“What do we say about coindences?” the Mycroft of Sherlock’s Mind Palace inquires from his throne.
“The Universe is rarely so lazy.”
And that quote really stuck with me, because in Sherlock, coincidences really don’t just happen by chance. So I got to thinking and, well, what is one of the biggest coincidences in their show thus far?
John runs in to a school mate whom he has some trouble remembering and they sit down to have coffee and catch up a bit. After a while, Mike inquires about John’s life and John admits that he can’t stay in London with only an army pension to get by. Mike asks why John doesn’t go to his sister for help, but they’re not close, so he suggests John try getting a flatmate.
John finds the idea laughable. “Come on – who’d want me for a flatmate?”
To which Mike laughs.
“What?”
“Well, you’re the second person to say that to me today.”
That. That right there is the biggest coincidence of the show. John needs a flatmate and, what do you know, Mike happens to know someone who needs one, too!
Now, in the real world, this isn’t really something that would make a person think twice. In the original stories, Mike and John running into each other was just that – a coincidence. But in Sherlock, the writers love to twist and turn every little detail, morphing them into their own little creatures, and a coincidence such as this one seems far too tempting for them to leave untouched; it’s probably the only thing in the series that was plucked from canon and left practically untouched.
I think it would be a really interesting twist if Mike Stamford was more than just the man who introduced John to Sherlock and there are a few other things that make me think it’s actually possible.
One thing I love about the series is that almost every bad guy has a name that starts with the letter ‘M’, giving the writers plenty of room to spin out a plotline using any of them. Mike, obviously, could be one of these ‘M’s’.
The main reason I think Mike Stamford may just come back in a bigger way?
“To Mr and Mrs Watson: So sorry I’m unable to be with you on your special day. Good luck and best wishes, Mike Stamford.”
The writers chose not to have Mike attend the wedding. Why? Why didn’t they let him go, or why didn’t they just ignore his absence? They chose for him not to be there and they chose to have him send a telegram, making sure we were well aware of his absence. Now why would they do that?
tjlc:
To supplement this post I’ve subtitled the end of The Sign of Three with the lyrics to “December 1963” rather than the dialogue. I really only scratched the surface in that post. Take a look for yourself!
thi s is, physically painful to me
(Source: http://tjlc.tumblr.com/)
I want to talk about Sebastian Moran for a moment and my theories on our current Lord Moran who was arrested for the attempt to blow up Parliament (not to mention his other dealings) and what his connections to canon Moran might be. Canonically, Sebastian Moran’s father was knighted. Sebastian attended Eton and Oxford, spoke multiple languages, penned two books…
I think our lovely sniper could be Lord Moran’s son sent home from the army. Was he wrapped up in something nefarious during his time in the army, like father, like son? Was it swept under the rug and Sebastian just discharged because of who his father was?
Jim would definitely be interested in someone like that. He would scoop him up in a heartbeat, put him to work, let him work his way up until he found himself at Jim’s side, his second in command.
While I love, love fandom’s scarred, beat up, grizzled, gruff sniper, I think it’s entirely possible Sebastian Moran is younger and capable of blending in almost anywhere…
I know there’s been some discussion about Tom being the sniper who was on John. There’s a hint that he was ‘invited to reconsider’ shooting John. If that’s true (remember, this was in Sherlock’s explanation to Anderson) it opens lots of avenues into further subterfuge between Moriarty and Sherlock. Was Sherlock aware of who ‘Tom’ was… did ‘Tom’ suddenly disappear because Mycroft got word to Sherlock about him actually being Sebastian Moran? Meaning once his cover was blown poor Molly was left in the lurch? (Might explain the particular vehemence in those slaps and Sherlock’s jibe aimed at the broken engagement)
Of course, it’s all speculation. Molly’s slaps are enough to him being glad she doesn’t have the ring, Lord Moran could actually be Moran, Tom could just be a look-alike Molly tried to placate herself with… There’s so much to explore.
What if Mycroft is Greg’s “wife”?
(Hear me out)
When Sherlock tells Greg his wife is cheating on him, and with who, it is a different code word. Like they set up a system a long time ago to do it, cause Myc can’t always share where he goes for work or what he’s doing and Greg worries constantly so Sherlock gives him hints.“She’s cheating again”= Mycroft won’t be home when you get there tonight, he got pulled away on a mission.
“She’s cheating with the p.e. teacher”= He’s on the run, but alive.
“She won’t leave you, Lestrade, don’t be stupid.”= He’s okay and he loves you. Stop worrying.
“She slept with the grocer on her way home”=He’ll be home for dinnertime.All these coded messages so Greg doesn’t worry as much as he would with just radio silence.
All these coded messages, just to remind Greg that he is loved.
Hey do you think Sherlock actually never needed a flatmate to help him afford to stay in 221B? I mean then why did he choose such an expensive location; how can he afford such expensive clothes and accessories? And most of all we never actually hear him say that he needs a flatmate to help him pay the rent, just him musings that he must be a difficult person to find a flatmate. But then again why an antisocial person like him was looking for one in the first place. Thoughts?
loudest-subtext-in-television-d:
Brace yourself, because this is another “too farfetched for M-theory” thing.
