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Jan. 6th, 2014 10:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
unpuzzlingCharacter Name; Sherlock Holmes
Canon; Elementary
Canon Point; Post-2x12
Age; ~41
House; Odin
Power; Ice magic
Personality; The most recent modern adaptation of Sherlock Holmes holds true to some conventions when it comes to the character: he is still sharp, arrogant, and at times extremely acerbic; at the same time, he is also someone who deeply cares about his job and wishes to do anything possible to save people. He cares little for how his personality comes off, and in many ways, his desire to save people seems completely different from his own assessment of his personality. He is blunt, forceful, and at times very rash, but he does what is necessary to be the best consulting detective possible. Above all else, he wishes to solve crimes, not just for the boredom or to fulfill some meager egotistical idea for himself, but because he wishes to take his finely honed skills and use them wisely.
For all the good that he does, Sherlock is a very convoluted and at times extremely eccentric individual. Most recently, he has begun to have a crisis of faith over his own humanity, and rather than approaching it head on, he has begun to explore it in other ways. He is a man who seeks understanding, but for all his unwavering faith in himself, he is starting to crumble in little ways without realizing it.
In order to understand that, it’s important to look at several distinct facets of his character. Without these aspects, it’s difficult to see why, at his age, Sherlock would begin to have this crisis.
His Humanity
While Elementary does little to explore Sherlock’s childhood, there are a few very clear facts. First, his father cared little for him, abandoning both him and his brother to separate boarding schools as if to ensure that they would not have a healthy or carried on relationship with one another. Second, while at school, Sherlock’s abrasive personality and know-it-all sensibilities tended to frustrate his schoolmates. This fact led to a string of bullying, and Sherlock had to deal with that. He didn’t overcome it so much as retreat into himself. No one else understood what he had undergone.
Both of these factors inevitable led to a very restrained and oddly repressed Sherlock Holmes. Or rather: it did in subtle ways. The Sherlock Holmes that presents himself is loud, at times boisterous, and arrogant. His true emotions only surface on rare occasions. He may be visibly angry, but his anger and rashness is very different from what he feels inside, and he doesn’t address or assess those emotions very often.
Sherlock decided to claim an identity for himself, and he’s someone who seems very certain in that identity. He decides to exhibit his humanity in the loudest ways possible. These methods may be loudly stating his kinks, approaching women in demeaning ways, or even trying to control the lives of people around him. Indeed, his ability to control his own image tends to extend outwardly to the point where he cares little about other people’s personal interests or opinions; his own opinions matter more. It’s the height of malformed arrogance, and he tends to thrive on it.
Actually, it’s likely more accurate that he tended to thrive on it.
Recent circumstances have led him down a different and more self-aware path. It’s not as if Sherlock hasn’t always struggled with humanity. Even as a teenager, he sought out answers and did what he could to best understand other people. Half of what makes him such a good deductionist and detective is the fact that he struggled to be able to understand people—and understand them well. What matters to Sherlock above all else is understanding humanity, even if he’s not fully aware of that. Of course, he’s far more aware of it now, and his understanding has led to some new conclusions: Sherlock sees himself as different, and it’s a fact that cripples him and leads to self-doubt.
He is, to some degree, aware of the fact that he’s better for this, but he isn’t aware of the fuller picture. What Sherlock sees is how he differs from other people. He sees that he can be dangerous. And, in some ways, Sherlock is even afraid of himself. Other people have said that Sherlock is someone who will always need someone. He’s someone who will lead to his own self-annihilation. What Sherlock fears is for this to be true, and he’s already hurt a colleague with his own self-assured attitude and tendency to rush into situations his own way.
After all, Sherlock claims he refuses to temper himself. He refuses to be anything but the arrogant, abrasive, and acerbic individual that he is; he refuses to believe or even try to be anyone else. The thing is, he is rapidly becoming someone else. He is unaware of his increased compassion, of his ability to expand his circle of people, of his ability to even make a friend. Sherlock has a tendency to overlook these things in order to see the greater fault in himself.
For all his indelicate assessments of himself and the growing belief that he has no one he can truly connect to or that he is not human, these are truly, more than anything, demonstrations of his own lack of understanding in how his humanity comes into play. He is an extremely human person. He just is so caught up in his own need to see himself as a terrible person that he fails to grasp it. He looks for outs from it without realizing that he’s doing exactly that.
The reason he does that is because humanity for Sherlock Holmes is a demonstration of how much he cares. If anything, a truly self-aware Sherlock would accuse himself of caring a little too much.
