belis wrote:

Willow wrote:

But she doesn't eat humble pie, does she? The scene in the Holmes' sitting room shows no sign whatsoever of her apologising, expressing remorse, hoping to do better in the future. She is clearly antagonistic to John when he enters the room, and once he's done the dramatic tossing the memory stick in the fire there are a few tears, a few hugs but absolutely no expression in any size, shape or form that she is sorry for what she has done. Indeed the last line she speaks is when she tells John that there's no chance of him naming the baby, which is picked up on in Sherlock's last conversation with John at the airfield.

She is a bit antagonistic to start with, which I take to be a defence mechanism. She is expecting a rejection and bracing herself. Somehow her not apologising works for me. In all honesty I don't think she truly regrets what she has done. The way I see it she has weighed up her options and came to the conclusion that shooting Sherlock was a logical solution to the problem she was presented with at a time. I think that she would regret the final outcome and didn't want to couse the degree of harm that she did but the actual shooting would still be something that she would concider 'right' thing to do under the circumstances. I'm not defending her actione here, I'm trying to look at it from her perspective.

I imagine after reflecting she might have come to a conclusion that she should have handled the situation differently from the outset to avoid being in a position where she needs to decide in a plit second if she needs to shoot Sherlock or not. For that she could have appologised. But i'm not sure if spoken appologies are in keeping with her chracter. I'm trying to imagine these scene with her appologising and it somehow doesn't work.

The way I read the line about baby names is a bit more lightharted. They have forgiven each other and are back to the usual banter. It's a bit like her saying 'now that you have me back things between are going to be as they were and that doesn't involve you always having it your way'.

 

Unfortunately we now know that Mary is extremely adept at lying through her teeth, so the usual banter is no longer the usual banter; it may well be the re-establishment of her dominance over John, but clearly Sherlock doesn't trust her enough to leave her conscious in his parents house whilst he is out of it. And that too is deliberately shown by the writers; after all, drugging a pregnant woman is a bit of a no-no, unless that pregnant woman is someone who doesn't hesitate to kill to get what she wants, and cannot be trusted not to kill if the opportunity arises and she sees some benefit to herself.

CAM may want Mycroft alive, so he can manipulate him, but there are plenty of foreign powers who would like to see Mycroft dead; there must be a pretty large bounty on his head, and Mary has all those lethal undetectable at post mortem substances you mentioned in an earlier post. So, Sherlock doesn't trust her, and neither do I; she may well want John as a possession, but I don't think she experiences what I think of as love, which requires me to think about what's best for the person I love, rather than what I want.

I see no reason to assume that she believes that John is going to dump her; after all, he could have done that with a text message. Why travel to someone else's home on Christmas Day to dump your (fake) wife? I don't think she was antagonistic because she believed that was going to happen; she was antagonistic because she wasn't prepared to accept a relationship in which she was less powerful than she had been before.

Her happiness, and relief, appear to stem from the discovery that John has decided to emulate an ostrich; that isn't acceptance and forgiveness, it's 'I'm going to pretend it didn't happen'. Avoidance is your territory but I have difficulty in perceiving this as a benefit to John; on the whole, pretending something didn't happen doesn't work very well, particularly when the person doing the pretending has a shed load of mental problems already.

Of course, the fire on which the AGWA stick burns takes us back to John trapped in the petrol soaked lighted bonfire in TEH, Sholto's burns in TSoT, CAM replaying the video of the bonfire to them in Appledore, and Moriarty's threat to burn Sherlock's heart out in the Fall; none of this is accidental.  Moftiss are so good at setting up these links, and we are left to try and deduce their literal and symbolic meaning.

Which is just as well because there's a long wait to the next season

I agree that drugging people in general is a questionable activity; there is always the chance that something will go wrong, as it did when John spiked Sherlock's drinks on his stag night.

However, Sherlock is protective of his friends and family, and you don't have to be a genius to deduce that someone who kills for money could get a very large amount of it for killing Mycroft; he doesn't trust her and he is right not to trust her.

