The case falls flat this week as Elementary makes room for more personal stories to take center stage. Our recap answers whose love life is under review and why the Stanley Cup is around.

“The great love of my life is a homicidal maniac,” Sherlock tells Bell to try and ease his dating woes in this week’s Elementary. But how did he wind up chumming with his pal Marcus at the end of a long week tossing cards into the Stanley cup? That is a mystery that has been playing out over the course of season 3. Sherlock as a friend is perhaps the greatest journey Elementary has given the detective. Besides his drug addiction and recovery, the relationships that result from his partnership with Watson, his constant kindling of the romance that exists with Jamie Moriarty.

Other relationships we have seen involve a professional relationship with Captain Gregson, with the lines clearly drawn between the two, and a budding friendship with Detective Bell. For all intents and purposes, on the scene of a crime, Bell has learned that accepting Sherlock’s quirks and ticks are more beneficial to both his work and the good of the department. Off the case, however, Marcus and Sherlock are still working to pave a new friendship that takes steps further away from Sherlock’s actions that resulted in Marcus getting shot.

The dark web is not just for illegal flower and organ sales. Sometimes you strike NHL gold when the Stanley Cup appears on the listings. Sherlock purchases the cup, lest it fall further away from the NHL’s possession and throughout the episode tests the authenticity of the cup.

Marcus’ love life comes into this episode when a detective from the 12th precinct, Shauna Scott, is called away from her date with Marcus when a sitting Judge from New Jersey winds up on a subway platform with a screwdriver in his chest. Special cases is called in to assist, meaning Marcus and the detective are mixing work and pleasure for the first time.

At the center of the A-story this week is corruption within the privatized prison systems. The case was a bit more jumbled than usual this week, as the B and even the C stories were more captivating than a corporation owner committing two murders to frame a third party to bring the death tally to three. All of this is to ensure a $25 million dollar bonus ended up in his corporation’s pocket at the end of the day. What state would want to sell a jail to a company who just experienced a jailbreak and a double murder?

Unfortunately for this week’s storyline, the Stanley Cup’s presence and odd experiments with Watson’s underwire were more engaging than the information that was being disseminated. It seemed at first that the escaped convict’s route out of the prison was the main mystery at the heart of the case, but it turns out that her job sorting computer parts was the only means of egress from the prison’s walls. Her fingerprints on a screwdriver were then planted on the judge after she was killed and stuffed in a bin intended for a landfill.

As the case unfolds for Sherlock and Joan, they both bring revelations about Detective Shauna Scott to light. Sherlock reveals she is a double agent working for the INA to send reports from the 12th about corrupt behavior within the system. This poses a problem for Bell, not only is she lying to him, but she is the type of person who could betray the trust among detectives and get him into a ton of unintentional trouble. As she pushes away from Marcus and her double life, Sherlock begins to ponder whether there is a direct correlation between his involvement in his colleagues’ lives and their loneliness. Where Sherlock has Joan, Joan has no significant other choosing to retreat to the brownstone, Bell has married himself to his work in a way that mirrors both Sherlock and Gregson’s commitment. In a way the common denominator for everyone’s tendency for a solitary life is Sherlock.

Sherlock has been doing a great job working to make others bring out the best in themselves at the cost of admitting the worst about himself. It is a trend that we have seen over and over again this season and has worked well to bring Watson out of her isolation and at least throw her into cases where she takes the lead. In a way none of the stories played into the case of the week, making the more fun and personal plot lines overshadow the guest stars and case audiences were meant to pay attention to.

Watch Elementary season 3, episode 23, “Absconded,” next Thursday, May 7 at 10:00 p.m. ET on CBS.