Elementary - 1.18 Déjà Vu All Over Again Recap/Review

Six months ago
A man plays a cello, a woman (Penny McNamee) walks past. Another man gives a bouquet of flowers to the woman and she smiles. She walks away. She tells her friend on the phone that he was just a random stranger whose girlfriend had cancelled on him and that she thought things were turning around. Then she was pushed in front of a train.

Joan(Lucy Lui) is going thru some of her friends’ photos of all their kids and they ask about her companionship ‘thing”. She says it’s incredible and her friends agree toasting her. She takes a phone call from a place that refers clients to her about Sherlock. He chose her. “I just have one question, what kind of name is Sherlock.”

Present
Joan is using a slim jim to break into a car. Once in it she has to hot wire it to get the alarm to turn off. Alfredo (Ato Essandoh) tells her that she’s improved with the lock but can’t let the noise get to her. She thinks it’s weird. He tells her that every hour she spends with him, Sherlock has to spend two. Sherlock texts Joan.

Sherlock (Jonny Lee Miller) has gotten a correspondence from his father about that favour he owes him since borrowing the money, which has since been returned. “Knowing my father, the man is a shyster’s shyster.” Sherlock goes to the office and notes the bullet proof glass before giving the origin of the word shyster.

The client, Emily, (Susan Pourfar) shows Sherlock a breakup video her sister recorded and he Googles the subway pushing incident. The woman had left the brother in law before. After a few weeks, they tried to locate Callie (Roxanna Hope) by contacting the police. Sherlock asks if the video was faked. The woman tells Sherlock and Joan about their grandmother’s trunk at her apartment which went missing when her sister left. The video was not made under duress. She was “utterly calm” and may have been eager to move on. Sherlock tells Joan that this would make an excellent case for her as it’s “a case with training wheels.” Joan thinks that this is because his father suggested it. But it’s because Sherlock has a case of his own – the woman who was pushed. He even has prior experience finding pushers as he lost an informant to one in London.

Sherlock admits disappointment that he was “locked away in Hemdale” at the time the murder was committed as it’s a “curious case.” Joan thinks this is an exaggeration but as Sherlock was banned from reading news papers, I don’t think so. Tube pushers tend to not be very well organized. Sherlock thinks he knows exactly what the guy looks like which Joan says she can’t tell if he’s been sarcastic or not. He crumples the paper. Joan meanwhile has made no headway on her case but has an appointment with the ex and Sherlock is excited that she gets to introduce herself as a consulting detective. Joan has forgotten to meet her friend and the friend is pissed as it is not the first time.

The worst part of his wife leaving him was the sister thinking he hurt Callie. The previous time Drew Gardner (Josh Hamilton) had begged her to come back and she did. The second time she had been distant and depressed because of the woman pushed in front of the train. He insists he had no idea what the problems in his own marriage were even taking it so far as to say he wasn’t aware there were any problems until she left the first time. Outside, Joan calls Sherlock to tell him she’s certain the husband killed Callie.

Joan plays the tape for Sherlock as he’s sitting in the kitchen eating cereal. Joan says that the tape was verbatim what he said to the police which Sherlock explains by saying that he might have it down by rote because of how frequently he’s had to tell it before asking if she would like him to tag in. She declines but asks his next course of action. Sherlock tells her about gas lighting before pulling down a banker’s box full of burner cell phones and texting Gardner. His gas had been lit so observing him should lead them to some clues.

Sherlock has also made some headway. He’s brought a colleague of hers down to the station to tell him the theory that the killer had been on the platform before, that the killer studied it. In his research. Sherlock has found a number of times were the colleague was following Miss Tully and was taping her on his phone. Gregson (Aidan Quinn) presents the man with some paper evidence and he still denies it. After Sherlock repeats his assertions he tells them that he was following her but wasn’t in frame and was in disguise. In either an alibi proving move or a terrible bluff, he claims to have video. Actually he does but the questions are did he really tape it? Did he tamper with the tape? And why wait so long to come forward? Joan calls Sherlock bored after watching Gardner all day. Joan says she’s good all night for watching him. Sherlock has reached out to Alfredo who is waiting to release Joan for her meeting.

