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Elementary 3.24
Still chewing on this one, as a season finale and as an episode both. But here's my overall verdict on season 3: I loved the first half without reservation, and not just because of Kitty, but because of the coherent arc for all three - for they were three - leading characters. The second half, I liked, and at times loved, because there were some great episodes there, but the coherence of the first half was missing. Which means season 1 is still my favourite, and season 2 still my least favourite, with s3 falling in the middle - it has near greatness but also too much randomness in the second half to achieve it.
Now, on to the actual episode.
Among many other things, it confirms![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
zarahwithaz's opinion that instead of the previous episode, they should have placed the "Sherlock and Alfredo go from sponsor/sponsee to friends" episode before the finale as a lead up to it. Can't really think why they didn't. Aaaaanyway. This episode brings back a guest star from this season but not Kitty, which is in retrospect wise; instead, it's Oscar, more than any other guest star the symbol of Holmes' deepest drug addiction days. And he attacks Alfredo, who among other things is a symbol of Sherlock Holmes' on-the-wagon state and emotional growth, using him as leverage to take Sherlock on a road back to hell. In retrospect, that made the ending all but inevitable.
Here's what I was afraid would happen, though: that Oscar out of spite would have injected Alfredo with some heroin, thus destroying Alfredo's own hard won sobriety, and that this in turn would result in something similar to Joan's initial reaction to Andrew's death, i.e. Sherlock going "I am endangering all my friends, I must therefore end all relationships again" . Which I would have hated, not least because it would have taken away Alfredo's agenda for something so crucial for his life in service of allowing Holmes to repeat a storyline we already had. Which didn't happen. (Unless season 4 will suddenly reveal it did, which given what did happen in this episode I very much doubt.) Let's stay with Alfredo a moment more; while he's only in one scene at the start and silently in another at the end, we do learn some new and important facts about him, and a fondness for Abbott & Costello is the least of it. We meet his mother in the episode, who seems kind and supportive but also scarred by having a son whose sobriety, no matter how long lasting it's right now, can never be taken for granted. I appreciate that the episode doesn't vilify her for assuming (as Sherlock does himself before meeting Oscar) that one possible explanation for Alfredo's sudden disappearance is a relapse. (BTW, thanks to the continuity gods for Sherlock bringing up Alistair in that context.) She's been there before. Elementary has always presented addiction as something far too complicated to explain by "if only he/she had supportive parents/family/spouses, this would not have happened", or "once an addict has someone who loves him/her, the sober happily ever after is guaranteed!". Alfredo has a mother who loves him deepy (without enabling him). Alistair had a loving partner. Holmes may have a dysfunctional blood family, but he has Watson, Bell and Gregson as his chosen family, as Gregson verbalizes in this episode, and he also has Alfredo, Ms Hudson and the Irregulars. The other thing we learn about Alfredo is that despite his former employers badmouthing him, he continues to have clients, he's romantically interested in a woman who isn't, as of now, returning the interest. These are all details which contribute to give Alfredo a background, a life glimpsed that doesn't revolve around being Sherlock's sponsor (and now friend) but continues offscreen when we don't see him. And thus Alfredo is his own character, not just a plot device for Holmes' story.
Doesn't mean, of course, he can't be used as a plot device, just not in the way I feared. Whether or not the episode would have ended the way it did if Oscar's excuse for taking Sherlock with him had been someone other than Alfredo is up to debate, and the episode is careful to let Sherlock know Alfredo is, in fact, alive and saved before his final actions. But thematically, it pretty much needed to be Alfredo. The title of the episode is "A Controlled Descent" (the end of that Warren Ellis quote is ..."is still a fall", as far as I know), but "descent", in its Latin overtones, also reminds me of Virgil - "Facilis descensus Averni" (Aeneid VI, 126), "it is easy to descend into hell". That quote ends with "sed revocare gradum superasque evadere ad auras, hoc opus, hic labor est" - but to follow your footsteps back into the light, that is effort, that is work.) If Alfredo - after Joan the sober companion at the start of their relationship - was Sherlock's Virgilian guide in recovery purgatory, Oscar was his guide in addiction hell. Neither of them started either process - as far as I recall, the show definitely has Sherlock already using before coming to the US, and he stopped using before meeting either Joan or Alfredo. But they had the guide functions nonetheless.
