to be aborted, is bizarre. Secondly, it completely negates the idea that Mary’s actions are possibly fatal, which is a theme that reverberates through s4 (and all the chapters of this meta) - if Janine fiddling with the taps is what pushes Sherlock back into his MP, then by rights Janine should appear in S4, instead of the preoccupation it has with Mary and shooting.
What, then, is going on here? Sherlock is told by MP!Jim that John is in danger – and then imagines he wakes up. In his MP, Janine appears, puts him in pain and puts him back under. She, then, is the reason he can’t wake up. Janine has been Sherlock’s beard, and it’s quite possible to read her as being a symbol of Sherlock’s repression, but I think that’s a simplification; discounting TAB, Janine doesn’t appear again, and even then it’s minimal, whereas s4 is literally built around the concept of repression. As I go into in a lot more detail in chapter 9 (X), which is about the use of drugs to mask our darkest secrets in TLD, it’s the drugs that represent Sherlock’s deepest repression, in this case the morphine that he uses to mask the pain. Having Janine be the one who is fucking with the taps simply makes the link clearer, particularly when we might not associate hospital drugs with the other kind of drugs that Sherlock normally takes to take the pain away – however, it’s clear that the drugs that anaesthesise his pain do the same job as Janine – hide his queerness. Janine turned vindictive causes him intense pain, and he needs to turn back to the drugs to slip back under. Bearding was always temporary in this show, at least for Sherlock; drug abuse is a consistent problem and becomes a running metaphor for Sherlock’s repression in the EMP.
Janine being a symbol here helps me to make sense of the couple of lines that didn’t make sense to me otherwise. If Janine were real, getting rid of the bees would be awful – she gets the future our boys want and she destroys it. But if she’s a symbol in Sherlock’s mind of that bearding, and a barrier to waking up and saving John, then her sitting there, pushing him back into a coma and tearing away the future he longs for – that makes a lot of sense, and is 100% more devastating. The other line that has never made sense to me is Janine telling Sherlock that he could have just been honest with her, that she knows what kind of man he is. This line doesn’t make sense unless she means a gay man. I would be really interested to know how else this can be construed. This line can make sense in the real world if we accept that Janine is working with Mary – which must be true anyway, because otherwise Mary can’t get to CAM – and also wants Sherlock to get involved in that situation, although God knows why – the Janine-is-Jim’s-sister theory feels like it might work here, but I don’t think there’s enough evidence for me to unravel it. If Janine genuinely does open the door out of affection for Sherlock, regardless of her relationship with Mary (the two aren’t mutually exclusive), Janine knowing Sherlock is gay doesn’t make sense at all - but Sherlock’s mind turning that beard back on himself to mock him? Absolutely makes sense. Remember, this is the loathing that pushes him back into the deep coma – this scene is really pivotal.
Sherlock vanishing from the hospital bed, despite being nearly dead, is pretty much medically impossible, and is probably the first impossible thing that we see happen in EMP – but it should be a red flag that that’s where we are. It’s also nice and symbolic of his movement away from that surface level, a level which we see him return to briefly in the hospital scenes in TLD when he realises his place in John’s heart. Touching stuff.
We then move into Sherlock’s interrogation of Mary behind the facade of the houses. In case we missed the reference, Mofftiss actually have the phrase the empty house used, a reference to The Adventure of the Empty House X, the story on which TEH is meant to be based. It is telling, though, that very little of The Empty House features in TEH, other than that it is the moment when Sherlock comes back. Others have commented on the minor relevance of Moran to the story and hypothesised that Mary is the real Moran – I think that the facade scene presents that as a genuine possibility. I don’t want to overstate the similarities that The Empty House bears to HLV, but Mofftiss do draw attention to it – and there is something interesting about the criminal being revealed by Holmes only after the criminal thinks they’ve killed him. That bears a particular relevance to Mary – and links her to Moriarty as his potential second-in-command. The most important link, however, is that in The Empty House, Holmes tricks Moran into incriminating himself by creating a dummy Holmes for Moran to shoot at. It’s true that Mary doesn’t shoot at dummy Sherlock (John) here, but the dummy is set up to incriminate her, and she acknowledges that this is a basic trick, one she should have known before. The links of the empty house and the dummy, both made explicitly familiar in the dialogue, do a lot to link Mary’s character to acdcanon!Moran.
This, however, all takes place in Sherlock’s brain. In several scenes, we’ve had Sherlock engage with two concepts in his mind that he can’t know about; one is Sebastian Moran in The Empty House, which only takes place in ACD canon, but even if you think that link is tenuous, he’s also engaged with his canon future as a beekeeper in Sussex. And then, on top of this, there is the problem of Mary versus the housemaid from Charles Augustus Milverton. My suggestion is that these aren’t just jokes put in by Mofftiss to say look-we’ve-read-the-books – Sherlock’s mind is actually using the bees from the original stories to negotiate his relationship with his sexuality, and The Empty House to try to understand Mary’s motives. This is confirmed on a grand scale by TAB – he goes back to ACD canon!Holmes to navigate the problems of his everyday life – so Sherlock is not just a modern Sherlock Holmes, he is on some level self-aware of his existence as a fictional character. As we’ll see going through, his awareness of the existing canon of stories is fascinating and tied up in his repression – how do we break out of canon character, and what has canon been hiding, are two questions which repeatedly come to the fore. Mary is the character who most consistently breaks these canon expectations – a lot of TAB is about this – and that’s something he really struggles to contend with, and is one of the reasons that the reality of canon!verse starts to break down in TAB – it’s not sustainable, and it doesn’t tell the full story. These two moments early on in EMP show him negotiating his identity and his experiences in his mind in relation to what he knows about Sherlock Holmes – an early iteration of a theme that’s going to become much larger.
The first thing Sherlock does after being pushed under by Janine is go and interrogate who Mary is in his brain, whilst also working out her impact on John. Sherlock comes up with a pretty reasonable background for who she is in the Leinster Gardens scene, but this isn’t really what’s important – it’s the The Empty House parallel which sees him subconsciously making the link to Moriarty. ACDcanon!Moran, unlike bbc!Moran, was the last assassin sent after Sherlock from Moriarty’s network – this means that the dismantling-Moriarty’s-network plot from the start of TEH becomes more than a fill-in-the-blanks montage, it means that the show retains its key villain to the end – it structurally works, in a way that other plot-level ideas haven’t. [@ eurus holmes. anyway]
Something that’s interesting here, is that there is a real shift away from the implications of the dummy in acd canon. In acd canon, Moran attempts to murder Holmes, which is a way of catching him in the act and sending him to prison. This is about catching Mary in the act in a similar sense, but it’s about being caught by John. This is interesting, because it shows that Sherlock’s priorities have shifted from acd canon – or, more accurately, we’re seeing the priorities that weren’t reported in the Strand. The emotional impact on John is far more important than the legal ramifications – and this in itself is the shift which the creators have been pretty emphatic about taking from the original stories.
