The way that most of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories’ most horrible villains are rich dudes that are abusive to women, in a time such as the 1880’s, compels me.
Yup, there’s a huge number of times where Sherlock Holmes is the ONLY person to take a young woman’s complaint or worry seriously and finds out someone is up to some serious evil. Holmes also shows a lot of compassion and empathy with the victims over and over again. (This is why I find “Secretly a woman” or “Trans” Holmes headcanons much more convincing than “sociopath” Holmes.)
I am never going to shut up about how much I specifically love The Adventure of The Copper Beeches because it is literally Sherlock Holmes listening to a young lady he does not know except as a potential client, agreeing with her that a potential job she has interviewed for that she thinks is SUPER SKETCHY is, indeed, sketchy as fuck and when she says she’s probably gonna take the job anyways because the money is good and she needs it going “OKAY I GUESS but for the love of god please write to us so we know you’re okay we will literally drop everything and jump on a train if you want us to”.
The job turns out to indeed be sketchy as fuck, she writes to them, Holmes and Watson drop everything and jump on a train when she asks them to. I read this story for the first time when I was twelve and it made a HUGE impression.
This is also the basis for a lot of speculation about Holmes’ family life. The idea that he has been a victim of abuse, or his mother was abused (or even murdered by his father.) There’s definitely SOMETHING that makes him very aware of how dangerous isolated families can be, and the dark things that can happen behind closed doors. Plus, of course, the motivation to devote himself to stopping crime. And yes, so much of it is of the personal type.
dude see this is one aspect of the original books i NEVER understand why modern remakes (cough cough) don’t go all in on. Like, in the 21th c we HAVE all the dumb forensic shit that made Victorian Holmes stand out, but we STILL DON’T HAVE uh….you know, compassion for women and minorities, or the willingness to believe them, adequate community support for domestic violence or hate crimes, etc. etc. which you’d think is exactly where a renegade consulting detective would come in handy. A good modern day Sherlock Holmes remake, instead of trying to convince us that Holmes is some super genius for being better than fingerprint analysis or whatever, could have him just be…a good person who helps out people the police can’t and won’t help. There you go. That’s how to write a relevant modern Holmes.
One thing that annoys me is how much the BBC version of Sherlock (and the fandom around it) focus on police cases or cold cases. In the stories, Holmes’ bread and butter cases had fuck-all to do with the police and in a few stories, he actively works around/against them, or outright lies to them. Of the many, many things I wish that show had done differently, this is one is particularly obnoxious since it’s such a gimme.
There were very few actual murder cases in the Canon, and Holmes handled them either one of two ways:
Option one: The murder victim was innocent while the killer was an abusive bastard, see Speckled Band. Conclusion, arrest and have the killer charged (Or in the case of Speckled Band, indirectly murder him yourself then shrug and go home)
Option two: The victim was murdered to protect someone that the victim was abusing, or for vengeance, see Boscombe Valley, Devil’s Foot, Abbey Grange. Conclusion, Oops, I don’t know who the killer is, I am suddenly incompetent, oh look a pheasant.
#my favorite murder in holmes canon#is when they straight up witness a lady murder her blackmailer#do nothing except destroy his other blackmail material#and then straight up lie to lestrade about it#sherlock holmes#more of this in modern adaptations pls (via @cactusspatz )
Let’s not forget the time Holmes helps a young woman who’s being catfished by her own stepfather to steal her inheritance, and when the villain sneers that the law can’t touch him, Holmes grabs a horsewhip out of sheerest chivalry.
I think it’s also important to note, and complicates our ideas about what the highly patriarchal/misogynistic society of 19th century England looked like, that these stories SOLD
they were POPULAR
the Victorians LIKED reading about women who won out over shitty men in their lives, even when that plotline reaffirmed a woman’s power and agency or put an active sexist in his place (ie Irene Adler besting Holmes)
which is fascinating in light of. you know. [gestures broadly at all of Victorian gender dynamics, laws, etc.]
