This post contains spoilers for the latest episode of Elementary, “Tremors.”

This week’s Elementary started out rather ridiculously. A schizophrenic man was shown into the precinct by an officer who was not alarmed by the man’s odd behavior or the fact that he was carrying a bulky and concealed item. When the young man, Silas Cole, revealed that he was carrying a shotgun, the entire precinct drew their weapons. Sherlock managed to defuse the situation by distracting Silas until the officers could tackle him.

I’m pointing that out because it’s a very glaring flaw in an otherwise brilliant episode. Any trained police officer would’ve noticed Silas’ odd behavior, and most police stations institute a strict No Weapons policy for visitors, which would naturally lead to searches of people who appear to be carrying anything that could conceal a weapon. Why couldn’t Silas have just wandered in unnoticed? Sure, that is unlikely to happen too, but I think it’s more likely than a trained police officer leading him right up to Captain Gregson, don’t you?

Clyde made an unforgettable appearance.

This episode was about Sherlock dealing with the consequences of his actions, both in the James Dylan case and in the hearing for the James Dylan case. It broke its usual structure this week, choosing instead to go with flashbacks with added Sherlock “flourishes” which made for great jokes, but also contributed to Sherlock’s bigger problems.

In the aftermath of Silas’ arrest, Sherlock believed Silas was out to kill someone Silas had been calling “The Queen,” who ultimately turned out to be Silas’ ex-girlfriend, Rada Hollingsworth. Rada was found dead from a gunshot wound to the chest, leading Sherlock to believe that Silas wasn’t the murderer. During the investigation, he questioned many suspects, including Rada’s oncologist, Dr. Phineaus Hobbs, and a viatical settlements manager named James Dylan. It was the method in which he went about questioning Dylan that eventually got him into trouble… even though Hobbs turned out to be the murderer.

During his hearing, Sherlock lies on the stand after being questioned about his and Joan’s illegal activities, such as breaking into houses or illegally obtaining evidence. Sherlock believes these things are necessary for a consultant because he is able to work outside the law; the problem is, he does nothing to hide this attitude on the stand, which makes him something of a loose cannon to the people who write and enforce the rules.

It puts Joan and Gregson in the crosshairs, but Sherlock is adamant that his work and methodology is more important than the rules forced on them by society.

Joan: “Why do we get to be above the rules?”
Sherlock: “Because our methods work. And I’m comfortable that our actions are guided by a morality that supersedes any clumsy employee manual. The danger with rulebooks, Watson, is that they offer the illusion that leading a moral life is a simple undertaking, that the world exists in black and white. Welcome to the grays!”

He’s right, in a sense, that morals are subjective according to personal codes, and it’s funny that he questions why we, as a society, choose to follow certain ones even as he works with them. Even during his trial, he challenges the prosecutor on whether she’s ever jaywalked, asking, “So some degree of criminality is acceptable, the rest is just negotiating boundaries?”

It comes out about halfway through the episode that Detective Bell was shot in an incident related to the Dylan case. Sherlock clearly feels some guilt, but to the prosecutor and judge, he appears unaffected by his colleagues injury; the prosecutor even goes as far as sarcastically saying, “Your affection for the man really shines through.” We (and Joan) know him better, and the dead giveaway is Sherlock’s refusal to go visit Bell in the hospital.

Sherlock: “I’ve got nothing to offer the man other than a few banal bromides.”
Joan: “What makes you think that’s not enough?”

Joan eventually has to take the stand, where she keeps to Sherlock’s story about puppies and loud TVs, and Sherlock even cross-examines her about the Rada Hollingsworth case, which is how we find out that the doctor did it. But when his line of questioning is over, the prosecutor asks Joan, “Then what happened?” and Joan is forced to recount the events of Bell’s shooting.

