Sherlock, S1 Ep1, A Study in Pink

analysis
#7

For Sherlock’s problem solving, I always thought of him as a more holistic problem solver. Hasn’t holistic problem solving also been known as intuitive? Sherlock seems very intuitive. I think sometimes he acts simply on a hunch. I don’t understand the linear/holistic stuff very well though, so I’m likely wrong, or maybe I’m right but I’m using the wrong reasons to justify why he’s holistic.

I think what will help with figuring out their problem solving styles is rooting out what the actual problems are in the story, identifying the MC and IC throughlines and whatnot.

As for the rest of the storyform…

ELLA
John, you’re a soldier. It’s going to take you a while to adjust to civilian life - writing a blog about everything that happens to you, will honestly help you. Trust me.

Closer on John. He looks bleakly at her - a proud soldier, stoic, but somehow broken and lost.

JOHN
Nothing happens to me.

I think John (the Change MC for this episode) is stuck in some sort of external problematic state. Either he has a fixed attitude “nothing ever happens to me” or he’s in a problematic situation “adjusting to civilian life”.

JOHN
My therapist thinks it’s
psychosomatic.
MIKE
What do you think?
JOHN
I think I got shot.

I’m leaning more towards Situation at the moment…

As for the overall storyform, I think Physics makes sense. Multiple people mysteriously commit suicide. And figuring out why they do that is a big part of the conflict in the OS. The characters really struggle with Learning the identity of the culprit/if there is someone behind all this, There’s also John struggling to catch on to who’s who and what’s going on, such as how M is related to Sherlock. And Sherlock really really wants to know how the murderer is getting away with it.

I can also see Obtaining as a possible concern: catching the culprit. That has a stronger consequence of Becoming.

Also, I have a random hunch (it could totally be something else) that John’s UA might be Work:

SHERLOCK
The bullet they just dug out the
wall was from a hand gun. A kill
shot over that distance from that
kind of weapon - that’s a crack
shot you’re looking for. But not
just a marksmen, a fighter - his
hand couldn’t have shaken at all,
so clearly he’s acclimatised to
violence. He didn’t fire ‘til I
was in immediate danger, though.
So, strong moral principles.
You’re looking for a man probably
with a history of military service
and nerves of steel –

Anyways, just some other story points:
Action seems like the driver. The story starts with people committing suicide, that’s the driver, and I see it as an action. And I think the story ends when Sherlock squeezes that name out of the cab driver: Moriarty.
Success. Good. They learn, and everyone’s angst is more or less gone.
Optionlock. I could argue it many ways, but, I mean, it’s hardly much of a debate from what I can see. I can’t think of any moment that makes me go “Hmm, this could be a timelock.”

#8

I like to remind myself that Doyle created the Sherlock Holmes character after a Scottish doctor he had worked with. So, there would be an element of hunch but only after a fact showing up that needed clarification, kind of hypothesis bread crumbs.

Btw, is science linear or holistic?

#9

The most basic explanation of the differences I’ve found is that Linear problem solving is spatial and Holistic is temporal. LPSers look at the state of things. HPSers look at processes. LPSers tend to look at problems as paths, spaces, structures, and prefer reason. HPSers look at problems as relationships and balance, and prefer emotion.

Sherlock is all about the reasoning. (He calls it deductive reasoning, but what he’s using is actually more like abductive reasoning.) While everyone else is looking for connections (or relationships) between suicides, Sherlock comes in and immediately sees the state of things and pulls all his clues from that (the pattern of the mud splash, the way she’s dressed, the state of her ring, all the pink, etc.). The mind palace isn’t shown in this episode, but that seems like a very spatial way of approaching a problem. We do see him trying to chase a cab and he goes to think and then we see images of maps of London, another spatial approach.

When he meets Watson, Sherlock immediately starts talking about flat sharing and Watson says something about having just met and seems to think they should get to know each other more first (a process) to which Sherlock tells him all the things he has already observed about him (a state). I’d have to think a little more for more examples of Watson as Holistic, but he seems to approach things more emotionally (“Damn my leg!”)

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#10

I can see his problem being something like “adjusting to civilian life” but that seems like more of a process to me than a state. And seeing a therapist seems like, by it’s very nature, an attempt to change ones self to match the world around them-the definition of a be-er. I don’t know how strongly I’d stick to it, but sounds like I’m leaning toward Psychology at the moment.

