Wanting to respond to both @destinationtoast and @unreconstructedfangirl here.
1) I only watched the first 2 seasons of Breaking Bad and so I’m mostly commenting on the “Skylar White Effect” as described in the articles rather than drawing specific parallels between BBC Sherlock and BB.
2) I do think that the Skylar White effect, by this definition:
“It goes like this: a female character judges the male protagonist’s bad behavior in a completely rational way, and the audience hates her for it” (Johnson).
Is more applicable to Sally Donovan. Sally is just doing her job, and well, and Sherlock slut shames her. It’s really not that big of a surprise she calls him “freak.”
3) However, I do think Johnson’s other definition of the Skylar White effect: “It speaks to the overwhelming preference for a male perspective over a female one, and for a male hero free from any woman’s ‘interference’” applies to Mary.
I’m not saying that Mary hasn’t done things that through doubt on her moral character or make the viewers inclined to distrust her. I’m just saying that the male leads do similar things, which don’t result in the viewership distrusting them.
Yes, Mary shot Sherlock. John shot Jeff Hope. Sherlock shot Magnussen. And we, as viewers, are encouraged to identify with these male characters and forgive them for having committed murder because the characters they murder are ‘evil.’ And yes, there is objective evidence of both these characters actually being evil, Hope is a serial killer. Magnussen is a blackmailer–but so was Irene, who is painted much more sympathetically by the show because Sherlock likes (loves?) her, and we’re encouraged to see things from his perspective.
And yes, Mary married John without telling him about her past. Sherlock faked a relationship with Janine for the sole purpose of breaking into her Magnussen’s office. But I’ve seen some viewers go to the extreme of calling Mary a rapist on the grounds that that her sexual relationship with John is based on deception, whereas Sherlock generally gets a pass on what he did to Janine.
So, I think that the morality of BBC Sherlock is frequently less about who does what and more about to whom. And that whom is very much biased in favor of our two male leads. So Mary shooting Sherlock is unforgivable not because the show presents shooting people as wrong, but because she shoots Sherlock. And I do think that’s an example of the narrative world view being biased in favor of the male character’s POVs, and I do think that’s part of the Skylar White effect.
4) Fans hated Mary way before she shot Sherlock. Fans hated her as soon as Moftiss announced they were casting a Mary Morstan and that the three words for S3 were “rat, wedding, bow.” As @unreconstructedfangirl said:
she is the woman who marries John and is thus the means by which Sherlock is made miserable
Which is very telling. Because, I mean, it makes me ache to see Sherlock’s face at the wedding, too, but objectively, there’s nothing wrong with what Mary does. Probably almost everyone has an ex who hasn’t gotten over them or a friend with unrequited feelings who is made unhappy by their current relationship. No one is required to take the feelings of those people into consideration when making their choice of life partner.
But the show encourages us to identify with Sherlock, the male lead, and not Mary, the female character who is presented as an obstacle to what @destinationtoast called “the monogamous model of a juggernaut ship.” If this were Mary’s show, Sherlock would be presented as the guy who had his chance with John and fucked it up by disappearing for two years and can’t accept that that irrevocably damaged his and John’s relationship. But it’s not, and not that many fans try to imagine things from her perspective.
I personally am aching for Mary POV, for an understanding of why she shot Sherlock, why she married John, what her motives are. I’m not sure I have a ton of faith in Moftiss providing satisfactory explanations but I still have hope that we will get this in S4. I am, by the way, also perfectly fine with Mary being written as an antagonist to Sherlock and John. I’ve written before that I headcannon her as a villain. But I want her to feel like a person. I want her to make sense. I don’t want her to just be an obstacle thrown in the path of Johnlock, a plot device or a foil for the male characters.
5) I do see people hating on Mary’s competence, especially after TAB. l saw a lot of critique of Mary as having been written as “too cold,” or people saying there were “too many clever people on the show.” And of course, when Sherlock and Mycroft exhibit the same arrogant behaviors, people applaud. But when Mary tells Mycroft MI6 security “would be a good idea” she’s “bitchy.” So I’m not saying that people who hate Mary hate her for her competence and no other reason, but I am saying that because Mary is a female character people hate, she’s critiqued for her competence in ways that the male characters are not.
Anyway, those are my thoughts on Mary Morstan/Watson and the Skylar White effect.
