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Impressions from Sherlock BBC, A Study in Pink

love this scene, that slow spinny bit when everyone else disappears briefly, little dip into the mind palace. *chef's kiss*

A  SMASHED  GLASS  OF  CHAMPAGNE

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A series of screen caps for the falling glass of champagne in TSOT. Requsted by @sarahthecoat  Hope this is helpful. :)

Sherlock stands up to give his best man speech. As far as I can tell he doesn’t move much the whole time. Just turning now and then to John but never stepping back from the table.

More under the cut …

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thank you so much, this is perfect! so, the lighting, or color grading, changes that much while the glass is hitting the floor?? And yeah, the table is absolutely vanished, not there at all, not even a shadow. HMMM. I *suppose its possible* they just wanted a cool shot of the glass smashing, and the second unit made the shot after the first unit went home, including the continuity person, so they werent thinking about needing the table in the shot. BUT, so much in this show is s meticulous, that "sloppy work" is never our first choice explanation. so... what else in this episode feels unreal, besides the "delayed action stabbing" which has been discussed, and all the stealth mind palace? OR, Is the broken glass more important as a symbol, than as a "real" thing? On one level, it's clearly signalling sherlock's epiphanies about both john's feelings, and the mayfly man case, but is that all? I know sometimes breaking something is a symbol of a life transition, like Buffy dropping a plate after she slept with Angel, or the glass that is used by the couple and then broken during a jewish wedding ceremony. HMM, a wedding tradition involving a broken glass. Although, in this case, nobody drank out of it first, so. And the disappearing table, that's a head scratcher. if it's a sign of a brief dip into mind palace, then the broken and replaced glass is only in mind palace, thus the unconcern back in the "real world" with cleaning up, there's no mess. could be?

Hiding in Plain Sight- part five

Evolution- Deductions vs Mind Palace: A Comprehensive Look

“Sometimes a deception is so audacious, so outrageous that you can’t see it even when it’s staring you in the face.”

SERIES THREE

TSOT:

We jump right in here at the wedding. Let’s not kid ourselves here- regardless of whether you ship Johnlock or not- it can’t have been an easy time for Sherlock at John and Mary’s wedding. Just as was the case in TEH, Sherlock’s deductions continue to suffer under the onslaught of sentiment:

This episode gives us our first ‘patience grenade’ that will explode dramatically in S4:

From the stag night, we see that being ‘under the influence’ (of alcohol here, but who can know, given the following episode and the possibility of ongoing drug use we might be unaware of up to this point) definitely affects Sherlock’s deductions:

But, here’s where it starts to get interesting- and eventually gives us the next elevation in increasing mind palace over the show’s entirety.

Extended Stealth Mind Palace™

People still debate whether parts of the courtroom deduction scene are mind palace or not. Some argue that it’s entirely possible that while Sherlock is occupied with the women, John could have changed clothes. That’s absolutely a possibility, but is it a probability? John doesn’t live at Baker Street anymore. Is it probable he brought a change of clothes with him for the Stag night?? Yeah, I don’t think so either.

Sherlock hears John coming up the stairs, quickly hiding his guilt the evidence that he was checking up on Sholto, not in fact, working on Tessa’s case.

Others before me have pointed out that the lighting remains constant throughout this scene, which would indicate very little time passing, and another hint that John probably hasn’t gone off and come back from changing clothes.

It can also be pointed out that John appears in the mind palace cardigan™- in the mind palace- before Sherlock ‘sees’ him wearing it in 221B. If he has indeed changed in the meantime, is it probable that Sherlock somehow noticed it while still inside the mind palace? I don’t think so, do you?

There has also been a case made against these intermingled scenes in 221B concerning the food we are shown. People argue that Hudders could have made Sherlock something to eat later, and would explain the time given to John to change clothes and for Sherlock to get out all those laptops. I mean, I guess?? But, that is a lot of explaining one has to do in order to make this work. And when have we ever seen that many laptops in Baker Street?? All Sherlock had to do was open up different tabs in order to chat with those women. It just seems as if this is one of those things we’ve learned to call ‘mind palace tells’. The little things that are off, just enough, to clue us in to what is real and what isn’t. For me, all those laptops were just icing on the cake. A little poke, to make sure we were paying attention. (And, mind palace tells will come into play later)

So, why- Extended Stealth Mind Palace™? Because this is the first instance we get of mind palace within mind palace. The first hint that there are levels within the mind palace.

Deductions within mind palace:

And once more- as in the Flight 007 deduction- the indication that time is relative and doesn’t exist within the mind palace as it does in real life. Sherlock makes the Hamish deduction within the time he drops his champagne:

We are also shown that Sherlock can be in his mind palace and still be ‘functioning’ in real life simultaneously. It isn’t smooth, and it appears hard for him to remain focused in either location, but it does seem to be a thing he does / can do.

I could go on and on about the depth of complexity of these mind palace scenes from this ep, but what else is left to say? It’s intense and has increased exponentially up to this point.

I will leave you with the final, all-important deduction of the episode, and another example, I believe, that emotions (if not something else as well) are definitely an Achilles’ heel when it comes to Sherlock’s control over his mind. And the ultimate gut punch:

|Part One| |Part Two| |Part Three| |Part Four| 

Weiterlesen

@monikakrasnorada: Yes to all this. TSoT is a pivotal episode where Sherlock’s MP development is concerned. We have a clear progression over the episodes:

I am leaving out S4 for the sake of argument here. Anyway, there has been a clear progression over the episodes and not just in one but in several aspects:

And another thing that just came to my mind and that creates a parallel between TSoT and TAB: TSoT almost completely happens in Sherlock’s mind as well. It is not his usual MP but we are presented with Sherlock telling stories that are shown to us while for the wedding guests this is just a speech. So we get the events of weeks compressed into what? - half an hour? Rings a bell, doesn’t it? TAB - the events of weeks compressed into a few minutes in which the plane was landed. In a way, TSoT is a predecessor of TAB.

OH, very good point! We thought of a lot of that as "flashbacks", but after all, a memory is within the mind of the one remembering.

Sherlock's Mind Palace: The Baker Street Room

Warning: this is ridiculously long. So long, I went all college and wrote a short abstract to sum it up if you prefer the short version. While there are lots of great metas out there on how Sherlock realized he was in love with John during TSoT, mine is a slightly different take (with the same happy/not happy ending). :)

Disclaimer: I’m not saying I 100% believe the writers did this intentionally, although I do think it’s possible. Obviously, there are other interpretations/theories that totally work, too. But this is how I prefer to view the Mind Palace scene, because it does fit, and (for me) it makes the entire episode even more beautiful and poignant. 

abstract:

The Mind Palace scene in TSoT consists of not one, but two rooms. One is the courtroom, representing the brain, logic and reason, ruled by Mycroft. And the other is Baker Street, representing the heart, love and lust, ruled by John. In this scene, we are watching Sherlock try to work out the Mayfly Man mystery, but his heart (John) keeps interrupting to point out the clues from stag night that indicate their feelings for one another. Sherlock doesn’t put the pieces together until the end of his best man speech (“it’s always you”).

Why do you think Baker Street is a Mind Palace room? In short:

John’s unexplained change of clothes

(Actual Baker Street and Actual John)

(Mind Palace Baker Street and Mind Palace John)

the sudden appearance of food Mrs. Hudson prepared (that differs entirely from what she made for John) despite the fact that Sherlock doesn’t eat when working

and the sudden appearance of seven laptops when we’ve never seen more than two (including John’s) in Baker Street.

