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psi-psina · 7 years ago

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The Hounds of Baskerville, a long-ass read-through.

Pt one, 221B.

I haven’t done this to an episode in years... I’m gonna preface this with a quick summary on how I read the symbolism in the show so that anyone who might happen to read this might have a clue as to what I’m talking about. The symbolism I’m referring to here is the double-meaning attached in the text to food/hunger, drug use/cravings, and tea.

Edit: I almost forgot! Full credits to Ariane DeVere for the episode transcripts! Without her there would BE no Sherlock meta lmao.

Mirrors are:

Bluebell = Sherlock

Henry Knight = Sherlock

Louise Mortimer = John

Jaqui Stapleton = John

Corporal Lyons = Sherlock

Major Barrymore = John

Bob Frankland = Moriarty

Billy & Gary = Sherlock & John

The Fisherman & The Widow = John & Sherlock

Moriarty: Sherlock

Mycroft: Sherlock

Mrs. Hudson: Sherlock

Lestrade: Sherlock

Baskerville is the Heartroom (a depressing situation).

Note on how I read the symbolism:

Tea = Sentiment.

Does this need an explanation. Tea is warm, comforting, hospitable, lovely, as good as a hug. Making someone tea is a universally accepted gesture of warmth and hospitality. Sherlock loves tea, he makes so much tea, he wants it ALL the time, because he’s a SCHMALTZ. He goes so far as to reject all other forms of sustenance (i.e. FOOD!) in favour of it, but no one can survive solely on tea, Sherlock!

Eating as Intimacy and, Hunger = Desire.

Food, and eating as an act both carnal and communal, carries meaning in all cultures and in literature the world over; the association between gluttony and lust, feasting and orgies etc, is as old as the bible, in which desire and shame itself entered the human realm via the eating of forbidden fruit. It’s permeated literature ever since. Practically speaking, food has been used to denote the other appetites in film and lit for a long, long time for reasons both practical and creative.

So in regard to Sherlock, in the unaired pilot when John and Sherlock go to Angelo’s, they equate the act of eating and the act of having sex when Sherlock pointedly uses the same phrase (“Everything else is transport.”) to field questions about his “appetites”. Then John asks if Sherlock has a “girlfriend” who “feeds him up”, explicitly framing eating (or in this case being fed) in a romantic context.

The pilot isn’t strictly speaking canon, but they have clearly carried this thread over completely into the finished version of the show, they just haven’t spelled it out quite like this, which allowed them to embed it into the show with a lot more nuance. They wait until ASiB to even draw an explicit connection between “dinner” and “romance”. Eating is still framed very romantically in S1 but the link isn’t made explicit until later when Irene flat-out states that her asking Sherlock to have “dinner” with her is her attempt at being delicate in broaching the topic of sex with him.

In the show, eating is never framed in terms of the act of sex, but in terms of hunger (a synonym for desire) and intimacy. Hunger = Desire, in the text. It’s the simplest synonym to parse, ever.

Sherlock’s Cravings/Drug Use as Lust/Libido

They lifted this right out of Private Life. We all know, Billy Wilder said that he wanted Holmes to be a closeted homosexual who was unable to admit it, maybe even to himself, and that was the reason he took dope. Even in the final censored version of the film, it’s pretty obvious. Moffat and Gatiss were coy about what their intended approach to Holmes’ opium use was going to be in their modern setting, to the point of saying it was simply not an avenue they were going down with the character, despite heavily implying past drug use in ASiP and ASiB. This was yet another flagrant lie, and by the time HLV rolled around Sherlock was back on narcotics. His substance abuse carries the same meaning that it has/was intended to have in Private Life, but has been implemented far more creatively. You are meant to understand the talk of Sherlock’s “cravings” as being textually about his sexual cravings.

It’s also important to keep in mind the fact that they clearly distinguished between this thread and the thread wrt Food, which absolutely does encompass sexuality but is fundamentally about intimacy and sharing. It is positive, and it is always framed that way. Sherlock’s “drug problem” is framed VERY negatively. It is a negative expression of the sublimation of his sexuality.

Anyway. Food is a bit of a non-issue in this episode, the focus in this go-around is squarely on drugs and tea/coffee.

The final thing of import: Irene Adler is a mirror for Sherlock’s sexuality.

