2 out of 5

Created by: Craig Sweeney

covers season 1

Guys, Watson is a dumb show. And, y’know, that would be okay: I watch – and enjoy – a lot of dumb shows. But part of the magic of that absolutely should be distracting me from the dumb, and instead, Watson’s creator Craig Sweeney, follows his bliss and keeps doubling down on directing me to the dumb, by constantly tacking on elements that just make you ask… Why?

At its heart, though – barely concealed in translucent, faux-mystery box skin – Watson is just another medical malady procedural, in which whiz doctor-turned-detective-turned-doctor Watson (yes, of the Sherlock variety, here played by Morris Chestnut) takes on improbably curable patients, and teams up with various doctor eccentrics – one’s a twin! – to combine sleuthing and rabbit hole wikipedia knowledge to save the day. The eccentrics are often further doubling down elements, but when we shuffle aside most of that and just focus on the fairly steady formula of brilliant doctor and variably snippy / clinical / wildcard / etc. sub-doctors, doing the House stuff, Watson works well enough, and, fairly, every few episode we do get to focus on that.

But then: Sherlock stuff. Moriarty – with apologies to Randall Park, very miscast, bringing minimal sense of threat to this prime adversary – Irene Adler; Ritchie Coster’s Shinwell Johnson, in the series’ most belabored Why? subplot of double-dealings. Watson has a hastily jammed in pending divorce with his dating-again wife who is also his boss, and periodically they almost tear up over their past; there’s that twin, played by Peter Mark Kendall, wearing glasses or gelled up hair; the Chinese by way of Dallas Sasha (Inga Schlingmann), forced into an improbably folksy accent (if it’s real, it’s unfortunately just another dump of Why? eccentricity); and Eve Harlow, excellent as the sassy sub-doctor Ingrid, but given her own mysterious past that gobbles up a couple episodes.

On the one hand, I recognize that this is all part of the TV formula, trying to give everyone some established tic and bottle episode backstory that can be tucked away for some future cliffhanger; and that setting this in the Sherlock-verse is the elevator pitch to get another medical procedural on screen. Only… why? The fact that the show truly is Sherlock meets House isn’t a bad idea, if kind of hilariously “yup, that’s exactly what it is,” but I think what feels so dumb is that that’s not what it is, but rather leftover episodes from some hospital show that occasionally switches channels to Sherlock. Then, like a repurposed for American TV anime, a whole bunch of extra characters are stapled on to buff the transitions between scenes, and the resequenced storylines.

If you watch through half-closed eyes and wait for the medical stuff, Watson is silly, and acceptable. Trying to watch in earnest – and god forbid as a legit Sherlock extension – makes things not nearly silly enough to justify the runtime.