Watson Season 1 Episode 11 Review: The Dark Day Deduction

The season is wrapping up on Watson Season 1 Episode 11, “The Dark Day Deduction.” While Moriarty lurks in the background, we explore a separate part of Dr. Watson’s past.

He receives word about someone named Dean being in the hospital. The man is a soldier he served with and who lost part of his leg during an attack. Dean is now suffering from violent delusions and lashing out at everyone, especially Watson himself.

We eventually learn that the attack came via a young suicide bomber and that John held up Dean’s efforts to get the squadron to flee while helping an Afghan woman patient. He believed that her diagnosis could revolutionize medicine.

Dean’s hallucinations get worse, eventually leading to an encounter on the hospital’s helipad. John is finally able to break through to him and after submitting to treatment, he confesses his own feeling of guilt for previously befriending the bomber.

Dr. Watson connects the symptoms to a condition Dean was born with and, after briefly being on the brink of death, he makes a full recovery. Later, he tells John that the patient he was treating is alive, in the States, and willing to consult with him again.

Meanwhile, Moriarty’s shadow looms over the team. Sasha tries to get Ingrid to talk more about that whole “killing her father” thing, not knowing who else knows that little secret. Moriarty himself may not make an appearance, but his henchwoman certainly does.

We learn that she is being held to service herself via a daughter sick with cancer. Soon, she isn’t the only one playing a part. After several shady meetings with Shinwell, she releases him from service—and apparently recruits Stephen’s girlfriend, Lauren.

For most of this first season, Watson has been defined more by its medical spin on Holmesian canon than by its focus on the typically secondary character. With all the callbacks to the consulting detective, Sherlock has basically been present in all but body.

This is the first time we’re delving into a part of John’s past that’s entirely separate from the other man, and I certainly hope it’s not the last. Whether or not we ever see his partner return from the “dead”, this show will always be about him first.

Though his time in London shapes who is now, his role as a doctor and his service in the military made him who he was well before that. The guilt and regret he carries from this particular incident are as big a part of his PTSS as seeing Sherlock’s presumed demise.

Dean is a complex character, bringing in both the legitimate anger he carries towards John and the unfair blame he places on him. The guilt he later holds on his own shoulders also feels undeserved. Yet all these emotions are painfully human.

Someone so young being radicalized to the point of killing themselves to kill others is a true tragedy, and I appreciate that the storyline spends nearly as much time reflecting on that as it does on the also very real psychological effects on Dean today.

It’s a soberingly familiar plot for those of us who grew up around constantly headlines of war. Offering a small burst of true happiness at the end by reconnecting Watson with the woman he was able to held is a nice balm with major implications for the future.

Whatever happens with her, though, it’s unlikely to happen before next season. We still have Moriarty to contend with. Between the likelihood of his blowing up Ingrid’s secret and the growth of his sphere of influence within the team, our anxiety is high.

I will say that that growth is…kind of strange. I love the scenes between Shinwell and Moriarty’s henchwoman; seeing that in different ways they’re both victims to the scale of his influence. Using a sick child to manipulate is a different level of cruelty.

Yet what follows next isn’t entirely clear. It sure looks like Lauren is taking on Shinwell’s role and—plot twist!—doing so willingly, but it’s hard to tell for sure. It’s also hard to tell why. The only thing we can be sure of is that this finale could put everyone in peril.

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Watson airs Sundays at 9/8c on CBS.

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