I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere: Jonny Lee Miller

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Elementary — His Last Bow

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<b>“this seven years and never a word of complaint” [HOUN]</b></h4>
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[<i><b>Editor's note</b>: When the author refers to Sherlock he means Jonny Lee Miller's (or occasionally another actor's portrayal) of Doyle's original; when he refers to Joan he means Lucy Liu's (or John meaning another actor's portrayal) of Doyle's original doctor. When the author writes Holmes or Watson he refers to the actual personages.</i>]<br />
The seventh and final season of <i>Elementary </i>will premiere on Thursday, May 23, 2019 for a 13-episode season, taking its run to the end of August barring any interruptions. <br />
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In <i>The Hound of the Baskervilles</i>, John Clayton lamented,"seven years and never a word of complaint." This could just as easly be an ironic counterpoint to <i>Elementary</i>’s final season. <br />
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When CBS first announced the show in the shadow of BBC <i>Sherlock</i>’s worldwide fame seven years ago, the hue and cry was largely negative from the fandom: crass corporate exploitation for money not love was the prejudgement. (I will not point out that the BBC is a corporation which also does nothing for love and that the lucre raked in from Benedict Cumberbatch’s curly locks puts CBS to shame. [<i>Insert wink here.</i>]) <br />
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But instead of being the pale rip-off of its British cousin that some proclaimed it would be, creator Robert Doherty and company have given us a mostly fresh re-imagining of both the pop culture Holmes and Watson and the Doylean canon. So much so that the same critics who were afraid of a Sherlock-copy now decried <i>Elementary </i>as not being Sherlock Holmes at all. (Of course, now that BBC <i>Sherlock</i> has shot itself in the foot and limped off screen, HBO Asia’s carbon copy <i>Miss Sherlock</i> is beloved exactly for its crass corporate exploitation of the BBC series. Go figure. <i>Wink wink</i>.)<br />
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From the beginning Doherty has stated he wanted to tell his own Sherlock Holmes stories, not to rewrite Doyle. At the TCA press tour in the summer of 2012, he said:<br />
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"I think that’s actually one of the upsides to the character. If so many people couldn’t put their own spins on it, I don’t know that he would exist in the popular culture, in the way he does. So, I was intrigued, but also wanted to make sure that, if we were going do this, I could have my own take on it. It took a little time. For me, it was absolutely about his drug use, which I know has been mentioned and acknowledged, once or twice, outside of the books. One of the things that jumped out at me from the books was that it never really dictated plot. It never really informed or altered the course of the story. Some of them are just throwaway lines. And his relationship with women was not great. It was very complicated. Understandably, he’s a very complicated guy. The more handholds I could find, the more excited I got about our take. Everything came together quite nicely."</blockquote>
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What if Holmes did not have the stabilizing influence of Watson at the beginning of his career? “The original Sherlock dabbled with cocaine and opiates.  Our Sherlock had those same problems, but one of the big differences is that our Sherlock hit a serious wall,” said Doherty in 2012. “Something terrible happened to him in London, and he spiraled out of control.” <br />
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Sent to rehab in New York City, Sherlock is paired with former surgeon and present sober companion Joan Watson. This premise—Holmes without the stabilizing influence of Watson—is explored in the second season episode “<a href="https://youtu.be/H87E4KI9DbA?t=78">The Marchioness</a>” with Sherlock addressing a support group (in a sly bit of meta and one of my favorite non-Canonical "canonical" scenes):<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Sherlock</b>: I often wonder if I should have been born in another time. Sorry, my name is Sherlock, and I'm an addict.<br />
<b>Group</b>: Hi, Sherlock.<br />
<b>Sherlock</b>: My-my senses are unusually—well, one could even say unnaturally—keen. And ours is an era of distraction. It's, uh, a punishing drumbeat of constant input. This-this cacophony which follows us into our homes and into our beds and seeps into our—into our souls, for want of a better word. For a long time, uh, there was only one poultice for my raw nerve endings, and that was…copious drug use. So in my less productive moments, I'm given to wonder if I'd just been born when it was a little quieter out there, would I have even become an addict in the first place? Might I have been more focused? A more fully realized person?<br />
<b>Member of Group</b>:  What, like Ancient Greece?<br />
<b>Sherlock</b>: You any idea what passed for dental care in the Hellenic era? No, no, I'd, um, I'd want some of the wonders of modernity. Just before everything got amplified. </blockquote>
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Season One saw the evolution of the friendship between Sherlock and Joan, something that’s not present in the Canon and very rarely shown in films and television to the extent that <i>Elementary </i>did it. That of course, is where it stays: as a friendship. <br />
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As Doherty has remarked on more than one occasion, Holmes and Watson never slept together in the books; Sherlock and Joan never will either. While having its ups and downs, theirs is a deep platonic love, with each sacrificing for the other. This wouldn’t work as well if Sherlock were depicted as gay or asexual. <i>Elementary</i>’s Sherlock is actively heterosexual. <br />
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This aspect of the character is handled less successfully, in my opinion, as Sherlock considers sex as exercise, while the Canonical Holmes eschewed exercise for its own sake. Having Sherlock engage in sex for it <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/01/how-sex-affects-intelligence-and-vice-versa/282889/">scientifically posited</a> <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10508-018-1193-8">cognitive enhancement</a> would have been more in line with the character. Also, Sherlock’s frequenting of prostitutes posed ethical questions the series ignored, especially when the series has been <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elementary_(TV_series)#Awards_and_nominations">nominated or won</a> awards for its portrayal of drug addiction or LGBT characters.<br />
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<b>The Returns </b></h3>
Season Five ended with the cliffhanger of Sherlock suffering memory loss and hallucinations and the closing scenes of him on an MRI scanning table without alerting Joan of his condition and her concern for his wellbeing after seeing the delusion-induced destruction wrought in the spare bedroom. This was a bold move of faith on the showrunner’s part as the series had not been renewed for a sixth season. <i>Elementary </i>was not on CBS’ May 2017 lineup of new and returning 2017-18 shows. It wasn’t until late summer when fans found out it was coming back as a 13-episode midseason replacement series. <br />
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At the time, <a href="https://tvline.com/2017/08/23/this-is-us-season-2-spoilers-jack-kid-young-flashback/">Doherty said</a>:<br />
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“There’s always a chance we could [return] earlier. If we were, it stands to reason there might be additional episodes ordered. We are in ‘wait and see’ mode at the moment.” [This] “could be our last season. We’re not sure yet. We want to do everything we can do to keep it from being the last season. But we’ll see where we are in a few months.” </blockquote>
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Season Six aired on April 30, 2018 and the series story arc centered around two plots points. One concerned <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-concussion_syndrome">post-concussion syndrome </a>(PSC). At the end of Season Five Shinwell Johnson hit Sherlock over the head with a bottle and gave him a severe beating. <br />
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In "An Infinite Capacity for Taking Pains," the opening episode of Season Six, Sherlock said:<br />
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“But many of my life choices leading up to this moment are likely factors—the boxing, the continually putting myself in harm's way, heroin. All of them have likely contributed to this moment. So, as for what to expect, the doctor is loath to make any promises. Things could get worse before they get better. He's putting together a regimen to aid in my recovery, but, uh whether that recovery takes weeks or months or, uh if I'll even get better at all he couldn't say.” </blockquote>
Usually a blow to the head is little more consequential that a stubbed toe in the TV and literary mystery and private eye world. Take for example the nearly indestructible PI Joe Mannix (Mike Connor) on CBS’s 1967-1975 TV show <i>Mannix</i>.  “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/tv/mike-connors-brawny-star-of-mannix-tv-detective-series-dies-at-91/2017/01/27/50e8feee-e4a2-11e6-ba11-63c4b4fb5a63_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.af5086582e94">[A]ccording to one count, he was shot 17 times and sustained 55 concussions during the series’ 194 episodes</a>.” Ironically, Mannix made a TV appearance in a 1997 episode of <i>Diagnosis: Murder</i> (“Hard-Boiled Murder”) suffering from a life-threatening cardiac risk not CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy). The seriousness of brain trauma is all-too familiar to the public these days through the stories of athletes in contact sports and military veterans. The showrunners of <i>Elementary</i> again deserve some credit for highlighting a serious ailment with sensitivity and humor rather than just another TV trope.<br />
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The second plot point; serial killer Michael Rowan (Desmond Harrington) encounters Sherlock at support group meetings and has his own twisted ideas for Sherlock’s PSC therapy and unfortunately puts them into action.<br />
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In late November 2017, CBS ordered up eight more episodes of <i>Elementary </i>on the heels of the cancelation of <i>The Wisdom of the Crowd</i> following star Jeremy Piven’s sexual harassment allegations. This was well into the filming of <i>Elementary</i>. In fact, “it became this very unique challenge once we finally did get an additional order to tell stories that could be placed in front of the finale that we had already written and produced,” <a href="https://tvline.com/2018/09/17/elementary-recap-season-6-finale-sherlock-joan-move-to-london/">Doherty said.</a>  <br />
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The finale and the whole of Season Six was produced to be the series’ swan song, bringing the main characters to a satisfying (or not) evolution point. Serial killer Michael is murdered and Joan becomes the prime suspect in FBI Special Agent Malik’s eyes. Detective Marcus Bell (Jon Michael Hill) is ready to move to the U.S. marshals. Sherlock uncovers the fact that Hannah Gregson actually killed Michael in revenge for murdering her roommate and that her father, the once incorruptible Captain Thomas Gregson (Aidan Quinn) manipulated evidence to protect his daughter. <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Gregson</b>: And that's when [Hannah] told me everything.<br />
<b>Sherlock</b>: You have to tell the FBI.<br />
<b>Gregson</b>: I can't. No. Hannah's a cop. She can't go to prison.<br />
<b>Sherlock</b>:  And Watson can?<br />
<b>Gregson</b>: You gotta understand—everything I did, I did before I knew that the Feds were trying to pin this on Joan.<br />
<b>Sherlock</b>: Are you under the impression that that makes it okay?<br />
<b>Gregson</b>: Malik's got nothing. Her whole case is circumstantial. It's going to blow over.<br />
<b>Sherlock</b>: Let's just imagine for a moment that it does. What about the damage to Watson's reputation? Do you think she'll ever be able to consult for law enforcement ever again? What about the families of the women who Michael murdered and then disposed of? What about the mothers and fathers who are never going to be able to find their daughters, never going to be able to give them proper burials? Is this gonna blow over for them as well? Or do you think perhaps they might start bringing civil lawsuits against Watson? How exactly do you imagine her quality of life moving forward?<br />
<b>Gregson</b>: You're the door that this lunatic walked through, okay? Not me! He cozied up to you. He got to know everything about you, including the fact that I have a daughter. He killed her friend to get your attention.If it weren't for you, Maddie Williams would be alive today and my little girl wouldn't be a killer. [Sherlock gets up and starts to walk out. Gregson pleading.] She's my daughter.<br />
<b>Sherlock</b>: She's my best friend.<br />
[S6 E21 "Whatever Remains, However Improbable"]</blockquote>
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Sherlock confesses to the murder to protect Joan and through a deal with MI6, who both Mycroft (Rhys Ifans) and Sherlock had worked for in the past, a proxy from the consulate relays Sherlock’s confession. MI6 confirms that Sherlock killed Michael while working for the British government. Sherlock is now in England. <br />
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Joan finds this out when agent Malik calls her to her office: “The Brits won't extradite him. They made that very clear. And he isn't allowed to set foot in the U.S. ever again. Not without being arrested and tried for everything he alleges he did. Your little partnership—it's over. Cheer up, Joan. You just got away with murder.” However, Sherlock is at the brownstone when Joan goes home.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Joan</b>: Thought you were supposed to be in England.<br />
<b>Sherlock</b>: I am. Supposed to be, that is. The terms of the deal I agreed to are quite binding. There's a plane waiting for me at Kennedy. But couldn't leave without saying good-bye. You surprised me last night. Your willingness to protect the captain. Then I was surprised that I was surprised. Helping others before yourself is your nature. Always has been. And yet, in this instance, I found the risk to you unacceptable.<br />
<b>Joan</b>: You thought I was throwing my life away, so you decided to throw your life away instead.<br />
<b>Sherlock</b>: Well, in point of fact, I've sacrificed very little. With respect to my freedom, that is. MI6 owed me. Not you, not the captain, certainly not his daughter. Me. I'm the only one who could confess without going to prison….<br />
<b>Joan</b>: We could have fought this together.<br />
<b>Sherlock</b>: We could have failed.<br />
<b>Joan</b>: That doesn't sound like us.<br />
