Elementary: A Burden of Blood (4x08)

I liked this one. It was fairly basic, pretty straight-forward, and had a subplot featuring Bell. I'm always complaining about the lack of Gregson and Bell, so I was pretty happy. Let's take a look.

Cons:

Despite what I just said, I wish that the Bell subplot could have had potential for further expansion. Basically, he's studying with Joan and later with Sherlock for the sergeant's exam, but he doesn't really want the promotion. He just wants the extra money to help his mother, who lost her job. Sherlock and Joan manage to find a way to get his mother the money before the episode is up, so there's some missed potential there for further development. I hope I'm wrong, and that we see Bell continue to grapple with the possibility of promotion, and what it would mean for his career.

Pros:

On the flip side, Bell's case had a lot of humor and fun character moments in it, which was a good counterpoint to the very dark case of the week. I loved the beginning moment, when Sherlock sees that Bell and Joan were together at the house, and believes they have been sleeping together. He's very tense about the whole thing, seemingly protective of both Bell and Joan's feelings. I loved the fact that he got sort of jealous and weird, but not because he wants Joan himself, at least not in that way. There's always going to be some tension if Sherlock senses Joan getting close to somebody other than himself. It was a fun moment and they didn't push it too far. Sherlock's uppity distress was a joy to watch, especially because of Miller's expert performance.

And then once Sherlock realizes that Bell is studying for a test, he's innocently enthusiastic about helping him out. It was sweet to see Sherlock try hard to help his friend, and then once he realized that Bell's motivations were all monetary, he found another way to help, without injuring Bell's pride. Joan and Sherlock give Bell a case study to help him practice for the test. He finds the missing witness and it turns out there was a $40,000 bounty for the information. The money goes straight to Bell's mom, and the problem is solved. It was sweet to see how much Sherlock and Joan were willing to do for Bell.

Then there's the main case, which was not exactly difficult to crack, but which was very dark and intriguing. A woman is murdered in her car, and the sounds of her murder are recorded on her answering machine, as she was leaving a message for her husband at the time. In the message, she says "No!" over and over again. As the case progresses, the main suspects start out as her husband, and her secret lover. It turns out that her husband is sterile, and that the victim had just discovered that she was pregnant with her lover's child. The obvious motive is that one of these two men didn't want the pregnancy discovered. Either her husband killed her in anger, or her lover killed her to prevent the truth coming out.

In the end, it turns out that the pregnancy was the motivation, but the murderer wasn't either of the two initial suspects. The victim was the daughter of a convicted serial killer. She and her brother had changed their names and done everything they could to escape their old lives. They agreed to never have children, so they wouldn't pass on the murderous genes of their terrible father. The victim's brother, who goes by Craig, is the murderer - he didn't want his sister having the baby. When the victim was calling out "no!" in the recorded voicemail, she was actually saying her nickname for her brother, who used to be named "Nolan."

From the very beginning, Sherlock and Joan think the motive for the murder will be the pregnancy. It's fairly obvious that the murderer won't be the husband or the lover, and the truth about the brother isn't difficult to figure out either. But you know what? That's okay. I don't always need to be totally shocked and amazed by the twist in a procedural. Motives for murders are usually a lot more straight-forward. I appreciated the simple A to B plot thread, and how the twists seemed to fall naturally into place. The serial killer, the identity of the secret lover, the brother's true name... each new piece of information flowed simply and led to a solid conclusion.

I think that's all I've got for this one. In some ways this was a middling sort of episode. I wasn't totally blown away or anything. But I enjoyed watching it. Hopefully next week the A-plot can make an appearance?

8/10