Cast
Main cast
Featured cast
Plot
| "You have to admire the ingenuity of the plan. If they hadn't killed someone, I'd have half a mind to let them get away with it." — Holmes
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| At the Flatiron, a security guard, Frank Dempster, reads while a weather report warns of a major blizzard. Hearing a blond woman calling for help, he exits the building and brings her in. She points a pistol at him and demands he let in her two accomplices. He reaches for his gun and she shoots him. She lets her accomplices in, who drag Dempster's body behind his desk. As they head up stairs, Dempster fires a shot at the woman's back. At The Brownstone, Watson returns from shopping to find a distressed woman, Ms. Hudson, in the library. A friend of Holmes, she's having relationship problems so Watson leaves to get her some tea. In the kitchen, Holmes explains that Hudson was one of his Irregulars due to her expertise in several ancient languages. She often finds herself with rich, powerful men and her latest lover has evicted her from an apartment he kept for her. Holmes has taken her in and as Watson asks for more notice, Captain Gregson calls.
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| At the scene, Holmes reconstructs most of the events and leaves it to Watson to finish with the shooting of one of the criminals by Dempster. Detective Bell indicates the thieves stole hundreds of a new phone model. From a wig hair strand, Holmes deduces one of them was a woman, and at least were at least three total to carried the phones and a wounded person out. Given the banal nature of the crime, Holmes wonders why they were called, but when the lights go out as the storm hits, he welcomes the challenge. At the 11th Precinct, Gregson introduces his command to Denise Castor, from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), sent to co-ordinate the snow storm response. Castor indicates the power will be out during the storm. On his phone, Holmes finds a social media post from someone who bought one of the stolen phones and from the pic, he knows where it was sold.
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| Holmes and Watson discover the phones are being sold by a homeless man, Private Maggio. He retrieved them from a dumpster after two white men dumped them. Holmes gives him some money and leaves, convinced the phone theft was a cover and the thieves stole something else in the Flatiron. From Dempster's access card, they trace the thieves path to an architectural firm, where the lock has been picked. As Watson picks the lock, the door is opened by an employee. Holmes discovers which blueprints were stolen and has the employee provide duplicates. At the Brownstone, Ms. Hudson helps Watson build a fire and as she discusses her lover, Davis, he arrives, begging to see her. Hudson has Watson let him in. Upstairs, Holmes examines the blueprints in a tent, trying to keep warm. He hasn't found what the thieves were looking for and Hudson and Davis start arguing.
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| The next morning, Holmes wakes Watson and has her dress while he explains his findings. He found a job the architecture firm bid on but didn't get, for EROC (East Rutherford Operations Center), which contains the world's largest supply of U.S. cash. He believes the thieves planned a heist to coincide with the snow storm which will hinder police response and, he thinks it is currently underway. With no way to reach the NYPD, they'll have to find a way to East Rutherford on their own. Bundling up, they trudge down snow-covered streets. Encountering a snowplow, Holmes asks the driver, Pam, to give them shelter. Once inside, he has her raise the NYPD by radio and leaves a message for Gregson with his deductions. He still insists on proceeding to EROC and tries to commandeer the plow. Pam tells him to leave so Holmes produces cash and asks if he can rent the plow.
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| Bell visits a hospital looking for any patients with gunshot wounds. Finding none, he expands the search to stomach wounds and finds a woman who was stabbed. In her room, Bell questions the brunette woman, Alysa Darvin, who is about to be discharged. Bell finds a blonde hair on her coat which she claims is from a friend. When Bell holds the hair under a lamp, it melts, showing it's from a wig. He accuses Alysa of being stabbed after being shot to disguise the gunshot wound and takes her to the precinct. In the snowplow, Holmes and Watson argue about Ms. Hudson who Watson has taken a shine to until they reach EROC. In "the box" at the precinct, Bell pressures Darvin to name her partners in the phone heist until Gregson interrupts, having received Holmes' message, and asks her about EROC. In the control room of EROC, the supervisor won't let them on the automated cash floor but checking a terminal, he notices an unscheduled cash sort of $1B was done. Although unusual, no money is missing.
