John Watson

[Experimental]

I believe John’s character is much more developed in this version. He is not only a sidekick, but someone that Sherlock actually needs and cares about.

 

While Sherlock was arguably actually fine on his own before they met, he might be very close to the border of the angel side, leaning dangerously.

John, on the other hand, was a mess. He was tortured and unhappy with unbearable nothingness in his life. He wasn’t even looked happy meeting his old friend, Mike Stamford. Nothing to cherish, nothing to look forward to, with psychosomatic limp, he must be in psychological pain.

 

Meeting Sherlock, all of sudden, in a day, he encountered a lot of ‘interesting’ things that gives meaning and excitement to his life again. It’s not everyday you run around London (thinking that you would never run again), meeting Holmes brothers (the strangest and most fascinating brothers that ever exists)  and shooting someone, and bonus point (got a dinner invitation from Sherlock. Don’t let Irene Adler and Molly know)

 

When he said, ”I owe you so much,” on Sherlock’s grave stone, it’s really true imho. John Watson might end up in some horrible places had he never meet Sherlock.

 

In return, John is probably Sherlock number one admirer. He is sincerely very fascinated with Sherlock to put up with everything he throws at him, frustrated, speechless yet finds it so endearing to be with him. I believe Sherlock is a hero in his eyes, although in TGG he was disappointed that Sherlock doesn’t share his view, it haven’t changed, he was head over heels when Sherlock cracked Supernova case.

 

That's actually interesting. I've thought about what Sherlock might be like without John, lapsing into drugs, mind tearing itself apart out of frustration and boredom, but never stopped to look at it the other way around. You're right I think John would be/ would have stayed quite damaged without Sherlock. Never occurred to me I guess because John seems like the giver/caretaker in the relationship to me and the "humanizing" element. Those two things were so big I almost felt like it was a unidirectional dependency.

And love what was said here btw:

Martin Freeman's acting is just flawless. He turned John into a guy with so much damage and baggage; between the fist-clenching and his smirk, John just seems so real. I wouldn't want to be his friend though. He's so high-strung.

 

Martin's given him so much psychology and dimension John is like the hardest thing for me to write, let alone understand. (Or maybe that's the whole point, that he's irrational by nature and can't be understood? it's all very confusing..) Reading about ISFJ's helped some. This description seemed really accurate to me, if you wanna read. http://www.16personalities.com/isfj-personality

I was like cool! Omg, a look inside John's head that he would never let anyone know about cuz he's so guarded : )  It even talks about his yelling!

 

There's a John in the MP , remember the courtroom scene in TSOT? , cuddly cardie John.

 

 

Who could forget that! That was the first thing that popped in my mind when Bendy said there was no John in the MP. I was like whaaat. Not only is John in the mind palace, he's beautiful in it. That cardie?

[Shadow Dweller]

@Elementary: are you sure that John is not ISFP? Don't mind the 16personalities' claim, it is most likely based on the ACD version.

[Experimental]

Hm I don't actually know for sure, but I'm inclined to say no.. doesn't feel right. But since that's not really sufficient for conclusion I went and looked it up for BBC John and found a more experienced opinion.

http://sherlockcharacteranalysis.tumblr.com/post/30512271044/an-overview-of-myers-briggs-personality-theory

I think the suggestion here is he isn't an adventurer ISFP because he doesn't go adventuring on his own (he doesn't know how- extraverted intuition is an inferior function) and needs sherlock to enable him to adventure/ fulfill that desire. So he is deficient in this area, and therefore deprived, and that is why we see that craving to go adventure. 

 

John seems like a sentinel - but that might be because the way he protects Sherlock has a bit of a biasing effect on me lol. I felt this way when I read that "ISFJ's are the most loyal of all Myers-Briggs types" "have an ability to connect with people on an intimate level unparalleled by all other introverts" and ultimately this part "if I can protect you, I will".

 

I assumed they meant the ACD version, but I didn't think to discard it because of that.. John is after all based off of him and the reason they put the orignal Watson in there is because of the similarities he shares with BBC John ie he's a doctor-soldier who helps, follows, protects Sherlock, makes him palatable etc. 

 

As I said, everything I say is probably biased because I'm saying it all because of a feeling, so I don't think I'm a good judge of this. And psychology is my worst science. 

Also.. I have no idea why this annoys me so much, but my name is not elementary, it's experimental. 

[Shadow Dweller]

That page confused MBTI with Keirsey-Bates' system

 

Oh sorry, I was thinking about Jamie from Elementary and how she might fit into BBC's version ^^;

[Experimental]

Oh really? Sorry, I'm not familiar with the Keirsey system, I only know Myers-Briggs. The page looks like M-B to me, unless I learned them mixed up. Is it all Keirsey, or did it mix the two together?

