TV REVIEW: Elementary “The View From Olympus”

By Cindy Jackson

After a few weeks of no new episodes, this week’s was well worth the wait.

How can you not love an opening conversation centered around something Joan refers to as Sherlock’s “sex blanket?” In a nutshell, Sherlock is having a few days long tryst with someone with whom he occasionally consults. Joan will be staying in a hotel.

Our crime of the week occurs when a man is stopped in his car and gets rear ended. He gets out of his vehicle as the car that hit his backs up. He walks between the cars to assess the damage. (Um, dude? Don’t EVER walk between the cars.) The vehicle, which looks like a cab, speeds up and crushes the guy’s legs in between the two cars. He falls, obviously, and the taxi speeds up again to finish the job.

At the crime scene, Detective Bell explains the victim’s name is Galen Barrow, and he worked for a ride-sharing company called Zooss. Bell contacts a cab company that reported a vehicle with front end damage, but it is not the vehicle they are looking for. Sherlock deduces it was a retired cab that was used to cover up the real motive for the murder.

Joan arrives at the brownstone and finds Sherlock in her office in the basement. She accuses him of avoiding his houseguest. He protests at first, but then admits that the woman, Agatha, has asked him to be the father of her child. It would be a donation only, no involvement in the child’s life is requested.  While in hiding/not hiding/totally hiding, Sherlock discovers that Galen is also an internet journalist and blogger.

Bell calls and lets Sherlock know that he has researched recent sales of retired cabs and come up with something. A registered sex offender bought one a week ago and tried to run from the cops when confronted. When questioned, he says he was being blackmailed and was forced to commit the murder to avoid being reported for activities which would violate his perole.

Sherlock questions Galen’s boss, who says she didn’t know him well, but she can’t imagine anyone wanting to hurt him.

Sherlock is distracted by his proposition from Agatha. He sarcastically wonders out loud to Joan whether it was his optimism or his stellar upbringing that made him a viable candidate. He can’t magine who would want him to father a child. Until he can. He also uses the word “spermatozoa” which I mention only because it JLM’s delivery was hilarious.

Galen’s boss comes to the station to give some additional information after she hears that Galen’s killer was being blackmailed. It turns out she was being blackmailed as well. Someone had pictures of Galen and her and she was having an affair with him.

Sherlock realizes that both blackmail victims used Zooss. The tracking devices in the vehicles could have given a Zooss employee all the info they would have needed to blackmail both people.

Holmes confronts Agatha. He insists his father was behind her request. She admits the idea was originally his father’s, but she also said that she specifically wants him to be her baby’s father. She says that he is the most remarkable man she’s ever known and that he is briliant, strong, and makes his living helping others. She suggests it may be selfish of him to not want to pass his gifts along.

Meanwhile, we learn that Patrick Kemp worked for Zooss, and was murdered about a month ago.  His sister comes in to give some info. Holmes and Watson go to Patrick’s apartnent to investigate. They find out that he was a gambler. He likely was the blackmailer, but that means they still don’t know who wanted  Galen dead.

Sherlock reviews all the Zooss footage, looking for another reason Galen may have been murdered. He zeroes in in a woman who is being stalked. Turns out someone at Zooss was using their technology to track her every move. In order to ensure Galen did not find out what was going on, he had to be stopped. Sherlock gets the description that the woman gave police, and it matches a Zooss employee who was in on the initial meeting with Holmes.

The episode ends with two beautifully done scenes with Jonny Lee Miller. Sherlock tells Agatha that he cannot honor her request.  He says that all the reasons she wanted him to do it were the very reasons he could not. He says that he does what he does because not doing it hurts. Not because he is a good person, but because it focuses him and helps with the pain of, well, pretty much everything. He says he cannot in good conscience pass those things along to another person.

In the final scene Holmes tells Joan all of this and she offers him ice cream to comfort him. He declines, but then adorably asks her “What kind of ice cream?”

Humor (bonus for Sherlock’s use of the outdated sexual terms “couch quail” and “fetch mettle”), a good amount of heartstring pulling, and a really interesting case – just an all around great episode.