- Watson works a case on her own about a woman who has disappeared while Holmes deals with a subway murder. As they work their separate cases they gradually appear to be connected, even though they can't determine exactly how.
- "Elementary" - "Deja Vu All Over Again" - March 14, 2013
An onscreen title card informs us that it's six months ago.
We see a woman spontaneously receive roses on a subway platform from a man who claims his girlfriend canceled their date. Then he pushes her in front of a train.
That night we see Joan out with friends saying she loves her new job as a sober companion and then she gets a call for a new client and she wonders what kind of name is Sherlock.
We cut to today and Joan is busting into a fancy car. When she can't shut off the alarm we see she's in the car with Sherlock's sponsor the former car thief turned security man. He's teaching her tools of the trade to help out Sherlock.
She heads home and learns Sherlock's dad is asking for his investigative help in return for the money he loaned him recently to pay off his old friend's kidnapper.
They head off to an office, with bulletproof glass, to meet with a "shyster" attorney that his father wants him to help. It turns out it's the shyster's assistant Rebecca who wants help. Her sister Kelly is missing.
She shows them a video of Kelly breaking up with her husband via video and saying she's going to go away for a little while. She was inspired by the woman pushed in front of the train, saying life was too short to spend it with someone she didn't love. Kelly went missing a lot as she was a fragile soul so her sister wasn't concerned at first. But then after weeks in which Kelly didn't use her credit cards they got nervous, thinking her husband forced her into making the video in order to kill her since they had a troubled relationship. There's also a missing trunk, one that would fit a body, thinks Rebecca.
Sherlock disagrees that the video is fake and that Kelly wasn't under duress. Sherlock wants Joan to take this one solo and would be a good case since she clearly wanted to leave her husband. Sherlock decides he wants to go after the subway pusher instead. Sherlock leaves it to her to tell her father's friend that she's taking the case, not Sherlock.
Sherlock looks at video of the subway pusher and starts to investigate. As does Watson. Neither have much to begin with.
Joan gets a call from one of her old friends who she accidentally blew off for drinks. They make a new date.
Joan goes to speak to Kelly's husband. He says she was a complicated person. She had left him briefly before and that time she called him and she came back. Joan asks about their problems. He isn't sure, he was blindsided the first time. The second time she seemed distant and depressed over the subway murder. He swears again that Kelly took the trunk. He says he wants her to come back, not because they can be together since he knows they can't, but just to know that she's okay and to let her know that he wants her to be happy. Afterwards, Joan calls Sherlock and agrees that the husband might have killed her. Later she plays audio of an interview from the police in which he said the same thing verbatim. She thinks it feels rehearsed. She also just didn't like something about him. Sherlock asks if she wants him to tag in and she says not yet. She does ask what his next step would be. He asks for the man's phone number and thinks they should gaslight him. Sherlock texts from an anonymous burner phone that he knows he killed his wife and what he did with the body. He tells Joan to watch him now.
He goes to the police station to interview a suspect in his case. A man who worked in the same office as the woman pushed in front of the train. A janitor. Sherlock watched footage of that subway platform in earlier days and saw this man following the woman and taking surreptitious video of her. He has previous stalking priors. Capt. Gregson tags in and they pressure him. The guy admits her was there and was in disguise but swears he didn't kill her. He said he wore a hat and a scarf not the hoodie of the killer. It turns out he was recording that night and has proof he didn't push her.
Watson calls Sherlock from her stakeout and the husband hasn't reacted to the text at all. Alfredo comes to take over the stakeout because he remembered she made plans with her friend. She forgot again.
Sherlock notices a busker on the platform who stops midsong and takes off. He theorizes the busker knew the pusher.
Joan meets her friend and her other friends are there and they're a little surprised that she's working as a detective and were worried since she has fallen out of touch. They wanted to express a concern intervention-style. They say she seems lost. They're surprised that she quit her job, moved in with a recovering drug addict former client, and are worried about her. It's kind of insulting actually but she doesn't really explain it either and she takes off because Alfredo texts her that the husband is on the move.
They follow him and Joan sees him taking the infamous trunk out of storage. Joan goes to investigate his car and the trunk while the man goes back inside. She gets busted by the security guard. She blurts out that the man killed his wife and she could be in the trunk. The guard asks him to open it up saying if he has nothing to hide it doesn't matter. The cops arrive. He opens the trunk. It's empty.
Joan ends up in jail. Sherlock bails her out. He says the husband told the cops that he sold the trunk out of spite and he needed the money. So he bought it back to give it to Kelly's sister. He commends her instincts and although she was wrong about the trunk it doesn't mean she was wrong about the man being a murderer. Sherlock proposes they team up on both their cases.
Sherlock and Bell go to see the busker. He claims he knows nothing about the subway pusher. Sherlock leans on him. He says he just knew the guy's face, they had a previous altercation and he was afraid the guy would retaliate. Sherlock asks about a patch on the pusher's jacket. He IDs it and they want to show it to the public.
Gregson tells Joan that the husband will drop the charges if Joan will apologize and pay for the damages. Sherlock tells her not to apologize. She says she's not like him and admits the confrontation with her friends. She goes to apologize to the husband. And then she goes to see Rebecca, Kelly's sister to say she's going off the case. But then notices a picture of Kelly in a jacket with the pusher's patch on it. It turns out the jacket was her husband's.
Sherlock and Joan go over the the links between the cases including that Drew was the subway pusher. They wonder why? And why it affected his wife so much that she would leave him if she didn't know it was him? He prods Joan to stay with the case and not wallow in self-doubt.
They bring the husband back in, now on the subway pushing charge. He claims he gave the jacket to Goodwill. Watson worked it out: the video was 18 months old, it was from the first time his wife had left him. It turns out that another woman with flowers had been pushed in front of a train around that time. So he gave a woman flowers and pushed her in front of train and then killed his wife and used the old video to explain her disappearance. He calls her insane and says Joan wants him to be guilty.
They look through Kelly's emails and find the original one with the video archived. Watson is right.
Later she gets a call from her friend Emily who says she's not going to apologize for worrying about her, but she will apologize for doubting her since she's a reporter and was just assigned a story to write about the subway pusher guy.
Sherlock asks her to come downstairs and check out some files sent to him by a friend. He says he figured out who the murderer was in a matter of seconds and he wants to see how long it takes Joan. He says that although she enjoyed a modicum of success today she shouldn't let it go to her head.
She changes her job on her dating profile from "sobriety counselor" to "consulting detective."
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