Cast
Main cast
Featured cast
Plot
| "He was a pain in the ass. But he was also very, very good." — Captain Gregson to Watson
|
| Holmes and Watson are attending his first addict group support meeting. She notices that he is staring straight ahead, almost as if asleep. When she taps him on the shoulder, he bolts to his feet and yells "AMYGDALA!" Fortunately, the meeting was wrapping up anyway. As they are walking home, Watson is upset to learn that Holmes hypnotized himself to avoid cluttering his mind with the group's prattle. He uses a glass with water and oil to explain "Attic Theory", that too much useless information will crowd useful data out of his mind. Watson doesn't believe his theory and tell him that she'll be seeing a friend for dinner so Holmes will be alone that evening. Captain Gregson calls Holmes, requesting he attend a murder scene.
|
 |
| On the top floor of an apartment building, Gregson shows Holmes the victim, Casey McManus, dead from a single gunshot to the forehead. Holmes meets Detective Bell, who believes that McManus surprised a burglar who shot him and then took his watch and wallet. Holmes examines the scene and deduces that the killer was sitting in McManus' apartment, waiting for him and the killer is a woman from deodorant he smelt on the chair. Holmes also believes that the robber is a different person who also stole an antique amoire. Gregson and Bell are doubtful, until Watson shows them a photo taken inside the apartment, showing the armoire. Holmes follows the skid marks on the floor to the door of a neighbor who called 911 and is speaking to police. Over the neighbor's protests, Holmes kicks in his door, revealing the armoire.
|
 |
| In the box at the 11th Precinct, the neighbor admits to the thefts, but not murder. Bell is disbelieving, but Holmes forcefully provides evidence the neighbor is being truthful, annoying Gregson. Watson tactfully asks Holmes to get her a bag of chips and once out of the room, Watson asks Gregson about his past acquaintance with Holmes in London. Gregson praises Holmes' abilities but not his behaviour and Watson discovers Holmes lied to Gregson about where he was when he called to ask to work with him in NYC. In the hallway, Bell informs them that the neighbor says he saw a woman on the stairway which Bell believes he made up after overhearing Holmes' theory. Holmes asks for a sketch artist over Bell's objections which Gregson approves. Leaving the station, Watson reminds Holmes about her dinner. Holmes deduces the friend is an ex-boyfriend and advises her to sleep with him to improve her mood.
|
 |
| Watson's dinner with her ex, Ty Morstan, doesn't go well as he expresses worry about her current career and that Watson's parents contacted him with similar concerns. Ty believes that Watson has become a sober companion as penance for the loss of the patient that cost her medical licence. The next morning, Holmes views photos from the coroner's report on Casey McManus. He notice Casey also had a rare genetic deficiency, a clouding of the cornea of his eye. Watson asks why Holmes didn't tell Gregson he was in rehab but Holmes is evasive and threatens to sue Watson if she tells Gregson. They are interrupted by a call from Detective Bell who says he's found the woman the neighbor described for the sketch artist.
|
 |
Holmes and Watson meet Bell outside a hospital, and he explains that he was about to circulate the sketch portrait provided by the neighbor, but a uniformed cop recognized it first, and provided a name: Yvette Ellison. Yvette's photograph matches the portrait exactly, and the neighbor has already identified it from a collection of similar-looking people. There is just one problem.
For his denouement, Bell shows them into Yvette Ellison's hospital room, where she has been lying in a coma for three days, after a failed suicide attempt. Bell concludes that the neighbor must have lied, and Holmes is wrong, since the person he identified is one person who couldn't possibly have killed Casey McManus the previous night.
Holmes sniffs Yvette's armpit and recognizes the same brand of deodorant. He rifles through the drawers in the hospital room, looking for a syringe to stab Yvette in the thigh, convinced she must be faking her coma. Watson performs a much simpler test: lifting Yvette's hand and letting it drop, her hand smacks her in the face. Watson concludes that the coma is quite real. When a doctor enters and asks what they are doing, Holmes reports, in a deadly serious voice, your patient's coma is quite real."
Exiting the hospital, Holmes says the lead is not a dead end: Holmes noticed a book (The Wizard of Oz) on Yvette's bedside, indicating someone has been reading to her. A dedication inside the book shows it was a childhood gift to two sisters who share the same birthday (i.e., twins). Holmes is further intrigued to learn that Yvette Ellison and her sister, Rebecca are the surviving children of recently-deceased shipping magnate Charles Ellison. Rebecca administers the family's charitable foundation, and both sisters are only days away from receiving their father's vast fortune.
But when Holmes and Watson visit the Ellison Foundation, Holmes is taken aback to meet Rebecca, who is Yvette's fraternal, not identical, twin. The two women do not resemble each other closely enough that the neighbor could plausibly have mistaken one for the other.
That evening, Holmes is practicing his lock-picking skills, while puzzling over the case. Rebecca was not the woman whom Casey McManus' neighbor saw, so clearly the killer bears a striking resemblance to Yvette, the only question is who is she?
