Elementary: Dead Man's Switch (1x20)

I'm having a lot of feelings about Elementary right now. It's good. Much better than I expected. The acting is great, the character stuff is fantastic, and while the crime-of-the-week plots are rarely anything special, they aren't painfully bad either.

This week's crime is barely worth mentioning. There was a rapist, and a blackmailer, and a twist ending, an multiple suspects, an icky dead guy in a bathtub... all actually pretty standard fare for a crime procedural. There was nothing wrong with it, and there were enough things going on in the episode that I was never bored. I did like to see how this crime affected Sherlock, because he seemed to be particularly disgusted with the criminals due to the horrendous nature of their crime. This was very different than, say, BBC's version of the character, who looks at crimes as puzzles and nothing more. While of course I love Sherlock and I think it overall to be the superior show, I still enjoy this interpretation of a more compassionate Sherlock.

But now let's get in to the real meat of the episode.

Sherlock's one year sober anniversary is coming up, and he says he doesn't want his one year chip. Watson just thinks he's been an ass about it at first, as she offers to talk to him and he refuses. Alfredo, Sherlock's sponsor, is also pressing him for details about why he won't accept the chip. I really like Alfredo and I hope he remains an important character in the future. This is a show with a very small main cast, which I like, but sometimes I'm hungry for some variety, and Alfredo is interesting enough to give me that.

The whole thing culminates in one of the cutest moments this show has yet had. Sherlock confides in Joan about his real sober anniversary. Apparently, the day after he decided to sober up, he had a relapse. The scene where he admitted this was really touching, and it gave Johnny Lee Miller a chance to really stretch his acting muscles. Here's the quote in full: "I decided to stop using drugs, right? I decided! Me! And then 24 hours later... It sounds like a mere detail, but I'm a man of details and it matters to me. Now I know that I need to tell Alfredo but it's proving difficult, and it just doesn't seem right to tell him... before you." I declare this to be the best Elementary quote ever. It's ridiculously adorable that Sherlock wanted to tell Joan before anyone else. Seeing him vulnerable is something that this show deals with very well. Drug addicts are vulnerable, no matter how much of a genius they are. This is the first time I've seen a version of Sherlock Holmes that really dives into this addiction as a serious issue.

A few other things to note: I was sad that we didn't see much of Bell this week, but I suppose you can't have everything. I liked seeing Sherlock touch up some of his own tattoos. Apparently he's ambidextrous. He would be. There was a moment of not-so-subtle product placement for a Windows Tablet that made me chuckle.

I guess I'm being pretty brief about this episode, but it was a rather simple one to talk about, really. The crime wasn't anything special, but that was more than made up for by the subplot about Sherlock's drug abuse.

8/10