Okay, I’ve got another big meta I want to write, but first I realized I need to write this one.
It’s kind of a public service, actually. Some of us are dropping meta all over the place, while other swathes of the fandom are going, “SOMEBODY PLEASE EXPLAIN TO ME HOW YOU ARE SEEING ANY SENSE IN THIS?”
I am here to tell you that you’re not insane. Some of it doesn’t make sense.
First, let’s go back to grammar school. 20th century lit crit tells us that there are three basic forces in a text that dictate the shape of the narrative. These are:
1: The author(s) – the author has a story in their head. They put it down on paper. But here’s the thing: the story they put down is not necessarily identical in shape to the story they believe they are telling. Because an author has extra information in their head, and assumptions that don’t go down on that paper (or screen). So the story as they perceive it can be different from the story you receive from them.
In this case, we have not one but THREE authors, which makes this even more complicated, because each of them don’t necessarily have an identical narrative in THEIR heads either. Their interpretations of the characters and motives and world can be subtly different from one another. Sometimes this can clash, as their subtly different interpretations play out inconsistently on screen.
2: The text itself – the text is an entity unto itself. As I said, the story the writers put down is not identical to the story in their heads. Therefore, the text is a force of its own.
3: The reader (viewer/consumer) – each reader comes to the text and consumes it. In doing so, they use their own experience and knowledge to draw connections. Thus, the narrative each of us has in our head is unique to us.
This is why they say ‘the author is dead.’ (Or at least comatose.) Since the author(s) have a unique relationship with the text, you may (or may not) choose to privilege their additional feedback on the narrative as they see it when you are reconstructing the narrative in your own head. But you don’t NEED the author’s opinion. You can simply work from what you see in the text. Also, as in the case of this show, sometimes authors actively lie. In which case you have one of two choices: you can either drive yourself nuts second-guessing everything, or fuck ‘em, put the paddles away, and call the time.
Now, there’s a third complication with authors. I’ve seen some fans argue that “The writers know what they’re doing,” and “This is the story they want to tell.” If that’s your position, then it may go some distance to explaining why you’re struggling so much, because I am sad to inform you that this is not always true. Even excellent writers can sometimes produce unintelligible bullshit. Moffat in particular is well known for this. Sometimes he’s solid as the Rocky Mountains. Sometimes he…well, writes a season finale for Doctor Who.
So that said, let’s look at identifying stuff that makes sense, stuff you can make make sense with a bit of work, and stuff that nothing but a multi-chapter fanfic can possibly help—and how to identify which you’re looking at.
Stuff that makes sense is stuff that is supported by the text. Sometimes this is more obvious than others. We can soundly infer that Sherlock royally fucked John up with his death stunt, because we have multiple references in the text to how much stress John was under for those two years. Additionally, these references often come in ways that are not dependent on an unreliable narrator.
- In “Many Happy Returns,” we have Lestrade expressing concern about whether he should have given John that box of stuff.
- In TEH, we discover that he dropped off the map when it comes to Mrs. Hudson.
- Also in TEH, we have Mary’s gasp of, “Do you know what you’ve done?!” to Sherlock when he reveals himself.
Solid evidence. You can make bank on this.
Now, of course we’re dealing with a bunch of characters who lie like rugs, so whenever one of them is TELLING somebody else something (which in cases like Sherlock includes body language and things like stuff he picks up and fiddles with), you have to ask yourself whether you feel secure believing what they’re saying. Unreliable narrators.
And then, sometimes, we have cases where you can reasonably draw a connection but the text is not going out of its way to provide you with supporting evidence. Sometimes I see fans say, “The writers are counting on us to do the work” when it comes to this stuff—but the truth is, not always. Sometimes this is the stuff that just slips through the cracks, or connections that made perfect sense in the writer’s minds but they never drew it out for us. And since we’re not telepathic, we have to come up with our own theories.
In all honesty: if the text is not making an effort to flag that connection somehow (and in TV shows it can be admittedly subtle and non-verbal, using things like mood music, color palettes, blocking for the characters) then you cannot assume that the text is actually inviting you to draw that connection. For example:
Many people have asked, “Why the hell out Mary be willing to have Sherlock under her nose if she has a deep dark secret she wants to keep from John?”
Well. Remember back to that scene in TEH when Sherlock studies and deduces her? He deduces that she is a liar. But he never does anything with that. Now, WE know (if you want to believe Moffat) that this is because Sherlock went out of his way to accept having Mary in his life, even to the point of ignoring his own deductions (and I think that this is indeed supported by the text: http://prettyarbitrary.tumblr.com/post/73524592065/im-sorry-if-this-has-already-been-answered-before-but, which has spent two years laying down the damage it can do your rational faculties when you let yourself get emotionally involved).
But what Mary sees is the famous Sherlock Holmes, giving her the fisheye and then nodding acceptance. He spends the rest of that episode and the next one going out of his way to make nice with her, for John’s sake. Could Mary not reasonably conclude from this that Sherlock might either have deduced her secret and chosen to keep it, or else she successfully hid it from him and is safe?
It’s reasonable! But there is absolutely no support for this in the text. Nobody says anything, nobody exchanges a significant look. It’s just a theory.
Likewise, CAM knows about Redbeard. How? How could he possibly know about the damn dog? Well, he’s a new mogul. He could’ve sent a sweet-faced intern to the Holmes house after Sherlock came back and talked them up about wanting to run a “human interest” piece on Sherlock to show everybody he’s actually a great guy, and do you guys have any stories about his softer side? Because we’d really love to show everybody how he can be nice and cool once you get to know him.
