Elementary - The View from Olympus - Review

 Let me begin by apologizing for the lateness of this review. I was out of town when the episode aired and have only just been able to catch up.

Despite the title, there is nothing really special about "The View From Olympus." It is a solid if unexceptional episode that takes its a plot, in part, from recent events. The driver service company Zooss is a fairly clear stand-in for Uber, and the recent concerns about its "God mode" tracking of their users' data. If the name "Uber" carries with it disturbing implications of overlording, then Zooss (homonym for Zeus) carries even more disturbing implications of how those with access to data can assume godlike surveillance status. The episode's title refers to Zooss's high-level customer tracking, associating it with Mount Olympus, the home of the Greek gods, and suggesting  that the company is assuming for itself something akin to divine omniscience, with potentially frightening implications.

Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller), naturally, expresses the greatest degree of skepticism and concern about how responsibly mega-corporations might use the data we all so freely allow them to access in our post-Orwellian world, though in true crime procedural form, the misuse of data here becomes simply a matter of tracking customers' data in order to blackmail them, which leads inevitably to murder. (Aside: I found myself again thinking of fellow CBS show Person of Interest while watching this episode, especially when Holmes was reviewing the Zooss data on computer files using schematics of New York to show car movements--not quite exactly the high-level mapping image we see in Person of Interest--though an earlier episode of Elementary this season did feature the exact image--but close enough for me to make the connection and consider how much more weight PoI gives to the dangers of virtually omniscient surveillance.)

As mysteries go, this is familiar territory. The motives are the banal, predictable ones that usually  lead to crime, and as far as the A plot goes, the implications of the omnipresent observing eye are largely downplayed in favour of focusing on the exceptional bad apple criminal who abuses the power such surveillance capacity provides rather than focusing on the inherent and endemic dangers. One contrast between the Elementary version and the real-life situation with Uber, for instance, is that the Zooss head honcho is ultimately blandly cooperative with the investigation, rather than someone willing to threaten to use the data access he has in order to chill dissent. The fact that the first murder victim is a reporter investigating the company might lead us to suspect that corporate malfeasance will end up being targeted, but instead we simply get the greedy employee. Nor is there anything especially distinctive or notewoerhy about the investigation, apart, perhaps, from Holmes's ability to identify a specific brand of gin from the smell of the vomit in which it is commingled.

The B plot is of somewhat more interest. In it, one of Holmes's irregulars, with whom he also has a

no-strings-attached sexual relationship, Agatha Spurrell (Anastasia Griffith), asks him to be a sperm donor so she can become a mother; she expects no further involvement from Holmes beyond providing the genetic material. Holmes is suspicious of this sudden urge, and discovers that in fact Agatha has received significant funding from his father for her climatological research, suggesting a quid pro quo (or perhaps tit for tat) arrangement: Agatha gets money if she is able to produce a Holmes heir. The episode is silent on why Mycroft (Rhys Ifans)--or for that matter Holmes Sr himself, though Sherlock does mention this possibility--could not equally adequately perform the . . . service. The point, of course, is not that Sherlock Holmes specifically needs to be a father to ensure the continuation of the Holmes bloodline, so much as the metaphor of the God made flesh.

Olympian gods were especially fond of human interaction leading to issue. This episode contrasts the Olympian arrogance of Zooss with Holmes's more plausible status as a man of, if not literally godlike, at least heroic status. He shows himself capable of assimilating the view from Olyympus, for instance, observing all the Zooss data feeds at an accellerated pace in order to find the underlying patterns and track down the true culprit. Holmes's general isolation from humanity at large and his formidable intellect make him an exceptional figure, the son himself of perhaps an even more exceptional figure, the literally distant (never seen) Holmes Senior, whom we might in this context liken to Zeus, with Holmes one of that gods' various semi-human sons.

But Holmes prefers his outsider status, his status as observer of and assistant to humanity, rather than as one of the throng. He declines the appeal. This episode, more than any other I can recall, stresses Holmes's exceptionality as defining him. For all that he has moved towards the more socionormative, he remains fundamentally other, fundamentally outside, as this episode reminds us. How much does this make him godlike, and how much of a burden is that status? The show's ongoing exploration of the delicate negotiation between Holmes as outsider and Holmes as one of us remains one of its strengths. I look forward to seeing how (or whether) Holmes's brush with fatherhood (or divinity!) will return.

How about you? Do you think Holmes made the right decision? How did you like the episode? Let me know in the comments below.