Sherlock is the one that goes around chasing after cabs and calling John from across London to come all the way back to the flat to send a text rather than to get up and go ask Mrs. Hudson for her phone. Do-ing, but does he influence others through Physics?

That would put the OS in Universe. Less the act of murdering and more that there is a killer on the loose. It’s the unsolvable nature of the rash of suicides that forces Lestrade to go to Sherlock for help.

I could be convinced otherwise of all that, though. I do like Action, Success, Good, Optionlock.

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#11

Sherlock seems intuitive to an observer, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that he is. He seems to make some incredible leaps of intuition, but every time he’s asked, he lists out his entire train of thought used to arrive at his conclusion. In his mind at least these relationships appear causal, which is to say linear.

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#12

What’s weird is that this seems backwards in some ways. Linear thinkers like cause and effect, an inherently temporal concept–the cause must happen before the effect. Meanwhile on the Holistic side, relationships exist in the space between things.

It’s almost like spatial and temporal are referring to what their practitioners take for granted, or perhaps what they assume. The LPS expends his mental energy in the spatial realm because he’s assumed that time is fixed, and the causal chains are set in stone. But the HPS sees time as stretchy and fluid and where the problem can be solved, while spaces are fixed.

I think that helps explain why Holistic/ temporal thinkers don’t engage well with Timelocks, even though semantically they seem well paired. It’s not that the HPS doesn’t understand time; they don’t understand how it could be locked.

Pairing Holistic and Timelock in the storyform seems to create a sort of vicious circle between the audience and the story. The Linear thinkers in the audience can’t empathize with the Holistic MC, the Holistic thinkers in the audience can’t buy in to the Timelock, and since the HPS Main Character doesn’t feel properly pressured by the Limit–being unable to really understand it–there’s a dissonance at the heart of the story that further alienates the audience.

Sorry, I guess that’s a bit off-topic.

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Difference between Linear and Holistic problem solving
Difference between Linear and Holistic problem solving
#13

Rewatched “A Study in Pink” this afternoon. I didn’t get the impression that it’s a GAS.

Watson is clearly the intended MC, and Sherlock is the IC, but anything more than that starts to get a little fuzzy, in my opinion.

First, there doesn’t appear to be any Changed character. It feels like Watson’s throughline is meant to be about his PTSD, but it’s half-hearted and pretty thin. He has his psychosomatic limb and hand tremor, but he’s given them up or grown out of them well before the final act. Ultimately, his shooting of the Cabbie, which resolves the OS, has no apparent connection to the MC Throughline. Are we meant to believe that Watson’s PTSD would have prevented him from pulling the trigger at the beginning? I just don’t see enough of a baseline established for us to say for sure. Maybe if the episode had ended with Watson writing in his blog, we’d have an author’s proof of his change.

Interestingly, the final lines of dialogue come from Mycroft and concern how Watson might change Sherlock. This points to a larger GAS potentially spanning the season or multiple seasons (not that this means there isn’t one in this episode).

I’d guess that Watson is a Be-er, or at least that was the intention. The internalization of his problems have manifested in his limp and tremors. He has nightmares and responds by sitting alone in his room and goes to therapy, which I interpret as an attempt to change himself internally. The therapist wants him to blog, a way to externalize his problem, but he’s unable to.

The issue is that this is dropped pretty much the moment Watson meets Sherlock. They go to the apartment, the police show up and invite Sherlock to the new crime scene, and Watson leaps at the chance to go participate. If he’s a changed MC, the change happens here. I’m not sure we really see the Be-er Watson again.

Sherlock is a Do-er. He prefers to text, and when his phone is acting up, won’t even change himself enough to make a phone call on a landline, preferring instead to borrow a working phone. Generally, he’s brilliant but his working relationship with the police is held back by his poor social skills. Instead of changing himself to fit in better and resolve those issues, Sherlock prefers to pile on more and more brilliant observations until he convinces them.

I agree with @Gregolas about the Domains, with the caveat that if it’s not a GAS no Domains can really be assigned. It felt a lot like the Silence of the Lambs in the sense that it opened with several crimes having already been committed, with Sherlock as the brilliant psychopath (er, high-functioning sociopath) the authorities turn to for help.

