EURUS: Saved her? From what? Oh, do be sensible. There were no explosives in her little house. Why would I be so clumsy? You didn’t win. You lost.
EURUS: Look what you did to her. Look what you did to yourself.
EURUS: All those complicated little emotions. I lost count. Emotional context, Sherlock. It destroys you every time. (x)
It’s always about the Fall
Sherlock tried to save John from a literal “bomb” (sniper) but failed to save him from an emotional one
i.e. Mary the ‘emotional Moran’, hurling rocks down onto Sherlock Holmes just barely clinging to the side of the waterfall
If viewed as historiographic metafiction, adds extra “emotional context” to the original ACD story too – the Fall is no longer an event which resonates (deeply and painfully) in just two or three stories, its emotional fallout obscured by the unreliable narrator/erratic timeline. Instead the effect upon both Sherlock and John is shown to be painful and long-lasting
The difference in John’s circumstances between TRF/MHR/TEH and ACD canon forces us to draw comparisons. In ACD canon, the (inconclusive!) death of Watson’s wife is added to the pain of losing Holmes so that Watson’s emotional turmoil may be safely ascribed to heterosexual love rather than excessive pining for his lost male friend. In BBC Sherlock, however, John finds, rather than loses, a wife during Sherlock’s absence. And yet his grief, his misery, his need to “move on” from Sherlock are unabated. This leaves the viewer/reader with the simple question: why? – and prompts us to re-evaluate ACD canon in light of this change.
BBC Sherlock makes visible, on-screen, the emotional scars – the loss of trust between Watson and Holmes – elided by the form, structure and narration of the ACD canon tales. Throughout the unreliable narration of Sherlock S4 runs a painful undercurrent of obsession with the Fall, a (sub?-)conscious reference by the narrator of S4 to the most painful event of John and Sherlock’s lives.
Green Violin Bow 