http://welcomebackholmes.tumblr.com/post/72007987176/anyway-time-to-go-and-be-sherlock-holmes
Anyway, time to go and be Sherlock Holmes.
Click on the link to see the image.
So the thing about this is.
Sherlock has ALWAYS been a construct of his own imagination. We’ve seen it loads of times; when the world’s eyes are on him, he PERFORMS Sherlock Holmes. He basks in the attention, he puffs up under the regard of others like a peacock. And what he does for John, who stares at him with those admiring eyes and heaps praise on him, well…
Now I think maybe we understand what Mycroft meant in ASiP when he said, “He’ll be the making of my brother…or make him worse than ever.”
I think John did a bit of both.
Who he is when eyes are off him, we never see, because just like everyone else on the show, we are his audience. When he’s home alone, maybe just sitting around with John, we see tantalizing glimpses of a man who is like but not exactly like the Sherlock he puts on with his coat when he steps out the door.
So when John says this… Somebody else commented on how WEIRD Sherlock acts in this episode. And he really does, he acts pretty bizarre. He’s bouncing off the walls with confused emotion: guilt, regret, a clearly twistingly powerful sense of missing John (and Lestrade and Molly and Mrs. Hudson—he’s so pleased to see them all, no matter how he hides it, and he even gets frigging MYCROFT to play OPERATION. Talk about things worth writing fic about). He outright states he needs to ground himself in London again. Clearly he isn’t quite feeling like himself.
And why should he? Of course he isn’t the Sherlock we knew before. He’s spent two years apart from us, doing all kinds of crazy things of the sort that tends to have an effect on a person. He and John have to get to know each other all over again, and maybe Sherlock needs to get to know himself again, now that he’s got time to sit down, kick back and have a think. But the Sherlock he performs, ahhhh. That’s the same old Sherlock we know and love and sometimes hate.
I am such a sucker for the changes of time, and the way someone you knew intimately can become a stranger in your time apart.