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| Holmes asks if money is destroyed at EROC, and the supervisor confirms that if a bill is too worn out, it is sifted out during the sorting process and shredded. Holmes asks to see where. The supervisor shows them a collection of bales of shredded money, about $33 million worth. Again, he says everything is accounted for, but Holmes and Watson look closer at the shreds and see they are ordinary paper, instead of the cotton-linen mix that real money is made from.
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| Holmes explains what happened: the thieves got into the facility while it was deserted, looped the security camera footage to "give themselves run of the place", ran the sort with the machines, but replaced the money meant to be shredded with counterfeit bills, taking the real ones. The supervisor says that doesn't make sense: if the thieves had gotten in, they could have taken much more. Holmes counters that stealing more would have instantly put the police on their trail; whereas, if the bales of paper shreds had gone to the dump, as planned, no one would know anything had happened. He concludes that they are too late to prevent the robbery, but hopefully not too late to prevent the thieves escaping with their stolen $33 million.
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| Even in a driving snowstorm, Holmes examines the grounds outside EROC and identifies where the thieves came and went, and also the tracks from a vehicle which he identifies as either an ambulance or a U-Haul truck - and he knows which he would prefer to be driving in a snowstorm to transport a load of stolen money. Noticing the rate at which the snow is falling, Watson checks the depth of the tracks and realizes that the thieves left less than an hour ago. At the precinct, Bell and Gregson confront Alysa Darvin, whose real name, they now know, is Elle Bastien - she has dual French and Moroccan citizenship, and Interpol has files on her and her husband, who they now know was one of the two accomplices with whom she broke into the Flatiron. Again, they repeat their invitation for her to confess before they catch up with him. Alysa/Elle smiles coldly, and says, in her real French accent, that they will never find her husband.
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| Riding back to Manhattan in Pam's snowplow, Sherlock and Watson confer with Bell over the radio. He reports that Elle made two calls on her cell, one to an airline to book a flight the next day to Morocco, and another to a manager at a race track - an ideal venue, Holmes realizes, for laundering the old, worn-out bills. They both realize where the ambulance is likely headed. As the storm lifts, the police stake out the manager's house, and sure enough, an ambulance pulls up outside. The police move in and arrest the drivers, but the ambulance is found to be empty, and the drivers insist they were called to the house for a possible heart attack. Then the manager comes out and asks what they are doing, since he feels fine and didn't call 911.
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| That evening, Pam drives Holmes and Watson to the door of the Brownstone. Holmes is chewing on the case, saying they followed all the right leads, yet the ambulance has still disappeared without trace. As they are disembarking, Pam surprises them by saying she had fun, and if they need to rent her services again, just give her a call. Entering, Watson is stunned to see that Ms. Hudson has given the whole house a thorough cleaning. Watson is delighted, but Sherlock asks what has happened to his collection of books and papers. Ms. Hudson points out that she has organized them in a scholarly fashion, that meets with Sherlock's cautious approval. Late at night, Watson enters the living room and sees Holmes pondering a map of Manhattan, with his collection of padlocks placed to represent road closures and police checkpoints, and Clyde bearing a cross of red tape on his back to represent the ambulance. With the padlocks in his way, there is nowhere for him to go, and Sherlock explains the problem: an ambulance was sighted driving past the scene of two medical emergencies, into Manhattan, but afterwards it disappeared, and did not pass any checkpoint - there was nowhere for it to go without being seen, yet... Watson says it only seems possible if the checkpoints and road closures were not there. Impatiently, Holmes says they were there, and one can't just wish them away.