I was talking about Sherlock Holmes with my cool weird 42 year old coworker the other day and he said that he had read other works by ACD but not any Sherlock Holmes. ACD is smiling down from heaven on his one and only true fan.
in a way john watson is a fantasy (what if you had this brilliant enigmatic friend and what if he liked you in particular and what if he offered you the excitement of youth and adventures and a way out of boring society life and all without having to actually give up your status as a gentleman so you could have the best of both worlds) and in a way sherlock holmes is a fantasy (what if someone never got tired of you despite your various strange habits and mood swings and instead of simply tolerating you they genuinely liked you and what if you didn’t have to live alone forever and what if you never had to give up doing the things you love) and of course there’s the most fantastical part of it all (what if you could afford london housing prices)
I was sorting out my room today and all of my many, many paper documents that I needed to get rid off. Felt quite a bit like Holmes after Watson forced him to sort out his old case notes, but rather than it ending up in me telling my lover roommate about an old creepy family ritual, I just realised that I procrastinate throwing things away.
Me explaining to Conan Doyle why it's vital that I draw Sherlock and John making out crazy style to keep the future generations interested in his works
This is a distressing throught but bear with me: imagine if ACD had, as he planned, stopped writing after The Final Problem. That was it, Sherlock Holmes was without a doubt dead. I've already seen a few posts around here about how obviously devastating that would have been for the audience, for Watson and Holmes and all the characters, and all of this I whole-heartedly agree with.
But at what point did Holmes become iconic? What triggered the fact that he is still a cultural figure today, borderline a household name, not just in England, but all over the world? I mean, literally on my bookshelf, I have editions of the stories in Italian, French and Vietnamese. But what made this character and these stories so popular and widespread? Aside from, you know, being printed in different languages. And, yes, the adaptations play a part too, but how did it get to have so many adaptations?
If the stories stopped being written after The Final Problem, there would be no Hound of the Baskervilles, which is supposedly the most famous story. Then there's no Empty House, or The Lying Detective, and so on. But we still have the first two novels, which were pretty successful in their own right. And, if we're being very judicial about it, supposedly the first collections of stories are better than the ones that were written after the Fall (this isn't my personal opinion, but it's a general consensus I've gathered from different documentaries). Would it still be feasible for Sherlock Holmes to be as famous as he is if we only got two novels and twenty four short stories?
I mean, Dracula is one book, and he's quite well known. Same with Frankenstein. Even Hamlet only appeared in one play (same with Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, etc.).
I don't know, maybe this isn't a worthwhile question to ask at all, but I wonder where our focus would be if Sherlock Holmes had just died when ACD wanted him to. In some ways, he might have ended up seeming more human- in a tragic way, yes, but rather than having a resurrection, he dies at the end of his story and that's that. Given that nearly every adaptation includes this plotline, they'd have to focus on something else instead.
I might add to this, maybe not. Honestly, I'm not really sure where I'm going with this, but I do love to think about Sherlock Holmes way too intensely, so it's not the biggest issue.
One of the finest and most beloved Watsons ever to grace the screen has passed away. David Burke was 91 years old, just shy of his 92nd birthday, and he is survived by his wife Anna Calder-Marshall and his son Tom Burke.
By all accounts, he was a gentleman and a wonderful human being. He could have stayed on to play Watson much longer, which would have made many of us very happy, but he chose to leave the show to be nearer to his family, especially since Tom was very young at the time.
His was not the first intelligent and competent Watson, but this version marked a turning point in mainstream depictions, from comedic sidekick to a hero in his own right.
RIP, dear sir. You will be missed. Thank you for everything.
~*~
To read a longer and moving tribute, please check out the I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere website: https://www.ihearofsherlock.com/2026/05/david-burke-first-watson-of-granada-era.html. The tribute includes a link to the interview that the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes Podcast conducted with David and his wife a few years ago.
“Somewhere in the vaults of the bank of Cox & Co., at Charing Cross, there is a travel-worn and battered tin dispatch-box with my name, John H. Watson, M.D., Late Indian Army, painted upon the lid. It is crammed with papers, nearly all of which are records of cases to illustrate the curious problems which Mr. Sherlock Holmes had at various times to examine.”
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I finally played Sherlock Holmes Chapter One and he’s the babiest baby boy I’ve ever seen. My tiny son. My sweet little traumatized child. He’s never done anything wrong ever.
Considering a muppets adaptation of the Holmes stories, I would say that, should anyone not be a muppet, it should be Sherlock Holmes. However, that might make it seem like everyone around him is stupid, purely because they're a muppet, and that raises a bias against the intelligence of muppets (also, Holmes should be clever because he is clever, not because everyone else is stupid).
But if Holmes isn't a muppet, neither should Watson, as they should be the same species since, contextually, that makes more sense. Also, having one as a muppet and the other as a human might make any homeoerotically charged subtext (a natural phenomenon of a Holmes adapation) seem odd. And, it wouldn't be correct to 'other' Holmes too much, but to make both Holmes and Watson the only muppets would segregate them from everyone else.
