The Blind Banker definitely has issues and I have issues with it. It’s by far my least favourite episode for several reasons.
There are things I like, like the growing domesticity between John and Sherlock, the glimpse into Sherlock’s uni days, John getting the job at the surgery and us getting to see a bit more of his womanising side.
But as a whole, it falls a bit flat. The scene in the tunnels always irritates me slightly because I don’t think that is quite how John would react. He seems to flip between calm and panicky a bit too much (though I do like it when he smiles and says ‘Did I really say that?’ when General Shan is relaying what he said outside Soo Lin’s flat). The thing is, in Pink it was established that John is calmest when he’s in danger or others are, but we don’t see that in Banker. When Sarah is threatened he becomes frantic. True, he is tied down and can’t do much, but I still don’t think he’d react quite like that. I don’t know if that’s a fault with the writing or if Martin just didn’t quite know how to play it there.
The thing is, if this episode were in any other detective/cop show, it would probably be really good, but in Sherlock it just doesn’t live up to the standards of the others. It gets sidetracked by the case, which may sound silly because it is a crime drama, but Sherlock is really about the many relationships within it. And although we are introduced to Sarah and we get a glimpse of how John and Sherlock are living together, I don’t feel like it adds all that much to their relationship. I also don’t feel like what we see of John in Banker is a natural progression of a few weeks from what we saw of him in Pink.
Yeah, he does flip a bit from calm to panicky. Maybe we can all jut pretend this episode mostly doesn’t exist?