As they talk, Watson shows Holmes a violin that she found in his closet. At first he claims that it is a relic from an old case, but she points out his name engraved on the side. He admits that he used to play, but has not done so since his rehab. She tries to suggest that it might be healthy for him to resume, but she is interrupted by a call from Ty. While she is trying to tactfully put him off, Holmes places the violin in a bucket and sets it on fire. She quickly hangs up on Ty and smothers the flames, saving the violin. Holmes tells her to "stop mucking with my things!" and she retorts that she wouldn't need to if he would just open up to her a little. They are interrupted by another call from Captain Gregson, who says there has been a second murder, with the same M.O. as the first.
In Queens, Holmes and Co. examine the body of Anna Webster, who was likewise shot in the head while entering her apartment, by someone sitting in a chair facing the door. Since Casey McManus's neighbor has been in custody for the last two nights, Bell concedes, that rules him out as the shooter in both cases. Right away, Holmes sniffs the chair and recognizes the same brand of deodorant. Watson notices a bottle of medicine that is prescribed for the same corneal dystrophy that Casey McManus had. Sherlock looks closer and posits that, apart from their skin color (McManus was white, Webster was African-American) the two resembled each other closely enough to be brother and sister.
The next day, at the precinct, Gregson reports that DNA tests have confirmed that Casey McManus and Anna Webster were half-siblings. Both were born out of wedlock, to an unknown father, and neither ever knew the other existed. Unfortunately, both victims' mothers are deceased, so they can't identify the mystery father that way.
Bell comes in, saying Anna Webster filed a police report, claiming that someone was following her. She also snapped a photograph of the man, who Bell thinks may be the mystery father. Gregson says no, he knows who the man is.
They go to meet Michael McGee, a former police officer who is now a chief investigator for the prestigious law firm of Whitehorse & Whitehorse. McGee greets Gregson fondly, but pretends ignorance when he is shown Anna Webster's photograph. Sherlock pulls him aside and quietly points out several clues which shows that McGee has been abusing drugs to cope with the stress of his job. Sherlock politely suggests that McGee tell them what they want to know, before Holmes starts yanking open drawers to reveal McGee's stash in front of still-serving cops. McGee diplomatically excuses himself to use the men's room, while "leaving" a file from his office safe on the desk.
A short time later, Gregson and Holmes confront Rebecca Ellison at her office, saying they know she hired her attorneys to investigate Casey McManus and Anna Webster, who, they now know, were Charles Ellison's illegitimate children. Under New York law, McManus and Webster, as pretermitted heirs to Ellison's estate, could have sued for as much as two-thirds of the family fortune, but now they are both dead. Rebecca admits to starting the investigation, but says they have mistaken her motives: Rebecca and Yvette did not learn, until their father was on his deathbed, that they had two half-siblings. Rebecca and Yvette argued over the best course of action to take, and Rebecca wanted to know what kind of people they were, before "giving tens of millions of dollars away to two virtual strangers." Before they could reach any kind of decision, however, Yvette became depressed and self-destructive, and eventually attempted suicide, resulting in her coma.
Holmes refuses to accept this explanation, theorizing that Rebecca used her attorneys' investigators to learn where the two heirs lived, and then killed them, disguised as her sister. In fact, Holmes says he wouldn't be surprised if she had something to do with Yvette's "suicide attempt." Rebecca slaps him, swearing she would never hurt her sister, before she is taken in for further questioning.
As they are returning home, Watson is surprised to see Ty standing outside their door, with a bottle of wine. He says she emailed him an invitation to dinner, and he has happily accepted. Watson rounds on Holmes, who rather smarmily introduces himself as Joan's "companion," which is enough to send Ty away in a jealous snit, convinced that Joan lied to him about her latest client. Watson is furious, and Holmes says it is only fair, after she started rooting through his closet. He proposes that they bin the idea of them getting to know each other, and instead base their "companionship" on mutually respecting each other's privacy: she can keep her secrets, and he can keep his. Before the argument can escalate, Gregson calls, telling Holmes that Rebecca Ellison is being released. There is no evidence in her apartment or her office linking her to either crime scene; moreover, although her alibi that she was home, alone, when the murders were committed would be feeble, there is security camera footage confirming this. Rebecca did not kill either victim, meaning they are back to square one.
Holmes and Watson are attending another group support meeting, where Watson politely warns Holmes against self-hypnotizing again, or else she'll jab him in the fleshy part of his thigh with a thumbtack. Holmes sourly pretends to listen to the addicts go on while ruminating over the case; he is sure that Rebecca Ellison somehow tricked the security cameras in her building, since no one else could have killed McManus and Webster.
Then one of the addicts gets up and describes how she seduced her married physician in order to gain access to more pills - one of the many sorry avenues to which drug addiction led her. Holmes shoots to his feet and tells Watson he has a breakthrough. Watson demands to know what it is before she lets him walk out of the meeting. Holmes says there isn't time, but Watson lays down the law: their relationship may not require them to be friends, but it does require them to trust each other. Trust her, Watson says, and she will try to help; don't, and she "will be the opposite of help." Holmes sighs.