I.. don't watch elementary.. I mean I did but.. Anyway why might ISFP be a better fit, do you think? 

[Shadow Dweller]

http://www.socionics.com/articles/mbti.htm Enjoy decoding the psychobabble there :D After that, you might want to take a lot at another fun thing called enneagram.

[Rubpe19]

I really like this character, both in the original novels and short stories and in the TV series. It's also important to say that in the Spanish version Jesús Maniega -undoubtedly my favourite dubbing actor- gives his voice to Martin Freeman and that's maybe a reason why I like the character so much...

[Carol the Dabbler]

I have moved the subsequent discussion of the pro's and con's of dubbing over to the "Language Thread."

 

[Rubpe19]

Okay, thank you very much and I'm sorry for the incovenients I may have caused...

[Carol the Dabbler]

No problem.  That's why there are moderators. 

 

[Experimental]

It's like a ghost town over here.. 0.o

[SherlockedCAMPer]

It happens periodically with threads then at random they get revived by someone.

[T.o.b.y]

Taking this here because I still think it's interesting even though we have discussed it already at some point:

 

(...) John has a combat experience and has seen many of wounds caused by firearms. Probably more than Molly.

Well, so why John isn't in Sherlocks Mind Palace? Maybe Sherlock feared John would be too emotionally involved?

 

Okay, first of all, we know that John does in fact have a voice in the mind palace - we heard it in The Empty Hearse. So it's reasonable to assume that he has a full persona there as well, like Mycroft or Molly. Interestingly enough, his role does not seem to be that of a medical professional. From the little we heard, it seems more like Sherlock's "inner John" represents his conscience (also, Sherlock himself said "you keep me right", which seems to point in that direction as well).

 

I remember from reading the original stories that Holmes never seemed to hold Watson's expertise as a doctor in very high esteem. Watson does occasionally refer to him as "my patient", but then we learn that only another physician, somebody famous and important it seems, could persuade Holmes to do anything for his health. It also does not seem as if Holmes had Watson as his GP, or whatever the equivalent of a GP was in late Victorian times.

 

But back to Sherlock (who, by the way, doesn't seem to be so confident in John's medical skills either: "left to you, I would have died."). The people in his mind palace are actually all himself, parts of his consciousness that communicate with each other in the shapes of people Sherlock knows. They seem to have roles, for example Mycroft is a kind of superego and Molly is the voice of sanity and reason as well as the forensics adviser together with Anderson. Moriarty is Sherlock's "evil" side, well under control it seems but not dead. And so on.

 

So the in-universe reason why I think John wasn't part of the mind palace sequence in His Last Vow is that Sherlock didn't need his conscience's input when trying to analyze and survive his own murder. It wasn't exactly a tricky ethical problem or a question of socially acceptable behavior.

 

The main reason, though, I suspect, has to do with the storytelling. The whole point of the scene, what it builds up to, is that Sherlock wills himself to survive because he vowed to keep the Watsons safe, and lets face it, that mainly means John (I do think Sherlock loves Mary, but if he had to choose between them, I don't think she'd have any chance at all). The episode is even called His Last Vow, so clearly this is what it is about. Now, if John had been around in the scene earlier, the climax would have been much less dramatic. He couldn't be so much as mentioned until the very end. If they had actually shown John, though, sort of pleading his own case, that could have easily gotten way too sappy and melodramatic. I think it was very wise to leave him out and to have Moriarty of all people mention him. His mocking tones balanced out the high emotional drama very nicely.

 

I'm getting dangerously sidetracked here thinking about Sherlock instead of John (maybe I should have chosen another thread?), but it just occurred to me that the mind palace scene is the one single case where we as the audience could be 100% sure that Sherlock was not putting on an act. We got to be inside his head, inside his subconscious even, and for once, we can trust in what we saw. We don't know if he ever really put his life in danger for anybody (theoretically, the airfield goodbye could be just as fake as the rooftop one in The Reichenbach Fall - who knows what had been going on between Sherlock and Mycroft before that), but we do know that he chose to live for someone, and sometimes I feel as if that is an even greater... well, not sacrifice exactly. But an even braver thing to do. Life can be more frightening than death.

 

So Sherlock really is a good man. Huh. Okay, they can end the series now. His Last Vow would really make a good ending.

 

 

[Arcadia]

Eh, endings. Endings are boring. :D
 
I like this analysis, I may have to adopt it.

