It’s a return of the reoccurring characters this week on Elementary! We finally spend time with Alfredo for the first time since his kidnapping, Captain Gregson and Detective Bell get a shot at doing police work, and everyone engages in banter.
Spoilers? Spoilers. So many spoilers.
The best moment of the latest Elementary had absolutely nothing to do with the plot, but was a quick mid-investigation aside. Sherlock Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller) walks up with a pair of bicycles mid investigation, prompting the following exchange with Detective Marcus Bell (Jon Michael Hill):
Bell: What are you doing?
Holmes: These were chained to a lamppost down the street.
Bell: And you figured you’d steal them?
Holmes: I’m re-stealing them.I peruse the crime blotter when I’m bored, and these were stolen in Chelsea last month.
Bell: And you’re just gonna walk around with ‘em for the rest of the day?
Holmes: Oh, don’t be ridiculous. This one’s for you.
Detective Bell does all the real work.
The case-of-the-week is chasing down the murderer of an archeologist who was digging around abandoned landfills for lost video games. Unravelling the mystery breaks tradition by not involving any crazy schemes or convoluted motivations that really requires the brainiac-duo of Sherlock and Joan Watson (Lucy Liu) to figure out. Instead, it’s a rather straightforward affair of slowly working through a list of suspects and eliminating them. Really, the coolest thing about the mystery was getting a fictionalized version of Atari’s mass burial of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
Holmes: Your help has just resulted in that man’s murder. Again.
Watson: Okay, first of all, he wasn’t murdered— he was zapped into another dimension. And second of all, he still has two lives left.
Holmes: Yes, yes, of course, that’s what happens in real life. If you die, you get two more chances. Somewhere, two more Eddie Rosses have just resumed digging their hole.
Never come between a girl of the ‘80s and her 8-bit console games.
Of course Joan kicked ass as soon as Sherlock relinquished the controller to her, leaving him to sulkily ice his sore thumb. Other than that, that it was a bit strange to get so far into the technicalities of toxic waste cleanup, yet also oddly satisfying to have the case rely on such mundane police work instead of something convoluted. At its conclusion, Elementary continues to be satisfying in its choice of villain. The murderer wasn’t an ex-girlfriend or a game-obsessed online geek, but instead a corporate executive with abhorrent ethics.
It’s all about donuts with Alfredo.
But the subplot is where this episode really shines. We finally get to see Alfredo Llamosa (Ato Essandoh) for the first time since Sherlock’s ex-dealer kidnapped his former sponsor at the end of last season. The two struggle to redefine their friendship in the face of Sherlock’s relapse, only to bond anew over Alfredo’s renewed struggles with sobriety. It’s a painful venture into dealing with the stark reality of addiction, recovery, and the ongoing nature of both. That their friendship now revolves around cars and donuts just makes the story uniquely theirs:
Holmes: That’s not breakfast.
Llamosa: Maybe not where you’re from. Try one.
Holmes: I did. Two years, three months, 27 days ago, when you first brought a box to a meeting. You do realize pink coconuts do not occur in nature.
Llamosa: Everyone else loves these donuts.
Holmes: Addicts and alcoholics often crave sugar. You put frosted rocks in a gingham box, they’d eat those, too.
Llamosa: That’s why you switched meetings? Get better snacks?
Yet again, Watson is the key to chasing down a hidden connection. What exactly does Sherlock bring to this relationship?
Will our beloved Alfredo find his equilibrium again, or is he destined to attend multiple support meetings a day for the foreseeable future? Will Everyone catch wind of Sherlock’s distaste for pink-frosted donuts and demand he consume one as payment for one of their favours? Did Gregson flat-out take pity on Watson and Holmes by throwing them such a straightforward case? What mischief is Morland up to, and when will Detective Gina Cortes reappear to stir up more trouble?
Favorite quotes this week:
Llamosa: Well, if I’d have known hugs were on the table, I’d have left Chicago a lot sooner.
Bell: So the owner of the murder weapon is a left-handed archaeologist. How many of those can there be in New York City?
Holmes: Put the word “vintage” in front of glass bottles, cameras, trading cards— you can turn a tidy profit.
Holmes: A company opts not to release a bad product, that’s one thing. They decide this product is so colossally bad it has to bury the whole inventory, that’s the stuff of legend.
Holmes: If the Holy Grail were a plodding, pixelated failure banished to a dump.
Holmes: It would seem my week has a theme of middle-aged men clinging to pubescent glory via collectibles.
Holmes: In the same way that many drug users only relate to one another because they use drugs, the thing that Alfredo and I did together was not use them, so... It is a conundrum, to be sure.
Holmes: According to my research, Swords of Saturn was one of the best games of the era. If Nottingham Knights was one of the worst, then consignment to a landfill was too kind a fate.
Holmes: We suspect that your career as a composer of ear-splitting digital music peaked in the early ‘80s.
Clyde status: Presumably absconded by Ms. Hudson for an adventure in locations unknown.
Elementary airs on Thursday nights on CBS. All images credit CBS.
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