As for the phone, you don't have to dial numbers; all you have to do is hit 999 on the keypad which takes less than a second. We will never know for certain, unless Moftiss choose to tell us, but all 999 calls are recorded and Mycroft would have had those voice records in the labs at the speed of light...

Be wrote:

Another question is: How could Sherlock possibly know that Mary phoned? He had three seconds of consciousness and was a bit preoccupied in his mind-palace afterwards. Mary would have done it after Sherlock fell. So I think it is possible that Sherlock just invented it.

He couldn't know for sure. He postulated that based on ambulance repsonce times it must have been Mary as if it was John ambulance would not get their in time. However for all he knows there might have been a crew in the vicinity able to respond quicker than expected.

 

belis wrote:

By the same token he doesn't trust his brother or his parents either. My take on this is that Mary would have tried to stop them, as would Mycroft. Poor parents were probably tranquilised for their own benefit.

Neither his parents nor his brother have a track record of murdering people for money, and his parents would have murdered Mycroft long ago if they were going to murder him at all. Mary does have a track record of murdering people for money, and there are a lot of people who would pay lots of money to have Mycroft dead, which is why she needs to be prevented from doing it. It is illogical to suppose that Mary could have prevented Sherlock and John from leaving, short of her shooting both of them, and since she is a nurse, surely it would have made more sense to have her making sure that no-one suffered ill effects from the tranquiliser. The fact that Sherlock did not do that is compelling evidence that he did not trust her.

belis wrote:

John would have easy access to those substances, as would any doctor. [img]file:///C:\Users\Curtis\AppData\Local\Temp\msohtmlclip1\01\clip_image001.png[/img] Just having access, knowledge and skill doesn't mean that people are going to utilise them. I somehow don't see Mary going on a killing spree. I may be reading her wrong since she is clearly very adept at pulling wool over people eyes but I don't think this is her motivation.

I suppose there are different ways of loving and different ways to show it. It's not a great start to base a relationship on a lie. But I don't think that she has ever seen John as a possession. More like an end goal that she would do anything to obtain. I think in her mind she is a good thing for John. It's open to discussion if this is true or not.

Well, we don't know how many people Mary has killed; my suggestion was, however, that Mycroft has a massive price on his head which would be tempting to anyone who has managed to convince herself that she kills people who need to be killed. That is the only explanation that Mary ever advances for her career choice, so we can hardly ignore it completely.

belis wrote:

Honestly? Do you really see John as a kind of person who would end up a relationship via a text massage? He can be mean when it suits him but it doesn't quite fit with his modus operandi to dumping his wife (legalities aside) and mother of his child that way.

Well, he could have visited her in suburbia if he wished to do so face to face; it's a remarkably strange idea that he would accept an invitation to someone else's home for Christmas for the purpose of dumping his wife. You don't use other people's homes like that, in the first place, much less at Christmas.

belis wrote:

I that is the case I would say good for her. The way I see this relationship they are on equal playing field. I don't see John as being dominated by Mary but equaly she is a very strong character. I think that is the part of the attraction for him. If she suddenly started acting differently she would not be true to herself and I don't think either of them would be happy. That's where the banter comes in. She tells him that he won't always have it his wife. He tells her that he will get angry from time to time. It's done in a joking way but there are important truths in that on both sides. Humour is mature defence mechanism but it is a defence mechanism nevertheless and you could interpret it as both of them still being a bit unsure how this is going to play out but willing to give it a go.

