Mrs Hudson is always right, or: Holy Shit, I believe in canon Johnlock.
loudest-subtext-in-television:
I read all the meta on how Johnlock is the endgame, how nothing makes sense if it isn’t and how there have been coded, subtextual references all along. And I’ve wavering back and forth in my belief, every rewatching/discussion of ASiP confirming it, and every interview snippet with TPTB weakening it.
Then I rewatched TSoT. And I actually listened to Mrs Hudson.
Mrs Hudson has two big scenes in this episode: both conversations about the effect marriage has on friendship, one with Sherlock on the day of the wedding, one with John after the stag night (in real time, their order would have been reversed).
During her talk with Sherlock, she forces him to directly face his fears about how the marriage will change the relationship between him and John (which will be a major theme of the episode). She tells him about Margaret, her best friend and bridesmaid, who called Mrs Hudson’s wedding day “the end of an era” and then went on to leave early. Sherlock absolutely refuses to engage with her; he first denies that marriage changes anything, then he cruelly recalls her husband’s eventual execution and finally orders her to get him biscuits (“make me a sammich”, a classic macho tactic to shut women up and belittle them).
As the next shot makes all too clear, her remarks have hit too close to home. He eyes John’s empty chair sadly before he walks over to his tuxedo, his battle dress for the day.
This scene is a classic case of foreshadowing. By the end of the episode, a baby will have come into the mix (a definite game changer), Sherlock will have left the wedding early and by the time of HLV Sherlock and John haven’t seen each other in a month. John’s chair will have been moved.
The second conversation takes place in Mrs Hudson’s kitchen, where she makes a very hung-over John one last fry-up. He reacts the same way Sherlock does, by denying that anything will change. Again she insists: “Well, marriage changes everything, John.” John doesn’t react as violently as Sherlock, he asks her to explain, he is prepared to listen. He doesn’t brush her (bad) experiences with marriage aside, he actively asks her about them.
And she says: “Well, if you’ve found the right one – the person that you click with – it’s the best thing in the world.” And John says that he has.
This, after we have been watching two whole seasons of John “clicking” with Sherlock. Seriously, keep that line in mind and rewatch “A Study in Pink”. Both John and Mrs Hudson quickly reaffirm that they are talking about Mary here, but as other people have already pointed out, we don’t get to see that happening with Mary. If we think “John Watson”, the first name that comes to mind is not Mary Morstan. Even if you take any romantic meaning out of that statement, from their first meeting John Watson and Sherlock are the click to end all clicks. Well.
But the scene is not over yet. John asks about her marriage, and she explains how, oh no, he cannot compare her marriage, because she never thought she’d found the right one, “It was just a whirlwind thing for us”. Flashback to TEH, “I know it hasn’t been long”, and yet John asks her to marry him, because she’s turned his life around.
Mrs. Hudson’s tale grows darker: there was so much she didn’t know about her husband that came out bit by bit. He ran a drug cartel, he cheated on her and he got arrested for “blowing someone’s head off”. Again, there’s foreshadowing for HLV: John gets to know his wife’s dark secret, and she shoots Sherlock in the chest. She’s presented as not quite as bad as Mrs Hudson’s husband (her assassin days are in the past, she doesn’t quite kill Sherlock), but there is a very clear parallel. Now, some people have proposed that one way to solve the “baby-problem” would be to make it not John’s (so Mary can take it with her, it can live with its real father etc.), so who knows, maybe the cheating-parallel will be drawn as well in series 4. Or the cheating is simply analogous to the way Mary was lying about her identity and her past… Also, remember how it was Sherlock who ensured that Mrs Hudson’s husband would be executed. (Mary Moran will totally be coming true in series 4, is what I’m trying to say.)
This conversation with John certainly gives us an exciting glimpse into Mrs Hudson’s back story, but ultimately it doesn’t tell us much about her we didn’t know already. That she had a criminal husband who was executed in Florida years ago was established in S1E1, and while it’s nice to see it fleshed out, that alone wouldn’t justify giving it that much screen time. What this scene (and the one before with Sherlock) lays out for us is the essential trajectory of the relationship between John and Sherlock:
They click. They’re right for each other and the two them together could be the best thing in the world. John’s marriage with an ex-assassin is something he got swept along in, but eventually her deceit and her criminal past will catch up with her and Sherlock will have proven his complete devotion to John. Now, Mrs Hudson hasn’t found The One You Click With after her husband (instead, she seems to have picked up a duplicitous bigamist in Mr Chatterjee – or maybe that has been sorted out?), but for John, the answer should be loudly, resoundingly clear.