Addict
Another side of Sherlock that makes him human is his selfishness, and there is no other way that it comes out more than through his addiction. While his addiction is an affliction and something that he battles with every day, he also views it as a very selfish experience, and when matters come up involving it, he exhibits his most obvious shows of selfishness. His sponsor, Alfredo, constantly reminds him that his battle is not only about him. His ability to overcome it is something that Sherlock has a hard time seeing as anything but about him. He thinks he is unique, decisive, and able to handle anything that he sets out before him. He thinks he can just make a decision and stick to it, and that he made a decision to give up drugs, and that that would be it.
But that wasn’t it. Sherlock laments at one point that the day after he gave up drugs, he escaped from the rehab clinic to go out, get more drugs, and make himself feel better. It never happened again, but it’s something that is always on his mind. After all, among all his weaknesses, Sherlock’s addiction seems to be the most obvious and the most prevalent as the one he wishes to say he conquered. That is something he deems incredibly important.
The reasons why it’s important are likely incredibly obvious. No one stops being an addict. Sherlock especially doesn’t like this blemish on his person, this sign that he lacks control and that he can fly off the handle without it being some carefully designed plan or it being some natural character flaw. Being an addict means that he needs help and that he’s dependent on others. These facts are true, but they’re even more obvious when the question of his addiction comes up.
This is truly where his selfishness comes into play, because his addiction is a reflection of that self-absorption. He ended up addicted to drugs because he was trying to dull the pain of a loss. He felt too much, so he started to escape into the drugs. The drugs were meant as a means of dulling the world around him and making it so that he could turn off the emotions and perceptions he had of everything. Sherlock wanted to escape, and the drugs led to that—both in him being on the drugs, and in running away to New York City until his father found him.
That is not to say that Sherlock isn’t sympathetic because of his addiction; it’s quite the opposite, really. He’s extremely sympathetic, but his addiction is the culmination of all of his self-destructive tendencies in one venue. His addiction is something that allows him to not see beyond himself. It’s also something he’ll struggle with for the rest of his life, and it’s very obvious that that fact is something he’ll always resent. The fact that he suffers from it leads to further self-absorption. It isn’t so much the addiction that’s the problem, as Sherlock cannot help but suffer; it’s how he responds to the suffering, and how he turns it into something even more hurtful.
Still, he is trying to change, and trying to see beyond his own understanding of it as an affliction. He’s working on it.
The Job
In many ways, the same compulsions that make Sherlock an addict are the very same ones that make him an excellent consulting detective: he is relentless, overly confident in his own read on situations, and he has a tendency to show a cavalier attitude when it comes to any kind of law and order to get done what needs to be done. He cares little for the typical guidelines of the world and seems to believe he lives outside of normal jurisdiction. While he does what he needs to in order to solve crimes and save people’s lives, he is, at times, exceedingly selfish, and willingly blind to the consequences of situations. Don’t misunderstand: he is completely aware of the consequences; it’s more a matter of not caring for them.
Sherlock doesn’t just solve crimes with a clear disregard for the rules; he is also a brilliant deductionist. Thankfully, Elementary does a very good job of showing how he reaches these conclusions: Sherlock is a very well-read individual who has read a wide array of studies so he can best back up what he’s talking about at all times. He has studied psychology and other sciences, though he’s not a doctor by any extent of the imagination. The show also expounds upon his limitations. While he is extremely street smart, he’s not a genius or an expert; he doesn’t know everything, but it’s obvious that he’s reading at all times and his brownstone has a very, very large library with a very wide selection of items that he’s clearly read. Sherlock proposes a bullshit “attic theory” about how he only retains what’s important, but that’s also called out as bullshit, so it’s clearly not something to ascertain as truthful with him. Brains don’t work that way, as Watson points out when he explains it.
Additionally, for as much as Sherlock grapples with humanity, he does his best to be able to read people. He reads facial quirks, motivations, the amount of things they have in their purses, and he does everything he can to draw specific conclusions about their lifestyles so he can try to follow things to their natural conclusions. Sometimes he draws a conclusion before he finds things, but all of this is evident of the fact that Sherlock is an extremely observant person. There is very little that gets by him.
It’s important to note that Sherlock doesn’t do his job simply because he’s bored—he’s extremely dedicated to it. He doesn’t only work on the cases handed to him, but he waits, listening to police broadcasts and trying to look into a case even before he’s called to consult on it. When he’s without a crime to solve, he has a backlog of cold cases that he’s determined to solve. The fact that he has cold cases is evident of the fact that he is not a flawless detective. These cold cases clearly hold some weight in his mind because he holds on to them. They are also proof of his dedication to the job and the fact that he doesn’t just want to give up.
Sherlock wants to solve murders. He wants to stop bad things from happening, and he has a certain level of righteousness that goes in hand with it. He isn’t the typical hero when trying to pursue these circumstances. He does have a level of self-assuredness when approaching them and he does in fact believe he is the best at solving crimes, but he doesn’t do it to bolster his ego in any way. His ego is independent of it, but enforced partly because he is rather good.
