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FOR THE RECORD, I have mostly liked this season on account of Sherlock and Mary not competing over John. I endured what I did not like with good grace. I am a long far way from Sherlock fandom itself, and I read the fanfiction intermittently and when I do, let's be honest, I'm reading AU gender dystopias and don't need to get particularly worked up about characterization.

THAT SAID there were things I both liked and disliked about 3x03.

+ : Honestly the thing with Mary getting the skip code had been bothering me a whole lot; it was like when the Female Character in a historical novel suddenly turns out to be proficient in swordplay because Her Brother Taught Her When She Was a Kid. I didn't really want to harp on that because I didn't want to be that person who over-criticizes female characters, but I'm honestly glad there was an explanation.

+ : I liked that Molly Hooper is the voice of sobering medical logic in Sherlock's mind palace.

- + : I hated that Sherlock exploited Janine, but I was glad that she exploited him back, and I feel like she made a good point, they could have been friends, she did know what kind of person he was and she liked him anyway.

- + : I don't think I would like this if my expectations weren't so low, and I completely respect that other people might not like it, but I really liked when Mary had to sit in the client chair. I've been braced this whole season for the two households of John-Sherlock and John-Mary to come into conflict, as in the RDJ movie. The fact that it happened because she had a dark secret, not because being married to a lady is totally lame and getting in the way of brotimes, was pretty good for me. And the fact that they all three had to sit down and work out if they were going to be able to continue on together, in light of revelations, was also pretty good. I don't formally ship it as an OT3, but I'm always interested in social dynamics where two sides of an angle are trying to connect the third side. And like I said, I've loved Mary and Sherlock being friends this season. I love that all three sides of that triangle got wobbly, this episode, and all three sides pulled themselves right.

+ : I do love the idea that Sherlock recognized Mary as like to like.

- : I didn't care about the villain but I never care about the villains in these, frankly. Though I did appreciate how tasteless and new-money his architecture looked. I wonder what would strike me as perfectly tasteful architecture nowadays?

- Okay, so, I have mostly tried to ignore the view of this show where I have to keep in mind that Moffat exists. And I've mostly succeeded. Lots of people work together to make shows, and consuming those shows shouldn't make me feel beholden to deal with any particular producer, dammit.

But we need to talk about what happened to Mary's past and then we need to talk about Amy Pond and River Song. Because Moffat seems to have this thing that crops up over and over and over where love literally erases womens' pasts, where they're recreated as essentially new beings whose entire timeline is encapsulated within the purpose of being in love with a man. When I was talking to phnelt last night, I was pretty willing to handwave it as "Moffat just doesn't get why a woman would love a man and he gets it wrong a lot and makes it look disproportionate and alarming instead of realizing it's basically the same reason that anybody loves anybody."

But that thumb drive in the fire (so dangerous, btw! Don't breathe burning computer parts!) has been kind of haunting me. The idea that it's supposed to be romantic to think that John Watson really doesn't care about Mary Morstan's actual pre-him life, or romantic that her identity is essentially five years old and she's acting like John's the only interesting thing in it - I just. Eugh. Eugh. Stop it, Moffat. John's got baggage from his past, but being in love with Mary doesn't make him, for instance, not a doctor, or not a crime-solving sidekick and deeply loyal man. Being in love with Mary is an extension of the things that make him himself. It should not be an ideological statement to say that Mary being in love with John should be the same thing - an extension of who she is and who her past has made her, not a literal erasure of it.

I am just saying. Moffat's thing for erasing women's timelines is the creepiest Moffat Thing.

Of course I can fanwankingly survive it. It's one of those old-fashioned reading-against-the-grain things, where of course she has other motivations - maybe she got sick of killing, and is genuinely trying to live clean, maybe she's made friends who aren't John who she values, of course she's got a whole complete inner life that motivates and drives her, and her relationship with John is a piece of that puzzle, not the whole thing. Of course that's true. It would make no sense for it not to be true. But I dislike realizing that I'm doing that thing where I automatically fill in more reasonable character motivations because the canon sucketh mightily on that front.

+ I really appreciated that Mary didn't just die. I was waiting for her to die.

+ - phnelt pointed out that it would have made way more sense if Mary had shot what's-his-Murdoch-dude, not Sherlock. But I was really glad that they didn't make John do it.

+ - Maybe Mary will get her own history-inclusive personality next season?

+ - Maybe we can write lots of fanfic that is not exactly Natasha Romanov/Steve Rogers/Tony Stark, but looks pretty close to it.

+ - Except they're all werewolves.