Elementary - Midseason Finale - Recap: Guilt Trip

Credit: CBS

So Detective Bell is back to work after his shooting, and he's still harboring resentment and bitterness over his circumstances, rebuking Joan (Lucy Liu) for her sympathy, only to soften almost immediately, in recognition of just how harshly his attitude has curved as a result of the shooting. He isn't sure if the damage to his hand will be permanent, and so he's been assigned to desk duty since he's incapable of carrying a firearm. However, he's learning to use his left hand, in an attempt to overcome the handicap of his dominant hand no longer being functional. In many ways, this relates to Sherlock's attempts to relate with other people more, an ongoing narrative thread that carries through the episode, as his guilt has begun to weigh on him more significantly, although he refuses to name it as guilt. Essentially, Bell and Sherlock are on parallel trajectories, one towards forgiveness and the other towards self-awareness. If they can both overcome their own stubbornness (regardless of whether or not it's justified), both men stand a better chance of salvaging some sort of working relationship, if not a friendship. But that's a tall order already, particularly given just how strenuously Sherlock's attentions are being taxed, as yet another case presents itself. (And what would Elementary be without Sherlock and Joan being pulled tumultuously into another murder investigation?)

A white collar crook is killed by an unknown assailant, who actually interrupts the man as he's about to commit suicide. When the authorities arrive at the scene, the man is dead with the word "THIEF" scrawled on the wall in his own blood. Sherlock quickly deduces the suicide attempt, and rationalizes that the killer likely wanted to keep him alive long enough to extract information of some sort from the victim. His suspicions lead him to the victim's chef, with whom Joan has a personal history. She had been the woman's sober companion during her time as an addict, and the parallels between Joan's relationship with this woman and her partnership with Sherlock are immediately evident, as both are evasive to Joan in surprisingly similar ways. When Joan discovers that the chef holds the key to identifying a potential suspect in the investigation, she tries to get her to confess, only for the woman to claim confidentiality between herself and Joan. She does this to prevent her past as an addict from coming to light and costing her custody of her son, and Joan understands somewhat, even if she'd prefer for her friend to see the greater good in coming forward.

Credit: CBS

However, Sherlock doesn't really care all that much about the woman's privacy, and whats to see the killer named and brought to justice. Though Joan is subjected to different brands of stubbornness from both Sherlock and her former friend, her reaction is the same for both: a keen sense of right and wrong. Although Joan pleads with her friend to reveal the identity of the suspect to police, and argues the moral rightness of doing it, she also passionately defends her friend against Sherlock, who just doesn't understand why someone who privilege a child's custody over the decision to take a dangerous criminal off the streets. It's a binary choice for Sherlock, because it's an unselfish choice for him -- and it'd be easy enough, to boot. He has no child to worry about, so he couldn't possibly understand why someone would keep a killer's identity secret just to retain custody. He only sees the black-and-white options of letting a killer go free vs. bringing a killer to justice. It's as if Sherlock is on a mission to redeem himself for the Bell shooting by doing double the work to make up for his absence on the field, as we're again reminded that Bell is an "exceptional" detective. But things only get more complicated for Holmes and Watson after a reporter who exposed the victim's criminal enterprise is found murdered in similar fashion.

Credit: CBS

Ultimately, the investigation leads back around, as it tends to on Elementary, to the start. Well, near the start, anyway. The evidence takes them back to head of a charity organization that the victim had invested in, and although everything initially appears to be on the up and up, it becomes apparent that the charity organization is merely a front for a money-laundering and embezzlement operation. Essentially, it is discovered that the head of the charity organization had the victim tortured to discover the location of the files exposing their fraud. The killer than finished the victim off once he had what he needed. However, the the head of the charity organization decided to tie up loose ends, bumping off the reporter and then killing the hitman himself. It might have actually been a perfect crime had anyone but Holmes caught the case, and I generally find that those tend to be the more interesting Elementary cases: the ones that only Holmes could have solved.

Credit: CBS

Of course, the reason for his tactical precision on the field is his dedication to remaining as unattached as possible away from the field. With "Internal Audit", Elementary finally brings back Alfredo (Ato Essandoh, of the regrettably cancelled Copper), Sherlock's sponsor, who wants him to give back to the community that helped him achieve and maintain his sobriety. Alfredo comes to him with the idea of taking on a recovering addict and serving as their sponsor, and Sherlock is immediately hesitant to the proposal, attempting to use his urgent schedule as an excuse to shirk responsibility, an arc that parallels his desperation to shirk responsibility for Bell's shooting. However, as the episode rolls on and Sherlock begins to understand his profound level of remove from his ability to accept responsibility, he comes around on the idea of sponsoring Alfredo's friend, a young man named Randy who is just three months sober. Alfredo's plan -- to get Sherlock to accept responsibility in his life by having responsibility for someone else's -- pays off, as he agrees to sponsor Randy but only in the most skeletal way possible: he'll neither be Randy's therapist nor his friend, but rather an instrument in his recovery.

Randy apparently has no problem with this, rationalizing that since Sherlock has been sober for a long time now, all he cares about is Sherlock's methods for staying that way so he can replicate them in his own life. It sort of shows that, despite his abrasiveness, Sherlock is occasionally the source of idealization, as the people in his orbit tend to see him as this superhuman (if not alien) presence worthy of their respect and begrudging admiration. And I feel that's a really cool place to take the character that doesn't marginalize his potency in the overarching narrative, as Sherlock is now not only essential to the police, but he's essential to the recovery of a man whose plight is not too far removed from what had been his plight a year ago (not long before we first met him in the Elementary pilot). Though Sherlock doesn't necessarily find piece, he does find some measure of self-awareness, as does Bell, who is offered a job with a mysterious division of the police force, which could be an intriguing storyline for down the road. As for now, it's simply square in the larger tapestry of season 2. In brief, I can't wait to see how it all plays out. At the very least, Elementary has the potential to be a far more interesting serialized procedural than most. It kind of reminds me of Numb3rs in how it deftly mixes character-centric storylines with a procedural focus.

Credit: CBS

"Internal Audit" is a solid episode, packed with continually excellent work from Jonny Lee Miller, Lucy Liu, and particularly Jon Michael Hill, who continues to do outstandingly subtle, nuanced work with what little he's given. This isn't the best Elementary of season 2 so far, but it still manages to be a great way to close out the first half of the season. Elementary has been on a roll this season, and it doesn't look to be slowing down anytime soon.