Watson Season 2 Episode 12 Relies Too Much on Shock Value to Push An Otherwise Compelling Mystery Forward

Critic’s Rating: 4.2 / 5.0

4.2

The best part of Watson’s premise is that the Sherlock Holmes sidekick solves his own medical mysteries every week.

However, sometimes the pacing is off, and this was one of those times.

Watson Season 2 Episode 12 rushed through the conflict over whether Wren should stay in the hospital, and that wasn’t the only time it relied too much on shock rather than telling a coherent story.

(CBS/Colin Bentley)

I Was Grateful When The First Part of Watson Season 2 Episode 12 Was Over

Some people enjoy juvenile humor about sexual misadventures and genital injuries, but I don’t.

Although Watson’s calling everyone in on an unusual case was a strong procedural move, having the interns act like they were in middle school because of the nature of the injury was ridiculous.

Ingrid rose above it somewhat when she blocked out everyone’s comments in order to evaluate the chart and realize that there was another patient they needed to seek out.

Still, there were too many juvenile jokes in the opening act of Watson Season 2 Episode 12, making it hard to take the episode seriously when it took a dramatic turn.

(CBS/Colin Bentley)

Is Ingrid In Trouble Or Not?

Speaking of Ingrid, it irked me that Watson Season 2 Episode 12 didn’t involve much of the fallout from Ingrid having to switch therapists.

To be fair, we still haven’t done much with Sherlock’s disappearance and the note Ingrid found on the whiteboard either, the last two minutes of this episode notwithstanding.

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The continuing storylines are getting lost in the shuffle, and that’s especially annoying in a show like Watson that builds up suspense and then doesn’t follow through for weeks, if at all.

Watson Season 2 Episode 11 ended with the suggestion that Ingrid was about to relapse into destructive behavior, yet 90% of her appearance this time focused solely on her competence as a doctor.

(CBS/Colin Bentley)

In one way, that makes sense — many people with severe mental illness are functional on the job, sometimes doing exemplary work, while their personal lives are chaotic.

However, if that is Watson’s intention, it needed to signal that somehow.

Ingrid’s behavior seemed to have no connection with her previous struggles, and when she told Wren that she knew that doing bad things didn’t make you a monster, it seemed like a healthy way to turn processed trauma into support for others.

Of course, her response to Watson checking in with her afterward suggests otherwise, but the fact that she’d been displaying no signs of continued problems (subtle or otherwise) made that scene feel more like an afterthought than a coda to the episode.

There was also no mention of the lawsuit or how it changes anything for the hospital moving forward, contributing to the feeling that this episode was entirely self-contained and not connected to the previous story at all.

(CBS/Colin Bentley)

The Bigger Problem Was The Way The Story Was Structured

The medical mystery itself could have been compelling, but wasn’t, for several reasons.

One of the biggest issues was that the episode description gave too much away.

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The description clearly said that the patient’s issue was related to being forced to eat her parents to survive, so there was no shocking twist for me when that was revealed.

Maybe there wasn’t supposed to be, but it did seem like a turning point where Watson realized that that act was related to Wren’s illness.

(CBS/Craig Bentley)

I was also irritated that Wren’s hospital admission came from her collapse.

This is a trope that happens too often on medical dramas: a patient doesn’t want to stay, the hospital can’t force them, and 30 seconds later, they have a medical emergency that forces the situation.

It feels like an end-run around an interesting conflict; the doctors don’t have to do anything to convince the patient to stay because biology took care of the situation for them.

Watson probably did that because there is only so much time in an hour, and the plot needed to move forward; there simply wasn’t time for a clever way to convince Wren to seek treatment.

Still, it seemed a bit too convenient, almost as if the universe heard Mary say that the only way they could hold Wren against her will was if she had a medical emergency, so it delivered one.

(CBS/Colin Bentley)

Watson quickly concluding the disease had no cure and focusing on whether Wren should tell her brother about it also seemed somewhat out of character.

Watson usually tries to find novel cures for serious diseases rather than giving up once the diagnosis presents itself, but obviously, that was not the story the writers wanted to tell this time.

We Need to Talk About The Triplet Storyline

I’m sensitive to stories about multiple births because I’m the proud uncle of quadruplets, and I know what my sister went through is not usually depicted accurately on television.

The initial shock and the idea of the mother thinking about quitting her job because she will soon have to be responsible for three babies at once were more or less realistic.

(CBS/Colin Bentley)

However, since this is a medical drama, I hope the story will involve a specialist in multiple births, consideration of risk factors, preparation for the likelihood of premature births, and how to give the babies the best chance of normal development if they arrive early.

Hopefully, this storyline will be handled more responsibly than most of this nature, since Watson usually does its medical research, rather than just being a vehicle for exploring whether Adam is really capable of being the father he had already committed to be now that three kids are on the way.

What did you think, Watson fanatics?

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If you enjoyed this article, check out our coverage of other medical dramas such as Chicago Med and Grey’s Anatomy.

Watson airs on CBS on Sundays at 10/9c and streams on Paramount+ on Mondays

• Watson Season 2 Episode 12 offered a shocking twist and a compelling medical mystery, yet something was missing from this story. Our review!

• Watson Season 2 Episode 11 offered one of its most ambitious plots yet, but it didn’t quite work out. Our review!

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