Sherlock thinks the fiddler might have seen something because he stops in the middle of the piece. He knows the pusher and might have even known what he was going to do. Gregson says he did not know Sherlock played the violin “actually until today, I didn’t know you ate food.” Joan goes to the meeting with her friend where two others have shown up. They claim to be concerned for her and Joan asks if it’s an intervention. They claim it isn’t. Her one friend thinks she’s lost and has been since she stopped practicing medicine and they try to encourage her to not work with Sherlock even suggesting that she’s “with” him. Joan says that she didn’t think she’d have to explain herself. “I just know you and I know you’re not a detective.”

In the middle of this Alfredo has texted Joan that Gardner has moved on. Arriving at the new location Joan learns that it’s a storage facility and the missing trunk has reappeared. He puts it in his trunk. Alfredo wants to call the police but Joan wants to jack the car. Not a good move. Even Alfredo thinks it’s a bad move but Joan goes anyways and the security guard at the facility comes out asking Joan to stop what she’s doing. Joan explains to him and Gardner about the missing wife. The guard orders the trunk open saying he can open it for him or the police. He opens it and it’s empty but there is a bit of discolouration towards the back that will surely lead to something.

Joan’s in prison. Because why not? Sherlock goes to visit her citing déjà vu and stating he paid her bail and that “fortune often favours the bold.” He tells her that the trunk is the same. He spoke with the officers who said that Gardner had sold it to a collector. What he did was wrong and he knew it so he was going to come clean after buying the trunk back. Sherlock tells her that just because she was wrong about the trunk doesn’t mean she wasn’t murdered or that her husband isn’t her killer. Joan says that if Sherlock had opened the trunk Callie would have been there but since she did, Callie wasn’t. Sherlock proposes that if she helps him solve his case, he can help her solve hers.

Sherlock takes Bell (Jon Michael Hill) to go talk to the violinist and ask how he knew the pusher. Sherlock blackmails the man saying that if he gives them information, Sherlock won’t tells Bell that he’s a pick pocketer, a good one but illegal none the less. Sherlock asks about the patch. “If you feel like you have to, don’t.” Joan looks at it before Gregson comes in saying that if she will apologise to Gardner and pay the damages to his car, Gardner will drop his case. Joan tells Sherlock about her friends’ disapproval and he couldn’t really give a fig. She needs to stand on her own feet about this.

Joan goes to the sister’s apartment and in the middle of dropping the case, notices the victim wearing a jacket with the same patch. It’s Drew’s and he had a beard like the composite of the man who witnesses saw pushing Vivian Tully in the subway. Sherlock recaps the facts and then asks how it could have affected her. Joan wonders if he “have I told you how distracting I find self doubt? If you must wallow, do it in the kitchen.” Joan says that maybe B lead to A as opposed to A leading to B.

Sherlock asks the husband if he gave his wife his beard as well as his jacket or did he shave it to look less like the killer. Kelly made the video a year and a half ago, the first time she left him. Joan then says that another woman was pushed off a subway platform by accident eighteen months ago. She was holding flowers as well. Gregson asks him to confirm it for the record. The police have been granted access to Callie’s e-mails proving she sent it eighteen months ago originally and he resent it later when it suited him because even though he deleted it, it stayed on the servers.

One of Joan’s friends calls her again and Joan tells her she was out of line. The woman apologises to Joan as her editor has just been assigned the story Joan broke. Sherlock walks in asking her to come down stairs when she’s finished as a colleague has sent him a file from London which he picked the murder out in a matter of seconds and he wants to see how fast she can do it on her own. Joan hangs up on her friend and updates her status on a FaceBook like site from ‘Sober Companion’ to ‘Consulting Detective’.

Next Week: Pre-empted! The next new episode will air on April 4th. But with news of a two hour season finale, it’s not as if the show is leaving us for long. (Too bad it airs at the exact time as my graduation)