Willow wrote:

I was pointing out that John came very close to failing absolutely both as a doctor and as a friend in that scene at Baker St; I can certainly find reasons to explain it, and clearly Sherlock forgave him for it, but nevertheless it was just as well that Sherlock had called the ambulance himself because if he had relied on his best friend the doctor he would have died. It makes Sherlock's best man speech all the more poignant because it turned out that Sherlock would catch a murderer -Mary- but John Watson was not the person who would save someone's life.

 Willow, I am so much with you in all this reasoning. As I said more then once in different threads, I started the season feeling sorry for poor John and ended it being quite angry with him. And this is great, from my point of view. I am not sure it was completely intentional as far as M & G are concerned, but the lack of balance in John and Sherlock relationship which I perceive in HLV made Sherlock acts and sacrifice all more touching and poignant. Also, if Watson continued to be a-perfect-friend-and-Sherlock-s-moral-compass the whole thing could easily slide into alarmingly soapy melodrama.
 

Swanpride wrote:

I don't expect John to ever aknowledge Mary's past again - he basically burned it.

John said "The game is over" and Sherlock denied it. It was practically a promise to come back.

But what Sherlock said that was that there would be other players; that is not, in any way, a statement that he will return...
 

Willow wrote:

And, about the bleeding to death thing; there are straightforward and obvious signs of the loss of blood pressure etc when someone is bleeding internally; it's first year medical school stuff. The actor and the make up team did a great job, but then they actually use actors, and make up teams, in medical schools to simulate such situations; for obvious reasons you don't let students loose on people with life threatening conditions like internal bleeding. I appreciate that you do not realise this, since you believe that someone can walk around a couple of days after taking a bullet into a lung with no ill effects, but it was textbook stuff.

I didn't know that, thanks, learned something new. Overall, the show isn't very realistic when it comes to medical stuff, forensic experts would probably find it even harder to watch. I doubt that Moffat understands the implications, movie wounds have a tendency to be a lot less serious than their real life counterparts. So I think it's more likely to be a writer error than a real characterisation of John. 

On the other thread the experts are ripping the ballistics of the bullet to pieces. Great fun and I'm learning a lot, but it doesn't really help understanding the story. 

As I'm sure Steven would say:  this is what guy friends do.

tonnaree wrote:

besleybean wrote:

As I'm sure Steven would say:  this is what guy friends do.

My guy friends certainly do!  Whoa, the way they talk to each other!

eh. Steven is so good at keeping everything so manly every time
Thank God for Gatiss, I need some softness every now and then.

besleybean wrote:

Wow.
Mark likes the dark/menacing stuff...

I didn't mean his stuff is all fluff... I just meant he also includes 'fluff'...

silverblaze wrote:

Willow wrote:

And, about the bleeding to death thing; there are straightforward and obvious signs of the loss of blood pressure etc when someone is bleeding internally; it's first year medical school stuff. The actor and the make up team did a great job, but then they actually use actors, and make up teams, in medical schools to simulate such situations; for obvious reasons you don't let students loose on people with life threatening conditions like internal bleeding. I appreciate that you do not realise this, since you believe that someone can walk around a couple of days after taking a bullet into a lung with no ill effects, but it was textbook stuff.

I didn't know that, thanks, learned something new. Overall, the show isn't very realistic when it comes to medical stuff, forensic experts would probably find it even harder to watch. I doubt that Moffat understands the implications, movie wounds have a tendency to be a lot less serious than their real life counterparts. So I think it's more likely to be a writer error than a real characterisation of John. 

On the other thread the experts are ripping the ballistics of the bullet to pieces. Great fun and I'm learning a lot, but it doesn't really help understanding the story. 

 
Yep; ballistics stuff is a constant source of interest to people who understand it, and I'm not one of them

But I'm sure that Moffat does understand the implications of that scene; even if we completely ignored the pointed riposte to the statement in Sherlock's Best Man speech about John being the person who saves people's lives, if Moffat did not understand what is happening to Sherlock why should he write the scene in the way he did? Sherlock's collapse was genuinely text book stuff; it makes no sense to say that they got all of the physical aspects perfectly right but this was some sort of coincidence which happened accidentally.

I agree that people do all sorts of implausible things when they get shot in the movies, but in Sherlock's Mind Palace there is a specific reference to it not being like the movies; the various characters were telling him what to do if he wanted to live, with Mycroft cheerfully pointing out that he had been murdered. Nothing in that scene suggests that Sherlock had taken a ludicrous 'it's just a flesh wound' movie bullet, and the fact that he was then shown flatlining emphasises this even more.

So we are left with John so angered by his discovery of what Mary was that everything he had ever learned was wiped from his brain; all of his instinctive reactions, which become automatic in a doctor because they have done them thousands of times, disappear because he's throwing a massive tantrum. Which is why I originally speculated that John's personality was disintegrating; that's a more generous interpretation than many of the alternatives. I do hope that John achieves some sort of equilibrium in Season 4 because at the moment he seems a long way from being the person described in the speech of his Best Man...

Would you?
I would have loved it.
But I perfectly underdstand why they didn't do it.

Yes, it would have been over the top and out of character, imo. 

Willow wrote:

But I'm sure that Moffat does understand the implications of that scene; even if we completely ignored the pointed riposte to the statement in Sherlock's Best Man speech about John being the person who saves people's lives, if Moffat did not understand what is happening to Sherlock why should he write the scene in the way he did? Sherlock's collapse was genuinely text book stuff; it makes no sense to say that they got all of the physical aspects perfectly right but this was some sort of coincidence which happened accidentally.

So we are left with John so angered by his discovery of what Mary was that everything he had ever learned was wiped from his brain; all of his instinctive reactions, which become automatic in a doctor because they have done them thousands of times, disappear because he's throwing a massive tantrum. Which is why I originally speculated that John's personality was disintegrating; that's a more generous interpretation than many of the alternatives. I do hope that John achieves some sort of equilibrium in Season 4 because at the moment he seems a long way from being the person described in the speech of his Best Man...

Ok, you've convinced me. Sherlock was in a life threatening situation, John should have seen it and the writer did his research this time and this was his intention. John was so shocked to learn that his whole life was basically collapsing, everything he believed in was a lie, he didn't see the obvious fact that his best friend was bleeding to death before his eyes. I don't think that would have anything to do with a change in personality traits, I think it may have been caused by the temorary shock of learning that his wife was an assassin, shot his best friend, and lied about everthing. Once over the shock, his judgement would probably return to normal. Why wouldn't it? 

Actually, they might have added the bleeding to give it a bit more realism, you said that he couldn't really walk around after such a wound, maybe that's what they went for then.