Monday, December 22, 2014

Elementary - End of Watch


The murder of a police officer brings all of the department's resources to bear including Sherlock Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller), Watson (Lucy Liu), and Kitty (Ophelia Lovibond) who uncover some unsettling news about the victim's drug habit and the lengths he took to try and pay for it. When a second patrolmen is killed soon after, with no ties to the now disgraced first victim, Holmes and his team work to find a connection and uncover what is really going on.

While paying tribute to the local police, who Holmes has dealt with more as colleagues following Marcus Bell's (Jon Michael Hill) shooting, "End of Watch" has a nice twist involving the true motive for two apparently unrelated killings. Revealing the first victim selling off police weapons from the department stores to promote a drug habit is a black mark for the department, but Holmes' discovery of the reason for the second cop's murder helps recover more than $1,000,000 of stolen guns from the police impound.

The episode's B-story returns Holmes to AA where an anonymous colleague's offhand remark about his style of speech leads to a discovery than someone in the group has been posting Holmes' personal remarks anonymously on a website for addiction recovery. Taking great efforts to hide the identity of the man responsible from Kitty, Holmes nonetheless is ruthless when called upon to protect his own privacy and sobriety by blackmailing the owner to pull down the blog. The subplot reminds us how easily Holmes can be distracted by something which hits so close to home and how protective he is of his own privacy and a sobriety that (as we nearly saw last season) is more fragile than the detective would care to admit.

No comments: