Sherlock offered us something new in “The Sign of Three,” which was broadcast last night in the United States: Sherlock Holmes as the hero of a ROM-COM romantic comedy.
The couple in question is Sherlock and John Watson, of course. Sherlock plays the role of the boyfriend as we often see him in movies today: fixated on his work, uncertain of his feelings, and afraid to commit.
John Watson gets the part of the girlfriend, which in The Economist’s brilliant recent phrase means he is “a perky hybrid of nursemaid [and] personal assistant.” (The Economist also added “sex worker” which is not germane in this case.)
All is fine on Baker Street until John falls in love with Mary and threatens their bro-mance. The relationship deepens, but is also complicated, when John asks Sherlock to be his best man, which requires Holmes to both think about his feelings and confront the fact he doesn’t like to think about them.
Watson and Sherlock bond during a drunken stag night, which lands them in jail. Sherlock delivers a funny-awkward-touching best-man speech, and following the pattern of the ROM-COM, all ends happy with dancing to 70s music at John and Mary’s wedding reception.
I give the Sherlock-team points for trying something new and surprising me. And I enjoyed the results okay I guess. But ideally, I’d like my reaction to innovation to be “Well done!” and not “What the heck?” and “What the heck?” was my reaction.
Part of my difficulty is that the tone of “The Sign of Three” is so different from that of the first two seasons that I might as well have been watching another show entirely. A bigger problem for me is that a lot of the episode felt as if it could have been almost any romantic comedy that rolls out of Hollywood. Or worse, one of dozens of television sit-coms that deliver yucks and “aaawwws!” in equal measures and with equal lacks of flair.
On the plus side, since I think that a Sherlock Holmes story should contain a good mystery, the detective story in “The Sign of Three” was a significant improvement over last week’s “The Empty Hearse.”
Two unsolved and seemingly unrelated mysteries come together and allow Sherlock to unravel and prevent a murder in progress at John and Mary’s wedding. The management of the plot elements and structure was neat (a strength of Moffat and Gatiss that abandoned them last week) and the story played a chess game, and then showed us how it was played, which is something the Conan Doyle did very well when he was on his game.
How to sum up my feelings about Season 3 so far? How about this: “Oh Sherlock, I feel we’re just drifting along on familiarity and habit. You’ve changed. The spark you lit in my heart has dimmed and cooled. Oh please, won’t you make it blaze again next week!”
I found his almost unbroken monologue tiresome in the extreme. Maybe good for radio. I missed the last one and haven’t bothered to find it on catch up.
Yes, I can’t blame you for not bothering. I’m still running on the hope, against evidence, that I’ll really enjoy Season 3 rather than working to find things to enjoy, which is what I’ve been doing. On Sherlock’s speech, I will say I wasn’t surprised it was so much about him (all the times Sherlock said “I”) and it fit the character. But did the audience actually want to watch him talk on and on? You gave one very reasonable answer.