I suppose that the passage of time has indeed brought us to an episode centered around a pandemic, even a minor one that teeters on the brink of becoming a widespread health crisis. And it's telling that in Watson Season 2, the most intriguing observation I can muster about Episode 2, "Back from the Dead," concerns not the inclusion of Sherlock Holmes but rather its impact on the show itself. While Holmes's surprising debut in the premiere may have piqued our interest, his presence here doesn't so much elevate the show as it sets the stage for future developments. Unfortunately, many of the same issues persist.
Let me be clear: as an Englishman, I hold a bias that anything is improved by the presence of Sherlock, and Robert Carlyle's flamboyant take on the character is indeed a delight. Whenever he graces the screen, he imbues Watson's life with a touch of exaggerated mystery, examining elements such as Watson's failed marriage to Mary and his relationship with Ingrid, whom Sherlock refers to as his "nemesis," foreshadowing their future interactions. In essence, he makes Watson feel like a Sherlock Holmes show within a medical drama.
However, as I've maintained since the first season, Watson doesn't function as a Sherlock Holmes show. It's a medical drama, and the inclusion of Holmes only serves to frame "Back from the Dead" as Watson recounts his tale to his best friend. It's an odd medical mystery that, thanks to Sherlock's interjections, threatens to veer into a more criminal narrative, creating a sense of discord between the two halves.
On its own terms, the case is compelling. A scientist, Dr. Woodward, is brought into the clinic exhibiting flu-like symptoms that she believes may be caused by an infectious disease unearthed from Siberian ice after millennia. She's part of a team that recently defrosted a herd of long-frozen woolly mammoths due to global warming and may have infected her entire expedition with a "zombie virus" that could spread throughout the hospital and beyond.
Watson Season 2, Episode 2 rather cynically leverages the very threat of a pandemic to build much of its tension. As members of Dr. Woodward's team quickly arrive in the ER exhibiting similar symptoms, there's a palpable sense of panic that the virus could spread. It becomes a ticking-clock device as Sasha and Stephens examine the remains of the woolly mammoth – a sight that is remarkably gruesome – while Watson struggles to prevent Ingrid from killing him for contacting her psychiatrist without her knowledge.
It transpires that during the expedition, Mallory, a member of the team, suddenly collapses from a heart attack while Watson and Ingrid are engaged in a heated argument. In their desperate attempts to revive him, they inadvertently expose themselves to a virus, resulting in their forced quarantine together. Before Watson can fully process this turn of events, he discovers that the "virus" is not an infectious disease but rather a foodborne illness caused by a soda bread laced with poisoned baking soda. This revelation means that Mallory's death was a murder, not an accident, and the culprit is revealed to be one of Woodward's research team members, who was so dedicated to his cause that he was willing to go to extreme lengths to raise awareness about it (Woodward's book sales have skyrocketed since the "zombie virus" was leaked to the press).
Meanwhile, we are frequently cut back to the conversation between Holmes and Watson, which can be frustrating in a few ways. One is that there's a juvenile recurring joke about Sherlock saying things that are supposed to be dramatic but sound a bit unintentionally homoerotic. This is supposed to be a smart show, right? Another issue is that, predictably, Sherlock has already figured out Watson's case with ease, which is on-brand but also undermines Watson a bit. And the lengthy exposition about the mammoth seems to drag on forever, leaving us with little insight into Sherlock's survival and intentions in Pittsburgh.
This is a problem for Watson in general, and especially in Season 2. After doing away with the Moriarty arc, the show seems allergic to the idea of developing ideas over multiple episodes. So, when Sherlock returns in "Back from the Dead" and then departs again with the promise of reappearing later as a third-act surprise, it feels like he could have just been reintroduced then and skipped this bit entirely. The main function of his return here seems to be to convince Watson to re-hire Ingrid after implanting the "nemesis" idea in the audience's minds. It's very obvious, and you can see it in a subplot with Sasha as well, which is hilariously truncated. She mentions to Stephens that, inspired by Mary reconnecting with her long-lost brother in the premiere, she started exploring her own biological family (she was adopted). Since then, her uncle has been bombarding her with more information than she necessarily wanted. This is introduced and seemingly resolved in the margins of this one episode.
All of this speaks to a show that, if you ask me, is still suffering from a sort of identity crisis, trapped halfway between being its own thing and something more brand-aligned. Hopefully, with Sherlock out of the way again and Ingrid coming back into the fold more officially, it can try to forge its own path in subsequent episodes.