The Women (Moriarty, Watson and other women)
Beyond the job, there are many things that are important to Sherlock, but some of the most important come in the form of women. One woman, Jamie Moriarty, is someone who has led to a great deal of pain for Sherlock. She posed as another woman, Irene Adler, and in some ways falsified a relationship with him in order to figure him out. When she was “done” with him, she had that identity killed off and it led him on a downward spiral that eventually ended with his addiction and time in a rehabilitation center. The other woman has been a very important influence in Sherlock’s life, and he’s not even fully aware of her influence. Joan Watson came on as his sober companion following his release from that rehabilitation center. Elementary positions both of these women are very significant points in Sherlock’s life; Irene/Jamie came first, and they were the cause for the addiction in some ways (though certainly not directly, it wasn’t their goal to lead to Sherlock’s downfall), and Joan came afterward. These women are not there to serve Sherlock’s development in any way, but they are certainly intrinsic in his growth (or lack thereof) as a human being.
First, it is important to understand that Sherlock has a complicated relationship with women that sometimes, when he talks about it, hinges on misogyny. He viewed women as something to amuse him, perhaps not in the most direct of senses, but he definitely did have a very gendered approach to their existence. It’s not even that he believes men are superior, it’s simply that his view on them was as distant as anything else in Sherlock’s life. They were people to have sex with or even to dictate things to, and the implications of this are worsened because of the fact that he is/was a very arrogant man approaching them. At times, Sherlock has even exhibited this level of behavior with Joan by being invasive in her life and believing that he can dictate certain things to her.
To say he understood women would be a lie. He has callous relationships with women in his past, or nonexistent relationships at all. Most of the people who are dominant figures in Sherlock’s life are men, and it’s important to say that this is likely for a reason. Most of his connections and problems are with men, and when he finds himself an equal “nemesis,” he naturally concludes that said nemesis (later revealed to be Jamie Moriarty herself) is a man. These kinds of assumptions permeate almost everything that Sherlock does. He doesn’t understand boundaries, and though he exhibits a desire to understand the human condition, his treatment of women is some of the most vile.
The careful deconstruction of Sherlock’s subtle, yet latent, misogyny is one of the most important aspects of Elementary as a show, as it’s important to understand that Joan is actually the hero of the story. Season two focuses on any of his weaknesses as a human being and bolsters him more as a protagonist, but it is still about her growth as a heroine. Even the episode where she dominates Moriarty is called “heroine,” thus displaying her growth and the fact that her growth is what is important and unique. Season two is demonstrating how her growth is starting to be independent of Sherlock, and even how his own unwillingness to grow or attachment to identifying himself as “different” is starting to hurt him. As it is, Sherlock is still misogynistic. He still talks callously about women in ways that are invasive and not understanding of boundaries.
As such, it’s important to turn toward those two important women, the first being Irene/Jamie. Sherlock meets Irene through a contact (that she set up), and the two of them are very caught up in one another (it’s implied that it’s more so her into him than the other way around, but she can’t love him in a healthy way). When she dies, he declines excessively into his addiction and eventually needs to be picked up. Sherlock admits after Irene’s reveal as Moriarty that he hasn’t been thinking clearly for some time, and now that he understands the truth, he can think clearly. This statement is obviously a blatant lie. Sherlock doesn’t think clearly when Moriarty is involved.
The two of them are very similar, and it wouldn’t be wrong to say that Jamie and Sherlock are two sides of the same coin. However, Sherlock doesn’t fully understand the meaning of this. While they are both detached from humanity, where she is almost completely devoid of compassion, he almost has too much. They both see the world in a similar way as something to dissect, but where he dissects the world as a puzzle to solve and almost move on from, she sees it as a playground for her to continue to play with. They are seeking a means to understand humanity, but while he deals in saving lives, she deals in destroying them.
Sherlock is very much in love with her, and he’s almost unaware of how easily she toys with him, giving him what he wants and even letting him see her as his lone kindred spirit. She is the source of much irrationality from him. It’s not that Sherlock isn’t capable of rashness and irrationality on a normal occasion, but he seems to slip into childish behavior all the time when he’s around her. He wants to cut her off and ensure that there is no connection between them, but he seems almost addicted to that connection (which surely ties into the fact that he is an addict).
It’s also important to say that Sherlock demonstrates some misogynistic behavior with her. He considers her a seductress, an emotional manipulator, and someone very dangerous, but the way he refers to her is as someone who is containing very feminine qualities while doing so. That said, Moriarty doesn’t seem to be someone who only uses emotional and sexual wiles to control people, but Sherlock focuses on them when he tries to assess her. In a way, that shows the limitations of his understanding of her manipulations, and he fails to see entirely when she plays upon that. She is a blind spot for him, and he’s aware of that, but he doesn’t even know how much of one she happens to be. She holds a very important place in his mind, though.