All three of these go unexplained. John could have brought a change of clothes for stag night. Mrs. Hudson could have cooked up a completely different meal and brought it up to Sherlock. Sherlock could have been stowing various laptops around the flat for years (yet continued to borrow John’s without permission) and thought this would be visually easier than just opening several tabs on his one laptop despite the fact that we’ve never seen him do such a thing. (And it does admittedly make a visually neat contrast – one laptop for each woman.)

I’m not being sarcastic – those are all legit explanations. I could be entirely wrong about this Mind Palace thing. But there are other oddities later which (in my opinion) indicate that once Sherlock enters the courtroom, the rest of this scene takes place entirely in Sherlock’s mind, which I’ll explain if you want to read further. :)

Here we go!

__________________________________

The long version

Let’s start with the morning after stag night. Stag night calls for a meta all its own, but here’s my take in a nutshell – they got drunk, John’s repressed sexual/romantic feelings for Sherlock rose to the surface, John (subconsciously or otherwise) gave Sherlock all kinds of clues about this (I don’t mind; am I pretty; the fact that he chose Sherlock’s name for the Rizla game). Sherlock was too drunk to pick up on these clues and make a deduction at the time. (What a wasted opportunity!)

But those clues are stored away in Sherlock’s Mind Palace. And just like he does on two other occasions in this episode – with Janine and the impotent potential boyfriend, and with Mary’s pregnancy (both of which also happen to be love/sex-related deductions) – Sherlock is about to make one more deduction than he was expecting.

After his breakfast with Mrs. Hudson, during which she gives us all sorts of delightful foreshadowing on how things are going to turn out for John with Mary (a whirlwind thing; I didn’t know what he was up to), John heads upstairs and finds Sherlock working on the Mayfly Man case. 

Except not. Because this is what Sherlock has really been doing.

(note the name: James Sholto. James as in Moriarty. Sholto-Sherlock: victim. John-Jonathan: Mayfly Man. For more on what this could mean, here’s another meta.)

Sherlock’s jealousy of Sholto is pretty blatantly obvious throughout the episode, starting with when he first learned about Sholto while helping Mary with the seating arrangements. So here we are, morning after stag night, and the first thing Sherlock does is….research this man that apparently used to be so important to John and was so unsociable and got more death threats than even Sherlock, etc. TSoT jumps all over the timeline, but consider this: at this point in time, Sherlock has no idea Sholto will be the Mayfly Man’s victim at the wedding. Sholto is not a person of interest as far as work is concerned. He and John had a night of drunkenness, and the next morning…he’s Googling this guy from John’s past. Secretly.

I’ll leave you to your deductions.

Anyway, the second he hears John coming, Sherlock closes the Sholto story.

Sherlock jumps into work mode the moment John walks in. “There are going to be others [victims].” This is the last time we see Actual Baker Street and Actual John in his blue jumper. Note that the transition to the courtroom is abrupt, no fading, no effect, indicating Sherlock is entering his Mind Palace now, at this moment as he looks at the map. (Also, Sherlock’s clothes don’t change.)

Sherlock narrows down the women to the ones he believes had dates with the same “ghost” as Tessa. Note that Sherlock is talking to these women online. With the exception of Tessa (who doesn’t appear until later), he hasn’t met them, they’re chatting in a website forum. Which means these physical appearances are not necessarily accurate. They are simply visual representations of the victims Sherlock created in his Mind Palace.

Three of the women are vaguely similar to Tessa: medium height, brown hair.

And then there’s Vicky.

Even here, in this first shot of each girl, there’s something different about Vicky. The other girls look Sherlock in the eyes with honest, earnest faces; Vicky looks him up and down in a very flirtatious way. She is sexual from the start, and her answers to his questions hit like punchlines to dirty jokes. (Lovemonkey; he had a mask on; dungeon.)

Vicky – or rather, this version of Vicky Sherlock created in his mind – does not look like Tessa and the other girls. They are dressed in muted colors; her outfit is a screaming red flag. She is short, her hair is blond, she has a round face. Sound familiar? Many other metas have pointed out that Vicky represents John’s sexuality in Sherlock’s Mind Palace. More evidence of that to come.

Vicky is going to play an important role here as Sherlock struggles to work out two mysteries. The first, obviously, is the Mayfly Man mystery, also known as the ghost, or the Invisible Man with the Invisible Knife – the “most perfect” locked room mystery of which, Sherlock says during his best man speech, he is aware.

And that’s true, because he’s not aware of the other locked room mystery…not yet. Sherlock wants to live a life ruled by logic and reason – to be a sociopath. But to quote Moffat, “he’s so fucking not.”

Emphasis mine. This quote perfectly describes what’s happening in the Mind Palace scene – Sherlock is repressing his emotions/desires about John, without realizing it because this is a lifelong habit, in order to maximize full use of his brain and solve this case. But his heart (John) keeps getting in the way.

In other words: Sherlock’s heart is locked. Or was. But someone is in there. This is the metaphorical locked room mystery – Sherlock’s heart. From now until the end of this scene, we’re in his Mind Palace. The courtroom is his brain, Baker Street is his heart.

Sherlock asks the women a few questions. When he gets to Vicky, John interrupts. “He had a lovely –” “You okay?”

There is so much going on in these few seconds. I’m really going to pick this apart, and it might seem like overanalyzing (and maybe it is!) but however much time I end up spending on this meta, it’s a drop in the ocean in comparison to the amount of time writing, shooting, and editing this Mind Palace scene must have taken. We have multiple actors in two separate locations seamlessly moving through conversation. So I have to believe that every detail counts. This shit is meticulous. 

So check out that gif. The first and most notable thing?

Sherlock is standing upright in Baker Street.

He raises his hand, lowers it to “pause” Vicky, turns to John and is in Baker Street. Why is this important? Because if Actual John had interrupted Sherlock in the middle of chatting with Vicky online, Sherlock would be hunched over a laptop typing. Frankly, that would’ve been a lot easier to shoot. But the motion was intentionally filmed and edited so that it appears as if Sherlock and John are standing there and the background changes behind them. They did this on purpose, and they did it for a reason.

Welcome to the Baker Street room in Sherlock’s Mind Palace.

Edit 1: Someone suggested looking at the lighting as a way of judging how much time has passed – if this is later in the day, John may have gone home, showered, changed, returned, and Mrs. Hudson prepared lunch/dinner for Sherlock. Excellent point! So I looked into it and made these gifs (unfiltered). Here’s John walking into the flat (blue jumper):

And here’s the next time we see Baker Street:

The lighting is the same. Bright white light streaming in from the window, lighting up Sherlock’s left side, his right side shadowed. Look at the lamp in front of the bookshelf – exact same shadow position. Look at the map – lit up near the front of the table, in shadow the closer it gets to us/the camera.

The fact that the shadows haven’t moved at all, indicating little time has passed, yet John is suddenly in a different outfit, a plate of food is on the table, and seven laptops have appeared that weren’t there before, has me even more convinced this is a Mind Palace room.

John and Sherlock are intentionally made to look as though they are stationary while the room changes around them.

Edit 2:

Worth pointing out that Baker Street in this scene isn’t the only time we see an Actual room become a Mind Palace room.