The difference between Lector and Sherlock is that Sherlock’s influence doesn’t come from developing a psychological profile of his targets, but rather by seeing the physical evidence and drawing conclusions. Lector looks to motivations for behavior while Sherlock evaluates what he sees. Lector is in Psychology, and Sherlock is in Physics. Plus, Sherlock even influences Watson through sheer doing–running through the streets of London all while Watson has left his cane behind.

This puts Watson in Pschology, which makes sense; the limp is a symptom of dysfunctional psychology.

The RS would be in Mind, which I don’t quite see. In this episode there is very little conflict in their relationship beyond the running gag of them being misidentified as a gay couple. Watson is quite taken with Sherlock’s brilliance and happily follows him all over London.

As for the Problem-Solving Style, it’s really hard to say. Watson is given very few opportunities to solve problems on his own. That’s not surprising; Sherlock Holmes’ whole deal is that he’s THE problem solver, and he just sort of sucks up all the air in that area of the story. Overall, I’d say Sherlock is Linear for reasons already outlined in this thread, but I’m not convinced we see enough problem solving outside the necessities of the OS to say definitively. Plus, the firs thing we see Sherlock do is send the text messages to all the press and detectives during the press conference. This strikes me as holistic. He’s trying to change the balance of the relationships at play, so he’ll get brought in.

As far as I understand, none of this has any bearing on Watson’s PSS, and I don’t think we have enough to go on to say. He does just shoot the guy at the end, which seems about as linear as something can be, but again that’s in the OS.

Overall this feels to me more like the opening act of a GAS, than a complete story in its own right.

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#14

I agree. When I brought up this suggestion, I was sure it would be a GAS because of what I remembered about the episode and I found interest in determining if Sherlock was linear or holistic in this one. After rewatching it, it felt like they really wanted it to be a GAS but didn’t quite nail it. Like you say, the PTSD stuff was dealt with, but not in the most satisfactory way that was probably available. Watson going after Sherlock and shooting the cabbie somehow sort of felt like Watson switching over from Psychology to Physics, but I couldn’t say what element he was switching from or to. They wanted Sherlock to be alone with the cabbie for a while, and understandably so, but in spending so much time with Sherlock, they rushed over Watson who just needed a moment or two to complete his arc, or maybe he needed a moment or two closer to the front to clarify his problem. I don’t know. With Watson slowly losing his PTSD over the course of the episode I can see what they were going for and I think maybe I mentally filled in the holes in order to remember it as a GAS.

If Watson had had a clearer change, I would have offered that maybe the relationship grew or faded over what they thought of each other. When Sherlock tells Watson that he thinks of him as a fill-in for the skull on the mantle, maybe the relationship is pushed apart. When Watson tells Sherlock that what he does is amazing, the relationship grows a bit. Although it’s hard to say. Their relationship grows over the course of the episode, but it’s not so easy to say how or why it grows. They start out as strangers and become flat mates. From there, Watson begins trusting Sherlock being more fascinated by him, and Sherlock likes to impress Watson. That seems to be what they’re friendship revolves around.

Interesting take. I hadn’t considered it that way. I kind of saw it as his attempt to impress everyone with how he did that, but also to tell everyone that he knows more than they do. And now that you mention it, I can definitely see the shift in balance, but the way I saw it, I would have said it was linear. Great insight there.

Ps, what an incredible post! Thanks for taking the time to watch and offer those thoughts!

#15

To speak to why I was interested in Sherlock’s PSS, I had seen at least a few suggestions that he might be Holistic in nature. I don’t know if I’m right here, but I suspected it might be because of the way other characters look at a scene and see only the obvious things—they committed suicide—while Sherlock was viewing the whole (as in holistic) scene down to the state of the outside of her wedding band compared to the state of the inside of it. From a view of Linear vs Holistic, I can see this (and probably would have agreed with it at one point) because Linear suggests a path of least resistance (it appears they committed suicide so that’s what we’re going with) whereas Holistic, to a linear person, might look like pulling from many or all paths, such as Sherlock finding many paths of evidence that do not suggest suicide.
Only recently, I believe, have I really grasped the difference between LPS and HPS and that it’s space vs time, states vs dynamics. From that point of view, pulling from many paths is not dynamic. It’s still very linear. I just wanted to put that idea to the test.

#16

@Etherbeard, what do you make of this? I just watched the last seven or eight minutes again. Sherlock is telling Lestrade how the guy that shot the cabbie “probably had military service, nerves of steel”. We dont see Watson’s POV of his change, but get told about it through Sherlock. Still a little sloppy, perhaps, but does that do anything for you in regards to seeing Watson’s change? Could that maybe be enough to show, say, a change from inaction (not writing the blog) to protection (shooting the cabbie)?