Oscar is also both his own character and a plot device. Joan, commenting on the photo of him and his sister, talks about how any relationships that survive into addiction become even more intense and important to the addict. Oscar - who turned his sister into an addict in the first place - loved her enough to check her into the expensive rehabilitation facility in the place Holmes had paid for in his stead. But it's not actually the love for his sister that's motivating him here, or the closeness with his sister he used to have, that's not what he wants back. "I held you", he says to Sherlock when talking about Holmes immediatly post "Irene" , and as in the original episode where he showed up (and framed Sherlock for murder while he was at it), it's clear he wants that back, and Sherlock as a fellow addict.
Now, the show had Sherlock fake a relapse in the s1 finale (in order to fool Irene-Moriarty), and it had him come close to an actual relapse without anyone knowing after his temporary break with Watson during the s2 to s3 hiatues, as later revealed in a flashback; on that occasion, it was Kitty who unknowingly stopped him by allowing him to focus on helping another person. There were also some episodes underscoring how you can never not be an addict, only a sober one or a using one, in all three seasons, and episodes which showed that the routine keeping addiction away can get endangered (the mini arc when someone from the meetings started to post things Sherlock said online and the breach of confidence and safety that meant). In all these cases, he didn't relapse. But you can only go to the "almost" place so often before it becomes ineffective, so it figured that sooner or later, they'd go there. The real question was: how. Not least because there were any number of possible missteps there. (The biggest one would have been if he'd relapsed after Joan moved out, with her moving back for that reason. That was something I dread and did not want, and lo, it did not happen. Incidentally, the way the show actually caused Joan to move back - for her sake, not his - was pretty well done, and most importantly by him ensuring her apartment was still there and with the basement as separate-yet-a part-of-the-house thing, it didn't feel as Holmes and Watson falling back into their old relationship but as them moving forward based on the changes they'd negotiated.) Other missteps would have been if an outside party would have done it to him the way I was afraid Oscar had to Alfredo, because while the show was always clear on the importance of triggers and how dangerous they can be, it also empasizes free will, so had Holmes relapsed because the villain of the week forced him to, it would have been melodrama. Or if he'd done so because, say, Joan or another of his friends had been shot. (Which is why it's so important here that he knows Alfredo is saved before doing anything.)
The descent of the title happens step by step as we see Sherlock through the episode, ostensibly looking for the vanished Olivia, retracing the steps of his life, moving backwards. Not in all regards; the Holmes at the start of the show would not have unconditionally trusted in Watson, Gregson and Bell finding and rescueing Alfredo while he was with Oscar. But for the most part, it's pretty obvious: we start out with Sherlock at his most grown, hanging out with Alfredo in their new capacity as friends while also looking forward to meeting a possible new sponsor (we couldn't be further from the Sherlock who rubbished the entire program in the pilot and had to be dragged kicking and screaming to meetings). Then Alfredo vanishes and is replaced by that most unwelcome of reminders of the past, Oscar. In many other SH incarnations, Moriarty gets the job of being the villain who is Holmes' shadow self. In Elementary, we get several one episode characters doing that in the course of three seasons, and they usually have one or several traits carried to extremes, but in this season it's also his worry that Watson and Bell doing it - in their case, the social isolation. Oscar, though, is the character mirroring the needy addict part of Holmes, and it's important he's not a supervillain weaving complicated plots, or even a killer in the sense of deliberately committing murder. He's just someone who defines emotional closeness by sharing his own self destruction. So of course the guest star/opponent of this season's finale isn't Moriarty, or the British secret service. It had to be Oscar.