/edit

And there’s so much more happening here. (I’m copying the same gif in so I/you don’t have to keep scrolling up. :)

First: we have a literal connection between John and Vicky. He interrupts her statement (“he had a lovely…” and wow, the way she says that definitely implies she’s about to say something kinda dirty) and says “you okay?” Sherlock pauses her and turns to John. Another sign Vicky represents more than just a Mayfly Man victim. Hell, John even looks Sherlock up and down a lot like Vicky did in the beginning.

Second: John is wearing different clothes, and he appears in the courtroom/MP first. This is MP John, not Actual John. And remember last night, when Sherlock said beauty is a construct based entirely on childhood impressions, influences, and role models? Take a closer look at what Mind Palace John is wearing.

(For fun: remember when I said Vicky’s outfit was a red flag to call attention to her physical resemblance to John?)

Edit: Uber thanks to DoctorWhovian for pointing out that Mind Palace John is wearing the outfit from The Great Game pool scene – the night John offered to sacrifice his own life to save Sherlock’s:

(alrighty, back to Baker Street.)

Third: John stares at Sherlock until the very second Sherlock turns to face him, then he looks down. Body language and positions are really important in this scene. Mycroft towers over Sherlock, Irene faces him, John is at his side. This is all very intentional. And here, Sherlock is aware of John’s presence but they don’t look directly at each other – they avoid eye contact. They see, but they don’t observe.

Fourth: The very first thing John does is nod at the plate of food that has suddenly appeared next to the laptops and say “you’ve let your food gone cold. Mrs. Hudson’ll play hell.” This show’s food/sex metaphor starts in the pilot episode, when Sherlock outright says he avoids eating when working on a case, and that he’s intentionally celibate (“not my area”) because he’s “married to his work.” It’s driven home by Irene with the not-so-subtle “let’s have dinner” line we hear repeatedly. (“Why would I have dinner when I’m not hungry?”)

So to sum: Sherlock’s in his Mind Palace interrogating sexy Vicky but John – MP John – pulls him away to point out his food’s getting cold. We even get a quick shot of Vicky’s actual text – he had a lovely… - next to the plate. Pretty clear how that fits into the food/sex metaphor, particularly after all the “what ifs” of stag night. Wasted opportunities and all that.

As for Mrs. Hudson playing hell…John knows better than anyone that Hudders is Captain of the HMS Johnlock. :)

Oh, and Sherlock’s response to John pointing out the food? “Not now, John.” Avoidance, again. Not ready to see it. Back to the courtroom/brain. 

Like I said at the beginning of this post, the change in John’s clothes, appearance of food, and appearance of (unnecessary) laptops can be explained in other ways. But they happen all at once, and so abruptly – about four seconds – that I feel like we’re supposed to notice, to question it. 

If that’s not enough, to convince you, consider John’s behavior in this Mind Palace scene.

By the end of His Last Vow, we’ve seen many of the main cast – Mycroft, Molly, Anderson, Moriarty, and Mary – in Sherlock’s Mind Palace. Each are there because they represent certain things to Sherlock (logic, fear, hurt, etc). When we see them, they are entirely focused on Sherlock. I mean, of course they are! They’re not real, they’re in his mind and he’s using them to visualize a problem and work out how to solve it. But my point is, when another character enters Sherlock’s Mind Palace, they are fixated on him. 

Yeah, like that.

Still just standing there.

Watching.

Waiting.

And twice, very quickly…

we even see Sherlock from John’s point of view.

(With the plate in both shots, of course. Food’s still getting cold, Sherl.)

My argument isn’t necessarily that this is odd behavior for John. He does like to watch Sherlock when he’s in deduction mode, although maybe it’s a tiny strange that John literally doesn’t move, doesn’t pick up the paper, get a drink, sit in his chair, for the entirety of this scene (is watching Sherlock type really that fascinating?). I’m just pointing out that John’s intense focus is also extremely similar to what we see whenever a character is present in Sherlock’s Mind Palace.

Although there is one thing that’s definitely off.

Eye contact.

Sherlock always makes eye contact when an MP character is present.

Always.

Scary eye contact!

Except…

In the entire Mind Palace scene, there’s only two extremely brief moments when Sherlock really looks MP John in the eyes. (More on those in a bit.) Overall, though, it’s just John. Staring at the back of Sherlock’s head. Waiting. Repeatedly trying to pull Sherlock back into the other locked room mystery, back into his heart/Baker Street. Sherlock is aware of his presence, but he’s brushing it off, ignoring it. Repression of emotions in favor of logic.

Alright, back to the women in the courtroom. Vicky’s responses are fantastic, because it’s easy to brush them off as just jokes. But when you keep her connection to John in mind, they have more meaning. “He had a mask on." Attraction to someone, hidden identity. And my favorite – when Sherlock realizes the "ghost” is using dead men’s flats, the other girls respond with disgust, but Vicky? “Clever.” (John appreciates cleverness too.)

Tessa pops up here. “Bastard.” And we’re briefly brought back to the Baker Street room, John in the background. 

Makes sense. Sherlock met Tessa in this room with John last night, after all. Brief reminder of stag night and the Rizla game that was (so sadly) interrupted.

Back to business. Sherlock says: “He disguises himself. Steals the man’s home, steals his identity.” And John cuts in abruptly:

“But only for one night. Then he’s gone.”

Only for one night. Then he’s gone. Again, stag night could’ve been that one night for these two before John’s “gone” (married). And this time, MP John didn’t even bring Sherlock back to the Baker Street room/heart. He literally pops into the courtroom/brain for all of two seconds to say this line and then vanishes.

Also note the lack of eye contact. Sherlock turns to face him and John’s eyes flicker down, then he turns away. Still not quite seeing it. Not willing to, anyway.

Sherlock questions the women some more, and then we get to my favorite moment of the entire scene – the first moment Sherlock and John make eye contact, however briefly. And once again, we stay in the courtroom – no Baker Street.

“Do you have a secret you’ve never told anyone?" 

"No.”

“Gotcha.”

“What do you mean?”

Holy shit John pops up fast. There isn’t a breath between “gotcha” and “whaddayamean?” He sounds kinda guilty. Why? Well, Sherlock explains it as he looks John in the eyes.

“Everyone has secrets and they all replied too quickly.”

See what happened there? John replied too quickly too. John has a secret. Sherlock has the clues from stag night he needs to figure out what that secret is, and MP John is nudging him into it. But Sherlock is planted in the courtroom/brain and he’s not leaving, so John vanishes immediately. He’s literally there for all of three seconds, just for that line.

(Even if I’m wrong and this is Actual John the whole time, that interpretation still works. The point is, John replies too quickly, and Sherlock tells us that means he has a secret.)

Just like John, the women vanish with their secrets. Vicky fulfills her role as Courtroom Representative of John Watson’s Sexuality with one last, sad line and a wink (nudge nudge, get the hint?):

“Sorry, sexy. Some secrets have to stay secret.”

John is attracted to you but he can’t/won’t tell you or act on it.

Because Sherlock missed his chance last night, the wasted opportunity, all of John’s hints during stag night. He won’t get that chance again, as Tessa reminds him by rubbing a little salt in the wound:

“Enjoy the wedding.”

Ouch. No wonder he looks so hurt. Not only has he screwed up his chance at figuring out who the real Mayfly Man is, the other locked room mystery is nagging at him and he’s still not quite aware of it.

