Elementary 1.17

[selenak]

With some delay due to a Berlin & Bamberg trip, I'm back to catching up on current tv.



It wasn't as good an episode as the two previous ones, plus there really should have been some wrap up on poor Mr. Leyden and his late chauffeur, but there was still a lot to enjoy. Points for originality to Leyden & the script for letting the client try to bribe Holmes via a rare bee. That was great. And not just funny, because while Holmes was definitely over the moon at the prospect of the bee he still, when not believing the client had a case, stood by his principles and took the bee only once he had actual reason to believe Leyden was on to something. He also was respectful and emphatic (in a Holmesian restrained way) to the tragedy of Leyden and the others who'd been poisoned (and the death of the chauffeur; btw, I did notice that Leyden when talking about the man mentioned having helped him and his partner to adopt a child, which I take it means they were a same-sex couple).

THe dry-cleaning subplot could have had an unpleasant aftertaste despite being a case for Watson to show her abilities IF not for for Holmes actually cleaning the fridge (unasked, that's important) and thus keeping his part of the housemates duties. Mind you, having now marathoned The Wire and watching Breaking Bad as I do, I'm not impressed with the money laundring enterprise being so careless. Skyler White, law upholding citizen until recently, does that stuff far better because the gas station she uses to launder Walt's money actually works. So did Stringer Bell's copy shop. Tsk. Anyway, all the Holmes & Watson domestic scenes were thus highly enjoyable.

The science sounds about as plausible as Rambaldi's inventions on Alias, but that par the course, and so I'm fine with that.

Comments

[king_touchy]

Yeah, the death of the chauffeur hurt, but I like it when a show makes me feel for the bit players. Still -- ow.

[selenak]

Mind you, I'd rather care and be a bit unsatisfied with the (lack of) resolution than be left indifferent by a story.

[weewarrior]

It may be my general feelings on the subject of genes being blamed for certain kinds of behaviour, but I felt there was some dark irony in the first doctor's research on the "warrior gene" becoming an excuse for her fiancé to give into his baser instincts. Combined with the way profiling was treated in the serial killer episode, the show seems to be rather critical of categorising/condemning people via diagnosis. I found that pretty interesting.

I thought the chauffeur was gay, too, and it was a tiny detail I really liked.

The dry cleaning subplot raised my hackles a bit for the same reason you describe, but admittedly, cleaning the fridge is probably much more unpleasant by comparison (especially if he didn't regularly clean it before).

[selenak]

Personally, having cleaned out fridges before, I'd rather do the dry cleaning walks. :)

Good point regarding the scepticism towards profiling and "gene" explanations by the show both!

[jesuswasbatman]

The science in that was at least vaguely plausible in a "heavy SF extrapolation of what we can do now" way, although I'm sceptical about whether a polycyclic aromatic structure could be tailored so accurately as to reliably hit a single specific genetic sequence.