Subtext Interpretation... What Do You See?

[T.o.b.y]

I meant hints within the episodes. Usually, when there's a big reveal to come, we get plenty of clues on "Sherlock". Even with Mary, they were there in abundance. But I have not spotted anything yet that points at a possible return of Moriarty, except maybe for the suspicious silence on the whereabouts of his corpse.

[Bakerstreet Irregular]

 

But I have not spotted anything yet that points at a possible return of Moriarty, except maybe for the suspicious silence on the whereabouts of his corpse.

 

  There is that. Mary brings it up and John says something like: Absolutely....he blew his brains out.  Even Mycroft is sounding incredulous: How is that even possible....or something along those lines.

 

 And if Mycroft doesn't know where the bodies are hidden.....then how are we?

[T.o.b.y]

Well, we'll see. Perhaps it will all be explained. Perhaps not...

 

I wonder how Sherlock will react to the news. Will part of him be secretly pleased to have his best adversary back? Even Holmes in canon mourned Moriarty, though mockingly.

 

For some reason, my brain has become hung up on the text Magnussen sent Mary in The Empty Hearse. Was it really "just" a skip code? Was "John or James" really just a wink at fans of the original, a reference to the mix-up about Watson's first name? After all, Moriarty is called James, too. What if... What if... Oh my god, what if Mary had some kind of connection to Moriarty, during her "freelance days", for example? We know he liked to work with snipers. 

 

And isn't it rather too fitting that at the end of a series dealing with a villain whose power rests on manipulation through the media, we get Moriarty's face on every TV screen of the country? Could there be some kind of connection between Magnussen and Moriarty?

[sherlockandjohn]

 

 

For some reason, my brain has become hung up on the text Magnussen sent Mary in The Empty Hearse. Was it really "just" a skip code? Was "John or James" really just a wink at fans of the original, a reference to the mix-up about Watson's first name? After all, Moriarty is called James, too. What if... What if... Oh my god, what if Mary had some kind of connection to Moriarty, during her "freelance days", for example? We know he liked to work with snipers. 

 

 

Where did that come from? No way... just... no. Can you imagine that scenario? Mary working for the man who wanted Sherlock dead, and who had a sniper pointing a gun at John, making that sniper her "colleague". What a picture! Can't say I like it.

[Bakerstreet Irregular]

 

And isn't it rather too fitting that at the end of a series dealing with a villain whose power rests on manipulation through the media, we get Moriarty's face on every TV screen of the country? Could there be some kind of connection between Magnussen and Moriarty?

 

   I had that thought earlier. Moriarty loved the papers because of the "fairy tales" they told and if anyone printed "fairy tales" with his media connections it would have been Magnussen....maybe?

 

Since Mary was an assassin and fell in love with John and worked for the CIA and seemed to be "all right" with Mycroft at the airport.....just a thought....take it with a grain of salt....I certainly am.....it's just a thought....only.

 

  What if she also worked for Mycroft?   He was "under Magnussen's thumb"  some how....according to Sherlock anyway.  Could she have been one of Mycroft's snipers at Bart's? Maybe protecting John?

 

  Again, just a thought.

[T.o.b.y]

 

 

 

For some reason, my brain has become hung up on the text Magnussen sent Mary in The Empty Hearse. Was it really "just" a skip code? Was "John or James" really just a wink at fans of the original, a reference to the mix-up about Watson's first name? After all, Moriarty is called James, too. What if... What if... Oh my god, what if Mary had some kind of connection to Moriarty, during her "freelance days", for example? We know he liked to work with snipers. 

 

 

Where did that come from? No way... just... no. Can you imagine that scenario? Mary working for the man who wanted Sherlock dead, and who had a sniper pointing a gun at John, making that sniper her "colleague". What a picture! Can't say I like it.

 

 

Oh, I don't like it one bit, either! Tell my brain to shut up, please, it won't listen to me... It wants everything to be clever and mean something, so when something like that text message comes up, I ponder and ponder. You absolutely do not want to know how much time I wasted trying to figure out "IOU".

