#elementary 2x07

He got to Mycroft’s flat before their father’s agents cleared it out, with the intent of transferring a few things to the echoing empty caverns of 221B. In a fit of ridiculous guilt-driven sentimentality he took the box of mementos from before Mycroft went to university, the desk and its contents, and a pair of armchairs he remembered from childhood and didn’t hate with the vitriol generally inspired by other things from that era of his life. A skim of the bookshelves identified little of interest, but the first-edition, two-volume compact Oxford and an 1850 atlas of London might provide distraction in a dull moment. 

Mycroft’s school-dictated letters home had regularly included a word-of-the-day instruction to his little brother, Sherlock only just recalled. Carefully copied out entries from the Oxford English Dictionary selected to highlight and deplore his faults. Obstreperous. Weffe. Strange (all twenty-six meanings and sub-meanings). Aberglaube. That last which was pure slander, obviously, as he had never been guilty of any such thing. A fact all too well demonstrated by the situation he found himself in now.

It was clear from the end that Sherlock's trash-talk is his way of covering up strong feelings for someone, and that's how I interpreted his comments about Watson to MI6 early in the episode, partly his cover and partly venting surreptitiously that he cares for her.

I'm intrigued by the parallels between the Holmes brothers and the Bell brothers: one of them being framed, resentment and judgment of the older by the younger, the older one acting to protect the younger, and the younger one surprised that the older didn't hold a grudge.

At this point in the season, both Joan and Sherlock have had sexual encounters with other people that when revealed (necessary because neither was conducted openly) prove upsetting to the other. In each case the upset is compounded by other factors: the revelation that Sherlock's early investigations into Joan included following her and deceiving her friend and Sherlock's troubled relationship with his brother. That is, it's not just about the sex.

As we saw throughout season one, sex is most likely to come into conversation when Sherlock brings it up to derail some other topic he wants to avoid. That doesn't seem to be what's happening in season two, when the activity he references involves Joan (and I'm counting Jen here, not as an example of transference necessarily, because her primary association remains with Joan rather than Sherlock).

I'm going to set aside Sherlock's initial hook-up with Jen. Until we get another dose of retcon in a future episode, I believe that happened as he described: taking the evening in a different direction when the original reason he started talking to her proved futile. He wasn't going to learn whether or not he could trust Joan by talking with Jen, so move on and salvage the effort he put into the evening with other compensations. [I'm not excusing his behavior in pretending to be Tony and misleading Jen, just not thinking it had much to do with Joan at that time.]

The second event, however, is as baffling to me as Joan's alleged sex with Mycroft, for which I see absolutely zero evidence in "Step Nine." If that was, as Sherlock later proposes, a message to him about Joan's ability to be as callously obnoxious as he can be — say in hooking up with her friend again — all right. That's as much sense as I can make of either action. A momentary self-indulgence that disregards the priority they've each otherwise assigned to their partnership. Acting out on both their parts, perhaps due to anxiety, again, on both their parts, around the very fact that the partnership is going so well.

So. What does any of this have to do with the image above, Joan's empty room? I assume this shot was carefully planned to tell us something, but what? I don't get the sense that Joan considers herself to be isolated, although she is perhaps a bit to exclusively reliant on one similarly dependent person. Is it that her needs are few? That she lives the life of the mind, unburdened by physical clutter? This space is in stark contrast to the material cacophony of the brownstone's main floor and the messy methodology they both employ when working cases. The last shot like this was at the end of "Deja Vu All Over Again," when she changed her profile to consulting detective. As a consulting detective, Joan's tools are her perception and her ability to find connections. She doesn't need gadgets or belongings or things to get her job done.

[anon continued] However, I don’t agree with the opinion of Joan sleeping with Mycroft as a bad idea and something that’s mostly about the two brothers. True, we got to see more of Sherlock’s reaction to it, but Joan has made her point clear. One of the things I love most about her is that she usually makes her points without using too many words, and she’s a very private character. I don’t have reasons to distrust Mycroft or his intentions, up to this point.