<b>Sherlock</b>: I wanted to thank you.<br />
<b>Joan</b>: —Don't.<br />
<b>Sherlock</b>: —I wanted to thank you for everything you've done for me over the last six years.<br />
<b>Joan</b>: Sherlock—<br />
<b>Sherlock</b>: I was dying when we first met. I mean, I looked well enough. Just got out of rehab and all that. Thought that I knew everything, but I didn't. I didn't realize how much how much work I would have to put in and how much time it would take. But most of all, I—I didn't realize that things could get better. And that I could actually be—Yes, I was dying. And no one could see it but you. You saved my life, Joan.<br />
<b>Joan</b>: We’re partners.<br />
<b>Sherlock</b>: No. We're much better than that. We're two people that love each other. We always have been. [S6 E21]</blockquote>
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The show ends with the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVMQpIkoiW8">perfect coda</a> for the whole series; Sherlock back at 221B Baker Street in London and Joan next door at 221A. (<i>Note: one of the things I like about Elementary is that they did not give their Sherlock a stated address, just the nickname "the brownstone" for his residence, respecting that Holmes’ address will always be 221B Baker Street, London. There is a shot of a letter from Jamie Moriarty to Sherlock sent to 42 Stamford Avenue, Brooklyn, New York, 11209</i>) <br />
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Doherty says of the finale: <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“I have lifelong friends that I love like family, and yet it’s not so often I put it to them that way. If I thought it was the last time I was going to see someone I cared about, I think I would say that with great ease. It’s why Sherlock was able to say it in that moment. He really thought it was goodbye, and you don’t walk away from even a platonic relationship without telling your partner how you feel. I wish there was an even more appropriate word than ‘platonic.’ It’s fraternal. There’s great love, and there’s great respect, but there’s no romance.”</blockquote>
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<b>"The curtain rings up for the last act"</b></h3>
Two weeks after Season Six premiered and the finale was in the can CBS renewed the series for a seventh season. “A lot of parties came together and talked about their positions on the show — both in terms of business and in terms of creative — and we all decided that this was an opportune time to say goodbye to a show that has been very, very good to us,” CBS Entertainment President <a href="https://deadline.com/2018/12/elementary-to-end-7-seasons-cbs-canceled-1202521292/">Kelly Kahl said</a>.<br />
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<a href="https://www.denofgeek.com/us/tv/sherlock-holmes/273434/elementary-season-7-news-cbs">Den of Geek</a> offered the business reasoning behind the seventh season renewal:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Well, for one thing, <i>Elementary</i>'s ratings have never really been up to the level of a lot of the other shows CBS airs. CBS, a network that specializes in middle of the road procedurals and shows that are allegedly comedies and bad spinoffs of those alleged comedies does tremendous numbers. And while <i>Elementary </i>ratings would be considered great by other networks' standards, on CBS, it's perpetually on the bubble, despite being the best thing they air."</blockquote>
But <i>Elementary</i> is a consistent earner for CBS, especially overseas. It's also old-fashioned in that the network owns the series itself, which makes it extra profitable. So its ratings only tell half the story. <br />
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<a href="https://deadline.com/2018/12/elementary-to-end-7-seasons-cbs-canceled-1202521292/">Deadline</a> also mentioned a few pieces of the renewal puzzle:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"... the series has remained a solid utility player for CBS, airing on Thursdays, Sundays and, most recently Mondays. While the bulk of Season 6 aired over the summer, it still ranked No. 21 in viewers. <i>Elementary </i>also has been a solid gainer in delayed viewing, with the most recent sixth season growing 65% in viewers and 80% in adults 18-49 from Live+same day to Live+7 ratings."</blockquote>
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Of course, <i>Elementary </i>does not make Cumber-bucks for the network. In 2016 former CBS Corporate CEO Les Moonves <a href="https://www.ibtimes.com/elementary-gets-picked-season-7-cbs-2680469">told an investor conference</a> that <i>Elementary </i>made $80 million in profit for the corporation in 2015. For “The Abominable Bride” (2016), the limited theatrical release of BBC <i>Sherlock</i>’s Christmas special, international box office alone was<a href="https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/Sherlock-The-Abominable-Bride#tab=international"> $39,111,922</a>; just about half CBS’ 2015 profit. <br />
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<i> The Financial Times</i> <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/3cc9afc4-2d0e-11e4-911b-00144feabdc0">in August 2014 wrote</a> that while the BBC will not break down specific numbers for each series, it did concede that Sherlock made a “huge amount of money.”    <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Nevertheless, Sherlock’s global success has broken many records. The BBC says the third series – where Mr Cumberbatch’s detective miraculously returns to sleuthing after seemingly plunging to his death from the roof of Bart’s Hospital at the end of series two – has received more than 70m hits on the Chinese digital platform Youku. The DVD of the third series received the most pre-orders ever for a BBC series yet to be broadcast – at a time when the format is dying – and the final episode was the most tweeted about television programme when it was first aired on UK screens."</blockquote>
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<a href="https://tvline.com/2018/09/17/elementary-recap-season-6-finale-sherlock-joan-move-to-london/">Doherty talked</a> about the challenges of writing a finale and then having to tell more stories:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"You’re talking about a scene that killed me to write because it was my goodbye, too. I had to assume this was the end for the series. So I thought it was time for Sherlock to stop beating around the bushes and let the subtext be the text for once. When you look at any of our seasons, what you see or feel between them is love. I think that’s the way it is for all Watsons and Holmes, or Holmeses. I don’t know what the plural is… Yes, there’s respect and friendship, but I think a Watson loves his or her Holmes, and vice versa. It’s underneath everything we do, and yet I didn’t want the show to end without somebody making that explicit. The challenge, of course, now that there’s a seventh season, is continuing to explore that and expand upon it. I don’t think it was any great revelation to Joan that Sherlock felt that way, because she feels the same. There’s nothing embarrassing about it. I don’t think it’s anything Sherlock regretted saying. But it’s something that they’ll both compartmentalize, and put away as they continue to move forward together."</blockquote>
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Some of the <a href="https://elementarystan.tumblr.com/season7"><i>Elementary</i> Season 7 episode titles</a> are known and they are:<br />
E1 The Further Adventures<br />
E2 Gutshot <br />
E3 The Price of Admission<br />
E4 Red Light, Green Light — directed by Jonny Lee Miller<br />
E5 Out of The Woods  <br />
E7 From Russia With Drugs<br />
E9 On The Scent — the 150th episode of the series<br />
E11 Unfriended — directed by Lucy Liu<br />
E12 Reichenbach Falls<br />
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Episode Five will introduce the nemesis for this series arc, Odin Reichenbach (James Frain), an evil tech billionaire. A rich corporate baddie on <i>Elementary</i>? Who'd have thunk it? Actually, <i>Elementary</i>, like Doyle's canon, is set in the world's capital (then London, now New York City) and tells stories touching on government, the military, class and finance and uses this setting as a secondary character to explore how the protagonists react to the challenges of ethics and family with society and with each other. The Canon also presented those challenges to Holmes and Watson in a number of cases (CHAS, BRUC, ABBE, SCAN, SIGN and others).<br />
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So how will the show deal with Gregson's descent as the mostly-moral center of the <i>Elementary</i> unit? Joan had forgiven Gregson for protecting his daughter at the cost of Joan's reputation and possible freedom, but will Sherlock? “Sherlock, Joan, Gregson and Bell form this very non-traditional family unit, and as the seventh season begins, there’s going to be a ‘family’ crisis. Events will transpire that will force them to put smaller problems behind them and really come together again as that unit,” <a href="https://tvline.com/2018/09/25/chicago-med-colin-donnell-leaving-connor-rhodes-season-4/">Doherty opined</a>.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Spoilers:</b> <i>The following are from published sources about Season Seven and may contain information you may not want to read if you want to go into the series with a blank slate</i>.</span><br />
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<i>Elementary </i>started filming in New York City-dressed-as-London in July 2018, but do not expect any episode to be entirely set in England as both Sherlock and Joan will be heading back to the Big Apple as one of their "inner circle" is gravely wounded.  Bell, who was set to be a U.S. marshal “will be on a certain path as the seventh season starts, and by the end of the first episode, a lot will change for everybody,” <a href="https://tvline.com/2018/10/02/sarah-drew-greys-anatomy-season-15-april-returning/">according to Doherty</a>.<br />
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Ophelia Lovibond will be making an appearance as <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BldWuddD04G/">Kitty Winter</a> with son Archie in tow. <br />
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As with the last episode of Season Six and the first episode this season, the second series finale will also have a time jump. As Doherty said,<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Something that I knew I wanted to do was move forward in time a bit with the characters by the very end. There was a period [in the Canon] when Sherlock and Watson were not together; they went down very different paths, and their lives were very different from having been apart. We felt that would be appropriate for our show. A lot was Season 7 working towards that: How can we tell a larger story that would allow us to devise a finale that sets in not-so-distant future?” </blockquote>
Which makes the naming of the series seven badman "Reichenbach" appropriate. <br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>MAJOR SPECULATIVE SPOILERS!</b> <i>If you've been with me so far, you may want to reconsider as the spoilers will be huge</i>.</span><br />
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The Liunatic Fringe Tumblr, in a post called "<a href="https://liunaticfringe.tumblr.com/post/181060249245/things-we-knowsuspect-about-elementary-season-7">Things We Know/Suspect About #ElementarySeason 7</a>," posted a screen shot from the scene list of the Lucy Liu directed episode “Unfriended” that states Morland Holmes’s dead body is found at the brownstone. This should not come as too much of a surprise to careful viewers as Morland’s mortality was discussed in various episodes in Season Six. In E6, Sherlock came to cease-fire agreement with Moriarty on her attempts to assassinate Morland that will last, as Sherlock told him, “Until you die of old age. I persuaded her that won’t be long.” However, nature may have had a helping hand.<br />
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This spoiler is speculation on my part. In <a href="https://tvline.com/2019/01/18/sarah-drew-greys-anatomy-season-15-april-returning-2/">TVLine’s Ask Ausiello</a> there was posted this interesting item: “ELEMENTARY: Rumor has it that a pivotal deceased character will loom large-ish in the forthcoming series finale. Guesses?!”<br />
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<a href="https://en.businesstimes.cn/articles/110211/20190404/elementary-season-7-surprisingly-renewed-might-arrive-on-cbs-with-all-new-plot.htm"><i>The Business Times</i></a> made this interesting slip in an April 4, 2019 post: “Also, it has been recently revealed that Rhys Ifans will return as Detective Bell and Aidan Quinn as Captain Gregson.” Of course, Jon Michael Hill is Bell, Ifans is Mycroft. <br />
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And in a since deleted post on the <a href="https://elementarystan.tumblr.com/">Elementary|Natterings</a> Tumblr a picture of an empty brownstone room was captioned by the <i>Elementary </i>writers as “Mycroft—you were at Reichenbach Falls?” It was revealed in S6 E9’s “Nobody Lives Forever” that Mycroft had died at Leffen Trust Hospital, Timaru, New Zealand, ten months previously. “Apparently,” said Sherlock, “an intracranial hemorrhage is not unheard of in leukemia survivors. They say it was instantaneous. One minute he was all right, and the next minute, he wasn't.” <br />
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The next two episodes seemingly confirmed the reality of Mycroft’s death (but only through conversations, not physical evidence). So, is Mycroft dead and only being seen on the show in flashbacks? Or like Holmes after the Canonical Reichenbach Falls, had faked his own death?<br />
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<b>A Terrace View</b></h3>
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The cast of <i>Elementary </i>has moved on. Jonny Lee Miller on stars on Broadway in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/24/theater/ink-review.html"><i>Ink</i></a>, Lucy Liu continues on with episodic directing, most recently <i>Law and Order: Special Victims Unit</i>, and starring in the upcoming CBS All Access series <i>Why Women Kill</i>. Her recent honor of having a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame was no doubt given a boost by Joan Watson. Robert Doherty is an executive producer of <i>Alive II</i>, a TV movie in pre-production about a dead San Francisco cop brought back to life. In sum, it's highly improbable that <i>Elementary</i> will be back for an eighth season.<br />
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I suspect that Season Seven will not be <i>Elementary</i>’s <i>The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes</i>, a collection of weaker Holmes stories written in Doyle’s twilight (although I think it’s a much stronger batch of stories than is popularly perceived). </div>
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Rather, Season Seven will be as strong as any of the previous seasons. I look forward to this second Last Bow. </div>
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[<b><i>Editor's Note</i></b><i>: We're aware that "His Last Bow" occurred not in The Case-book, but in <u>His Last Bow</u></i>.]</div>
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Elementary — His Last Bow

