Drama
The Rainmaker
This adaptation may lack the depth of its source material, but it isn’t a bad option if you’re itching for a new legal drama.
The name “John Hamish Watson” doesn’t necessarily carry the same weight as “Sherlock Holmes.” But doesn’t the ever-loyal Dr. Watson deserve his day in the sun?
A day in the sun is exactly what he gets in Watson.
In this modern CBS spin on the classic Arthur Conan Doyle stories, Watson is an American doctor who left his life and career behind to solve mysteries with Sherlock Holmes. But after a fateful encounter on Reichenbach Falls with Holmes’ nemesis James Moriarty, Watson wakes up in a hospital to find he can’t remember the events of the past few weeks — and worse, that Sherlock Holmes is dead.
Watson’s story doesn’t end here. In fact, it’s just beginning. Turns out, Holmes was fairly wealthy, and he left a significant sum of cash to his friend in the hopes that he would resume his medical career.
Watson would never betray his friend’s last wishes. And that is quite a lot of cash. So he heads home to Philadelphia, hires a group of brilliant, slightly eccentric doctors and opens a clinic to treat rare diseases. It seems that Watson and his team are really doing some good in the world…except that Watson’s brain injury might be a little more serious than he’s letting on, and Moriarty might be a little less dead than everybody thinks.
After nearly two centuries and countless adaptations, it’s hard to believe that there are any twists left to make to the Holmes stories. Still, Watson does its best. In fact, the ‘Sherlock Holmes’ of it all almost feels like an afterthought. If occasional reference wasn’t made to ‘Moriarty’ or ‘the Reichenbach Falls,’ you might think you were just catching a re-run of Grey’s Anatomy.
The heavy lean into medical drama means you probably also have a good idea of what content issues to expect. Patients find themselves in upsetting situations (in the pilot episode, a young pregnant woman faces a fatal case of insomnia), while doctors get involved in some messy personal entanglements. There’s also the presence of drugs, as one of the clinic patients is a recovering heroin addict and Watson takes various prescriptions to perform “experiments” and develop new treatments.
Because Watson airs on broadcast TV, you won’t find anything very explicit here, but look out for some adverse themes. For example, Watson is a recent divorcee, and his ex-wife Mary is now dating another woman. For now, the couple is only spoken about rather than seen, but it’s highly unlikely things will stay that way in the future.
Watson probably won’t enthuse diehard Conan Doyle fans looking for their next fix of Sherlock Holmes. Still, it’s an original spin on classic characters, and we find plenty of admirable themes about the value of human life and devoting oneself to the care of others. Just be careful of some adverse messages that may pop up, too. All evidence in this case points to them developing further down the road.
(Editor’s Note: Plugged In is rarely able to watch every episode of a given series for review. As such, there’s always a chance that you might see a problem that we didn’t. If you notice content that you feel should be included in our review, send us an email at letters@pluggedin.com, or contact us via Facebook or Instagram, and be sure to let us know the episode number, title and season so that we can check it out. )
After the death of his friend and sleuthing partner, Sherlock Holmes, Dr. John Watson returns home to open his own medical clinic and treat patients with mysterious diseases.
A few threatening situations take place in this episode, though they’re absent of much physical violence. Watson jumps off a waterfall in an attempt to save Holmes, and when he’s injured offscreen, we see blood clouding the water. A pregnant woman is bumped by a moving car and falls over in the street. Doctors prepare to perform surgery on a patient, but the scene cuts away before any incisions are made.
A patient’s brother is said to be a heroin addict, while her cousin is a former user (and now sober). Watson takes various medications without telling his neurologist, claiming that he’s performing “experiments.”
Watson’s ex-wife Mary tells him that she’s in a romantic relationship with a woman and the two are living together. Watson takes off his shirt to change after spending the night in his office.
When Watson wakes up in the hospital after his injury, his friend tells him “I’ve been praying to whatever God will hear me that you’ll wake up.” The Lord’s name is used in vain once.
Lauren Cook is serving as a 2021 summer intern for the Parenting and Youth department at Focus on the Family. She is studying film and screenwriting at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. You can get her talking for hours about anything from Star Wars to her family to how Inception was the best movie of the 2010s. But more than anything, she’s passionate about showing how every form of art in some way reflects the Gospel. Coffee is a close second.
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