mememememe

Jack has officially became a walking meme

For me, one of the most awful things about the end of T6T is that Sherlock has lost his friend – someone that saw him for what he was, more clearly than John has yet managed to do, and who genuinely, naturally liked him – but John sucks all the air out of room, and is the only one given a right to mourn her.

This episode is one of the most theme-rich episodes to date, in my opinion. They’re more deliberate, more obvious than in other episodes. One of the big themes is whether we can determine our own fate (free will, agency) or if it’s all predestined for us.

Nearly forgot to put in a cut to avoid spoilers–sorry!

“Come, Watson, come! The game is afoot.”

John Watson as an abusive partner.

It’s awful to contemplate, I know. Not John Watson, not our lovely Doctor, not someone who doesn’t accept help but gives it, someone who, in the course of saving one man’s life, beat another until he spit blood.

His friend. Someone he’d killed for. Someone he’s almost died for. Abusive, toward Sherlock? Impossible. Except he has been, and Sherlock knows this and has used it to his advantage. 

Uck. Nauseating. But think about it: In S2, Sherlock wants John to hit him, to provide the verisimilitude that Sherlock’s a poor priest beaten up in the street by a mugger. John won’t do it, until Sherlock attacks him first, and in John’s shock and anger he lets go of his self control; he ends up choking Sherlock on the street. Unneccessary, and, as John put it, sometimes he hears “punch me in the face,” but it’s usually subtext. He’s got violent tendencies toward Sherlock in many ways, as much as he loves him, he’s helpless in the face of Sherlock’s cleverness and Sherlock *triggers that helplessness* to get what he wants. 

And when Sherlock comes back in S3, right in the middle of his planned proposal to Mary -  in John’s emotional shock that he’s alive, what does he do first? 

Makes that subtext, text. Not once, not twice, but three times. Takes his emotional turmoil at Sherlock’s resurrection and channels it into a violent outburst because he’s helpless otherwise - he was played, and Sherlock deserves to feel as badly as John does for doing it. 

Ah, but then, Sherlock twigs to an idea: Use John’s emotional/violent outbursts to shake him out of his trauma. So at the end, he lies to John to trigger his emotional outburst by thinking they’re going to die: but this time, John manages to physically keep himself together when he discovers Sherlock’s deciet, though it looked pretty dicey for a moment. Emotionally, though, he’s been terrible the entire episode: he locks Sherlock out, he won’t talk to him, refuses to listen to Sherlock’s explanations. It’s all about John, and maybe for a bit it should be. But for months? No. That’s hideously awful to your friend who suffered on your behalf, who left his life for years to save yours. It’s manipulative and selfish. But John blames Sherlock so Sherlock blames himself, and sets up a situation where John has to confront him about it. 

And now, we’ve got the worst situation: Sherlock is dying by his own hand, on purpose, after the emotional turmoil of Mary’s death. He’s using John’s emotions for his advantage, again. We know Sherlock has learned to calculate everyone’s actions and reactions; we’re told so the entire episode. When he “lost it” in the Morgue and tried to stab Smith, Sherlock was counting on John’s reaction. John blames Sherlock so Sherlock blames Sherlock for Mary’s death. So once again, Sherlock sets up a situation where John has to confront him. He must. Not just because Sherlock needs the pretext to be in the hospital, but because in his brain, John needs to beat the shit out of Sherlock to “get even.” He “deserves to.”

Oh holy hell, Sherlock. Those are the words of an abuse victim.

John has, by his emotional and physical abuse, convinced Sherlock Holmes that he deserves all the blame, all the abuse he’s suffering, all the abuse heaped on him by his best friend. The Best Friend who’s been utterly incapable of watching out for the emotional needs of someone we all know to be almost incapable of fully comprehending how he feels.

John Goddamn Watson. Doctor John H. Watson. Selfish, frustrated, conflicted, PTSD suffering, emotionally constipated and emotionally and physically abusive John H. Watson.

And what’s worse, I think he knows it. “Why should everything be understandable?”

(Thanks for giving us this gif @cumberbatchlives!)

I think right there, RIGHT THERE… was when Sherlock made the decision.

Sherlock was already on drugs trying to cope with a severe depression, and blaming himself for John’s loss. Add to that his almost unexistent self-esteem (we got more proof now with him saying “In saving my life [Mary] conferred a value on it, it is a currency I do not know how to spend” - how SAD is that.) Remember the book on suicide prevention in 221B. Remember suicide was a theme in this episode, and Sherlock was willing to help a woman he thought suicidal (mostly thanks to the fact that she reminded him of John)… 

…but that was before he thought he’d lost his mind -what he’s always seen as his only ‘useful’ trait- forever, and before John beat him to a pulp blaming him for Mary’s death. The only person he loves, whom he sees as the only reason for his sheer existence, hates him. He lost John’s respect and approval forever. What is there to live for? Ah, but there’s more. He feels he damaged John, and that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Being the cause of John’s pain? Now there’s something not to live for.

I feel that gif you see above is when the penny drops for Sherlock. A slight change of plans. He decided right then; he was gonna go in Emelia Ricoletti’s way. Taking a bad guy down with him, at least making his death count. You can see it in his exchange with Culverton. Sherlock was resolved, he wanted the man to kill him… but when facing death, he was afraid. He broke down saying he didn’t really want to.

I think he put the recorder in John’s cane trusting his clever John would realize and find it some time after they found him dead in that bed, and would send the recorded confession to Lestrade, to take down that disgusting Culverton. So, even when suicidal, Sherlock trusted John to make his death count. And of course John would burn in an eternal hell on Earth, knowing he couldn’t save Sherlock. The perfect ending. “Kill you? I’m gonna kill you someday, but I don’t wanna rush it. I’ll burn the heart out of you.” It’d be a promess fulfilled. Kill Sherlock, and burn the heart out of him.

Because, though Sherlock might have harbored any last ray of hope that John would find him before it’s too late -like Mary’s message said, there is absolutely no way John would come save him if it wasn’t because Mrs. Hudson was casually there in john’s presence in 221B, to show him the DVD. John even said he’d left the cane “as a goodbye gift”, which further proves he did not suspect some harm might come to Sherlock while in hospital. John was not gonna come back, at least not anytime soon. 

Mary knew this. She anticipated exactly how things were gonna go. Mary didn’t intend for that recorded message to be seen by John -if anything, the clever way in which she planned this leaves her as an innocent johnlock shipper, the memory of her forever clean. She just pre-recorded it to lead Sherlock to certain death. She knew in the state Sherlock was, and how in love with John he was, he was foolishly gonna follow her instructions believing her. She knew John very well too. She knew about how his anger works and how stubborn he is and caused their estrangement so there was no way John would be around to save Sherlock. She literally sent Sherlock to die alone, in hell. But what she didn’t anitcipate tho… was our hero of the episode, Mrs. Badass Hudson. She saved Sherlock. She “made it all possible”. She was the overlooked one who “counted” this time around. Just like Molly was in TRF.

Now, of course, seeing what was supposed to be his fantastic final act failed, someone will come out of his hiding-place, 100% done with his minions’ ineptitude, to dirty his hands and just do it himself, because man, you just can’t delegate nothing to people, can you. People, people, people…

[Just tags below the cut.]