The problem with this is that John doesn't have a strong character. He never has had; he's always had an authority figure, whether it's Sholto, Sherlock or Mary to essentially tell him what to do. Without them he's back at his psychiatrist without a clue as to what to do with his life; he may have an abnormal attraction to danger but he is a follower, not a leader. I am not criticising him for not being a leader; that's the way the dice rolled for him, and the world could not survive a human population comprised solely of people who lead. I am pointing out that there is never going to be a level playing field for John because he can't handle it; one of the things we see Sherlock doing this season is growing up, moving much closer to canon where ACD established from the outset that Sherlock was the grown up and the undisputed leader in the partnership. We see our Sherlock realising that John, after all, is not the person he imagined in his Best Man's speech, but continuing to love him nevertheless.

belis wrote:

I think there is a difference between pretending that something did not happen and not wanting to know the nitty gritty details. From the way he shot the cabbie and the way he reacted afterwards I would imagine that he has some skeletons in his own closet that he might or might not have discussed with Mary in any detail. It's open to interpretation if he is in total denial and hoping to go back to his life in suburbia as if nothing happened or if he is done with grieving for the wife he thought he had and ready to move on in life with life that turned out to be assassin (the kind of wife that he subconsciously wanted even if he didn't admit that to others or himself).
 

 
But we know that he didn't get what he wanted because after a month of matrimonial bliss in the suburbs he was having nightmares and storming a crack house. Clearly if his subconcious told him he needed a dangerous wife to make him happy then his subconscious must have been lying to him because selfevidently he wasn't happy; he isn't going to get what he craves as a suburban GP and loving husband and father. Unless he takes up playing Russian roulette, of course 

Actually, he won't need the Russian roulette because the memory stick wasn't the nitty gritty; it was the Rosetta Stone which would have told him who had good reason to wish to see Mary dead. He has deliberately blinded himself to the enemies he's acquired along with Mary, and that is not a recipe for a long and happy life...

Willow wrote:

Neither his parents nor his brother have a track record of murdering people for money

I'm not so sure abut Mycroft. It would be by proxy and no doubt a matter of national security rather than monetary gain but I somehow see him perfectly capable.

Willow wrote:

Well, he could have visited her in suburbia if he wished to do so face to face; it's a remarkably strange idea that he would accept an invitation to someone else's home for Christmas for the purpose of dumping his wife. You don't use other people's homes like that, in the first place, much less at Christmas.

Maybe she thought that he hoped to avoid an emotional scene by doing it when other people are around. I would imagine that she has seen John's main motivation to be there as wanting to spend Christmas with his best friend. Why did Sherlock invite her in a first place. That's an intresting question.

Willow wrote:

The problem with this is that John doesn't have a strong character. He never has had; he's always had an authority figure, whether it's Sholto, Sherlock or Mary to essentially tell him what to do.

I don't see his character this way. I think his attitude to authority is a bit ambivalent. He had a successfull career in medicine and military so he needs to know how to operate within the systems and show some respect for the rank. However he breaks the law without hestitation when it suits him and disregards millitary procedures (he has broken every rule in the book in the Hunt). I wouldn't say that he follows Sherlock blindly either although he obviously trusts him. I never had an impression that Mary dominates the relationship and tells him what to do. Any examples of that?

Willow wrote:

Without them he's back at his psychiatrist without a clue as to what to do with his life; he may have an abnormal attraction to danger but he is a follower, not a leader. 

I think that's a bit harsh.  He ends up ill after seeing his best friend jump off a roof and he takes action. He gets professional help, goes back to work and enters a long term relationship. He may well end up ill again but it doesn't mean that he doesn't know what to do with his life. I think that he does quite well considering what he needs to put up with.

I agree that he is more of a follower than he is a leader but I think that he follows his own inner moral compass just as much as he follows the important people in his life. The way he chooses who to follow, going very much against the mainstream, is in itself a sign of inner strength in my opinion.

Willow wrote:

But we know that he didn't get what he wanted because after a month of matrimonial bliss in the suburbs he was having nightmares and storming a crack house. Clearly if his subconcious told him he needed a dangerous wife to make him happy then his subconscious must have been lying to him because selfevidently he wasn't happy; he isn't going to get what he craves as a suburban GP and loving husband and father. Unless he takes up playing Russian roulette, of course

I'm not sure if the nightmare itself has something to do with Mary or was it triggered by something else. Incidently it was Mary wholead the path for him to go storming into the drug den and she was only to happy to follow. I think she knows what a thrill seeker he is and would encourage a degree of that behaviour. I think that he would be quite happy working part time and running around with Sherlock solving cases, coming back to enjoy a bit of familly life in the evenings. It's not going to happen becouse that wouldn't make good TV.

belis wrote:

I'm not so sure abut Mycroft. It would be by proxy and no doubt a matter of national security rather than monetary gain but I somehow see him perfectly capable.