In Yvette Ellison's hospital room, Rebecca is reading The Wizard of Oz to her sister again, when Holmes storms in and says he knows that she lied, and that she killed McManus and Webster. He is about to reveal how, when Yvette's doctor bursts in, along with Gregson and Bell. Holmes shouts that Rebecca may have fooled everyone else, but she didn't fool him, and, moreover, the two murders she committed were for nothing, because there was a third pretermitted heir, and Holmes knows exactly who she is and where she lives, and will be guarding her place personally. Before he can say more, he is placed under arrest and hustled out of the room.
That night, a mysterious female follows the third heir into her apartment, carrying a gun - when the lights come up and a whole host of police officers, led by Gregson and Bell, point their guns at... Yvette Ellison.
At the precinct, Rebecca stares in confusion at her sister, who is being held in custody. Watson explains that Yvette's coma was drug-induced by her doctor, who put her under and brought her out of it, as needed.
Holmes explains that, during the group meeting, he heard the story of a woman who seduced her doctor for the sake of his medical expertise, and realized that Yvette had done the same thing to her doctor, who helped her stage her suicide attempt and place her in a coma, to give her an airtight alibi for killing the two unwanted claimants to their father's fortune. It was not a perfect plan: being in a drug-induced coma left Yvette quite weak, which is why she had to sit down while lying in wait for McManus and Webster.
Holmes realized that, while Rebecca, who had a big heart, wanted to welcome their previously-unknown siblings into their lives and share the family fortune with them, Yvette wanted the exact opposite.
Rebecca asks about the third heir, the one Yvette just tried to kill, and Holmes confesses that he made her up. He staged the scene at the hospital, with Watson, Gregson and Bell's help, to set a trap for Yvette and her doctor lover. Not only did Holmes blurt out the name and address of the fictional third heir in front of the doctor, but he made it appear as if he - the only person intent on guarding the third heir's apartment - would be in jail for the evening, giving Yvette and her doctor a very small, very crucial window of opportunity. The woman that Yvette followed to her home is actually a police officer.
Rebecca begins to say that she needs to contact her family's attorneys and get Yvette some professional help, because, whatever crimes she has committed, they are still sisters. Holmes gingerly poses the question: why didn't Yvette "miraculously" wake up from her coma after eliminating the two pretermitted heirs? What else did she need an alibi for? Who else might she have been planning to kill? Could it be, Holmes wonders aloud, her own sister, the only other person standing between Yvette and the entirety of the family fortune?
Shocked, Rebecca looks through the glass at her sister, and gets a look of chilling indifference in reply. "You mind that big heart, Miss Ellison," Holmes advises, "it'll beat longer."
As Holmes and Watson are heading out, Gregson and Bell meet them, and Gregson invites them out for drinks at a local pub. Holmes is surprised by the offer, but declines politely.
That evening, Holmes and Watson sit down to a takeout dinner. With prodding, Holmes admits that listening at the support meeting helped him to solve the case. Watson asks Holmes if the reason he closes himself off to feelings and pleasurable experiences is not because it makes him a better detective, but as some form of penance? Holmes asks, penance for what? Watson says, for whatever happened in London that led to his drug addiction, not to mention the addiction itself. Watson supposes that someone may punish or deny himself (or herself) as a form of penance, maybe without even realizing it. Sadly, Holmes replies, "You always know it, Watson. If you didn't, it wouldn't be penance."
That evening, Watson is reading in bed, while Holmes sits in an easy chair, staring at his violin in its case, on his lap. In her room, Watson hears the violin being tuned and then tentatively played, and smiles.
Music
- Castlebed - Only Games Ft. Aoka plays in the background at the restaurant where Watson meets her ex-boyfriend Ty Morstan.
- Bach - Partita No. 2 in D Minor for Solo Violin, BWV 1004 is played by Holmes on violin at episode end.
Trivia
- The amygdalae (singular "amygdala") are a pair of nuclei in the brain, responsible for, among other things, memory function and decision-making.
- Holmes's "attic theory" was first pronounced by the original Sherlock Holmes in Arthur Conan Doyle's A Study in Scarlet, when John Watson expresses surprise that Holmes has an encyclopedic knowledge of many subjects, yet remains ignorant of several fundamental facts, such as Copernican theory (i.e., the fact that the Earth revolves around the sun).
- Ty Morstan's last name refers to Mary Morstan, Dr. John Watson's wife in the original Holmes canon.
- Detective Marcus Bell debuts in this episode.
- Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes also played the violin while thinking.
- When Holmes tries to burn his violin, he facetiously compares himself to Jimi Hendrix, a rock performer who famously set his guitar on fire, while on stage at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967.
- A similar premise was used in the episode "Mr. Monk and the Sleeping Suspect" of the USA mystery series Monk, in which the person with the clearest motive for murdering the victims has been lying in a coma for six months.
Gallery
| 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
| ||
| Season One • Season Two • Season Three • Season Four • Season Five • Season Six • Season Seven | ||