I have this whole theory that Mycroft pays for everything for Sherlock and the rest of his family because Mummy the math genius gambled everything away in Vegas trying to count cards. She plays the lottery still, after all; the fact that the parent of people as rational as Mycroft and Sherlock would think she could beat absurd lottery odds is an interesting blip to have included in TEH. It definitely makes people go, “What?” Of course, it could simply be intended to only code her as “not that intelligent” just to show that Sherlock came from a normal family, but let’s see where we can go if we take it as foreshadowing of her backstory.
Blowing the family money in Vegas would go some way to explaining why Sherlock only has a list of complaints about his mother, whereas Mycroft has a file (he’s the one who got the cushy government job and provides for them all), and why Sherlock feels his mother is stupid and doesn’t listen to anything: card counting is risky even if you’re good at it. We know that Mummy and Daddy visit America for line-dancing and apparently have done this for years since HLV “isn’t the first time [Sherlock’s] substance abuse has wreaked havoc on their line-dancing,” and that Sherlock was in Florida to help Mrs. Hudson out back in the day, so: it’s not implausible that Mummy could hit up Vegas. In fact, if she likes playing the lottery, she probably would. We keep having America come up in Sherlock’s past.
But it gets better: Sherlock has the book Bringing Down the House in 221b, which is about students counting cards in Vegas. We also get some funny mirroring of Mary and Mummy in HLV, in which Mary is coded as a gambler whose personality issues might make her an unfit mother, so that could reinforce the gambler angle on Mummy. We also got mirroring of Mrs. Hudson and Mummy (same initials, mother figure to Sherlock) in HLV, and we know Mrs. Hudson’s past is full of fucked up illegal stuff.
Plus I don’t think Moftiss would introduce a sweet old lady genius whose sons resent her even though she seems REALLY nice, and then not make her backstory shocking in some way. Everyone’s backstory is fucked up in this show and that’s why I can’t wait to hear more of John’s and Mummy’s.
Anyway, where was I? Right. I don’t think Sherlock needed a flatmate for financial reasons. Mycroft knows that solving cases and being a general unemployable weirdo is the only thing that keeps Sherlock occupied and alive, so I can’t imagine that he would be sitting alone in his giant mansion with huge statues of chess figures and tell Sherlock he doesn’t care if he gets evicted, you know? We can also guess that Mycroft pays for his parents’ expenses because they have a REALLY nice house and stuff, and they get to go to Les Mis performances and line-dancing trips to America. Either Mummy is such a gambler she plays the lottery totally for fun, or she wants more money and doesn’t feel right asking Mycroft for it (parents tend not to feel great about being a financial burden on their children).
So I think Sherlock just said that line about how him and John should be able to afford 221b because the real reason would sound too pathetic: Sherlock’s just trying to make a friend because it’s that, or suicide; we get too much coding that Sherlock is at the end of his rope when the series starts for me to see it any other way.
Then Sherlock doesn’t care that John can’t pay for anything and doesn’t want John to get a job. He gets a lot of tie pins and cufflinks and other dumb shit for solving cases, but checks for huge amounts of money like Sebastian handed over don’t seem to be in large supply, plus apparently Sherlock will turn down that sort of thing out of pride. He dresses like a model. He makes it rain on his homeless network on the regular. Even CAM doesn’t know anything about Sherlock’s financial status when he targets him with his Shameful Secrets Vision. You can read it as a joke about “lol television characters always live outside what their means realistically ought to be” — it’s a tv cliche that glamorous people don’t seem to have any source of income — and it might well be just that, but I suspect it’s more.
My other theory is that it’s not Mycroft paying Sherlock for shit directly, but that Sherlock is still on the MI6 payroll and Mycroft has to harangue him into taking cases now and again if he wants to keep that money coming. Sort of a “stay off drugs and keep your shit together and I’ll make sure you’re looked after” thing, perhaps. After all, if he just gave Sherlock money directly, he might fear that Sherlock will blow it all on drugs, so it would make some sense that Mycroft would attach several strings to it.
Either way, I’m pretty sure Sherlock would be broke as fuck if not for Mycroft. Or at least I hope so, because that makes Sherlock and John both broke moocher weirdos, which I LOVE. Like always, John would be the one trying to be normal anyway, with his little job at the surgery that he hates, meanwhile Sherlock is like, fuck it, jobs are bad and my brother is rich and exploitable.
My headcanon is that every time John accepted a check for one of Sherlock’s cases, Sherlock waved it away and John just hung on to the money to pay their finances and waited for Sherlock to ask for the rest, but that never happened. So that’s one reason why John’s finances didn’t look exploitable to CAM. And since I’ve never met a headcanon I couldn’t turn sad, may I suggest imagining that John’s wedding was largely paid for by the cushion of money Sherlock refused to accept for cases? Furthermore, may I suggest imagining that Sherlock knew that, and that’s why he felt comfortable making the wedding so ABSURDLY EXPENSIVE?
Have a pleasant day, y’all.
Glorious exposition, loudest-subtext-in-television, but you’ve forgotten the biggest clue of all. Y’all. 😉
Where oh where were they line dancing, LSiT? Mummy has friends in low places. Where the wind comes sweeping down the plain. (Hint: I grew up there.) Who needs Vegas? Smaller casinos are easier marks, no? 😉
Oooook-lahoma… plus reblogging for “Shameful Secrets Vision.”