John often represents the heart in Sherlock’s MP – I haven’t quite worked out how to distinguish between heart!John and Sherlock’s imagined John yet, and am flying on instinct, which is definitely not sustainable! But it strikes me that a lot about HLV and TST is about understanding the impact of this shooting on John, and that therefore this needs to be John as Sherlock imagines him.
We’re still with Sherlock’s imagined John as we move into “the Watsons’ domestic” in 221B – but, as so many have pointed out, for a domestic between the Watsons, they feature very little as a couple! The core emotional dialogue is often said to come between John and Sherlock, but despite Martin Freeman’s excellent performance in this scene, that’s not strictly true either. The centre of this scene is Sherlock explaining John’s love for Mary. It’s not about the Watsons – it’s about Sherlock understanding what’s going on, which fits into EMP theory exactly. I firmly believe that Sherlock begins his EMP trip believing that John loves Mary, and slowly unravels the threads to realise that it’s actually him John cares about, and this scene is testament to the first part – the deduction that he makes about John loving Mary is flawless, but despite explicitly referencing himself, he fails to see the obvious – hiding in plain sight - that such a deduction could equally be applied to himself. He’ll get there in the end (TLD), but right now, that’s what makes this scene so painful for me.
Turning Mary into a client is about moving into the rational part of Sherlock’s brain, trying not to let emotion cloud it, even though it’s incongruous and unworkable. We’ll see Sherlock’s brain and heart slowly integrate, finally uniting in TFP, but for now he thinks rationality is the way forward. This also helps us to set out a framework for what happens with Mary in the EMP – clients are deduced, worked out, they present problems - never forget Mary being framed as the abominable bride – and that’s what is happening here. She is the first problem of the extended mind palace to be solved.
But this scene is metafictional too, because it gets to the core nub of Mary – as John puts it, she wasn’t supposed to be like that. And, canonically, he’s right. If we follow acd!canon, Mary is not meant to be an assassin, but more importantly for HLV, she’s also supposed to save her husband. She’s meant to be all-out devoted shoot-Magnussen type – but instead she shoots Sherlock. When John says that, then, it’s not just a nod to an updated show – it’s a genuine problem that Sherlock has to contend with, because in neither acd!Mary scenario nor housemaid!Mary scenario is she obeying the framework of a woman who loves her husband. This failing marriage is not in the stories, it’s not supposed to happen, and things that come outside of established canon come outside of Sherlock’s pre-programmed mould – we can think of this as a way of thinking about our own childhood programming to be straight/cis/etc., but in a more self-conscious, literary way!
And then, Sherlock’s response: you chose her. That’s why she’s different, and this is actually a vital line. It suggests that the programmed canon that we know these boys follow, because they have to – that’s not what this show is about. Our characters are agents, and for the first time in history, their lives are dictated by free choice. John chose this Mary, not the Mary of canon – and Sherlock himself makes explicit the comparison between John choosing Mary and John choosing Sherlock. The heart of the story is the choices that can be made for the first time. How incredibly exciting.
The ambulance people coming into Baker Street (seemingly without the door being unlocked?) is, I think, the real world blending with the mind palace world here – although not paramedics, there are people currently trying to restart Sherlock’s heart, and this scene shows us that he’s trying hard inside his brain, he’s working with them – he really doesn’t want to die. The idea of the outside world taking on a physical form in his MP is not incredibly hard to believe – I really recommend watching s02e02 of Inside No. 9, written by Mark Gatiss’s League of Gentlemen co-stars Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton, an episode which pulls this off marvellously, although with a big cn: for death. In this moment in Sherlock, we get the lovely lines
Sherlock She saved my life.
John She shot you.
Sherlock Eh – mixed messages, I grant you.
These lines are delivered so quickly between the two of them that it feels like Sherlock is talking to himself, like Mary isn’t even in the room. The way BC delivers ‘mixed messages’ – it’s as though there’s still a problem, bbc!Mary hasn’t been reconciled to good!Mary yet.
The next section on our whistle-stop tour is Christmas with Mummy and Daddy. Plenty of people have pointed out how Mummy and Daddy are very clear mirrors for our boys – you can see here X, or you can just look at this picture to be honest.
The Christmas scene doesn’t make sense in the timeline – there’s a great timeline diagram here X that shows how much fuckier than any other episode HLV is (excluding TSoT and everything post s3), and that doesn’t even take into account all of the jumping between scenes that we see in the Christmas bit. Jumping from Leinster Gardens to Christmas to Baker Street and back several times is chronologically odd and doesn’t seem to serve a purpose, except to show that the rift between John and Mary has lasted for months – and even that didn’t need such a complex interweaving of flashbacks that is so at odds with the show. It’s also at odds with the plot – why on earth did Mummy and Daddy invite John for Christmas, if he’s no longer living with Sherlock, and even stranger, why did they invite Mary if John and Mary haven’t been on speaking terms for months? This isn’t the way human beings behave. There’s also an old adage in writing which says to never move a conversation to a new place – it’s a waste of time and space. Have the conversation here, or have it there. Don’t abort it for no reason – and that’s exactly what they do here. Mofftiss are pretty experienced, and I’m inclined to believe that they’ve done it for a reason.
So, in MP terms, why does Sherlock gravitate towards his family home instead of Baker Street as the location to unravel John’s relationship with Mary? Bearing in mind that this is a continuation of the interrogation of their relationship, it seems interesting that he chooses to juxtapose them to the only loving couple we see in this television programme. Like a lot of parallels in EMP, this is something that our dads choose to draw our attention to; Daddy says to Mary “you’re the sane one”, as though every happy relationship has a sane one and a mad genius. And they draw attention to it again – Mary points out that Sherlock brought them here to see a fine example of happily married life.
Except, of course, like so much of this interrogation of John and Mary’s relationship in HLV and onwards, this doesn’t quite ring true. Because, of course, there is no mad genius in the Watsons’ relationship, and in terms of sanity Mary is certainly not the sane one. It’s like Sherlock is trying to fit them into the domestic bliss mould, but they just won’t quite go there. The comparison won’t quite be made.
The conversation between Sherlock and Mycroft, who has been established as his brain in TSoT (I cannot find this meta! Where Mycroft is brain and John is heart! Can anyone help?), is pretty straightforward – the brain is interrogating Sherlock’s obsession with the Magnussen case and why he can’t just let it go, and the emotion we see here from Sherlock is more powerful than pretty much anything we get in real life. I actually think this scene is one of the most vulnerable moments he has in the show – and there’s no way that vulnerability would be to Mycroft in real life. There’s also, crucially, no reason why MI6 should actually want Sherlock dead this early. It’s another tell-tale sign that the surface plot doesn’t make sense – we should be looking deeper. Sherlock has just brought down a terrorist network – MI6 should love him. What Mycroft is actually putting forward is that already, way before Sherlock kills Magnussen, pretty much as soon as he enters EMP this is a two-way fork. He can choose to die at any point. But he doesn’t.