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#17

Yeah, Sherlock even says, “…hands couldn’t have shaken at all.” I think you’re probably right; this is meant to function as the proof of Watson’s change.

It doesn’t bother me to present the proof this way. It’s quick and efficient, unexpected, and works alongside the whodunnit motif. I do suspect it would work better as a MC observing a changed IC. And I do have a couple of quick quibbles:

They both originate from the Mycroft scene around the midpoint. Mycroft points out that Watson has an intermittent tremor in his left hand that his therapist thinks is brought on by stress. Mycroft elaborates that the therapist ought to be fired because Watson is under stress at that moment and his hand is not shaking. So Watson’s steely nerves in the climax aren’t a revelation to us or to him. Also, he holds the gun in his right hand, and the tremor is specifically stated to be in his left, but that could just be a slight continuity error.

The last third is pretty goofy, structurally. It’s like Sherlock becomes the MC, so we’re not really there with Watson at the critical moment. I’d really like for there to have been either more with the gun at beginning or more with the blog at the end.

As for Inaction to Protection, I don’t think Watson not writing his blog works as Inaction–at least not as I understand it. I think of inaction as requiring a choice; you could’ve done something, but you chose to do nothing, to let things play out, whether because you thought that was the best course or because you didn’t want to act. Watson’s issue with the blog feels more like an inability. He gets out the laptop with the intention to write, but nothing comes. He tells his therapist he has nothing to write about because nothing happens to him.

The first place I’d look for a storyform is the upper left quad. Conceptualizing goes along with Watson trying to find his place in the civilian world, and all the Issues under it look good. Sherlock astounds people by not merely noticing but appreciating the meaning of small details, and the Senses\ Interpretation diagonal looks particularly good.

The elements under Destiny feel pretty good for the OS (though they look so good if assigned to Sherlock, I question the assigned Domains). In that final scene with the Cabbie, you’ve got the talk of people being unaware of them (just the back of a head) and the guessing game with the pills. The issues of Fate\Destiny comes in with the Cabbie’s impending aneurysm.

I can’t quite get a full set of Problems, Symptoms, etc. to work across OS, MC, and IC, at least not to my satisfaction (sort of ignoring RS for now) But it’s close. Closer than I expected, certainly. Like you, I suspect it falls just short.

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#18

The more I think about it the more I like this way of showing an MC has changed. For arguments sake, let’s just say the problem/solution is Inaction/Protection. We see the MC change when Watson shoots the cabbie. Sherlock speaking to Lestrade is just sort of confirmation to the audience that Watson was changed at that moment. On first watch, I thought like you that it would have worked better as an MC speaking about an IC, but now I think it works fine. And I’m pretty sure there’s at least a hint of a separate story between Sherlock and the cabbie where Sherlock is MC. If that’s right, then when Sherlock is giving that info it’s coming off an act where he was an MC and maybe explains why some of that looks a little sloppy at first.

I agree with that. But again, for the sake of argument, he still hasn’t changed from Inaction to Protection (or insert other elements) until the climax. Also, I take the mentions of how steady he is from Mycroft and Sherlock as further evidence of his Psychology Domain though, in that it shows the psychosomatic nature of his issues.

Already addressed most of the goofy structure above.
While I am convincing myself that maybe Watson possibly had a clearer change than I originally thought, I agree that something with the gun at the front or the blog at the end would have been nice to have the change sort of spoon fed to us, but it should not be absolutely necessary. I don’t remember any scene at the front of Star Wars, for instance, where Luke is using his targeting computer or whatever.

I was definitely looking at the right side. Assuming OS Universe and MC Psychology, Progress or Present seem a better fit to me than Past. At one point I was looking pretty close at Progress, but I think I’d have to go with Present.