But there is a very big difference between someone who murders for personal gain, and someone who may potentially authorise a 'shoot to kill' in a matter of national security. The first person is doing it for personal gain and the second person is doing it because s/he can't find an alternative. It is, after all, Mycroft who is shouting 'Don't shoot, don't shoot' at the numerous armed marksman he has brought along to Appledore, and it was Mycroft who put together a plane load of people who had already died rather than let a plane full of live people go down in order to protect the fact that they had broken the code.

belis wrote:

Maybe she thought that he hoped to avoid an emotional scene by doing it when other people are around. I would imagine that she has seen John's main motivation to be there as wanting to spend Christmas with his best friend. Why did Sherlock invite her in a first place. That's an intresting question.

Well, it was asked and answered in the episode; John and Mary decide it's because Sherlock wants them to see happy family life. I think it was because he wanted Mary where he could keep her in check. I fear that the idea of John as the sort of emotional coward who would rely on his best friend's parents to help him dump his pregnant wife on Christmas Day doesn't really help; if that's what Mary thinks happens then she really has no idea of what might loosely be called normal human interactions.

belis wrote:

I don't see his character this way. I think his attitude to authority is a bit ambivalent. He had a successfull career in medicine and military so he needs to know how to operate within the systems and show some respect for the rank. However he breaks the law without hestitation when it suits him and disregards millitary procedures (he has broken every rule in the book in the Hunt). I wouldn't say that he follows Sherlock blindly either although he obviously trusts him. I never had an impression that Mary dominates the relationship and tells him what to do. Any examples of that?

Well, with Sherlock it's John bringing his gun with him to Christmas dinner at his parents, with Mary it's refusing to let him go off to rescue the neighbours son without her going along too. A pregnant woman in a dressing gown outside a crack house is at very high risk, but John does as he's told in both cases. With Sholto it's, as Mary puts it, neither of us were the first; Martin did an excellent imitation of a puppy, I must confess. Unfortunately, in S3 John doesn't trust Sherlock; he does trust his wife, and therein lies the tragedy. Doing what somebody tells you doesn't need trust; it's following orders.

belis wrote:

I think that's a bit harsh.  He ends up ill after seeing his best friend jump off a roof and he takes action. He gets professional help, goes back to work and enters a long term relationship. He may well end up ill again but it doesn't mean that he doesn't know what to do with his life. I think that he does quite well considering what he needs to put up with.

I agree that he is more of a follower than he is a leader but I think that he follows his own inner moral compass just as much as he follows the important people in his life. The way he chooses who to follow, going very much against the mainstream, is in itself a sign of inner strength in my opinion.

You have omitted the whole of his history up till TRF; I appreciate that you need to do that if you are to attribute his parlous state at TEH to Sherlock's departure, but we know that John had severe problems well before then. He was a total mess at the beginning of the series; he was unable to adequately function, notwithstanding the support of a whole slew of people inside and presumably outside the army, he was tottering around with his cane, and he only managed to regain some semblance of normality because of Sherlock. Once Sherlock was gone he abandoned Mrs Hudson, apparently without a qualm, notwithstanding her grief, and was knocking back the scotch in suburbia with Greg Lestrade trying to keep him in the land of the living by visiting him. I'm not seeing much of a moral compass in his abandonment of Mrs Hudson; the writers made that very pointed line about not even one phone call, mirroring the fact that Sherlock hadn't called John either. But Sherlock was risking his life taking down a world wide criminal network, whereas John wasn't.

