Elementary - Recap: An Indulgence in Narcissism

It's not that I constantly want him to be going through emotional hardships, but rather, I'm just a sucker for Miller's portrayal of a Sherlock who isn't sure how to handle how deeply he feels. As he says tonight of the death of a close friend, "It bothers me that it bothers me." That's Sherlock, in a nutshell. Anything he can't distill down to easily rationalized facts and figures becomes something he just can't handle. Not without the requisite emotional turmoil and stern talking-to from Joan (Lucy Liu). "No Lack of Void" is an episode that succeeds on the merits of its emotional story, and the strong performances that sit comfortably at the center of it, since the case of the week is a largely listless affair with a conclusion made all too obvious by the casting of Raising Hope star Garret Dillahunt. You don't cast someone as recognizable as Garret Dillahunt if he's not your killer, and so it is here. But even ignoring that casting spoiler, "No Lack of Void" is good far more often than it's not.

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The case centers on the death of a pickpocket, who keels over dead in the police station as the result of anthrax poisoning. This isolated incident turns into a full-on panic, as Captain Gregson (Aidan Quinn) fears we could be looking at an outbreak. And so he puts Joan with Bell (Jon Michael Hill) to work on the case, since Sherlock is partly absent dealing with personal matters (which we'll get to a bit later). While he does eventually return to help at key moments of the case, this is an instance of Joan getting to flex her deductive muscles while Bell is allowed more screentime to be something other than just a handsome slab. And it mostly works, although I frequently found myself wishing the pairing had been in service of a more interesting case. The crux of it all centers on a man named Eugene MacIntosh, a member of a radical, anti-establishment organization that has dabbled in ecoterrorism. The detectives basically spend the entire episode trying to track him down, even going so far as to try and fail to talk Eugene's brother, Bart (Garret Dillahunt), into revealing his whereabouts. They continue with their investigation, with Sherlock even finding some possible anthrax distributors (before discovering their boxes contained little more than a crude mixture of baby powder). The team seems at a loss until they receive a call from Gregson revealing that Eugene has been killed in a confrontation with his brother.

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According to Bart's testimony, Eugene had been trying to poison the cattle on the family ranch, and Bart stopped him in defense of his herd. Seems like an innocent enough excuse until Joan lets slip that Bart's ranch is only being kept afloat by government subsidies, since he's broke beyond all recovery, and has been ever since he inherited the farm from his late father. It all leads up to a by-the-numbers conclusion, in which we learn that the farm was technically bequeathed to both Bart and Eugene. From there, it doesn't take long to deduce that Bart and Eugene had concocted a plan to use the anthrax to poison the cattle and cash-in on the valuable insurance policy. And it takes even less of a leap to deduce that Bart killed Eugene so he wouldn't have to share half of the payout. In essence, as with any crime, it would have been the perfect crime if he just hadn't gotten caught. Honestly, this is far from the worst case they've done this season, and Dillahunt is good with what he's given, although one would think if the show was to cast someone like Dillahunt, he'd be given more of a showcase for his unique talents, as opposed to being given a role just about anyone could have done. But even while I found the case dull, I liked Dillahunt, so there's that. Yet while the case involved cows, that wasn't where the real meat of the story was (I know, I know, sorry)...

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Alistair, one of Sherlock's dearest friends (and the man who posed as Sherlock's father in season one), has passed away. And the news hits Sherlock hard, particularly once he learns that Alistair, a brilliant actor in every respect, was hard at work on an upcoming play and was the very picture of health just days before his death. This leads Sherlock to suspect foul play, and he goes as far as to insinuate Alistair's estranged song, Jeremy, had something to do with it. But it's Jeremy who reveals the truth: his father wasn't murdered, he died of a heroin overdose. As it turns out, the man who had been instrumental in helping Sherlock get on the road to recovery, and who had 30 years of sobriety under his belt, had relapsed. And the relapse was enough to kill him. It's word of this relapse that has Sherlock absolutely devastated. If it had been murder, it would have been something Sherlock could solve, and there would have been a person he could blame for the death. But this? He doesn't want to be mad at Alistair, especially because he doesn't know what his trigger was that caused him to relapse. And so he internalizes his sense of guilt and failure, essentially making it all about himself, because it's the only way he knows how to cope. He's the only person he can actually blame, since the only other person he might blame is already dead.

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Sherlock admits this is "an indulgence in narcissism" after Joan takes him to task for his failure to recognize that it's not about blame or fault. These things just happen. People relapse, and it shouldn't affect your own sobriety. Hell, Sherlock is more than allowed to be sad about Alistair's death. But his method of coping is to cause visions of Alistair to appear out of thin air. It's kind of a hokey gimmick at first, although it actually allows Roger Rees to appear onscreen (since he dies offscreen and hasn't been seen in well over a season). And it's through his appearances that we get the episode's most poignant moments, as Sherlock appears at his friend's grave and apologizes to his "ghost" for making it all about himself. Alistair, for his part, apologizes for letting Sherlock down, but Holmes responds with what Watson helped him to recognize, that it isn't about who let down whom. People have their troubles, and even though they might try their best, no one is invincible. It's a beautiful scene that really makes me wish Alistair had been a recurring character, and not just a one-off they decided to bring back just to kill off. Hearing Sherlock tell Alistair he loved him would have been far more resonant if we knew Alistair a little more than not-at-all. But even then, the feeling and depth of Miller's performance, and his onscreen chemistry with the generally terrific Rees, made this all worthwhile.

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"No Lack of Void" suffers from the rote nature of its case, but ascends to something far more substantial with its character-centric subplot. Elementary has a great grasp of the Sherlock Holmes character, and while it might be minor blasphemy, I think that, of the two Holmes shows on the air, this show has the better Sherlock. There's just something about Miller's performance that makes Sherlock feel like a more fully-formed, lived-in human being with flaws and honor and all that complexity. This was far from the best of the season, but it still managed to be engaging nonetheless.