In the prologue, we see Henry (Sherlock), running over the moor, amid flashbacks of the Hound killing his father. He’s lost, distressed, confused. He comes face to face with a lady and a hound as he runs; he’s benevolent, curious, friendly. But Henry is traumatised, and with the Hound’s snarl roaring in his ears, he screams in terror when the doggie leans in for a sniffle. :(

The Morning After

Like Mark’s first episode, Hounds opens with a bang. This time as Sherlock slams 221B’s door. Like a gunshot. The camera swoops over to some little hound’s in the window of Speedy’s, heads bobbing as if to show us what’s in pursuit of him. Thematic. Nice tone setting mates.

Inside, Sherlock barges onto the scene, tense, covered in blood, gripping a huge phallic harpoon. Next thing we know, he’s cleared the blood off himself and his giant cock harpoon and is dramatically keening for a case because he NEEDS a distraction. This is the most oddly agitated and manic we ever see Sherlock, and it is not without reason, as it might initially appear. The events in the 12 months over which A Scandal in Belgravia takes place were thus,

he falls in love, bad. like ass over tit bad.

he comes to believe his feelings are, and always will be, unrequited and his hopes (however forlorn) are crushed (Battersea)

and all his WORST fears about love are consequently reasserted (Irene takes advantage of him and fucks him over, and he in turn exerts his own worst self and ruins her life out of spite. MESSY.)

So, he’s not really doing well. This episode, which takes place in the days immediately following the end of Scandal, is largely the fallout of those events. “I always assumed [falling in] love is a dangerous disadvantage. Thank you for the final proof.” Might as well be called The Hounds of Love.

So anyway, he’s practically vibrating and levitating with the force of all that maddening, doomed sexual energy he’s had pent up for over a year. He paces as John looks through the papers, scowling in disgust when John points out the photograph of him in the hat that Irene had caressed. Sherlock then screams, and slams his harpoon down before abruptly turning to John and demanding John give him some. I mean get him some. Same thing, really. Either way he NEEDS SOME and he wants John to GIVE IT TO HIM. :/

Like jhbkjlkm, could they have framed this demand anymore suggestively lmao. No. John flawlessly deadpans him and Sherlock makes a petulant face and turns away. Apparently Sherlock has tried to force himself to ditch his “habit” cold turkey (what an idiot…) and paid everyone off so he can’t “get any” for miles. Boy realises this was idiocy and hollers for Mrs. Hudson. He then begins frantically tearing the place apart looking for any stray cigarette he can suck on, BEGGING John to tell him where they are;

“Tell me where they are. Please! Tell me! Please.”

Just sayin…he begged...twice.

Mrs Hudson pops in as Sherlock throws himself across the room in search of his Secret Supply, now begging her to tell him where he keeps them. Hudders provides the tea dear, she can’t help you in this area Sherl you’ve called on the wrong mirror my boy. Hudders has no idea what he’s on about and he has another dramatic huff and grabs his harpoon again. Hudders offers to make some tea, and maybe a nice warm cuppa could calm him down enough to settle his (ahem) harpoon but-

“Seven percent stronger…” *[1]

Yeah, tea ain’t gonna take the edge off these cravings mates, he needs the GOOD STUFF.

He rounds on Hudders, brandishing his big harpoon at her (lasjflsd), and segues into a frankly hilarious and exceptionally frustrated deduction about her romantic exploits first thing on this Monday morning. He’s like, “even Hudders is out there taking names, while I am mouldering inside this perpetual hellprison two feet away from the untouchable object of my desires!!!” Also...where, exactly, do the scratch cards lead? i’m dying to know.

He inevitably goes on to point out that her beau is a worthless womaniser so she’d better not pin any real hopes on him, calling back the deductions he makes at Christmas in Scandal about Molly’s love life, which were also embarrassing projections of his own insecurity and heartbreak about the situation with John, and his bitterness and resentment toward John for his slovenly dating practices.

Yes. So in Scandal, Greg’s and Sherlock’s SO’s are sleeping with a teacher at Christmas and it is decidedly not all sorted, and Mrs Hudson (Sherlock) is in a relationship with a womaniser who’s just keeping her on the side of his main gig(s). Uncanny.