Considering the large majority of the story would be about Holmes and Watson, that means that the characters on the screen the most would be human, which cancels out the fact of it being a Muppets Movie, rather than a movie with muppets. So, consider the reverse: Holmes and Watson as the only Muppets. But then that might invoke a bias against the intelligence of humans (which, given the current state of the world, objectively makes sense). However, to set apart Holmes and Watson takes away their inherent humanity, which goes against the themes of the canon.
If everyone is a muppet, then, except from whoever was murdered (if they are solving a murder, that is) that raises the question of which muppet plays which character.
Kermit, as per usual, would probably get a major part. But, to have him play Holmes leaves Miss Piggy without a partner; to have him as Watson, that automatically casts Miss Piggy as Mrs Watson. However, the homoeroticism would challenge Miss Piggy and Kermit's relationship, and as comitted a Johnlock shipper I am, I wouldn't want to get in the way of Kermit and Miss Piggy. Instead, Kermit could have another role, such as Detective Stanley Hopkins- if the plot was based upon one of the stories which Hopkins is involved in, then he would seem more like a main character. Hopkins, as a character, could conceivably be quite similar to Kermit as a person (or, muppet), so I think that fits quite nicely. Additionally, a Mrs Hopkins could be created to cast Miss Piggy.
I can't decide if Fozzie Bear would be better suited as Lestrade or Mycroft Holmes. To have him as Lestrade would fall into the typical casting of Lestrade, as generally being a little bit stupid and ill-fitting as a detective, when that wasn't exactly a narrative within the books. If he was Mycroft however, that wouldn't match how intelligent Mycroft is supposed to be. As a working idea, I would want to cast him as a police officer, potentially Lestrade, or Gregson, even.
Gonzo is quite difficult. I don't know if he could be antagonistic enough to play Moriarty. Now that I think about it, maybe Moriarty should be played by a human (if Moriarty's even a part in this adaptation). Gonzo could even make a good Holmes, but who plays Watson? Rizzo the Rat?
I thought maybe Dr Bunsen Honeydew and Beaker could play the pair, but which is which? Either way, they would have the chemistry for it (pun intended).
Consider: Statler and Waldorf (the heckler muppets) as Holmes and Watson, but in their later years. They don't match the personalities, but for some reason, it fits better in my head than Gonzo and Rizzo the Rat.
Mrs Hudson would be Camilla the chicken, and Rowlf the Dog would be... the dog (not the one that Holmes experiments on in A Study in Scarlet, that's too dark for a Muppets adaptation).
Sam Eagle might actually make a good Mycroft, but that questions the parentage of his and Sherlock's parents, as how did they produce and Eagle and a Muppet man? Though, I suppose that the Muppet Cratchit family was made up of pigs and frogs, and everyone was fine with that.
Pepe the King Prawn could play Wiggins. Animal and his bandmates could be the other Baker Street Irregulars.
Or, do something completely different: Watson is the only human. That poses the same difficulties as before, however. So, you might be able to see why I'm having a dilemma about this.
very strange being part of a fan of a "classic" thing bc like. its overrated. its underrated. everyone knows OF it but its a toss up if theyve actually ever engaged with it. you want to talk to everyone about how good it is but its so culturally ingrained that everyone waves off your glowing review as "well duh, its [classic thing]". its dismissed and overlooked BECAUSE it is so good. you cant find anyone to talk to about it except for deranged ppl on tumblr bc the masses havent actively thought about it in 30 years. its been referenced in every form of media since it released. no one gives it a second thought. youre going crazy.
I have not been using this account nearly as much as I have wanted to be, since I have been fairly busy at the minute (multiple minutes, hours and days, actually). Mainly to prove that I'm alive, I'm going to explain the half-baked theory I have on BBCSherlock Season 4 (also, I'm quite aware that a lot of you which view this blog don't watch/like this show, which is perfectly acceptable and actually sensible. I did want to use this blog to focus on the original Holmes stories, thus the name, but unfortunately I can't deny the fact that I do regularly watch this show and feel that it holds some sort of merit, even if it is a bit of a piss take. I will try to get to my usual content soon).