Again. Headcanon. It’s reasonable, but it’s just a guess. But this is fair! It’s okay! This is where the narrative becomes unique to each of us; where we get to own the story for ourselves.
But then we come to the third kind: the WTF? jumps. When a writer makes a WTF jump (that’s its name now, I’ve named it, I want credit when you cite me in your published articles), they are literarily obligated* to help the reader figure out how one gets from Here to There. If they don’t, then nothing makes sense. Worse, if they don’t draw the connection because THEY DON’T KNOW (it happens sometimes; we all forget to ask ourselves “why” sometimes), you’ve got a catastrophe on your hands because the text will essentially dissolve into mushy puddles of wet toilet paper at a hard glance.
(* Unfortunately there’s not actually any such thing as literary obligation. We may put a cultural premium on it, but nobody’s hunting down the deadbeat author to make them pay alimony when they don’t deliver.)
And unfortunately, Sherlock is historically not free of the WTF jump. Most of us are aware that ASiB is a hot mess (oh look, another Moffat episode). That’s how it rolls sometimes. And it’s OKAY TO ADMIT THAT. If a chunk of the text seems to have simply gone off the rails, then recognizing that is the first step. After that, you can read the analysis of other people to see if they found a logic to it. You can read fanfic to see if somebody’s invented a logic you like. You can simply say, “You know what? I’m just not going to look too hard at that and just keep rolling.” You’ve got options!
And thus we come to the following points (as examples; I’m sure you can think of more):
1: Why does John forgive Sherlock in the subway car?
2: How the hell can CAM feasibly have dirt on, as Sherlock emphasizes, EVERY SINGLE PERSON IN THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE?
3: What the fuck is up with Mary?
#2 is actually dismissible. As the season’s villain, CAM comes in a lump. In a sense, it doesn’t matter HOW he gets that dirt, or by what cyborg means he can supposedly enter and store it all solely in, apparently, his super-computer Google database of a brain. He’s got it, and that’s enough for the story. It doesn’t damage any other part of the story or bring anything else into question if it makes no sense, because all the dirt he has on THESE characters is dirt we can logic up a reason for him to have come by.
#1: This one is important for the narrative of the entire season, and the entire show. Anyone who watches Sherlock for the relationship between Sherlock and John has EVERYTHING invested in this moment. To not understand how the fuck it actually works is damaging.
What can we do about this scene? We can reason through it. We do know the following things about these two characters:
- We do know that both of them are men who keep their emotions close to their vests
- We do know that scenes this emotionally loaded often turn on intensely subtle cues and subtext
- We do know that things were already moving in this direction, as Sherlock was struggling to win John’s affections back and Mary was successfully working to convince John to return to Sherlock.
- We do know that (whether you think there’s an erotic component or not) the force of the love between these two men echoes down through over 100 years of literature.
And thus, the fact that their issues with one another are resolved at this point makes sense. Although the specifics of how their issues with one another are resolved remains an open question. We can be about 99% sure we’re never going to get a definitive answer for EXACTLY what went down here, but the story is moving on, content that the question is resolved.
At this point fanfic enters the picture as we are left to come up with our own answers. Was it a mushy reunion scene? Was it abusive? Was it some kind of queerplatonic S&M game? Are they both repressed dicks with incredibly questionable senses of humor? Fuck you, authors, we’ll figure out for ourselves!
#3—Mary—is more dire, because the entire plot of the season finale episode hinges on WTF is going on with Mary? IvyBlossom asks the burning questions (and there are a lot of them) in suitably colorful fashion here: http://ivyblossom.tumblr.com/post/73479772785/mary-and-sherlock-i-have-no-idea-whatsoever-what-just
So how do we deal with this? When the entire underpinning of the plot AND the interpersonal dynamics between the characters for this season (which is really the core ongoing plot that runs throughout the entire show) hinges on a bunch of things that don’t really seem to hang together?
We scramble like motherfuckers to make logical sense of it. And in this case, we wait. We don’t know if we know if we have the whole story about Mary yet.
In the meantime, we work with what we’ve got, and we also focus on the parts of the show that DO make sense.
(This is why, you might have noticed, most of my meta has been focusing on Sherlock and John. I believe they do make sense, based on the evidence I see in the text. And this is why I deny that Mary has come between Sherlock and John. Because even though Mary is over there doing WTF to the plot, their emotional arc is still continuing unbroken.)
Oh, and a word on the timeskips, because I have a feeling this has been fucking with people and a lot of you don’t even know why.
So the thing about timeskips in a text is that when the narrative doesn’t show you what went on, traditionally you can safely assume that in that time the status quo was maintained. There are some exceptions to this rule to be found in literature, but normally this is the contract.
What I’m seeing mess with quite a lot of fans is that SOMETIMES, in Sherlock, somebody later refers back to something that happened during those timeskips that was significant.
Which then, you might think, implies that:
- the things that happen during the timeskips ARE important,
- and yet we’re not seeing them
- and therefore things in this story are so completely out of control we might as well flip some tables and go Lord of the Flies all up in here.
BUT NOT NECESSARILY SO. Because you see, referring to a thing that happened in the timeskip counts as ‘showing it onscreen.’ So in fact you did learn about the important bit and all the rest of it is still status quo.
It can be a really cheap trick, though, because we’ve had some really great scenes glossed over using this method this season. So it’s still worth being ticked off about, but in a “GIVE US THE GOODS” sort of way rather than a “PIGGY’S GOT THE CONCH” sort of way.
So for those of you who’re struggling to order this season in your heads, I hope this all helps you sort things a bit! Sometimes, identifying what doesn’t make sense to you can make as big a difference as anything.