Anyway, he successfully upsets Hudders with the jab about her lover because misery loves company, and jumps into his chair, folding in on himself in agitation. John instructs him to apologise to Mrs. Hudson and Sherlock looks positively affronted. He says he envies John for his mind, for being so “placid, straightforward, barely used.” He says it flippantly, as always couching it in insult, to mask the truth in the sentiment. Because his is out of control. He’s tearing himself to pieces. His desires are trapped on the launchpad, tearing him to pieces. :/

He screams, again, that he needs a case, and John screams back that he’s just solved one by “Harpooning a dead pig, apparently.” “Apparently” indeed. This phrase is a play on the idiom “Flogging a dead horse.” As is Sherlock’s propensity for flogging corpses. They twice imply (in ASIP and TAB) that the ‘medical’ reasons Sherlock provides for doing such things are a pretext; “So, bad day was it?” And apparently he’s escalated from flogging corpses, to impaling them. :/ And I feel like this is also very much about Scandal, because:

Listen, it’s not a coincidence that the first is the closing sentiment of Scandal and the second the OPENING sentiment of Hounds, taking place the literal following day. A Scandal in Belgravia = Flogging a dead horse. The Woman (i.e., Love). Tedium. The outcome (rejection, heartbreak, misunderstanding) was always decided. Inevitable. He’s rejecting all of it.

Poor John just...perseveres through this behaviour as Sherlock flails and wriggles around in his chair petulantly. “Nothing on the website?” Sherlock huffs.

Nothing but…Bluebell. A locked room mystery! A rabbit that vanished from inside his locked hutch after he turned luminous, like a fairy! According to little Kirsty.

IMPORTANT!!: This is all about Sherlock. All this talk about Bluebell the luminious bunny is about Sherlock. Sherlock is a Bluebell. And there are some nice info’s about Bluebells:

“Bluebells have long been symbolic of humility and gratitude. They are associated with constancy, gratitude and everlasting love. Bluebells are also closely linked to the realm of fairies and are sometimes referred to as fairy thimbles.”

“Bluebells are widely known as harebells in Scotland.”

“Another name for bluebells is Dead Man's bells. This is due to the fact that fairies were believed to cast spells on those who dare to pick or damage the beautiful, delicate flowers.” [x]

“Even if it’s not forbidden to pick bluebells, you might not want to do that on account of the superstition of bad luck. Picking bluebells and bringing them to your home means inviting bad luck to enter into your life because based on many folklore, the fairies had cast a spell that will bring bad luck to anyone who dare to destroy (or pick) this majestic-looking flower.” [x]

^ Fitting for John, wouldn’t you say.

The Bluebell is symbolic of loyalty, gratitude and everlasting love, but is surrounded with superstitions of ill fate and death due to their reverent and supernatural associations. A lot like the Hound. And you will see, the Hound and the Bunny are equated once we enter Baskerville.

“What am I saying this is brilliant. Phone Lestrade. Tell him there’s an escaped rabbit!”

A genetic experiment. Out roaming the moors. Luminous. Red eyes. Not very dangerous though.

They argue about Cluedo for a moment and then at last, the doorbell rings. Client! And a wild Henry appears.

They sit watching Henry’s documentary about Baskerville. Sherlock’s eyes flick from Henry to the TV as the presenter tells us about the superstitions that surround Baskerville. Sherlock is skeptical of Henry’s fears and their interview starts out brusquely. He interrupts Henry’s reminisces, instructing him to skip ahead to the part where his dad was ‘violently killed’. John reacts to this glib remark in a way that could be suggestive, since there are hints that John’s father is also dead, and even if still living, is certainly lost to him in the way the following subtext suggests. Or perhaps it’s just a reaction to Sherlock’s general assholery. Or both.

Henry recounts his memory of his father’s death; he’s mauled on the forest floor as Henry watches on, terrified. Henry shakes as he remembers it and we then cut to…Sherlock. Also trembling, just slightly. Imagining.

