Review of elementary Episode 2.21 The Man with the Twisted Lip: "Loco Mosquito"

Given that this was  a myth-heavy episode featuring the return of Mycroft (Rhys Ifans), one of my favourite guest stars, and given that it gave Watson (Lucy Liu) a lot more to do than normal--and actually showed her being irritated by Holmes (Johnny Lee Miller), rather than simply tolerant of him--I should have liked this episode a lot better than I did. As it was, "The Man with the Twisted Lip" was, for me, a bit of a misstep. The crime of the week plot and the secondary plot did not, in my opinion, gel particularly well, and some of the plot elements were a bit hard to swallow (twisted lip or not).

The crime of the week involves the disappearance of the sister of one of Holmes's fellow addicts, whom Watson agrees to help when she conveniently comes across the woman crying outside  an AA meeting. This felt awfully convenient to me, like some sort of set-up to ensnare Watson and Holmes--flies in a spider's web, perhaps--but that ended up being a red herring, a tease to deflect us from the real deceptions in the episode. Either that, or I just tried to read too much into it. Regardless, for me, the introduction to this plot element did not seem to segue well into the real issue at hand, in which the missing sister is actually collateral damage, killed because she witnessed another murder, one of a man who was about to blow the whistle on a frightening new government drone program. If her sister knowing Holmes and Watson is coincidence, that's weak. I've commented before on this being  atoo-frequent device to draw characters into the crime of the week. we've seen it used in several episode this season--and as recently as two episodes ago.

Even laying coincidence aside, here, for me, the plot went somewhat off the rails. It depends on tiny drones, literally the size of mosquitoes, that can track, record, and even kill people by "stinging" them and injecting them with poison. Watson's pointing out that this seems like "something out of a Sci-fi movie" tries to forestall audience skepticism without, to my mind, much success. Elementary has featured many an unlikely plot involving science and scientific advances--recent episodes such as "Hound of the Cancer Cells" or "Ears to You" leap to mind. However, insect-sized drones, while certainly on the technological horizon, are, I think, just a little too far down the road for me to be willing to buy them in a show that is at heart a police procedural. In Person of Interest, maybe I'd be more open to such an idea (that would be an interesting crossover!), but here, the idea just pushes the show too far, as Watson notes, towards the Science Fictional.

Anyway, Holmes manages to capture one of these insectoid drones under a glass, communicate with its controller via written messages, and thereby draw him out to a meeting while Watson infiltrates his office--the office of a senior officer at a major military tech company! into whicsh she just walks with a paper-thin trick!--finds the murder victim's stolen laptop, on which his damning report was stored (why would the company not immediately destroy the laptop? if they did not immediately destroy it, why would they store it in a safe one can apparently break into with a ruler?), thereby allowing Watson to get the proof necessary to wrap things up. It's all nice and neat--far too much so--without  being particularly plausible.

Somewhat more interesting is the Mycroft plot. Mycroft has returned to New York ostensibly to help straighten out a few twists at the New York Diogenes restaurant, but of course we know that there's more going on. The last time we saw him, we learned he is involved in some sort of secret plot to get Holmes back to London--or, anyway, out of New York. The real red herring in this episode, in fact, is the drone plot, as the actual spider trying to trap flies is Mycroft. The spider metaphor of course applies to Moriarty in the Doyle canon, so I am perhaps taking a liberty by playing on the bug drone idea in this episode to attach it to Mycroft, but I would not in fact be surprised if Mycroft is indeed tied in somehow to such high-tech skulduggery. Perhaps we'll find out next week.

Mycroft tells Watson he has an ulterior motive for his return to New York, which Holmes picks up on and which leads to tension between the partners--again, I suspect that this is part of Mycroft's cunning plan. Mycroft claims he wishes to explore a relationship with Watson. Since this can then become the "secret" he's keeping from his brother and can distract Holmes's attention (not to mention Watson's, as she is both flattered and a bit tempted by the idea), I suspect it's a ruse to manipulate events to get Holmes where he wants him.

And the end of the episode suggests that Mycroft is well on his way to doing so. Holmes notices a rather obviously-placed Corsican gangster in Diogenes (whom he saw at the exact same table the last time he was in the restaurant--what are the odds?), which he reports to Watson, assuming either that his brother is up to some sort of criminal endeavour, or that his brother is a fool. Watson spots the same gangster herself on her final attempt to visit Mycroft at the restaurant, and of course she chooses to follow--by herself! at night!--the gangster's companion when he leaves. Then she tries to break into the compartment of his motorcycle (parallels to the implausible safe-cracking here, perhaps, not to mention the clearest example yet of Watson's quasi-criminal skills being a mixed blessing at best). Doing so, she finds--surprise, surprise--a picture of herself, just before she is kidnapped by said Corsican gangster--presumably the titular man with the twisted lip, given his rather odd-looking face. Mycroft is nowhere to be seen, of course, but if he's not the mastermind behind this kidnapping, I'll eat my head. I expect we'll find out next week.

This episode does have strengths, notably the typically solid acting. Lucy Liu especially is impressive this week, as she is given more emotional range than Watson usually displays, and she handles that range well. I loved her being irritated with Holmes, especially when she threatens him with a kick in the "soft parts" when he caustically proposes "shared custody" of Watson between himself and Mycroft. I also always enjoy Rhys Ifans as Mycroft; he does a remarkable job of being a plausible brother to Holmes. Even their body language has echoes, as the picture here suggests. And given that the episode begins with a bravura AA scene in which Holmes asserts that the chief threat to his sobriety is that he has no peer foreshadows that we will learn that this Mycroft, like Conan Doyle's, is in fact his brother's peer and more. (Let as not forget, by the way, that the last time Mycroft turned up, he did so in the context of another of Holmes's self-defining testimonies at AA.)Whether Mycroft will prove to be a sane peer--Holmes qualifies his peerlessness by stating he has no "sane" peer, a clear reference to Moriarty--also remains to be seen. I hold out some hope that Mycroft will not prove to be a villain, but I would not bet a lot on it. There's definitely trouble ahead for Holmes, regardless; even before Watson was kidnapped, we saw him hide a sachet of heroin....
 
What do you think? Will Holmes crack when he learns Watson has been taken? Will Mycroft prove himself a villain? Will Watson be saved? Let me know your speculations, as well as your thoughts on this week's episode, in the comments below.