 

Fox, clever observation about Moriarty referring to the influential "fairy tales" of the media at the end of series 2. If that wasn't a hint of what was to come next... I love how they do take care to tell one big story instead of lots of little unconnected ones.

 

Hmm, so based on what we saw in series 3, what could be next?

 

 

[Bakerstreet Irregular]

Almost to scary to think about....but to much fun not too.

[Zain]

Well, we'll see. Perhaps it will all be explained. Perhaps not...

 

I wonder how Sherlock will react to the news. Will part of him be secretly pleased to have his best adversary back? Even Holmes in canon mourned Moriarty, though mockingly.

 

For some reason, my brain has become hung up on the text Magnussen sent Mary in The Empty Hearse. Was it really "just" a skip code? Was "John or James" really just a wink at fans of the original, a reference to the mix-up about Watson's first name? After all, Moriarty is called James, too. What if... What if... Oh my god, what if Mary had some kind of connection to Moriarty, during her "freelance days", for example? We know he liked to work with snipers. 

 

 

 

God, I hope so.

And I've been entertaining that idea for some time. I think we once mentioned it in the HLV thread. "Back in the good, old days in january and february."

(It also explains much better why Mary started to work as a nurse when Sherlock deduces that she's rather a linguist, and well, an assassin. If she had "kept an eye on John" even before they met, she would have seized the opportunity and taken the job to get intel more easily on him...)

 

I don't think he'll get Moriarty back. Maybe there will be someone organizing crimes from the shadows, but I guess Sherlock won't meet this new nemesis until episode three's last few minutes. To get a big reveal on how it's not Moriarty.

Now that I wrote that Mycroft probably will jump up first thing in episode 1 and announce to Sherlock it was him who had Moriarty's face plastered over every TV while John and Mary walk through the park carrying their baby daughter and feed ducks. Just to spite me...

[sherlockandjohn]

 

 

 

 

For some reason, my brain has become hung up on the text Magnussen sent Mary in The Empty Hearse. Was it really "just" a skip code? Was "John or James" really just a wink at fans of the original, a reference to the mix-up about Watson's first name? After all, Moriarty is called James, too. What if... What if... Oh my god, what if Mary had some kind of connection to Moriarty, during her "freelance days", for example? We know he liked to work with snipers. 

 

 

Where did that come from? No way... just... no. Can you imagine that scenario? Mary working for the man who wanted Sherlock dead, and who had a sniper pointing a gun at John, making that sniper her "colleague". What a picture! Can't say I like it.

 

 

Oh, I don't like it one bit, either! Tell my brain to shut up, please, it won't listen to me... It wants everything to be clever and mean something, so when something like that text message comes up, I ponder and ponder. You absolutely do not want to know how much time I wasted trying to figure out "IOU".

 

 

Speaking of IOU, that's a great example of how we all try to make sense of something, and it turns out to have been incredibly simple and without deeper meaning. I did the same; I was almost sure it had to mean something, since it appeared three times during Reichenbach.

[sherlockandjohn]

And speaking of Harry Watson; I would love to see her in series 4 - it's about time to get some family history and background for John.

[Slithytove]

I've always hoped Mary would turn out to be one of Moriarty's snipers - preferably one of those involved in the Great Game. If the first time she saw John was when she had him in her sights at the pool.....Well, I would like that, but it's probably wishful thinking because I want Mary to be the next Big Bad (or, at least, working for the Big Bad......) The original Moran was a crack shot but Moftiss rather wasted that character in TEH, so I would like Mary to turn out to be some version of Jim's Moran. Doubt that she will be, though.

 

A connection between Moriarty and Magnussen is interesting, though a long way from canon. (Not that that really bothers the writers too much.) Hard to imagine those two massive egos co-operating - they would be even more competitive than Sherlock and Mycroft - but it is possible.

 

To revert briefly to "the other one"...,,Chekov said that if you show a knife in Act One, you had better use it by Act Three ( or words to that effect.). Surely "the other one" must show up in S4.

[Carol the Dabbler]

And speaking of Harry Watson; I would love to see her in series 4 - it's about time to get some family history and background for John.

