I loved the first episode of Sherlock. I liked the second, but I lost the love. Why the difference?
The most annoying part of the episode was how pathetic the police are. Ideally I’d have liked to see Lestrade develop as a character in some way. Instead we got another detective who may as well have been replaced by a cardboard cutout for all the good he was doing. Sherlock is supposed to be incredibly smart, but you don’t make someone look smart by comparing them to someone who is dumb and incompetent. Everyone would look smart compared to the police in this episode (and the criminals to be honest, but we see less of them). To be fair, that’s also a problem with the first episode but the police were slightly more realised and their ineptness was used for comic effect. Of course, Sherlock Holmes should leave the police behind, but because he is brilliant, not because the police are useless.
This episode also had far fewer moments. Moments are those little things that are bound to happen from time to time when interesting characters are put into interesting environments. The ‘do you have a boyfriend’ scene in the first episode is one of them. Lestrade telling his colleague to turn his face away so Sherlock could think, was another. The text message asking Watson to come back to the flat if it was convenient, and then following up with ‘if it’s inconvenient, come anyway’ was another great moment. Sherlocks physical leaps of joy as he embarked on the case were delightful. These moments are not only a delight to watch, but they reveal a little more about the characters. Almost of this was lost in episode two. The writer missed what was interesting about the characters and flattened them into something approaching a typical detective duo. It’s not surprising, therefore, that they forgot to do anything interesting. These are not the same characters as they were in episode one.
Almost everything that made the first episode great, was lost in the second. All the weaknesses of episode one have been exaggerated while the strengths have diminished. The actual crime was a bit of a sideshow last week as the Holmes/Watson story was introduced. Now that the setup was done (though it could have been developed further), the show had the opportunity to let the murder mystery take center stage. But while that mystery was a little weak in episode one, it was just as weak in episode two but was now more prominent.
I was sucked into Sherlock’s world last week. This week his world started to evaporate. There’s only one more episode left to pull it back together. There is reason to hope though. The writer Mark Gatiss, is the other co-creator; the other being Steven Moffat who wrote episode one. He also plays Holme’s brother Mycroft so perhaps he took pains to write himself an interesting part. Also the third episode is directed by Paul McGuigan who also directed episode one.