At this point, does anyone even really care if Sherlock and John are in love?
在這樣的觀點下,是否有人甚至真的關心SHERLOCK和JOHN之間是否有在戀愛?


Much has been written about the way Sherlock queerbaits — that is, the way in which it arguably exploits queer identity by making John and Sherlock’s relationship into the ongoing subject of homoerotic speculation and subtext, even as the show’s creators insist, again and again, that they’re not writing the two men as queer.
Almost every episode of Sherlock up until now has contained some sort of side-speculation by one character or another that John and Sherlock are gay and/or in love. “The Six Thatchers” was notably devoid of this kind of interaction, and was in fact extremely straightforward about John and Sherlock’s friendship without any of the usual frustrating homoerotic overtones.
Except, of course, Mary is now dead, and she has charged Sherlock to “save” John after her death. This sets the stage for an even deeper level of intimacy forged by mutual grief over her loss. Before “The Six Thatchers,” we had queerbaiting in the form of a lot of gay jokes. Now the gay jokes may be gone, but the show has traded them for something that feels even more insulting: the death of its most independent female character purely to further some manpain that in the end probably won’t bring John and Sherlock together as more than friends.
It’s kind of a mess. And it really only justifies the impending narrative for the rest of season four — in which John will push Sherlock away as Sherlock awkwardly tries to help him recover — if you ultimately think their relationship is worth salvaging. Frankly I’m not sure that it is.
Sherlock, for all of his occasional attempts to be a decent friend, is a perpetually selfish individual who seems to need John more as a reflection of a certain version of himself than because he values who John is. John, in turn, appears to still be the PSTD-ridden soldier who can only snap out of his stupor when he’s chasing the adrenalin high of crime-solving that Sherlock offers him.
If this is friendship, it’s darkly co-dependent; if it’s true love, it’s a tragedy. Sherlock has never been forced to reckon with any of the utterly unconscionable things he’s done to John over the years (look back at that list — it’s a horrific list!). And if the show is going to sacrifice entire characters on the altar of “Johnlock,” a.k.a. the shipping name for their eternal love, it should probably make Johnlock something worth caring about. I'm just not sure that it has.
Also, though this may be an afterthought for a series that has built itself around its own cleverness, it’s just not very much fun anymore.
There are now two episodes left in season four, which Moffat and Gatiss have called “climactic” and have hinted may be the show’s last. But I’m not holding my breath for a narrative that boasts any finality, particularly since Sherlock still has a lot of loose threads to tie up. After all, we not only still don’t know what Moriarty’s end game was, we haven’t even met this season’s villain, Culverton Smith (Toby Jones). There may even be a third Holmes brother in the mix.
Still, at least Abbington and Mary got a fierce send-off. Whether it will be worth the loss in the long run depends on how willing Gatiss and Moffat are to really have Sherlock undergo the moral reckoning that would justify her death, or whether they intend to keep spinning out the same empty, self-satisfied love story of two crime-solving bros who would probably each be better off alone — or at least without the other.
Sherlock airs Sundays at 9 pm Eastern on PBS.