BBC's Sherlock is Back!

[Mr. Carnelian]

Mr. Carnelian's reasons as to why this episode was decidedly 'meh'
1) The secretary lady's motivations were very poorly explained, and didn't really make any sense. The money motivation hardly seems enough: if there's only enough money in selling government secrets to buy a small cottage in Cornwall, then how could it possibly be worth the risk? And if the motivation was actually jealousy, as Sherlock suggests: why exactly is she meant to be jealous? She was clearly in a position of great trust and importance, as evidenced by the fact that she was present in the super-secret meeting in the beginning of the position. Hardly a dead-end career which would cause one to become jealous enough to risk everything and betray one's country.

2) There was no good puzzle or mystery in the episode. The only proper case, the whole car-death thing, was absurdly simple.

3) Speaking of the car-death thing, the fact that it turned out to be a complete coincidence, completely unrelated to the bust shenanigans, was completely ridiculous. The writer clearly couldn't come up with a coherent way to introduce Sherlock to the bust "mystery" (which, again, was ABSURDLY easy to solve), so just threw in a stupidly unlikely death which just randomly happened to occur at one of the places where one of the busts happened to be.

4) Mary's character was reduced completely to "former super-spy". She was allowed none of the moments of cleverness or insight which made her interesting in the previous series.

5) John's semi-affair came completely out of the blue. Something so completely out of established character requires at least SOME explanation.

One of the episode's few redeeming qualities
The banter between Sherlock and Mycroft was pretty good. One of the only moments where the spark and wit which made the show interesting in the first place shone through.