#elementary 4x02

Joan Watson-Elementary 4x02

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New Look Pants-Alteration: Add godets to the lower outer seams of the pants

Sherlock: Neither was war in the Falklands, but the old man tends to get what he wants.

Sherlock: It is a truly ingenious -- albeit fascist -- piece of technology. The DARPA-funded scientists across the hall have been developing it as a crowd-control device. It emits a direct blast of low-range sonic waves which vibrate at the same frequency as lung tissue. Would you like a demonstration?

Watson: The idea is for police to use it on unruly protesters.

However I think it’s also significant that this faint critique happened in an episode that not only didn’t include the NYPD, but neither Marcus Bell nor Tommy Gregson even appear in it at all. I doubt “Made in NY” (NYC’s office of filming permits) micromanages storylines, but CBS’s agreement with the NYPD certainly could.

Sherlock is in Joan's world, working with her on a case she found through her own contacts, essentially joining her private detective business for a [very short] while. And so we see him working in her office, though he reframes it as belonging to neither of them thanks to the looming shadow of his father's 3-year old eviction threat. It's not the first time he made himself welcome there; last season he hid there from Agatha's donation request and later chose to experiment with Clyde's musical tastes there in One Watson, One Holmes. He didn't answer Joan's question then, of why he was in the basement, but perhaps he was trying to rebalance the Watsonian component of their equation by moving himself into her space while she chose to shelter in his. This time, though, he retreated there with his ill-got gains, and while he clearly wasn't surprised that she tracked him down, he did attempt to allow her plausible deniability from committing treason — stealing defense department data about propaganda algorithms implicated in espionage by China seems likely to tend in that direction — rather than tossing it up on the wall with the rest of the case files in their shared living space upstairs.

From the start, the basement office has been a refuge, a metaphorical bomb shelter, a place to hide from or with situations too fraught for daylight. Joan, apparently without a shred of self-awareness, entombed herself there in the first place to bury her recent past: her private business now a shroud over a year of cascading losses: Sherlock's departure; Sherlock's return with her replacement already installed; Gruner's deception & manipulation; her own inability to recognize Gruner for what he was; Kitty's departure; Andrew's death; she even lost the chance to avenge him when Moriarty took March from her.

Back in 3x15, even as he regarded her warily for deciding to live half her life in an underworld, Sherlock compared the newly barricaded space to a time he shut himself into part of 221B for weeks with a hint of fondness in his voice, as if recollecting time well-spent. (I can't help but wonder now if that corresponded at all with the one time Morland visited him there.) He's recognized her as a kindred spirit from the start (his appraising glance when she suddenly questioned a suspect in the pilot; his declaration of shared love of the bizarre in The Leviathan). Season three hinted at complications for him when they have too much in common; will season four consider the same for her? (my perpetually cynical magic JWDB ball says "doubtful")

I wish they had stretched this period of exclusion from the NYPD for a few more episodes. While I still find it absurd that Gregson would show up with groceries for a social call, there's precedent for Marcus visiting the Brownstone (1x16, 2x13, 3x14, 3x22) as well as an opportunity for him to return the food-donation gesture that Joan first made to him after he was shot. They don't need NYPD cases to loop those characters into the story.

I'm not thrilled with the way Sherlock said he'd decided to take his father's offer, like it was a done deal, instead of phrasing it as a preference contingent on her agreement. The fact that she replied as if he had phrased it that way helped a bit. Given her blunt comment to Morland in the final scene that she didn't trust him, it seems clear that she really doesn't want to be indebted to him and would rather not take the offer. As much as she enjoyed working with the NYPD and with Marcus and Gregson specifically, I think she also liked being unattached, open to other opportunities, professionally speaking. Being cut off from the NYPD was not the same blow to her as it was to Sherlock. But she's going to do it because of what Sherlock said, that it would make him happy. We know her preference is to work with him, but will that be enough when the bill comes due?

To that end, I wonder if the cost of this offer will be Gregson's career: if the consultants aren't going to be sacrificed for their transgressions, then the person who brought them in seems likely to be the next in line. Somebody wants him out of Major Crimes; if not kicked upstairs by the promotion he declined in 3x23, then maybe he'll be kicked down. (and it would be a dream come true if this somehow linked back to the planted evidence in the Wade Cruise case discussed in 1x07, but I know better than to hope for that.)

While I wish we could know something about Joan that's not Sherlock-related, I do appreciate getting a glimpse of her world that the audience knows but Sherlock doesn't. A welcome turnabout from the overplayed moments in which Sherlock mansplains Joan to Joan (and to us), and the narrative either lets it pass without question or explicitly endorses his conclusions.

Seems unlikely that Sherlock won’t find out about his father's role in keeping him out of prison (it's already straining my suspension of disbelief that Joan researched it but he didn't). I suspect the way out of Sherlock's knee-jerk "malignant self-righteousness" will be him choosing not to destroy himself for Watson's sake. Alternatively, we'll find out that Morland is wrong about Sherlock reacting like that; we saw him accept an arguably analogous manipulation in season one, when he was grateful to Watson for staying rather than angry that she'd lied to him; in season two he was confused but not angry when he found out Mycroft had acted for him, as well. However, other people making decisions on his behalf may well backfire, as @autisticsherlockinelementary discussed in the context of family members treating Sherlock as a burden of responsibility.

random aside: I’m curious that there were two references to Chinese culture in this episode after 2.5 seasons with none (IIRC it previously came up in 1x04 and 1x10; were there others?): the character for “beauty” and the tienchi flower tea. Notable that both Joan and Sherlock were familiar with them.

Further searching identified several alternate transliterations (including sanqi, sanchi, tian qi, tien chi) as well as the western scientific name for the plant, Panax notoginseng.

While tea from the flowers has clinically verified anti-inflammatory and anti-insomnia properties, the plant's root is more widely used and studied in a range of medical contexts.

However, one other as yet undocumented effect of tienchi flower is on the tea cozy.

First, here's a screen cap from the "you go, I go" scene in 4x01, showing the familiar red & green knit tea cozy they've had since the start.

Next, here's a screen cap from the kitchen conversation between father and son in 4x02, after the absence of tienchi flower has been discussed. Not only no tienchi flower, but no teapot or cozy at all.