Sherlock enters some dangerous land on tonight’s Elementary season 3, episode 6, “Terra Pericolosa.” Our recap reveals where he finds the most trouble.
There are two people, three if you include Mycroft’s early years, who have come to know Sherlock Holmes on an intimate level. That is to say, living with the man, taking in all of his absurdities, and accepting them as part of the complete human package they choose to associate with. But every now and again, the manic workings of Sherlock’s brain get the better of him leaving a tiny crack for worry and betrayal to seep in. Joan, an old pro by now, understands that Kitty has crossed over from the casual acquaintance side of the Sherlock threshold and into loosely dubbed “friend” stage of their partnership.
Caving into Sherlock’s request to carry Clyde on the subway back to Chelsea, the two women spend a few minutes apart from the watchful gaze of Sherlock. Joan and Kitty’s relationship has grown quite considerably over the last few weeks. More time passes on the show than in reality and Kitty has been meeting with a group of people at a coffee shop quiet often, but never pursuing plans beyond that. It is not for lack of offers, but rather a lack of time due to carrying out Sherlock’s many nonsensical errands.
One of which, interrupts their chat with a request to hit up a library who experienced a break in and discovered a missing map. Kitty tries to hold onto Joan’s advice that it is okay to make Sherlock wait every now and then, but in the age of read receipts on text messages, technology does not work in her favor.
The library is working with Holmes on the suggestion of Miss Hudson. Discretion is of the highest order for an establishment that does not want to worry its very wealthy curators that their collections have been compromised. But all that is out the window when Kitty discovers that the guard assisted the thief achieve his end goal and wound up dead inside one of the casings. Detective Bell sums up Sherlock’s fleeting smirk by delivering this great line, “her first hidden corpse, you must be so proud.”
But pride is not going to get in the way of uncovering a plethora of information that connects the rest of the scattered dots surrounding this murder. The scanned collection reveals that a map on loan from the wealthy Brays family from Virginia was the target of this thief’s break in. The 1794 map of King James County, Virginia belonged to a Hollis Bray, a very wealthy philanthropist in the medical field and collector of cartography of his home town. His granddaughter Margaret is their first line of inquiry as to the maps importance to the family.
When Margaret fails to offer any suggestions Sherlock goes off on a cartography crash course and immerses himself with enough information to get in the thief’s mind. It works, but only enough to lead them to another dead body. They reveal to Margaret it was indeed a fraud that her grandfather had loaned the library. A series of ink tests, scans, and collector searches later, a real estate giant brings along his interest in securing the map and offers to hire Joan and Sherlock to do just that. But his investment in the larger project he claims to be working on fails to convince Holmes that his intentions are pure.
The rest of the episode covers Sherlock, Joan, and Kitty rallying through an all-nighter to find that the map’s river orientation is the key to why the map is so valuable. The river is the only boarder that will separate Indian reservation land from the property line of US soil. A casino project is in the works and the Brays map is the only key item that could halt the progress. But who sits to benefit from this? Well the casino builders of course, but Margaret Bray’s property lines the casino’s future home. Her property value is about the sky rocket upon the site’s completion.
The case was a clever collaboration of circulating around a figure eight only to end up back at our first inclination that the innocent granddaughter of the estate is responsible for the murder of two men.
The meat of the episode, once again, falls to the B story of the relationship between Sherlock and Kitty. Noticing that she has been spending a bit of time with a certain gentleman named Zachary, Sherlock ups the ante on his demand of her time. Joan chooses to confront him about pulling the same stunts he did with her desire for personal time. However, Joan is not seeing the entire picture.
Sherlock points out, bluntly, that whatever idea Joan has in her head that she and Kitty are the same needs to change. Joan did not step into Sherlock’s life afraid to look at him because he was a man. While his concern for Kitty’s safety is well contrived, he is also not completely in the right.
But Kitty is smarter than either of them give her credit for. In a beautifully acted scene by Ophelia Lovibond, Kitty reveals that she knew all along why Sherlock was giving her the extra work and she appreciated his concern, making it crystal clear that she felt, “very protected and very loved.”
While Sherlock’s actions may have been taken the way he intended them, he makes it a point to give Kitty the option to spend her time how she pleases without fear of restraint on his part. Watson will be taking up some of the slack and a loophole for getting the three on the same tract is achieved in a way that does not feel like a cheap ploy to keep the “Holmes and Watson” tagline.
Hopefully the show will strike a balance between Sherlock and Kitty cases, Joan and Sherlock cases, and, fingers crossed, find a way to ship Sherlock back off to MI6 for a Kitty and Joan case.
Clyde Watch:
•Clyde is safely back in Joan’s apartment fully equipped with his cozies, treats, and all the love he deserves. We are enjoying the weekly check-ins.
•Bonus Clyde joke: “Are you talking about the frowny one with the hard shell, or do you mean Clyde?”
Watch Elementary season 3, episode 7, “The Adventure of the Nutmeg Concoction,” Thursday, December 11 at 10:00 p.m. ET on CBS.
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