Unless in the future we learn that he was responsible for plotting the events that brought both Joan and Sherlock to London. So, in my opinion, when Joan made the decision of fucking (because that’s the word they’d have used if it was real life or if it wasn’t network TV) that decision was hers, and hers alone. I think that she may have done so she would be in control of things for a change.

Sherlock “betted” with her saying Mycroft would try to have sex with her, “I’m conducting an experiment. I’m curious to know which of us is right about my brother.” Sherlock wasn’t right (and neither was Mycroft, as far as we know, since he didn’t make a move). She made the move. Consciously or not, she made her stand to not be a piece in their games. Not to prove a point to Sherlock since she didn’t tell him willingly, but she did that for herself. Was that the right decision?

At the moment I’m sure she though it was. So far, I don’t see why it wasn’t. I know if it was me in her shoes, I’d be pissed to have just found out my friend/partner have a brother and that I’ve just become a subject of an experiment and that I was thrown in the middle of a sibling rivalry. The decision was hers, and the dialogues from both Step Nine and The Marchioness show that.

We can’t always be careful and mindful of others. We’ve seen her doing that when her friends tried to pull an intervention on her/manipulate her life choices. Even if Sherlock had spent the whole day bugging her about it, saying he was fine with the retaliatory sex, the decision was hers in the end. She entered the restaurant asking if that was a romantic meeting; it wasn’t.

I like that. Was it OOC of her to do something like that? I don’t think so. We haven’t had the chance to see this side of her yet. We got to see Sherlock pouting about it, but she didn’t see much affected by it, she seemed at easy with her decision. I’d love to have seen more of her POV, always, I can’t ever get enough of Joan, but, I don’t think that these two things must be analyzed as a unit.

Sorry for the humongous chopped text. I don’t have a Tumblr account, but I always check the tag after a new episode airs, and you always make excellent points and as I didn’t see any comments around here exploring this side, I thought I’d share my 2 cents.

It’s me again. I forgot to mention the “at the mercy of the Holmes brothers” line. It instantly made me think of Joan. She didn’t let herself be in that position. Also, I just read your ‘if I had a sister’ and I agree with you. How one single line can make one immensely happy.

Hi anon,

Thanks for the kind words.

I’m sure it won’t be a surprise to hear I disagree with your view that it’s okay we don’t know much about Watson yet because it’s early days yet for the show. Or for any other reason, really. My opinion on this has not changed.

I do agree that it would be fine for Joan to chose who she has sex with for her own reasons, and that just because Sherlock has a theory about why she does something does not mean that is actually why she did it. I think it would be interesting to see Joan make choices that her friends find uncomfortable, for her to act rashly and perhaps wish she’d done something differently, or to behave unexpectedly. If the revelation of 2x07 had been part of an existing pattern of any of these things, I’d know how to interpret it.

I’m intrigued by your observation that unlike Nigella, Joan did not put herself in a position to be at the mercy of the Holmes brothers. Yes; Joan did not cheat on anyone, but I’m not sure the two groupings are really comparable. If it turns out that Joan and Mycroft actually made plans to start working together as business partners, then it might make more sense to contrast Joan and Nigella and their relationships to Sherlock and Mycroft.

But wasn't the explosion idea inspired by Joan? So it could have been that the sex happened before the idea. It all would have been the same dinner-date, obvs, but he could have woken up the next morning and thought, "Joan says to get his attention, but this night with Joan was special enough that I'd rather not fuck things up with her by using it like that... I know, a bomb!"

I honestly don't think he slept with Joan for revenge purposes; I'm just saying the timeline doesn't preclude it.

And yeah, I don't think he slept with her SOLELY because of fascination about her bond with his brother. I'm hard-pressed to say it wasn't a factor, though.

But nah, the reason he slept with her is obvious, and hardly requires this much analysis. He slept with Joan Watson because JOAN WATSON. Who says "Sorry, not interested" to Joan Watson??

I have not seen any comment on one small but significant detail revealed in this episode:

Joan does not have a sister.

This is important (to me) for how we found out, which is the sort of casual in-context slip of detail in conversation that has so rarely been incorporated into her dialogue. It's an example of what I have been whining pleading hoping for, and I am so happy to know this little fact I just wanted to to point out that it happened.