Being Geek Chic is a blog for stylish geeks, sophisticated nerds and people who enjoy the musings of a complete dork. Join us as we dream of driving the TARDIS, cuddle with our eBooks and test out an iPad sleeve. It's written by Elizabeth Giorgi and a team of brilliant lady nerds. Meet the team.
When we were first introduced to this Sherlock Holmes and Watson months ago, we knew two distinct things about the show: the first and most obvious being that Watson was a woman. The second was that Sherlock was a recovering opiate addict. These two choices could have meant nothing to the series in the long run, but it was clearer than ever this week that these changes are the very things that make Elementary worth watching.
Jonny Lee Miller was exceptional in his own way and that’s no easy task with so many prominent variations of the famous detective available for comparison. I appreciated the way he strove for balance between the pain and struggle of addiction with the electricity of possessing such a fire-cracking mind. Liu brought a sense of presence to the show, which allowed Holmes to be more vulnerable, more raw. In the end, I’m just so darned pleased this adaption gave us a male/female friendship that didn’t devolve into petty flirtations and focused instead on the power of helping someone who can’t always help themselves.
Spoilers from here on out.
This is spoilery right from the get go. You’ve been warned.
Moriarty may have finally revealed himself last week, but he’s still just a disembodied voice on a cell phone. So no Moriarty face yet, but we did finally see one very important face: Irene Adler’s.
There’s quite a few things in this week’s episode that are classic Doyle references. When describing Adler to Watson, Holmes refers to her as “THE woman” and even goes so far as to lift a line straight out of Scandal in Bohemia. He says, “she predominates the whole of her gender,” at one point. The original text used “sex” in place of “gender,” but this is CBS.
The Moriarty mystery finally picks back up where it left off this week and with it came momentum, excitement and one of the best scenes in Elementary yet.
This Moriarty mystery episode is all spoilers from here on out, my fellow Sherlockians.
We begin this week when we meet a man with a pacemaker who’s being tortured by a man with a mysterious piece of software that seems to simulate a heart attack. After using this dangerous tool to convince the rich fellow to vote to remove the historical marker designation for a former speakeasy, our newest murderer kills the guy with his space bar. That’s some serious programming power.
But the real action begins when Sebastian Moran beckons Sherlock to the prison to alert him to a heart attack that he believes to be a murder. Moran, for those that can’t remember, is the Arsenal fan who Sherlock had mistaken for Moriarty earlier in the season. A reluctant Sherlock follows up for one reason: to find Moriarty.
You know what I really wish they would try on Elementary? Sherlock Holmes being happy. Sure, he has these momentary (and by momentary, I mean two seconds) instances of pleasure whilst solving a case, but the fact is that Elementary’s Sherlock Holmes is a giant grumpy pants.
It’s part of the whole recovering drug addict shtick, but it adds a severity to the show that starts to make it all seem very blase. After 20 episodes, all I want to see is Holmes and Watson engaging in a big freaking laugh.
If you haven’t seen episode 20 of Elementary, stop reading, because spoilers.
I have a new idea for a movie.
Sherlock Holmes, Joan Watson and Pam the snowplow driver go on a cross-country adventure solving crime and rescuing stranded motorists. A buddy cop comedy in blaze orange. You know you would see that.
When plows are out, you know it’s bad news. The weather creates the perfect setting for stealing heaps and heaps of cash in this episode of Elementary. It’s an episode filled with misdirections and tricky accents and in the end it’s satisfying, but I really couldn’t be bothered with any of that mystery solving nonsense, because a lady with the last name Hudson makes an appearance this week and we really need to talk about it.
Spoilers from here on out, folks.
Read the rest of my review over on the Baker Street Babes website.
Editor’s note: Starting this week, I’m writing my Elementary reviews for the Baker Street Babes website. You’ll still find links to the review in a timely manner on this site each week. Thanks!
This week’s episode of Elementary begins with a flashback and a question: What kind of name is Sherlock?
Turns out that our case this week, as well as the case of Sherlock Holmes’ psyche, are evidence of what can happen when you put your trust in the hands of a stranger. An unsuspecting woman takes a bouquet of roses from one hooded man while another unsuspecting woman takes on the case of a British client with a love of opiates. Unfortunately, only one of these women are going to survive the experience.
