Matt Smith reviews the fifteenth of Elementary Season 2…
Sherlock Holmes, as a detective, works best when he’s in a vacuum. Bereft of distraction, focusing on the job at hand, social niceties not getting in the way of his cold, hard logic. Personal issues shouldn’t come into it; otherwise they’ll pull him away from being, in his own words, the world’s best detective. This week, he meets another character who is rather like him, in the ways described above and in the way that because they’re both human means they can never really be completely cut off from their own personal lives. A period of transition, often painful, is something they’re both going through.
This week’s episode features a ballet star, pulled into the murder case of another performer. A star who Holmes has particular admiration for, and one who he can’t see as a murderer. Is his appreciation for her skills clouding his judgment or is it, as before, a case of Holmes being irrefutably right?
The answer to that is obvious, but that’s not the point. The point is finding out who did it, and in that respect the case works. A solution presents itself towards the end that makes it seem like nothing else would fit, giving the whodunnit nature and aspect of this episode a satisfactory end. Not along for the ride, though, is Watson, who is dealing with the case of a missing homeless person. While the end of the case is played up to be some form of revelation in that Holmes decides to be charitable towards the homeless, the entire episode had a feeling of being light on substance.
It’s a shame that the contents this week would’ve made a great half hour episode, but when spread out over closer to an hour the ‘main’ case was made less substantial.
While, yes, we get to see Watson solve a case all by herself, it’s already clear from previous episodes that she’s a good detective in her own right. And any personal revelations with either Holmes or Watson are played as being much more dramatic than they actually are.
That’s the problem, with both this review and the episode, in that there’s not much to be said within either. Because Sherlock Holmes, as a character, doesn’t work best in a vacuum. Interest on the part of the audience usually comes better when he’s clashing with someone. This week was more about a case barely worth the time put into it, by both the audience and Holmes. A case of Holmes saying the first accusation is wrong and then everyone calmly helping him go about finding the real killer. The killer who makes things incredibly easy, so easy in fact that it’s like everyone’s half asleep as they catch him.
Hopefully next week sees Holmes brush past this accusation of a lack of substance and finds a case, and an episode, worth everyone’s respective time and effort.
Matt Smith – follow me on Twitter.
Originally published March 27, 2014. Updated April 12, 2018.