“this seven years and never a word of complaint” [HOUN] [ Editor's note : When the author refers to Sherlock he means Jonny Lee Mi...

+ Read more »

by James C. O'Leary

Elementary’s Mycroft and Morland Holmes — A Tale of Doyle's Two Mycrofts

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“He was very like the chap that I had seen the night before” [STOC]</h4>
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Arthur Conan Doyle never set out to make Sherlock Holmes a series character. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Study in Scarlet</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Sign of Four</i> did not set the literary world on fire in 1887 and 1890 respectively. Before <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Strand Magazine</i> came into being in January 1891, there wasn’t a market for a short story serial character. Such a thing did not yet exist.<br />
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In the beginning of the nineteenth century, with the rise in literacy and more cost-effective printing and distribution, serialize novels in magazines and newspapers were popular. It’s why the novels of those times were so long; they were first serialized by authors who were being paid by the word. <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Twenty-Years-Oxford-Worlds-Classics/dp/0199537267/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1466201654&sr=1-1&keywords=twenty+years+after" target="_blank">Alexandre Dumas wrote 1.25 million words</a> about the Three Musketeers between 1844 and 1850. </div>
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With the acceptance of “A Scandal in Bohemia” in March 1891, Doyle wrote six Holmes stories for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Strand</i>, being paid by the word, averaging £35 for each. When the July, August and September issues hit newsstands, sales increased because of the amateur detective and his medical companion and the magazine asked for more. Doyle offered <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Strand</i> £50 per story, regardless of length, hoping the magazine would decline such a ridiculous offer. They did not.<br />
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Doyle planned to kill Holmes in the twelfth tale. After informing his mother of that plan, she begged him not to do it and even supplied Doyle with the kernel for the plot of "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches." When <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Strand</i> again asked for another Holmes series, Doyle countered with <b>£1000</b> (approximately $75,000 in US dollars today [Editor's note: calculated by using <a href="http://currency.wiki/1893gbp-usd" target="_blank">Currency.Wiki</a> and Dave Manuel's <a href="http://www.davemanuel.com/inflation-calculator.php" target="_blank">Inflation Calculator</a>) for twelve, again hoping the asking price was too rich for the magazine. It was not and the author stuck to his guns and killed off the detective in the twenty-forth story, “The Final Problem”.</div>
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For nine years, “Final” was the operative word when it came to Holmes, but with the worldwide success of William Gillette’s play <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sherlock Holmes</i> and mounting personal expenses, Doyle decided to turn his “creeper” of a ghost story into a reminiscence of the late detective and HOUN was the first bestseller of the twentieth century in the modern sense of the term. Such a chink in Doyle’s armor <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Teller-Tales-Arthur-Conan-Doyle-ebook/dp/B00HY09X16/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1466201748&sr=1-2&keywords=teller+of+tales" target="_blank">led Collier’s Weekly to offer</a> <b>$25,000</b> ($715,000 today) for six, <b>$30,000</b> ($860,000 today) for eight or <b>$45,000</b> ($1.3 million today) for 13 revived Sherlock Holmes stories, with the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Strand</i> throwing in an extra £100 per thousand words. Being human, Doyle accepted.<br />
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But also, being Doyle, he went at the task with the highest professional resolve. “I don’t think you need have any fears about Sherlock. I am not conscious of any failing powers, and my work is not less conscientious of old,” Doyle wrote his mother. Watson made clear throughout <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Return</i> that Holmes had retired and this was to be the final series of adventures.</div>
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The siren call of cash has power over mortals — and in the nineteen years between 1908 and 1927, Doyle would come to terms with his once-hated nemesis and sporadically write 20 more short stories and one novel. The point is not to berate Doyle for a moral weakness, since what he did was to be well-compensated for giving the public more of what they wanted and not rob or kill for filthy lucre, but to point out that the Canon is a series of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">stops</i> — and in the fifteen years between Mycroft’s two guest-starring turns, Holmes’s brother had evolved in Doyle’s mind and that the character in "The Greek Interpreter" is subtly different than the one in "The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans"<br />
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It is this difference that Robert Doherty and the writers of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Elementary</i> exploited in their Mycroft and Morland Holmes.</div>
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Interpreting "The Greek Interpreter"</h3>
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Holmes informing Watson of the existence of a heretofore unknown brother is one of the Canon’s classic scenes; the older sibling with “better powers of observation than I,” but with “no ambition and no energy,” who<br />
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“audits the books in some of the Government departments. Mycroft lodges in Pall Mall, and he walks round the corner into Whitehall every morning and back every evening. From year's end to year's end he takes no other exercise, and is seen nowhere else, except only in the Diogenes Club, which is just opposite his rooms.” </blockquote>
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Holmes describes the Diogenes:<br />
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“There are many men in London, you know, who, some from shyness, some from misanthropy, have no wish for the company of their fellows. Yet they are not averse to comfortable chairs and the latest periodicals. It is for the convenience of these that the Diogenes Club was started, and it now contains the most unsociable and unclubbable men in town. No member is permitted to take the least notice of any other one. Save in the Strangers' Room, no talking is, under any circumstances, permitted, and three offences, if brought to the notice of the committee, render the talker liable to expulsion. My brother was one of the founders, and I have myself found it a very soothing atmosphere."</blockquote>
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“His body was absolutely corpulent,” Watson describes him on first meeting,<br />
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“but his face, though massive, had preserved something of the sharpness of expression which was so remarkable in that of his brother. His eyes, which were of a peculiarly light watery grey, seemed to always retain that far-away, introspective look which I had only observed in Sherlock's when he was exerting his full powers.” </blockquote>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNPXBvD8KaCq5X6-AhXg6e2GtqfIfCgY90Laj2w79ZhQzXMM5-zrRnzGToMXYsgUzFn8wB0-4N2nKdAUhN3XyMhitDki3_TrSeRGjvh6sLeU-AausdAyxA_7pziSZjcJQgAveHl3PwXiOa/s1600/GREE-07.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNPXBvD8KaCq5X6-AhXg6e2GtqfIfCgY90Laj2w79ZhQzXMM5-zrRnzGToMXYsgUzFn8wB0-4N2nKdAUhN3XyMhitDki3_TrSeRGjvh6sLeU-AausdAyxA_7pziSZjcJQgAveHl3PwXiOa/s320/GREE-07.jpg" width="281" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">Mycroft Holmes in "The Greek Interpreter" - illustration by Sidney Paget</span></td></tr>
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In competing deductions of a stranger on the street we get a hint of sibling rivalry that later pasticheurs and scriptwriters have made much hay over.</div>
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Holmes, Watson and Mycroft (for the second time) listen to Mr. Melas’ story then Holmes queries Mycroft on any action he has taken:</div>
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“Any steps?” he asked.</div>
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Mycroft picked up the <i>Daily News</i>, which was lying on a side-table.</div>
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'"Anybody supplying any information as to the whereabouts of a Greek gentleman named Paul Kratides, from Athens, who is unable to speak English, will be rewarded. A similar reward paid to anyone giving information about a Greek lady whose first name is Sophy. X2473.’ That was in all the dailies. No answer.”</div>
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“How about the Greek Legation?”</div>
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“I have inquired. They know nothing.”</div>
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“A wire to the head of the Athens police, then.”'</div>
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“Sherlock has all the energy of the family,” said Mycroft, turning to me. “Well, you take up the case by all means, and let me know if you do any good.”</div>
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Here is a man to whom writing out two telegraph forms and dispatching a servant to send them puts him on the brink of exhaustion; writing <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">three</i> would send him over the brink. In fact, this picture of an inert and ambitionless man is reinforced when Holmes and Watson walk home from the interview.</div>
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Holmes ascended the stairs first, and as he opened the door of our room he gave a start of surprise. Looking over his shoulder I was equally astonished. His brother Mycroft was sitting smoking in the armchair.</div>
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"Come in, Sherlock! Come in, sir," said he, blandly, smiling at our surprised faces. "You don't expect such energy from me, do you, Sherlock? But somehow this case attracts me."</div>
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[Holmes is so shocked by this unprecedented event that he elicits history’s first instance of “No s—t, Sherlock” from the reader.]</div>
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"How did you get here?"</div>
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"I passed you in a hansom."</div>
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If the Canon had ended with the stories of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Memoirs </i>or of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Return</i>, this is the only portrait of Mycroft we would be left with: a lazy and unambitious man, perhaps agoraphobic (“From year's end to year's end he takes no other exercise, and is seen nowhere” except work, home and club) and perhaps misanthropic. An intelligent underachiever content to bookkeep in obscurity and live more within the confines of his mind (“His eyes … seemed to always retain that far-away, introspective look which I had only observed in Sherlock's when he was exerting his full powers”) than the world and behind the façade of a “social club” of fellow hermits.<br />
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It is only the intellectual excitement of Sherlock’s work that pulls Mycroft from his comfort zone, and yet for all his intellect makes the tyro error of advertising in the papers after Melas has related the dire consequences of doing just that from Latimer and Kemp and then to suggest to interview the ad respondent rather than to rush to the probable location of the kidnapped Melas and Kratides. As we will see, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Elementary</i>’s Mycroft (Rhys Ifans) will draw heavily from this well.</div>
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<b>Planning "The Bruce-Partington Plans"</b></h3>
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Over the fifteen years from GREE to BRUC, Mycroft must have evolved in Doyle’s mind, grown in stature, ability and status from the eccentric recluse to someone more fitting to be the older brother of the world’s first—and best—consulting detective.</div>
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Gone is the man with no energy and no ambition. He is not too lazy to go anywhere save work, club and home, but “Mycroft has his rails and he runs on them. His Pall Mall lodgings, the Diogenes Club, Whitehall - that is his cycle. Once, and only once, he has been here. What upheaval can possibly have derailed him?" And “that Mycroft should break out in this erratic fashion! A planet might as well leave its orbit.”<br />
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Why? Not because he’s an insignificant accountant too sluggish to move, but because he is a governmental entity too important to be derailed by the trivial.</div>
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"You told me that he had some small office under the British Government."</div>
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Holmes chuckled.</div>
