Cast
Main cast
Featured cast
Plot
| "Don't think for a minute that I'm ever gonna forget that you were planning to murder someone on my watch. And don't think that I'm ever gonna really trust you again." — Captain Gregson to Holmes
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| Days have passed since Holmes caught Sebastian Moran and his evidence board has grown considerably. Watson enters and comments that he slept for two days. As Watson has an appointment, Holmes indicates he'll be fine while he pursues a hobby, conspiracy theorists. Holmes indicates that he's been the source of several crackpot theories, all to watch the theorists take them seriously. Watson attends a therapy session with Dr. Reed and confesses the lie she made to Holmes. Reed wonders why Watson is staying with him while not being paid so she explains her concerns and that she'd like to heal the rift between Holmes and Captain Gregson. She gets a text from Holmes, asking her to meet him at a Brooklyn address. Arriving there, Holmes explains to her that "Zapruder", the moderator of the online theorist chat room was absent. Holmes long ago identified him as Len Pontecorvo and is checking in on him. After Holmes picks the lock, they find Pontecorvo has been hung.
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| Detective Bell examines the scene and reminds Holmes that he's supposed to be taking a break from working with the police. Bell believes it's a suicide, but Holmes points out several clues that indicate Pontecorvo was murdered and that he texted the M.E. Bell tells him to not work the case which Holmes agrees to, right after examining the rest of the home. Over Watson's protests, Holmes finds Len's binders on conspiracy theories and decides to take them. He also decides to take Len's pet tortoise Clyde, to prevent him from starving. Watson is touched until Holmes says he'll make a delicious soup. Holmes picks up a rock from Clyde's tank and finds a listening device inside it. At The Brownstone, Holmes smashes the bug after examining it. He's confirmed that the bug is government grade and he's found spyware on Len's laptop. Someone in the government was monitoring Pontecorvo.
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Watson wonders if Pontecorvo really had stumbled onto something sensitive or dangerous. Holmes says "Pontecorvo, rest his soul, was one of the laziest thinkers I have ever come across," and most of his ideas are laughable - except one. Holmes props up a binder labeled "The Red Team", which refers to the annual exercises performed by the U.S. Army's War College. Every year, the results of the exercises are published in the College's journal, but in 2009, when the exercise was designed to test the military's response to a terrorist sleeper cell going active in New York, the results of the exercise and the names of the participants were immediately classified. Nobody knows why, but Len Pontecorvo had developed a theory: the "enemy" players, code-named the "Red Team," created a plan that revealed a gaping hole in national security that, if exploited, could lead to the deaths of thousands of people.
| Alarmed, Watson says that theory is much more plausible than Pontecorvo's others. Holmes says it gets better: according to Pontecorvo's notes, he believed he had identified at least one member of the Red Team, an Army counterinsurgency expert named Martin Nagowski, who died in a mugging last year. Pontecorvo believed the man was murdered, and the government is systematically eliminating the Red Team to protect national security. Watson has more trouble believing that, and Holmes says it should be simple to test the theory: he shall simply identify the other members of the Red Team and check to see that they are alive and well. Watson points to a head of lettuce sitting on a bureau and asks how it fits in. Holmes thanks her for reminding him, and begins shredding the lettuce and dropping it into a drawer, Clyde's new home. He says Clyde will not make a good soup stock until he has been fattened up.
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| At the precinct, Watson pleads with Gregson that Holmes feels terrible about what he did, and will say so, if given half the chance. "You make it sound as if he borrowed my favorite shirt without asking," Gregson retorts, not that Holmes planned to use his quasi-police authority as a cover to abduct and murder a man. Moreover, Gregson wagers that, even now, Holmes doesn't feel the tiniest bit sorry about what he planned to do. Watson's phone beeps with a text message from Holmes, and Gregson sarcastically asks if Holmes is sending an apology. Naturally, he is not - instead, he is summoning Watson to a sanitorium in Queens. Holmes says he has identified another member of the Red Team, an ex-military expert named Carlo Anillo. Anillo is now a permanent resident of the sanitorium, having been diagnosed with early-stage Alzheimer's Disease. The odd thing, Holmes says, is that Anillo's family has absolutely no history of Alzheimer's. Holmes has a different theory: someone poisoned Anillo with an acid solution that destroyed the memory portions of his brain, leaving him with symptoms virtually indistinguishable from an Alzheimer's patient's. After all, if someone is trying to silence the Red Team, then there are other ways to do so besides killing them. Holmes calls Bell with the clue, but is surprised to hear that Len Pontecorvo's murderer has already confessed, a friend who got into a heated argument with Pontecorvo over the Internet.
