Cast
Main cast
Featured cast
Plot
| "The upside was that I learned a lot about how to deal with people like him. So when I left medicine, companionship seemed like a pretty natural fit." — Watson regarding her ex Liam Danow
|
| A middle-aged man stares at a gun being pointed at his face before it is fired. Holmes is huddled in a blanket, fighting a bad flu. Despite his condition, he responds to a text from the NYPD in spite of Watson reminding him he isn't paid for his services. In the rain, they meet Detective Bell at a garbage heap where the body of the middle-aged man is lying having been shot through both eyes. Holmes swiftly notes he was killed elsewhere and the man was a professor of Asian studies who'd been to Thailand recently. By the man's tie, he identifies the man taught at Garrison University and a search on his phone identifies him as Trent Annunzio. Later, they interview Annunzio's widow Jun, who is Chinese and much younger than Trent. She says she met Trent in China where she was his student, he brought her to the US where they were married and had a daughter. She can't think of anyone who'd killed him.
|
 |
| On the way to Garrison, Watson receives a call and goes to Rikers Island Prison to help an old client. At the university, Annunzio's teaching assistant, Brendan O'Brien, shows Holmes and Bell into Annunzio's office. Holmes observes that many items reflect good luck in China. Bell finds mah-jongg tiles which he identifies as membership cards to illegal gambling parlors. At Rikers, Watson meets Liam Danow, a recovering addict. He's been arrested for a hit-and-run that he swears someone else committed with his car. He admits that he was high that night, but would have remembered. He asks Watson to help with her friend at the D.A.'s office, but she refuses. As she leaves, he asks if she treats all her ex-lovers this badly. Watson meets up with Bell and Holmes as they are about to enter a mah-jongg parlor.
|
 |
| While Bell questions the staff, Holmes learns the details of Watson's trip to Rikers. She declines his help as she's fairly certain Laim's guilty. No one will speak English to Bell until Holmes addresses the janitor who he identifies as the owner in disguise. Holmes asks about a large area that has been bleached and when the owner says a drunk threw up there, Holmes points out the repair of two recent bullet holes in the wall. He then asks for security video from a camera disguised as a smoke alarm which with resignation, the owner provides. The video shows a man with a ski mask robbing the patrons before shooting Annunzio in each eye. Holmes gets the security footage from the hallway in which the killer's face is seen. At the precinct, Holmes scans mug shots and decries Chinese herbal tea Watson brings for this flu. He's deduces who Watson's client is and leaves his file on the desk. Bell tells them they have the killer and Watson takes the file after they leave.
|
 |
| There is overwhelming evidence against the killer, Raul Ramirez, who offers to trade information for special consideration. He claims he was hired by someone, who called or texted him, to shoot Annunzio in both eyes when he was leaving the university. Ramirez was tailing Annunzio, saw him go into the parlour and figured he could make more money by robbing it and killing Annunzio there. Later, Bell reports that Ramirez's phone records back his story but the number he was called by is untraceable. However, Watson is able to see an irregularity with the picture of Annunzio sent to Ramirez which Holmes sees is a photo of a picture in Annunzio's office and produces a suspect. In his home, Annunzio's TA Brendan O'Brien, is questioned as he had access to Annunzio's office and, lived near Ramirez. He claims no knowledge but a bad letter of recommendation from Annunzio provides motive and a search of his bedroom reveals the phone used to contact Ramirez. From O'Brien's reactions, Holmes believes he is innocent but O'Brien confesses.
|
 |
| At the Brownstone, Holmes watches the video of O'Brien's interrogation in which he repeats the questions back as answers. He shows Watson O'Brien's on-line records which includes a large number of downloaded songs which Holmes comments are almost all bad. Watson discusses Liam's case and notes that his car was wrecked but Liam had no injuries. She believes he's telling the truth and Holmes tells her of numerous car thefts in Liam's neighborhood where the cars were hot-wired and stripped of valuables. Watson believes Liam left the keys in the car and notes a key-ring pendant she gave him was missing. Holmes has deduced that Liam was Watson's ex-lover and Watson evades his questions due to embarrassment. As she heads to bed, Holmes looks at O'Brien's records and spots a clue. The next morning, he and Bell question Jun at her home. The previous visit there, Holmes saw mix CDs with music he recognized was from O'Brien.