Amen! Even though the first two series were told largely from John's point of view, we know hardly anything about his family. Are his parents still living? Is he on good terms with them? Does he have any other siblings? Of course, our ignorance could be defended as canon -- I don't recall hearing anything about Watson's family other than Holmes' deductions about his brother Harry -- and we've already had that.

 

To revert briefly to "the other one"...,,Chekov said that if you show a knife in Act One, you had better use it by Act Three ( or words to that effect.). Surely "the other one" must show up in S4.

One would hope, wouldn't one?

 

On the other hand, they mentioned Mummy Holmes in Episode 1 and she didn't turn up till Episode 7 -- so who knows? I'm fairly confident that we'll meet the third sibling eventually, though.

 

[Bakerstreet Irregular]

According to Anderson's "brainstorming"  since one of his theories included Moriarty's body being altered to look like Sherlock and being thrown off of Bart's that would pretty much point to the fact that the police didn't find Moriarty's body on the roof.

 

 So, where did it go?  Was Sherlock telling the truth then about Mycroft being involved, having people close by and they took it?   Did Sherlock have some of the twenty five members of the homeless network take care of it? And if so, why?  Why not tip the police off of it's whereabouts unless they were afraid that a dead body left where Sherlock was supposed to have jumped added to the arsenal of charges of fraud against Sherlock....like murder/suicide?  Or heaven forbid....it just got up and walked away?

 

 For my part I thought the police were just sitting on the evidence of there being another body until they could prove who this was, either Richard Brooks, or really a Jim Moriarty and what was Sherlock's part in all this and was he innocent or guilty. Once they were able to prove that the body on the roof was really a suicide and Sherlock was not the fraud the papers made him out to be then that information would be released to the public. 

 

  It happens that way in Maine all the time. We hear of something being found in the woods, then we may never hear of what it was....or be told years later that a body was found in such and such a place in such and such a year. This especially happens if there is no missing persons report made out to help identify the body sooner.

[Carol the Dabbler]

Oh, good point about Anderson!  I realize that he's not currently with the police, but he still has friends on the force -- so the general public may or may not know that Moriarty is dead, but clearly the police do, and his body was not found on Bart's roof.  Umm -- unless that was just another part of Anderson's theory -- he assumes that Moriarty hadn't been heard from lately because he was dead.

 

I think I'm about to have a dizzy spell. 

 

[Bakerstreet Irregular]

Anderson was still on the force at the time of Sherlock's suicide, wasn't he? He wouldn't have left until sometime afterwards. So there was no forensic team sent to the roof, the "body" having landed on the sidewalk then whisked away into the hospital....or.....what....?

[Carol the Dabbler]

No, it was apparently the other body (Sherlock's stunt double) that landed on the sidewalk.  Maybe.  I would guess that Moriarty's body was, as you say, whisked away directly from the roof, presumably by Molly (who knows where to hide bodies).

 

[Bakerstreet Irregular]

 

I would guess that Moriarty's body was, as you say, whisked away directly from the roof, presumably by Molly (who knows where to hide bodies).

 

  Yup, Molly would make sense, especially since Sherlock told her what was going on and why he thought he might be going to die. She would know who else was going to be on the roof along with Sherlock.

 

 But according to the pictures of St. Bart's, there's a bit of a problem with the "body double" scenario as presented by Anderson. It shows Molly shoving a body out of a window so it lands parallel to St Bart's on the sidewalk as if there is a bit of an "L" in the architecture so that she can look out on the sidewalk with a side view. Looking at pictures of the hospital, there is no such architectural feature. The hospital presents a flat face to the street. There is no window that gives that kind of view.

[Carol the Dabbler]

I don't recall exactly what that scene looked like, but Sherlock fell near the corner of the building, and there may be windows around the corner -- would that help at all?

 

Guess I'll have to pay more attention next time I watch!

 

[Bakerstreet Irregular]

I'll have to pay more attention too because it looks like the window has a view up the sidewalk that fronts the hospital....even if the window was around corner there is no way a pushed body could have fallen as the body double was supposed to have landed.

