Diksha Sundriyal
CBS’s ‘Watson’ is a medical procedural that brings familiar characters from Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories to the modern world. The series features episodic mysteries relating to different illnesses exhibited by the subjects, and diagnosing them correctly is the job that falls on Dr. John Watson and his team of scientists. Despite borrowing characters and elements from the Sherlock Holmes universe, the show presents a unique spin that hasn’t been explored in the dozens of adaptions so far. The first episode gives us a glimpse of all that’s to come. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Watson Begins in the Aftermath of a Tragedy
One of the most important events in the story of Sherlock Holmes is the Reichenbach Fall where Sherlock Holmes and his archnemesis, James Moriarty, presumptuously fall to their deaths. This is where the events of ‘Watson’ begin. We see Morris Chestnut’s John Watson running through the forest, calling after his best friend, Holmes, and eventually finds him in a scuffle with Moriarty, with both of them falling down the waterfall and into the river. Watson jumps into the river as well, but instead of finding and saving his friend, he ends up hurting himself and gets a concussion whose repercussions echo in his brain for a long time.
Following this, it is believed that both Holmes and Moriarty are dead, leaving Watson with nothing but to go back home. Interestingly, he discovers, from Shinwell Johnson, that Holmes was pretty loaded and left a lot of his money to Watson so that he could open his own practice back home in Pittsburgh. In honor of his memory, this is exactly what Watson does. He assembles a team of top scientists, each bringing something different to the table, and thus begins his journey to help people who appear to be doomed by their medical problems.
Watson’s Team Features a Wide Spectrum of Interesting Characters with Complicated Dynamics
Once back in Pittsburgh, John Watson opens the Holmes Clinic, assisted by Shinwell, who seems entirely dedicated to the cause. The team includes four members: a neurologist Ingrid Derian, rheumatology and immunology expert Sasha Lubbock, infectious disease specialist Stephens Croft and functional medicine specialist Adam Croft. There is already some tension between the Croft brothers, who happen to be twins, with Stephens being the spectacled, reserved guy and Adam being the more easygoing one. It turns out that Stephens dated a girl and shortly after they broke, Adam started dating her. This fed the conflict that had already been brewing between the two of them for many years.
At one point in the episode, Adam notes that the four of them weren’t selected for the team simply because they are best at what they do. He believes that Watson’s clinic is an experiment in itself, and he has chosen the four specialists for very specific reasons. For Adam and Stephens, the conflict between them as twins gives a lot of space to study things like nature vs. nurture. In Sasha’s case, her history of being adopted by American parents and being a child of Chinese parents makes for an interesting case. As for Ingrid, the reason doesn’t seem so obvious to Adam, who finds her more of a mystery. But later, Watson tells her that he picked her not only because she is highly skilled at what she does but also because she has a darkness to her, and he wants to know if it will overtake her good side in the end.
Watson’s Fraught Personal Life and Medical Problems Become Important Plot Points
While Watson seems to have his hands full with the new clinic, he also has a lot of problems on the personal front. To begin with, his marriage has fallen apart. It turns out that following his time in the war, he struggled to adjust to civilian life. It was when he moved to London and befriended Sherlock Holmes that he found a way to deal with his psychological problems. The detective work helped him find a purpose, and he learned so much from it that it has helped him become a better doctor. However, this move and his dedication to Holmes and the detective work didn’t bode well for his marriage with Dr. Mary Morstan. By the time of the Reichenbach Fall, things had already worsened to the point of breaking apart between the couple. Now, they are separated for good. Still, there is a sense of camaraderie between them, which is why Mary doesn’t hesitate to call on him when a particularly challenging case presents itself.
His marriage wasn’t the only thing damaged following the fall. The injury that he sustained at the beginning of the episode caused brain damage, and he continues to feel its effects weeks after it. Apart from working for his team, Ingrid is also supposed to be his doctor, but she points out that she cannot treat him properly if he keeps secrets from her. And secrets he keeps. He self-medicates even as his situation seems to worsen. He has headaches that pop up at any time, and he has a huge gap in his memory surrounding the events of the fall, so much so that he doesn’t even remember what Moriarty looked like.
The First Case for Watson’s Clinic Presents an Interesting Challenge
Watson and his team are called upon when Mary tells them about a pregnant woman named Erika who hasn’t slept in days. She believes she has fatal insomnia, something her father also had and died of. She wishes to have a C-section so that her baby can be delivered safely before her condition worsens and she dies. While she seems to have diagnosed herself, Watson and her team begin by questioning the root of her problem. The first thing they find out is that she doesn’t have fatal insomnia, just like her father didn’t. Her sleeping problems are psychological, so Watson lies to her, and lo and behold, she sleeps.
At first, it seems her problem has been solved, but then, when she wakes up blind and starts to have other symptoms, Watson and his team have to dive into her family history to figure out what’s going on with her. It leads them to her cousin, who, strangely, also starts to show the same symptoms. Thoroughly investigating their household leads the team through the trash, and the idea of songbird fever is put on the table. It turns out to be right for Erika but not for her cousin, who soon goes into a septic shock. It turns out that Erika’s cousin is not her cousin but her half-sibling by her father, which clarifies a lot of things as it becomes clear that their problem is genetic. This piece of information helps things along, and eventually, both women are saved. Erika has her baby, and she named her cousin, now half-sibling, to be the child’s godmother.
Watson Episode 1 Features an Interesting Twist in the End
From the events of the Fall, it is assumed that both Sherlock Holmes and James Moriarty are dead. However, as a rule of thumb, we know that no one in a TV show can be declared dead unless we see their dead bodies. Sometimes, even that is not enough, but hopefully, ‘Watson’ does not fall into that category. In any case, because neither Holmes nor Moriarty’s corpses are found, they can both be assumed to be alive. And at the end of the episode, one of them shows up, proving the point.
It turns out that Moriarty (Randall Park, in an interesting casting choice), at least, survived the fall and has followed Watson to Pittsburgh. He is planning something devastating for the city, though whatever it is will not be revealed to the audience for a while. Not so unexpectedly, we find Shinwell meeting with the villain and giving him a briefcase that consists of samples of something. The exact contents of the briefcase are not revealed to the audience, but it cannot be anything good. We also see Moriarty’s identifying marker, his joint fingers, that make an M on his left hand. What havoc he plans to wreak remains to be seen, but his survival also proves that Sherlock Holmes is also bound to show up eventually.
Read More: Where is CBS’ Watson Filmed?
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