Elementary Season 3 Episode 15 "When Your Number's Up" – Recap and Review

The post contains spoilers and readers who have not yet seen the episode are recommended to skip the review, if they wish to avoid plot details.

This week, Elementary surprises us with a Columbo-type mystery - the killer is revealed at the beginning and the rest of the episode is about how the killer is caught in the end by Sherlock Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller) and Joan Watson (Lucy Liu).

Dana Powell (Alicia Witt) has lost her husband, Nick in a crash involving a Aceway Airlines Flight 1059. In addition to Nick, there were 80 other victims. 

Dana intends to get a hefty payoff from the airlines. She kills two men, who have also lost their relatives in the same mishap. Her first victim is a homeless man, Henry (Moti Margolin). The second man to fall prey to Dana's machinations is Freddy Duncan (Jason Pendergraft).

After shooting both men at point blank range, she leaves cash near the corpses. Her aim is to draw attention to the crash victims and subject the airlines to compensate the crash victims' families.

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Dana tries to divert attention by leaving a quote at the crime scene. This quote is credited to Arlen Shrader (Michael Cumpsty), an attorney at Arlen Shrader and Associates. Arlen specializes in victim compensation. He in turn points the finger at another attorney, Erin Chatworth (Anastasia Barzee) with whom he had a brief affair. He dumped her in order to capitalize on the aforementioned air disaster.

Dana's sister, Penny (Maria Dizzia) also doubles up as her accountant. Penny informs Dana that she needs to make some payments urgently in order to retain her house.

Dana pretends to be the next target of the killer. She sets up a bullet shot through her house window.

As can be expected, Sherlock sees through the deception and works out the solution.

Canonical References

1. Sherlock mentions that Luc does not speak at all and goes on to mention how much this makes Luc such a good companion to him - In the Canon, Sherlock Holmes once complimented Dr John Watson: “You have a grand gift for silence, Watson. It makes you quite invaluable as a companion”

The secondary subplot involves Joan's return to the brownstone. Sherlock tries to get her to reverse her decision. After a couple of discussions with him, Joan moves into the basement of the brownstone.

This was an OK episode. Only Alicia Witt managed to breathe some excitement into the episode. Her scene in the kitchen with Penny was fraught with tension.

Sherlock and Joan are their usual selves. Ditto for Detective Bell (Jon Michael Hill) and Captain Thomas Gregson (Aidan Quinn).

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Elementary Season 3 Episode 14 "The Female of the Species" – Recap and Review

This post contains spoilers. Readers who are yet to see the episode are recommended to skip it, if they wish to avoid details.

After being subjected to hemlock poisoning, Andrew Mittal (Raza Jaffrey) has died. Joan Watson (Lucy Liu) investigates and discovers that Elana March (Gina Gershon) is responsible for her boyfriend's death.

As readers might remember, Joan had Elana arrested in the first episode of the third season, “Enough Nemesis To Go Around”. Elana had one of her assassins, Marion Desjardins mix the hemlock in Andrew's drink. During her meeting with Joan at the prison, she teases her about her impending breakup with Andrew. 

Sherlock Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller) receives his latest case from Vernon Joseph (Chandler Williams), the moderator of Beecircuit.com forum and Curator of Mammals at the local zoo. He needs Sherlock's help to track down two pregnant zebras who have been stolen recently.

Since Joan is still mourning Andrew's death, Detective Marcus Bell (Jon Michael Hill) teams up with Sherlock. Sherlock deduces that a truck belonging to the Axiom Parcel Delivery (APD) company was used in the theft.

Sherlock lists all the intended deliveries for the stolen truck and deduces that one of the recipients, “Criterion Equine Services” is a lead worth checking out. Sherlock and Bell discover the two zebras and the corpse of Dr. David Chang, one of the veterinarians.

Sherlock deduces that the thief wanted to steal the zebra foals. Working on Joan's advice, Sherlock and Bell track down one of the newborns, who turns out to be a quagga. Quaggas are an extinct species of Zebras. 

Sherlock deduces someone working at the zoo is working on “De-Extinction” to bring back the Quagga species for their own monetary benefits.

Sherlock zeroes in on one of the zoo employees, Ben Reynolds (Louis Cancelmi) after deliberately falsely accusing another employee Donovan Gaines (Anthony Gaskins) for the theft.

