Review: Elementary 02 x 04 – Poison Pen
Reviewed by Liz Giorgi
Being Geek Chic For The Baker Street Babes
I get the feeling Elementary is testing us. They want to introduce a new side of Sherlock Holmes. A sensitive, emotive, even empathetic Holmes, whom trusts others at their word, emotes effusively and even relates to the pain of others with great depth and intensity. Using the term Emo-Holmes may seem trite, but don’t mistake me for being unimpressed. After decades of remakes, reshapings and redos – it may have seemed like there wasn’t a new side of the consulting detective to see, but clearly I was wrong.
This week’s episode is easily the least remarkable to date, mostly due to a throw away sequence at the beginning of the hour involving an XXL latex bondage suit and a morality clause in the dead CEO’s contract. The concept was clearly thrown in to show Holmes with a dominatrix and to add a bit of sauce to an otherwise evocative and sensitive season.
The real drama at the center of the episode is the relationship between nanny Anne Barker and Sherlock. It turns out that the CEO’s nanny was acquitted 22 years earlier of murdering her father with the same chemical found in the victim’s system. Whether or not she did it was never really at the core of the story. Instead, it was Sherlock’s insistence that he owed Miss Barker a chance and his fervent belief that he could trust her word.
During her previous trial, she and Holmes had become pen pals of sorts and he had determined from her letters that she was almost certainly guilty of killing her cruel father. But that fact never bothered Sherlock. It was a rare case in which the guilt or innocence of the criminal on trial was irrelevant to him. The reason? He tells Joan it was because Barker was his “first” – meaning, his first case, but I’d argue it was more than that. It was his first relationship with another person who was as smart, as resourceful and as strong as he. He related to her and that’s an exceptionally rare human feeling for Mr. Holmes.
It’s no surprise then that her reappearance in his life brings out a softer tone to this episode. I give a lot of credit to Jonny Lee Miller for simultaneously balancing the tension required to maintain Holmes’s demeanor while softening his face and even his physical placement in a room. In one interrogation scene, he even sloughs back in the seat in exasperation, but still maintains that rigid core strength. You get the sense that he is really trying to do the right thing because he cares for the person, rather than the case.
In the end, it’s unfortunate that the episode allows the killer to not only walk away from the case without punishment, but to also get away with not even so much as discussing his motive with professionals. Thankfully, Holmes is upset with us and even goes out of his way to offer a listening ear to the victim and killer. It’s hard to imagine another scenario in which the historical version of Holmes would ever allow the problem’s of others to weigh on his incredible mind – but then again – this is a very new Holmes.
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