There’s something that I really don’t understand here, though, which I think is important – Sherlock drugging the family with the help of Wiggins. This motif of drugging is something which comes back time and again to represent Sherlock’s repression – but here he’s not drugged. Wiggins is also a symbol of repression, but again he’s completely sober. Any thoughts on this would be much appreciated – I don’t like loose ends, and I don’t believe that another use of drugs is insignificant!
Then we have a quick flashback to the canteen scene. A lot of EMP theory has drawn on the canteen scene, and how phenomenally dreamlike the entire situation is. There is no way this can take place in Speedy’s – in terms of the timeline, it can’t even take place in the hospital canteen! However, it seems to draw on a mental image of Speedy’s because of the visual similarities between them (referenced in this meta, although this meta makes the argument for the reality of the scene X). Magnussen doesn’t seem to even have a bruise, despite being battered by Mary’s gun. This scene cannot exist. Magnussen picking at Sherlock’s food has often been seen as a metaphor for Sherlock being sexually assaulted whilst comatose, which is something I buy into – the food=sex metaphor has been striking from the beginning, and it suits Magnussen’s power play. It’s also quite possible in this scene that Sherlock thinks that everything fucky is real, and the absolute fuckiness of this scene draws it out – this is the scene that foreshadows the realisation that Magnussen is working from his MP, and of course that’s a realisation that Sherlock needs to make himself. The scene opens with a moment of dislocation – is this the hospital canteen or not? – and is about Sherlock working out what’s happening to him.
What’s really striking is that John has brought his gun to Christmas lunch, however. Bear in mind John-being-suicidal is the realisation that Sherlock is going to come to in TLD, but it’s prefigured here. We haven’t seen John’s gun since ASiP, when it was used to indicate that he was suicidal. It’s suddenly come back, but Sherlock misses its significance – he expects John to have it, but he doesn’t focus on the significance of the gun itself. He’s still thinking in terms of Mary and Magnussen. What’s significant is that John throws him the coat, which has the gun weighing down in its pocket. This prefigures that scene in TLD -
Faith!Eurus, who is a mirror for John in TLD, is thrown the bag, and we see Sherlock weigh it and then realise there’s a gun in it – too late. A bag is the female equivalent of a coat (*cries about pockets*) and the throwing motif with the heavy gun inside it is a clear link between the two moments. Sherlock didn’t recognise the significance of the gun in the first one, possibly because he couldn’t process the situation without mirrors (more on the importance of Eurus as a series of heterosexual mirrors later). When he realises in TLD that he’s made a mistake, that there’s something he’s missed, the implication isn’t that he’s missed it in his analysis of Faith!Eurus, because in no sense of the word does Faith!Eurus exist. What it means is that he missed it in his first, cursory analysis of John. Not the heaviness, but exactly what it meant. The symbols of John’s suicidal ideation start to appear and threaten to break in right up until the end of TLD – this is arguably the first point we start to see them.
Hypothesis theory – that Sherlock is running simulations in his MP – is not something I hold with through all of EMP, but I do hold with it to the end of HLV. It’s something that we know Sherlock does in real life because of THoB, both in acd!canon and in bbc!canon – he stages something in order to prove it to himself. In this case, he’s not able to see the war between Mary and Magnussen play out, so he’s running it himself, and we’ve already seen him desperately trying to prove Mary’s innocence, and more than that her love for John. But this trip to Appledore will prove that impossible.
It’s possible that the Appledore Vaults being Magnussen’s MP is the first time that Sherlock recognises that this is a simulation, and that this isn’t real. He certainly looks incredibly distressed, although that could also be because of the immense danger he’s put John in. However, the vaults being a mind palace doesn’t make sense as surface plot, as so many have pointed out – we’ve literally seen the letters before. (I grant that Magnussen could be bluffing, but it seems odd to draw attention to the letters having a physical form nevertheless.) However, the fact that Magnussen’s MP is in vaults underground is really interesting – imagery to do with going deeper and deeper into Sherlock’s mind is pretty much always falling or sinking, as seen in both TAB and TST in particular. That idea of descending into one’s mind is prefigured very neatly here, and should get us thinking about height generally (I’ve talked about the reverse side of this in the previous chapter X). I also think, although am not an expert on sound, that we can hear a slight eerie dripping when Magnussen walks through the vaults, which ties thematically to the water that is linked to falling/sinking in the rest of the EMP.
Fast forward past the face-flicking, and Sherlock shoots Magnussen. This is the culmination of the metafictionality of the episode, and I think it’s really fantastic. The simulation that Sherlock has run to prove that Mary loves John has failed, because the only way to save John is to kill Magnussen and he’s the only one who can do it – so in short, Sherlock becomes the housemaid, not Mary. He takes on the role, and it breaks canon completely. He’s supposed to be above that, disinterested – but instead he becomes the woman who kills out of love for her husband. He is no longer filling the traditional role of Sherlock Holmes in the narrative. He has disproven the point he needed to make – and so, as brain!Mycroft seems to suggest, deeper waters still. The cut to little Louis Moffat screaming in the firing line instead of BC is another hint that this isn’t real – we might just about accept it here as showing Sherlock’s vulnerability, but given that the entirety of series 4 is about childhood trauma coming back up, the resurgence of a screaming child of Sherlock as he recognises his new place in the narrative is brutal. (Yes, Sherlock has a lot of gay trauma – we’ll find out more when we meet Eurus.)
Eurus, incidentally, comes up here – you know what happened to the other one. I want to home in, though, on Mycroft’s line about Sherlock, that there’s no prison that he could be incarcerated in. This is a bizarre comment, given the events of TFP – it could just be sloppy writing, sure. Or, again, these inconsistencies are pointing to something else, that Sherrinford isn’t a real place and that Sherlock’s death sentence is not a sentence, but self-imposed.
So much has been said, so eloquently, about the tarmac scene, that I don’t know that there’s much more that I can say. The importance of the plane as being Sherlock going to his death is really important as an image that will repeat later – again, see previous chapter X. I’ve also pointed out that there is no point at which Sherlock is told Moriarty is back, yet he seems to know it automatically – another suggestion that this is EMP, and there’s a lot more going on.