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"I did not know you quite so well in those days. One has to be discreet when one talks of high matters of state. You are right in thinking that he is under the British Government. You would also be right in a sense if you said that occasionally he is the British Government."</div>
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"My dear Holmes!"</div>
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"I thought I might surprise you. Mycroft draws four hundred and fifty pounds a year, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">remains a subordinate, has no ambitions of any kind, will receive neither honour nor title, but remains the most indispensable man in the country</i>." </div>
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"But how?"</div>
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"Well, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">his position is unique. He has made it for himself</i>. There has never been anything like it before, nor will be again. He has the tidiest and most orderly brain, with the greatest capacity for storing facts, of any man living. The same great powers which I have turned to the detection of crime he has used for this particular business. The conclusions of every department are passed to him, and he is the central exchange, the clearing-house, which makes out the balance. All other men are specialists, but his specialism is omniscience. We will suppose that a Minister needs information as to a point which involves the Navy, India, Canada, and the bimetallic question; he could get his separate advices from various departments upon each, but only Mycroft can focus them all, and say offhand how each factor would affect the other. They began by using him as a short-cut, a convenience; now he has made himself an essential. In that great brain of his everything is pigeonholed, and can be handed out in an instant. Again and again his word has decided the national policy. He lives in it. He thinks of nothing else save when, as an intellectual exercise, he unbends if I call upon him and ask him to advise me on one of my little problems. But Jupiter is descending today.” [Emphasis ours - <i>Ed</i>.]</div>
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Mycroft Holmes is, in fact Her Majesty’s analog to Sherlock Holmes, a consulting intelligence analyst but as superior to the average analyst as Sherlock is to the average Scotland Yarder. He is a department of one, subordinate but independent and like the ship of State itself can only move off-course (or depart Olympus) with great effort and reason. Gone is the lack of energy; the energy is now mental rather than physical. Gone is the lack of ambition for he has created his own, important niche in a realm where only the strong survive; but rather he lacks ambition<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">s</i> — the desire for fame, power or wealth.</div>
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Doyle’s physical description of Mycroft is also subtly different. </div>
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A moment later the tall and portly form of Mycroft Holmes was ushered into the room. Heavily built and massive, there was a suggestion of uncouth physical inertia in the figure, but above this unwieldy frame there was perched a head so masterful in its brow, so alert in its steel-gray, deep-set eyes, so firm in its lips, and so subtle in its play of expression, that after the first glance one forgot the gross body and remembered only the dominant mind.</div>
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The eyes are now alert and steel-gray not introspective and watery gray; the brow so masterful that the seal flipper hand fades from memory. Mycroft has habits, not indolence: “I extremely dislike altering my habits, but the powers that be would take no denial.” Supplicants must come to him prepared: “Give me your details, and from an arm-chair I will return you an excellent expert opinion. But to run here and run there, to cross-question railway guards, and lie on my face with a lens to my eye - it is not my métier.” Doyle paints for us a man worthy of the name Holmes in "The Bruce-Partington Plans" — and that is the one the reader of the Canon remembers the most.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_RsCP4DhUvb1kFRzP9mMcLXfiytgi2UmKlOH_paSaq4R7XKBGSgg9PxRBeh6wiYQfIpqHOJx21LZNriAyiVwPsopLa-J91DuLD3JZgngUoTWFJw-0cQ3u3HDuOhpD8_TKCZJx2KYkmlob/s1600/Bruc-01+Twidle.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_RsCP4DhUvb1kFRzP9mMcLXfiytgi2UmKlOH_paSaq4R7XKBGSgg9PxRBeh6wiYQfIpqHOJx21LZNriAyiVwPsopLa-J91DuLD3JZgngUoTWFJw-0cQ3u3HDuOhpD8_TKCZJx2KYkmlob/s1600/Bruc-01+Twidle.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mycroft Holmes in "The Bruce-Partington Plans" - illustration by Arthur Twidle</td></tr>
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Doyle explains this different Mycroft to the reader by having Holmes claim he did not know Watson well enough to let him in on the truth, one unsatisfying within the confines of The Game, as "The Greek Interpreter" would have to take place after the publication of <i>A Study in Scarlet</i> ("I hear of Sherlock everywhere since you became his chronicler.”). That would place GREE in 1888 at the earliest, which would mean that Holmes did not know Watson well after <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">seven years</i>.<br />
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Remember also that in 1883 Holmes contradictorily told Helen Stoner, “This is my intimate friend and associate, Dr. Watson, before whom you can speak as freely as before myself.” A more likely explanation within The Game is that Watson <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">did</i> know truth in 1888, but it was the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">public </i>who could not know of Mycroft’s position in the government until 1908, when Mycroft’s role was either generally known or he had retired.</div>
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While Doyle elevated Mycroft to Sherlock’s governmental analog equal, it was Sherlockians who made Mycroft something more. By taking “he is the British Government” out of the context of Mycroft’s recommendations occasionally being implemented as government policy, Mycroft has become an <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">éminence grise</i> who has the ear of Queen and ministers and powers over purse-strings (as in Billy Wilder’s <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Private-Life-Sherlock-Holmes/dp/B00K6D1RVW/ref=tmm_dvd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1466201883&sr=1-3" target="_blank"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes</i></a>) or a James Bondian “M” of a proto-MI6 run under the cover of the Diogenes Club or, as Vincent Starrett might have it, a mole of Moriarty. It is this Parallel Mycroft, <a href="http://www.ihearofsherlock.com/2016/01/original-holmes-and-parallel-holmes.html#.V2R5U6KNFZY" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">as Mattias Boström would style it</a>, that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Elementary</i> uses as the template for Morland Holmes.</div>
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“Morland is not from [the] Canon,” said <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Px16uAMW9bE" target="_blank">Robert Doherty at WonderCon 2016</a>, “and in some respects that makes him harder to write. You know if you’re taking something from [the] Canon you’re on some pretty solid footing, but with Morland, he was from whole cloth.” Yes, Holmes <i>père</i> is never mentioned or hinted at in the Canon, but by exploiting the duality of Doyle’s two Mycrofts and the duality of Canonical and popular culture Mycroft, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Elementary</i> has created a family dynamic that is influenced by Doyle and the cultural mythos that has built up around Mycroft but is outside the Canon, one both familiar and unique to Sherlockians, exploring how Sherlock became the show’s version of the icon and how the show’s Mycroft became GREE’s underachiever, by having the father be the pop culture Mycroft puppetmaster. </div>
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<b><br />
</b> <br />
<h3>
<b>Rhys's Piece</b></h3>
<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0406975/" target="_blank">Rhys Ifans</a>’ Mycroft was introduced in Season 2, where it is clear he and brother Sherlock (Jonny Lee Miller) aren't on good terms:</div>
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<b>Sherlock Holmes:</b> Fatty, This is Watson. Watson, this is Fatty.</div>
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<b>Mycroft Holmes:</b> Fatty? I’d say I slimmed down quite a bit. Wouldn’t you say?</div>
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<b>Sherlock:</b> Lap-band?</div>
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<b>Mycroft:</b> Exercise.</div>
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<b>Sherlock:</b> Exercise requires energy and ambition. You’ve never had either. (S2 E1)</div>
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This Mycroft is a successful restaurateur who owns several Michelin-starred restaurants named Diogenes. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Elementary</i> combines the elements of obesity, work and club [GREE] to give us a Mycroft whose safety zone is food and a self-created environment where he can sate his inner demons. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Later in the season we find out that Mycroft was recruited by MI6:</div>
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<b>Mycroft Holmes</b>: It’s true, my business was going through a rough patch. I needed cash to keep my restaurants afloat.</div>
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<b>Sherlock Holmes</b>: So you took money from drug dealers. What could go wrong?</div>
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<b>Mycroft</b>: Le Milieu approached me with what they called a ‘mutually beneficial arraignment’. It was not an offer one could decline and yet that’s precisely what I intended to do. But before I could give my official word, I was visited by a man from MI6. He told me they’d been watching Le Milieu and were aware of the offer; he urged me to accept. Burrow in, keep my eyes and ears open, do some good for Queen and country.</div>
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<b>Sherlock</b>: And here was me thinking that MI6 was an intelligence organization. But they sought help from you, a virtual cartoon character.</div>
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<b>Mycroft</b>: You’re not listening…. I suppose, at first, it was all very romantic. I was an asset. I was imbedded with Le Milieu. As it turned out, I had something of a knack for spying.</div>
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<b>Sherlock</b>: What’s your double-o designation? License to kill or just to annoy?</div>
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<b>Mycroft</b>: I never was an operative. Never went on missions. But I did find I had a capacity for storing facts. Quite a remarkable one. And as my work with Le Milieu brought me into contact with other criminal organizations, I began to take on their secrets, too. I became a sort of clearinghouse for MI6. I could often, but not always, predict the effect of certain actions that might be taken to dismantle criminal groups. I know you don’t take me seriously, but the agency does. And they have done for quite some time.</div>
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<b>Sherlock</b>: So you honestly expect me to believe that you are an MI6 asset and you have kept that hidden from me for over a decade?</div>
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<b>Mycroft</b>: [sarcastically] Right. Because we’re so close. (S2 E23)</div>
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As with Melas in "The Greek Interpreter," Mycroft’s action led to a kidnapping — Joan Watson’s (Lucy Liu). Throughout the season, Mycroft had shown a fascination with Sherlock and Joan’s work and during the effort to free Joan from Le Milieu we get a flip version of GREE’s deduction competition:</div>
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<b>Sherlock</b>: You have the intellectual tools to make simple deductions. Your failure to apply them in an energetic fashion is a constant source of befuddlement. Look around you. Really look around.</div>
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<b>Mycroft</b>: Excuse me. This cushion’s been disturbed. There’s scratches on the floor. Dry blood? There may have been some kind of scuffle.</div>
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<b>Sherlock</b>: More than a scuffle, I’d say. Those scratches are drag marks. Someone pulled a heavy object to this door. (S2 E22)</div>
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For someone without training, Mycroft acquits himself well, especially, as filmed, the clues are subtle to read. After Joan is rescued, she finds out the depths to which Mycroft would sacrifice for Sherlock. He had quit MI6, to get on with his own life, until:</div>
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<b>Joan Watson</b>: Tell me about Sudomo Han ….</div>
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<b>Mycroft</b>: Han was an Indonesian businessman who kept an office in London. About three years ago, when Sherlock was at the height of his drug use, or at the bottom, whichever way you look at it, Han approached him to act as a sort of confidential courier. Said he need to transfer a packet of trade secrets to a colleague without his competitors finding out the package had passed hands.</div>
