Hi everyone, have refrained from commenting here for a loong time - almost three years. But couldn't resist to take a few peaks at the new threads today after having watched TST.
I have to agree with those who felt that the whole episode had something unreal about it. I had a very hard time to get into it. But I appreciate how the writers tried to work in very clever hints at canon. I postpone final judgement until I've seen the last episode. It might work better in hindsight. I just didn't enjoy it very much as a standalone episode.
I do not believe that everything was a dream or a figment of Sherlock's mind palace. But the unreliable-narrator theory has some plausibility. And I think that the writers/makers deceived us as well on several occasions. I firmly believe that John's midnight texting ("miss me ....it's been too long") is not a chat with the mystery woman but with an old friend, with whom he hasn't been in contact for a while. There's nothing flirty or erotic about it. It's just our dirty fantasy which adds this connotation, since we have seen John flirting with the mystery woman . But the actual words of the texts make it unlikely that the various texts are exchanged with the same person. So, with whom might John exchange texts after a longer hiatus? Some said it might've been Sherlock, but that's not very plausible, since there has been no recent hiatus. My money would be on Mike Stamford, who couldn't even make it to John's wedding for some reason. Too far fetched? Well, it has been mentioned that Mike Stamford would make an appearance in S4. Why shouldn't he be in the morgue at night and exchange some texts with John from one night owl to another? If true I reserve judgement for now if such an exchange will be relevant in later episodes.
But if John was really texting with an old friend while Mary was tending to the baby's needs, he wasn't quite as callous as we might've thought at first viewing. Maybe that's a comforting thought. He might not have acted so OOC after all.