Elementary 1x02: While You Were Sleeping.

Previously: Elementary: characterisation, the unaired pilot, and its relationship to Sherlock Holmes canon.

This episode cemented the main opinions I formed from watching the pilot: that while the Holmes/Watson dynamic is a delight, the crime storylines are very generic. I actually found this episode more predictable than last week's, because once you introduce a pair of soon-to-inherit heiresses and a collection of murder victims who all share the same genetic traits, it's not hugely difficult to put two and two together. While the heiress-murderer plotline fell comfortably within the scope of classic Holmesian mysteries, the procedural crime drama episode structure was so formulaic that most similarities to Sherlock Holmes were lost. This is particularly true because while canon Holmes did make mistakes on occasion, this type of episode structure requires so many red herrings that just like in the pilot episode, Holmes hardly seemed much cleverer than any other TV detective. Hopefully the crimesolving and deduction scenes will improve as the season progresses.

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Until the crime writing picks up, the other aspects of the show will definitely be enough to keep me watching. I'm already loving Joan Watson's characterisation, particularly the objective fact that she really is good at her job. First of all, she's excellent at establishing boundaries, which is pretty rare on TV. Usually characters end up either with an established BFFs dynamic from the very first episode, and standoffish female characters are almost always portrayed as defensive bitches who need to be thawed out. Secondly it's pretty explicit that her relationship with Holmes is (currently) professional rather than friendly, which I honestly find rather refreshing considering my previous point that most buddy-cop stories have the main duo setting the tone very early on and carrying on in the same bickering-partners dynamic ad infinitum.

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Forgive me for making comparisons to BBC Sherlock, but I love the way Elementary has cast Watson as the cipher while Holmes is the more open of the two. I already have a lot of thoughts about Elementary's relationship with Holmes canon, and something that I find particularly interesting is the fact that the characterisation in Elementary is no more or less canonical than that of BBC Sherlock (in different ways, of course), and yet the dynamic between the two sets of characters is radically different. In Elementary, Holmes is the one for whom it seems like a real strain to keep his feelings under wraps, while Watson is very practised at not reacting to Holmes' deductions and jibes. It's clear that Holmes isn't Watson's first client as she's brisk and cool towards him without being unkind, in a way that suggests to me that she's had to deal with a lot worse from previous addicts. She's unruffled by things like Holmes effectively telling her she needs to get laid -- which, by the way, I am so sure that as an attractive but unfriendly/uncompromising woman she's had to put up with from hundreds of other guys already.

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Holmes' comments about Joan's ex-boyfriend followed up on last week's implication that Holmes has a very functional attitude towards sex. I must admit I'm curious to see how the Ty/Joan relationship progresses in later episodes, because presumably there's a good reason why they're not still together even though they seem to be on good terms. We already know that he's in Joan's parents' good books and he wants to spend more time with her, even though she doesn't act any more warmly towards him as she does to anyone else. If this was a more mature show like The Good Wife then I'd see this as the beginning of a storyline wherein an outwardly "nice" but secretly villainous ex-boyfriend pursues Joan (a situation complicated by Joan's client/patient confidentiality regarding Holmes), but since Elementary is more at the level of mid-range crime procedurals, it's more likely to be the start of a mildly conflicted will-they/won't-they subplot.
I'm finding that Elementary is reminding me more of House MD than of BBC Sherlock, perhaps because both Elementary Holmes and Gregory House exist in "real life" far moreso than the antisocial Sherlock. However, Elementary differs drastically from both in that it's completely abandoned the model of "asshole eccentric/long-suffering sidekick". There are moments when Holmes acts like an asshole, but the important thing to notice here is that while he may be acting like it, he isn't actually an asshole by nature. Case in point, the scene where he exploits the private detective's secret meth addiction to get answers. That scene was particularly telling because not only did Holmes take the man aside (whereas both House and Sherlock would have just shouted out his secrets in public) but after he's got the information he needs, he bashfully recommends his old rehab clinic. Elementary Holmes may not function fully in everyday society, but he certainly feels empathy in a way that House and Sherlock rarely do.

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There are moments when Holmes gets carried away or seems a bit "off", socially speaking, but the one moment where he does something actually bad (inviting Joan's ex-boyfriend to a fictional dinner-party -- a trick taken directly from the Gregory House Bad Friend Handbook), Watson immediately smacks him down and makes sure he understands that this type of behaviour is unacceptable. Which brings me at last to the topic of Elementary's hidden gift to us all -- the gift of happily submissive Holmes.

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On top of the fact that Elementary Holmes and Watson already have a genuinely entertaining rapport, there's this strong indication that Holmes is into BDSM -- and written in a way that's surprisingly free of cartoonish innuendo. It's already obvious that Holmes enjoys being told what to do. Not in the sense that he's getting off on being bossed around by Joan, but more like he really benefits from the way she deals with him as a combination of authority figure and caregiver -- ie, treating him with respect, but with clearly delineated boundaries and instructions that he has to follow. Although Joan is being paid by Holmes' father to take care of him, I think that Holmes secretly knows that he needs to be taken care of, and more importantly Joan knows how to take care of him. He seems more self-destructive than masochistic, and Joan shows up at precisely the right time and in the right circumstances to provide him with the authority figure that he didn't know he needed.

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Looking towards later episodes, I'm interested to see what further intersections we see between Sherlock Holmes canon and Elementary. The writers are going to have to walk a fine line, because while they do presumably want to keep as many canon details as possible, BBC Sherlock is knee-deep in Holmes trivia to the extent that some overlap is already inevitable -- and Elementary does not want to overlap with BBC Sherlock too much. In the pilot there were very few similarities but in this episode we saw the appearance of what Holmes referred to as "attic theory", which sounds pretty similar to BBC Sherlock's "mind palace". These are both versions of the canon characterisation of Holmes having an encyclopaedic knowledge of things like cigarette ash and footprint patterns, but no familiarity whatsoever with "useless" information such as the fact that the earth orbits the sun.

Random thoughts

• LOVED the credits sequence. 
• Lucy Liu's disgusted expression is a delight to behold.
• This is undoubtedly quadruple idiotic coming from a person who has lived in Britain their entire life, but I'm 100% charmed by Jonny Lee Miller's accent, voice, and general Britishisms like "Stop mucking with my things!"
•  "Ty. Interesting name, that. Noun, verb, nationality." How is it that these writers can be so good at writing entertaining, snappy dialogue for their lead characters, but be such utter potatoes when it comes to crime-writing?
• The music Holmes plays at the end of the episode is Bach's Chaconne for Solo Violin.
• Zipper mask! 
• Joan telling Sherlock to go buy her some chips! 
• Who else freaked out at Holmes trying to burn his violin? DON'T BURN VIOLINS, oh my god.
• I am thoroughly disappointed at the lack of bees in this episode.

All previous Holmes-related posts can be found on the Sherlock Holmes tag.