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<b>Joan</b>: Sherlock took the job.</div>
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<b>Mycroft</b>: Unfortunately. What Sherlock didn’t realize was that Han was financing a terrorist plot. The trade secrets were instructions for the transfer of funds, and the competitors Sherlock managed to elude were British agents. Luckily, MI6 thwarted the attack, so no one was hurt, but in the process Sherlock’s involvement came to light. He, uh…could’ve been sent to prison for a very long time.</div>
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<b>Joan</b>: So MI6 offered you a deal.</div>
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<b>Mycroft</b>: By my handler. He said if I came back to work, Sherlock’s problems would disappear.</div>
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<b>Joan</b>: In other words, everything that you did for MI6, letting drug traffickers use your restaurants, that wasn’t for money, or to save your business. That was all to protect Sherlock. (S2 E23)</div>
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Mycroft comes to a harsh judgment of his actions and himself:</div>
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<b>Mycroft</b>: ‘He has no ambition and no energy. He will not even go out of his way to verify his own solutions. He would rather be considered wrong than go to the trouble of proving himself right.’ Something I overheard Sherlock say to my father once. He was 15.</div>
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<b>Joan</b>: I can’t even picture him at 15.</div>
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<b>Mycroft</b>: It hurts. And to be assessed like that.</div>
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<b>Joan</b>: He knows a lot. He doesn’t know everything.</div>
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<b>Mycroft</b>: I could have followed father into business. I could have followed Sherlock into his passions. But I wanted… less, I suppose.</div>
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<b>Joan</b>: You are a success. You own restaurants all over Europe. And the things you’ve done for your country---</div>
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<b>Mycroft</b>: Folly. Obviously. I should have said no when the agency approached me. But I remembered what Sherlock said. And I remember my father failing to disagree. And I…I thought I could prove, at least to myself, that I was more than what they thought. Idiocy. (S2 E24)</div>
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In his own variation of "The Final Problem," Mycroft lets the NSA fake his death to fool Le Milieu and disappears on his own hiatus.</div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Elementary </i>takes Mycroft's obesity, his desire for obscurity ("How comes it that he is unknown?" "Oh, he is very well known in his own circle." "Where, then?" "Well, in the Diogenes Club, for example." I had never heard of the institution…"), and need for a comfort zone and recombines them.<br />
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Food, a symbolic substitute for Mycroft, becomes both his work and his social club. The Diogenes restaurants become the place where he shares that most accessible part of himself with a select clientele. His ambitions are small compared to his father’s and to his brother’s, but like GREE Mycroft's unremarkable bookkeeping job within walking distance of home and unsociable social club, he is happy and content in his self-made world.</div>
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The twist during the course of Season 2 is the blending of this Mycroft with the Canonical Mycroft's government servant and espionage [BRUC]. He is an asset to MI-6, letting his restaurants be used by Le Milieu and being a clearing-house of intel and a strategic analyst. Unlike with Doyle’s Mycroft, the later version does not become the default Mycroft, but Ifans' Greek Interpreter-based Mycroft stays dominant and becomes an uneasy fit to a man trying to prove to himself that he is not the failure his father and brother believe he is. In fact, he did quit only to be lured back in by his handler to prevent Sherlock’s arrest.</div>
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Ultimately for some, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Elementary</i>’s Mycroft, while hewing close to Doyle, seemed too foreign. They were expecting something more like Parallel or pop culture Mycroft. Indeed, the portrait of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Elementary</i>’s Mycroft was incomplete until John Noble appeared to flesh out the family tree and to give the viewers a pastiche theory of how Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes came to be the men they are; “how far any singular gift in an individual was due to his ancestry, and how far to his own early training.”<br />
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<h3>
<b>The Not-So-Noble Father</b></h3>
</div>
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Father Holmes has been an unseen presence since the beginning of the series. The brownstone occupied by Sherlock and Joan is his least-valuable holding in New York City. Sherlock’s low opinion of bankers, lawyers and capitalists expressed throughout the series has been colored by the relationship with his father: “My father is a Lovecraftian horror who uses his money to bludgeon his way to ever-more-obscene profits.” (S2 E22) Early in the first season, the viewer is teased by the possibility of meeting the man:</div>
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<b>Joan Watson</b>: Your father e-mailed me last night before I went to bed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>He’s coming into town for business. Wants to have dinner. [Sherlock chuckles] What’s so funny?</div>
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<b>Sherlock Holmes</b>: Him. Dinner. Us. [Looks at Joan] You. Remind me, Watson. How many times have you met the man?</div>
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<b>Joan</b>: Never.</div>
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</b> <br />
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<b>Sherlock</b>: That’s because he’s secured your services as my sober companion electronically. And all of your subsequent correspondences have been via e-mail or through one of his legion of personal assistants.</div>
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<b>Joan</b>: So?</div>
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<b>Sherlock</b>: So take it from someone who has spent incrementally more time with him than you, he has zero intentions of meeting us for dinner this evening. (S1 E6)</div>
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And later:</div>
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<b>Sherlock</b>: One, my father does not care about me. He does what he does out of a sense of familial obligation. Big difference. Two, he does not care about you or what you think. Meeting you would be a formality. Three, as I’ve already told you, your concern is unwarranted because he has absolutely no intention of showing up tonight.</div>
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<b>Joan</b>: How could you possible know that?</div>
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<b>Sherlock</b>: Because he is a serial absentee. A pathological maker and breaker of promises. Been that way since I was a boy. Fool me one, shame on you, fool me ad nauseam---(S1 E6)</div>
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That <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">incrementally</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">serial absentee</i> are telling. Morland is always away on business; Sherlock and Mycroft were sent to different boarding schools and their mother was an opioid addict who became estranged from Morland and the family, later dying in an apartment fire.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>While the Canonical Watson thought Holmes was an orphan until "The Greek Interpreter," <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Elementary</i>’s Sherlock <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">was</i> functionally an orphan.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVRkwmCwZeOdA0Zv0YWco4FSk_ftgl1YFlNr2CWmu6C8rp__mHCyzXJDCoIORo8oZXa-rOz-Q99iBQjiPvOdaxgOc9xI50qsFrGZtc4mkyuxcD4wRM8I0BGwzXGdqjyLYgjibnnwJzbX0p/s1600/Morland+Holmes.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="358" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVRkwmCwZeOdA0Zv0YWco4FSk_ftgl1YFlNr2CWmu6C8rp__mHCyzXJDCoIORo8oZXa-rOz-Q99iBQjiPvOdaxgOc9xI50qsFrGZtc4mkyuxcD4wRM8I0BGwzXGdqjyLYgjibnnwJzbX0p/s640/Morland+Holmes.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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In Season 4, in a scene that plays like a version of the one in BRUC, Sherlock clarifies his father’s position in the world and the ease in which he can make the improbable happen:</div>
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<b>Joan Watson</b>: Look, I think it’s nice that he wants to help, but you know we can’t go back to the department---it’s not possible. </div>
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</b> <br />
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<b>Sherlock Holmes</b>: Neither was war in the Falklands, but the old man tends to get what he wants.</div>
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<b>Joan</b>: I can’t tell if you’re serious right now.</div>
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">Sherlock</span>: How much do you really know about my father? You’ve rarely broached the terms of your initial appointment.</div>
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<b>Joan</b>: Mostly I dealt with people under him. I know he’s some sort of international consultant.</div>
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">Sherlock</span>: It is true I am not the first consultant in the family but the title is where the similarities end. Father’s business exists to grease the skids so that politicians and corporations can operate around the globe. Sometimes these are noble ventures, more times they are not. But they happen because Father is an influence peddler par excellence. If he says he can restore us he means it. </div>
</blockquote>
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However, Sherlock warns, “With him there is always a cost. The toll always comes due.” (S4 E2) And the Machiavellian nature of Morland comes clearer as the season continues:</div>
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<b>Sherlock Holmes</b>: Were you under the impression that we were dealing with a nice man? … Perhaps I underplayed the danger. Perhaps my constantly referring to my father as the devil incarnate wasn’t clear. He has armies on his payroll. He has mercenaries on speed dial. There are countries that you knew the name of as a child that no longer exist because of him. (S4 E22)</div>
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This portrait of an amoral power-broker will be familiar to viewers of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sherlock</i>. While the Parallel Mycroft <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">is</i> the British Government and a master behind-the-scenes manipulator occasionally at odds with his brother, making Morland Holmes his independent business equivalent paints a complex family portrait, combining Canonical and Parallel-Canonical elements, familiar to the Sherlock Holmes fan, but connected in original ways.<br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><br />
</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Elementary</i>’s Mycroft, unsatisfying to some, becomes more complete when viewed against Morland. Sherlock saw Mycroft cashing in his trust fund as soon as possible to open up Diogenes as lazy and unambitious, but set against a harshly demanding absent but famously successful father and a competitive younger brother...<br />
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<b>Sherlock</b>: [to Morland] Well, it happened rather famously on your one and only visit to Baker Street. Or do you not recall excoriating me for not stocking your favorite tea? [S4 E2] </blockquote>
Mycroft’s move can be seen as wisely leaving an unhealthy world and creating a personally satisfying one, as "The Greek Interpreter" Mycroft did in setting up all he would need in England within a block or so in the heart of Whitehall.<br />
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To open a restaurant, have it not only survive but thrive, to be Michelin-starred, and to open others across Europe is not the calling of a lazy, unambitious buffoon.<br />
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Even the addition of elements of "The Bruce-Partington Plans" to Ifans’ Mycroft achieves a deeper meaning. Perhaps Mycroft’s success with Diogenes came relatively easy to him, so he undervalued his efforts and saw himself through his father’s disdain. When MI6 came calling, he saw an opportunity to prove to his father and himself he could be more than <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">a</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">mere restaurateur</i>.<br />
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The head of MI6, Sir James Valentine, confirms Mycroft’s worth to the agency. Assessed dispassionately, Mycroft performed much better than Sherlock’s harsh appraisal at the end of Season 2 before departure on hiatus and his heartfelt hug and genuine sentiment “This last year has been a gift,” not only went steps to answering his query to Joan at the beginning of the season of how one becomes Sherlock Holmes’s friend but, as the look on Sherlock’s face confirms after Mycroft leaves, one-ups the detective in their sibling rivalry.<br />
