Review: Elementary 02×07 – The Marchioness
Reviewed by Liz Giorgi
Being Geek Chic For The Baker Street Babes
I have never been so excited and so enraged at a character’s return as I was in the first few moments of The Marchioness. When a panning shot at a Narcotics Anonymous meeting reveals Mycroft Holmes (played brilliantly by Rhys Ifans) listening in on his brother’s vulnerable and telling reveal of why he believes he used drugs, it causes an eruption for both Sherlock and the viewer. If you have ANY doubts about the quality of television being produced here, just watch this scene a few times. It’s so unbelievably real, meaningful and important – it hurts you all the way to the core. For all the ways in which BBC’s Sherlock has modernized the series, the take on Holmes’s drug use in Elementary is hands down one of the best modernizations in history of canon.
This episode purports to be about a million dollar race horse which has been sold as a mating partner to countless hopeful equestrians, but at it’s core, The Marchioness is about trust. The lack of trust between Mycroft and Holmes because Holmes slept with Mycroft’s fiance. The intense trust between Watson and Holmes being put to the test because of Mycroft’s newfound presence in their lives. The budding trust between Watson and Mycroft as he works to understand her as a gateway to his brother. The hard fought battle Sherlock is experiencing with his own demons as he works to trust himself to stay clean and sober. And in the case of Mycroft’s former fiance, the dirty business practices she partook in by exploiting the trust of other horse lovers.
Throughout, there’s an incredible chemistry on screen between Miller, Liu and Ifans. Watson’s posture isn’t the only cue to the viewer that something weird is afoot. And Sherlock’s darting eyes create humor and intrigue in several delightful moments. A particularly hilarious dinner scene plays out more like a crime scene deduction than an uncomfortable dinner date. Strangely, Mycroft keeps tagging along with Holmes and Watson on their various investigations, which only amps up the drama as Mycroft is now the third wheel in the pair’s normally comfortable and natural dynamic. Not only does this make Sherlock more irritable, it makes him more boldly certain. It’s almost as if he is showing off to Mycroft as he uncovers a small detail here and there. And when he finally deduces that Mycroft and Watson have slept together, well, not only is he beyond frustrated, he calls his trust in Watson into question.
In one of the weirder conclusions to date on Elementary, we discover that the man attempting to murder Mycroft’s fiance for her horse breeding lies stole a homeless man’s hands after murdering him years ago and used his prints as a way to disguise his various crimes. Call me a wimp, but the idea of a dude carrying around a pair of dismembered hands on his various sniper missions really threw me off. How does he keep the hands from decomposing? And how is that not terribly inconvenient. Or did he have a hand transplant? Yeah, the murdering thing is horrible, but the hands. Ugh.
We are left with something beautiful this week, though. Two brothers sharing an afternoon talking about whatever they like. Maybe trust can be rebuilt one espresso at a time.
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 a social media and web strategist who currently works for a communications consulting firm in Minneapolis. She’s also a contributor for Apartment Therapy andThe Mary Sue.
You can contact her at elizabeth@beinggeekchic.com and follow her on Twitter @lizgiorgi