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| The next morning, at the precinct, Holmes and Watson show Gregson and Bell the map, with colorful tape representing the blockages and a small stapler to act as the ambulance. Watson reads a series of entries from the previous day's duty log, as emergency forces were shifted around, and Holmes removes tape in sequence, showing that someone was re-directing the authorities to clear an escape route for the ambulance. Then Holmes looks out the glass at Denise Castor, who is wrapping up her duties. He informs them that, in spite of her job's heavy responsibilities, her salary is government scale, and thus she makes as much as a postmaster in rural Wisconsin - "perhaps she decided she needed a raise." Gregson and Bell say there is no proof, and there won't be, as long as two of the three thieves have escaped, and the third, Elle, still refuses to talk. Holmes wonders aloud whether the reason Elle refuses to talk is because she still has faith that her accomplice will be able to spring her from jail. He then suggests that the police perform a modest bit of theatre...
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| Bell enters the interrogation room to talk with Elle again, but they are interrupted when the lights flicker - apparently the backup generator is still on the blink. Then they hear noises from outside, and Gregson rushes in, saying there was a stabbing in the holding cells when the lights went out, and the prisoners are rioting downstairs, he needs all the cops in the building. Bell, flustered, asks what about Elle, and Gregson tells him not to worry, the door will lock from the outside. Bell and a uniformed policeman get up and follow Gregson out, leaving Elle alone. Holmes and Watson are watching through the two-way glass. In a whisper, Holmes remarks that Bell once told him he played the lead in a high-school production of Guys and Dolls, but "I had not until this moment supposed that he was any good."
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| On another part of the floor, a collection of detectives and uniformed cops are clattering chairs, banging on chain link fencing, and yelling to simulate the sounds of a riot. Once she believes the rest of the floor is deserted, Denise Castor slips into the holding cell, throws her jacket over Elle's handcuffs, and leads her out of the room. Watching from a corner, Gregson tells the other police to hold back, since the fugitives need to clear the floor to be guilty of escape. Castor leads Elle into a stairwell, asking urgently whether Elle told the police anything. "Say anything about what?" Bell asks, waiting at the foot of the stairs with a trio of uniforms. Castor and Elle sag in defeat. A few days later, as New York starts to recover from the storm, Sherlock is using a paintbrush to simulate blood splatters in the living room. Watson enters to report that Castor and Elle gave up their accomplices location, and the ambulance has been found with the stolen money inside. Hearing a beep, Watson looks out the window and sees Pam waiting in her snowplow. Sherlock explains that some of the roads are still blocked, and Ms. Hudson needs a ride to her cousin's in upstate New York. Ms. Hudson comes down with her suitcase, thanking them for their hospitality and mentioning to Watson that Sherlock has engaged her to clean the Brownstone on a weekly basis.
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Music
- Hanni El Khatib - Penny plays at episode end.
Trivia
- The opening scene was shot at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.[1]
- Jonny Lee Miller improvised Holmes giving the homeless man cash so that he could find shelter.[2]
- When on the radio in Pam's snowplow, Holmes says "Over" to end his message but should have said "Out."
- Holmes tells Watson that Detective Bell played Sky Masterson in his high school production of Guys and Dolls. This biographical detail is in fact true of Jon Michael Hill.[3]
- Holmes' quote, "Life is infinitely stranger than anything the mind of man could invent" is from Conan Doyle's short story A Case of Identity.
- Holmes bluffs the employee at the Flatiron by claiming that Watson "holds several black belts." Lucy Liu has trained in Escrima, a Filipino martial art, since her early twenties.
Gallery
Behind the Scenes
References
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| Elementary Season One Episodes | ||
|---|---|---|
| Pilot • While You Were Sleeping • Child Predator • The Rat Race • Lesser Evils • Flight Risk • One Way to Get Off • The Long Fuse • You Do It to Yourself • The Leviathan • Dirty Laundry • M. • The Red Team • The Deductionist • A Giant Gun, Filled with Drugs • Details • Possibility Two • Déjà Vu All Over Again • Snow Angels • Dead Man's Switch • A Landmark Story • Risk Management • The Woman • Heroine
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| Season One • Season Two • Season Three • Season Four • Season Five • Season Six • Season Seven | ||