The only other person to hold a similar, and perhaps even more significant place, in his mind is Joan Watson. Like the above-mentioned fact, she came on as his sober companion, and at first, it seems that Joan is someone that Holmes comes to approach as someone he can brush off and move on from. In a time, however, he comes to appreciate her presence and she changes him. After all, when he begins to improve as a person, Sherlock cannot deny the fact that the changes in his disposition and approach to matters is caused by her. He needs her. She is his partner, and while she doesn’t need him, he does come to depend on her. That dependence isn’t unhealthy, but it is important.
Joan is someone he has said that he believes to be exceptional. Sherlock claims he treats her differently and holds her opinion in the highest esteem. This is partly because of Sherlock’s tendency to downplay the importance of women (which is a problem), and partly because he says it while he’s having a crisis of faith in his own extant humanity. Either way, what can be taken from their relationship is that he does deeply respect her. He cares for her opinion, even if he doesn’t always abide by it, and he goes out of his way to do what is necessary to help her. Sherlock does treat her differently. Sometimes the things that Joan says to Sherlock don’t get through, at least not immediately; in time, they seem to seep in.
In many ways, Joan is the demonstration of what Sherlock is capable of when he’s not being so selfish. Surely, there is a certain dependency there, but he noticed her own capacity for being a consulting detective and reached out to help her in that department. Furthermore, when she was having difficulty with her family in that regard, he went out of the way to ensure that she looked better to them. He cares for her, and he is almost fully conscious of many of his behaviors around her.
She is also important because in many ways, Joan is there to keep Sherlock in check. He is someone who has a tendency to spiral out of control, even if it’s not immediately obvious. She calls into question many of his behaviors, and she tells other people that the best way to get through to Sherlock is to ensure that he’s listening. She goes through many means to do that, and he does listen. She has figured him out, and he’s aware of that in many ways.
More than anything, it could be said that Sherlock doesn’t want to disappoint her. The fact that she does make him listen is a part of that. He tries to go on “binges of bad behavior,” so to speak, but her influence over him always wins out. He has professed that she is extremely important in his life, and she is partly responsible for him being a better person, a better detective, and someone who can help others. In turn, that means he does depend upon her approval, even if she doesn’t seem to willingly give it. He knows that, too,
The Men (His father, Mycroft, Gregson and Bell)
Part of his blindness when it comes to women is partly his selfishness, self-absorption, and the tendency to allow the men in his life to hold more influence than they should. Sherlock’s relationship with his father is estranged, and it’s apparent that the two of them have hardly communicated for most of his life. He resents his father because he neglected him, though Sherlock is very much blind to the fact that his father is the one who lifted him up out of his mess and ensured that he entered rehab. His own anger toward his father (and he has a great deal of it) in turn makes him act childish when he approaches him. That anger tends to extend toward his brother, Mycroft, though the show hasn’t fully explored the complicated relationship between them. What is evident is that his feelings toward Mycroft are a milder version of what he feels toward his father. Either way, Sherlock is completely unwilling to compromise in his negative emotions toward the two of them.
Of course, Sherlock doesn’t only have negative relationships with men. His friendships with Detectives Gregson and Bell show another side of him. He has actively come to understand a great deal about them. While he had working relationships with the police force in London, his relationships with Gregson and Bell are far more intimate. At times, he misunderstands the two of them, but his respect for the pair of them has only grown over time. He cites them as being partly responsible for him being a better person.
Still, Sherlock has a bad tendency to allow the male influences in his life to have a greater hold over him than the female ones, and they are often responsible for his stagnancy. Still, Gregson and Bell’s more positive influences are important—even if he is currently caught in a bind because he quite possibly hurt Bell a lot, having acted callously in a way that nearly led to the loss of Bell’s life (and almost certainly led to the end of his current career, though he’s exploring other paths). Sherlock has a hard time of showing that he cares, but he does feel responsible for them in some ways.
Conclusions
What is obvious throughout all of this is that Sherlock Holmes is, at times, an extremely obnoxious person who likes to tightly control aspects of his life, even if he utterly fails at it. He is a difficult person to deal with. For all his genius and eccentricities—and he has a great deal—the other aspects are more prominent and at times more important. He is growing every day, and he’s at times the very demonstration of how someone doesn’t change simply because they’re an adult.
Right now, he is grappling with how he fits in with humanity, believing himself to act in good ways simply because he worries about other people’s opinions. Of course, that isn’t really the case, but he’ll come to that realization eventually.
