john watson shouts “I AM NOT GAY!!” the audience roars in laughter. another vulnerable group of people used as a joke. what ground-breaking writing. why include queer characters when you can just hint at them and make them vehemently defend their heterosexuality instead?
Holy shit, are we really doing this for Sherlock? Did you not get the context of the joke after 2 years of tumblr jokes and even the first episode of the first season?
I did get the context. The writers have been doing this sort of thing frequently. I just don’t think that making another “BUT I’M NOT GAY” so-called “joke” was funny. Or the idea of making such “jokes” at all.
Even though they’ve been cracking that “joke” on this show for two years now, the context of it was WEIRD in this episode, and it failed to read as even an unfunny homophobic queerbaiting joke to me. They lived over her flat for TWO YEARS. She saw them every day, in all sorts of states of presentability, and she was STILL convinced John and Sherlock were a couple? Despite the fact that during that time John made no bones about the fact that he was DATING WOMEN?
That’s not a joke. That’s something going on. And I don’t mean that in the slashy headcanon sense. I mean that for someone who knew them that well to be that convinced, either there was stuff going on between Sherlock and John of an intensity beyond even what we saw on the screen, or else Mrs. Hudson heavily invested herself in something that was not her business, and proceeded to build up her own little story about what ‘must be going on.’ (I mean, not that that is unusual or anything. Good god, I come from a small town. EVERYBODY did that, and it was annoying every time.)
It also struck me as terribly sad. Because if their relationship—in whatever form you want to believe it took—was that powerful, then that moment was a real slap in the face for John. Imagine someone you love that much dying, and how it would feel if somebody brought it up to you that way. I also noticed that John’s responding shout of “I’m not gay!” didn’t have that half-amused exasperated edge that always made that into a joke (such as it was) before. He was seriously upset.