|
 |
| Holmes asks Jun if she and O'Brien were having an affair which provides motive and explains that O'Brien's confession would be to protect her. Jun admits to the affair but not to Annunzio's murder. She claims Annunzio was a sadist and a pervert and shows them a torture manual and claims he forced her to perform sex acts which he recorded. She also reveals that they weren't married which Annunzio used to keep Jun silent about his actions lest she be deported. The affair began when O'Brien found her crying and her promised to help her leave Annunzio and marry him. Holmes points out she lied to them before so to prove her story is true, she accesses Annunzio's computer to show them the sex tapes but is shocked to find they are gone. Bell asks her to come to the precinct.
|
 |
| At Rikers, Watson shows Liam the crime scene photos of his car and asks him to look for anything out of the ordinary. While he is doing so, he apologizes for his earlier rough words to her, and she accepts. She says that she knows he feels sorry for the things he's done, but that begs the question: why does he keep doing them? Liam chews on the question for a moment, then looks at the crime scene photos and notices that the charm Watson gave him is gone.
|
|
That evening, Watson returns home to find Holmes sitting over the disassembled remains of Annunzio's computer. She asks why, and he says that, although the clues point to O'Brien's guilt, he is not satisfied - particularly when the "solution" to this particular case may result in an innocent man going to prison and an equally innocent woman being deported and separated from her infant child permanently. To her surprise, Holmes asks for another cup of the special medicinal tea she made the other day.
Over cups of tea, Watson reveals that she solved her own case: she visited pawnshops in Liam's neighborhood until she tracked down the key-ring charm, and the owner identified the kid who brought it in. The police have already arrested the young man for the joyrides in the neighborhood. Holmes is impressed, and suggests, half-joking, that she should take the lead in the Annunzio case. In a moment of vulnerability, Watson admits that Liam is not a former client of hers, just a former lover. She met him when one of his drug escapades landed him in the emergency room while she was on duty, and she staged an intervention to try and get him to clean up. Their affair was a fairly predictable medley of hurt feelings, disappointment, and heartache, but on the bright side, she did learn a lot about addiction cycles, which made her career as a sober companion an obvious choice when she was suspended from medicine.
| Just then, Holmes' phone beeps, as the coroner emails him the autopsy report on Annunzio. Holmes notes the presence of two medicinal Chinese herbs in Annunzio's stomach contents (sheepishly admitting that after Watson's tea proved so effective, he revised his opinion of Chinese medicine and did some research). The herbal mixture in Annunzio's stomach is specifically used to treat eye pain. Holmes says this can't be a coincidence: Annunzio was deliberately shot in both eyes. Watson also remembers seeing a photo of Annunzio and his students in which everyone but Annunzio had "red-eye" from the camera flash, indicating that something was blocking the reflective part of his retina. Holmes says they need to get to the coroner's office, as he now knows who arranged Annunzio's murder.
|
|
A short while later, Holmes shows Gregson and Bell microscopic photos of cancer cells found in the remnants of Trent Annunzio's eye sockets. He had developed uveal melanoma, terminal cancer in his eyes that was both untreatable and excruciatingly painful. Holmes has realized that Annunzio planned his own death, both to get revenge on his wife and her lover, and also save himself from an agonizing end.
| Annunzio discovered Jun's affair with O'Brien at roughly the same time he began experiencing eye pain and was diagnosed with his cancer. Left only with "his intellect and his anger," Annunzio tracked down Raul Ramirez and hired him, anonymously, to be Annunzio's own executioner. By planting the phone he used to contact Ramirez in O'Brien's apartment, and writing the phony recommendation, Annunzio gave O'Brien both the method and the motive for murdering him and likewise ensured that Jun would either be implicated in his murder or, at the very least, deported back to China in poverty. To cover his own tracks, Annunzio also deleted the sex videos he had made of Jun from his computer and instructed Ramirez to shoot him in the eyes, to destroy the evidence of his terminal condition.
