- While Watson struggles with Holmes over finding a new sponsor, they work a case of a bombing of an Internet company. The bomb was planted four years ago but it's inconceivable that anyone would plan a bombing so far into the future.
- An explosion in a computer firm, where most could improvise such bomb hidden deep in the ventilation system, kills an employee. Holmes keeps changing his theory each time the NYPD has caught up with his previous one. The target was chosen amazingly precisely, but years in advance. Meanwhile Watson stubbornly keeps looking for her successor as Holmes' addiction buddy, only to find him as determined to scare them all away.—KGF Vissers
- "Elementary" - "The Long Fuse" - Nov. 29, 2012
We open on Sherlock watching several TVs as he likes to do to sharpen his mind. Watson enters and wants to talk about him getting a sponsor since her stint is almost up. He says he doesn't need one. She essentially forces him to meet with a guy that she has picked out.
We then switch to a hipster web design firm where young people bustle around complaining about the olds. We hear a beeping that one young guy tracks to a vent but figures someone just left their cellphone in there.The camera zooms into the vent. It's not a phone, it's a bomb and it goes off.
As the cops investigate they report the bomb killed two people and injured eleven others. Holmes and Watson survey the wreckage. He notes she probably won't miss this when she gets a new client. She says she won't but doesn't have a new client. Holmes picks up some pieces of newspaper and deduces it was packing material for the bomb. He then finds a motherboard from a pager which was likely the detonator.
While they wait for intel on the motherboard they go to meet the sponsor Adrian. Holmes essentially dismisses him out of hand and stalks off after giving him an impossible hypothesis to solve. Watson accuses him of there being no right answer to the question and that they will look for other sponsor candidates at a meeting tonight.
The motherboard gives them the number of the call that set off the bomb. It traces to a guy who essentially dialed the wrong number.
Looking at the bomb parts Sherlock notices it has a four year old battery and that the newspaper bits were also from 2008, so he deduces they found the man who set it off accidentally in 2012 and must find the person who meant to set it off intentionally in 2008.
Holmes and Watson go to investigate at a high-powered PR company that used to occupy the same office space in 2008. They meet with the well-heeled owners, including the company boss Helen, a crossword puzzle enthusiast like Sherlock who solves a few clues on the puzzle on her computer while talking to her. They put Holmes on to an eco-terrorist group that sent them threatening letters in 2008.
At an AA meeting Sherlock reads about the organization and ignores a woman sharing. He discovers it wasn't really an organization but one man. Watson presses him to look around for a sponsor. He says they're not his kind of addicts and the search will take longer. Then a reformed addict and carjacker named Alfredo begins to share and Sherlock says he wants him.
Back at home he fixates on a repeated phrase in the emails and knows that he's heard it recently. He realizes it was on television and he stands in front of his 7 TVs and jogs his memory. He recalls he heard it on a talk show. He finds the clip of the man using the phrase on the show and they track him down, Edgar Knowles.
They call him in to the precinct. Of course at first he denies being a bomber or eco-terrorist but then Sherlock gets his fingerprint from the elevator button and matches it to a bomb that went off in Utica. Knowles admits to the Utica bomb and the threatening letters but he promises he didn't set off this bomb, the one that, you know, killed people.
Sherlock sets off several mini-tennis-ball-bombs on his roof to do research. Knowles admitted using nitrate based bombs and Sherlock says this would be consistent with an eco-terrorist using organic materials but the bomb at the PR firm was petroleum, gas, and bleach-based so he knows Knowles is telling the truth.
Gregson is annoyed that Sherlock first served this guy up on a platter but now doesn't think he did it. But, Sherlock has also pieced together the newspaper page and discovered handwriting imprinted on it, the word "novocaine." He now believes a disgruntled employee-- with the cover of the eco-terrorist threat-- framed Knowles.
Watson waits with Alfredo but Sherlock cancels. She apologizes and chats with him a little and finds that she likes him; he talks about needing to be patient. He's never been a sponsor but says he had a great one and is looking forward to it.
Sherlock goes to the PR firm and begins his search in the personnel files. Helen, the boss, IDs him as a fellow addict... of crosswords. She starts hitting on him. He realizes that she wants to sleep with him and, while he's totally amenable since he finds her tantalizing, he's busy now and suggests they schedule an appointment and then she should not expect a relationship because that's not how he rolls. Watson arrives just then and Helen vamooses. Holmes has found a suspect, one Pradeep Singh, an upwardly mobile creative director. Although Singh was good he was also arrogant and after a fight with the male boss he just disappeared.
They go to his wife who says he's dead because he wouldn't have run away and disappeared because he loved her so much. She thinks he was murdered but the police cleared a man at the office. Sherlock asks about renovating the room they're sitting in. She says she hasn't. He asks to look in the back yard. But this is a feint, Watson and the wife go outside and he goes to look at a moldy wall. He takes the pictures off of it, runs his hands over it and listens. He meets them outside and tells Watson that he believes Pradeep was murdered and then buried in his own wall: hence the mold. He could tell because the pictures on the wall were in slightly different places then they were in a picture on a nearby table. She asks if he's sure. He says fairly sure. We cut to where Sherlock has ripped the wall open and revealed the decomposing body.
Back at the precinct they realize the bomb probably wasn't set by Pradeep because it was right near his office and he never missed a day of work. He was the target. In the dead man's pockets they find a safety deposit box key. Inside the box they find a Cheech and Chong video. They take the video to Sherlock's house because he has a VCR. While Det. Bell takes a call in the other room Watson presses Sherlock on bailing on Alfredo. She theorizes that he has separation anxiety about her leaving and once she said she liked Alfredo he turned him down to extend her stay. He scoffs at this. Bell returns and they watch the tape. It's a recording of a very young Pradeep meeting a prostitute. When she turns toward the camera we see it's his boss at the PR firm, Helen, also much younger.
They bring her in and show her the video. At first she tries to pretend it isn't her as Sherlock monologues about what happened-- he recognized her, threatened her. She planted the bomb but didn't realize there wasn't a signal tower close enough to the office to set it off. Since she came from modest means with a laborer dad she killed Pradeep, rehung the drywall while his wife was in Mumbai, moved office and voila, problem solved. She was ho-ing to help put herself through business school and then seed her company. She thinks he has no evidence. Then he plays the trump card: "novocaine," which was imprinted on one of the newpaper pages. It was the answer to a clue to a crossword puzzle in the paper in 2008. They matched her handwriting sample. Boom, they arrest her.
Later, Alfredo shows up unbidden at Sherlock's home. He has parked out front an incredibly fancy car. As a reformed car jacker, dealers and manufactures hire him to try and break their car security systems. He says he knows Sherlock likes to pick locks. In an aside to Watson, Sherlock says he knows this was her idea. She says that whether he is dreading her leaving or counting the seconds to when he is free of her, she wants him to be taken care of. It was a smart move daring him to beat the new security system and he can't resist. He tells her it doesn't mean he's assenting to Alfredo's sponsorship. Sherlock starts to work it out and asks Alfredo for clues. He won't give any. Sherlock says that it's quite alright, he'll work it out and says, "I'm entirely self-sufficient you know."
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