Hello shirtless, Holmes.
Now that you’ve got your clothes off, why don’t we take a closer look. The threads are off, both literally and figuratively in The Deductionist.
When a former mass murderer makes his escape through a kidney transplant gone wrong, Holmes comes face to face with a criminal profiler. The detective, Kathryn Drummond, studies these baddies and uses her findings to help the police find them. But in this case, she went to far and set off a man who is intent to get revenge after she published her findings about him and became famous for helping capture him.
But she’s not just a criminal profiler, she’s also a former partner in “loud acts of love” with Holmes. Turns out, while she was analyzing his naked body, she was also gathering intel on his skills and after their trysts came to an end, Drummond wrote a paper called The Deductionist, which diagnosed Holmes as an obsessive personality on the brink of self-destruction. And she was right. At the beginning of the series, we meet Holmes right after he leaves rehab and seeing Drummond now is a stark reminder that this is a man who still hasn’t found total stability in his life.
Of course, Holmes hates this to his core. And he especially hates that she was right about him. It’s not fun for Holmes, but it is a lot of fun for us as viewers. Watching our protagonist struggle to understand his own choices and face his insecurities brings out a more sensitive detective who’s not just keen on solving the case, but committed to interpersonal justice too. To solve the case, he has to prove that people aren’t entirely predictable, which goes against much of what we know about his methods.
It serves as an important reminder that people who see us in our most stripped down moments can see things in us that we are completely blind too. And when they point out the ugly side of our deepest vulnerabilities, well, it can get uglier than two lovers no longer texting for late night engagements.
Watson also finds herself dealing with the more literal form of human’s baring it all: home-made pornography is being made by the subletter in her apartment. And while that story line didn’t do much but illustrate that Watson is starting to pick up some skills from Holmes, she does get a standout moment when she helps Holmes understand that people aren’t always as formulaic as they seem:
Watson: She didn’t get one thing right. She said you couldn’t make a friend. And you’ve made one.
Holmes: …
Watson: Me.
And we all squee together now.