Canon; Elementary
Canon Point; Post-2x12
Age; ~41
House; Odin
Power; Ice magic
Personality; The most recent modern adaptation of Sherlock Holmes holds true to some conventions when it comes to the character: he is still sharp, arrogant, and at times extremely acerbic; at the same time, he is also someone who deeply cares about his job and wishes to do anything possible to save people. He cares little for how his personality comes off, and in many ways, his desire to save people seems completely different from his own assessment of his personality. He is blunt, forceful, and at times very rash, but he does what is necessary to be the best consulting detective possible. Above all else, he wishes to solve crimes, not just for the boredom or to fulfill some meager egotistical idea for himself, but because he wishes to take his finely honed skills and use them wisely.
For all the good that he does, Sherlock is a very convoluted and at times extremely eccentric individual. Most recently, he has begun to have a crisis of faith over his own humanity, and rather than approaching it head on, he has begun to explore it in other ways. He is a man who seeks understanding, but for all his unwavering faith in himself, he is starting to crumble in little ways without realizing it.
In order to understand that, it’s important to look at several distinct facets of his character. Without these aspects, it’s difficult to see why, at his age, Sherlock would begin to have this crisis.
His Humanity
While Elementary does little to explore Sherlock’s childhood, there are a few very clear facts. First, his father cared little for him, abandoning both him and his brother to separate boarding schools as if to ensure that they would not have a healthy or carried on relationship with one another. Second, while at school, Sherlock’s abrasive personality and know-it-all sensibilities tended to frustrate his schoolmates. This fact led to a string of bullying, and Sherlock had to deal with that. He didn’t overcome it so much as retreat into himself. No one else understood what he had undergone.
Both of these factors inevitable led to a very restrained and oddly repressed Sherlock Holmes. Or rather: it did in subtle ways. The Sherlock Holmes that presents himself is loud, at times boisterous, and arrogant. His true emotions only surface on rare occasions. He may be visibly angry, but his anger and rashness is very different from what he feels inside, and he doesn’t address or assess those emotions very often.
Sherlock decided to claim an identity for himself, and he’s someone who seems very certain in that identity. He decides to exhibit his humanity in the loudest ways possible. These methods may be loudly stating his kinks, approaching women in demeaning ways, or even trying to control the lives of people around him. Indeed, his ability to control his own image tends to extend outwardly to the point where he cares little about other people’s personal interests or opinions; his own opinions matter more. It’s the height of malformed arrogance, and he tends to thrive on it.
Actually, it’s likely more accurate that he tended to thrive on it.
Recent circumstances have led him down a different and more self-aware path. It’s not as if Sherlock hasn’t always struggled with humanity. Even as a teenager, he sought out answers and did what he could to best understand other people. Half of what makes him such a good deductionist and detective is the fact that he struggled to be able to understand people—and understand them well. What matters to Sherlock above all else is understanding humanity, even if he’s not fully aware of that. Of course, he’s far more aware of it now, and his understanding has led to some new conclusions: Sherlock sees himself as different, and it’s a fact that cripples him and leads to self-doubt.
He is, to some degree, aware of the fact that he’s better for this, but he isn’t aware of the fuller picture. What Sherlock sees is how he differs from other people. He sees that he can be dangerous. And, in some ways, Sherlock is even afraid of himself. Other people have said that Sherlock is someone who will always need someone. He’s someone who will lead to his own self-annihilation. What Sherlock fears is for this to be true, and he’s already hurt a colleague with his own self-assured attitude and tendency to rush into situations his own way.
After all, Sherlock claims he refuses to temper himself. He refuses to be anything but the arrogant, abrasive, and acerbic individual that he is; he refuses to believe or even try to be anyone else. The thing is, he is rapidly becoming someone else. He is unaware of his increased compassion, of his ability to expand his circle of people, of his ability to even make a friend. Sherlock has a tendency to overlook these things in order to see the greater fault in himself.
For all his indelicate assessments of himself and the growing belief that he has no one he can truly connect to or that he is not human, these are truly, more than anything, demonstrations of his own lack of understanding in how his humanity comes into play. He is an extremely human person. He just is so caught up in his own need to see himself as a terrible person that he fails to grasp it. He looks for outs from it without realizing that he’s doing exactly that.
The reason he does that is because humanity for Sherlock Holmes is a demonstration of how much he cares. If anything, a truly self-aware Sherlock would accuse himself of caring a little too much.