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<br />
Morland’s complex relationship with Sherlock is wonderfully conveyed John Noble in voice and expression:</div>
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<b>Morland Holmes</b>: When you had your troubles in London, I lost faith in you. I provide for you in New York because I wanted you out of sight and mind. Little did I know that the untended corner of the garden would grow so strong and healthy…. I’m not talking about the last few days, I’m talking about the last few years. I respect what you’ve built here, the work you’ve done. I’m proud of you. Didn’t think I would be. (S4 E2)</div>
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The anger, disgust and pride are all there. Morland sees their relationships as worthy opponents on par with a wily business competitor. Joan, in their first face-to-face meeting dissuades him of that notion:</div>
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<b>Morland</b>: If you think Sherlock is the only one who considers me an enemy, you’d be wrong. </div>
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<b>Joan</b>: He doesn’t consider you an enemy.</div>
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<b>Morland</b>: An antagonist, then.</div>
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<b>Joan</b>: [matter-of-factly] No. I think he just…thinks you’re a terrible father. (S4 E2)</div>
</blockquote>
<br />
Morland is clearly hurt. Speaking of hurt, Joan notices during her lunch meetings with Morland unusual dining habits and numbers and type of vitamins he’s taking and posits that he’s had chemotherapy treatments. <span style="font-family: "arno pro" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">While going over Morland’s internet appearances to see if she can detect signs of illness, </span> she comes across the info that Sabine Raoult, a woman Morland was seeing, was killed in a drive-by shooting. Sherlock deduces that two of the bullets never found at the shooting scene ended up inside his father. Morland confirms this and admits the other reason he’s in New York is to get revenge on Sabine’s killer.<br />
<br />
Sherlock decides to investigate and discovers that Professor Joshua Vikner (Tony Curran), former mentor and father of Jamie Moriarty’s (Natalie Dormer) daughter had taken over the Moriarty organization and tried to assassinate Morland, but killed Sabine instead.<br />
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<b>Sherlock</b>: [to Morland about Vikner] I’m sure you’ve been painting a portrait of evil in your mind’s eye since Sabine’s death, but it’s really not like that. A closer approximate would be Great Uncle Willard as a younger man.” (S4 E24)</div>
</blockquote>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
We don’t know if Miller’s Sherlock is related to Vernet, however we can say that “Capitalism is the blood is liable to take the strangest forms.” Morland had assumed that he had angered a rival business competitor, but is puzzled as to why Vikner would try to kill him. Sherlock had deduce that there was dissent in the Moriarty organization over Vikner’s leadership, headed by Iranian diplomat Zoya Hashemi (Roma Chugani). Morland, Sherlock and Joan interview Hashemi and get a sense of how large the criminal organization is; they have a presence, large or small, in about half the countries of the world. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<b>Hashemi</b>: When Moriarty was captured, those with the most influence in the group realized that we couldn’t continue on without a leader. We were, as you said, a snake and we were eating our own tail. Certain candidates emerged---Vikner was one of them. But others, like myself, advocated for an individual outside the group, a man we long admired. A legend. He had spent a lifetime playing dice with the globe and had profited immensely. He still does.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<b>Sherlock</b>: [to Morland] She’s talking about you. They wanted you to lead them.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<b>Hashemi</b>: Tell me you don’t see art in what we do. Tell me you couldn’t have perfected it. (S4 E24)</div>
</blockquote>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Morland’s wounding and Sabine’s death accomplished the same result as Morland’s death would have; it gave Vikner enough time to consolidate his leadership over the group. Sherlock asks Hashemi to help “roll up” the group, but she replies it is too big to jail. Later at the brownstone, Joan asks:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<b>Joan</b>: Do you think Morland would have said “yes” to the offer to take over the group?</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<b>Sherlock</b>: No. There’s no denying over his long and storied career my father has facilitated deals where death was the likely outcome for someone, somewhere. But Vikner and his people persue death as a business deal. It’s a difference of kind, not of degree.</div>
</blockquote>
<br />
The offer had come as a bit of a shock to Morland as he no doubt saw himself as one of “the good guys” or the hero of his own life story:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<b>Morland</b>: It’s really something, realizing you are, for all appearances, the kind of man who would accept the leadership position in a group like that. I’ve always blamed myself for what happened to Sabine. I was sure I had done something to upset a competitor or acted too aggressively in a negotiation, angered the wrong dictator or CEO. I’d stay up at night struggling to put a finger on it, to figure out exactly what I had done wrong.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<b>Sherlock</b>: Right. ‘Cause it wasn’t one thing, was it? It was everything. Your life’s work. You would have been a spectacular failure, by the way. You don’t have the stuff to be an evil mastermind.(S4 E24)</div>
</blockquote>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Parallel Mycroft works in a moral gray area; the needs of the government outweigh the rights of individuals or the niceties of international laws. In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes</i>, Queen Victoria, coming to the understanding of the unsportsman-like nature of submarine warfare orders Mycroft to destroy his prototype. Mycroft allows the German agents to steal the sub and rigged it to sink after theft---which also seems a bit unsportsman-like. By making Morland a Parallel Mycroft, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Elementary</i> shows us, in the context of the Game, how Sherlock became Holmes, the man who would “rather play tricks with the law of England than with my own conscience” [ABBE] while still having a code of ethics, by contrasting him with a father who is not evil but,<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Sherlock</b>: <span style="line-height: 107%;">Father’s work is anything but frivolous, I assure you. Thanks to him, this energy firm and other clients like them have literally brought light to lands that were dark and just as often rained darkness where once there was light. Father doesn’t distinguish. Perhaps you need sanctions eased against a rogue nation so you can sell them your tanks, or your factories can only spew toxins if the US doesn’t sign an emissions treaty. Father can make it so, with the moral neutrality of the plague…. Not evil. </span>Neutral. Like a shark, or a tsunami. (S4 E3)</span></span></blockquote>
</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
The difference between Sherlock’s sense of justice and Morland’s moral relativism is critical, especially as we see throughout Season 4, father and son have similar<i> modus operandi</i> for achieving results, such as threats and bribery. In Sherlock’s case, the threats are exposure of criminal activity or the bribe a <i>quid pro quo</i> to not expose criminal activity in exchange for information to bring a larger crime to justice. Morland uses them as a means to an end.</div>
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<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
As the Holmeses work together, Joan, who like the Canonical Watson doesn’t mind breaking the law or facing arrest in service of a good cause, keeps a wary eye on them both to make sure Morland doesn’t corrupt and Sherlock doesn’t become corrupted. He does admit to Joan that he could get used to having a helicopter at his disposal to avoid New York traffic. But as we see, while Sherlock might naturally wish for a rapprochement his father, he has come to reject the moral neutrality that allows Morland—and the Parallel Mycroft of pastiche—of using people, loved ones, corporations and governments as chess pieces to be moved and sacrificed for an end-game. The dominant father-figure of Parallel Mycroft gives the characters of Sherlock and his brother a psychological depth for Canonical traits taken from Doyle and repurposed in both familiar and original configurations in, not a retelling of the Canon, but an exploration of a version of the essence of Sherlock Holmes, Doctor Watson, family and partnership.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The differences between father and son are displayed on the rooftop of the Brownstone at the end of season four when Morland informs Sherlock he has accepted Hashemi’s offer to head the Moriarty group, which resulted in Professor Vikner’s assassination.</div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Morland</b>: I told you, I will not lose my son.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Sherlock</b>: So your only recourse is to become the head of an organization which murders for profit?</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Morland</b>: How else would I dismantle it? Ms. Hashemi was right, the group is virtually impervious to threats from the outside, but a threat from the inside on the other hand…</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Sherlock</b>: What you’re describing would be suicide.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Morland</b>: I should be returning to London this evening. The group will no longer have a presence in New York. You have my word. What is it about you and I that we do so much harm to the ones we allege we care about? I know about Irene Adler now. Ms. Hashemi explained. For years, you’ve blamed yourself for her death. You never questioned it … and the case could be made that your brother is in banishment because of you.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Sherlock</b>: Do you have a point?</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Morland</b>: Being loved by you is a dangerous thing, Sherlock. Probably why I’m still alive. Men like us… we’re not meant to make such connections.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Sherlock</b>: I disagree.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Morland</b>: Ask yourself: who do love more than any other in the world? And what do you think will happen if you stay with her?</div>
</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As performed by John Noble, the viewer believes Morland is infiltrating the group to destroy it—to save his son in a gambit where the grand master is willing to sacrifice a bishop (Vikner) and his Queen (himself) to save the King (Sherlock). We believe Miller that he’s come to see Morland as human (“You don’t have the stuff to be an evil mastermind.”), although not forgiven for his paternal failings. He was willing to frame the Professor for a murder committed by one of his hired assassins who already languishes in prison, but Vikner’s murder was out of the question for Sherlock. We know what Morland would do for those he loves; Sherlock, like the Doyle’s Holmes, has “a great heart as well as ... a great brain” [3GAR] and a moral compass. Parallel Mycroft-as-father-figure puts those differences in stark relief.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<h3>
<br />
Stay Tuned</h3>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Elementary</i>’s Sherlock is capable of growth and the arc of the series has been to follow the great detective from the nadir of addiction, that dulling of distractions in too-sharp of focus, through the redemption of true friendship with Joan, something that didn’t exist in his familial relationships. <i>Elementary</i> does this not by a retelling of Canonical stories, but by using the Canon, and the pop culture canon, in original ways.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The fourth season of <i>Elementary</i> will be out on <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Elementary-Season-4/dp/B01D4SPZR2/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1466786489&sr=1-1&keywords=elementary+season+4+dvd">DVD</a> August 23, 2016 and the fifth season will premiere on CBS Sunday, October 2, 2016 at 10:00 pm ET.<br />
<br />
I do not know what’s in store. I would love to see a story arc showing Morland dismantling the Moriarty organization from the inside, perhaps with Mycroft's help and Jamie Moriarty emerging from the shadows to protect her empire, but the realities of actor availabilities will no doubt triumph over my personal wishes. However, I am looking forward to what Robert Doherty, Bob Goodman, the writing staff and the cast will have for us.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<i>Author’s note: My quotes from the TV show are based on the closed captioning and the dialog as I hear it. I’ve done the best I can to be accurate.</i></div>
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<br />
--<br />
<br /></div>
</div>

