Elementary - "I Believe in Sherlock Holmes" - Review

Last week’s episode starts with a young woman living alone who makes this mistake of answering her door. The man on the other side of the outer screen asks for assistance with delivering some tables and chairs for a band but as his cell phone is dead, he asks if he can charge his phone. She asks for the numbers of his boss and the office. When he can’t provide them, she asks him to leave before she calls the cops. Another man is waiting for her when she turns around and uses chloroform on her before sticking her in a suitcase. The first man has gotten help from a cabbie.

Sherlock spends the first part of his screen time talking on an AA group about one of his past cases involving a judge and a mongoose. The suspected killer was a magician and had scared the victim who hadn’t seen the first in so long.

“That was a morning of firsts.”

Why am I not surprised that Sherlock’s (Jonny Lee Miller) first share is not about his addiction? Neither is Joan (Lucy Lui). What surprises everyone is the appearance of a random naked Rhys (John Hannah). Joan calls for Sherlock who dashes up the stairs and stops when he sees his former drug dealer. It’s almost a relief that Sherlock knows the man but Joan asks if they can pause the discussion of Rhy’s missing daughter until they are all clothed and he goes into her bedroom to comply. Sherlock informs Joan of his and Rhy’s former relationship then heads down stairs to make tea.

In the kitchen, Sherlock tells Watson the last time Rhys was in New York, he stayed in Joan’s room and that the man is no longer a drug dealer just as he is no longer a drug user. (Joan says title that Rhys is “A Giant Gun, Filled with Drugs pointed at you”)Sherlock tells Joan she’s going to have to work a little bit harder this week. After bringing everyone up to speed, Rhys requests very nicely that Sherlock watch the ransom video and if he thinks he can’t help, Rhys says he’ll go.

The video came in the second he touched down in New York. Joan asks if he can meet the demand of $2.2 million and Sherlock replies that that’s the exact amount Rhys took from a rival drug dealer. Sherlock asks how much is left and the answer is around two thousand. The rest was lost in cards. Joan asks how Rhys can be so calm when they got to Emily’s apartment and he retells the story of how Sherlock deduced a suspect’s guilt from just a couple of stains on his shirt in less than ten minutes when Rhys delivered some drugs to him at Scotland Yard.

“You ask me why I’m not a total wreck; ‘cause I believe in Sherlock Holmes.”

Sherlock has deduced that the Dominicans had been there or at least one of them. Finding the spot where the suspect waited for Emily. And Emily was definitely not a smoker before identifying the brand of cigarette the ash belongs to.

“I can identify 140 cigarette and cigar brands by their ahs alone. Now if you bothered to read my monographs you would know that.”

Sherlock decribes the struggle in which Emily spilled a glass of ater on the kidnapper’s hand which left a stain on wall. Her killer was at a night club where they use a Taino symbol belonging to the god of hurriancanes as their calling card. The club is called Hurrikane. There’s no fingerprints in the apartment as the door was wiped down before the killer left. He had just come from the nightclub so that’s where they shall go.

repeated: “I believe in Sherlock Holmes.”

Joan can’t believe that the best plan is have Rhys walk around the club in case he recognizes someone. Sherlock says that this is the best way as they can’t contact the police and points out that she seems even more dour than usual. Joan replies that his mentioning of her menstruation is misogynistic and says that she’s cautious of all the possible temptations to Sherlock’s sobriety. Rhys recognizes no one but Sherlock has a suspect whom he follows to the bathroom and talks to at the urinals. Unsurprisingly, the man claims not to know any English. Before the man leaves, Sherlock tells him he knows that he’s DEA. He was looking into the champagne bucket to see behind himself, his tattoos were all gotten at the same time which is noticeable because of how the ink ages over time. Sherlock threatens to tell the men in VIP area about his new “friend’s” official status and the man attempt to call his bluff.

Sherlock gets not fifteen feet from the bathroom before he’s punched in the face. I’m actually surprised this doesn’t happen more often. Rhys holds Joan back so that she won’t interfere with what’s now turned into a full-out ass kicking while the DEA guy tells Sherlock that the cartel hasn’t kidnapped anyone in months. Because they run everything by you first? How could he be so certain of that fact?

Joan awakens the next morning to find Sherlock reading Emily’s dull twitter feed. She tells him that they have an appointment at noon to which he replies that he is no longer required to go to daily meetings. Joan still wants him to because of the ex-drug dealer living with them and tells him he is not going to share something about one of his old cases. She goes up stairs to get some antibiotic for his wounds and kicks Rhys out of the bathroom. On his way out, she tells him that Sherlock is her number one priority and that if she catches him doing drugs again, talking about drugs, or thinking about drugs, she will turn him into the police as a drug dealer and a thief before demanding all of the drugs in his possession.

Sherlock has found that Emily’s stepfather had to take a loan from her. Suspicious because his job as a big real estate man was one that he shouldn’t ever have to. Sherlock calls Bell and the detective tells him that there the man used to have money emphasis on used to.

