Matt Smith reviews the fifth episode of Elementary season 2…
To catch a criminal, sometimes you hear the adage that it’s best if you think like one. If taken literally, this might bring up a whole host of logistical problems, such as how you’d cover up all your crimes and what the title of your tell all book should be.
Sherlock Holmes has got a tell all show at hand to display his prowess, and a healthy set of criminal skills to show off when it comes to how he’ll catch the actual criminal. Indeed, he spends small moments of this episode lamenting at the lack of dead bodies, which would make the case easier to solve.
Perhaps it’s these skills and this mindset that set Holmes apart. Police officers can definitely figure out how a criminal’s mind might work, but how many of them routinely practice lock picking and have a small library of books on how to build bombs? It’s this logical, but unusual way, which Holmes goes about solving a case. And in his mind, it doesn’t matter if it’s unusual as long as it works.
He’s perfectly suited then, for this week’s case. It’s a typical episode, in that it’s not exactly a typical case. Holmes and Watson have a murderer but unfortunately cannot find a body as they try to uncover the mystery behind a cold case.
Cold cases don’t exactly lend themselves well to thrill rides, and it’s in this way that the episode fails. There hardly seems any risk, and the fact Holmes is bored is pointed out at the beginning of the episode only goes to serve as a warning. What follows is a routine case for Sherlock Holmes, with a sub plot involving Watson’s friend and Holmes sleeping together.
When it’s mentioned Holmes followed Watson around at the beginning of their relationship, I thought this was another revelation simultaneously acting as a hurdle in their new relationship as partners. But no. It was nothing more than a time filler that, while amusing, wasn’t all that interesting or important.
Not that the case is solvable in five minutes. One of the good things about this episode is that just when you think it’s getting a bit too east, a delightful dead end pops up. But the ending feels rushed, somehow. Even though the plot is a lot thinner than usual episodes, it’s like the producers suddenly realised they were running out of screen time and couldn’t do anything about it.
There seems to be a lack of drive in this episode, and a real lack of polish when it comes to the plot. Whether the series would do better if an overarching plot were introduced is a question that comes to mind, if only to give somewhere for the characters and scripts to push towards.
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Originally published November 25, 2013. Updated April 11, 2018.