|
|
The only flaw in his plan was the unpredictable nature of Ramirez, who shot him two days ahead of schedule when the timing of the kill was supposed to make O'Brien look guilty. Gregson says that, although Holmes' theory makes sense, there is not enough evidence to release O'Brien, since they already have the phone and a signed confession. Gregson also admits that Jun was released from custody, and the immigration authorities have already begun proceedings to deport her. Ruefully, Gregson says that, if this is all a frame-up by Annunzio, "then it's a damn good one."
In the morning, Watson enters the bathroom to find Holmes has re-created his "evidence board" in there. He explains that he is trying to place the old data in a new setting, to figure out how to prove his theory. When she asks him if he got any sleep the night before, he says, "Hard to sleep knowing that a psychopath may have managed to ruin two lives from beyond the grave."
| Among the photos and notes, Watson notices a map showing O'Brien and Raul Ramriez's addresses circled, and notes their proximity. As often happens, Watson mulls over a detail that seems to have eluded Holmes: how did Annunzio find Ramirez? A man can't just look up killers-for-hire in the phone book, especially if he was aiming to make O'Brien look guilty by hiring someone who lived close to him. Holmes realizes, "you'd use a menu," and opens the webpage for New York's sex offender registry. Killers are not listed by location, but rapists are, and it's not a great leap to imagine that a rapist would agree to murder for hire if the price was right. A search of the registry using O'Brien's address brings up Raul Ramirez, but it brings up another man first: Dennis Kaminski, who lives in O'Brien's building. Watson is confused: "why didn't [Annunzio] go to this guy first?" Holmes rejoins, "who says he didn't?"
|
|
At Rikers Island, Watson shows Liam a news article, reporting the arrest of the joyrider and his own exoneration for the hit-and-run. She tells him he will be released shortly. Liam is profoundly grateful, but Watson tells him that, as much as she cares for him, he can't keep relying on her to bail him out of his own mistakes. She says she has made an appointment for him at a rehab clinic in Manhattan, but she won't be there waiting for him: if he really wants to get better, he will have to take the responsibility.
| In Gregson's office, Jun is surprised to learn that Annunzio planned his own death. Holmes reveals that the police have already interviewed Dennis Kaminski, who admitted that someone anonymously approached him in the same manner as Raul Ramirez. Mr. Kaminski, however, was more suspicious and told the mystery man that he wouldn't even consider the job without an additional $1,000.00 upfront. Kaminski (whose prior rape offenses included placing hidden cameras in ladies' bathrooms) then planted a camera outside his apartment door; the next day's footage from the camera clearly shows Annunzio slipping an envelope under his door. That is enough evidence to prove Holmes's theory.
|
|
O'Brien is shown into the office, having just been cleared of suspicion of Annunzio's murder. Gregson informs him and Jun that, if they get married immediately, she should be able to stay in the United States. They agree enthusiastically. Holmes, embarrassed by their open show of affection, exits the office with a light "good show, Mr. O'Brien" to Brendan - faint praise, but effusive for Sherlock Holmes.
That evening, Watson is contrary to her own promise, waiting at the clinic for Liam to show up. She is surprised when Holmes shows up and offers to wait with her. Liam is nowhere to be seen, and she says she will give him ten more minutes. As they keep a vigil on a bench inside the clinic, she says that Holmes can go if he has somewhere else to be. "Not tonight, Watson" he replies.
Music
- No - The Long Haul plays at episode end.
Trivia
- Trent Annunzio's damning recommendation letter about Brendan O'Brian mentions his "Horatio Alger can do spirit."
- Titled "Chinesische Medizin" (Chinese Medicine) in German.[1]
Gallery
References
|
| 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 | ||
