"Elementary" - "One Watson, One Holmes" - April 9, 2015
Tonight, Sherlock and Joan deal with the hacker collective known as "Everyone" in a whole new way and confront the ways that Joan is changing and how, in this case, change might not be good.
We open on Sherlock apparently asleep with electrodes attached to his body. It sounds like he flatlines and then there is a knock on the door. He wakes and the heartbeat continues.
A young man arrives, he explains that he is a member of Everyone. Sherlock is still attached to a machine and explains that he was training himself to mimic death. The young man explains that Sherlock knows him as the Everyone poster Sucking Chest Wound (SCW) and brags that he is important. He says there is a civil war being waged for the soul of Everyone that has split into two factions. He leads the one that wants to keep it essentially harmless, help those they want to help and hurt the ones they want to hurt by playing pranks. The other leader, known as Species, wants to get super-political and align with the left and hurt the right. He wants Sherlock to help him find dirt on Species to embarrass him so he can be the sole leader.
Sherlock says he is not interested and goes off to help Joan with a case she's working for their neighbor Connie who says her daughter Emmanuelle is being bullied online. Trouble is, Emmanuelle is making it up to get attention from her parents. They go to the library where the emails are being sent to catch Emmanuelle in the act and talk to her without embarrassing her in front of her parents. Sherlock tries to start small talk and notes that it is usually Joan that does that sort of thing. She says she is fine with silence.
When Emmanuelle finally arrives and Joan goes to talk to her Bell calls with a murder and says Sherlock has a connection to the murder since pictures of him in a dress are on the murder victim's computer. They go to the scene. The victim is Species, who was killed with a sword. Sherlock finds a bit of hair dye from a lock of SCW's hair and they bring him in for questioning after finding a surveillance video from the brownstone and discovering his real identity as a sound engineer for a club in Brooklyn.
Meanwhile, Joan has been texting on and off with friends who are trying to plan a silly, old school bachelorette party. Sherlock can tell she isn't into it. Joan says she will eventually get into the spirit.
During interrogation SCW claims he didnt know who Species was. And he has an alibi, another Everyone member that he was having sex with at the time of the murder. They go to the woman, a stuffy hedge fund manager, who denies being with SCW. But Sherlock can tell she is lying. Later, she comes to the brownstone and admits as much saying she wasn't covering to save her capitalist job but... her marriage. But she feels bad that SCW will rot in jail so she tells them the truth that she was with him.
Given the hair and other evidence found in his car, this alibi isn't enough to get SCW out of jail, however.
Joan heads out to her party planning date with friends but claims to get an important text during the meal-- it is spam-- and excuses herself early, still not in the spirit.
They go to see SCW in prison to determine who would've wanted Species dead and would know to frame him. He says Species had been bragging about a cache of credit card numbers he was going to auction off.
Back at the brownstone they put all the hacker avatars on the evidence wall and eliminate them one by one by reasons of geography and disability and focus on one who seems to have come into money very recently. They track him down at the hospital where he has landed after an accident on his brand new Ducati. The hacker admits he stole the credit card information from Species but did not kill him. He does, however, offer up the wealth of information he got from Species' laptop-- including a tracking of all of his hacks-- to let him slide on the breaking and entering and theft.
They bring all of the information to the brownstone- it is thousands of pages of paper files-- and begin to comb through them. Sherlock says sometimes you have to outwork criminals as well as outthink them. He notices that Joan is again skipping the bachelorette party committee meeting in favor of work and deduces that she is becoming too much like him -- work before everything, cutting off human contact that might be fun-- which doesn't work for him. She doesnt care if that is inconvenient for him and tells him in a very Sherlock-esque brusque tone.
After poring over the documents Sherlock realizes, based on the way that they post their messages, that there were in fact two people who shared the handle of Species. This person, who went by the handle of Tessee.
They go see SCW in prison and explain their theory. He agrees this is likely but doesnt know who the person behind the avatar is. He does know that both Species' wanted to hit a place called the Atherton Foundation, a conservative think tank.
Sherlock and Joan go to Foundation to warn them but the smarmy guy in charge doesn't seem worried about their cyber security. Sherlock notes the presence of very fit and armed employees. Smarmy guy doesn't want to talk about it. He calls his friend at the NSA but the guy won't even talk about Atherton, that's how important they are.
At the brownstone he apologizes to Joan for making his earlier complaint all about himself. What he meant to say is that before he felt like they had worked towards friendship and his working definition of that meant something that was mutually beneficial as they moved towards the best aspects of one another. He thinks her becoming more like him isn't good for either one of them. She agrees this is something to think about once they find Tessee. She has hit on a plan to draw them out with a piece of elusive pop culture memorabilia. She goes online claiming to have this magical lunchbox and then meets with a succession of people interested in it. They hit on one person, that they realize is their killer. They go to his home and he is skittish and practically runs away from them as they confront him about the murder of Species. But he has texted someone and suddenly an official car rolls up. Out pops an agent named Branch who tells them that this kids is working with them on a special case and not only that but he was with her when the murder occurred. Sherlock is livid, knowing that she is using the kid to bust Everyone and wants that so badly-- to advance her career-- that she is willing to let the kid get away with murder.
They go to Gregson he asks for evidence and probably cause because he can't just accuse a federal official of lying.
Sherlock brings a forensic accountant named Briggs into the brownstone to do some digging and they realize the kid was agitating on the Everyone boards to make a move against Atherton because, with its government connections, it would turn them from harmless pranksters into felons and the FBI could bust them up and arrest them. He also finds out that Branch has an illegal Tibetan nanny and the next day in a meet up he appeals to her to not let a murderer go. To tip off the police anonymously the murder weapon and the murderer and let it go since has already warned Everyone off attacking Atherton. She acquiesces.
Joan is disappointed that Branch got off scott-free but Sherlock thinks Everyone will exact revenge on her. Joan decides to go reconnect with her friends after all after hearing Sherlock's speech. She knows it could be enjoyable and agrees that, as he says, there should be one Watson and one Holmes.
company.
