Elementary: Sticks
to its Elements in this Week’s Episode
This year, a new Sherlock Holmes series premiered on CBS and
I was at first skeptical of its quality and potential. I had watched the
riveting and often comedic BBC series called Sherlock and I was unsure if Elementary could reach that gold
standard. After watching the first episode, I was pleasantly surprised by its
twist on the usual Sherlock Holmes formula, yet at the same time, the show was
a few points shy of being equal to
Sherlock. In Elementary, Sherlock is a recovering drug addict who abused
heroine and alcohol and Watson is actually an Asian-female sober companion who
is living with Sherlock to ensure that he won’t relapse. I really liked this
new interesting dichotomy compared the jokingly “homosexual” relationship of
Sherlock and Watson in the BBC show. Although I like the new characters, I
dislike how the plot of one episode in Elementary
is – at least so far – unlinked to the plot the preceding, a tactic that Sherlock employed to give each episode a
sense of progression, overarching plot development, and further
characterization. Despite this, the characters in Elementary are proving to be fleshed out and each one fits into
little niche, one great example being Sherlock’s arrogant and dismissive
behavior, a quality that would be expected from a genius detective.
In this week’s episode, Sherlock is called in to consult for
a banking firm who’s COO has been missing for the past day. Sherlock finds the
location of the man in no less than two hours and when he arrives on the scene,
the man is dead, seemingly from a heroin overdose. Sherlock is immediately
suspicious of the “accidental” death, but his mind is more preoccupied with the
heroin, as the viewer can derive a small internal struggle going on in his head
through his blank stare, which denotes his withdrawn internal state. Luckily,
Watson is there to push him in the right direction and he quickly snaps out of
it, snaps at her because he doesn’t need her to help him maintain his sobriety,
and then he quickly to Gregson, the police captain, explains how the death, was
actually a murder. This short scene is a great example of characterization
because it shows how Sherlock is still struggling with remaining sober and is
arrogant nature, evident by his rude outburst at Watson for helping him.
Mexican Standoff- Sherlock versus Watson
Even though I thought the character development in this
episode was well done, especially for Sherlock whom was forced to face his past
problems of addiction, it was probably the least captivating by far. I found
the mystery in this episode quite tedious and underdeveloped. The plots of the
previous episodes, especially last week’s, were great and enthralling, which
made this episode’s mediocre plot seem all the worse. Additionally, I thought
that the episode’s one attempt at showing how Sherlock’s arrogance and
confidence gets him into deep trouble lacked build up and tension, it just
happened, and this expedience changed what could have been a thought provoking
foray into Sherlock’s character, a simple mistake that ultimately came off as
having little consequence. For me, this pitfall was expanded due to the fact
that the BBC series would have capitalized on such an opportunity that would
allow them to show Sherlock’s turmoil between his arrogance and his situational
appraisal skills.
Overall, I grant a measly three stars to this week’s episode
and a hope that this episode hasn’t set a precedent for future episodes or
foreshadows the series getting stale in the future.
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