Ben refuses to co-operate with the investigation. The NYPD assigns officers to keep him under surveillance escapes through hidden tunnel in his apartment. Sherlock lays a trap for Ben and has him apprehended successfully.

In the subplot, Joan apologizes to Santhosh Mittal (Brian George) for being responsible for his son's death. Santhosh expresses his wish that had Joan taken more proactive steps earlier, his son would still have been alive. Later, Elana sends a death threat via mail to Joan.

Joan receives a letter from Jamie Moriarty (Natalie Dormer) who claims responsibility for Elana's death in her cell. In the final scene, Joan decides to move back to brownstone and completely concentrate on her work as a detective.

Canonical References

1. Elementary Sherlock uses the nickname “Sigerson” to lure Ben into a trap. He claims to use that pseudonym occasionally - In The Adventure of the Empty House, Sherlock Holmes uses the alias “Sigerson”, as he explains to Dr John Watson: “You may have read of the remarkable explorations of a Norwegian named Sigerson, but I am sure that it never occurred to you that you were receiving news of your friend.”

2. Ben escaping through a network of tunnels from beneath his apartment - This is a bit tenuous, but reminded of the plot element of the Arthur Conan Doyle's novel, The Valley of Fear, in which John Douglas hides inside his own house after killing Ted Baldwin. 
 

This was a good episode. The exchanges between Miller's Holmes and 's Detective “Marcus” Bell were genuinely funny. The episode focussed on how Sherlock's methods were different from that of Bell and his department.

Sherlock is not one to stick to a working schedule of certain number of hours a day. He just keeps working on the case till a solution is found.

I liked Sherlock's comment about Vernon's username “BeeBeeking17” being offensive to both apiarists and musicians alike. I also liked his line: “I am not against contemplative silence.”, while explaining his working style with Joan to Detective Bell.

When Detective Bell informs Sherlock that he does not eat red meat, Sherlock responds that he is “a man of hidden depth”. Miller's delivery was excellent and was very similar to the dry wit often practiced by the Canonical Holmes.

An interesting point - Unlike Joan, Bell gets a decent wake-up call courtesy of an alarm clock.

Joan gets her own version of Moriarty in the form of Elana March. Gina Gershon is as devious in the role, just as Natalie Dormer was a Jamie Moriarty. Unfortunately, Gina's role came to an end today. Perhaps, we will see her in flashbacks in future episodes.

Her discussion with Sherlock, in which she confesses that she has always found it tough to separate her personal life from the detective work was executed well.

Lucy Liu has also directed this episode and deserves applause for delivering one of the best episodes of this season.

 

 

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Elementary Season 3 Episode 13 "Hemlock" – Recap and Review

After the departure of his protege Kitty Winter (Ophelia Lovibond), Sherlock Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller) is desperate for company in the brownstone. He is even willing to use the women he sleeps with as a sounding board.

The opening scene shows one such instance where a shirtless Sherlock is discussing a case with couple of scantily clad women on the bed. Despite his enthusiasm, the ladies do not share his passion for crime solving.

The next day, Holmes receives a new case in the form of Jill Horowitz (Amy Hargreaves), who suspects her husband Steven Horowitz of having an affair. Steven is an attorney at Dorchester-Reid, a famous law firm.

At the firm, Sherlock and Joan Watson (Lucy Liu) find out that Steven had been fired six months back. But, Steven has hidden this fact from his wife by having his secretary continue to take her calls and continue the pretense that he still has his job.

Steven runs SMH Inc., a debt collection agency. The NYPD picks up Eduardo Pena (Jacinto Taras Riddick), one of Steven's employees for questioning. He informs them that Steven had let go off all his employees last week.

Sherlock deduces that Eduardo has stolen the list of Steven's list of people. One of them is Owen Downey in Connecticut. Sherlock and Joan discover that he is bed-ridden and suffering from a life threatening disease. His aunt, Carla (Jayne Houdyshell) tells them that Steven had forgiven Owen's debt and was more of a friend to him.

Sherlock deduces that Steven was killed due to his sudden change of mind about collecting debts. The killer turns out to be one Coleman Brown (Ben Livingston), a partner in a firm whose attorneys turn out to be Steven's company, Dorchester-Reid.

Canonical References

The episode's plot reminded me of the original story, The Man with the Twisted Lip. In Arthur Conan Doyle's work, Neville St. Clair claims to be working a regular respectable job in the city. But he is actually a street beggar, earning alms to support his family.