(Another point of interest we’ll get into later: Tessa and the other women emphasize that “nothing happened” with the Mayfly Man. It was romantic, fun, he was charming. But there was no sex. Again…like stag night.)

So…back to the Baker Street room/heart.

“Why, why would he date all those women and not return their calls?”

Remember when Tessa said “I just thought at least he’d call to say we’re finished?” Drunk Sherlock’s reaction was more than sympathy. It was empathy. And the poor guy doesn’t even understand why he’s empathizing – look how confused it makes him:

That makes me sad. Wait…am I sad? Why am I sad?

Throughout the episode, we see how scared Sherlock is of losing John after the wedding. I’m not even talking romance here. Just losing him, as a part of his life, period. Think about the way he stares mournfully at John’s empty chair at the start of the episode. Even Mary flat-out tells John. “He’s terrified." 

So yeah, Sherlock is taking this Mayfly Man thing a little personally. "Why, why would he date all those women and not return their calls?" 

MP John tells him. "You’re missing the obvious, mate.” “Am I?”

“He’s a man.”

On the surface, that fits the Mayfly Man mystery….except….the Mayfly Man didn’t sleep with these women. One night, no sex. And Sherlock knows it, because they told him. They also said he was charming, a good listener, etc. So really, what John’s implying – that this guy is just a douchebag looking for a one-night stand – doesn’t fit at all, because sex wasn’t involved. 

However, MP John’s statement perfectly explains the unanswered question. John’s secret. What’s stopping him from being in a romantic/sexual relationship with Sherlock. He’s a man.

There’s lots of opinions out there on John’s sexual orientation. Whatever it may be, his repeated assertions that he isn’t gay demonstrate a level of discomfort at the idea of being with a man. Maybe he’s a closeted bisexual. My personal reading is that he’s straight but Sherlocked. (That was my interpretation of the Battersea scene between John and Irene in ASiB. “I’m not gay.” “Well I am. And look at us both. I don’t think so…do you?”) Either way, John is attracted to Sherlock (I don’t mind, am I pretty?) and that attraction surfaced when they were drunk, but the opportunity’s passed, so… Sorry sexy, some secrets have to stay secret.

Sherlock is understandably frustrated. “But why would he change his identity?” Why would the Mayfly Man assume disguises to have perfectly chaste dates with these women? And as for John, why would he hide/deny/be unaware of his sexual identity?

MP John answers again.

“Maybe he’s married.”

Both his and Sherlock’s reactions to that are interesting.

I love MP John’s face. Figure it out yet? Do you hear what I’m REALLY saying? 

And Sherlock: “OH.” It’s as if he had a revelation here. And he did – but it had nothing to do with the Mayfly Man.

Because the real Mayfly Man, Jonathan the photographer, isn’t married. He wasn’t some cheating a-hole out having one-nighters with women…hell, they weren’t even one-nighters, they were chaste dates. This is where the main mystery of the show seems most cluttered and awkward…unless you’re aware of the other mystery Sherlock’s trying, albeit subconsciously, to work out.

The revelation Sherlock has here is the other mystery, the locked room heart mystery. “Why would John deny/hide his feelings for me?" 

"Maybe he’s married." 

Oh.

The next part’s hilarious (in the typical Sherlock-style heartbreaking way). We’re back at the reception and Sherlock tells everyone that the Mayfly Man was married (wrong! wrong! wrong!), trying to escape the suffocating chains of domesticity…he goes on a pretty epic anti-marriage rant right next to John and Mary. Then he catches himself and says my favorite line: "On second thought, I probably should’ve told you about the elephant in the room.”

Aw, sweetie. You just did.

Because the elephant gag was really funny, but it has a deeper meaning. Everyone knows the real elephant in the room at John’s wedding: the fact that at some point or another, pretty much everyone present wondered whether (or, like Hudders, believed) Sherlock and John were in a romantic relationship. Having what some might consider your ex as your best man is kinda awkward, especially when he starts ranting about “the suffocating chains of domesticity” during his speech.

Sherlock recovers nicely and gets back on track. He notes that he can read a crime scene like John can understand a human being, and tells everyone that he will solve your murder, but it takes John Watson to save your life. And then we get this as he wraps up his speech:

“This blog is the story of two men and their frankly ridiculous adventures, of murder, mystery, and mayhem. But from now on, there’s a new story. A bigger adventure.”

This is totally debatable, obviously, but I want to believe the writers are telling the viewers something here. I’m going to change one word. 

This show is the story of two men and their frankly ridiculous adventures, of murder, mystery, and mayhem. But from now on, there’s a new story. A bigger adventure.

It’s true. Everything changes here. Sherlock is moments away from THE revelation, and the story changes. Everything that follows in His Last Vow is a bigger, different adventure for Sherlock and John. And it’s all down to what Sherlock’s about to realize as he raises his glass to toast Mary Elizabeth Watson and John Hamish Watson. Here we go.

Did you guys think this would be the moment Sherlock realized the photographer was the Mayfly Man, the Invisible Man with the Invisible Knife who stalked Dean Thom—er, the guard? I did. And under normal circumstances, he probably would have. But Sherlock’s distracted by something else. 

John’s middle name.

Tessa’s introducing John as Sherlock’s “partner, John Hamish Watson” triggers an epiphany for Sherlock with both mysteries. For the Mayfly Man mystery, he realizes Tessa had seen the wedding invitation and therefore knew John’s middle name, that the Mayfly Man had been assuming false identities to get to the wedding.

For the locked heart mystery, we get a blatantly obvious metaphor to work with. There’s a series of flashbacks during which we learn John’s middle name was a secret. Funny how we never knew that before. Funny how Sherlock was so obsessed with figuring it out. And in the end, John doesn’t “confide in him” – Sherlock just finds his birth certificate. John won’t tell him the secret, so Sherlock figures it out on his own.

(Also, the use of the word partner, which we rarely hear applied to John and Sherlock (they favor “colleague” or “blogger”) is not to be overlooked here. His partner, John Hamish Watson. Sherlock has just toasted Mary Elizabeth Watson and John Hamish Watson, and this is what triggers his revelation. John is HIS partner.)

The whole Hamish montage is amusing, but has little substance…unless you apply the metaphor. John’s secret is his feelings for Sherlock. John’s secret is his middle name, Hamish. And this fits beautifully with the one time John actually has said his middle name in this series – the scene with the Woman.

Irene’s role in Sherlock and John’s relationship is clearly worthy of a meta on its own. In short, she forced them, particularly John, to confront their feelings for one another. And she forced Sherlock to confront his own sexuality. She was naked when they first met, and Sherlock couldn’t read, her…go figure. (I mean, he was dressed as a priest. The double meanings in that episode are off the charts. Anyway.)

John is totally weirded out by Irene’s flirtations with Sherlock. He blurts out his secret – “Hamish, if you’re looking for baby names” – and, in that moment of jealousy, lets his other secret show, too. Irene knew. She so knew exactly what John Watson liked.

Irene briefly shows up in Sherlock’s Mind Palace. “God knows where she is." Like I said earlier, notice the body positioning – face-to-face, eye contact. Naked, like the first time he met her. Activate sexuality confrontation. And what does Sherlock say?

"Out of my head, I’m busy.”

Yet again, repression of emotions/feelings/sexuality in favor of reason and logic. He tries so hard to be a sociopath, he really does.

