Review: Elementary 01×19 – Snow Angels
Reviewed by Liz Giorgi
Being Geek Chic For The Baker Street Babes
I have a new idea for a movie. Sherlock Holmes, Joan Watson and Pam the snowplow driver go on a cross-country adventure solving crime and rescuing stranded motorists. A buddy cop comedy in blaze orange. You know you would see that.
When plows are out, you know it’s bad news. The weather creates the perfect setting for stealing heaps and heaps of cash in this episode of Elementary. It’s an episode filled with misdirections and tricky accents and in the end it’s satisfying, but I really couldn’t be bothered with any of that mystery solving nonsense, because a lady with the last name Hudson makes an appearance this week and we really need to talk about it.
Spoilers from here on out, folks.
Ah yes, Ms. Hudson. You’ll all remember her. She’s a beautiful blonde transgendered adulteress with an interest in Greece and cataloging personal libraries. Not ringing a bell? She keeps a clean apartment too. Ah now you remember.
Alright Elementary, what the hell is going on here? I’m not suggesting I don’t like this iteration of Hudson, but why? Why is Ms. Hudson a former colleague on the run in NYC? And why is Ms. Hudson transgender? And why is she “finding herself the muse” of all kinds of lousy two-timing dudes? At the end of the episode, we get a throw away goodbye that indicates Ms. Hudson will be returning on Tuesdays to tidy up the Watson/Holmes compound. If that’s a hint that you’ll bring her back, well you better. Because I’m giving you skeptical side eyes right now. I want to know what this version of Hudson is all about.
Ok, enough obsessing over Ms. Hudson’s impressive collection of robes.
This week, a massive snowstorm serves as the perfect setting for a financial heist. We all know how it works. It snows, humans hibernate. But not criminal minds. A team of criminals break into a cell phone company and steal their to-be-released smartphone of the moment s few days before an impending blizzard hits New York. We did get a nod to canon in this episode, besides Lady Hudson’s appearance. Holmes relies on his robust homeless network to figure out that the phones were just simply a distraction to get at some more valuable assets: blueprints from an architecture firm in the same building.
As the flakes start to fall, the team of criminals use their building plans to break into EROC, which is apparently some kind of reserve bank. The criminals run off with stacks of money that were meant to be shredded and tossed. While the storm was meant to keep Holmes and Watson off their path, their tracks give them away and so my new favorite Buddy Cop Comedy team get to go on a plow chase. A very slow, snowy one.
At the same time, we learn that the team of thieves is one woman down, because she was shot during the phone heist. She tries to disguise her wound in the hospital, but honestly, she had to know better. And before we know it, our mystery is solved with Caption Gregson and the rest of the cops putting on a misdirection of their own.
The questions and their answers in this episode were appropriately vague, but also timely. I loved that Holmes found the point of sale for the stolen smartphones through an instagram picture. Seeing Detective Bell burn that piece of blond hair at the hospital was a nice nod to Holmes and proof that he’s been watching our hero closely.
But ultimately, I’m just confused about where the writers are going with one of my favorite characters in Doyle’s series. I get the gender bending of Watson now. In fact, I’m entirely pro-female Watson these days. But this Ms. Hudson? Friends, I’m skeptical.
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 and The Mary Sue.
You can contact her at elizabeth@beinggeekchic.com and follow her on Twitter @lizgiorgi