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| At the precinct, Holmes interviews the man, Gary Sullivan, who says that he and Pontecorvo agreed that the Apollo moon landings never occurred, but got into a heated dispute over who was responsible for staging them. Gregson enters the interrogation room and pulls Holmes out, demanding to know what he is doing. Holmes says that a few minutes in Sullivan's company is enough to convince anyone that the man is not a mastermind of anything, but that doesn't mean Holmes is wrong about someone else targeting the Red Team. In a falsely hearty voice, Gregson thanks Holmes as a "concerned citizen" for the tip allowing them to arrest Sullivan, then threatens to have Holmes arrested for trespassing if he tricks his way into the interrogation room again.
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| In a rental car parked outside Len Pontecorvo's house, Holmes is fuming to Watson about Gregson's attitude. Watson gently suggests that an apology would go a long way towards repairing the rift, but Holmes says such an apology would be false. Holmes doesn't feel sorry about abducting and planning to murder Sebastian Moran, and he understands why Gregson is upset, but, like it or not, the NYPD needs him, and Gregson is only doing the public a disservice by trying to shut him out. Watson gives up the conversation as pointless for the time being, and asks Holmes what they are doing there. Holmes says it is simple: whoever was bugging Len Pontecorvo's apartment would have planted more than one listening device, and now that the police have vacated the crime scene, will be sending someone to retrieve the other devices.
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| Sure enough, a man wearing a telephone company uniform enters the house and leaves a few minutes later. Holmes and Watson follow the van to an office building, and follow the man in the uniform to a locked door. Instead of knocking, Holmes leans into the eye of the surveillance camera and waggles the plastic bag holding the pieces of the bug he took from Pontecorvo's house. The door opens. In a spartan office suite that screams "U.S. government", Holmes and Watson are met by a man in a suit, who introduces himself as "Bill" and asks what they want. Holmes shares his theory that someone is targeting the Red Team, and Bill says he has no idea what they are talking about, and has never seen the bug in Holmes's possession before. But he adds that if, hypothetically, the U.S. government was targeting the Red Team, it would certainly have the resources and the firepower to take care of all of them in a single night - why do it in such a piecemeal fashion?
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| Walking away, Watson glumly reflects, "that was either a total waste of time or I'm going to be audited for the rest of my life." Holmes says it wasn't a waste of time at all: during their conversation, Holmes threw out names of the suspected Red Team, and noticed for which names the man in the suit unconsciously clenched his jaw. Now Holmes has the other team members. Reluctantly, Gregson and Bell apprehend the other members - Harold Dresden, Walter McClenahan, Sheldon Frost, and Veena Mehta - and bring them in for questioning. Holmes starts to tell them that they may be in danger, and wants to know who else might know about their plan. Dresden and McClenahan warn the rest that they are all sworn to total secrecy, and walk out. Mehta and Frost do the same, but Mehta drops a piece of paper into the wastebasket, with a significant look at Holmes. On the paper, Mehta has written a note to find their U.S. Army liaison, code-named "Yossarian."
