But I’ve got a job to do, too. Where I’m going you can’t follow.
Sherlock/Casablanca parallels 2/2I recognized the plane scene…but the others? ( I always thought that door at the restaurant was..suspicious)
Ohhhhh, THIS is what bugs me about the Casablanca parallels!
One of the things that makes Casablanca great is that the man who was the one who got screwed over the first time is the one who makes the selfless choice the second time.
Ilsa is a woman of conviction. She tells Rick that she chose her husband not because she loved him more, but because he is helping to save the world and he needs her to do that. And at this moment in the end, she is wavering—prepared to chose her own personal love over the principles she herself told him that she values.
He is making a selfless choice—the choice she already told him was the right one, the one she already told him was the one she wanted to make. He’s not making a choice FOR her, but helping her to be strong.
In Sherlock, though, John is the one who was screwed over and left behind. In those first gifs here, the comparison is John = Rick. But in the later gifs, it’s Sherlock = Rick, because Sherlock screwed John over and abandoned him before, and now he has unilaterally made ANOTHER choice, presumptively, with no input from John as to whether it is the one he would prefer that Sherlock make. So effectively, Sherlock screwed him over and left him behind the first time, and now he’s doing it again. And John stays contained, says goodbye, because the choice has entirely been taken out of his hands and he simply has no other option (other than to break down and hang on Sherlock sobbing, but hell, at least he can keep his dignity).
(Though in reality I think that John also assumes, as he always does, that Sherlock has a plan. Because when doesn’t he have a plan? He DIED and had a plan, and furthermore John knows Sherlock always has Mycroft at his back if he really needs him. Regardless of how much he has been told or guessed or believes, whether he thinks that he personally will ever see Sherlock again, John is secure that Sherlock will win, somehow. And that lets him say goodbye here with a confidence that Sherlock doesn’t seem to feel. But that takes us out of the Casablanca parallels completely.)