The final thing I want to focus on in this episode, though, is the east wind. The east wind is referenced in His Last Bow, which gets very little coverage generally in HLV. His Last Bow is (I believe) the final Holmes story, and the east wind that is coming refers to WW1 – Holmes tells Watson that there is an east wind coming and Watson thinks he means it’s cold, and Holmes laughs and jokes that Watson is a stalwart who will always be there. This is a touching moment to end the stories on, and might remind us of the It is always 1895 poem that will become so important in TAB. Except, this time, John accepts that there’s an east wind coming – he references it repeatedly, actually, as a threat, both here and in TFP. The east wind is the wind of change that comes through the changing years in acd!canon. This seems particularly important here – the social changes between 1895 and 2014 are vital for the next episode, highlighting the idea that the update of the show is a really central part to it. There’s no world war ahead of Holmes (please God @2020) so the wind of change must be referring to something else… I really couldn’t possibly comment as to why the change of time period might be so important!
This chapter has been a long one, but I hoped it help to set up EMP theory on firm foundations. We’ll move into TAB next – see you there!
loving this series! a few very minor comments.
i wonder if there are restrictions around showing drug use and viewer age certificates in the UK. I mean, it's really truly weird and f'ed up if you can show a character shooting another character, but not a character injecting himself. but that could have something to do with what makes it to screen and what has to be implied.
i think? we did see john's gun? briefly in TGG & THOB, but off the top of my head i am not sure whether they are also references to john being suicidal, could be? still, your point is taken about it here in HLV, and the parallel with the matching scene in TLD.
i am loving all the stairs code, height meta. wasn't sherlock's hospital room on an upper floor? that's part of how we can tell that him "sneaking out" is clearly Not Real. i forget if we learn which floor though. (callbacks to the roof of barts, 4 floors, the balconies in TBB, etc)
and if there is dripping water in the appledore vaults, that ties them to the leinster gardens empty house, which also had water dripping. those pesky emotions are leaking in!
i am also loving the whole metafictionality theme, reminds me of the line at the end of TEH, "time to go be sherlock holmes" (in the stoopid hat) so this thread of the story goes back at least that far, and prob farther.
I never imagined that they had filmed the phone call "live" .... but if Loo was there and also dressed the same then it is the only explanation ... is it?
This makes me wonder if they used the kitchen in one of the trailers as her set, or if there was a house near the beach. I assume if ben was there, it was to film his own scenes of getting out of the helicopter. I only watched TFP once, and i used knitting to get through it, but i bet the same helicopter on the same beach was used for both.
So, I finally found and listened to the entire play “The Secrets of Sherlock Holmes” (Starring Jeremy Brett and Edward Hardwicke)
And…wow.
I don’t know what it is about the play, aside from the fact that it is centered around their friendship, but some parts just…got me.
It alternates between canon and the moments in between, that Watson does not write.
Most importantly, it deals with Holmes’s treatment of Watson, and his own darkness.
Holmes is not a villain in this story, he’s just lost. He apologizes to Watson again and again. (“I crave your forgiveness”)
The narrative is about one thing: they need each other.
Holmes says, “I would have been dead within two years without Watson”. He also said something about Watson keeping him from his addiction and out of depression, though the audio was choppy so I can’t quote it exactly.
At the end the secret is revealed (I won’t spoil) though the drama of the secret is hardly the drama of the play, just a factor.
At the end, there is a line spoken by Holmes that just…got me. He says:
“Watson, you are the only fixed point in a changing world.”
Watson replies with a soft:
“Thank you, Holmes.”
I don’t know why, it was just kind of beautiful.
So yeah, this was my review thingy lol.
Link to the recording is in the notes. I had no idea there was a recording of this. And it’s fantastic. 🙏🙌
I’ve been meaning to write about Secret since I first heard it, and I don’t have the time to do this properly, but I’ll just say:
Remember TFP, and the whole “I’ve fallen in–” and then the music cuts off? and it’s that line from I Want to Break Free, and the missing word is love?
WELL.
THERE IS A PARALLEL MOMENT in The Secret of Sherlock Holmes, which I think is meant to indicate the secret itself, where Holmes says, “If music be the food of–” and then he cuts himself off.
The entire quote is “If music be the food of love, play on.” It’s from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. The man who speaks the line has been pining for his neighbour for a long time. (Sidebar: he ends up falling in love instead with the heroine of the play while she’s dressed as a man–Twelfth Night is pleasantly queer.)
What’s been giving me that particular oh-mofftiss-you-filthy-dogs feeling ever since I listened to The Secret of Sherlock Holmes is that they would make such a deep cut reference to this extraordinarily bizarre and dare I say romantic play, and specifically to the one line that screams LOVE without actually saying it.
ANYWAY carry on, and thanks for bringing this up!
That’s a great parallel catch. (And nice tags) I listened to it with the continuities and divergences from ACD canon in mind and hadn’t even begun to think how it might relate to Sherlock. But yes. Yes.
I don’t want to give any spoilers to the plot of the play for those yet to hear it so I will keep this vague but it occurs relatedly there’s a mega strong theme of secrets and more specifically choosing what to reveal, or indeed conceal, with, or in, words. It has therefore a lot of connectivity to the idea of the unreliable narrator in ACD canon (and by extension, beeb Sherlock) and plays with that notion. This aborted Shakespeare quote cut off incomplete is but one example of self-editing in the play, which comes in various guises.
Twelfth Night’s fingerprints are all over canon (especially in The Empty House, but in other stories, too); this has been gone over pretty thoroughly by a lot of past Sherlockians. Twelfth night is also the main reason that January 6 is generally accepted as Sherlock Holmes’s birthday, which is a meta unto itself, given that Sherlock’s birthday should signal the end of twelfth night, yet none of us believe that the narrative becomes more real by the end of TLD.
So, it would make sense for Jeremy Paul/Jeremy Brett and Mofftiss to independently reference Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night – but oh, what an interesting way for Mofftiss to do it, by invoking The Secret of Sherlock Holmes. I looked for this scene in my copy of the play and couldn’t find it, so I’m wondering if it might have been a late addition, and also what the context for the quote was within the play.
I’ve written a bit about The Secret of Sherlock Holmes here (very spoilery), if anyone is interested; possibly my favourite thing that Mofftiss pulled from it is Moriarty’s insane train impression in TFP, which is a delightfully obscure reference!
The first time we see Moriarty, Jim from I.T. , he’s dressed as a twelve-year-old gay boy with a tender face and low pants.
It is also curious in this picture watching Molly and John stare fascinated Jim. Molly is a mirror of John, it’s no wonder she/he was hit by Jim, because it’s Mr. Sex after all, it’s the part of Sherlock that seduces people. But he’s gay and it’s something Molly and John have long denied. One could think this is like the sexuality of SHerlock at a first stage. It isn’t for nothing that we are in the middle of a case involving facts dating back to the 80s. We will see Moriarty dressed in a similar way when he attacks the jewels of the crown, presumibilemte a reference to when for the first time (a memory of, recalled because the conditions have resurfaced similar), desire has turned into a fact. The first sexual experience, more or less shared, perhaps isnt even important.
however this is a rather suggestive image
The other times we see Moriarty perfectly dressed in tailored clothes, a feature that compares him to Sherlcok and to Mycroft. Sherlcok wears clothes like armor.