[Lady Vengeance]

But John is in Sherlock's mind palace (if only by proxy) in HLV, isn't he? He's a voice in TEH, but he's right there in TSOT (his clothes are different when he's MP John -and there are several laptops around- instead of "hangover John" -and the only laptop Sherlock has-) and the places Sherlock associates with John are the setting for the mind palace in HLV (the staircase and the halls from their first case together). Besides, there's Redbeard that was established as a parallel for John by Mycroft in TSOT.

[T.o.b.y]

the places Sherlock associates with John are the setting for the mind palace in HLV

 

:lol: Yes - but apparently, that wasn't intentional. In the commentary they admitted they had just run out of new locations to shoot at. :D

 

I like the effect, though. It's another tieback to A Study in Pink, and I just love it when things fit together across episodes and a series is one big whole instead of just a long sequence of episodes.

 

[Lady Vengeance]

Oh, shame, it was so neat  :(  :D

[Inge l-w]

Yep! You also have to factor in the whole of S3: in TEH Sherlock desperately tries to get back into John's life and mostly fails spectacularly, in SoT he capitulates so unconditionally in his relief to have John back (even by proxy) that he's railroaded into doing the whole wedding arrangement and speech, even going to the lengths of writing a wedding piece AND teaching John to dance, and in HLV he rationally, although not logically, offers up his life to keep John happy with Mary, once by chivalrously offering to take Mary's case against Magnussen and getting shot for his pains, and once by again offering up his whole life and good name and reputation by being prepared to betray his country, and as a last resort, killing Magnussen point blanc!

[Inge l-w]

OK, here's a question that I haven't seen answered over at the TRF thread: Dr Watson has already received an ASBO in the Blind Banker, he deliberately chins the Commissioner in TRF, yet he is back in practice, no repercussions on his Good Standing assessment as a doctor two years on in TEH. How is that possible?

The GMC is not a particularly forgiving overseer, and he must have incurred some judicial injunction or other for GBH at one point or another after Sherlock's flight of fancy from the rooftop of St Bartholomew's. What strings did Mycroft have to pull for his wayward younger brother's best friend in order to keep Dr Watson's criminal record blanc and immaculate as driven snow?

[J.P.]

Do you think with an ASBO he would have problems to get a job?

Maybe he had problems though, he had two years to sort it out. :D

[Inge l-w]

Dear J.P., not a job, a clean yearly appraisal by a peer/colleague and the five -year revalidation of his licence to practice: real doctors in the UK need a clean criminal record, which must be obtained by the DCS ever since 2002. Let's say, he got Mike Stamford to do the assessment, if Mr Stamford is an accredited appraiser by the GMC, what about almost breaking the Comissioner's nose?

[J.P.]

I have no idea. Must be a plothole.

[Shadow Dweller]

Today what Mycroft had said to John in the warehouse at their first meeting tickled my curiosity. What did he mean with John is seeing battlefield in London? That in my mind could be interpreted as John is seeing London quite similar with a battlefield and as a place where tactical skill he polished where he was posted before would be useful. But then Mycroft said that John missed the battlefield (in the real sense?) Perceiving - seeing is not the same with missing -wishing for something.

[Arcadia]

Here's the dialog in question:

 

M: Most people blunder round this city, and all they see are streets and shops and cars. When you walk with Sherlock Holmes, you see the battlefield. You’ve seen it already, haven’t you?
JOHN: What’s wrong with my hand?
M: You have an intermittent tremor in your left hand. Your therapist thinks it’s post-traumatic stress disorder. She thinks you’re haunted by memories of your military service.
JOHN: Who the hell are you? How do you know that?
M: Fire her. She’s got it the wrong way round. You’re under stress right now and your hand is perfectly steady.
M: You’re not haunted by the war, Doctor Watson ... you miss it. Welcome back.

 

 

And here's what I think it means.... it's Sherlock who sees London as a battlefield. If John chooses to associate with Sherlock, he will see London as Sherlock sees it. The events of the evening are an example; he's seen the murdered woman. The "battle" is between criminals and those who would bring them to justice.

 

Mycroft goes on to note that even though John is currently in a seemingly dangerous situation, on top of just seeing a crime scene, he is perfectly steady and in control ... leading Mycroft to deduce that the stimulation of the battlefield is what John misses. That is, he's not traumatized by danger; he's traumatized by being sidelined, by no longer having a purpose. Mycroft concludes ("Welcome back.") by presuming John has found a purpose and will follow Sherlock into the London "battlefield".

 

How'd I do?

[Carol the Dabbler]

Sounds like a fair interpretation of Mycroft's statements.

 

Not that I agree with him! :P