I’m beginning to think that the other person in his relationship being anti-social may be important to John.
Throughout the show, we see John framed as the compassionate, nurturing one. The one who holds Sherlock to social standards, who gets him to behave like less of an ass, or at least more courteous.
But that’s not really right, is it? That’s not compassion. That’s propriety. They can be the same thing, but they aren’t always. And this is something the show sometimes highlights. ”That’s kind, isn’t it?” “No, Sherlock, that’s not kind.” Because sometimes, the white lies and omissions propriety encourages us to indulge in avoid wounds.
But also, “Will caring about them help save them?” Because sometimes, propriety—getting wound up because you know you’re supposed to, because you’re supposed to care and express your caring emotionally—is a distraction from doing the things that will actually help.
And in “Many Happy Returns,” Sherlock says that John’s friends don’t like him. And you know what? They don’t, really. Justly so, because honestly John is a bit of a jackass. He almost blows off Mike at the beginning of ASiP. He turns his nose up very rudely at Donovan over the ‘state of your knees’ thing. He’s awful with and sometimes to his girlfriends. He snaps at Mrs. Hudson (and remember her comment at Christmas in ASiB? The one time of the year when Sherlock and John have to treat her nicely? I mean, I don’t think they’re terrible to her or she probably wouldn’t love them the way she does, but that is the comment of a woman used to being taken for granted), he punches a DCI, jumps on board Sherlock’s “childish mocking of Mycroft” train (granted Mycroft kind of invites it; I’d be hard-pressed not to poke some holes in his hot air balloon).
And we think it all makes sense, because most of the time we’re seeing the world through John’s eyes. Because in any single event, we can usually find some reason to justify his behavior. But what he doesn’t invite us to think about is how his behavior really looks to people outside him—especially in the collective, as the way he generally lives his life and treats the people around him. Imagine being Donovan, standing in that doorway, having just been publicly humiliated by Sherlock because you had the gall to express (admittedly through name-calling) your disapproval of how much he gets off on people dying—and here’s this dude neither you nor Sherlock actually know, and he walks up to you, looks you in the eyes, looks at your knees, gives you a snide look and follows the crazy guy inside.
If I were Donovan, that’d kind of ruin my night. But she still shows concern for John’s well-being on his way out. She’s tougher than I am.
And at the beginning of HLV, after a mere month of not being in touch with Sherlock or careening after him on cases (a month is not a long time! Even people with best friends and close family can sometimes find a month falling by the wayside), John is twitchy, frenetic, closed-off, rude and snappish with a woman—one of his neighbors, whose son has gone missing!—who has come to them for help.
Is this supposed to be new? Are we supposed to believe that John never got twitchy or nasty at people like this before? Or, looking back through the series, do we see that this is a pattern of behavior he’s always had, but it was just eclipsed by the levels Sherlock took it to?
(I invite you to remember John’s reaction in TGG when that little kid was reading off the countdown. He was concerned, yes, and I’m sure that was genuine (because being a dick is not the same as being evil), but he was also completely hyped and excited, getting off on the danger to another person. It was okay, because Sherlock saved the kid just in time, and then we got John’s little “Oh, Sherlock, oh” reaction which has been likened with some justification to his O-face.)
So you know what? John’s kind of a dick. But significantly, he’s a much smaller dick (ahahahaha AHAHAHAHAHA haha ha sorry, it’s just funny on so many levels) than Sherlock—or, probably, Major Sholto, that poor bastard. John is bad at emotions, but he’s good at normal, good at propriety, good at greasing the social wheels. When someone else is being jittery and impatient and wound up for him, it’s so much easier for John to be patient, compassionate, nurturing and respectable. And those are all things that John wants to be/wants to believe he is.