So, to add to the many theories which exist around that disaster of a series, I will suggest something new. I've got to say that theories like Extended Mind Palace and Blog Theory are really intelligent, and I really mean it when I say I hope the people behind such ideas are using their talents and imaginations to create their own work, as they have created stories I am sure we would all have preferred to watch. However, I do feel that they might be giving a bit too much credit to Moftiss. Aside from the fact the last episode aired nearly a decade ago, I would struggle to believe showrunners would put out a whole season of a show, just to retract it and say it was 'all a dream', or something of that ilk. This is a premise which would need to be introduced some time toward the end of the show, maybe in S4E3, and whilst I would agree that episode felt like a fever dream, there was no explicit or even cryptic message which might suggest that the events which occured were partially or wholly false (i.e. John/Sherlock waking up in 'reality', something in that reality which goes against the 'fantasy', like Rosie not being there, Mary still being alive, etc. etc. etc.)
Naturally, I don't talk about my personal life and my career on this blog, but I am a training actor who also writes my own work (screenplays, playscripts, that sort of thing) and I know that it would be near enough impossible for Moftiss to reemerge after how many years, say the last season was fake, and have a second round. Not only would the audience not buy that (they would have to have Twin Peaks level of confusing plot line skill to do that), but no studio would produce it. Nor would the actors return for that, since they're not exactly struggling unknowns anymore.
(By the way, I've written that as though I think anyone who created the theories mentioned above don't understand storywriting. This is not true at all, and I trust that there's many people in this fandom who are creatives in their own right. I really don't want to seem dismissive in this, so sorry if it comes across that way.)
With that out of the way, I will clearly establish that I have taken season 4 as it is. So, everything that happens (Rosie is born, John cheats, Mary runs away, Mary is killed, John beating up Sherlock for some fucking reason, Eurus is there, Moriarty is still dead) is going to remain as they are, sort of like given circumstances.
I think it's safe to say that every character in season 4 just seems to be completely different to who they were in the exposition, and not due to character development, but just piss-poor characterisation. On my first round of watching the shown (after it had been released, so it was literally one episode after the other), going between season 3 and 4 was like whiplash (I should mention that I thought TAB was purely a Christmas episode, I watched it after I finished season 4, which was confusing). Even when I watched it in chronological order and before I got involved in the fandom, it still felt incredibly off.
Until season 3, there was definitely character development with some of the main characters, especially with Sherlock. Part of that because of growth and maturity, to be expected after a two-year 'faking my death' hiatus, but the perspective switch between S2 and S3 definitely helped. S1 and 2 are from the POV of John (begins with him waking up from a nightmare, ends with him... well, living a nightmare). Sherlock is definitely quirky and arguably quite funny, but he's cool and collected for most of the time. Maybe to say he's 'suave' is a step to far, he's no James Bond (even if Moftiss might have wanted him to be), but the argument that BBCSherlock exaggerated the 'Robot, man-machine Holmes' stereotype in the first two seasons is very fair.
That changes in S3 (which is probably my favourite season for this reason). Sherlock is more human, partly because of what he went in the hiatus, but since we're seeing it from his POV (emotions clouding his judgement, his overall loneliness and struggles with addiction), the image of him created earlier is slowly broken down. There's less of a focus on the cases and on the man (men) solving them. I still think the Mind Palace scene from HLV is one of the best I've ever watched: they made sure there was still an element of deduction and intelligent problem-solving, but then focused on Sherlock's issues with his past (Redbeard) and also the really introducing dynamic that he and Moriarty *used* to have.
In S4, we lose perspective. I have very simply divided up the earlier seasons between being John's or Sherlock's, though they are definitely more nuanced than that and we do get to see glimpses from other angles of the story, but S4 wasn't like that. Say if we follow the pattern that (wasn't) established before, S4 should still be from Sherlock's POV. TAB certainly was- virtually the entire episode was in his head. Or maybe, it could return back to John's POV: I think both versions have merits, since S4 was mainly about Sherlock's childhood, but to view someone else's past through the eyes of their loved ones is also very interesting. None of that matters though, because S4 is from no one's perspective. It could be argued it is Mary's POV, but she dies in the first episode, is a ghost (hallucination? Who knows!) in the second episode, then only exists to narrate the last few minutes of the finale which really had nothing to do with her.
I know I said that S3 was my favourite season, but I can't help but wish that Mary didn't shoot Sherlock. Up until HLV, I really liked Mary, I thought she was a great character, but her characterisation shifted quite harshly from then on. To have a season from her POV, as fun as that would be, would have to be executed a million times better than S4 to make it actually work.