We will then see Motiarty dressed as John (thanks to this fun meta X).
Sherlock’s desire has been shaped by the object of his love. A story teller in soft jumpers.
Ha ha, yes this is very apt @raggedyblue ! :))) ”A storyteller in soft jumpers”, I love it! (And I also love those funny cardigan gifs in your link). And Andrew Scott is always priceless, but one of his best scenes, in my opinion, is that one from TRF where he elegantly performs a ballet-inspired frontal attack on the crown jewels, shattering any glass walls in the way. ”I want to break free”, indeed! :)
wow, yes, the multi faceted mirroring of moriarty! I do love the "12 year old gay boy" using a dick metaphor to liberate his "crown jewels" from the glass closet. "Family jewels" was one of the first euphemisms for mens' bits that i remember learning as a child. Of course they'd go for the #1 top of the pile, of the whole country, for sherlock's metaphorical jewels! Isn't 12 about the age sherlock was when the carl powers case happened? So this is at least partly about "where he began", about ACD Holmes.
also, there is something a little bit funny about using a fire EXTINGUISHER as a dick metaphor in the crown jewels scene. By "funny" i mean sad and disturbing, since fire is a metaphor for passion and love. At least it's not set off, there is no actual fire to put out here. And then that reminds me of john using a fire extinguisher to break open the door in TLD, and that's... i'm not entirely sure how to feel about that.
OH, and moriarty uses his PHONE to set up the break in. I hope i haven't already strayed too far off topic, this just got me pinging on everything, the scenes are so packed!
We’ve made a lot of posts about potential closet metaphors in Series 4–like John Watson, trapped in a well, or Eurus, trapped on a plane. But we’ve mostly focused on individual instances. My question was: What do the trends among all the closet metaphors in Series 4 tell us?
So, I made a list of every potential closet metaphor I could find in Series 4. And it turns out that they all share 5 unifying factors: the victim, 1) a Sherlock or John mirror, is 2) trapped, 3) harmed, and 4) unrecognized for 5) far too long. They all reveal the harm that comes from keeping them in the closet. But they also suggest that once we know that they’re trapped, it won’t be too hard to make their relationship clear for all to see.
How does this play out in Series 4?
Charlie, a Sherlock mirror, dies hidden behind the seat in TST but remains trapped there until a week later.
We see this post from John’s blog:
A limbless body found decomposing inside a trunk in left luggage office in Waterloo station couldn’t be identified…
An unidentified body is found murdered and locked in a trunk. It’s been there so long that it’s already decomposing.
Norbury is a John mirror. She’s a widow with a drinking problem; Sherlock even asks her, “Widowed or divorced?” in the same way that he asked John, “Afghanistan or Iraq?”. She’s trapped in a physically small apartment and at a desk job that doesn’t recognize her abilities, ending up lonely and arguably insane.
Sherlock is literally trapped in the trunk of the car wearing painfully tight of the handcuffs.The whole charade was planned two weeks ago, and John doesn’t understand how Sherlock could have planned something that occurred so much later.
Faith is an almost offensively obvious John mirror. She inflicts self-harm and lives trapped “in isolation” and hidden from others (she has “no human contact, no visitors”).
Bonus metaphor:
Look at the size of your kitchen: teeny-tiny…Must be a bit annoying when you’re such a keen cook.
Combination food and closet metaphor! John wants to express his love (wants to cook), but trapped in the closet (small kitchen), he can’t express his feelings (cook).
Culverton chokes Sherlock, simultaneously trapping him in his grip and forcing him to stay silent. Culverton points out that no one will realize that Sherlock’s being murdered, because “no-one wants to suspect murder if it’s easier to suspect something else“. Sherlock’s room is locked, and he nearly dies because John doesn’t realize that Sherlock’s in danger and almost gets there too late.
Eurus kills a therapist (Sherlock mirror) and hides her trapped inside the closet. She’s been there since John changed therapists. My eternal thanks to @gosherlocked and @sagestreet for pointing this out and inspiring this meta.
The girl, a Sherlock or John mirror (depends on your interpretation), is trapped on a plane that will crash and kill her but nobody realizes that it’s actually Eurus, trapped in a “plane” since childhood.
and on a metaphorical level
Eurus, a Sherlock or John mirror (depending on interpretation), is trapped in a prison. Sherlock and John denied or didn’t know she existed for years. She feels lonely and unhappy. However, the prison is glass and she is ready to escape at any time.
Self-explanatory.
Sherlock and John are both trapped behind glass as they take too long to decide whether to shoot the governor. The governor’s gagged wife dies, and so does the governor.
Howard Garridebs, like John, has a drinking problem and a tremor in his hands. He’s tied up and gagged, and he dies because Sherlock doesn’t realize that Eurus will kill him even though he’s innocent.
(I’m sure there’s a meta on this and on mirroring with the other Garridebs, but I can’t find it for the life of me.)
The coffin, which would contain a dead person, belongs to Molly, a John mirror. Sherlock nearly takes too long to get her to say “I love you” because she doesn’t realize that her life is in danger. Bonus mirroring: Sherlock smashes the coffin and saves Molly from the threat of death, just as John and Sherlock’s love would free John from the harmful effects of the closet.
Sherlock is trapped in what he thinks is a prison cell. a room filled with memories of his childhood. He can’t get out immediately because he doesn’t realize that the walls are fake, and he can exit at any time.
Victor Trevor, a John mirror, is killed and hidden in a well, where he remains for many years because Sherlock doesn’t know that he’s there.
John is trapped in a well that will slowly fill up with water and kill him. Sherlock nearly doesn’t find him in time because he doesn’t know where John is.
In each of these cases, we see the harmful effect of being closeted (in the canon and in the audience’s mind) on John and Sherlock. The trapped people get hurt, often killed. Worse, just as the audience doesn’t know that John and Sherlock are in love, and John and Sherlock are unaware of each other’s affection, they can’t do anything about it. They’re trapped in the closet because nobody knows that they’re in there.
The length of time for which these people are imprisoned may reference the 130 years of closeted silence, but it might also be a nod to the fact that there was no canon Johnlock in S4. Alas, we have to keep waiting.
But there’s a spot of hope! Because there’s one more unifying factor that occurs only in examples from TFP: Once Sherlock or John knows that the person is trapped, it’s easy to free them.
