Sherlock made me really uncomfortable this first episode. He treated Watson badly and I thought he was going to apologize and tell Watson what a star she is but instead he made it all about him AND told her that she was totally replaceable???
it’s going to take him a least a few episodes of Joan not accepting his inadequate “mepologies,” as someone described it in the tag, to get it right. And I hope even more episodes for him to actively work on earning her trust again. This is a huge project, and I hope the show takes a good long time to fix it.
this is old territory for him: downplaying significant emotional connections as a means to an end rather than acknowledge those emotions. It’s very reminiscent of how he described his relationship with Abigail to Joan in Poison Pen - she was an excellent research subject, certainly not his first love, how absurd. So in Nemesis, he described focusing on the least painful aspect of the broken partnership, the part that he really could replace (because in fact they’d both outgrown that part before the end of s2), and found a new student. What struck me was that he started out that scene being honest: “I was afraid.” But he’s still afraid, and that fear attempted to reduce ending the partnership to a simple matter of exchanging protegée a with protegée b. (I’m not excusing it, just that his denial-based logic fits what I understand about the character.)
When he wasn’t doing that, he tried simply disregarding her refusal with the position “isn’t it obvious [we should work together]?” in a sort of “fake it til you make it” strategy/manipulation. Which she saw through immediately. And so he showed up in the elevator and followed her to the hotel room and continued to work on the case. (and she clearly expected that, with the brief look over her shoulder to see if he was following and making the hotel room door bounce closed in his way.) And like Gregson, she can’t ignore the value of his work, so she won’t let her hurt feelings block his help, no matter how much she wants to do that. (Though I think it was a little mean of the writers to have her say “Pretty sure he wasn’t sitting on the shower bench when he murdered two people.”)
But also like Gregson, she doesn’t trust him any more, so she’s not going to accept anything more from him. She’ll be a sounding board for him, if he likes, and she’ll listen when he butts in, for the sake of the case. But she said “No” the first time he offered to be a sounding board for her and pointedly did not accept when he expressed his willingness to help her a second time. She’s not going to act as if they’re partners, and she’s not going to let him act that way with her, either.
What I saw on Joan’s part was wanting him to take responsibility for ending the partnership and to apologize for that specifically. That’s the answer I think she wanted to “Why are you here?” She doesn’t want his praise and accolades for good work; she already knows she’s good and truly doesn’t need him to confirm that (“I’m really good at finding things.”). Once he's acknowledged hurting her and made amends for that, and if she accepts the apology, then maybe something can be rebuilt. After that, perhaps someday we can have a reverse “Details” with Joan proposing partnership because she’s better with him. (I admit, I’ve dreamed of an eventual parallel like that since Details first aired.)
