You know why I'm here

So it’s been a week since “The Reichenbach Fall,” and I’m still processing it.  Anyone who is familiar with “The Final Problem,” let alone see the episode, knows that Sherlock’s death is not the end. He’ll be back in typical Sherlock Holmes fashion, but it doesn’t dampen the way the last moments were gutting.  John is utterly alone, and this episode makes no qualms about showing that.

Unlike most Watsons, John is actually alone.  The show has always taken great pains to try to establish John’s girlfriends, going from the “ladies’ man” Watson you see glimpses of in Conan-Doyle’s stories and novels, from John trying to hit on Anthea to his doomed flirtation with Sarah to the boring school teacher in first episode of this series.

Of course, this also seems to be the show’s way of reminding us, tiringly so, that John is straight.  It’s a bit more effective than John’s constant cracks about how people are going to talk about he and Sherlock.  Of course they’ll need to two rooms! Thank god no one saw Sherlock ripping off John’s semtex coat. People might talk. Confirmed bachelor? What does that mean? (Sherlock himself is barely better. While his own apparent asexuality/disinterest in sex is commented on occasionally, perhaps most humorously in this exchange, he comments about the naked lady pictures on John’s laptop.  It is worth commenting that Sherlock seems less concerned with the rumors about he and John.  He acknowledges them, but he doesn’t get hung up about it.)

But really, with the constant reminders of the fact that John is straight (because god forbid we just let it go for one damned episode; I shudder to think what this show would do with someone who was actually gay. The reminders of that would be probably more obtrusive and easily more offensive, judging by the show’s track record.), it also reminds us that John is alone.  He doesn’t talk to his drunk of a sister; he doesn’t have any other family.  His friendship/partnership with Sherlock is implied to have cost him every single girlfriend he’s had since they met.  Before that, John was quite frankly a wreck, so it’s unlikely that he had a girlfriend since he came home from Afghanistan.

What makes the loss of Sherlock, even though the audience knows Sherlock is alive, so incredibly powerful is that John is alone now.  He is, in many ways, the sad sack he was at the beginning of series one. He’s alone again; he’s back at his therapist.  He doesn’t have a place to live. It’s hard to be sure, but in certain shots of John at the cemetery, it appears that even his damn limp is back.

To compare his plight to Ritchie’s Watson, who is shaken by Holmes’ death, he seems even more lost.  When Holmes dies in the stories, Watson is married.  He has his wife to keep him buoyant in this horrible moment where he has lost the very best man that he’s ever know. Watson appears shell-shocked at Holmes’ funeral, but the last scene of the movie is him starting to move on with his life.  He has his wonderful home with Mary, and he seems happier.  They are going on their honeymoon.

And then Watson learns that Sherlock is actually alive. He is able to deduce looking at Mycroft’s breathing device that Holmes survived his encounter with the falls.  The ending is much more ambiguous, too.  There is no body.  Watson, of course, doesn’t see Holmes, but he knows that his friend has survived.

Compare that to the fact that John watched Sherlock take that last step off the roof, that Sherlock gave John his note, because that is what people do in those situations.  He saw his friend’s body; he saw the blood and Sherlock’s blank eyes.  He saw everything (or at least he thinks he did).

This isn't a scarring image at all.

Sherlock isn’t really much of a srs bznss show.  Sure, Cumberbatch and Freeman were nominated for BAFTAs (and Freeman won, as well as the show) but it’s much more of a romp with laughter and adventure than it is a show about Issues and Implications.  It’s a show about two friends, at its core, and to watch one friend lose the other in such a dramatic and graphic fashion is deeply unsettling.  Even knowing that Sherlock isn’t actually dead in the image above, it’s hard to look at it.  (It would be easier to look at if I would look for stills, but hey. I do most of my image searches on Tumblr, and at least this one isn’t over-saturated green with SOPA over Sherlock’s eyes.)

For all its weaknesses and silliness, Sherlock managed to do what I would have said was impossible.  The man who wrote “The Blind Banker” wrote one of the emotive episodes of the series and possibly the best overall. I’ve only covered one of a hundred facets that made this episode compelling.  I’m planning on working up an entire post about one Molly Hooper because she is perhaps the most redeemed aspect of this show, depending on who is writing her. It is a hard episode to get through, with some of the plot twists it makes, and it has far too many “gotcha” moments, but when you step back and look at the entire episode–or even just those last ten minutes, from the moment Sherlock talks to John on the roof to the last shot in the cemetery–it’s hard not to have some kind of visceral experience, if even to feel the absolute loneliness of John Watson.

Or getting Mark Gatiss to write it

I’m having a busy week, and I want to recap both Sherlock and Once Upon a Time, and maybe touch on Lalaloopsy dolls.  Yes, my writing blog has somehow become my thoughts on TV and toys, but hey. Roll with it.

After last week’s dreary and disturbing-in-a-bad-way turn, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to see this episode.  The Sherlock Holmes source material is frankly awful. Arthur Conan Doyle should have stuck to faeries and short stories, and The Hound of the Baskervilles has a mystery at least as old as Jessica Fletcher. Young rich person gaslighted! Old family friend floating around the fringes of the story. Mysterious happenings! Murder! I wonder how it plays out!

Sherlock’s updates were, as usual, well-done, thought after last week I cared a little less about all this government crap.  It was worth it to see John pull rank on a base, and security checks scrolling over the walls was excellent.  I had to laugh at the sentry’s allowing Sherlock and John admittance, as while there are similarities in Sherlock and Mycroft’s mannerisms, they do not resemble each other in miniature. I can let that pass, I suppose, for the inclusion of Bluebell, the mysterious rabbit, coming back into the story.  The economy of Sherlock is perhaps one of its biggest strengths. Nothing is wasted or played just for a laugh.  There is something behind it, always.

The laughs come from Sherlock and John themselves, too, rather than from the random side characters. Sherlock and John just need to interact and the humor comes, and Gatiss really lets that interaction shine.  The episode did have a few weak spots, but Gatiss didn’t let those stay spongy.  He made Sherlock be Sherlock or John react as only John can, and it brought things back into sharp focus.

Like many Sherlock episodes, the biggest laughs were in the beginning.  Much like John’s battle with the chip and pin machine or last week’s outing with Moriarty, Sherlock’s entrance into the story just feels like it can’t be anymore perfect before he starts craving a fix, and then it IS better.

Sherlock and John? Have played Clue, of all games. Well, Cluedo in the script, as this is a proper British version.  It’s very hard to make this post not sound like some second-rate Harry Potter fanfiction with colour and random British slang peppering the text because I can hear the dialogue in my head as I write this.  The episode is so good that it stays with you in a way that last week’s episode couldn’t, aside from that one exchange between Irene and John.

Seriously, if this reaches anyone that hasn’t seen the first series, check it out when you have a chance.  The pacing problems of last week are like a thing of the past, and the characters are amazing.  Even the side-characters are fun. It feels like a horror-mystery (complete with a terrible CGI reveal!) and it simply can’t be missed.

Moffat might get the credit for reviving Sherlock for the modern world, but his characters are almost painfully ripped from the books. It’s Gatiss who deserves the credit in making them more than the slapdash types they are in Conan Doyle’s tales and makes them bother larger than life and incredibly human. Moffat wouldn’t have thought to have John be genuinely hurt by Sherlock’s declaration that he doesn’t have friend, and Gatiss makes it a point and a moment between them.

Next time: Once Upon A Time, we were supposed to care about Rumple and not one spec of scenery went unchewed.