The girl on the plane doesn’t crash because it’s just Eurus, who Sherlock can comfort. Eurus can exit her cell easily. Sherlock just pushes out the walls of the room. John magically escapes from the well. They don’t die because they escape–and it turns out that it’s not that hard to escape once you know you’re trapped.
Sherlock and John’s love won’t die, trapped in a metaphorical closet. Once they know that they love each other they can free themselves. And once the audience knows that they’re in the closet, they’ll have come out for the world to see.
Finally, their relationship will be free from silence.
Tags under the cut. I’d really appreciate it if anyone knows of other closet metaphors, or of meta on these that I didn’t see.
All direct quotes from episodes are from arianedevere’s transcripts.
this is excellent! I just the other day rb a meta about the s4 promo photo of the “burned out flat” and the open cupboard/closet doors on either side of john & sherlock. Havent had my tea yet, or i’d go find it. This all makes me very hopeful!
Wasn’t the other term given to small food kitchens a cupboard, also?
@tendergingergirl True true!
@sarahthecoat @may-shepard I was referencing this post, but I see that you guys have already found it :)
@devoursjohnlock said:
With respect to the coffin scene, I kind of love that we’ve reached the point where they don’t have to go to the trouble of filming a scene for deletion anymore; they can just say, “this is the scene we wrote but shot something else”.
Being “trapped” is such a Doyle theme, too. The stories that I tend to classify under “this offer is too good to be true” usually have an element of being trapped and imprisoned, often by a family member or by a false or surrogate family member. Watson mirrors are imprisoned by mirrors for his stern military father – or by mirrors of the character we know as Mary. Holmes mirrors are usually imprisoned by Mycroft mirrors. I doubt the use of the closet as a metaphor extends back to the 19th century, but regardless, these are “closet” stories.
Yes, absolutely! The fact that Molly was originally locked in the coffin definitely adds to the closet metaphors. And yeah, the imprisonment theme is absolutely a trend in the stories and frankly in most queer gothic novels which i need to write that meta about already
Thanks, everyone!
-soe
Excellent compilation @sherlock-overflow-error! I particularly like the hopeful prospect, that it’s quite easy for them to come out once they realise the possibility.
@possiblyimbiassed: this is just brilliant, thank you so much for this meta. I will think about other possible metaphors but this is quite an impressive collection.
How about Ajay who was trapped in Tbilisi and later escaped? We also see him in a small room drinking alone.
Sorry, @sherlock-overflow-error, of course this is your meta. My mistake. 😊
@gosherlocked Ah yes, thank you! That one should definitely go on the list.
Oh brilliant @sherlock-overflow-error!
Under duress of his emotions (Eurus), Sherlock confesses his love to Molly (John). It turns out that no one dies as result of that. That no one would ever die … Sherlock rightly resents the damn coffin / cabinet that made them waste so much time
yes! RB for all the discussion. @devoursjohnlock , that trapped trope in ACD stories is huge! Now i want to go back through canon again!
I was always a shipper of johnlock but after seeing some of your posts, I'm very curious about the potential of sheriarty...I've seen that you think that Sherlock is sexually attracted to Jim, but you also mentioned that Jim is in love with Sherlock? I never noticed that really, I thought he was only being 'scary'/'freaky' or something..Do you think there's any canon evidence that Jim is in love with Sherlock? Sorry for this long post, and English is not my native😄
Hey friend!!! To be honest, it is hard for me to differentiate between what is blatantly canonical in the show (very little is, in general) and what I think is so heavily insinuated, subtextually or not, that I personally count it as canon evidence. Furthermore, it’s hard to tell why a villain’s action stems from emotional frustration instead of just an attempt at creepiness and intimidation without making an extensive analysis of the character and the plot. I think there are quite a few signs of Moriarty’s torturing feelings for Sherlock but depending on how you are used to perceive a character’s motives, my interpretation might seem quite or not very accurate to you. Despite all that, I made a list of moments that show in my opinion that Moriarty is in love with Sherlock and isn’t just being creepy for kicks.
First sign of discomposure.
The reason this scene looks weird is because Jim is acting in an uncharacteristic way in this occassion. The thought of what it means to him to burn Sherlock’s heart makes him lose his composure. He tries to be scary in the beginning but he fails, his voice breaks and looks like he’s about to cry which he avoids by making an awkward expression in the end. So the issue Moriarty has with Sherlock is of an emotional nature and it is not just about the intellectual stimulation. What has Sherlock done to Moriarty to make him so revengeful? Nothing, except he showed complete indifference when Jim flirted at him at Bart’s.
Second sign of discomposure
When Sherlock chooses to shoot the bomb (and therefore die along) instead of just Moriarty. I won’t expand on this here because I’ve already written a lot in What happened in the pool scene where, in short, I explain why I think Moriarty wanted John to die, even if he had to sacrifice himself to achieve this, but Sherlock was supposed to stay alive. Sure, this can be a sign of extreme sadism rather than twisted love but if we think that’s he’s willing to die just to get John out of the way, then we can also assume he’s not just being freaky to intimidate the enemy. Apparently this is not blatantly canon but the fact that Moriarty didn’t want Sherlock to die technically is.
In the cell
Moriarty spent his time in the cell carving Sherlock’s name on the walls, so we know Moriarty is really obsessed with Sherlock and he’s not faking that at all (unless he just wants to scare Mycroft but I doubt it). He’s genuinely obsessed in an extreme and unhealthy way and if we take into consideration that 90% of the things he says to Sherlock are suggestive or very sexual, we can assume that his obsession is mostly of an erotic nature and the intellectual aspect of it is just an excuse or probably what made Moriarty fall for Sherlock in the first place.
Moriarty in the Mind Palace
Anon, you’re a Johnlocker, so you probably agree with me that the HLV Mind Palace was a sequence where Sherlock was eventually taken down by his feelings and heartbreak after John married Mary, a choice that made Sherlock devastated and John’s life troubled. Moriarty keeps company to the dying Sherlock, preparing him for the cascade of feelings as if he has experienced them himself.
Sherlock: You… You never felt pain, did you? Why did you never feel pain?
Moriarty: You always feel it, Sherlock. But you don’t have to fear it! Pain. Heartbreak. Loss. Death. It’s all good. It’s all good.
So, inside his mind, Sherlock knows Moriarty has experienced the terror of going through the pain of heartbreak and loss before dying and he also knows that Moriarty wanted to drag him in the same pit that he was. Seperating Sherlock from John, having him witness John going on with his life with someone else and then dying because of that was exactly what Jim wanted Sherlock to go through - take the same path, feel the pain and then die or be miserable forever.
The entire TAB mind palace
Whenever Moriarty shows up in TAB Sherlock’s mind palace, he’s aggressively flirting at (or with???) him and is very sexually suggestive which can mean three things at face value.