(Also: Sherlock’s in his wedding tux. Just pointing this out because they were very detail oriented about wardrobe in the Mind Palace, which makes John’s sudden, unexplained change of clothes earlier stick out even more.)

We get another little gag here with John debating taking Hamish off the wedding invitation.

Funny, for sure – but what’s the point? Sherlock is really spending a lot of time dwelling on John’s secret middle name here. Apply the metaphor: John’s secret is his feelings for Sherlock, and a wedding invitation is sort of like a public statement of one’s sexual identity, right? John’s debating it. He’s not sure. (Identity crisis.)

(Love how Mary says “it’s traditional” while Sherlock says “it’s funny.” Um…yeah, pretty much.)

As Sherlock works through what all this means for the Mayfly Man mystery, Mycroft appears. Again with the positioning: Mycroft towers over Sherlock, he rules that courtroom. And we know from TEH that even as a child, Sherlock felt “stupid” in comparison to his older brother. It’s no wonder Mycroft represents logic and reason, the brain. Also note the eye contact.

Back at the reception, Sherlock tries to “keep control of the room” while figuring out who the Mayfly Man is. As he attempts to narrow it down, he rambles distractedly about the “depth and complexity” of John’s jumpers, as well as his cooking…“he does a thing….a thing with peas…” Funny, but hey: calling attention to John’s style of dress, and food. Just sayin’.

Along the way, he realizes the Mayfly Man’s actions suggest a murder will be committed, and someone at the wedding will be the victim. The parallel is easy to see here. Like I said earlier, the writers nudged us with the characters names:

Sherlock/Sholto…victim. John/Jonathan…Mayfly Man.

Sherlock spells out the parallel for us:

“Did I say murder? I meant to say marriage. But you know, they’re quite similar procedures when you think about it. The participants tend to know each other and it’s over when one of them’s dead.”

Er, yeah. Nicely put.

Sherlock sends Lestrade out to lock the place down, continues rambling, warns John of what’s about to happen (Vatican Cameos)…and here it comes. Remember how Moffat said Sherlock Holmes must be bursting?

He’s trying so hard to focus, to narrow it down, to use logic and reason, to be like Mycroft. But here, at John’s wedding, Sherlock can’t repress all those emotions and feelings anymore. And that brings us to the most dramatic moment of the show:

NOT YOU. NOT YOU.

YOU.

It’s always you.

John Watson, you keep me right.

What.

The.

Fuck.

Was that.

Sherlock violently slaps himself out of the courtroom/brain Mind Palace. He slaps Mycroft out of his mind. Suddenly, John is all he sees. And damned if Sherlock doesn’t look happy as hell to have figured this out. It’s the first time we see him genuinely smile at the wedding.

Oh, and remember the eye contact that was missing earlier? Well.

Yeah. That’s…intense.

But WHAT did Sherlock figure out? “You keep me right.” This is such a dramatic moment, it’s clearly important. Although the funny thing is, it’s really not all that important to the Mayfly Man mystery. Hell, we don’t even see the moment Sherlock actually solves who the murderer was – it happens sometime between them getting into Sholto’s room, and him practice-dancing with Janine. We don’t see him send Lestrade off to bring the photographer back. The metaphorical mystery has officially been made more important than the actual mystery in this episode.“Oh, the photographer did it, by the way. Got him, Graham? Er, Greg? Sweet, thanks."  

So what’s Sherlock’s big revelation really about? "You keep me right.” Options:

1. You’ll make sure I don’t solve a murder, but save a life. Okay…except Sherlock said this earlier. He called it the only one feature of interest in the whole of this baffling case when he told The Bloody Guardsman story. John Watson reads people like Sherlock reads a crime scene. This isn’t a revelation.

2. I need you (non-romantically). Or I love you platonically. But they’ve already said this to one another. “I want to be up there with the two people I love and care about most in the world.” “Today you sit…between the two people who love you most in all this world.” This isn’t a revelation. For the record, this was the moment Sherlock realized how much John loved and valued him as a friend:

….I’m honestly struggling to come up with anything else this “you keep me right” revelation could mean. Except, of course, the big one, the one they’ve spent two and a half seasons building towards. Are there any other revelations for Sherlock to have about John? One that warrants the dramatic face-slapping, yelling at MP Mycroft shebang?

“You keep me right.” This is the answer to the locked room mystery of Sherlock’s heart, the one the Mind Palace scene so neatly set up for us. The courtroom, the brain, a place of reason and logic, ruled by Mycroft. Baker Street, home, the heart, a place of love and lust, ruled by John. It’s easy to see what Sherlock’s revelation means now.

“He’s repressed his emotions, his passions, his desires, in order to make his brain work better…I just think Sherlock Holmes must be bursting!”

Bursting…yeah, that describes that scene pretty well. 

Sherlock’s mind hasn’t even put it all into words yet, but he accepts it and flips back to the mystery at hand. Because – here’s the great part – Sherlock is actually OKAY with not fully understanding his emotions because he’s so intensely relieved at finally just allowing himself to feel them. 

And doesn’t that just fit so well with the whole metaphor? Not you, Mycroft/Logic. You, John/Love. You keep me right.

It’s not about using logic to work out what John means to him. It’s about allowing himself to feel it. Using his heart without analyzing chemical defects and the like. The fact that Sherlock has recognized this epiphany,welcomed it, without even trying to work it out in his mind yet, just demonstrates exactly how John Watson has changed him as a human being and makes this moment all the more poignant.

Sherlock  understands now that he fell in love a long time ago without realizing it (delayed action) and that John feels something for him, too. Maybe something could have happened on stag night (wasted opportunity), but it’s too late now – John’s married (all the time in the world to create an alibi). 

Here’s to John having his much-needed revelation in season 4.

And if you made it all the way through this meta…

rb cos this came up. I urge anyone who wasn't here for the post s3 semesters, to read this whole group of metas.

Hiding in Plain Sight- part five

Evolution- Deductions vs Mind Palace: A Comprehensive Look

“Sometimes a deception is so audacious, so outrageous that you can’t see it even when it’s staring you in the face.”

SERIES THREE

TSOT:

We jump right in here at the wedding. Let’s not kid ourselves here- regardless of whether you ship Johnlock or not- it can’t have been an easy time for Sherlock at John and Mary’s wedding. Just as was the case in TEH, Sherlock’s deductions continue to suffer under the onslaught of sentiment:

This episode gives us our first ‘patience grenade’ that will explode dramatically in S4:

From the stag night, we see that being ‘under the influence’ (of alcohol here, but who can know, given the following episode and the possibility of ongoing drug use we might be unaware of up to this point) definitely affects Sherlock’s deductions:

But, here’s where it starts to get interesting- and eventually gives us the next elevation in increasing mind palace over the show’s entirety.

Extended Stealth Mind Palace™

People still debate whether parts of the courtroom deduction scene are mind palace or not. Some argue that it’s entirely possible that while Sherlock is occupied with the women, John could have changed clothes. That’s absolutely a possibility, but is it a probability? John doesn’t live at Baker Street anymore. Is it probable he brought a change of clothes with him for the Stag night?? Yeah, I don’t think so either.

Sherlock hears John coming up the stairs, quickly hiding his guilt the evidence that he was checking up on Sholto, not in fact, working on Tessa’s case.

