TV Review: Elementary Episode # 5 - "Lesser Evils"

Jonny Lee Miller and Lucy Liu in CBS Elementary

Sherlock Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller) discovers that someone is killing victims with terminal diseases and passing them off as natural deaths. The killer is injecting Epinephrine into the victims to cause their deaths.

Joan Watson (Lucy Liu) runs into her old friend, Dr Carrie Dwyer (Anika Noni Rose) who also works at the same hospital. Joan is concerned about Dr Dwyer's current patient, but her pleas fall on deaf ears.

Jonny Lee Miller as Sherlock Holmes

Holmes and Detective Bell (Jon Michael Hill) interrogate a list of suspects and zero in on a doctor. Does he turn out to be the killer? Can Joan save her friend's patient before it is too late?

Miller is showing continuous improvement in his performance. CBS recently ordered a complete season for the show. Hopefully by the end of the first season, Miller would have carved his own niche among the pantheon of actors to have portrayed the detective.

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Joan not only stands up to Sherlock’s quips, but helps Holmes in the case as well. Joan started learning the skills of observation and deduction in the previous episode and I like her continuing character arc as the show progresses. Lucy Liu has given her best performance in this episode.

Lucy Liu as Joan Watson

Here comes my favorite section of the review – The references to the Canonical stories:

1. Miller’s Holmes discovers that there are 2 different handwritings in a patient’s consent form. Sherlock Holmes made a similar deduction in the story – The Adventure of the Reigate Puzzle.
2. Miller’s Holmes and his friend visit the same beekeeping chat room. In the story His Last Bow, Sherlock mentions he is writing a book on Bee Keeping entitled “Practical Handbook of Bee Culture, with some Observations upon the Segregation of the Queen”.
3. In the opening scene, Miller’s Sherlock is conducting an experiment on a corpse. In A Study in Scarlet, Stamford informs Watson about Holmes’s habit of beating the subjects in the dissecting-rooms with a stick.
4. When Joan Watson asks Miller’s Holmes about having sushi for dinner, Miller’s Holmes mentions about mercury poisoning and explains that Anisakis is a worm can infect human beings. In A Study in Scarlet, Watson make a list of topics on which Sherlock Holmes has knowledge. In this list, Watson mentions Holmes as having variable knowledge in Botany and is well up in poisons generally.
5. Miller’s Holmes shuts himself inside the hospital room to make sure no one tampers with the scene of the crime. In A Study in Scarlet, Holmes expresses his regret at the lack of prints on the pathway to the scene of a crime due to the movement of people – “If a herd of buffaloes had passed along, there could not be a greater mess.”

This episode had lot of humor injected throughout. I especially loved the elevator scene with Holmes and the janitor. That was pretty funny.

The only downside was the excessive use of medical terms. Given the nature of the murders, this was understandable.

Jonny Lee Miller and Lucy Liu as Sherlock Holmes and Joan Watson

In conclusion, this was one of the better episodes in the show.

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Image Source: CBS

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