‘Sherlock’ season 3, episode 2 (PBS) review: Drunk Sherlock, Irene Adler and a Watson wedding

After watching the premiere of “Sherlock” season 3 (which you can check out a review for here) we were hoping that episode 2 was going to dive into a larger story involving a new case. Unfortunately that was not the case and instead what we had was an episode that focused on John and Mary’s wedding and Sherlock trying to uphold his duties as best man.

We have already reviewed this episode when it aired in Britain (which you can read here), so we are going to give you a top five moments of the episode.

1. John asks Sherlock to be his best man: This was a really touching moment, because not only was it difficult for John to reveal to Sherlock that he’s his best friend, but it was equally difficult for Sherlock to grasp the concept that he is anyone’s friend at all let alone a best friend. It was awkward, lovely and a reminder of what a truly special friendship these two have.

2. Mary the friendship pusher: We’ve had our concerns about John and Mary getting married and that ending the great capers he has with Sherlock, but as we saw in this episode, Mary is a great mastermind in ensuring that John and Sherlock’s friendship stays in tact.

3. Bachelor party: Some people might think this would be the worst bachelor party in history, but to us it looked like a good time. We had Sherlock take Watson on a pub crawl where they drank beer out of dirty beakers and two hours later they were back in the Baker Street apartment playing a game of “guess the person” with post-it-notes. The highlight was watching a drunk Sherlock and Watson try to take on a client and solve a case.

4. Worst best man speech ever?: We knew that Sherlock’s best man speech was going to be rough, but we didn’t expect it to go off the rails so badly. Were their nice moments? sure, but for the most part he had foot in mouth syndrome while trying to figure out a case that felt a little tacked on to the whole wedding story.

5. Irene Adler: We know that she only had a small cameo and that she was really just in Sherlock’s head, but we love that she still has a hold on him. Steven Moffat has said that she may not come back in a full episode since they don’t want to ruin what they’ve already done with her, but as a Sherlock/Irene shipper we loved seeing that moment.

If you’re wondering why Mary’s pregnancy isn’t in the top five moments it’s because it has us worried. Babies are never a good thing in a world like this full of danger, because once they arrive then the big risks that many parents used to take are no longer and for someone like Watson, we could easily see his days of frolicking with Sherlock coming to an end. The other thing about this season so far is that while we know that Moffat wants to take new risks with the series and not rest on his laurels, we want to see big cases and even bigger bad guys! Did Watson’s wedding really have to be the whole episode with a small case tacked onto the end? We know that the finale is going to bring us Charles Augustus Magnussen our first real big bad of the season, so we can only hope that we’re going to be moving back to Sherlock’s roots a bit.

What did you think about Mary being pregnant and do you want to see more cases? If you want more “Sherlock” news just click here and if you want weekly TV updates, feel free to subscribe to our newsletter.

Photo: BBC One