Others before me have pointed out that the lighting remains constant throughout this scene, which would indicate very little time passing, and another hint that John probably hasn’t gone off and come back from changing clothes.

It can also be pointed out that John appears in the mind palace cardigan™- in the mind palace- before Sherlock ‘sees’ him wearing it in 221B. If he has indeed changed in the meantime, is it probable that Sherlock somehow noticed it while still inside the mind palace? I don’t think so, do you?

There has also been a case made against these intermingled scenes in 221B concerning the food we are shown. People argue that Hudders could have made Sherlock something to eat later, and would explain the time given to John to change clothes and for Sherlock to get out all those laptops. I mean, I guess?? But, that is a lot of explaining one has to do in order to make this work. And when have we ever seen that many laptops in Baker Street?? All Sherlock had to do was open up different tabs in order to chat with those women. It just seems as if this is one of those things we’ve learned to call ‘mind palace tells’. The little things that are off, just enough, to clue us in to what is real and what isn’t. For me, all those laptops were just icing on the cake. A little poke, to make sure we were paying attention. (And, mind palace tells will come into play later)

So, why- Extended Stealth Mind Palace™? Because this is the first instance we get of mind palace within mind palace. The first hint that there are levels within the mind palace.

Deductions within mind palace:

And once more- as in the Flight 007 deduction- the indication that time is relative and doesn’t exist within the mind palace as it does in real life. Sherlock makes the Hamish deduction within the time he drops his champagne:

We are also shown that Sherlock can be in his mind palace and still be ‘functioning’ in real life simultaneously. It isn’t smooth, and it appears hard for him to remain focused in either location, but it does seem to be a thing he does / can do.

I could go on and on about the depth of complexity of these mind palace scenes from this ep, but what else is left to say? It’s intense and has increased exponentially up to this point.

I will leave you with the final, all-important deduction of the episode, and another example, I believe, that emotions (if not something else as well) are definitely an Achilles’ heel when it comes to Sherlock’s control over his mind. And the ultimate gut punch:

|Part One| |Part Two| |Part Three| |Part Four| 

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yes! I must say, TSOT is one of the more painful episodes to think about. I have only watched it 2 or 3 times, once or possibly twice when it was new, and once with my housemate in the run up to TAB. SO much is "played for laughs" which is actually guttingly, dreadfully, painful. that was not a nice feeling in elementary or middle school, and it's not entertaining to revisit. But maybe it's on purpose, like the murders disguised as suicides and the invisibility and the other trials and tribulations. I'm sure you are familiar with @deducingbbcsherlock 's metas on the "baker st room" in the mind palace. http://deducingbbcsherlock.tumblr.com/post/77248066893/sherlocks-mind-palace-the-baker-street-room The laptops are indeed a tell, and the food, and john's outfit. I think the choice to put him in a blue sweater with mrs hudson was to make as much contrast as possible with the red mind palace cardigan. This is something they wanted us to notice. I think it might have been the metas about stag night (also scenes that make me deeply uncomfortable) that helped me realize that the "word cloud" deductions here and back in TEH, are unreadable on purpose, to demonstrate that sherlock himself isn't catching them. I also like to think of the table full of computers as an illustration for @ivyblossom 's The Quiet Man, which was my therapy fic during and after s3. (I played the entire podfic of it about twice a week for several weeks.)

Hiding in Plain Sight- part two

Evolution- Deductions vs Mind Palace: A Comprehensive Look

“Sometimes a deception is so audacious, so outrageous that you can’t see it even when it’s staring you in the face.”

SERIES 2

THoB:

I am going out on a limb here, and discussing Hounds before ASiB. As @the-7-percent-solution pointed out some time ago here, there are clues that point to the absolute possibility of THoB having taken place before ASiB. And, the things I noticed on my re-watch may add even more proof to that theory.

Again in THoB, we are shown an increase in the mind palace visuals. The causation is questionable, but there is one element added into the mix here that we haven’t been made aware of in any of the three previous episodes:

I believe there is a case to be made that Sherlock’s exposure to the H.O.U.N.D. drug is the literal gateway to this expanded mind palace role within the series. Because once the ‘drug’ is introduced, the mind palace as we have seen it, is never the same.

ASiB:

This episode truly ups the ante and again, this coincides with the addition of drugs. Another unique element plays over from  THoB, where we see Sherlock doubting himself, openly, to then having the first on-screen ‘failure’ of his deductive abilities:

There are three major differences we see this episode regarding the mind palace. 1) We actually get to see Sherlock inside it:

2) It is the first instance of Sherlock using ‘avatars’ within, after Irene has drugged him, they move as a unit. Irene essentially becomes Sherlock:

3) It’s the first time we see that time is not relative within the confines of Sherlock’s mind palace:

Time slows down, and in the seconds it takes Irene to kiss Sherlock’s cheek, he completes the Bond Air deduction.

This is where we sit and listen :

This is the episode that also goes a long way to showing us just how much of a permanent fixture John is in Sherlock’s life- both real and imagined. This is a clear indication in gain of the mind palace experience and exposure they are building within the show. A leap from the pen-toss of TBB, and insight into Irene and Sherlock’s later conversation concerning John.

Plenty of meta has been written concerning the “hiker deduction” and whether John was there or not. Watching it again, I feel like there is a telling clue that he indeed is not in 221B when Sherlock is listening to the client’s re-telling of what happened.

We are shown a series of potential cases and clients in a flurry of images at the beginning of this episode- preceding the driver of the car which back-fired:

In all of those cases, we see John seated in his chair as they receive clients (and as we are later informed is their habit in HLV). But, when we are shown the man with the back-firing car, John is suspiciously loitering in the background, dressed much as we see him in a later questionable mind palace moment in TSoT:

For me, this is the next logical step from what we were shown in TBB as Sherlock always imagining John in the room even when he isn’t there, and the first instance of stealth mind palace scenes.

TRF:

I stumbled for a bit when I got to this episode with my idea that, as the show progresses, so does the appearance of  mind palace moments. There were only a minimal amount in this ep, and it bummed me out considerably, making me almost give up that I might have been on to something (which isn’t impossible, I am a noob when it comes to meta and thinky-thoughts)  But, since I’m a glutton for punishment, I channeled my inner Brit and carried on.

There are several instances of on-screen deductions, but this ep is so mind palace lite™ I considered stopping there, feeling this all but invalidated the idea that the mind palace builds with each successive episoe. In an episode so deeply involving Moriarty, I would have imagined a lot of time spent in Sherlock’s head with him trying to figure out just what to do. I understand that they couldn’t give us that, not really, and keep the surprise of the fall a secret, but still, it feels sort of telling that we are hidden from Sherlock’s inner thoughts in some a pivotal episode.

Until, I noticed something I hadn’t really paid attention to before. Sherlock sits in his chair and recites- word for word- the judges own words.

Moriarty breaks the fourth wall- and looks directly into the camera. At Sherlock.

Once the verdict is handed over, we see John, hurrying down the street. We assume he is in a hurry to get to Baker Street because he knows Moriarty will be headed there.

The funny thing is, Sherlock hangs up on John (ignoring Vatican Cameos??) and in the time it takes him to make tea, Moriarty arrives at the flat.

“Gothic enough for you? Mad enough?”

Honestly, I don’t know whether I believe this entire scene to be mind palace or not. There is just something about the entirety of the scene leaves me wondering if there is a case to be made that it is perhaps it is indeed another case of a stealth mind palace scene. Especially when you pay close attention to how the conversation goes as they sip their tea.

