Episode 5: Lesser Evils
For the first time we got to see Watson in her element. And to no one's surprise, it looks as if she were as good a doctor as Holmes is a detective, which of course is why the pairing works so well. We also found out that she had only been suspended from the hospital, not let go, and she couldn't practice medicine because she had let her license lapse, not because she had lost it. Could this be setting up for a future season closer where it is made to look as if she is going back to medicine and leaving the company of Holmes?
I don't set out watching these shows looking to predict the ending before it is readily obvious. That is not where the pleasure I derive from them comes into play. But, as I am a student of the medium and this genre, I do notice things not readily obvious to others. For example, in this episode we saw two rules of thumb at play that would seem to contradict each other, but in the end didn't, but of course I knew that right from the beginning because of ta third rule of thumb. Rule #1 - in shows that are less than 45 minutes long, if you see a background more than once, especially if the main has reason to talk to them about anything, related to the crime or not, they are almost always the guilty party. Rule #2 - the first blush suspect that is too perfect but has an ironcald alibi, is almost always the culprit. Now in this episode, these point to contradictory ends, but this is where the third rule of theumb comes in. Rule #3 - if there is more than one crime, counting multiple instances of the same crime as separate crimes for purposes of this rule, it is possible for contradictory rules to apply (this is just deduction), and you know it's correct if the two potential culprits either never meet on screen or have a seemingly meaningless encounter early on before either are established as culprits, the former being more likely and pointing to the at least one of the parties not knowing about the other and the second pointing to some type of collusion. It was the former in this case.
Episode 6: Flight Risk
I can only imagine how hard it would be to deal with someone like Holmes the way Watson does. Just when you think you're making some headway with the guy, he pulls a joke on you to prove that he is right, his point being that you should trust him even though he hasn't given you any reason to. In this case, he hired someone to impersonate his father whom Watson had gone to have dinner with. This ends up leading to what you would normally think of as the background story, i.e. the interpersonal relationship between Holmes and Watson, being the main story and the crime investigation the secondary story.
With this episode, we see a mini trend forming of murders that appear as accident or natural cause, but are only shown to be murders through an observation that Holmes makes while other (police) detectives are missing the clues. They are handling it well, better than a lot of other shouws would I think, for two reasons: he's hypothesizing and makes it very clear that he needs to gather more evidence before he is sure and also once he convinces one of more of the officials they are on board and work to solve the crime not to have a pissing contest with him. I can think of several episodes of CSI where this was the set up and they all had the person being so cocky about how right they were without any visible evidence that it made their work environment very hostile for the episode. Not that those were bad episodes, they were just more about melodrama and less about crime solving and character development.
Episode 7: One Way to Get Off
Every procedural seems to at some point in their run introduce the serial killer put away by one of the key figures before the show began. And in each one of these stories, there are some new killings that make it seem like the serial killer might have been innocent. And inevitably it turns out that they weren't, though sometimes it's not resolved in the same episode. You can now add Elementary to that list of shows., and they only waited until their seventh episode. Sometimes the shows, if they run long enough, will revisit that serial killer with either the same set up or something completely new that seems to exonerate them. It always works out that they were even more heinous than previously thought. I guess we will have to wait and see if Elementary will follow that route too.
We had some nice character building going on with the police captain this episode, and if we needed reminding that Aidin Quinn is a great actor, we got it. But, of course we didn't need it, still it was nice to see an episode more focused around his character.
Episode 8: The Long Fuse
The plot for this episode was rather unique as far as procedurals go. Several crimes were uncovered, but the murder that starts the ball rolling was time delayed by four years and not intended for the victims, but for someone who used to have the same office when a different company rented the building. This was accomplished by old tech getting accidentally upgraded by a new cell tower being pout in, and then someone dialing the wrong number which sets off the bomb. There were lots of twists and turns that involved Holmes testing theories that eventually lead him and Watson in the right direction. This was a nice spin on the bombing plot line.
We got to meet a new character this time out who while playing a quite minor role, I think will end up being a semi-regular. He is a potential sponsor for the drug support group that Holmes has to attend. There are lots of possibilities with a character in that role, and with this character in particular as they picked someone who on the surface seems about as different from Holmes as someone could be. Time will tell.
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