I can't make S4 make sense, but one thing I can make sense of is who Sherlock was throughout it. Unpopular opinion, I know, and as someone who has read the canon as often as I have, I probably should feel differently, but I do think that BBCSherlock did a fairly good job at adapting his character for the modern day. They were definitely aiming for a very meta perspective for 'the man beneath the deerstalker', so having a good but insecure man wearing a mask which made him seem more cynical than he was. If you've read any of my metas of the Holmes canon, you know I love that division of who the characters actually were and who Watson wrote them to be, so I think that's why I still like *some* of BBCSherlock (not what they did to Irene Adler though, never that, save Irene Adler from the heteronormative perspective).
I'm trying to stay on track, I promise.
Last time we saw Sherlock, before S4, he was getting over an overdose. I'm not a doctor, but I would think that an overdose of that amount (John looked like he thought Sherlock was about to drop dead, and there's every chance Sherlock wanted to) would induce some sort of withdrawal or health problem. We don't see any of that, which isn't to say it didn't happen, given how rapidly TST progressed, but that begs the question why it isn't shown. Sherlock's drug issues are firmly ignored up until he's on his death bed in TLD, and even then it's gone to the other end of the spectrum. Whereas before his addiction was brushed under the carpet, now it's the main plot of the episode, so much so we're not even sure if there even is a case, since he apparently hallucinated his main clue.
But this isn't the first time we've been told to ignore Sherlock's drug problems. In HLV, we see Sherlock high for the first time (I think), and then we carry on with the case. Again, no withdrawal or health issues are mentioned. Maybe his night at the hospital after being shot sorted him out, but (again, not a doctor, I'm an actor, don't ask me about science) I would expect Sherlock to have experience some form of withdrawal during that interim. But that's to suggest he even tried to get clean. The only way to make sense of Sherlock being capable of keeping his health up after near-enough overdosing on more than one occasion is that he had been actively using drugs from HLV to TLD. I would go a step further: I wouldn't think it too much to suggest that he'd started using again during his hiatus and had hidden it the entire time. Only when he needed it to be seen (Magnussen to identify his weaknesses, and Culverton Smith too, for that matter) did he let it show. As Mycroft said 'Nobody deceives like an addict', and we're talking about someone who was an undercover spy in Siberia (I think? He was a spy or something like that).
I'm going to get to my point, I promise.
Even though I said that everyone's characterisation was off in S4, I think there's a way to explain Sherlock. He's not just high or actively using drugs (and I'd like to think he would have tried to use less when Rosie was born, since he was apparently taking on parenting responsibilities), but he was avoidant too.
Drugs are a coping mechanism, they're used as a form of escapism- at least, for Sherlock. I don't use drugs, but I have dealt with similar issues myself, and I know how easy it is to turn towards harmful coping mechanisms when everything else is falling apart around you. We are all aware that Sherlock has been pushing things to the side (such as the fact that his sister killed his friend when he was a child, little things like that, easy to forget...), but, most importantly, emotions. Difficult decisions- he was shot by his friend's wife, and now he has to be friends with her? Now there's a baby to deal with, and say what you want about Sherlock, the series made a point of showing he's surprisingly good with kids (Archie from TSoT). Not only is he using drugs to distance himself from what's going on, but I think it's fair to say that there's dissociation going on too.
To quote from the MIND website:
"If you dissociate, you may feel disconnected from yourself and the world around you. For example, you may feel detached from your body or feel as though the world around you is unreal...
Dissociation is one way the mind copes with too much stress, such as during a traumatic event."
"Experiences of dissociation can last for a short time (hours or days) or for much longer (weeks or months).
Dissociation may be something that you experience for a short time while something traumatic is happening. But you also may have learned to dissociate as a way of coping with stressful experiences. This may be something that you’ve done since you were young."
There's a lot more information on the website, an important part being that there can be shifts in identity.
To be honest, I'm not a huge fan of diagnosing characters in media with mental health problems. Not just because, again, not a doctor, but the media can't exactly be trusted to portray accurate depictions of mental illness. If that wasn't intended by the writers and is a plot line they followed by pure accident, there's definitely going to be other elemets to the story which argue against a reading.