Sherlock says this simultaneously as Moriarty continues on, without acknowledging Sherlock is even speaking. As if Sherlock were speaking to himself. Sherlock doesn’t even look at Moriarty.

And then we get this infamous scene, with the oddly over-lapping narration of Moriarty with his whistle of death.

Again, this scene is a toss up, and could just as easily be ‘real’ as it mind palace. I only felt it was just ambiguous enough to add it here as a possibility. 

If it isn’t mind palace, then again, this episode diverts from the pattern of increasing our exposure to Sherlock’s inner world. Unless of course it doesn’t. Since this is a Moriarty heavy episode- just like TGG- does  the lack of mind palace representation correlate to Moriarty in particular? Would showing us the who what when where and why of Sherlock’s thoughts on the game Moriarty has laid out for Sherlock be giving too much away?

|Part One| |Part Two| |Part Three| |Part Four|

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That's an interesting thought about tea with jim being mind palace. It is at least very weird that jim can somehow BOOP from the old bailey to baker st so much faster than john can get there. And that oddly layered shot, when he's drinking tea, talking, and whistling all more or less at once... wtf is up with that, it always seemed weird to me.

Little rant on TD-12 and memories, Ignorance isn’t bliss

There are moments you shouldn’t try to go deeper, there is a reason we need suspension of disbelief.

Because TD-12? It’s a mess and thinking about it makes the scene with Culverton and his ‘friends’ even creepier.

…how many of you went to their dentist and got an IV?

Anyway, I’m going to let that one pass. Moving on…

You go to the doctor (or the dentist), you’re going to be operated and someone is going to give you TD-12. This is an amazing drug, they tell you, you’re not going to remember anything ever happened once he’s done with you.

We know, considering its use, that you are not going to be under general anesthesia, you’re going to be awake. If anyone decides to tell you that they’re going to operate on you and you won’t remember a single thing, you should run away screaming.

Because, at no moment did they tell you you’re not going to be in pain.

TD-12 isn’t morphine, or cocaine, it is never said it is an analgesic or a painkiller. The only effet we know is the memory loss. And the only reason you would need to forget your operation isn’t because you’re scared of the needle, it’s because you’re going to be in a lot of pain.

They are going to hurt you, but it’ll be okay because you won’t remember the pain.

Anethesia vs Amnesia, the difference between the two is the same than the one between being healed and being tortured.

TD-12 is a torture device and Culverton is using it the correct way. And, as nobody remembers what Culverton is doing, he’s torturing them every time and they always come back in that room.

But if you decide to take TD-12, if you decide to choose ‘forget’, you can never move forward nor escape the pain. It’s not because you don’t remember that it isn’t there. Because it will inevitably come back.

The only reason this ended is because, despite everything, Faith decided to find a way to remember, to face the truth. And even though she forgot immediately afterward, Eurus gave the note to Sherlock.

And, if Eurus is Sherlock’s subconcious, that means there is something he needs to remember to find a way out of this mess. If Sherlock wants to stop being tortured, he will need to have Faith and choose to remember and face his pain.

Oh my god. This is so simple and I love it.

A character literally called Faith desperately writing a note, in order to try to remember who Culverton Smith was trying to kill. Culverton who told her he was going to kill someone after his speech about how the worst thing you can do to your closest friends is tell them your darkest secret, because “once you open your heart, you can’t close it again.”

Considering Culverton as a dark!John mirror … Did John kill Mary? Or at least attempt to kill her?

Eurus, aka., Sherlock’s emotional side, writes “MISS ME?” on the note in linseed oil in order for Sherlock to make a deduction. On the surface it makes it seem like “Miss me?” is about Sherlock missing his sister. But beneath that it seems to be a clue that implies that John is in great danger, because of Sherlock.

It’s also interesting to note that what Faith’s note was about who Culverton Smith wanted to kill. Written on the paper were occupations like police officer, broadcaster, judge, and just ‘me’ — so what if “MISS ME?” is a name?

Miss M.E.? = “Miss Mary Elizabeth?”

The thing that really gets me is, the whole “Miss me?” slogan that’s become eponymous with Moriarty’s character might not even be said by him.

Consider how each reiteration of Moriarty on a TV screen saying “Miss me?” is in a different style. From the “every TV screen in the nation”, to the after-credits HLV scene, to the interview version, to the pre-recorded messages in TFP …

They don’t all originate from a single memory source, and from what we can see in the five minutes Sherlock is on the plane in HLV there isn’t a screen around for him to see the video. Meaning that it’s quite likely that “Miss me?” was created by Sherlock himself.

Mary’s DVD with “MISS ME?” on it might not just be a link to her working with Moriarty, it might be because she’s the real ‘source’ of the phrase.

I’m especially interested in the possibility that John attempts to kill Mary because it’s possible that Sherlock has ‘rewritten’ the shooting/sacrifice memory twice already.

“You were upset, so you told yourself a better story.”

In TLD, when Sherlock’s on the bridge, he has a split second flashback to what looks like John’s SIG going off after the line “Taking your own life. Interesting expression …” and the background colour matches up with that at CAM Tower:

Perhaps at Magnussen’s private estate Sherlock imagined that instead of John taking that shot to protect Sherlock from Mary, it was the other way around — that instead, like so many times before, Sherlock takes the fall once again and sacrifices himself to protect John.

From the moment of the shooting in HLV things begin to disintegrate, starting off as implausible and then just becoming downright surreal.

I really think that TSoT, with instances like that of the stealth mind palace scene while Sherlock’s solving the Mayfly Man case, has integrated these scenes in order to establish some of the rules of what Sherlock’s mind palace looks like and what it can do.

The CAM estate shooting is appealing because like the tarmac scene, it has an emotional resonance to it which seems so true to how characters would really act that it’s hard to let go of it being real vs. fake, but if you look beyond that attachment, the actual events don’t make much sense.

Magnussen’s whole mind palace room thing is a big tell. Like … He uses the exact same memory technique the way that Sherlock does? After fooling Sherlock the exact same way Moriarty did in TRF? And he just happens to have this bright white room where he sits to think?

The scene not only includes a completely white backdrop, with absolutely no shadow at all, but it’s also really symmetrical, another recurring characteristic of scenes that occur in Sherlock’s mind palace.

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hmmm… reminds me of a certain scene we’ve seen before actually:

or in fact this scene, also from t6t:

of course it’s a lot more subtle in the scene you mentioned so it could be just sloppy editing there but, well, you know what we say about coincidences… also *cough* EMP *cough*

Ohhh yeeeaaahhh..... i remember that. HMM.

EMP/EDT - The incongruent scene in TAB

I’m still playing around mentally with the Extended Dream Time idea and had another thought. 

For clarity’s sake, the main problem that exists that the EDT idea helps solve is the utter appalling plot stuff that is HLV from Christmas on. There are so many problems with people being OOC, especially John and Mycroft (Mr. British Gov’t doesn’t wonder who shot his baby brother?). The biggest issue is, of course, the idea that the ultimate Sherlock protecter, John, forgives Mary and returns to her. Then we have Sherlock leaving John in Mary’s hands blithely to fly off to his death after having returned from the dead once already to protect John from Mary. Hugs at the tarmac “take care of him”. Seriously?