Three thirds into the episode on the road backwards, Sherlock, confronted with a character who's also a reminder of a more recent past (a powerful man with seemingly respectable facade preying on women, sometimes taking them captive and making the disappear - sounds familiar? Hello, Gruner avatar), uses physical violence to extort information from him, as he did mid s1 with Moran. As with Moran, the show is careful not to reward torture with actually helpful information. Sure, he finds out what he wanted to know, but it's all in vain, because Olivia has been dead for days, and Oscar always knew she was. It was never the point, and that was what Sherlock failed to see, because he still can't stand looking at Oscar and what Oscar reflects. And so, after getting the news about Alfredo, Sherlock goes further back even beyond the pilot, backwards into the tunnel, literally, drugs in hand. In the very last scene, he's up on the roof again, as he was at the start of the episode. The roof of the Brownstone usually signifies emotional connection on this show - with Alfredo at the start of this episode, with Joan at the end of the s1 finale when he tells he he named a bee after her, even with Mycroft, practising fencing during s2. But not this time. This time, we see him as we haven't seen him before in the present day. Sweating, eyes unfocused. (Until then, I hadn't been sure whether or not he'd taken it, despite the going back into the tunnel, which could have been another "almost" fake out.) In withdrawal. Joan stands next to him as she says his father has heard "what happened" and is on his way, but they're not looking at each other, and if he hears her, he doesn't show. He's back in the Avernus.
Speculation for season 4: not much. Obviously we'll finally meet the ominous Holmes Senior. (Insert British actor of choice speculation here.) Who, unless I'm forgetting something, is still the owner of the Brownstone and paying for all of this, so I could see him reacting to the relapse news by blaming Joan (whom he originally hired to keep Sherlock sober) and insiting she moves out, whereupon Sherlock will probably move with her, in which case the fact her old apartment is still there will come in handy for both of them. There's also the hint from the previous episode that someone wants Gregson gone, so that will probably come up again. And while Joan is over her post-Andrew idea of drawing back from people now, I hope she'll have some development in waiting that's not about having to deal with what Sherlock's relapse means for both of them. And yes, I still want Kitty to come back for an episode or two the way Moriarty did in s2.
In conclusion: see above.
Now, on to the actual episode.
Among many other things, it confirms
zarahwithaz's opinion that instead of the previous episode, they should have placed the "Sherlock and Alfredo go from sponsor/sponsee to friends" episode before the finale as a lead up to it. Can't really think why they didn't. Aaaaanyway. This episode brings back a guest star from this season but not Kitty, which is in retrospect wise; instead, it's Oscar, more than any other guest star the symbol of Holmes' deepest drug addiction days. And he attacks Alfredo, who among other things is a symbol of Sherlock Holmes' on-the-wagon state and emotional growth, using him as leverage to take Sherlock on a road back to hell. In retrospect, that made the ending all but inevitable. Here's what I was afraid would happen, though: that Oscar out of spite would have injected Alfredo with some heroin, thus destroying Alfredo's own hard won sobriety, and that this in turn would result in something similar to Joan's initial reaction to Andrew's death, i.e. Sherlock going "I am endangering all my friends, I must therefore end all relationships again" . Which I would have hated, not least because it would have taken away Alfredo's agenda for something so crucial for his life in service of allowing Holmes to repeat a storyline we already had. Which didn't happen. (Unless season 4 will suddenly reveal it did, which given what did happen in this episode I very much doubt.) Let's stay with Alfredo a moment more; while he's only in one scene at the start and silently in another at the end, we do learn some new and important facts about him, and a fondness for Abbott & Costello is the least of it. We meet his mother in the episode, who seems kind and supportive but also scarred by having a son whose sobriety, no matter how long lasting it's right now, can never be taken for granted. I appreciate that the episode doesn't vilify her for assuming (as Sherlock does himself before meeting Oscar) that one possible explanation for Alfredo's sudden disappearance is a relapse. (BTW, thanks to the continuity gods for Sherlock bringing up Alistair in that context.) She's been there before. Elementary has always presented addiction as something far too complicated to explain by "if only he/she had supportive parents/family/spouses, this would not have happened", or "once an addict has someone who loves him/her, the sober happily ever after is guaranteed!". Alfredo has a mother who loves him deepy (without enabling him). Alistair had a loving partner. Holmes may have a dysfunctional blood family, but he has Watson, Bell and Gregson as his chosen family, as Gregson verbalizes in this episode, and he also has Alfredo, Ms Hudson and the Irregulars. The other thing we learn about Alfredo is that despite his former employers badmouthing him, he continues to have clients, he's romantically interested in a woman who isn't, as of now, returning the interest. These are all details which contribute to give Alfredo a background, a life glimpsed that doesn't revolve around being Sherlock's sponsor (and now friend) but continues offscreen when we don't see him. And thus Alfredo is his own character, not just a plot device for Holmes' story.
