TV REVIEW: Elementary “One Watson, One Holmes”

By Cindy Jackson

Last night’s episode “One Watson, One Holmes” was an entertaining, if rather dense, affair.

Or maybe I just feel that way because throughout the first part of the episode I was very distracted by the fact that the character named Sucking Chest Wound (or “Mr. Chest Wound” if you’re Holmes) was not in fact being played by a time-traveling Dominic Monaghan. I kept waiting for him to solve the case by telling Sherlock it wasnt Penny’s boat.

Anyhoo, this week’s case begins with him being framed for murdering one of his fellow ‘Everyone’ members. (Remember those guys? The hacker organization who would embarrass the crap out of Sherlock in exchange for whatever information he required? The victim even had a picture of Holmes in a dress as his computer wallpaper, which is what prompted Detective Bell to call Sherlock in on the case.)

‘Everyone’ is in the midst of an internal power struggle and Mr. Chest Wound approaches Sherlock for assistance, which Sherlock declines. The suspect quickly offers a solid alibi of being with a woman at the time of the murder, although the woman originally denies she was with him because she is married. Her conscience later gets the better of her and she admits that he was with her when the murder happened. He is being framed.

The victim went by the internet persona Species.  Upon further investigation, Sherlock deduces that Species is actually two people. He can tell by the “fist” or typing style that there were two distinct “fists” evident in their posts. Another member of ‘Everyone’ named Tessie has the same “fist” and was never online at the same time as the second Species posts.  It seems likely that this person is to blame for the murder.

Joan tracks down the killer with a very clever plan involving the sale of a lunchbox that she doesn’t actually have. She knows by previous posts that Tessie is a collector of memorabilia from an 80’s tv cartoon. She posts that she found a lunchbox from the show and wants to give it to the first person to meet her at a coffee shop. She then tells all of the interested parties that she has already given the item away, but her brother may have another one. She gets their names, contact info, and even sneaks in some photos. (Well played, Joan!) She and Sherlock confront the man, named Brady Dietz, who is quickly scooped off the street by an FBI agent who gives him an alibi.

The FBI agent is using Dietz as an informant. She is hiding the murder weapon so she can continue to use him as her mole. Sherlock threatens to expose the fact that she is employing someone who is in the country illegally as her nanny. The next day, the murder weapon mysteriously appears at police HQ.

Some other notable points in tonight’s episode:

Joan’s wardrobe has been improving as of late, but tonight she appeared in a sweater-shirt with a weird picture of a dog on it. I really don’t even know what else to say on the subject, but just really needed to mention it.

Clyde the Turtle and Captain Gregson both made very small appearances in this episode. I was happy about one of these brief showings (Where has Clyde been, anyway??), and not so happy about the other. (Underutilizing Aidan Quinn is NOT cool.)

This edition of everyone’s favorite game “Annoyingly Rouse Sleeping Joan” was Holmes loudly beeping out “Wake up, Watson” in Morse code. Over. And over. And over.

Joan is the one having a bit of an emotional crisis this week.  She was unusually quiet, even withdrawn.  She was supposed to meet with some  girlfriends to help plan a bachelorette party and kept bailing on them. Sherlock expressed concern for her wellbeing by explaining how it negatively effects him. He later apologized and told her how much her friendship means to him.  She ends up going to meet up with her girlfriends at the end of the episode, after a sweet (and maybe slightly shippy?) exchange.

“Enjoy yourself, Watson.”

“I’ll try, Holmes.”