Elementary Review 03 x 06 – Terra Pericolosa
Reviewed by Liz Giorgi
Being Geek Chic For The Baker Street Babes
Translated from Italian, Terra Pericolosa means “dangerous land” – but in this case, it’s more of a dangerous map.
On facts alone, this episode should have been brilliant. It had all the makings of a truly awesome story. Vintage maps. A mysterious break in. Lucrative business dealings on native lands. Add in the guest star, Mamie Gummer, and you’ve got good bones. However, things fall apart rather quickly. In large part because our guest star is just rolled into the police station a couple times to be TOLD things instead of allowing her character to evolve in any way or even contribute to the story. So when the solution finally makes itself clear – you can’t really be bothered that the mastermind has been playing stupid for the last forty minutes.
There are good things here though. Cartography has canonical ties and Holmes regularly uses his knowledge of maps, both of overground and underground locations to add to the original stories. In the first moments of the story, I thought this was where the writers were going: it was going to be a shining moment of Holmes’ intense knowledge of both old and new locations – but alas, most of the solutions are discovered by Watson and Kitty in this particular episode and he is largely playing a supporting role. Most notably in realizing the connection between the redrawn lines on the stolen map as compared to the supposed original that belongs to Gummer’s character. It’s fun to watch Holmes make discoveries that allow Kitty and Joan to shine and it’s largely been enjoyable watching these things play out week to week. However, Terra Pericolosa also falls victim to one other major problem developing in the series: the slippery slope from deductions to lucky guesses.
As Joan becomes more independent from Sherlock, she is regularly irritated by his presence in silly ways. Side glances and subtle intonation in average comments don’t go unnoticed when you’ve got a veteran like Lucy Liu heading your franchise and this has added a lot of drama throughout season three, but it’s also contributed, I believe, to a weird need to validate Watson’s evolution from protege to independent contractor. And so in lazy ways, like Watson randomly guessing where a map might be hidden in an office or where a dead person might be located, the show attempts to validate her new work, but in fact it doesn’t serve her.
As we make it to the mid-season point, I really hope that the writers find a way to tamp down the awkward interactions between Joan and Sherlock – if for no other reason than I want some of that levity back.
Liz Giorgi is the Baker Street Babes’ Elementary Guru and runs the fantastic nerdy blog Being Geek Chic. You can find her former reviews of Elementary here on her site.
She’s the founder and director at Mighteor, a video production company that focuses on creating beautiful and meaningful videos for the web. She’s also a contributor for Apartment Therapy and The Mary Sue.
You can contact her at elizabeth@beinggeekchic.com and follow her on Twitter @lizgiorgi