Elementary’s Mycroft and Morland Holmes — A Tale of Doyle's Two Mycrofts

“He was very like the chap that I had seen the night before” [STOC] Arthur Conan Doyle never set out to make Sherlock Holmes a ...

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by James C. O'Leary

Elementary Will Return for a Fifth Season

<h4 style="text-align: center;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">"The signals were
renewed" [REDC]</span></h4>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
As Elementary winds up its fourth season, let's touch on the news from CBS last month when they <a href="http://tvseriesfinale.com/tv-show/elementary-season-five-renewal-cbs-drama/" target="_blank">announced the renewal of Elementary for a fifth season</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>There were questions on
whether CBS would bring back the show.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> 
</span>The live ratings have taken a dip this season and the network has moved
the show from Thursdays at 10:00 PM to Sundays at 10:00 PM, a slot that been
the final resting place of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Mentalist</i>
and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">CSI: Miami</i>. After four seasons, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Elementary</i> has 96 episodes, enough for a
successful syndication.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
However, the <a href="http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2014/06/09/live7-dvr-ratings-complete-2013-14-season-the-big-bang-theory-leads-adults-18-49-ratings-increase-raising-hope-earns-biggest-percentage-increase-the-blacklist-tope-viewership-gains/271900/">live ratings only tell part of the story</a>. The
live + 7 day ratings <a href="http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2016/03/07/broadcast-live-7-ratings-feb-15-21-2016-week-22/">adds millions of viewers</a>, especially in the all-important
18-49 demographic. The fans of the show actively seek it out, DVRing it or watching
it on demand at their convenience. The show is made by CBS Studios, which gives
the network a financial incentive to keep the show going.<br />
<br />
One of the long-time
knocks against <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Elementary</i> has been
that it was crass ploy to cash in on Sherlock Holmes and the <span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">BBC's</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Sherlock</i>. Such an argument seems to assume that the British
Broadcasting Corporation is a non-profit and ignores the fact that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sherlock</i> makes <a href="http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/3cc9afc4-2d0e-11e4-911b-00144feabdc0.html#axzz44nl7prjc">untold millions</a> for the
Beeb; Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman tchotchkes are ubiquitous. You’d
be hard-pressed to find similar Jonny Lee Miller and Lucy Liu merch.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/tv/columnist/2015/11/04/cbs-elementary-jonny-lee-miller-review/75105242/">Television critics</a> who are not Sherlockians consistently praise the show for its acting
and intelligent scripts. Sherlockian critics (a majority of which tend to be
BBC fans) sniff that CBS’ show is a<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> procedural</i>,
as if the definition of the word contained a whiff of excrement, forgetting
that long ago <a href="http://wessexpress.com/html/knox.html">Father Ronald Knox</a> enumerated the Canon’s own procedural elements.
Sunday night is presently the home of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">60
Minutes</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Madame Secretary</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Good Wife</i> making <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Elementary</i> a good fit with CBS’ prestige
line-up.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I look forward to Robert Doherty and the writing staff’s interesting,
intelligent and challenging take on what it means to be Holmes and Watson, and
Holmes and Watson in the 21<sup>st</sup> century. <a href="http://www.cbs.com/shows/elementary/news/1005135/more-morland-more-problems-on-elementary/">Doherty</a> was at WonderCon when news of the renewal was announced, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kBt0Rwz3z8">Here</a> is a YouTube video of Doherty at one of the round tables and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Px16uAMW9bE">one</a> of him at a media interview.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><br /></b>
<b><br /></b>
<b>CORRECTION: </b>An earlier version of this article misstated the end date of Season 4. The current season ends on May 1, 2016.<br />
<br />
<i>Image credit: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRf5UkqHdQk" target="_blank">YouTube</a></i><br />
<br />
--<br />
<br /></div>

Elementary Will Return for a Fifth Season

"The signals were renewed" [REDC] As Elementary winds up its fourth season, let's touch on the news from CBS last mon...