And Mrs Hudson, Shipper On Deck since day one, will have been right all along.
(And if I’m wrong, and this isn’t what’s going on in these scenes, I can just say, damn, what a wasted opportunity. The breaches of Pratchett’s Theory of Narrative Causality are so severe, they should be made to pay a fine.)
This is a good read.
When I get to writing up TEH I have some things to say about the related idea that Mrs. Hudson is intentionally trying to push John and Sherlock together romantically with those conversations; she shipped them from the first time they stepped foot in 221B and kept making assumptions no matter how many girlfriends John brought over. Her “live and let live” comment to John when he tells her Sherlock wasn’t his boyfriend (when they still thought Sherlock was dead) gave me vibes of her feeling that she doesn’t really get what sorts of sexual arrangements young queer people might get up to nowadays, but she knows what she saw between the two of them and she refuses to believe John wasn’t in love with him.
Note Mrs. Hudson never actually says Sherlock is John’s “boyfriend” or even implies anything sexual. The things she implies don’t need labels or sexual actions attached: she asks stuff like if they had a “domestic.” She reads John’s blog where he keeps saying he’s not gay and not in a relationship with Sherlock. In The Blind Banker she brings up a tray of food for Sarah, so she saw that. In A Scandal in Belgravia she meets Jeanette, John’s girlfriend at Christmas, and John even comes to her when Sherlock is composing asking whether he’s ever had a boyfriend or a girlfriend. Mrs. Hudson knows how Sherlock is, and she knows they weren’t in an official relationship. Mrs. Hudson isn’t Irene Adler, she’s not the show’s sex expert, but she was an exotic dancer and we’re not supposed to believe she’s sexually oblivious or something. Mrs. Hudson might suspect they have sex now and again — I imagine the thought has to have crossed her mind — or she might not, but it doesn’t really matter: when she makes her comments, they just pertain to the feelings she perceives them to have for one another.
It always kills me when Mrs. Hudson sobs, “Oh Sherlock,” just before John hugs him during the best man speech. You have to wonder what all is included in that. Mrs. Hudson and Molly are both set up as parallels to John’s marriage, and it’s suggested throughout TSoT that Molly knows that Sherlock is in love with John. It would make sense that Mrs. Hudson is like Molly in that way too, especially given that she’s been saying it from day one.
John was in love with Sherlock and he knows it
loudest-subtext-in-television:
After this season of Sherlock was concluded, it was quite apparent to most of us that Sherlock loves John in a way that exceeds mere friendship. Many people have already tackled that subject and listed all the clues for this fact. However, we rarely got an inside glimpse into John’s mind in any of the episodes – deliberately done so by the authors to keep us guessing.
There was one little fact that struck me as odd, though. One ‘clue’ that makes me quite certain John (prior to the Fall) had feelings of a (nearly) romantic kind for Sherlock, and that he was aware of them despite his vehement denials (“I’m not gay”).
Let’s look at this bit of dialogue between John and Mrs Hudson at the beginning of The Empty Hearse.
MRS HUDSON: Oh, God. Is it serious?
JOHN: What? No. No, I’m not ill. I’ve, er, well, I’m … moving on.
MRS HUDSON: You’re emigrating.
JOHN: Nope. Er, no. I’ve, er … I’ve met someone.
MRS HUDSON: Oh, lovely!
JOHN: Yeah. We’re getting married … well, I’m gonna ask, anyway.
MRS HUDSON: So soon after Sherlock?
JOHN: Well, yes.
MRS HUDSON: What’s his name?
JOHN: It’s a woman.
MRS HUDSON: A woman?
JOHN: Yes, of course it’s a woman.
MRS HUDSON: You really have moved on, haven’t you?
JOHN: Mrs Hudson! How many times? Sherlock was not my boyfriend.
MRS HUDSON: Live and let live, that’s my motto.
JOHN: Listen to me. I am not gay!That wording struck me as odd from the very beginning. Moving on, here, relates directly to the fact that John has started a new relationship. He doesn’t say he’s moved on from mourning and therefore can visit places that remind him of Sherlock again, he doesn’t move out of town or the country as Mrs Hudson first assumes, no, he’s moved on to a new partner with whom to share his life. One that is on the same level and of the same importance to him as Sherlock.
You could argue that he immediately corrects Mrs Hudson by saying he’s not gay. I, personally, see that as sort of defence mechanism because John has recognised his error. He knows what his words sounded like, and he knows there is a reason for him using them instead of something else. He could have said “I’ve got news” or “There’s something I wanted to tell you”, but he directly starts with “I’m moving on.”
Now, who else has used the exact same wording in the same episode?