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That evening, Watson comes home and is upset to see Clyde lying upside down on a pile of Sherlock's papers. As she rights him, Sherlock chides her not to refer to "it" by name, as it will just make it harder for Watson to enjoy the soup. He also says he thinks he has identified "Yossarian," purely by accident. Browsing through the journal of the Army War College, Holmes happened upon a photograph of a Lieutenant Colonel Todd Clarke, who happens to be the "Bill" they met at the government office. Then the doorbell rings, and Holmes answers it to a man and a woman in nondescript suits, who inform him that Col. Clarke was just shot and killed outside his home, and they are taking Holmes in for questioning.
| The man and the woman question Holmes, finding it suspicious that he accused Col. Clarke of masterminding a conspiracy to assassinate the Red Team, shortly before he himself was killed. Holmes says he can supply an alibi quite easily, since his home is rigged with surveillance cameras. He then surprises them by asking for their whereabouts, since, if he is not targeting the Red Team, clearly someone is. Watson arrives with videos from the surveillance cameras, confirming that Holmes was home when Clarke died. After Holmes is released, She grouses that he could have avoided the whole ordeal by showing them the videos at the house, but he says that would have defeated the whole purpose: he wanted to interrogate them as much as they wanted to interrogate him, and he has now established that the government knows nothing about who is targeting the Red Team, therefore, they are not behind the recent deaths. Holmes then telephones Gregson, saying it is time for the rest of the Red Team to be taken into protective custody.
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Two uniformed police officers knock on Walter McClenahan's apartment door. When there is no answer, the superintendent opens the door - which has been booby-trapped with a shotgun.
A short time later, Gregson arrives, reporting to Bell that, mercifully, the shotgun was loaded with rock salt instead of buckshot, meaning the two uniforms and the super escaped serious injury. McClenahan is nowhere to be found, but Gregson and Bell find a small arsenal in his home. As they talk, Holmes texts urgently, asking Bell if the rest of the Team is safe. Bell doesn't answer, until Holmes texts to say he's found McClenahan. Bell picks up, only for Holmes to say that was a bluff, he just wanted Bell to answer the phone. Holmes informs Bell that he and Watson are on their way to meet Harold Dresden, and not to wait for them. Then he rings off. Bell remarks, "probably be a lot easier to fire the guy if we paid him in the first place."
| At his home, Dresden welcomes Holmes and Watson as he is tending to his wife, Sheila, who is in a wheelchair and unable to speak due to a progressive motor neuron disease. Holmes says that McClenahan is looking likely as a suspect in the recent killings, and asks Dresden if he has any idea where the man could be. Dresden says that McClenahan was paranoid and had few friends, except for Dresden himself. Dresden also confesses that when Martin Nagowski was killed, McClenahan joked - at least, Dresden thought it was a joke - that that made one less person to worry about revealing the plan. Now, Dresden is afraid that McClenahan is planning to sell the Red Team's plan to a hostile power, and has been eliminating anyone else with knowledge of the plan in order to drive the price up. As to his current whereabouts, Dresden mentions that McClenahan bought some land in New Jersey, saying he was planning to build a bunker.
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Holmes calls Bell with the tip, only for Bell to say that McClenahan's body has been found, and the man has been dead for at least twenty-four hours. While Watson stays behind to help Dresden prepare his wife to moving to a safe location, Holmes meets Bell at the crime scene. McClenahan is lying behind a dumpster in an alley, shot once in the head. Holmes notices something odd: the killer covered McClenahan with a blanket after shooting him, suggesting it was someone who knew him, even liked him. Alarmed, Holmes says that they need to get to the hotel where the rest of the Red Team is being protected, as Holmes believes the killer is already there.
At a small motel on the outskirts of the city, an NYPD detective shows the Dresdens into their room, mentioning that the department has reserved the whole floor, and they should be safe. Harold asks if the rest of the team members have arrived. When the detective answers yes, Dresden knocks him out and takes his gun.
| Dresden emerges from his hotel room, sees Veena Mehta at the ice machine on the balcony, and takes aim at her with the detective's gun. Before he can fire, a uniformed cop raises his own gun and tells him to freeze. Mehta screams and runs inside her room, while Dresden ducks back into his. When Holmes arrives, the police have the hotel under siege. Gregson tells Holmes that his warning came just in time to save Mehta, but now Dresden is holding the detective hostage. Instead of demanding safe passage out of the hotel, Dresden has demanded that the surviving Team members - Mehta and Frost - be delivered to him. Holmes realizes that Dresden is not planning to sell the Red Team's plan, since he could hardly kill the other two team members at a hotel surrounded by police and expect to get away. Holmes asks that he be allowed to talk to Dresden. Gregson refuses to put his man's life into a suspended consultant's hands, but Holmes insists that he knows what to say to make Dresden surrender.