 

 And if there was no body on the roof then my theory about the police setting on it then releasing the information later is all wet.  There wouldn't have been any kind of evidence to sit on. Some blood, maybe, unless that was carefully cleaned up by who ever took Moriarty out of the picture.

[Pawse]

I think Sherlock is asexual - I don't think there's anything between him and John.

[Bakerstreet Irregular]

Nothing intimately physical anyway. They do have a deep bond.

[T.o.b.y]

I think Sherlock is asexual - I don't think there's anything between him and John.

 

I would like Sherlock to be asexual, because I think it fits the (original) character best, but I have the impression that is not the writers' intention. I think he was quite visibly turned on by Irene, for example, and "he does know where to look".

 

As for Sherlock and John, I used to think the idea of any romantic involvement between them was utterly ridiculous. After series 3, I'm not so terribly sure of that. There is definitely a lot of subtext opportunity for those who want to see things that way. I mostly choose to ignore it, because I think it would be simply disappointing and flat if their unique bond boiled down to something as profane and boring as sex. In my eyes, what has happened so far is that the story of a friendship is being told in a manner usually reserved for romances, which causes people to think it is a romance. I hate the (non)word "bromance", but maybe it is the most accurate, after all.

 

What makes me the most sure that the writers do not intend to declare them lovers is that there really is no need in our culture these days to deny or hide the fact that somebody is gay, at least not on a BBC television show (in real life, sadly, things are more complicated...) If they wanted them to be so, they'd just say it and have done with.

 

[Arcadia]

That's the best response I've ever seen on this subject.

[Bakerstreet Irregular]

The "are they or are they not" is almost a hundred years old. I started reading the stories before I was 10 years old and never thought it strange that Holmes would ask Watson to "walk out with him" and Watson described how they walked "arm in arm". To me that was just friendship. But one poster here in the Forum said she always thought that they were right off the bat.

 

 Whole books have been written about this relationship and this whole homosexual question. From day one of this series there have been shippers, it's like people want them to be whether or not Sherlock is asexual....it doesn't matter what the writers intend....people will and do create their own head canon.

 

 I know there is a lot of talk about subtext but I think that is slanted as well. I still see a very strong friendship and a depth to the male bonding....but sexual?  Nope, what ever has made Mycroft and Sherlock so anti-social and lacking of social graces seems to have put them off women and especially sexual involvement of any sort. They may joke about it but it seems like digs and pot shots then anything else.   In canon Holmes tells Watson the women are not to be trusted, not even the best of them.

 

 Holmes manic energy and activity didn't seem to leave much room for romantic interludes even with Watson. Of course Watson would say that there were weeks and months when there were no cases but it didn't seem like Watson was sticking around much then either if Holmes could get away with using a seven-percent solution of cocaine three times a day without Watson knowing about it since Holmes kept his drug paraphernalia in a drawer right there in their living room.

 

  Even in canon Sherlock is drawn to women....chivalrous and even quite civil but he still holds them at arms length. He holds emotional and physical love as something to be ridiculed...and sneered at ....until after "A Scandal in Bohemia" anyway.  But it seemed to me that what was going on with the canonical Holmes was vocalized in Sherlock's "Best Man's Speech".

 

 

[T.o.b.y]

....people will and do create their own head canon.

 

Which is just fine, of course. And one of the great things about the way this show is written is that the creators actually seem aware of that, respect it even. You don't like Sherlock's explanation on how he survived the fall? Fine, you don't have to believe it, because he only told it to Anderson and why would he tell him the truth?

You want Sherlock to be gay? Fine, nothing has ever been proven to the contrary. You don't want him to be gay? Also fine, he's had plenty of flirtations with women. You want him to have no sexual orientation whatsoever or just don't want to think about that at all? Fine again - for all we know, he's still a virgin and planning to remain that way.

So many things on "Sherlock" allow for multiple interpretations, and I think purposely so. Like Mary: Good, evil, neither? Maybe we'll never find out for sure, but there will always be enough material for everybody to make a case for their own theory.