Addict
Another side of Sherlock that makes him human is his selfishness, and there is no other way that it comes out more than through his addiction. While his addiction is an affliction and something that he battles with every day, he also views it as a very selfish experience, and when matters come up involving it, he exhibits his most obvious shows of selfishness. His sponsor, Alfredo, constantly reminds him that his battle is not only about him. His ability to overcome it is something that Sherlock has a hard time seeing as anything but about him. He thinks he is unique, decisive, and able to handle anything that he sets out before him. He thinks he can just make a decision and stick to it, and that he made a decision to give up drugs, and that that would be it.
But that wasn’t it. Sherlock laments at one point that the day after he gave up drugs, he escaped from the rehab clinic to go out, get more drugs, and make himself feel better. It never happened again, but it’s something that is always on his mind. After all, among all his weaknesses, Sherlock’s addiction seems to be the most obvious and the most prevalent as the one he wishes to say he conquered. That is something he deems incredibly important.
The reasons why it’s important are likely incredibly obvious. No one stops being an addict. Sherlock especially doesn’t like this blemish on his person, this sign that he lacks control and that he can fly off the handle without it being some carefully designed plan or it being some natural character flaw. Being an addict means that he needs help and that he’s dependent on others. These facts are true, but they’re even more obvious when the question of his addiction comes up.
This is truly where his selfishness comes into play, because his addiction is a reflection of that self-absorption. He ended up addicted to drugs because he was trying to dull the pain of a loss. He felt too much, so he started to escape into the drugs. The drugs were meant as a means of dulling the world around him and making it so that he could turn off the emotions and perceptions he had of everything. Sherlock wanted to escape, and the drugs led to that—both in him being on the drugs, and in running away to New York City until his father found him.
That is not to say that Sherlock isn’t sympathetic because of his addiction; it’s quite the opposite, really. He’s extremely sympathetic, but his addiction is the culmination of all of his self-destructive tendencies in one venue. His addiction is something that allows him to not see beyond himself. It’s also something he’ll struggle with for the rest of his life, and it’s very obvious that that fact is something he’ll always resent. The fact that he suffers from it leads to further self-absorption. It isn’t so much the addiction that’s the problem, as Sherlock cannot help but suffer; it’s how he responds to the suffering, and how he turns it into something even more hurtful.
Still, he is trying to change, and trying to see beyond his own understanding of it as an affliction. He’s working on it.
The Job
In many ways, the same compulsions that make Sherlock an addict are the very same ones that make him an excellent consulting detective: he is relentless, overly confident in his own read on situations, and he has a tendency to show a cavalier attitude when it comes to any kind of law and order to get done what needs to be done. He cares little for the typical guidelines of the world and seems to believe he lives outside of normal jurisdiction. While he does what he needs to in order to solve crimes and save people’s lives, he is, at times, exceedingly selfish, and willingly blind to the consequences of situations. Don’t misunderstand: he is completely aware of the consequences; it’s more a matter of not caring for them.
Sherlock doesn’t just solve crimes with a clear disregard for the rules; he is also a brilliant deductionist. Thankfully, Elementary does a very good job of showing how he reaches these conclusions: Sherlock is a very well-read individual who has read a wide array of studies so he can best back up what he’s talking about at all times. He has studied psychology and other sciences, though he’s not a doctor by any extent of the imagination. The show also expounds upon his limitations. While he is extremely street smart, he’s not a genius or an expert; he doesn’t know everything, but it’s obvious that he’s reading at all times and his brownstone has a very, very large library with a very wide selection of items that he’s clearly read. Sherlock proposes a bullshit “attic theory” about how he only retains what’s important, but that’s also called out as bullshit, so it’s clearly not something to ascertain as truthful with him. Brains don’t work that way, as Watson points out when he explains it.
Additionally, for as much as Sherlock grapples with humanity, he does his best to be able to read people. He reads facial quirks, motivations, the amount of things they have in their purses, and he does everything he can to draw specific conclusions about their lifestyles so he can try to follow things to their natural conclusions. Sometimes he draws a conclusion before he finds things, but all of this is evident of the fact that Sherlock is an extremely observant person. There is very little that gets by him.
It’s important to note that Sherlock doesn’t do his job simply because he’s bored—he’s extremely dedicated to it. He doesn’t only work on the cases handed to him, but he waits, listening to police broadcasts and trying to look into a case even before he’s called to consult on it. When he’s without a crime to solve, he has a backlog of cold cases that he’s determined to solve. The fact that he has cold cases is evident of the fact that he is not a flawless detective. These cold cases clearly hold some weight in his mind because he holds on to them. They are also proof of his dedication to the job and the fact that he doesn’t just want to give up.
Sherlock wants to solve murders. He wants to stop bad things from happening, and he has a certain level of righteousness that goes in hand with it. He isn’t the typical hero when trying to pursue these circumstances. He does have a level of self-assuredness when approaching them and he does in fact believe he is the best at solving crimes, but he doesn’t do it to bolster his ego in any way. His ego is independent of it, but enforced partly because he is rather good.