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Holmes enters the motel room, unarmed, and sits at the small table. Holmes has figured out that Dresden is killing the rest of the Red Team to prevent their plan from leaking out, and once Mehta and Frost are dead, he plans to kill himself. What Holmes doesn't understand is why Dresden became so sure the plan would leak. Martin Nagowski, the first victim, wasn't killed until two years after the war game.
Ruefully, Dresden remembers that Sheila was first diagnosed with her disease two years ago, and since then, Dresden has been unable to do anything except watch her get worse. All the members of the Red Team had been approached before, anonymously, about selling their plan, but Dresden hadn't given it much thought. Then one of these anonymous agents claimed he could help cure Sheila's disease. Dresden knew he was lying, but realized that, if the man had been able to do anything, Dresden would have told everything he knew. He came to realize that everyone has a breaking point, and believed it was only a matter of time before someone found his, or one of the other team member's. So he decided that the only way to safeguard the plan was to kill the Red Team, including himself, plus Clarke - "seven lives versus thousands - the math works."
| Sardonically, Dresden congratulates Holmes for figuring out his plan, and thanks Holmes for helping him enact it. Having only one hostage, the detective, Dresden had no leverage, but after he shoots Holmes, the police will realize that Dresden is serious, and give in to his demands. Holmes doesn't blink, expressing amazement that Dresden hasn't yet figured out that "there really is no such thing as a secret." The Red Team's plan is written down in a memo, and it's been emailed back and forth. Any moderately intelligent person could gain access to it, and Holmes himself did so only a few hours after taking the case. Holmes has already sent another memo to an acquaintance - the secret is out, and Dresden will accomplish nothing by killing anyone else. Dresden says that if Holmes is telling the truth, "that's checkmate", then cocks the gun and demands that Holmes tell him the plan.
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A few minutes later, Holmes emerges from the hotel room with Dresden, who surrenders. Entering the room, the police report to Gregson that the detective is alive and unharmed. Holmes admits that he didn't know the plan before entering the motel room, he just thought carefully and worked it out from the likely possibilities - "Gun to one's head... very powerful stimulus." Holmes says that he and Gregson owe each other a conversation. Gregson says he needs to clear up the mess at the hotel, but tells Holmes to meet him later.
| At a bar, Holmes tells Gregson that he is sorry for lying to Gregson, even if he doesn't regret his actions with respect to Moran. But Holmes says they both know that the NYPD needs him. Gregson angrily says Holmes is missing the point: Gregson has cut Holmes a lot of slack in the past, because of his worth to the department, but Holmes crossed a line and abused Gregson's trust, and Gregson can never trust him completely again. Holmes rejoins that Gregson doesn't need to trust him in order to take advantage of his abilities. Gregson agrees, and also agrees that he needs Holmes on his cases - "but I do need to get something out of my system first." With that, Gregson slugs Holmes in the gut, leaving him gasping over the bar. "Welcome back," Gregson says on his way out the door. At the Brownstone, Holmes is sipping from a bowl of soup when Watson enters the kitchen. She is almost afraid to ask, but Holmes places Clyde, alive and well, on the table, chiding her for thinking he would ever kill such a remarkable creature, and assuring her that Clyde will probably outlive both of them. "With you, I can never tell," she admits. She asks him if he is ready to talk about what happened with Gregson, and he shakes his head no.
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Music
- Jake Bugg - Broken plays at episode end.
Trivia
- Len Pontecorvo's pen name, "Zapruder" is taken from the Zapruder Film, the home video which inadvertently captured U.S. President John F. Kennedy's assassination.
- Todd Clarke's code name "Yossarian" is a reference to the main character in Catch-22.
- First appearance of Clyde the tortoise.
Gallery
| Elementary Season One Episodes | ||
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| 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 | ||