Granted, it can also mean that’s how Sherlock remembers him from when he was alive but… he did enhance the boldness in his mind, right? ;)
The “never random” Moriarty songlist
Two things are certain: 1. Moriarty chooses songs that fit his personality or a particular situation and 2. Moriarty has a fantastic taste in music. The most interesting song is “I Want To Break Free” by Queen in The Final Problem, an unexpected little diamond in this mess of an episode. Here are the lyrics. The first thing that comes in mind is that Moftiss chose this song for the “Prison - Sherrinford - break free” theme but the song actually is about a person that tries to break free from his feelings for his romantic interest and stop suffering from living without them. Rather suspiciously, in the lyric “I’ve fallen in l- (ove)” is when Jim decides he had enough of this song and takes off his earphones. That’s a very conscious decision by Moftiss and shows when the song starts getting frustrating for Jim.
So in general there is not much you can take at face value, something as plain as a blatant statement, but it’s probably the same case with Johnlock, judging from how controversial and unfounded Johnlock seems to be for many people as well. Once you make the connection in your mind, the ship becomes obvious. 85% of BBC Sherlock works in a subtextual way and actually there is canonical evidence but you have to pay attention and examine all the motives, actions and layers of each character’s personality. To me, Moriarty and John are romantic antagonists and that’s BBC Sherlock’s plot (at least up to Series 3) in a sentence. From what I’ve read, it even seems casual viewers acknowledge Moriarty’s romantic/sexual interest for Sherlock more than John’s.
I hope I helped a little although I’m dissatisfied with my answer as much as I am dissatisifed with Moftiss’ hesitation to explore beyond their heavy insinuations. I don’t know which ones you read, so I include a few metas where I explain in detail my interpetations of Jim’s feelings and actions within the canonical context (as much as possible).
*English is not my first language either and there is a chance it is noticeable*
i hadn't seen this one, excellent! Your metas changed the way i thought about jim, so i am always glad to read one.
“I have already explained to you (my dear Watson), however, that MY CAREER HAD IN ANY CASE REACHED ITS CRISIS, and that no possible conclusion to it could be more congenial to me than this.” (ACD The Final Problem)
This is Sherlock speaking … at the beginning of the trailer … trembling with emotion. Not Mycroft. It is Sherlock who calls for outside help.
Additionally it is a slightly altered canon reference to The Final Problem …. an excerpt from Holmes’ last note to Dr. Watson before he engages in the final confrontation with Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls
Related post by @green-violin-bow here Trailer
hmm.
Given that the canon note was addressed to John Watson, is there perhaps potential for us (the players) to ‘be’ John?
After all, in the show, he is ‘people’. He is ‘London’. He’s the narrator - the eyes and ears of the reader.
And he always comes when Sherlock calls.
There’s “many a crisis” in canon; these are not consistently relevant as far as I can tell, and the best of them have already been built into Sherlock except for the one you’ve spotted, @ebaeschnbliah. There are two others that I think deserve a mention because together, these are all Fall-related.
Here’s one from The Naval Treaty, with its knife’s-edge, life-or-death decision point:
“You come at a crisis, Watson,” said he. “If this paper remains blue, all is well. If it turns red, it means a man’s life.”
… which I’ve felt for a while might be influencing the red/blue intervals that recur in Sherlock.
The other is this all-the-world’s-a-stage scene from The Six Napoleons:
“Gentlemen,” he cried, “let me introduce you to the famous black pearl of the Borgias.”
Lestrade and I sat silent for a moment, and then, with a spontaneous impulse, we both broke at clapping, as at the well-wrought crisis of a play. A flush of colour sprang to Holmes’s pale cheeks, and he bowed to us like the master dramatist who receives the homage of his audience. (The Six Napoleons)
This is arguably Sherlock’s “black pearl of the Borgias” moment with Ajay at a another pool, in The Six Thatchers.
“Before the police come in and spoil things, why don’t we just enjoy the moment?” Where, in the absence of John and the police to enjoy the performance, we’re the audience.
Ah …. ‘so many a crisis’ in canon … that’s an ineresting addition @devoursjohnlock Especially the connection to red and blue and the Borgia Pearl.
And once again there’s a different meaning of a word … of crisis. Thanks for pointing this out @gosherlocked (X). The creators love their little word games so much.
Similar thought regarding John=People @green-violin-bow (X). Summoning People could mean summoning John … asking John for help. Considering that the ‘crisis’ note in the original story is written BEFORE the fall, this would take the story of Sherlock BBC also back BEFORE Bart’s roof. Could be interesting. :)
Also, I love the idea of the audience being summoned to save Sherlock, @loveismyrevolution (X)
Interesting references indeed, @ebaeschnbliah, @loveismyrevolution and @devoursjohnlock ! Hmm. In canon Holmes reveals the missing Pearl by dramatically smashing a bust of Napoleon, but in the BBC show he’s mistaken; out comes a memory stick (= a bunch of important but repressed memories?) and he could only get to it by smashing a bust of Thatcher (= symbol of institutionalized homophobia?). I believe that these metaphores are staged in his Mind Theatre.
As for the red/blue intervals in the pool scene in TGG/ASiB: Moriarty throws the memory stick into the water (water=blue) and says he’ll burn Sherlock’s heart out (fire=red). Sherlock’s and John’s imminent death is interrupted by ‘Staying Alive’ playing on Moriarty’s phone and he says “sorry - wrong time to die” (Merchant meating Death in Bagdad but postponing it to Samara?). Possible meaning, considering @devoursjohnlock ’s canon ref: If you repress your memories all is well. But Moriarty (=Homophobia) is threatening to set your heart on fire, which might kill you eventually.
In TRF Moriarty also plays ‘Staying alive’, and warns Sherlock about the Final Problem and the Fall. So yes; I think the problem is very much related to the Fall.
So - on a meta level - just out of the top of my head: If Sherlock is in crisis and The Final Problem is [Sherlock] staying alive, and we’re supposed to solve it; what does it take for the great original character of Sherlock Holmes to ‘stay alive’ (= not succumb to the stereotype with the deerstalker but without Sentiment, who is frozen in time since canon and since S4)? What does it take for Sherlock to survive his comatose state in S4? Well, my bet is overcome Homophobia. Embrace his memories (canon Holmes, who he really is) and basically tell John that he loves him (mirror Molly in TFP).
Also, a bit out of the blue: ‘congenial’ in @ebaeschnbliah ’s canon ref makes me think of Billy Wiggins when he claims to have bad luck and mentions the word ‘congenital’ twice to Sherlock in TLD. It has a different meaning but sounds pretty similar to me.