While he was questioning James Dylan, Sherlock asked if Dylan’s employers knew he was a convicted felon. Dylan had managed to keep that fact a secret from his bosses, so he begged Sherlock to keep his secret in exchange for any information he had about Rada. Sherlock kept his secret, but it turned out that he’d talked too loudly in the office, and one of Dylan’s cubicle neighbors had heard the accusation. Dylan had lost his job, which meant he had violated his parole, so he was going back to prison. He ambushed Sherlock in the street, just as he, Joan, and Bell were leaving after having arrested the oncologist, and Sherlock goaded him rather heartlessly until Dylan finally pulled his gun to shoot. Bell reacted quickly, jumping in front of Sherlock to take the bullet to the gut as other bystanding officers shot Dylan.

The tragedy of the story is that Dylan was not entirely a loose cannon. He’s responsible for his actions, but the whole situation could’ve been avoided if Sherlock had been more patient, understanding, or compassionate. Heck, it could’ve been avoided if he’d just used his inside voice while questioning Dylan. Any number of things could’ve gone differently in order to keep Bell from getting shot, and it’s the reason Sherlock’s being investigated in the first place.

Bell has complications during his surgery; a blood clot formed which obstructed blood flow to his right arm for half an hour. The chances of him regaining full strength in his gun hand aren’t high. When Joan visits Bell later, he’s struggling just to grip something in his hand. It is, hands down, Jon Michael Hill’s best work to date.

But he’s not done acting yet! After the judge (who was played by the great Frankie Faison, by the way) handed down a recommendation that Sherlock and Joan be terminated as consultants, the police commissioner, Patrick, visits Bell in the hospital. He puts it to Bell to decide Sherlock and Joan’s fates; are they enough of an asset to risk these kinds of incidents, or is Sherlock too much of a loose cannon to keep around?

At the end of the episode, Sherlock finally visits Bell in the hospital. It’s a beautiful scene between two very talented and nuanced actors. He tells Bell that he and Joan have been reinstated, though he doesn’t know why. (We know: Because Bell did the right thing and recommended it to the commissioner.) Sherlock apologizes for his actions and admits that he should’ve done more to avoid that sort of confrontation, and he thanks Bell for saving his life. Bell remains stony the entire time, not speaking, not smiling, just staring at Sherlock without turning his head.

Sherlock continues to offer services, such as sending Bell to the best clinic in Sweden, or having the doctor fly in to care for him here in the city, at no cost to Bell. But Bell, either too hurt, too stubborn, or too proud to accept Sherlock’s guilt-induced offers of help, refuses the services. The episode ends with him snapping, “Holmes! I don’t want a favor from you. I’d rather not see you around here.”

I’m hoping he reconsiders next week; he has every right to his feelings about Holmes, but it’s in his best interest to take advantage of the very best medical care he can get, and Sherlock is offering that. I get that he probably doesn’t want to owe his recovery to Sherlock, but does he want to owe his persistent injury to him instead? If Bell truly wants to get well enough to be a detective again, hopefully he will reconsider.

Next week: Alfredo’s back! It’s been too long, good friend.

(And yes, I have learned my lesson: Never beg for Bell-centric episodes again. IT ONLY RESULTS IN HIM GETTING SHOT.)

Elementary delivered on “creepy,” “intriguing,” and “entertaining” in spades last week with its final sweeps episode. It started out interesting enough, with a young woman standing on a bridge, aiming a gun that was weighed down by a dumbbell at her face before pulling the trigger. It appeared to be a simple suicide, even if it was elaborately staged to look like a homicide, but it turned out that she had called the police earlier in the night to claim that a man named Lucas Bundsch was going to kill her that night. The woman, Samantha, believed Lucas had killed her sister, Allie, six years prior. Sherlock, a man of details, doesn’t take long to deduce that the young woman had killed herself in order to frame Lucas.

Lucas was still brought in for questioning, and Sherlock believed him to be innocent until he was hooked up to the polygraph. Unfortunately, that’s when Lucas showed signs of lying, leading Sherlock to believe that Bundsch had killed Allie, and that he was, in fact, a serial killer.

“I should’ve let Samantha Wabash frame that man.”

The episode twists and turns from there, and for the first time, the viewers are aware and certain that Bundsch is the murderer for the entirety of the episode. The intrigue lay in watching Sherlock struggle to pin the murders to Bundsch, who is always two steps ahead of him. Bundsch even shows up to the Brownstone to subtly threaten and mock Sherlock and Watson, which only serves to infuriate Sherlock.