“It got him…tore at him, tore him apart…”

This brings me to the meaning of the Hound in this episode, and by extension Henry. This is the heart of this episode. The Hound is a monstrous distortion of an ordinary dog that is literally created using “fear and stimulus”. The Hound is a representation of the fear and hatred that transforms a natural, ordinary (dog) love/sexuality into something unnatural, violent and predatory. Homophobia. This is part of what turns Sherlock’s love, his capacity to love and ability to be loved, into something twisted that he is frightened of and deeply cut off from. And the nature of this memory (and now The Final Problem) makes it clear that this damage began very early in his life. So even though Sherlock is outwardly skeptical of this whole Hound business, and he clearly maintains rationally that it’s all complete nonsense, treats it (defensively) like a joke and refuses to believe it even after “seeing” it, he is still very vulnerable to the effects of said “stimulus”. Henry, as a mirror for Sherlock, represents the part of him that has been terrorised and haunted by the Hound since his childhood. The way Sherlock treats Henry is indicative of how he treats this problem in himself.

Henry (Sherlock) imagines the Hound literally tearing his father apart, and losing him forever.

Sherlock acts glibly toward Henry, who is offended by his blasé attitude about such a serious matter and we get this exchange before Henry gets up to leave.

HENRY: “Are you laughing at me, Mr. Holmes?” SHERLOCK: “Why, are you joking?”

It’s interesting, because this is the start of a particular thread about the Hound in this episode and we now have some pretty strong parallels to this thread in The Lying Detective.

People laughed at them. Delusional, paranoid, exploited, taken for a ride, played for an ad campaign, can’t tell what’s real anymore.

They are the same, after all.

But as Henry is about to leave, Sherlock stops him with his deductions, and persuades him back to his chair. So, deducing Henry (….Sherlock).

SHERLOCK: You came up from Devon on the first available train this morning. You had a disappointing breakfast and a cup of black coffee. The girl in the seat across the aisle fancied you. Although you were initially keen, you’ve now changed your mind. You are, however, extremely anxious to have your first cigarette of the day. Sit down, Mr Knight, and do please smoke. I’d be delighted.

Sherlock says he’d be delighted if Henry would smoke for him, which is hysterical to me because honestly, if Sherlock’s cravings were actually about cigarettes (ie, if this show was normal) this’d be the part where Sherlock bummed a smoke for himself. But it isn’t (about cigarettes) and it’s not (normal). So instead, once his feverish deduction is over with, we get Sherlock practically trembling on the edge of his seat as he watches Henry light up, then launch himself off his chair into Henry’s face to suck in the smoke that’s just come out of Henry’s body. :/

“Punched-out holes where your ticket’s been checked […]” SHERLOCK: The train napkin that you used to mop up the spilled coffee: the strength of the stain shows that you didn’t take milk. There are traces of ketchup on it and round your lips and on your sleeve. Cooked breakfast – or the nearest thing those trains can manage. Probably a sandwich. HENRY: How did you know it was disappointing? SHERLOCK: Is there any other type of breakfast on a train? The girl – female handwriting’s quite distinctive [Sure Jan]. Wrote her phone number down on the napkin. I can tell from the angle she wrote at that she was sat across from you on the other side of the aisle. Later – after she got off, I imagine – you used the napkin to mop up your spilled coffee, accidentally smudging the numbers. You’ve been over the last four digits yourself with another pen, so you wanted to keep the number. Just now, though, you used the napkin to blow your nose. Maybe you’re not that into her after all. Then there’s the nicotine stains on your fingers ... your shaking fingers. I know the signs. No chance to smoke one on the train; no time to roll one before you got a cab here. It’s just after nine fifteen. You’re desperate. The first train from Exeter to London leaves at five forty-six a.m. You got the first one possible, so something important must have happened last night. Am I wrong? HENRY: No.

So Henry (Sherlock) arrives at Baker Street that morning, distressed because of ‘what happened last night’ with remnants of his ‘’disappointing breakfast” on his face and clothing

desperate for a cigarette.

No chance to smoke one stuck on the train, on which he met a woman whom he was initially interested in but ultimately indifferent to, had a ‘disappointing breakfast’ and spilled his ‘coffee’. Which he also takes black. Because he’s Sherlock. The coffee & the girl is yet another moment associating women with coffee along with the conclusion he (Sherlock) is indifferent to it/them. The detailed observations about Henry’s (Sherlock’s) smoking habit and ‘cravings’ and a few rather…erotic shots of Henry’s mouth and fingers…in Sherlock’s mind’s eye…

Doe eyes and pouty mouth ehhh...Alla this is…homoerotic. :/

I’ve always been in two minds about this deduction. This deduction is either about Irene, or about something that Sherlock actually….did the night before, when he was apparently out “impaling dead pigs”. I’ve always been inclined to read this deduction as being about Irene & the events of Scandal, which are what caused the Hound to rear it’s ugly head again and compelled him to return to the ‘scene of the crime’ after a very, very long time. It’s also the exact kind of underhanded nonsense Mark loves, he literally can’t even wait for 5 minutes to subtextually disavow any straight reading of Scandal lol.