Doesn't mean, of course, he can't be used as a plot device, just not in the way I feared. Whether or not the episode would have ended the way it did if Oscar's excuse for taking Sherlock with him had been someone other than Alfredo is up to debate, and the episode is careful to let Sherlock know Alfredo is, in fact, alive and saved before his final actions. But thematically, it pretty much needed to be Alfredo. The title of the episode is "A Controlled Descent" (the end of that Warren Ellis quote is ..."is still a fall", as far as I know), but "descent", in its Latin overtones, also reminds me of Virgil - "Facilis descensus Averni" (Aeneid VI, 126), "it is easy to descend into hell". That quote ends with "sed revocare gradum superasque evadere ad auras, hoc opus, hic labor est" - but to follow your footsteps back into the light, that is effort, that is work.) If Alfredo - after Joan the sober companion at the start of their relationship - was Sherlock's Virgilian guide in recovery purgatory, Oscar was his guide in addiction hell. Neither of them started either process - as far as I recall, the show definitely has Sherlock already using before coming to the US, and he stopped using before meeting either Joan or Alfredo. But they had the guide functions nonetheless.
Oscar is also both his own character and a plot device. Joan, commenting on the photo of him and his sister, talks about how any relationships that survive into addiction become even more intense and important to the addict. Oscar - who turned his sister into an addict in the first place - loved her enough to check her into the expensive rehabilitation facility in the place Holmes had paid for in his stead. But it's not actually the love for his sister that's motivating him here, or the closeness with his sister he used to have, that's not what he wants back. "I held you", he says to Sherlock when talking about Holmes immediatly post "Irene" , and as in the original episode where he showed up (and framed Sherlock for murder while he was at it), it's clear he wants that back, and Sherlock as a fellow addict.
Now, the show had Sherlock fake a relapse in the s1 finale (in order to fool Irene-Moriarty), and it had him come close to an actual relapse without anyone knowing after his temporary break with Watson during the s2 to s3 hiatues, as later revealed in a flashback; on that occasion, it was Kitty who unknowingly stopped him by allowing him to focus on helping another person. There were also some episodes underscoring how you can never not be an addict, only a sober one or a using one, in all three seasons, and episodes which showed that the routine keeping addiction away can get endangered (the mini arc when someone from the meetings started to post things Sherlock said online and the breach of confidence and safety that meant). In all these cases, he didn't relapse. But you can only go to the "almost" place so often before it becomes ineffective, so it figured that sooner or later, they'd go there. The real question was: how. Not least because there were any number of possible missteps there. (The biggest one would have been if he'd relapsed after Joan moved out, with her moving back for that reason. That was something I dread and did not want, and lo, it did not happen. Incidentally, the way the show actually caused Joan to move back - for her sake, not his - was pretty well done, and most importantly by him ensuring her apartment was still there and with the basement as separate-yet-a part-of-the-house thing, it didn't feel as Holmes and Watson falling back into their old relationship but as them moving forward based on the changes they'd negotiated.) Other missteps would have been if an outside party would have done it to him the way I was afraid Oscar had to Alfredo, because while the show was always clear on the importance of triggers and how dangerous they can be, it also empasizes free will, so had Holmes relapsed because the villain of the week forced him to, it would have been melodrama. Or if he'd done so because, say, Joan or another of his friends had been shot. (Which is why it's so important here that he knows Alfredo is saved before doing anything.)