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by James C. O'Leary

Elementary and the Hound

<h4 style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: "arno pro" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">"Not content with a mere fiend-<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">dog" [HOUN]</span></span></b></h4>
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<span style="font-family: "arno pro" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">From the beginning, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Elementary</i> was not about retelling the
Arthur Conan Doyle Canon in the 21<sup>st</sup> century. At </span><a href="http://collider.com/robert-doherty-carl-beverly-elementary-interview/" style="font-family: 'arno pro', serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 17.12px;">San Diego’s Comic Con</a><span style="font-family: 'arno pro', serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 17.12px;"> in 2012, </span><span style="font-family: 'arno pro', serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 17.12px;">Executive Producer Rob Doherty said,</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "arno pro" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">"We’re not looking to
contemporize the old stories.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Really,
when I look at the source material, what I love and have always loved is the
relationship and the mythology.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I love
those aspects.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>The cases are brilliant,
don’t get me wrong, but it’s not our first order of business.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If somebody had a take on one of the stories
and it seemed right for our show in New York, with our Sherlock and our Watson,
I’m open to it but it’s not our plan for the show.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>We want to tell our own new Sherlockian
mysteries week in and week out."</span></blockquote>
<br />

<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arno pro" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The show runners have taken familiar Canonical tropes and
tropes created by Sherlockians within the Grand Game since the 1930s, such as
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Illustrated-Caldecott-Greenaway-Historical-Baring-Gould/dp/B0014YL4WY/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1458166622&sr=1-1&keywords=sherlock+holmes+of+baker+street+by+william+s.+baring-gould">Irene Adler being Holmes’ great love</a>, and turned them on their heads: Watson
weaning “him from that drug mania which had threatened once to check his
remarkable career” [MISS] <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">then</i>
becoming his friend; the great platonic relationship <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">across</i> genders; Holmes’ greatest love <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">is also </i>his greatest enemy. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These changes work for me, exploring the
characters of Holmes and Watson in new, interesting, and for some, jarring
ways. Other changes, such as Sherlock’s sex-as-exercise, I feel are misfires,
but all-in-all <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Elementary</i> is a
thoughtful, well-written and acted examination of what it means to be Sherlock
Holmes and John (in this case Joan) Watson.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arno pro" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">When <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Elementary</i>
does partake of Canonical material, it can do so in ways that frustrate the
expectations of some, but, when successful are fascinating. Season 1, Episode
9 (S1 E9) “You Do It to Yourself” used the plot of “The Problem of Thor
Bridge” without name-checking any characters or locations from the story. That
left some to miss the connection between the story and episode entirely, and
others to assume that the showrunners are so ignorant of the Canon that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">they didn’t know</i> the source of the plot;
an assumption belied by Sherlock name-check THOR as a case of his in England
(S1 E21 “A Landmark Story”) and the use of Maria Gibson’s suicide method (S2 E9
“On the Line”) by a young woman attempting to frame her sister’s killer. In
fact the dumbbell used as a weight to pull her gun off the bridge into the
Hudson River is momentarily framed as Thor’s Hammer.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arno pro" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Elementary
</span></i><span style="font-family: "arno pro" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">has
taken parts of the Canon and its characters, such as S3 E2 “The Five Orange
Pipz”, S1 E12 “M.”, S2 E7 “The Marchioness”, S1 E20 “Dead Man’s Switch”, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the two-parter S3 E11 “The Illustrious Client”
and E12 “The One That Got Away” and worked them into the show’s mythos, but<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>its best Canonical retelling is S2
E17’s “Ears to You” which not only repurposed "The Cardboard Box" into the 21<sup>st</sup>
century but worked it perfectly into the show’s procedural and addiction
recovery formats while staying true to Doyle, and the story itself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>The series has finally gotten around to <i>The Hound of the Baskervilles</i> and within the confines of one hour managed to coherently condense the novel’s
plot while substituting the desolation of Dartmoor to the morally bleak
landscape of American commerce, one of the series’ touchstones and replacements
of the Canon’s Victorian England class system.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arno pro" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Broadcast on March 10, 2016, S4 E16’s “Hounded” is the last
episode on Thursday nights this season; the show move<span style="font-family: "arno pro" , serif;">d</span> to Sundays on March 20. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Hound of the Baskervilles</i> is the
most well-known and most filmed stories of the Canon. Part of the novel’s
success is the Gothic, supernatural setting in which the rational, scientific
Holmes must restore order. Not every film version has done visually what
Doyle did with words, and even with a two-part episode, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Elementary</i> would probably fail in capturing the chills and thrills
of the novel. Instead, Robert Hewitt Wolfe’s script hues close to novel, paring
it down to essentials. All this takes place in the ethical morass of business,
commerce and technology, an <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Elementary</i>
staple backdrop, befitting a detective working in the world’s financial Grimpen
Mire.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arno pro" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Venture capitalist Charles Baskerville is hit by a truck
after falling off a jogging path. His brother Henry, the last known surviving
heir to Gilded Age railroad tycoon Hugo Baskerville’s fortune, doesn’t believe
that it was an accident and asks Holmes and Watson to investigate. At the scene
in Central Park, Sherlock deduces from the broken b<span style="font-family: "arno pro" , serif;">r</span>anches and twigs that
Charles was chased to his death by someone who was wider with a lower stance and <span style="font-family: "arno pro" , serif;">there was a </span>third person who witnessed it and ran away. Sherlock sends Joan to find the witness
while he tends to the shows' B-story<span style="font-family: "arno pro" , serif;">; </span></span><span style="font-family: "arno pro" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "arno pro" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "arno pro" , serif;">t</span>he scene plays like a version of Holmes volunteering
Watson to guard Sir Henry</span>. The witness, a homeless vet who, while in
an alter state or two, saw Charles chased by small bear or large wolf that
glowed like a lantern. <span style="font-family: "arno pro" , serif;">Here the show</span> respects the source material by not trying to
shoehorn “Mr. Holmes, they were the footprints of a <span style="font-family: "arno pro" , serif;">gigantic</span> hound!” into 2016 New
York City. In fact, the word “hound” is never mentioned in the show. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arno pro" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">At Charles’ company, Baskerville Genetics, we meet a red
herring in the form of Cornwall, a large genetically-modified bioluminescent
dog. Dr. Jane Mortimer (so named in the script, but I don’t believe her name
was mentioned during the episode) direct Sherlock and Joan’s attention to a
convict named Selden, who was sending death-threat emails to Charles and others
at the company. Selden, played to crank perfection by obese actor Ric
Stoneback (could the show's Selden's first name be "Franklin"?), while happy at the karmic justice at Charles death has an alibi, “I
was at a comedy club with my sister. Big mistake. I was the target of every
bozo on stage. Fat-shaming is the last acceptable prejudice in America!” And
perhaps a meta-comment on Victorian Mycroft in “The Abominable Bride”. Selden leads them to a competitive genetics
firm, one which activities are a bit shadier that making drought-resistant rice—that
of breeding “war dogs” for the Army Research Laboratory. Fortunately for
society, the project produced stillborn or nonviable dogs and was abandoned. However,
the competitor tells the detectives of Charles’ “patent-jacking”—giving start-up
companies capital in exchange for stock and seats on the board and once he had
a controlling interest, liquidating the company and selling off its assets,
including any patents.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arno pro" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Here’s where the casting of the likable and sympathetic Tom
Everett Scott in the thankless role of Henry Baskerville (can anyone remember
and name another of the many actors, aside from <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Hound-Baskervilles-Peter-Cushing/dp/B000062XEY/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1458167707&sr=1-1&keywords=hound+of+the+baskervilles+1959">Christopher Lee</a>, who played the
role?) pays off; he knows about Charles patent-jacking, but thinks the 30 or so
inventors were “well compensated” and have nothing to be vengeful about.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arno pro" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">“Imagine,” Sherlock has to tell him, “you’re one of the
inventors your brother fleeced. Imagine watching your brother make millions off
your brainchild while you were forced to walk away with $100,000 and a hearty
handshake.” The viewer still roots for Henry to survive the inevitable. While
still on the phone with Sherlock, the beast breaks into Baskerville Hall, by
hearing the beast’s growl Sherlock is able to deduce what the beast is and save
Henry’s life. It turns out to be <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wE3fmFTtP9g">a four-legged robot</a> (“Only slightly less
outrageous than the glowing mastiff, wouldn't you think?” says Sherlock in another bit of meta-commentary) cobbled together
from stolen patents and sold to the Baskervilles’ cousin Rodger Stapleton. One of
the ten robots built for the military by Stapleton Innovations, it had
disappeared and someone had reprogrammed it to be a target-and-forget weapon to
eliminate the Baskervilles.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arno pro" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">“Hounded” works on many levels. As well as by a robot,
Stapleton and the Baskervilles are hounded by their sins, corporate and
otherwise, as well the genetic struggle of infertility in the male bloodline.
In the B-story, semi-regular character M.E. Eugene Hawes (Jordan Gerber) is
hounded by the post-traumatic stress of losing someone he cared about in an
explosion that also almost killed Hawes, as is Sherlock by the “loss” of The
Woman. “Hounded” works as a retelling of the Baskerville tale by stripping the
plot to its basics, losing the Gothic overtones, but keeping the “curse”—visiting
the sins of the father onto the children—and setting it in a modern-day ethical
wasteland. As always, Jonny Lee Miller and Lucy Liu are a joy to watch as
Sherlock Holmes and Joan Watson.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arno pro" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">As for the move to Sunday, <a href="http://deadline.com/2016/01/rush-hour-premiere-date-criminal-minds-beyond-borders-elementary-cbs-1201678446/">Deadline</a> notes that the
action/comedy <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Rush Hour</i> is more
fitting of CBS’ Thursday night comedy line-up while </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "arno pro" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">“<i>Elementary</i> attracts
the kind of upscale CBS audiences that watch its Sunday lineup. Plus,<i>
Elementary</i> is one of CBS’ most DVR-ed series, so a time slot is not that
crucial to the show’s performance. Still, if history is any indication,
any established CBS drama series sent to the Sunday 10 PM time period ends
its run there, most recently <i>CSI: Miami</i> and <i>The Mentalist.
Elementary</i> is owned by CBS, it is still relatively young and makes money
for the company, so it is likely not destined for a quick death.” </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "arno pro" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arno pro" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I hope <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Elementary</i> is around for a while longer.</span></div>
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<i>Image credit: <a href="http://www.cbs.com/shows/elementary/photos/1005983/first-look-sherlock-s-dogged-pursuit/" target="_blank">CBS</a></i><br />
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