I think it's just that there's a discrepancy between what he tries to be like and what he is, between what he presents to the public, and what he really feels.   That makes sense to me, and fits with everything we see on the screen and that the team say about him.     I think the scene in TAB helps to explain that.  He consciously avoids romantic entanglements, but the feelings and urges are there, repressed.

I think he feels much more for John than for any woman he might be attracted to - he clearly loves him, is happy to state that publicly and finds that the friendship "completes" him.   He isn't avoiding romantic entanglement: he courts John as a friend, recruits him, wants him to live with him, etc.   He wouldn't do that if he was desparate to avoid falling for him. 

I was thinking of putting this in the friendship thread, but it's maybe good here:  Moffat's answer to the question about who needs Sherlock more, Moriarty or John?

Oh, John needs Sherlock more. I don’t think Moriarty needs anyone really. He enjoyed Sherlock as a distraction from the sheer tedium and insanity of his existence, whereas John and Sherlock have a very warm, very sincere friendship that is – certainly initially – mutually redemptive. I think they’re both saved now, in a way, so they know they don’t have to redeem each other all the time, but they are just very, very, very good friends. [It’s] relatively rare to portray your central relationship in a show as a friendship, so that’s quite special, I think.
(from Arianne de Vere).

 

This is true. And not few of these crime-solving/adventurous pairs have been or become couples: 

Mulder and Scully
Wimsey and Vane
Nick and Nora Charles
The Doctor and Rose 

Oh, but I do detect a pattern. About time for a same-sex crime-solving couple, I suppose. 
 

I want to sign this too.

Almost every show in the genre has the cliches of one risking their life to save the others , the tackling a gunman aiming at your partner or shouting for them to run while the other diffusers a bomb or catching a hand and pulling them off a ledge ,you know , it has been done to death for decades.
I keep reading quotes where the writers have said something like everyone was getting it wrong , they wanted to write a fix it , and B.C. said something like there was an agenda behind the relationship and where they were taking it and thought it would be interesting.
What could that mean , what's so very different and special about Holmes & Watson.

Any link for the BC quote by any chance?!

EDIT: hang on, is this a total misunderstanding.
I took it that BC was referring to going to the Victorian era and nothing else.
I had no idea that some people had put any other kind of interpretation on this.

Last edited by besleybean (January 19, 2016 5:08 pm)

Hang on, you sure you're not confusing 2 different quotes?
Because he DEFINITELY says this in his TAB interview.

I know which one are talking about, Susi. It's on one of the old documentaries "Unlocking Sherlock" or "Sherlock Uncovered", I think.

B.C quote is from BFI screening of A scandal in Belgravia

"]Everything was there about his relationship with Sherlock - but at the same time this fantastic bit of writing about the discovery of what the relationship is between the two of them. "

http://waitingforgarridebs.tumblr.com/page/6

You don't think ASIB says anything about their friendship?  I think it's one of the most important episodes.  For me, personally, it particularly showed a lot about John's feelings for Sherlock - I think we see more there than we've ever seen in S1. 

(Edit: I think it's really difficult to pinpoint exactly what Benedict means in that quote - he's not clear at all.  But I think it needs to be read in the context of everything else he says about the series).

Last edited by Liberty (January 20, 2016 7:09 am)

B.C. said very much the same thing, about John and Sherlock and where they were going with it being "oh this is interesting " when he took the part , before asib was written .