The Women (Moriarty, Watson and other women)
Beyond the job, there are many things that are important to Sherlock, but some of the most important come in the form of women. One woman, Jamie Moriarty, is someone who has led to a great deal of pain for Sherlock. She posed as another woman, Irene Adler, and in some ways falsified a relationship with him in order to figure him out. When she was “done” with him, she had that identity killed off and it led him on a downward spiral that eventually ended with his addiction and time in a rehabilitation center. The other woman has been a very important influence in Sherlock’s life, and he’s not even fully aware of her influence. Joan Watson came on as his sober companion following his release from that rehabilitation center. Elementary positions both of these women are very significant points in Sherlock’s life; Irene/Jamie came first, and they were the cause for the addiction in some ways (though certainly not directly, it wasn’t their goal to lead to Sherlock’s downfall), and Joan came afterward. These women are not there to serve Sherlock’s development in any way, but they are certainly intrinsic in his growth (or lack thereof) as a human being.
First, it is important to understand that Sherlock has a complicated relationship with women that sometimes, when he talks about it, hinges on misogyny. He viewed women as something to amuse him, perhaps not in the most direct of senses, but he definitely did have a very gendered approach to their existence. It’s not even that he believes men are superior, it’s simply that his view on them was as distant as anything else in Sherlock’s life. They were people to have sex with or even to dictate things to, and the implications of this are worsened because of the fact that he is/was a very arrogant man approaching them. At times, Sherlock has even exhibited this level of behavior with Joan by being invasive in her life and believing that he can dictate certain things to her.
To say he understood women would be a lie. He has callous relationships with women in his past, or nonexistent relationships at all. Most of the people who are dominant figures in Sherlock’s life are men, and it’s important to say that this is likely for a reason. Most of his connections and problems are with men, and when he finds himself an equal “nemesis,” he naturally concludes that said nemesis (later revealed to be Jamie Moriarty herself) is a man. These kinds of assumptions permeate almost everything that Sherlock does. He doesn’t understand boundaries, and though he exhibits a desire to understand the human condition, his treatment of women is some of the most vile.
The careful deconstruction of Sherlock’s subtle, yet latent, misogyny is one of the most important aspects of Elementary as a show, as it’s important to understand that Joan is actually the hero of the story. Season two focuses on any of his weaknesses as a human being and bolsters him more as a protagonist, but it is still about her growth as a heroine. Even the episode where she dominates Moriarty is called “heroine,” thus displaying her growth and the fact that her growth is what is important and unique. Season two is demonstrating how her growth is starting to be independent of Sherlock, and even how his own unwillingness to grow or attachment to identifying himself as “different” is starting to hurt him. As it is, Sherlock is still misogynistic. He still talks callously about women in ways that are invasive and not understanding of boundaries.
As such, it’s important to turn toward those two important women, the first being Irene/Jamie. Sherlock meets Irene through a contact (that she set up), and the two of them are very caught up in one another (it’s implied that it’s more so her into him than the other way around, but she can’t love him in a healthy way). When she dies, he declines excessively into his addiction and eventually needs to be picked up. Sherlock admits after Irene’s reveal as Moriarty that he hasn’t been thinking clearly for some time, and now that he understands the truth, he can think clearly. This statement is obviously a blatant lie. Sherlock doesn’t think clearly when Moriarty is involved.
The two of them are very similar, and it wouldn’t be wrong to say that Jamie and Sherlock are two sides of the same coin. However, Sherlock doesn’t fully understand the meaning of this. While they are both detached from humanity, where she is almost completely devoid of compassion, he almost has too much. They both see the world in a similar way as something to dissect, but where he dissects the world as a puzzle to solve and almost move on from, she sees it as a playground for her to continue to play with. They are seeking a means to understand humanity, but while he deals in saving lives, she deals in destroying them.
Sherlock is very much in love with her, and he’s almost unaware of how easily she toys with him, giving him what he wants and even letting him see her as his lone kindred spirit. She is the source of much irrationality from him. It’s not that Sherlock isn’t capable of rashness and irrationality on a normal occasion, but he seems to slip into childish behavior all the time when he’s around her. He wants to cut her off and ensure that there is no connection between them, but he seems almost addicted to that connection (which surely ties into the fact that he is an addict).
It’s also important to say that Sherlock demonstrates some misogynistic behavior with her. He considers her a seductress, an emotional manipulator, and someone very dangerous, but the way he refers to her is as someone who is containing very feminine qualities while doing so. That said, Moriarty doesn’t seem to be someone who only uses emotional and sexual wiles to control people, but Sherlock focuses on them when he tries to assess her. In a way, that shows the limitations of his understanding of her manipulations, and he fails to see entirely when she plays upon that. She is a blind spot for him, and he’s aware of that, but he doesn’t even know how much of one she happens to be. She holds a very important place in his mind, though.