I'm not saying that John doesn't have good reasons for what he does; clearly he has had to tackle severe health problems which left him with no inner resources to do something like comfort Mrs Hudson. But as he is written, he isn't a strong character; he will always need, at some level, someone telling him what to do because he is, to use the jargon, not self-motivating. He has very poor impulse control, and a predilection for violence, neither of which are suited to his life as a GP, and he apparently has no desire whatsoever to confront reality as evidenced by tossing the memory stick in the fire.

belis wrote:

I'm not sure if the nightmare itself has something to do with Mary or was it triggered by something else. Incidently it was Mary wholead the path for him to go storming into the drug den and she was only to happy to follow. I think she knows what a thrill seeker he is and would encourage a degree of that behaviour. I think that he would be quite happy working part time and running around with Sherlock solving cases, coming back to enjoy a bit of familly life in the evenings. It's not going to happen becouse that wouldn't make good TV.

I've already commented on the crack house above; it's very obvious that we read this scene in very different ways. What we do know is that John thinks he hasn't seen Sherlock for ages, whereas Mary thinks differently; the encouraging the boys to be together which featured so strongly in the first two episodes has completely disappeared, and Mary was already complaining during their sex holiday that John was spending time on his blog, which is closely linked to Sherlock.
 
She has already obviously changed her attitude to Sherlock well before she shoots him; the writers make that very clear. She is very good at lying, but she's not even bothering to pretend any more...

Swanpride wrote:

"It's actually four."
"Mary and I think seven."

That doesn't sound like there are any problems between Sherlock and Mary.

Apart from the fact that Mary may be prepared to have phone calls with Sherlock, but she is not happy for John to phone and be with Sherlock. That looks like a pretty big problem to me...
 

Willow wrote:

What we do know is that John thinks he hasn't seen Sherlock for ages, whereas Mary thinks differently; the encouraging the boys to be together which featured so strongly in the first two episodes has completely disappeared, and Mary was already complaining during their sex holiday that John was spending time on his blog, which is closely linked to Sherlock.
 
She has already obviously changed her attitude to Sherlock well before she shoots him; the writers make that very clear. She is very good at lying, but she's not even bothering to pretend any more... A pregnant woman in a dressing gown outside a crack house is at very high risk, but John does as he's told in both cases.

I think most newly weds would complain if their partner would spend a significant amount of time during a honeymoon on the internet. I know I would. It wouldn't be indicative of my general attitude towards his hobby. There is time and place for everything.

Willow wrote:

A pregnant woman in a dressing gown outside a crack house is at very high risk, but John does as he's told in both cases.

We deffinitely see this scene from different angles. For me it was an indicator that he intuitively knew that Mary will be able to hold her own. Them going off to do something together. Not him being bossed around by Mary. I can see how it can be read differently though.

Neither do I (although I am married). 
But John's and Sherlock's friendship is depicted as something special. If you think of what they have been through together and separately and what Sherlock vowed at the end oF TSoT, one month without contact may seem quite long for John. And for Sherlock as well. 

Willow wrote:

SusiGo wrote:

Neither do I (although I am married). 
But John's and Sherlock's friendship is depicted as something special. If you think of what they have been through together and separately and what Sherlock vowed at the end oF TSoT, one month without contact may seem quite long for John. And for Sherlock as well. 

 
Indeed so; there are friends, and then there are best friends. Sherlock and John have been remarkably close, have endured, and enjoyed, an extraordinary array of adventures, and everything we saw up to HLV suggested that Mary recognised the strength of the bond between them and went out of her way to encourage them to be together.

The stuff about 'it's only been a month' might seem normal if it hadn't been such a dramatic change from the previous 2 episodes, but it sticks out like a sore thumb in HLV.

A month actually goes by relatively quickly. They've only just got married; first instinct is to want to settle down with your loved one into married life and enjoy a bit of that before you start going hanging out with your mates again and running round doing mad stuff like he and Sherlock do. John really doesn't seem that bothered by the fact that he hasn't seen Sherlock for a month....he says it casually, almost with a shrug of his shoulders, it's no big deal. Mary isn't forcing him to stop seeing his friends.