After a punch to the face, Bundsch files a restraining order against Sherlock, which seems to stall the case. Sherlock prepares to frame Bundsch for another woman’s abduction (one which Bundsch gloats about) until he figures out that Bundsch must be keeping his hostages at his recording studio, which was renovated and soundproofed when he purchased the property.

Bundsch was a repugnant man, played brilliantly by Troy Garrity. He is deeply unnerving, and at some points, it’s downright difficult to watch certain scenes. That Sherlock was provoked enough to punch him was no surprise to the viewers, as some of us were crawling out of our skin most of the time.

The episode ends with a small victory: a young woman who had been abducted in 2011 was discovered alive along with the woman Bundsch had kidnapped during the episode.

Sherlock and Joan are at odds for most of the episode, though, because of the way Sherlock treats the not-Bell police officers at the 11th Precinct. Joan disapproves of the way Sherlock talks to Detective Coventry, the man who had led the investigation on Allie Wabash six years ago, and Sherlock refuses to apologize for his actions, insisting that he’s simply asking for excellence from everyone around him.

Joan chooses to work separately from Sherlock as much as possible, angry that Sherlock can’t see that his actions have consequences.

“What does it cost us to tread lightly around the people that we work with? I’ll tell you: attention and effort. Which I am not willing to spare.”

To be fair, Detective Coventry was way out of line. He gave Lucas Bundsch the address to the Brownstone just to spite Sherlock, which should’ve gotten him suspended with pay at the very least. Later, Coventry tells Gregson over drinks that he’s embarrassing himself by keeping Sherlock around, because Sherlock is constantly checking over the shoulders of the detectives and officers at the precinct. Gregson stands behind Sherlock because of his track record (and he lays a pretty epic smackdown on Coventry in the process) but Coventry insists that “half the precinct” hates Sherlock and resents Gregson for utilizing him. He then threatens to call the union before storming out of the bar. Gregson later addresses his entire staff, saying that if anyone has a problem with the way he runs his precinct, they’re welcome to leave.

I’m wondering if we’re ramping up for an internal affairs investigation, maybe in May sweeps, in which Sherlock has to go to bat for Gregson in order to help him keep his job. This episode lays a good foundation for such a storyline, and it could even make a great two-parter.

After the case is solved, Sherlock is painting blood spatter onto the wall of a dollhouse when Joan approaches him. “I am not a nice man, it’s important that you understand that.” He goes on to list all of his negative attributes, adding, “I am neither proud of this, nor ashamed of it.”

“I’m not going to change.”
“You have. You’re not the same person I met a year and a half ago, you’re–”
“Good to you? Yeah. For the most part. I consider you to be exceptional. So I make an exceptional effort to accomodate you. But you must accept that for as long as you choose to be in my life, there will occasionally be fallout from my behavior. That must be a part of our understanding.”
“No one can accept something like that forever.”
“To thine own self, Watson.”

That exchange doesn’t bode well, either. Looks like a Sherlock/Watson schism is on the horizon.

**This post contains spoilers for the most recent episode of Elementary, “An Unnatural Arrangement.”**

Last night, we had the pleasure of meeting Captain Gregson’s wife, Cheryl, under less than favorable circumstances. She got home late one night to find an armed man sitting in her living room, demanding to know the whereabouts of her husband. She handled herself like any respectable cop’s wife: by hitting the alarm on her car to divert his attention, running to the nearest stashed gun in the house, and shooting the bad guy through a closed door.

Unfortunately, the perp got away (this would have been a boring case otherwise) but she managed to shoot him in the shoulder before he took off. She was calm and collected as she called the police, telling the dispatcher, “He said he came for my husband, you have to make sure he’s okay.”