LESTRADE: So, um, is it serious, you two?
MOLLY: Yeah! I’ve moved on!Molly, after introducing her fiancé Tom, confirms that she has moved on. From what? Her unrequited crush on Sherlock. So why use those words, twice, in the same episode, in a context of introducing new relationships, when the premise is supposed to be a completely different one? Sure, it could be sloppy writing, but with Mark Gatiss’ usual attention to detail I very, very highly doubt it.
So what can only be the point of this? Molly is a mirror for John, one that will allow the audience to automatically and directly read the intended meaning: she’s over Sherlock. She’s not in love with Sherlock anymore and has moved on to – to what exactly? A young man that dresses like Sherlock (or whom she made dress like that) who is a clear substitute for Sherlock. And a rather poor one as we find out later.
Molly’s “I’ve moved on” furthermore doesn’t sound all that convincing, especially in the light of everyone staring at the obvious similarities between Tom and Sherlock, and every one in the room (plus the audience) is wondering whether she doesn’t just tell herself that.
I’m not saying that I think Molly will still have a crush on Sherlock after this. I do believe Tom finally helped her get over it and move on, but at this point in the story she is still kidding herself. (Also, pay attention to how she assumes Sherlock is about to ask her out for dinner when he really just asks her to solve crimes with him, and look at her gaze and body language when Sherlock kisses her cheek. Completely and ultimately over someone looks different).
So, if Molly is a mirror for John then this also means that John has, same as she, found himself a (poor) substitute for Sherlock. In fact, we get confirmation for this in His Last Vow when it becomes apparent that Mary is very similar to Sherlock and that this is ‘what he likes’.
Furthermore, since Molly is John’s mirror, the end of her and Tom’s relationship also foreshadows the same for John and Mary. Though under which circumstances and when precisely remains to be seen.
tl; dr: Molly serves as an obvious instrument to affirm John’s feelings for Sherlock to the audience because she uses the same words in the same context. Both new partners have similarities to Sherlock, one on the outside and the other on the inside. And both she and John are kidding themselves and are trying to deny this fact by trying to be extra convincing.
Good analysis of John and Molly in The Empty Hearse. I have been saying that John is aware of his feelings for Sherlock in series 3, so anyone who is doubtful on that angle might want to read this as well. Also talks about some foreshadowing.
Like many genre stories, “Sherlock” has inspired reams of “slash fiction” among its viewers, especially its female ones: the term goes back to the homoerotic Kirk/Spock stories of the nineteen-seventies, written pornography in which the shouty captain and the Sherlock-like half-Vulcan went for it. The genre exploded once the Internet came along: you can find slash fic about almost any characters you can imagine, from Harry Potter/Draco Malfoy onward. Rather than play innocent about these dynamics, “Sherlock” mines them heavily, for humor and frisson. Yet for all the “Wait, are they actually gay?” gags, the show is admirably committed to something more serious: the notion of Sherlock/Watson as both True Detective and True Romance. This is a real love affair, not a joke one.
It’s also a central shift from the original: Sherlock is still a detective, there are episodic mysteries, there is still Baker Street (now equipped with Web access), but the subject of the show is not so much Sherlock’s deductions as this relationship, which is itself a kind of mystery. Sherlock and Watson are best friends, certainly. They’re also chaste boyfriends, as well as a captain and his first mate. Mostly, though, they’re a god and a mortal, mutually besotted—the most impossible love affair of all. When viewers “read” this relationship (and Sherlock’s relationship with his other intra-show fans, who include the morgue employee, Molly, and Lestrade, the admiring police inspector), it’s similar to the way Sherlock “reads” a crime scene: intuiting clues that “normals” might dismiss. And, of course, Watson is implicitly a writer of Sherlock Holmes fan fiction. In Conan Doyle’s books, he keeps notes of their adventures, which he publishes in magazines. On the television show, naturally, it’s a blog.
The second episode dives into the question of what Watson is to Holmes, and it’s one of the best so far—a daring display of nested mysteries that also inverts the central love dynamic. Set mostly at Watson’s wedding, it’s framed by Holmes’s best-man toast, a dilatory, frequently belligerent, then suddenly tearjerking monologue, studded with anti-marriage zingers and hilarious accounts of their drunken bachelor party, in which the word clouds go blurry. (The signature of a good, serious TV drama is, ironically, a sense of humor: if it’s glum and gluey, run for it.)
Fan Friction: “Sherlock” and its audiences. By Emily Nussbaum for The New Yorker [x] (via graceebooks)
I love this SO MUCH. She is my favorite (pro) television critic.
(via annejamison)