In the customary subplot, Andrew Paek (Raza Jaffrey) is back in town, after setting up business in Copenhagen. He invites Joan to meet his father, Santosh Paek (Brian George) over a dinner.

But Joan is having doubts about the future of their relationship, as Sherlock correctly deduces. She decides to break up with him.

In the closing scene, she is having coffee with him and informs him of her decision. Andrew starts gagging and falls unconscious to the floor. Joan tries to revive him.

SPOILER ALERT................ (Scroll below to read)
















The preview for the next episode indicates that Andrew has died from hemlock poisoning in his drink.








........ END OF SPOILER

This made me think as to why this episode was named “Hemlock”, when that poisonous material plays such a small role in today's episode.

Everyone's favorite turtle, Clyde make his reappearance. He is inadvertently painting. 

After a relatively strong first half, this episode was a bit of a letdown. The impact of Kitty's absence was quite telling.

Hopefully, the next episode will pick up the steam as Joan seems to be the target this time (as was Kitty in the previous episodes).

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Elementary Season 3 Episode 11 "The Illustrious Client" – Recap and Review

The episode delves heavily into Kitty Winter's (Ophelia Lovibond) past and the abuse she went through. The man who inflicted the horrific injuries on her has arrived in NY. His latest victim, Melanie Vilkas is a personal message to the authorities and Kitty in particular.

As can be expected, Sherlock Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller) and Joan Watson (Lucy Liu) pay extra attention to this case. Joan is lucky that her new boss, Del Gruner (Stuart Townsend) is very accommodating and gives her permission to spend time, despite having just joined the company very recently. 

The local authorities initially suspect Melanie's fiance, Brandon Powell. But Sherlock and company know better and interrogate Ron Davis (Robert Eli), the man whom Melanie had met on an online dating site. Ron was supposed to meet her at a pub on the same night she disappeared. Ron declines having met Melanie, claiming that he found her to be less beautiful in person than her online profile picture had suggested.

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A strong suspect soon emerges in the form of Simon de Merville (P.J. Sosko). He is a known face with the NYPD and is heavily involved in supplying women for prostitution. Just as he is tracked down and the NYPD arrives to take him down, he flees.

Simon has a sister, Violet de Merville (Tammy Blanchard) who works as a nurse. She claims to have only helped Simon by stitching him up, after having a fight in a bar. 

Sherlock deduces Simon's hiding place, but is too late as Simon is killed before he can be arrested.

In the closing scenes, Kitty recognizes the voice of Joan's new employer, Del Gruner as belonging to the man who had sexually assaulted her five years back. She also identifies him visually, after looking him up on the internet.

Canonical References
1. The episode titled is a reference to the Canonical story “The Adventure of the Illustrious Client” (ILLU).
2. The name of the character played by Stuart Townsend, Del Gruner is a shortened version of the name of the main antagonist in ILLU: Baron Adelbert Gruner.
3. The  character of Violet de Merville - In ILLU, Sherlock Holmes takes up the case in order to break the impending marriage between Violet de Merville and Baron Adelbert Gruner.
4. Violet looking out for her brother, whom she acknowledges was always “different” - This reminded me of The Hound of the Baskervilles, in which Mrs Barrymore cared for her brother, Selden. Selden is an escaped convict who is now hiding on the moor and receives food and clothes from the Barrymores.
 

Being familiar with the original story, I was not that surprised by the revelation involving Del Gruner.

I did enjoy Kitty's impromptu meeting with Violet, that involved Kitty using her single stick to coerce Violet into disclosing information about Simon. In ILLU, Sherlock Holmes takes Kitty Winter to meet Violet de Merville in an attempt to dissuade her from marrying Baron Gruner. Kitty was one of Gruner's former mistresses and Sherlock hopes to convince Violet by utilizing Kitty's personal experience. 

I liked the following quotes by Jonny Lee Miller's Sherlock:
1. Given the narcissism that consumes the modern epoch, a solitary selfie is a minor miracle. 
2.  A fugitive is more difficult to anticipate than an obsessive. 
3. Those of us with exceptional sensitivities are prone to motion sickness. 

The acting was intense, with both Miller and Ophelia giving exceptional performances. A good episode by Elementary's usual standards.

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