At the same time, part of me feels that it was sort of intended? Even if it's from S3, and Sherlock has returned from who knows what, but it certainly wasn't a holiday. He expects to come home and finds an empty flat, full of dust, his friend had got a girlfriend he's going to marry and live with... So Sherlock decides to not only focus on the work, but forget about everything else. That's something which we knew about him in the first two seasons, but maybe he can't be as 'cool and collected' as he once was. We can see this in the fake Jack the Ripper scene (TEH) with Molly when he hallucinates John's voice. But, say if he is using drugs, he can't have people asking questions like 'Are you okay?' So, to cope, he assumes a slightly altered identity, a 'lighter' version. More jokey, the type of person to get *blackout drunk* at a stag do before closing time. (That's something which is particularly insane and unspoken about in the show.)
He's in a whole relationship with Janine, but he manages to 'flip in' and out of it at will. You can't tell me there's a single thought going behind his eyes in those scenes; not because he wants to be somewhere else, but he doesn't even look like he's there.
So then he continues distancing himself, 'dissociating' maybe: S1 Sherlock would not be too quick to make friends with Mary, even if John forgave her. Look at the way he treats Sarah in TBB: if he doesn't like someone, they're going to know it. So maybe he's scared of Mary. She did try to kill him, after all. So he created a half-arsed theory as to how she was actually trying to save him, and he can use Mary as a 'cover' or maybe a divide between him and John. Should John find out he's using, he knows he'll try to stop him. And if he's sober, he'll have to deal with reality.
Sherlock is very odd in TST. Not that he hasn't always been, but he's very unlike himself. It's as though he's unable to take anything seriously, even when he tries to. He can't even focus on one case at a time. I've always been slightly unsettled by the way he's constantly on his phone for that rapid-fire montage at the start of the episode. I'm not going to try and create a proper time frame for how long that would have been, but given that Mary managed to be pregnant, give birth, and Rosie grew to... a reasonable size (I honestly know nothing about babies), let's say it was a year. All that time, Sherlock is head down, on his phone, one case after the other? Not only is that a good cover to hide if he is using (he's not high, he just can't get out of his chair because he's on his phone, etc. etc. etc.), but that's a really good avoidance technique. He can't focus on the dangerous assasin going into labour with his friend's child if he's solving or case, or when that child is being christened. He'll be nice to Mary, friendly even, but all of his interactions are very superficial. He doesn't even understand when John refers back to a joke of Sherlock being like a newborn baby, a joke Sherlock made himself. No, Sherlock's solving a case *on his phone*. Basically no legwork involved, he's converted himself into an arnchair detective.
I get that I have kind of skipped over the looming threat of MORIARTY, but you just need to understand that Sherlock is basically under a lot of stress. Understatement of the year.
These cases are things he's able to control. Nothing he is trying to solve seems to be too high-stake, and every time he gets close to a case which relates to something else (like his flashback to Moriarty at the beginning of the Thatcher case) he wants to follow it and focus on that. So when everything goes off the rails and relates back to Mary, then it gets difficult.
Mary does something she shouldn't: she runs away. But Sherlock can't let her out of his sight, as much as he's scared of her. People can do more in the shadows, so he needs to get her back. Also, if John starts relying on him too much, when he knows he's at an unreliable time of his life, everything will fall apart. They travel to Morocco (I checked- it's easier than I expected to get a last minute flight), and bring her back.
Then, something happens which Sherlock can't fix: Mary dies. Specifically, she gets shot (what goes around comes around...) Not only that, John blames him.
Sherlock has lost control of his surroundings, so he loses control of himself. He's at the worst part of his addiction, he finds a new case to focus on (you could argue that Sherlock is addicted to cases, as much as he is with drugs), and continues to self-destruct. He would have probably killed himself if John didn't intervene sooner (or Mary, Mary's ghost, Mrs Hudson?).
I can't explain TFP. That's just all round crazy, I'm not going to lie. There is a bit of a sense with it that Sherlock is 'better'. I don't just mean sober, but he's a little more present... I think. Again, I've just applied this idea of 'dissociation' onto a character which might not have been dealing with that at all, and like I said before, might be giving too much credit to the writers. I'd like to think that John and Sherlock had an actual conversation between Sherlock's birthday and when John gets tranquilized by Eurus (for fun, apparently). Given that Sherlock has every right to not like John anymore, he literally beat him up when he was already at a really low point in his life, the air is almost cleared in TFP? I'm not sure, it's impossible to have one fixed idea with this series.
This was a lot longer than I expected it to be, and I did just say a whole lot of nothing, but here's another idea to try and make sense of the mess that was S4. Maybe everyone knew this and I've just discovered media literacy... I don't know.
greatest dynamic in the world IS strange, eccentric asshole and their normal and polite friend who on closer inspection is actually worse in deeply weird and unexpected ways
