‘Sherlock’ season 3, episode 2 review: Sherlock steps up as Watson’s Best Man
The premiere of “Sherlock” season 3 set up the rest of the upcoming episodes perfectly. We heard a few different versions on how Sherlock faked his death, we met Watson’s future wife Mary, and we saw John finally get past his anger over what Sherlock did to him over the past few years and is ready to move forward. So will Sherlock and Watson be as close as they once were or will this “faked death” always be an albatross in their friendship? (Americans be warned: There are spoilers ahead).
It’s John and Mary’s wedding day and Sherlock is stressing over being the best man. The wedding ceremony goes off without any issue, and we learn from the reception line that Sherlock met with the ushers, the ring bearer and so forth before the ceremony to make sure everyone’s on their best behavior.
Sherlock’s best man speech was just as awkward as you expected it…. just as awkward as John trying to ask Sherlock to be his best man in the first place. It was a nice moment to see John express to Sherlock that he is his best friend and what that means to Sherlock. The speech went from awkward to bad as he started to insult everyone from John, to Mary, to the family, to the bridesmaids, but he was able to turn it around in the end focusing on his friendship with John and what that friendship means to him. In the end it was exactly that best man speech we expected from Sherlock, with a murder to solve and everything.
What we really love about Mary is that she isn’t trying to take John from Sherlock and that she is actually pushing them to work on another case together before the wedding to show both John and Sherlock that their friendship won’t end just because they’re getting married.
The best part of this episode hands down was the bachelor party – Sherlock takes John on a pub crawl of all the places that they found a dead body. Every place they go, Sherlock makes them drink a beer out of a dirty beaker, but the highlight of the bachelor party was seeing Sherlock and John playing a drinking game involving more booze, post it notes and fun.
Instead of having a larger case each episode this season we have seen a lot of smaller cases have been integrated into the story of Sherlock and Watson’s story of their friendship. (Watching a drunk Sherlock try to solve a case was thoroughly entertaining). We also loved seeing the brief cameo from Irene Adler and are hoping for more of her and Sherlock in the finale. We aren’t exactly crazy about the reveal of Mary’s pregnancy at the end of the episode since babies really change the story (many times in a negative way) and we were hoping that after all of this wedding hoopla was over that we would see John and Sherlock working on larger cases together again. Once a baby is involved, John will be less likely to put himself in danger anymore. Grade: B+
Are you happy with the addition of Mary into the cast and into John’s life? Leave us a comment below and tell us if you think this season of “Sherlock” was worth the two year wait.
Photo: BBC One
kcolrehS
January 27, 2014 @ 4:52 pm
This episode was so disappointing. I will never watch this again…
Personage
January 12, 2014 @ 8:36 pm
Buurggh. Another bomb. Stop trying to humanize the guy and over-harp on the bromance (and tacit homosexuality?) the writers are trying to stuff into our throats (no pun intended). We don’t need to hear 18 times how much Sherlock loves Holmes and Holmes loves Sherlock and how much Sherlock means to Holmes and how much Holmes means to Sherlock. Very rarely close friends have to talk about it, they just live it. It was very heavy-handed and not subtle as previous writing has been. If you want to make a show about two gay men or two bisexual men or two “questioning” men then do it but do it somewhere else. Sherlock was much better as the “high-functioning sociopath” then the guy they are trying to make likeable. He was written well because he was not entirely likeable or normal and weird and eccentric. Now I am going back to savor the first two series.
evan
January 13, 2014 @ 1:08 pm
My favorite part about this long rant was where you used Holmes and Sherlock as two separate people
cass1
January 5, 2014 @ 10:53 pm
Love sherlock but this is episode was so disappointing. For a man who demands silence to think, he did not shut up once and it was drivel at times. The writers lost the plot if there ever really was much of one. A real disappointment for a real fan. Where was the follow up to the events of the last episode and the slight revelation of a new arch enemy? It was all ignored and was, I loathe to say it ..boring.
I predicted he had been stabbed in the guard box and that his buckle was connected and at the weddingalised immediatelyd who the intended victim was and sussed the photographer. Why didn’t Holmes? As a who fan also I am surprised at the sloppy writing which is,usually first class
fan
January 6, 2014 @ 12:30 am
What this episode was about was character development, you can’t have a gruesome murder at a wedding as it doesn’t work. Also, fans saw a different side of Sherlock, a more human side, and if you really want crime and the arch enemy then wait for the last episode. In season 2, you only saw Moriaty briefly in the first episode, not at all in the second, and featured fully in the last.
Sherlock, the show, is not a detective crime series, its a show about a detective, something that the showrunners are trying to stress.
And also, if you were paying attention, you would see clues of the new arch enemy in The Sign of Three.