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?
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.”
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?
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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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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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.
In that case Watson’s change is that by shooting the Cabbie, he abandons his attempt to leave the war behind (or become a regular Joe or whatever) and officially enlists in Sherlock’s army where he’ll get to see the hidden battlefield in the streets of London.
Yeah, I reckon you got it. It’s hard to see because it never feels like much of a dilemma. Well spotted.
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Maybe he doesn’t trust revealing that to others? It was interesting that the therapist said, “You are a soldier.” and wrote down still has trust issues. That makes not trusting in some specifics, not in general. He trusted his old friend he met in the park to go with him to meet a possible flatmate. He trusted Sherlock to hand over his phone to him. Perhaps, he fell in with Sherlock so easily, trusting the environment he created to work in. Mycroft saw it as trusting Sherlock too easily, but it was actually his battlefield?
This isn’t shown in the eoisode, though, so I wouldn’t point to it when looking for a storyform.
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good point…darn that psych major
We look for trauma and dilemma, but it is part of the ‘game’ of ‘game afoot’.
S “Seen a lot of injuries, then. Violent deaths.”
W “Well, yes.”
S “Bit of trouble too, I bet?”
W “Of course. Yes. Enough for a lifetime, far too much.”
S “Want to see some more?”
W “Oh, God, yes.”
S …“There’s finally something fun going on.”
S …“The game, Mrs. Hudson, is on!”
Maybe, Linear figures things out and Holistic creates a whole by caring about people?
Sherlock is including Watson in the fun. Rewatching it, I’m shocked at how blatant it was, like going to a sports game their kind of brain fun.
I’d say that sounds like Sherlock and Watson. Sherlock says something, I forget what exactly, and Watson reminds him that there’s a woman lying dead on the floor because Watson is driven by emotion (be respectful) and balance (don’t say those things around a dead body) and then Sherlock says something like “a sound analysis, but I did hope you’d go deeper” going back to a few lines earlier when he’d asked Watson for his analysis because Sherlock likes the part where he gets to show off his ability to see clues.
I mean “dilemma” in the Dramatica sense: stories with change MCs focus on the dilemma while those with Steadfast focus on the work. I don’t doubt that Watson is meant to be a Changed MC, but his issues never feel like ba dilemma to me. He puts up virtually no resistance to Sherlock’s influence, and we’re mostly told about his issues without getting to see them for ourselves.
If Watson shooting Cabbie is the resolution of his MC throughline (and the OS), it’s not clear what it resolves. Are we meant to believe he wouldn’t have attemped the shot earlier in the story? I’m not so sure.
The implication seems to be that he was able overcome his shaking hands, but this doesn’t feel right because we’ve known since the midpoint that Watson’s hands don’t shake when he’s under stress. Having Mycroft point this out kinda sucked all the dramatic tension out of Watson’s throughline.
There’s no dilemma. Watson doesn’t appear to struggle to change. His changes just happen to him.
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I know I’m coming late to this thread, but I lean toward Watson’s problem as Inaction. When he left the war, his life’s purpose has been stripped from him, and he is adrift. He cannot write his blog, he relies on others to find a flatmate for him, and he very passively follows Sherlock around and does what Sherlock wants.
The MC Solution would then be Protection, when he shoots the Cabbie, finally taking the initiative and doing something NOT directed by another, and finding his new life’s purpose.
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I think another way to see Watson’s problem as Inaction, if his larger problem is that he misses the war, is as the lack of action he sees as a civilian. “Nothing ever happens to me” he tells his therapist. And then the examples where he is under stress and not shaking are showing that when something is happening, it saps his motivation, so to speak. When he follows Sherlock out of the apartment, I think that is where he starts to change. That’s where he stops missing the war and starts seeing that things are happening to him. Taking the shot is sort of his full embracing of this change.
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Yes, and we can see elements of Protection begin to surface just after his meeting with Mycroft, with how he responds to Sherlock’s text (when Watson thinks Sherlock is in danger). He immediately takes action to go home, take up his service pistol, and go charging into Baker Street…only to be confronted by his Inaction problem when Sherlock is merely lying on the couch and can’t be bothered to get up.
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I really like that interpretation.
So, Watson looks out into his civilian life and doesn’t see enough action, or he doesn’t experience enough action (MC Problem: Inaction), but instead of going out and finding it, he internalizes the problem (Approach Be-er), and it manifests as a limp and tremors, which he attributes to his PTSD (MC Focus/Symptom: Reduction). Running around like a couple nutters with Sherlock alleviates or addresses his symptoms (MC Direction/ Response: Production), but it’s not until he takes initiative and brings the case to a close through his own actions that he truly resolves his issues (MC Solution: Protection).
Then he and Sherlock strut off into the night, presumably to carry on protecting the people of London.
I think there are some storytelling issues with this throughline that don’t serve the audience very well, but I reckon that doesn’t count against it as far as Dramatica is concerned. It looks like the storypoints are there even if Mycroft spoiled the ending a bit.
We discussed the author’s proof a bit a few days ago, and I wanted to add that in addition to Sherlock’s realization about Watson and his change, we also get to see it in Watson. When Sherlock confronts him about it and points out that Watson is handling things well considering he just killed a man, Watson just sort of shrugs it off: “I did, didn’t I? Well, he wasn’t a very good man.”
Do we see Inaction as the problem in the OS? Is that the victims went along with Cabbie’s game?
I can better see Protection as the Solution and work backward. If the victims had protected themselves, they might have gotten away because the gun was a fake. At the very least it would have left physical evidence behind, making it clear to the police that these were murders. Their Inaction makes it look like suicide, which allows the Cabbie to continue operating.
The Pink Lady doesn’t just sit there and die. She protects her interests, insofar as catching her killer are her interests, by planting her gps-enabled phone on Cabbie and scratching the password into the hardwood. This ultimately gets the Cabbie caught.
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I like it. I’m trying to see Inaction in the police force. I don’t remember the exact wording but a reporter asks something like “How can we make sure we’re safe?” And Lestrade replies “Well, don’t commit suicide” which is hilarious, but also, I think, illustrates the drive to not take action.
I’m not sure how well this works, but Lestrade telling Anderson and others to stand down and let Sherlock do his things brings some conflict into a few scenes.
Ooh, and reading back over your example reminds me that one of the things the police keep mentioning is that no one left a note until the pink lady, so just as Watson is looking at London and seeing Inaction at play, the police are looking at the victims and seeing Inaction at play.
And then the cabbie describes his game by saying he doesn’t kill them. He speaks to them and they kill themselves, it’s this Inaction on his part that makes the case so baffling for the police! Yep, I like Inaction for the Os too.
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