I have this personal head canon for which Doyle began to write about Holmes and Watson as personal divertissement, a personal vent, a game to share with those who, like him, had certain ideas and inclinations. Let’s say it was his A03 space…
Then the political and social climate has changed for the worse. We also add that the official excuse could be valid, that is, Doyle wanting to be taken into consideration also for all his other writings, extremely varied, and some fruit of great efforts. Ultimately, writing about Holmes was no fun anymore … (and recently we heard the same words come out of the mouth of the man who plays Watson, namely, of Doyle’s alter ego).
The time was ripe for FINA. Holmes had to die and what was conducting to his end could not be a trivial projectile. The one who is defeating him could not be a common villain. It had to be Moriarty and it made sense to be a fall.
In FINA, a frightened Holmes comes from Watson and as a first gesture closes all the shutters. He admits that he is not a nervous person, but what happens inside the room is better not seen from the outside
“ it is stupidity rather than courage to refuse to recognize danger when it is close upon you “
and the danger that must be faced is not a GHOST “It is not an airy nothing, you see,” it is something tangible and real.
And the first resolution that Holmes takes is to leave the Country for to the Continent, so as to escape this enemy. And finally the fearful enemy is officially introduced into history. It is someone whose actions are seen, but whose existence is unknown. “The man pervades London,” would seem a forerunner of love that dare no speak its name) A man with “hereditary tendencies of the most diabolical kind” “some deep organizing power which forever stands in the way of the law”.
The first meeting between Holmes and Moriarty seems to come out from the screenplay of a bad b-movie soft porn. (and Moffits have played a lot with this). “ You have less frontal development that I should have expected, “said he, at last. 'It is a dangerous habit to finger loaded in the pocket of one’s dressing-gown.’.
Moriarty knows that because of him Holmes only has one option “You must drop it, Mr. Holmes,” he said, swaying his face about. 'You really must, you know.’ This is not a question of vague danger but of inevitable annihilation. But Holmes is willing to sacrifice himself to eliminate even Moriarty from the scene, “in the interests of the public.”
Moriarty in BBC Sherlock represents homosexuality, still declined in homophobia, because still forced in its role of villain. But even in the Canon, I believe that at the level of the subtext can be seen in the same way, They should not astonish the grotesque sides of Moriarty’s description and his role as antagonist (and in a rather long series of stories in which quite likely villains appear, with clear motivations and realistic potentialities, this obscure and megalomaniac genius of crime stands out for absurdity). In fact, we know well what the queer subtext was and where homosexuality was usually hidden. Always in the monster, in the evil, in the different. Dracula, Mr. Hyde, Dorian Gray, Frankenstein. The hidden homosexuality in the stories of Holmes and Watson was also the cause of their necessary end. Because simply escaping to the Continent was not enough. “One would think that we were the criminals”, says Watson before leaving, because now the danger of being discovered loomed and clouded even the happiest moments (like the honeymoon in Switzerland), “walk where we would, we could not walk ourselves clear of the danger which was dogging our footsteps ”.
The inevitable end, the one that leaves Watson (alias Doyle) alive and safe, sees instead Holmes and Moriarty, the stories and homosexuality hidden in it, falling into the tumultuous turmoil of deep waters.
So yes, I definitely think we can be frozen to the Final Problem at a meta level. When homophobia had determined the end of the adventures of the two men and before the economic needs (and quiet living?) Had brought them back to life (we might all just be human., even you Doyle). What may happen now, at different times, is that the rebirth of Holmes corresponds to the liberation of Moriarty.
@gosherlocked @ebaeschnbliah @possiblyimbiassed @sarahthecoat @sherlockshadow @devoursjohnlock @green-violin-bow
what an interesting way of looking at it! I think one of the most inspired aspects of bbc sherlock, is using moriarty in this way, to represent BOTH homosexuality (like a typical queer gothic), AND homophobia, at the same time. It turns the character from a one-story villain, whose “arch nemesis” status we have to take on faith, into a truly integral character, rich in symbolism and potential. This reminds me of what “expect the unexpected” in the run up to s4 made me think, that at some point sherlock would have to team up with jim to overcome a final obstacle. It would symbolize sherlock integrating his whole self, and the change in society, from homosexuality being illegal, to being accepted (more widely, and not illegal, at least in sherlock’s england) “the liberation of moriarty” has the potential to be a deeply satisfying “rug pull”, no idea if they’ll do it although one can imagine.
Absolutely, @raggedyblue Jim calls himself ‘Mr.Sex’ in TRF. On a metaphorical level, what else could he represent if not Sherlock’s sexuality. Just like Irene. They act as a pair. They represent Sherlock’s male and female side of his own sexuality. And both - Irene and Jim - are gay. If this happens inside Sherlock’s head, then this is Sherlock’s opinion on the matter. Opinions thogh, can change.
Wow - @raggedyblue, @sarahthecoat and @ebaeschnbliah, I so love this discussion! I hope you don’t mind letting me weigh it down with some more text, @ebaeschnbliah :) I quite agree, @sarahthecoat, that Moriarty represents both homophobia and 'gothic’ homosexuality at the same time. And if we’re inside Sherlock’s head from Day 1, it’s Sherlock’s view of his own sexual urges that we see, just as we see his view of ‘Love as a chemical defect found on the loosing side’ - a view that is changing as the story progresses, put to some crucial tests in Sherlock’s Mind Theatre experiments in TFP.
yes! RB for excellent discussion.
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“Daylight robbery. All it takes is some willing participants”
Transitions and similarities
Sherlock BBC, The Reichenbach Fall & The Final Problem
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“You want me to shake hands with you in Hell? I shall not disappoint you.” (Sherlock TRF)
“… a map reference for Hell.” (Mycroft describing Sherrinford in TFP)
Putting the ear plugs in and listening to ‘The Thieving Magpie’ (TRF) vs taking the ear plugs out and stopping ‘I want to break free’ exactly at ‘I’m falling in love’ (TFP)
Mai, 2018
Thank you @possiblyimbiassed for your wonderful comment on this post. The pic you added, that of Jim at Sherrinford, reminded me that I still had something related to that in my drafts. Here it is …. a bit delayed, but better late than never. :)))
August, 2018
Interesting @ebaeschnbliah! Showtime - yes! And ‘willing participants’ indeed. :) So, in TRF the Crown Jewels are being locked in, kept inside a cell, but Jim sets them free and starts using them (”and honey, you should see me in a crown!”) I think Jim’s little dance around them in TRF is one of my favourite scenes of the whole show ;). Sherlock isn’t impressed, however. But in TFP, in Sherrinford where Euros and later Sherlock are locked in, Jim gets even clearer and says he wants to break free. Which Sherlock actually seems willing to do later, similar to Freddy Mercury in the video of that song…
if moriarty represents at least an aspect of sherlock's sexuality, do you suppose the pun on "crown jewels" is deliberate?
