Sherlock - "A Scandal in Belgravia"

Season 2, Episode 1

“And you believe in a higher power. In this case, it’s yourself.”

About 2/3 of Sherlock’s first season was good. The first episode had a strong emphasis on getting Sherlock and Watson together, and generally introducing this version of the Holmes world. The third episode has Sherlock going up again Moriarty, in a brilliant plotted game of cat-and-mouse that was just as much about the dueling personalities as it was about the mystery at the center of it all. The second episode meanwhile, was a boring and borderline racist affair, a straightforward case that failed to do anything beyond tell a mystery tale, which it told quite poorly. I would hate to lay down such a blanket generalization as “serialization trumps standalone”, because that doesn’t always have to be the case, but it does appear as if this is going to be the case for Sherlock. Take witness tonight’s episode, which put the case itself behind everything else, and was all the better for it.

I’m never really interested in what stories the show chooses to co-opt for which episodes, since Steven Moffat and Co. wisely decided to deviate from them greatly in order to both update the stories for the modern age, and to keep things surprising for those who are well-versed in the source material. (Though I’ve read some Holmes stories in my day, I wouldn’t say I remember them well enough to know exactly how things change up. But I do remember The Hound of Baskerville quite well, and based on next week’s preview, they’re really going to deviate there.) Doing novel comparisons then, is ultimately a futile and pointless exercise. Have I ever read “A Scandal in Bohemia”, the short story on which this episode is loosely based? No, and given that the part of the story that saw a power play between Adler, Moriarty, and Mycroft is wholly original – remember, Moriarty only made one appearance in Arthur Conan Doyle’s original works – it shouldn’t really matter.

And speaking of Steven Moffat, he unsurprisingly manages to imbue the Sherlock with his knack for telling twisty, complicated stories that somehow manage to work (or, if you prefer, “work”) out in the end. It’s a storytelling quirk that can be quite divisive, and come off as either brilliant or needlessly complicated, depending on personal taste. While I like complicated plots, I think they fit better in certain genres over others. For instances, I’ve mostly enjoyed the twisty storytelling of Doctor Who, but I don’t think it’s very fitting of Sherlock. In the case of “Scandal in Belgravia”, it seemed as if the show was needlessly contorting itself in order to keep viewers on their toes while also dealing with the leftover bits of serialization from season one.

That this – and by this, I mean the cliffhanger to last season’s finale which saw Sherlock, Watson, Moriarty, and a bunch of unseen gunmen have a showdown over a bomb – was dealt with in a perfunctory manner could have been seen as a bit of a cop-out to what had been a gloriously built up climax. In fact, I was willing to dismiss it as such originally, and I’m still not entirely sure that that was the best way to handle it. However, it’s important to keep in mind that while that conclusion seemed a bit limp, it did lead quite well into the next stage of the story. By having it revealed early that it was Adler who managed to call off Moriarty, and that the two were is some kind of cahoots together, that led to a nice air of tension throughout the hour, as the audience was left to try and tease out just what Adler’s end game was, and why she was so interested in Sherlock.

I’m just not sure if I buy, or even fully understand, all of the cahooting that was going on. As best that I can figure, through her role of a dominatrix, Adler had come into a variety of information over the years, information which she kept on her phone, along with the insurance of risky photos of somebody within the royal family. Some of this information – and the reason that Mycroft sent Sherlock after her in the first place – had to do with a secret government mission to blow up a plane full of dead people and blame their “deaths” on a terrorist cell. However, Adler didn’t know that was the specific information she had on her phone, and once she tricked Sherlock into figuring that out, she sent that information to Moriarty, who lets Mycroft knows that he knows for…some reason. Obviously, some of this stuff (such as Moriarty messing with Mycroft) is mystery for mystery’s sake, the sort of long-term plotting that will be revealed over the next two weeks. But others – most of which revolve around exactly how and why Adler did all of the things she did – were just needlessly complex, and at times it felt as if the episode was stuffed with layers merely so it could reach it’s 90 minute running time.

This isn’t to say that there’s not some brilliance to all of the plotting. The way that Moffat managed to turn those early vignettes that originally seemed to exist merely to show off Sherlock’s level of fame into something relevant to the main case was a nice touch. So too was the Christmas party scene. While it was a bit awkward on a narrative level – it effectively split the episode into two parts, with very little reason for happening other than showing a passage of time – it did serve as a nice bit of character work for Sherlock, in that it showed what an ass he can be, while also highlighting bit players such as Molly and Miss Hudson.

In fact, it was in the character work that the episode shone the brightest.  

With the story elements more or less locked down – this is pretty much going to be the way the show works from episode to episode – and assuming that the case of the weeks stays at around the same quality – though this certainly isn’t a given – that mostly leaves the show with the option of doing some deep character work, and reviewers such as myself the option of discussing it. Though the first season did a lot to show what kind of person Sherlock was, it was also to busy introducing everybody else, and over 4.5 hours, there wasn’t really a whole lot of time to explore what the protagonist’s mind state actually means.

Here in season two, the show is much more confident in who everybody is, and it uses it to it’s advantage. Things are a lot snappier and fun this time around, as the show allows plenty of time in this case for the characters to just sort of bounce off of one another. Sherlock and Watson’s friendship is much stronger this time around, and they seem to have fallen into certain rhythms with one another. With Watson no longer questioning Sherlock’s moves (at least not as much), everything moves along at a brisker pace. In fact, I would go as far to say that the case(s) tonight served more as a character delivery vehicle than a story tonight, serving up dialogue-laden scenes for the characters to interact with one another. Sure, this led to a few painful info-dumps through the episode, but considering how sharp the character scenes were, it all sort of evens out.

Quotes and Other Thoughts:

“I always hear ‘Punch me in the face’ when you’re speaking, but it’s usually subtext.”

“Really hope we don’t have a baby in here.”

“Exactly how many times did he fall out of the window?” “It’s all a bit of a blur. I lost count.”

“You think she’s my girlfriend because I’m X-raying her possessions?” “Well, we all do silly things.”

“Hamish. John Hamish Watson, if you were looking for baby names.”