#elementary 3x01

In the restaurant, Joan and Elana confirm they've known each other about 6 months, and I think we can assume that would have started after the end of season 2. The next scene shows Joan at her desk at home watching a news report referring to the arrest at that restaurant as "last month." And then we get the "two months later" text on screen. Last I checked, 6 + 1 + 2 = 9. But when Joan finds Sherlock at the brownstone, she says he left 8 months ago.

2x24 Sherlock: I'd like to work on my own, if it's all the same to you. Your decision to find new lodgings necessitates the adaptation of my methods. I need to grow accustomed to going without your input in the evenings, and I prefer to begin immediately.

1x12 Sherlock: Actually, Watson, it occurs to me that help from you is the last thing that I need. Much as it pains me to admit it, you have become something of a crutch, and I need to get used to working by myself again.

1x03 Sherlock: For a brief stretch in London, I talked only to a phrenology bust I kept in my study.

it’s going to take him a least a few episodes of Joan not accepting his inadequate “mepologies,” as someone described it in the tag, to get it right. And I hope even more episodes for him to actively work on earning her trust again. This is a huge project, and I hope the show takes a good long time to fix it.

this is old territory for him: downplaying significant emotional connections as a means to an end rather than acknowledge those emotions. It’s very reminiscent of how he described his relationship with Abigail to Joan in Poison Pen - she was an excellent research subject, certainly not his first love, how absurd. So in Nemesis, he described focusing on the least painful aspect of the broken partnership, the part that he really could replace (because in fact they’d both outgrown that part before the end of s2), and found a new student. What struck me was that he started out that scene being honest: “I was afraid.” But he’s still afraid, and that fear attempted to reduce ending the partnership to a simple matter of exchanging protegée a with protegée b. (I’m not excusing it, just that his denial-based logic fits what I understand about the character.)

When he wasn’t doing that, he tried simply disregarding her refusal with the position “isn’t it obvious [we should work together]?” in a sort of “fake it til you make it” strategy/manipulation. Which she saw through immediately. And so he showed up in the elevator and followed her to the hotel room and continued to work on the case. (and she clearly expected that, with the brief look over her shoulder to see if he was following and making the hotel room door bounce closed in his way.) And like Gregson, she can’t ignore the value of his work, so she won’t let her hurt feelings block his help, no matter how much she wants to do that. (Though I think it was a little mean of the writers to have her say “Pretty sure he wasn’t sitting on the shower bench when he murdered two people.”)

But also like Gregson, she doesn’t trust him any more, so she’s not going to accept anything more from him. She’ll be a sounding board for him, if he likes, and she’ll listen when he butts in, for the sake of the case. But she said “No” the first time he offered to be a sounding board for her and pointedly did not accept when he expressed his willingness to help her a second time. She’s not going to act as if they’re partners, and she’s not going to let him act that way with her, either.

There is no partnership. You ended it

You decided we weren't partners

We're still not partners

Elementary's back!!!