The descent of the title happens step by step as we see Sherlock through the episode, ostensibly looking for the vanished Olivia, retracing the steps of his life, moving backwards. Not in all regards; the Holmes at the start of the show would not have unconditionally trusted in Watson, Gregson and Bell finding and rescueing Alfredo while he was with Oscar. But for the most part, it's pretty obvious: we start out with Sherlock at his most grown, hanging out with Alfredo in their new capacity as friends while also looking forward to meeting a possible new sponsor (we couldn't be further from the Sherlock who rubbished the entire program in the pilot and had to be dragged kicking and screaming to meetings). Then Alfredo vanishes and is replaced by that most unwelcome of reminders of the past, Oscar. In many other SH incarnations, Moriarty gets the job of being the villain who is Holmes' shadow self. In Elementary, we get several one episode characters doing that in the course of three seasons, and they usually have one or several traits carried to extremes, but in this season it's also his worry that Watson and Bell doing it - in their case, the social isolation. Oscar, though, is the character mirroring the needy addict part of Holmes, and it's important he's not a supervillain weaving complicated plots, or even a killer in the sense of deliberately committing murder. He's just someone who defines emotional closeness by sharing his own self destruction. So of course the guest star/opponent of this season's finale isn't Moriarty, or the British secret service. It had to be Oscar.
Three thirds into the episode on the road backwards, Sherlock, confronted with a character who's also a reminder of a more recent past (a powerful man with seemingly respectable facade preying on women, sometimes taking them captive and making the disappear - sounds familiar? Hello, Gruner avatar), uses physical violence to extort information from him, as he did mid s1 with Moran. As with Moran, the show is careful not to reward torture with actually helpful information. Sure, he finds out what he wanted to know, but it's all in vain, because Olivia has been dead for days, and Oscar always knew she was. It was never the point, and that was what Sherlock failed to see, because he still can't stand looking at Oscar and what Oscar reflects. And so, after getting the news about Alfredo, Sherlock goes further back even beyond the pilot, backwards into the tunnel, literally, drugs in hand. In the very last scene, he's up on the roof again, as he was at the start of the episode. The roof of the Brownstone usually signifies emotional connection on this show - with Alfredo at the start of this episode, with Joan at the end of the s1 finale when he tells he he named a bee after her, even with Mycroft, practising fencing during s2. But not this time. This time, we see him as we haven't seen him before in the present day. Sweating, eyes unfocused. (Until then, I hadn't been sure whether or not he'd taken it, despite the going back into the tunnel, which could have been another "almost" fake out.) In withdrawal. Joan stands next to him as she says his father has heard "what happened" and is on his way, but they're not looking at each other, and if he hears her, he doesn't show. He's back in the Avernus.
Speculation for season 4: not much. Obviously we'll finally meet the ominous Holmes Senior. (Insert British actor of choice speculation here.) Who, unless I'm forgetting something, is still the owner of the Brownstone and paying for all of this, so I could see him reacting to the relapse news by blaming Joan (whom he originally hired to keep Sherlock sober) and insiting she moves out, whereupon Sherlock will probably move with her, in which case the fact her old apartment is still there will come in handy for both of them. There's also the hint from the previous episode that someone wants Gregson gone, so that will probably come up again. And while Joan is over her post-Andrew idea of drawing back from people now, I hope she'll have some development in waiting that's not about having to deal with what Sherlock's relapse means for both of them. And yes, I still want Kitty to come back for an episode or two the way Moriarty did in s2.
In conclusion: see above.
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Interestingly, the show renewal wasn't announced until last week so either (a) the showrunners had some inside info that they were safe (b) shot an alternate ending that they would have switched off if the decision had gone differently or (c) were prepared to leave us ina really depressing place.
Fortunately we won't have to find out.
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The ending horrified me, but it didn't surprise me: well if darkly drawn episode. This show!
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