Anyway, John then asks Henry if this story could be a product of the trauma of losing his parents as a child and we learn that Henry has a therapist, Doctor Louise Mortimer (John), who is the reason all of this is happening. Henry (Sherlock) is trying to confront all of this because of Lousie (John). “She’s the reason I came back. She says I have to face my demons.”

So Sherlock asks Henry what it was he saw when he returned to Dewer’s Hollow, what was it that changed everything? Just footprints. Footprints on the exact spot he saw his father torn apart. Sherlock is truly annoyed at Henry for this, dismissing these fears immediately and quipping “Sorry, Doctor Mortimer wins, childhood trauma masked by an invented memory. Boring!” ....... . .. .. .. . . .. .. . . . .If only we could have known…if only we could have known the extent of this bullshit…that this is literally The Final Problem…in which Sherlock is facing his Final Demon s for John…because of John so he can save John…and it’s all framed as. A childhood trauma that’s masked by an invented memory of a dog…

I’m sorry but they’re so stupid and awful I’m gonna die.

Anyway, Sherlock bids Henry goodbye, reassuring him it was probably just paw prints which could be “anything therefore nothing”, not a monster, not a danger, just the fancy of Henry’s troubled mind. “Off to Devon with you, have a cream tea on me.” (Mark 😩) And on that note, he makes a beeline for his bedroom no doubt intending to rub one out immediately but then-

HENRY: Mr. Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic Hound!

Sherlock stops in his tracks. He makes Henry repeat his words, loading them with great significance, and with that cryptic bitch look on his face, he's just like “I’ll take the case.” Sherlock later reveals that he takes the case specifically because Henry called ‘it’ a Hound:

SHERLOCK: Why do you call it a Hound? Why a Hound? HENRY: Why – what do you mean? SHERLOCK: It’s odd, isn’t it? Strange choice of words – archaic. It’s why I took the case. “Mr Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic Hound.” Why say “Hound”?

Strange thing to call a dog these days. Archaic. Bygone. Anachronistic. So with that he decides, it’s time to lay this particular ghost.

But not before being a cock about it. Poor John is baffled by this sudden development, not least as Sherlock suddenly puts on airs that he’s “far too busy” to leave London at the moment because he has to solve the case of…Bluebell a,sdjf. John looks hurt as Sherlock taunts him and acts like he’s gonna send John off to deal with Henry and this Hound bullshit on his own, as though JOHN is the one for whom the Hound is a problem, while he sits on his arse at home sulking and obsessing over Bluebell the bunny rabbit instead of dealing with ANY of his problems himself. COCK.

John just looks knowingly at Henry, and then taunts Sherlock right back, tossing him cigarettes he had hidden inside Billy the whole time. Sherlock won’t even look at them now and just flings them over his shoulder, “I don’t need those anymore, I’m going to Dartmoor.” And out he flounces. We now have a Superior Distraction. 😩

[1] Just wanted to note; this situation has progressed to the point of being fully reversed in The Lying Detective. In Hounds, he’s still abstaining from ‘drugs’ but his ‘cravings’ have overwhelmed his desire for ‘tea’, and so he begs for a fix, be it cigarettes or a case. By the time TLD rolls around, he’s fully given in to his ‘addiction’. He’s using ‘drugs’ heavily, but now he’s desperate for a cup of tea. He stops taking clients and initially blows off Faith’s bizarre case claiming it’s “too weird” for him, and ends up taking the case basically because he...Bonds with her.

tagging a few people that might be interested, i guess @sarahthecoat, @impossibleleaf, @obsessivelollipoplalala, @221bloodnun, @gosherlocked, @devoursjohnlock, @mrskolesouniverse, @smoljohnlock, @northstargrassmaiden etc :)

#tjlc #johnlock #sherlock #sherlock meta #me in january; i'm gonna do a write-up of baskerville lmao #my meta

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