The only other person to hold a similar, and perhaps even more significant place, in his mind is Joan Watson. Like the above-mentioned fact, she came on as his sober companion, and at first, it seems that Joan is someone that Holmes comes to approach as someone he can brush off and move on from. In a time, however, he comes to appreciate her presence and she changes him. After all, when he begins to improve as a person, Sherlock cannot deny the fact that the changes in his disposition and approach to matters is caused by her. He needs her. She is his partner, and while she doesn’t need him, he does come to depend on her. That dependence isn’t unhealthy, but it is important.
Joan is someone he has said that he believes to be exceptional. Sherlock claims he treats her differently and holds her opinion in the highest esteem. This is partly because of Sherlock’s tendency to downplay the importance of women (which is a problem), and partly because he says it while he’s having a crisis of faith in his own extant humanity. Either way, what can be taken from their relationship is that he does deeply respect her. He cares for her opinion, even if he doesn’t always abide by it, and he goes out of his way to do what is necessary to help her. Sherlock does treat her differently. Sometimes the things that Joan says to Sherlock don’t get through, at least not immediately; in time, they seem to seep in.
In many ways, Joan is the demonstration of what Sherlock is capable of when he’s not being so selfish. Surely, there is a certain dependency there, but he noticed her own capacity for being a consulting detective and reached out to help her in that department. Furthermore, when she was having difficulty with her family in that regard, he went out of the way to ensure that she looked better to them. He cares for her, and he is almost fully conscious of many of his behaviors around her.
She is also important because in many ways, Joan is there to keep Sherlock in check. He is someone who has a tendency to spiral out of control, even if it’s not immediately obvious. She calls into question many of his behaviors, and she tells other people that the best way to get through to Sherlock is to ensure that he’s listening. She goes through many means to do that, and he does listen. She has figured him out, and he’s aware of that in many ways.
More than anything, it could be said that Sherlock doesn’t want to disappoint her. The fact that she does make him listen is a part of that. He tries to go on “binges of bad behavior,” so to speak, but her influence over him always wins out. He has professed that she is extremely important in his life, and she is partly responsible for him being a better person, a better detective, and someone who can help others. In turn, that means he does depend upon her approval, even if she doesn’t seem to willingly give it. He knows that, too,
The Men (His father, Mycroft, Gregson and Bell)
Part of his blindness when it comes to women is partly his selfishness, self-absorption, and the tendency to allow the men in his life to hold more influence than they should. Sherlock’s relationship with his father is estranged, and it’s apparent that the two of them have hardly communicated for most of his life. He resents his father because he neglected him, though Sherlock is very much blind to the fact that his father is the one who lifted him up out of his mess and ensured that he entered rehab. His own anger toward his father (and he has a great deal of it) in turn makes him act childish when he approaches him. That anger tends to extend toward his brother, Mycroft, though the show hasn’t fully explored the complicated relationship between them. What is evident is that his feelings toward Mycroft are a milder version of what he feels toward his father. Either way, Sherlock is completely unwilling to compromise in his negative emotions toward the two of them.
Of course, Sherlock doesn’t only have negative relationships with men. His friendships with Detectives Gregson and Bell show another side of him. He has actively come to understand a great deal about them. While he had working relationships with the police force in London, his relationships with Gregson and Bell are far more intimate. At times, he misunderstands the two of them, but his respect for the pair of them has only grown over time. He cites them as being partly responsible for him being a better person.
Still, Sherlock has a bad tendency to allow the male influences in his life to have a greater hold over him than the female ones, and they are often responsible for his stagnancy. Still, Gregson and Bell’s more positive influences are important—even if he is currently caught in a bind because he quite possibly hurt Bell a lot, having acted callously in a way that nearly led to the loss of Bell’s life (and almost certainly led to the end of his current career, though he’s exploring other paths). Sherlock has a hard time of showing that he cares, but he does feel responsible for them in some ways.
Conclusions
What is obvious throughout all of this is that Sherlock Holmes is, at times, an extremely obnoxious person who likes to tightly control aspects of his life, even if he utterly fails at it. He is a difficult person to deal with. For all his genius and eccentricities—and he has a great deal—the other aspects are more prominent and at times more important. He is growing every day, and he’s at times the very demonstration of how someone doesn’t change simply because they’re an adult.
Right now, he is grappling with how he fits in with humanity, believing himself to act in good ways simply because he worries about other people’s opinions. Of course, that isn’t really the case, but he’ll come to that realization eventually.