As she recounts the events of the night, she recalls relevant details for the investigation, even adding, “He had a Glock handgun.” It’s easy to imagine Gregson over the years, repeatedly quizzing his wife on what to do in the event of a home invasion, or coaching her on the ways to profile a suspect. (Moff insisted that I point how great it is that Gregson is married to someone who could realistically be his wife. She looks like a mother, she’s pretty without plastic surgery, she has a sensible wardrobe, and her hair is fantastic. I’m not saying I would’ve been disappointed if he’d turned out to be married to a tiny blonde who is twenty years his junior, but… yeah, that would’ve disappointed me.)

The sad part is when Gregson reveals that he’s not currently living at home, and that he hasn’t been for about a month.

During the course of the investigation, Gregson finds out that his estranged wife is seeing an old friend of hers, a man that Gregson never trusted. It results in a fight about their separation and how unhappy she has been in their marriage.

“What I want is to be with my wife.”
“Now? After 28 years of missed dinners and weekends at the precinct?”
“Come on. When did I ever tell you I wanted to be anything but a cop?”
“When did I tell you that I was always going to be okay with that?”

I can’t say it’s a common conversation that cops have with their spouses, but I can say that I’ve had similar conversations with my cop husband. Gregson’s lifestyle is different from Sherlock’s, he arrives at work every day with a vow to protect the people of his precinct. At any given time, he is making more enemies than he is friends, but that’s part of the job. It’s worth it to Gregson because of the good that comes out of it. It’s not easy, it’s a lot of missed holidays, family events, and yes, even dinners. I got a little shiver as I watched Gregson and his wife argue; could that be me one day? Will I resent the job as much as Cheryl does?

Sherlock, of course, knew about the separation thanks to good ol’ deductive reasoning: “He’s been arriving earlier in the morning, leaving later, stopped bringing home packed lunches.” He takes a pragmatic view of the situation, and of marriage in general: “Detection is a calling, not a job. Hardly leaves one with time leftover to sustain the elaborate ruse of marriage.” Maybe that’s true, or maybe detective work seems so time-consuming on TV because… it’s a TV show about detective work.

Nevertheless, Sherlock continually offers his support to Gregson, both in the case and in his separation.

At the end of the episode, Sherlock reveals that he ran a background check on the man Cheryl’s been seeing, and points out, “Of all the men she could’ve entertained, she chose the one most likely to elicit a reaction from you.”

“You should know, Captain, I usually cheer at the end of any marriage. As an institution, I think its outlasted its usefulness by quite a large margin. And yet, I’ve come to appreciate the prowess of… partnership. It’s far more intricate that I had previously imagined. The very smallest gesture can speak volumes.”

It compels Gregson to give his wife a small gesture of his own (a man-hating dog along with his assurance that he will work on himself) but it also dovetails nicely with the story between Sherlock and Joan this week. After being asked to assist in an investigation solo, Joan was annoyed that Sherlock swooped in and solved the case overnight. When he gives her the file back to solve it “for her training,” she snaps that “I wanted to solve it when it was unsolved!” and adds that even though she’s good at deductive reasoning, she’s still years behind Sherlock in terms of her training.

She’s annoyed with him for most of the episode, to the point that Bell even senses the tension, but Sherlock realizes Joan has a point and decides to present her with a gesture of his own: a trunk full of the cold cases he was unable to solve.

Sharing is hard enough for Sherlock; the fact that he shares his space, his life, and his methods with Joan already speaks volumes. Giving her the cases that he couldn’t solve, that’s a completely different level of trust. Not only is he telling her that he thinks she can do it, he’s sacrificing his ego in order to show her he cares. I really hope this trunk was planted so that we can revisit one of Sherlock’s cold cases in the future. That sounds like a good sweeps special to me.

Jon Michael Hill maximized his limited screentime in this episode (which reminds me, we’re about due for another Bell-centric episode, aren’t we?) both as Gregson’s right-hand man and as the lead detective on the case. He has some great interactions with Gregson and Sherlock, but the best Bell scene was one in which he wasn’t even present:

The case of the week was actually pretty forgettable; once it was determined that the attack on Gregson’s wife was simply a case of mistaken house identity, and that the case had nothing to do with Gregson or his family, I mentally checked out of that plot. It involved a stolen artifact and a man-hating dog, which eventually leads them to the would-be killer.

Next week: Fatty returns! For TWO episodes!