The following is an episode review of Sherlock: Series 1, Episode 2 – The Blind Banker
In The Blind Baker Watson (Freeman) and Holmes (Cumberbatch) are to discover what links the disappearance of Soo Lin Yao (Gemma Chan) to some rather indistinguishable ciphers, and a murdered victim being found inside a locked apartment made to look like a suicide. The game is afoot! But the episode, sadly, isn’t very good.
The one moment that I love in this episode is seeing John struggling with modern technology while shopping for groceries. As a matter of fact, this episode in particular had a lot of focus on new technology. The Sherlock-universe works well in current day London, but I do think that perhaps it rested on new technology for longer than was good for it – for the sake of showing off our heroes in new technology more so than as a service to the plot. It didn’t always work for me.
Whereas the first episode of series 1 relied a bit too much on the series’ story arc, this episode, thankfully I’ll add, felt more like a self-contained story that wasn’t weighed down by the series arc, which the show needs from time to time.
As mentioned in other reviews, while the story can be less-than-stellar the chemistry of our two protagonists tend to raise the level of quality in Sherlock. Cumberbatch and Freeman are great as always, but it is the weakest story yet. The episode pales in comparison with A Study in Pink, and especially when you compare the level of dialogue.
Sherlock is a good show, sometimes even great. I don’t think a single episode has been truly bad, but comparatively The Blind Banker might be the worst of the regular series episodes. It’s the the story with the least ‘meat on the bone’ in the show, which is to say that the story fails to justify the film-length runtime. It also desperately needed more of the regular characters, especially Lestrade, seeing as Dimmock got us nowhere with his flat and insignificant story. He doesn’t hold a candle to Lestrade, let alone Anderson.
B-
-I’m Jeffrey Rex
I'm Jeffrey Rex 