Rhys talks to Sherlock about his work having to learn how to deduce again after taking drugs. He points out that deducing is creative and some creative types need the drugs to work. Sherlock asks if he means to say that he was a better detective on drugs. Rhys recovers and says that it must be hard. Joan is going to kill him when she finds out….

They now think that the stepfather is behind the kidnapping and would have the perfect place to hide her in a property he invested in that he can’t off load. Sherlock deduces that the man is squatting in the property not that he kidnapped his daughter.

“You could have let me rough him up a bit.”

Rhys gets a phone call from the kidnapper who sometime knows that Rhys is working with Sherlock. He’s moved up the timetable as a consequence – twelve hours less time and the girl is down a finger.

Sherlock has compared the fingerprints and the finger is definitely Emily’s. He’s found security footage but it’s of no use. The finger provides a hint in the burn meaning it was pre-war. Under the fingernail is an elaborate ethnic dish which he discovered by tasting (eww… shades of The Tenth Doctor ... but eww) meaning he has to be near an Ethiopian restaurant. He asks Joan to check on Rhys.

She finds him sitting quietly by himself on his bed thinking about the fact he’s just seen a bit of his little girl in a box. Joan pours out a cup of the tea she’s brought from him and tells him that Sherlock thinks

“Rhys, if it makes a difference, I believe in Sherlock Holmes, too.”

Alright, so that’s three of us. Who else?

Sherlock is listening to the recording of the random video again trying to find the tiny details that could be key because the link between prewar buildings and Ethiopian restaurants proves to provide too many options. Rhys reminds Sherlock of the case he solved when no one else thought there was a case. The problem with it is that Sherlock solved it with cocaine. Rhys brings a small packet of it out of his pocket and sets it on the arm chair. Sherlock contemplates it a second before launching himself on the man for threatening everything he is trying to be. Rhys tries to convince Sherlock that he's better on drugs.

“This is some ghost of you, a pale imitation”

Joan walks in wondering what the hell just happened. Sherlock leaves Joan to sort out the mess with Rhys. She asks what set him off and Rhys tells her he only told the truth.

Sherlock sits on a bench in a bad looking area of town slowly dialing his father’s number. Later, he returns home and tells Rhys that he will be reunited with his daughter within the hour because his father has agreed to loan Sherlock the money in exchange for unnamed favors. The drop has been arranged in two hours and he sends Joan to get his tablet so that he can talk to Rhys. He tells him that the money is buying a life without him because he would have found Emily by his own devices. Rhys stands up and leaves.

Sherlock stands above the meeting place on a flight of stairs and while he’s going that, the DEA agent comes to the house with important information. The kidnapper hasn’t shown up and on his way out of town Sherlock, is chased by a small gang of painters. He climbs the fire escape to a building as he briefs Joan with his phone in his pocket. He breaks into an apartment and tells her that only leaves one suspect. Joan fills in the blank for him that it’s the DEA agent. She knows because the man is pointing a gun at her.

The painters have followed Sherlock, who’s now outside. He tells the DEA agents that they can meet at his house. He goes down some more stairs and hotwires a car. The man has told the painters that Sherlock is from a rival gang. Rhys is working himself free from the binds with a pocket knife from a punk rocker he used to deal for. Sherlock hypothesizes that the agent has

The agent tells him that when the money is transferred, he’ll let his friends go. Sherlock asks for a reason to rust him. Rhys breaks his binds, the man goes for him, and Sherlock hits him over the head with a porcelain bust but not before Rhys is shot. Sherlock yells for Watson a couple of times through the exchange

In interrogation later the agent tries to deny his involvement spinning a different tale of how things went down. Gregson tells the man that Rhys has gone to the hospital and Sherlock with him. From the district judge, Gregson has an order for the man to be in protective custody

Thinks he wants the girl to die so that he can be absolved of the whole matter.

Bell parrots back the statistic that there are five prewar buildings near Ethiopian restaurants near the DEA’s apartment. The girl will be found but Gregson would rather it be sooner than later. As he turns the leave, the DEA calls him back.

“You’d think after everything I’ve done to my liver it could defect a couple of bullets.”

At the hospital, Rhys wakes up and Sherlock tells him that Emily has been recovered and is recovering. Sherlock give Rhys some of his own money, his father’s returned, and tells him that tests of his sobriety arise everyday but he was the most recent. Rhys tells Sherlock he believed in him and Emily walks in concerned for his father.

Sherlock is repairing Angus when Joan comes back down stairs. He tells her that she did something incredible and tells her what happened between he and Rhys last night. Sherlock tells her he doesn’t want to talk about it with her but others might find inspiration in his abstinence. Apparently. And he invites her on the least romantic date ever. Kidding. I like the dynamic of them just being friends.

Tonight: Valentine’s Day and Sherlock hits Joan in the back of the head with a tennis ball. “It could have been a knife.” In what reality could that have been a knife?