Freckles & Doubt

I rather enjoyed this season - I liked the knowing nods and the fact that the writers appeared to have spent the hiatus reading fanfiction and then carefully crafting it into scripts which fans would recognise and casual viewers would still be able to follow. I also saw the increasingly queer interpretation of Sherlock, but to me this season was really all about John. John grows in so many ways: three scenes illustrated this for me. In Empty Hearse he says, under duress in the tube carriage, that he "finds this sort of thing difficult" and then goes on to make a declaration of his feelings to Sherlock. Breakthrough no 1. Breakthrough no 2, at the very end of the wedding, when Sherlock deduces Mary is pregnant, and tells them that they have had good practice already, as they've been 'raising' him...he realises suddenly that he has most likely lost his place in John's life, and in watching Sherlock realise this, John's face undergoes this amazing series of emotions - he SEES how valuable he is to Sherlock, how deeply Sherlock loves him (whether that love is sexual or not).

And then, in the last episode, John is forced to confront the fact that the two people he has openly stated he loves the most, who have saved his life, are, well, if not psychopaths, then at least somewhat differently wired to the bell curve. "She wasn't meant to be like this," he hisses, and we see he is finally, finally coming to terms with something about himself: he chooses these people. HE craves excitement and is not above behaving in morally dubious ways to obtain it (don't tell me he didn't enjoy roughing up Billy Wiggins!) and, last of all, like calls to like. Who shot an unarmed man dead the night after he met Sherlock, John Watson? Who acted a judge and jury on that "not a very nice man"??

Pot, meet kettles.

I was saying this on another site - I have a feeling that Mycroft has a very specific threesome in mind when he talks about the need for a surgical intervention in political intrigue. I can't wait for Series 4!!