Elementary - Episode 2.14 - Dead Clade Walking - Review

This week's Elementary found Holmes and Watson on the trail of a dinosaur fossil that could change contemporary understanding of prehistoric history, while Holmes faced issues with his AA sponsee.  Here's what happened along the way.

As Holmes tinkered with a model human head, he kept getting texts from his sponsee Randy, who became a bit emotionally needy.  Before heading out to meet with Randy, Holmes ran into Gay, a geologist who was helping Watson to analyze one of his old cold cases.  This led to a hilariously awkward exchange:

Gay: "I'm Gay."
Holmes: "I'm not."

And then once Gay clarified that her name was just that,

Gay: "I also am.  Gay."
Holmes: "How efficient."

When Watson and Gay went to investigate the backyard of the cold case victim, we saw Joan casually applying Holmesian methods of stretching the law, from searching without permission to stealing the valuable fossil she discovered (which was a little too illegal for Gay's taste).  It's interesting to note that while she's unquestionably moral, Watson prioritizes solving a murder case over certain legal niceties, just as Holmes does.  

Randy told Holmes that his ex-girlfriend, a currently using addict, had returned to town and he feared he would relapse.  Over the course of the episode, Holmes tried different methods of helping Randy with this problem.  First, Sherlock had to get past the fact that he was crossing a slight line in becoming a closer mentor than his responsibilities strictly required.  However, he cared enough for Randy's well-being to put the extra effort in.  This subplot nicely paired with the A plot of the cold case, which was unresolved because Holmes had been an addict the first time he investigated it.  

The extent to which Holmes identifies with Randy's problems is brought about by the necessity of revisiting the memories of his own darker days. We've seen a few occasions this season wherein Holmes has shown that noting his human weaknesses - whether related to drug use or his attraction to Moriarty - causes him to feel deeply unsettled.  He acknowledged to Watson that the first time he investigated this case, "I failed to give the man my best efforts, and that is not a pleasant thing to consider."  Because Holmes tried for so long to smother his more sensitive side, it's doubly difficult for him to deal with the emotional fallout from his past blunders and what they may say about who he is at his core. However, tackling the case anew in the right way while also assisting Randy, as hard as that was, allowed Holmes a chance to approach more emotional resolution in those areas.



Holmes tried the more passive approach of leaving Randy to make the wiser decision about Eve, but Randy only came back more confused and desperate when they met at the diner.  And Holmes then attempted some tough love, telling Randy that he cannot live with an active drug addict and that's it - words Randy needed to hear, but that were aggressive enough to make him flee any further discussion.  It was also fascinating that Holmes considered simply having Eve taken back to Chicago by force, and his explanation to Watson that he couldn't bring himself to inflict more problems upon an addict was touchingly reflective.  However it may pain Holmes to abandon a perfectly efficient and fast solution to such a problem, here he was able to admit that a harder, more long-term path to helping Randy was the more graceful way to go.  

As Watson and Holmes uncovered the mystery of the fossil and its connections to Dead Clade Walking, a twisty series of reveals led the pair from the cold case murder to a brand new one with seemingly conflicting evidence.  This case was perhaps not as exciting as the past two episodes' mysteries were, but I appreciated both the intellectually stimulating backstory of the fossil and its academic debate, and the emotional significance of Holmes revisiting this case on new terms - surely a potent way to continue making amends.  Plus, chasing this killer gave Holmes ample opportunity to drop more classic one-liners, including telling Watson, "it's not a collage.  I don't do crafts."  I also thoroughly enjoyed Holmes' fake 95 theses, complete with the verbiage, "those who disagree will be vigorously tickled."

And let us not forget Holmes' attempt to actually consume the cut-up clippings of the case files.  I loved the nonchalant way Watson simply took the paper right out of his mouth.




The encounter with Holmes' steamy letter correspondent "C" was a quirky, amusing sidetrack, not least of all due to Watson's quiet, slightly weirded-out but not surprised reaction (brilliantly conveyed by the ever-subtle Lucy Liu).  Sometimes I wonder how Holmes could possibly have time to engage in so very many and diverse hobbies, but then he hardly ever seems to sleep, so that leaves copious time indeed.

After rounding up all of the anti Dead Clade Walking academics and whittling them down to a key suspect, Holmes circled him by various means, telling Watson that "a good investigator never rules out the possibility that his quarry is a fool."  However, the true perpetrator turned out to be the friendly and innocuous-seeming Brit we encountered earlier in the episode, after Holmes neatly drew the killer's ire by questioning the validity of the dinosaur skeleton on display in the museum.  

Meanwhile, it seemed as if the level of genuine effort that Holmes put into assisting Randy yielded positive progress.  The sponsee turned up and announced that he had broken ties with Eve and he was ready to go to a meeting with Holmes.  It was wonderful to see this issue come around to a promising outcome.

Watson was, as usual, a class act in this episode.  I love the way she and Holmes are now making automatic assumptions about what the other is thinking.  First Holmes had a conversation basically with himself while trying to decide what to do about Randy, attributing certain ideas to Watson while she stood there chopping shallots and neither confirming nor denying his suppositions.  Later, after solving the case, Watson told Holmes she knew exactly what he was thinking, right before he acknowledged that it would probably not have been possible to solve this case were it not for her efforts.  While he then cut the tension of this sweet nod to her intelligence and helpfulness by creepily offering her a little brain surgery, it was lovely to see him again give more credit to the remarkable changes she has brought to his life.  The last shot of the episode, after Holmes and Randy headed out to the AA meeting, as the camera lingered on the model head, seemed to imply that Holmes' understanding of the human brain has only been amplified by his new comprehension of the heart.

What did you think of this week's Elementary?  Share your thoughts in the comments!

About the Author - Virginia Mae Fontana

Virginia is happy to be reviewing Hart of Dixie, The Mentalist, Beauty and the Beast, Bones, Witches of East End, Covert Affairs, and Devious Maids for Spoiler TV. She is a college English instructor and also enjoys obsessing over films and pop music - in addition to tv shows, of course! You can find her blog, SugarRushed, at http://virginiamaeblog.blogspot.com/ and her Twitter handle is @SugarRushedBlog