How Mary Morstan destroyed the moral centre of BBC Sherlock
So let me just start by saying that no one wants two-dimensional, black-and-white characters. Flawed people are normal, believable, more interesting, more relatable. Thatâs all fine. What the first two series of Sherlock gave us was:
1. Sherlock Holmes: A self-appointed detective, occasional (mostly past, seemingly) drug user who solves crimes as a puzzle to keep his overactive mind occupied. Rude to people, a trait born more out of impatience to get on with saving lives without being hampered by other peopleâs relative slowness, and possible also because he falls somewhere on the autism spectrum and struggles with social skills. Tries to believe that he is cold, emotionless, but the opposite is palpably true: his facial reaction when Moriarty destroys the old woman in The Great Game. This line: âThis hospitalâs full of people dying, Doctor. Why donât you go and cry by their bedside and see what good it does them?â (Read: wasting time wringing our hands wonât save this personâs life.) This exchange:
John: Charming. Well done.Â
Sherlock: Just saving her time. Isnât that kinder? (Read: He attempts to be kind, successful or otherwise.
Sherlockâs face when he sees John wearing the bomb jacket in The Great Game. Sherlock admitting his fear in The Hound of the Baskervilles. Sherlock showing compassion by rescuing Irene in A Scandal in Belgravia. Sherlockâs tear as he was saying goodbye to John in The Reichenbach Fall. These two series are full of evidence that Sherlock absolutely does care about people, so much so that his brother reminds him to be wary of sentiment as though itâs an old refrain, routinely repeated. And the final touch: âI may be on the side of the angels, but donât think for one second that I am one of them.â Thatâs it in a nutshell: Sherlock is no angel â but he is indubitably on their side. He solves crimes. He stops criminals from their actions. He saves lives. He is, despite his surface rudeness, a good person.
2. John Watson: An ex-army captain and doctor with an appetite for adrenaline, an inability to settle into civilian life, post-traumatic shock nightmares, and a dangerous violent streak. A man with a âstrong moral centreâ who waits until he believes it absolutely necessary to kill, then does it cleanly, quickly, humanely when he thinks he must. John is such an interesting mix. In one way of looking at it, thereâs a lot more dark in him than there is in Sherlock. Something obviously went wrong in his family, too, as not one of his immediate family attended his wedding. Thereâs some resentment there, some thirst to prove his worth â and a corresponding hyper-willingness to assume that people doubt it, that people place blame on him, that they find him wanting in some way. Trust issues, indeed.
And yet heâs the one whoâs mindful of when Sherlock is stepping on toes and hurting feelings, the first to pull him into line, to make sure he doesnât go too far. Theyâre such a good team this way: John came back from the war with a hand tremor that made it impossible for him to practise medicine and a psychosomatic limp and blasted-up shoulder that made it impossible for him to be the âwar heroâ Sherlock describes him as during their first cab ride. They fit each other perfectly: Sherlock gives John a safe outlet to let out his demons and channel them into being a hero again, cures him of his impediments almost just by believing him unshakably, always, without one shred of doubt, no matter what his sharp-edged humour might suggest, even giving him back the ability to practise medicine again, and in turn John provides Sherlock with equanimity: someone to come home to, eat with, be normal with, someone who will save him from going too far either verbally or into the deeps to search out a criminal there, who will follow him down and shoot the criminals off his back. They save each other. They do good work: theyâre good people.
And then series 3 gave us Mary. Mary the former secret agent gone rogue, Mary who kills for the highest bidder (confirmed in The Six Thatchers), Mary who scales a building pregnant to intimidate or kill a man who is blackmailing her. Mary who shoots a friend in the heart rather than accept his help and request his secrecy, or his help in breaking the truth to John. Mary the pathological liar, who layers lie upon lie upon lie, and feels that she should never have to apologise for anything, including all of these lies. Mary, who got snippy and resentful over Johnâs âmonths of silenceâ after she tried to murder his best friend, as though he had no right to his anger. Mary, who denied John the right to have a say in naming his own child after she put him through all of that. Mary, who would rather drug her friend and abandon her family rather than accept help. Mary, who abandoned her team without confirming that they were beyond rescue and started a new life with a marriage and a baby and not a second thought for the people sheâd left behind. Mary, who never for a second left her profession, keeping her guns and her outfits and her secret info stashed in random walls in Norway, her vast collection of wigs and offensive accents.
This might have worked if the show had seen her arc through as the villain she clearly was. Mary was decidedly NOT on the âside of the angelsâ. Mary was not saving lives. Mary was taking them. Mary was a person whose life choices, past and present, clearly put her on the other side from Sherlock and John â two flawed, yet ultimately good men who do good work. Maryâs work was, in a word, bad. She was the opposite, really: an inherently bad person with a cute façade, who could giggle and make little jokes (that frequently had a sting buried within), who could roll up her pants instead of just getting them hemmed, who could tease and banter, but as soon as the pressure came back on, her real self came out again. The old habits came back: drug a friend, shoot them in the heart, run away without looking back, kill anyone who gets in your way. The fact is that the show did NOT see this arc through. The writers tried to spoon-feed us the façade, and it didnât work, because the truth was so very visible: Mary was not a good person, and trying to pretend that she was is either completely unbelievable, or else destroys the entire point of who Sherlock and John are, in their essence. To have them take Mary on board without question, without her actual redemption by having felt or demonstrated remorse of any kind at any point for any of the very many terrible things she did, does not work! This is tantamount to Sherlock and John teaming up with Moriarty! Even if theyâd needed information from Moriarty or something, it would have been a necessarily temporary arrangement, because they are not on the same team and never have been!
So, tl;dr version: we want characters who are nuanced, who have grey area, who are three-dimensional: but not characters who betray their own moral code by associating themselves willingly with someone they would normally oppose with all of their combined might. Writing their acceptance of Mary Morstan destroyed their moral centre. In a way, it made them no better than she was, and we know from the first two series that this just isnât who Sherlock and John are. Theyâre good people. Mary wasnât.
blakekathryn
izzy806
andulkaphoto
origamiaround
germansingergirl
gummygunk
