Elementary Episode 3.02: The Five Orange Pipz - Review

The second episode of Elementary, now that it has returned, continues the early trend of relatively forgettable episodes. This time out, we get a mystery rooted in recent real-world news about toxic toys from the orient, as a pair of murders link back to the case against corrupt toy manufacturer Elias
Openshaw (John Rothman), whose company knowingly inported toys made of beads that had GBH inthem. When children swallowed the beads, and some died, the investigation led to charges, and Openshaw went into hiding. The episode begins with Openshaw and his lawyer being murdered, and Watson (Lucy Liu) and Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller)--and his protege Kitty(Ophelia Lovibond)--coming on board to investigate. Tension between them continues, with Watson reluctantly agreeing to pool resources--two bodies, two detectives.

The mystery, frankly, just isn't that interesting, as we weave our way through the obviously not guilty father of one of the dead kids (played by Zak Orth); since he is arrested within the first act and confesses, he obviously can't be guilty. His confession is implausibly justified (he wants to show the wife he lost ot divorce after their child died that he did do something--even if he didn't, and even if spending life in prison is a pretty dumb way to try to teach someone a lesson). The prosecutor (played by Sonya Walger) being blackmailed by Openshaw's lawyer is not materially more plausible. Basically, the mystery plot seems to be looking for reasons to keep spinning out, rather than being engaging. Given the presence of Orth (last seen in Revolution) and Walger (still probably best-known for Lost), I almost found myself hoping for a taste of the science fantasy that dominated those shows, but no such luck. Instead, the mystery has nothing to do, really, with Openshaw's crime but instead with the potential street value of the GBH-imbued beads: a corrupt FBI agent kills Openshaw and his lawyer to make the case go away, so the evidence can be released, and he can steal it and make a killing selling the beads as street drugs. Meh.

The "myth" elements are also not, to me, particularly interesting. True, Holmes fans might take some pleasure in the episode title's echo (and use of some character names) of the Doyle story "The Five Orange Pips," or Holmes's  use of a line from A Study in Scarlet (about detective work requiring one to take pains), or in the episode's teases about Kitty's background (Kitty Winter is a character in the Doyle story "The Adventure of the Illustrious Client," though how closely this Kitty will correspond to that Kitty remains to be seen). But I find myself not much caring about Kitty, to be honest. We are supposed to see her as having issues as a result of her victimization some five years in the past and therefore presumably sympathize with her, but Detective Bell's (Jon Michael Hill) concerns about her being a negative, destabilizing influence on Holmes, in contrast to Watson, strikes me as all too apt. I assume that the show wants to internalize such comments in order to disarm fan resistance, but such strategies merely remind me of how she simply adds needless complication.

Even shot compositions overstress Kitty's oppositional/outsider status--she's not really part of the team. She is consistently located
behind or opposite to Holmes and/or Watson In one particularly heavy-handed sequence, Holmes and Watson stand side by side, shoulder to shoulder, considering Holmes's evidence wall together--an image of their unity of purpose and their compatibility--while Kitty stands well behind them, her outsider/follower status literalized. When she approaches the evidence wall, the forces herself between the two, really telegraphing the incipient cat-fight between her and Watson. By the end of the episode, some sort of rapprochement between the two seems coming, as Kitty sits reading over old Holmes/Watson cases while Watson reads over Kitty's history (which Holmes had inscrutably kept hidden in a false wall behind a grate--what's wrong with a locked drawer, exactly?)--each getting to know the other. Though they are in separate physical locations, they face in opposite directions at rheir respective tables, so in the cross-cutting they symbolically face each other.

I'd like to see this triangle end, but I suspect we will have a few more episodes of melodrama before anything happens with it. I hope that we at least get more engaging mysteries while we watch the angst unfold.

Or am I just being a curmudgeon? How did you like the episode? Let me know in the comments!