Not to rehash all that here. This recent meta by archipelagoarchaea explains the problem with HLV brilliantly. 

I don’t think EDT is the only possible solution to these problems in HLV. I think an equally likely scenario is that John, or possibly John and Mycroft, are plotting against Mary and we’re simply shown the ‘surface’ of their plan to keep Mary placated. However, that doesn’t explain all the problems in HLV and TAB, such as John’s lack of emotion on the tarmac and on the plane, or the general unlikely fizzle of the ‘drug overdose’.  It doesn’t explain some of the weird visual glitches like Mycroft’s tie reversing itself. Nevertheless, we won’t actually know what the writer’s have up their sleeves until S4 airs.  So while it’s fun to play with different theories, and I’m quite fascinated by the idea of EDT, I’m not placing any bets. We haven’t been given all the facts. They may well surprise us with an option #3 that we don’t see yet.

The one thing I am sure of is that Moftiss are excellent writers. If WE see consistency and character problems, we can be sure they are well aware of them and have an arc in place that resolves them. We’re seeing the tip of the iceberg and it looks weird, but it will make sense when we see the whole thing.

Now to the new point! (finally)

One of the arguments against EDT is that the simplest solution is always the best, and that the writers always broadcast when we are in Mind Palace mode, in order to keep the lines clean. This was absolutely my thought when I first read about EMP after TAB aired. “No way! It’s too confusing!”

But there’s one problem. They did blur the lines and make things totally unclear already in TAB! TAB goes back and forth between the “present day reality” and “1895″. If they were ‘staying within the lines’ and keeping things sharp and clear–so that MP vs ‘not MP’ was obvious–then why did they insert a ‘present day’ sequence that is patently false?

In this ‘return to the present’ sequence there are a few things that tell us, with no room for doubt, that although Sherlock appears to have ‘woken up’ from 1895, just like in all the other ‘current day’ sequences, he is, in fact still asleep.

1. He wakes up in a hospital bed, off the plane. Then later on, he is still on the plane. So this sequence cannot possibly be real.

2. He’s attacked by a skeleton which, as creative as BBC Sherlock gets at times, is not a level of fantasy that can be ‘real’.

So if the writers always make MP clear, and always strive to remain obvious about what is and isn’t MP, why did they insert this patently dream sequence in the middle of supposedly ‘real’ sections of TAB? It certainly wasn’t necessary. And the whole grave/skeleton thing always felt like a throwaway to me, like it sort of fizzled in shock value. So what narrative purpose does this section serve?

Well, it could be a clue or set-up that, in fact, not everything that seems to be ‘real’ is ‘real’. Indeed, maybe none of it is. They have clearly established here that Sherlock isn’t always awake when he thinks he is, that they can and will play with the factual presentation of the show in that way, and thus they’ve made absolutely anything possible. (such as EDT)

Again, we have the problem with the dubious ‘drug overdose’ and other oddities in present day TAB that are either sloppy writing and bad prop work. Or: none of it is real.

But let’s look at this patently false current day section for more clues. What’s the first thing we see in this section? John standing over Sherlock in a hospital bed, checking his eyes with a penlight. On the surface, it’s John checking on Sherlock’s TAB ‘overdose’. But if Sherlock is really in a coma and has been since the domestic in 221B in HLV, then might this not be a bleedthrough from Sherlock’s actual reality? (In a hospital bed with John over him.)

Then there’s Sherlock digging a grave and being attacked by a skeleton of a bride. Others have pointed out what an apt metaphor this is for the way Sherlock has ‘dug his own grave’ with Mary. No argument here. But it’s also a pretty compelling allusion to death, which is something Sherlock is ‘struggling with’ if he’s actually in a coma and dreaming this whole thing.

Apologies in advance if others have covered this before and better. Please feel free to message me and I’ll insert any links you like!

I’d like to look at setlock and see what clues we’ve been given to EDT there. Hopefully later today.

XA

I absolutely agree with this, @xistentialangst, as, I think, most of us do that are playing around with EMP / EDT theory. It’s just one possible explanation. For me, at this moment, with what we’ve been given so far, it is the only way  I can  make sense of the inconsistencies and problems of HLV and TAB because in NO WAY do I think Moffat and Gatiss are bad writers. Not for a second do I believe that they don’t know exactly what they are doing, so there’s a reason why nothing makes sense from the Domestic™ on. It could be dream, it could be mind palace ala coma, it could be alien abduction, but it will never be that Mofftiss just don’t know what they are doing.

I read that ‘argument’ yesterday and I have to wholeheartedly disagree because NO THEY DON’T. Case in point, the stealth mind palace sequence in TSOT (which I know has been discussed to death, but seems more relevant in light of all the arguments concerning EMP / EDT):

John (plaid shirt, blue jumper)  the morning after the stag night, in Hudders’ kitchen-

John (plaid shirt, blue jumper) has just left Hudders’ and gone up to the flat to find Sherlock

Sherlock in mind palace during the Mayfly Man deduction with John (different plaid shirt, maroon jumper)

Back in 221B, we would expect everything to be as it was, but still we have John in different clothes (plaid shirt, maroon jumper)

There is also the fact of ALL those laptops that was a clue as to what was ‘real’ and what was ‘mind palace’, but it still didn’t stop viewers from missing them as tells. I’m sure there are viewers at this moment that still don’t know ALL of these scenes were mind palace. Mofftiss have, from the beginning, shown the mind palace as bleeding in and out of real life.

It’s lovely that you point out how John and the TAB hospital scene and Sherlock’s gravedigging scene could be real life influence. It’s said that people in comas do have some sense of what is going on around them and seems to be a possible explanation to the physical manifestation of what we are shown because I’m sure those scenes are working on figurative (Sherlock digging his own grave, allusion to death) and literal (John, standing over his bed, checking his eyes for dilation with the pen light) levels. Blurring the lines between reality and mind palace as they are wont to do.

@tjlcisthenewsexy @ebaeschnbliah 

This is so brilliant. I always thought it was weird that when John confronted Mary, he seemed more frustrated with being lied to than the fact that she NEARLY KILLED SHERLOCK.The man that he had killed for and almost died to protect. I just can’t tell where real life starts and the mind palace ends. Sherlock wakes up in the hospital and says “Mary”, as if he’s woken up to a realization. This seems plausible. John is breathless with relief when he tells Mary that Sherlock has woken up -this seems plausible, too. So is everything after that Mind Palace as Sherlock tries to figure out how best to deal with Mary in a way that wont destroy John?

Reblogging for @monikakrasnorada’s addition, reminding me that there are other MP scenes that are ‘stealth’ MP. 

To @kakashisauce - My personal take on EMP/EDT is that it began after the second time Sherlock collapsed, after Mary is revealed to John, and the domestic in 221B occurred. My main reason for that is that I think John’s behavior in that domestic scene is very much in character and how he would react (with rage) so I’m more inclined to think that was ‘real’. Whereas in scenes later on, especially the tarmac and on the plane in TAB, John seems OOC to me, very passive and somewhat blank, as if Sherlock were imagining John, he just no longer knows how John would react.

But as I’ve mentioned before, John’s OOCness in these scenes might also be an indication that he’s got a ‘secret plan’ regarding Mary, and that, since he’s such a bad liar, his way of being ‘undercover’ is just to go as neutral as possible. That doesn’t solve many of the other issues though.

Anyway, it’s all speculation!