Elementary: Up to Heaven and Down to Hell (4x15)

This was a very solid episode in a number of respects. I liked the case of the week, and I liked the B-plot as well. It wasn't outstandingly perfect or over-the-top wonderful, of course, but I enjoyed it quite a bit.

Cons:

The subplot this week, which I really loved, featured a lot of emotional stakes for Gregson. Joan was there as the supportive friend. The more I think about it, the more I realize that Joan is always sidelined in favor of emotional stakes for other characters. Usually Sherlock, of course. I wish we could have some stuff that genuinely focused on her character, instead of focusing on her role as a supportive friend for everybody else.

The main plot featured a victim who fell to her death and crushed a man underneath her. The case takes several twists and turns from there, of course, but the thing that bothers me is that the second inadvertent victim, the young man who was crushed by the intended target, is never really brought up again. At first I though we were going to discover some twist about him, that maybe he was somehow connected the whole time. But... nope. Honestly, the whole thing was completely unnecessary. The actual intended victim could have just as easily fallen to her death without taking out an innocent civilian. The story wouldn't have changed at all. So why include that?

Pros:

I did like the twists and turns in the main plot, though. Essentially, we discover that the whole murder was due to a dispute over air rights - i.e., how tall a certain building is allowed to become. Multiple bodies and twisted theories later, Joan and Sherlock realize that the guilty party is the architect who came up with a cool new building design. He had realized that his building wouldn't be structurally sound at the height he had originally conceived of, due to an error in his math. He got the air rights battle tied up so that he'd be forced to shorten the height of the building and save face.

Air rights are one of those fascinating things that ordinary people never think about. How wild is it to think that you own the air above your building and can sell it to somebody else? I liked the way that everybody just accepted that something so abstract could be motive for murder. Corruption runs deep.

The other interesting thing about the main case here is that Joan and Sherlock actually have to team up with an old adversary, William Hull, a real estate mogul whose corruption is distasteful, to say the least. He's not the murderer, though, and in the end they need him to bring the truth to light. I liked the idea of Sherlock in particular coming to grips with a man whose morals he finds reprehensible. The idea could have been pushed even further, but I liked what we got all the same.

The subplot, as is usually the case, is where we got most of the meat. Joan runs in to Gregson with his date, a woman named Paige. Gregson behaves oddly, introducing Joan as a doctor and not mentioning that they work together. Gregson later tells Joan that Paige used to be a cop, but was let go due to a corrupt mistake she made years ago. Paige is paranoid that if anybody found out that they were seeing each other, it would hurt Gregson's career. Later, Gregson tells Paige who Joan really is, and Paige breaks up with Gregson "for his own good." Joan goes to see Paige and tell her that she'll keep her mouth shut, but she realizes that something else must be going on. She encourages Paige to tell Gregson the truth. Paige does - apparently, she's been diagnosed with MS. She and Gregson have not been together all that long, and she doesn't want to subject him to the horrors to come. Gregson talks with Joan, wanting to prepare himself for all that will come. He loves Paige, and wants to make it work. As the episode ends, we see Gregson going to talk to Paige and tell her that he's sticking around.

So, on the one hand, this plot thread would have packed an even bigger punch if we had already known Paige. Suddenly, out of the blue, we're told that Gregson has been seeing somebody for the past year. Couldn't that have been mentioned before? But in all honesty, this plot thread still worked really well. I'm glad we got something Gregson-centric for once. It was also sweet to see Joan stepping up and being a good friend to the captain. Joan and Gregson seem like such kindred spirits, in a way. We don't see a lot of development of their friendship, but they have a deep and consistent understanding of one another, mostly because they understand Sherlock's value as a person.

Here, we saw them in a plot thread totally separate from Sherlock. I don't think Sherlock's name was so much as mentioned between them. It gave us a chance to re-examine Joan's identity as a doctor, and as a compassionate person who wants to help the people she cares about. I got a little misty-eyed when Gregson and Joan hugged at the end of the episode, and when she told him that his friends would be there for him through the difficult times ahead. I really hope we actually get to see more of Gregson and Paige, although with this show, things are often introduced and then dropped for long swaths of time with not so much as a comment.

That's all I've got for the time being. This episode had a lot of good stuff, but not very much that made me love it. I hope the ramp up to the finale starts to zero in on the A-plot again. I miss Morland.

7.5/10