Elementary - Season 2 Finale 2014 - Recap: The Brotherhood Without Banners

The episode centers around the fevered attempts by Sherlock (Jonny Lee Miller) and Joan (Lucy Liu) to clear Mycroft (Rhys Ifans) of the frame-up job that someone has perpetrated against him, in which he's being framed for treason by being made to look like the mole within MI6. As cases go, this has far more narrative momentum than most, since the stakes are higher than the simple question of whether a bad guy gets away with murder or not. Rather, this is a case in which not only is Mycroft's life on the line, but also Sherlock's chance at redemption for a lifetime of neglectful brotherhood. If anything, they're two brothers who've gone through life not exactly advertising their connection to one another, or proclaiming it on a figurative banner for the world to see. But there's still an underlying emotional connection that binds them together, even while their animus towards one another remains alive and well. Upon learning from Joan that Mycroft partnered up with MI6 solely to keep him out of jail, Sherlock confronts Mycroft and offers the closest thing to an apology that he can manage to muster: a promise that "You should know, I'm going to fix this. Every bit of it." It's a stirring declaration of purpose, as Sherlock finds it difficult to bridge the gap towards making proper amends with Mycroft, so he replaces brotherly affection with something he actually does know how to do -- solve cases.

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This is all he can offer Mycroft, with no guarantee that it will be enough, as their relationship has always been damaged. In fact, they're two guys who are far more like one another in their damage than they even recognize -- Sherlock is compensating for all his mistakes during his long drug abuse, while Mycroft has always tried to, as he explains to Joan, prove both Sherlock and his father wrong in their assessment of his intelligence and usefulness. It's great stuff that Miller and Ifans bring to life in devastating fashion, but it's also a poignant story that throws light on the fractured bond between Sherlock and Joan, as their partnership is at a crossroads of sorts. You wouldn't think a grown man would react so badly to his best friend deciding to move out, but Sherlock truly does seem to view this as a betrayal of sorts, a violation of the investigative process they worked so hard to cultivate as a team. And while this issue does come to the fore at various points throughout the episode, it's frequently forced to take a back seat to the pressing matter of discovering the true mole's identity.

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The plot sees Sherlock agreeing to work for MI6 temporarily in order to search for the mole from the inside; meanwhile, Mycroft is to go into hiding until the case can be solved. So he and Joan embark on a search for the mole, a circuitous investigation that brings them to a bookstore owned by a man named Julian Afkhami (Nasser Faris), whom we learn is working with the MI6 mole, and may have been responsible for a murder of his own: an Iranian national was beaten to death in New York in what is theorized to have been a politically-motivated assassination. While investigating the bookstore, Sherlock gets the intel he needs to be able to deduce that the invisible tattoos on West were dates, times, and locations for phone calls between Afkhami and the mole. And, in a twist of sorts, Mycroft is revealed to have been at each one of those locations on the specified dates and times, meaning that the mole specifically targeted him because Mycroft's presence at those locations coincided with his own. This leaves only one real suspect: Mycroft's handler, Sherrington (Ralph Brown).

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From there, it doesn't take too long before Sherlock cracks the case regarding Afkhami: the Iranian national that was murdered was stoned to death in revenge for an affair the murdered man was having with Afkhami's wife. Afkhami's wife handed over crucial evidence against her husband as payback for having murdered her lover, and with Afkhami facing no other options, he decides to make a deal and spill the beans on everything he knows about Sherrington and his mole activities. It's an effective scene that unites the main ensemble all in one big climactic moment, as Sherlock and Joan badger Afkhami with the irrefutable evidence of his guilt, while both Bell (Jon Michael Hill) and Gregson (Aidan Quinn) make it clear to the killer that the only way this ends well for him is if he gives up the goods on Sherrington. And just like that, Sherlock is on his way to delivering on his promise to Mycroft to fix this...except that Mycroft kind of screws things up.

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Sherrington turns up dead after a confrontation Mycroft with in which Sherrington threatened to reveal a letter to Les Milieu that would expose Mycroft's affiliation with MI6, bringing about the deaths of Sherlock, Joan, and anyone else he might care about. Yet even after the body turns up in the morgue, Sherlock is insistent that Mycroft is not a killer. And he's proven right. Although he had a hand in it, Mycroft didn't actually pull the trigger: after the confrontation with Sherrington, Mycroft went to the NSA and made a deal with them to expose Les Milieu secrets, in exchange for using their own contacts within Les Milieu to "burn" Sherrington. By exposing Sherrington as untrustworthy, the NSA has forced Les Milieu's hand, and they retaliate by making an example of Sherrington by murdering him in cold blood. The case is all wrapped up in a tidy bow, except for the realization that Mycroft must now go into hiding, possibly forever. What follows is a crushing farewell, as Mycroft apologizes to Joan for all that he's done, and then embraces Sherlock, telling him, "I love you brother. This past year has been a gift."

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Sherlock and Mycroft's relationship is one of the most nuanced in the series, and both Miller and Ifans are pros at imbuing it with a layered quality, the notion of a more complicated history we've neither seen nor heard of. And it helps a lot here, particularly when Mycroft embraces Sherlock at the end and declares his love for his brother: it's a simple gesture, but one that's fraught with all sorts of meanings we can't comprehend, because their relationship is subtext every bit as much as it is text. Sherlock has trouble processing his emotions, but this expression of affection doesn't appear to be any easier for Mycroft. It's just that he's willing to try to meet Sherlock halfway, since he's always held his brother in esteem. That's beautiful, and every bit as resonant, if not more so, than Sherlock's situation with Joan. In trying to get her to agree to stay in the brownstone with him, he claims to have changed and to have grown as a person, such that Joan won't have to leave.

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However, if Sherlock really had grown at all, he wouldn't have asked her to stay at all. He would have understood just how badly she needs to leave. As Joan herself explains, she needs to find a way to exist independently of Sherlock, since her life right now is all about getting caught in his vortex. It's as if Sherlock has his own inescapable, gravitational pull that prevents anyone in his orbit from being their own person. The only way she can be her own woman is if she achieves some level of separation from Sherlock, as he's very much like a drug himself, in that he leads a very exciting lifestyle, and is a very engrossing person to be around. It would be easy for Joan to lose sight of why she ever would want to leave the brownstone unless she remained fully committed to her decision. In some ways, it strikes me as selfish that Sherlock, at the end of the episode, having lost both Mycroft and Joan (except not really, because it's not as if Joan isn't going to be working with him anymore), approaches Sherrington's handler Sir Walter (Jim Norton)...and accepts his job offer to work with British Intelligence. And just like that, Sherlock effectively ends a partnership that wasn't going to be ending anyway -- and all because he can't accept change. In many ways, "The Grand Experiment" is about evolution, except Sherlock is the only one of the principal trio to fail to evolve: Mycroft is able to let go of the animosity against Sherlock and his father, and make his own choices as his own man; Joan, meanwhile, finally allows herself to exist independent of her partnership with Sherlock, and seeks to regain her own sense of personhood. Sherlock, however, obstinately rebels against change, except when acting dramatically in response to not getting what he wants, as in his decision to join MI6. Naturally, this won't be the end of Sherlock and Joan's partnership, since we wouldn't have a show otherwise, but it should be interesting to see how this failure to evolve changes the dynamic between Sherlock and the people in his life.

"The Grand Experiment" is a solid finale that manages to tell a better character story than a procedural one. But that's perfectly okay, since Elementary still manages to be one of the most affecting crime dramas on CBS, with characters as nuanced and complicated as the cases they investigate. And on some procedurals, you don't always get that kind of terrific balance. Long live Elementary.