The Empty Hearse
* 1/2
Why mess with a good thing? Why do people think the only schedules you need to work around are the actors? As if Cumberbatch and Freeman are solely responsible for the greatness of the series. This is a team effort, and critically missing in this episode are writer Steven Moffat (responsible for the other 2 season openers) and director Paul McGuigan. The Empty Hearse was written by Mark Gatiss, who seems like a nice person but, as is proven by the weakest episodes of the series, is rarely up to the challenge of writing a character who is smarter than us. There wasn't a single reveal I didn't figure out before it was explained to the audience.
The writing is a letdown from every possible angle. There's an odd streak of forced cleverness in moments like Holmes creating his French waiter disguise, the old couple or the board game surprise between Sherlock and Mycroft. I accept that people change over a couple of years, and it fits with Watson but Holmes is oddly different, and by "oddly" I mean he no longer seems like Holmes at all. He's got a warmth, an ability to make social connections. I hate that this rough edge that made Cumberbatch's portrayal so interesting has been smoothed over into a tick Holmes is aware of. Where's the accidental (or deliberate) rubbing people the wrong way? What about the transparent attempts to play sympathetic? Now he can do it earnestly. Boring.
The story is loaded up on the return of Holmes, and largely unconcerned with the mystery at hand. The terrorist plot is a paltry couple of unexplored details to where I suspected Holmes to turn untrustingly against the people providing the information. Instead he goes on a vague uber-quest waiting for a bunch of random people to break pattern. Then there's the brief subplot of personal danger, and at last in the final third Holmes and Watson follow the clues. I'm as happy to see Holmes back as anyone, and I want to hear the solution of his fall too, but why so much attention on that and so little on the new story? (It's a problem that plagues sequels which tread water because they don't know where to go next.)
The direction by Jeremy Lovering tries to copy Paul McGuigan's flashy style, but it's all empty flash here. Lots of weird double/triple composite shots while Holmes works out his process. (The "mind palace" has become like The Force, a once cool abstract idea turned into a bio-chemical mutant power.) The train route montage is the most egregious example, but throughout it's a case of a director trying on britches way too big for them.