That would put Watson in Concieving. I’m not going to lie, I’d have to look at this one a little bit before I could buy fully into it. But I’m not convinced his problems come from finding his place in society conceptually. This is where I’d like more emphasis on his throughline and what his problems are. And I’m not sure if this is what I would have said his problems are or if I’m now trying to fit this story into a particular form, but I’m thinking his problems seem more like he needs to see civilian life in a new way, or he needs to have an idea of how to deal with life after the military. On one hand he says he’s seen enough action to last a life time, but on the other he wants to see more and immediately goes with Sherlock when he’s invited. He tells his therapist that nothing ever happens, but then things are continuously happening to him. And when they are happening, we are told that his limp and trembling disappear. I don’t like this wording, but it seems like maybe not concieving of civilian life as exciting is causing his psychosomatic limp and trembling and when it is exciting, those things go away.
That would put Sherlock in Learning (or Gathering info). People need Sherlock because they can’t understand what’s going on without him, but it’s the way he can tell you everything at a glance (the way he gathers info) that creates conflict and pisses people off or makes them feel awkward or leads to them calling him a freak.

I’ll pass on the RS for now as well.

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#19

I agree lower right is also good.

We really could have the Domains wrong. I’ve got to get my day started, but I wanted to jot down a couple ideas while they’re fresh.

Staying in upper left but switching OS to Physics, we get:

OS Understanding-- investigation plot, these suicides are related, but how is that possible

MC Memories-- PTSD flashbacks, “Imagine you’re about to die. What wouldn’t you say?” “Please don’t let me die. I don’t have to imagine.”

RS Conceptualizing-- “This could be very nice. Clean it up…” “I thought so, that’s why I went ahead and moved in.”

IC Past-- maybe a weak point, but you do get the instances of people warning Watson off Sherlock because of their past experiences with him. And Sherlock certainly has a knack for deciphering the objective reality of what has alreary happened.

One last thought: isn’t Sherlock using the nicotine patches a Be-er move? It’s interesting that this episode barely touches on Sherlock’s substance abuse, so he’s probably at peak Do-er here.

#20

Hmm…I’m not really sure.

  1. Is it about getting the high to deal with the world, or is it about changing the chemicals in his blood (external to mind) to match his mind? I’d have to see the scene again for context.
  2. I also want to say that I’m not sure if using the patches is part of his influence on others. If it’s not, then it probably doesn’t factor in.
  3. If it does factor in and is be-ing, I suppose one could argue that he’d rather do something but has taken to be-ing on nicotine as a secondary option.
#21

I still haven’t had time to rewatch it, but wouldn’t his inability to be a fully functioning doctor, again so far, yeah fit in somewhere?

#22

I think you’d expect that to come up, and it makes sense that Watson’s shaky hand(s) might prevent him from practicing medicine. But it’s never really mentioned, though I supposed it could be inferred.

It’s strange that Watson has multiple MC scenes in the first few minutes (PTSD nightmares, can’t write blog, therapy, then an OS scene, then back to Watson running into an old friend), but his specific problems are so hard to pin down. It’s stated a couple of times, once by his therapist and again later by Mycroft (who is reading the therapist’s notes), that Watson has trust issues. This works with the solution of Test: him shooting Cabbie at the end in what is described as a remarkable shot requiring nerves of steel and unshaking hands. My issue is that Watson’s trust issues just don’t seem to exist. We’re told but not shown.

Otherwise, it’s actually a good quad of elements for Watson (domain psychology). The Test of making the hard shot, his Determination that he can’t afford a flat in London, his expectation that “Nothing ever happens to me.”

#23

Sure, but where do you suggest? I don’t recall that specifically being the source of any problems. Could be the conflict that comes from some inequity?

#24

I agree with this. From a Dramatica standpoint, I don’t see trust causing any real conflict for Watson. This seems to be the shows way of saying that Watson sure seems to have taken up with Sherlock awfully fast. What’s more, when the therapist says he has trust issues, it’s played like he doesn’t trust others when the therapist points out that he read her writing upside down. Then Mycroft points out that he trusts Sherlock too easily. I’d think the shows use of “trust” would fall elsewhere in the Dramatica chart and my personal hunch is that it could be somewhere in the thematic argument.

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#25

I think I got it. His problem isn’t trying to rejoin civilian life. It’s that he misses the war! Mycroft says it. He misses the war and that’s the cause for all the psychosomatic stuff with the therapist.

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#26

I just saw the first three minutes of the show with Watson jumping from the bed due to his war nightmare. He could be dreaming of friends who were killed. The trust issue could be at a very basic level, so many friends were killed and left him behind. Perhaps, it was hard for him to develop new relationships because he could not trust they would not leave him behind, also. Maybe, Sherlock (and his thinking) is a lifeline that helps him to lasso a stable life, i.e. straight shot.