#elementary 4x07

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I love that a whole epsiode in season 4 revolves around a fan fiction crime novel that features sex scenes between Sherlock and Joan. Making it clear once more that the very last thing Sherlock and Joan will do in this adapation is falling in love. Because Joans gender will never be used as a cheap excuse for a love relationship between her and Sherlock

also nice about this is that in the end both Joan and Sherlock accept that those fan fiction are out there and even encourage them. Because being a fan is awesome and should be allways encouraged. No matter of what kind the fan fictions might be

The good: The acting, the fashion. A couple of really funny lines: poop for lunch, porn name.

The bad: The plot was actually promising this time, in that at least it wasn’t some corporate bigwig murder. Then they had to go and f-ck it up in the final act, with a nonsensical explanation in which tons of investigation was done offscreen and revealed in a long and confusing expo dump. Then again, this story has been done before. A lot. On SVU and everywhere else.

And the back and forth about why the DNA didn’t, then did, then didn’t match. WTF? Just when you think, okay, great, here’s a story that has the potential for all kinds of emotional stakes (the father being a possible abuser), it’s just jettisoned for more plot gymnastics.

The ugly: Jesus, the B-story. First of all, John Heard was totally miscast. Their whole relationship was weird -- who doesn’t at least give a half-hug, kiss to their father when you’re greeting them? Secondly, as has been noted, you’ve got the creepiness of his writing about her sexually/racially (kung fu). 

Then you’ve got Sherlock back to being his asshole self, knowing about the book, not telling her, gloating that he’s caught her in a lie about where’s she’s been, not realizing that she might rightfully be upset about the whole book situation, and just when we get to the nitty gritty -- the f-ing phone rings. 

Then, SH/JW have their next important, personally revealing convo literally tossed over the trash as they’re searching the garage. Which is the perfect metaphor for this show’s utter disregard for LL and her character. 

There’s no attempt to delve into the timeline either. How old was JW when this affair happened? How long has it been? How long had bio dad been gone when Henry showed up?  And obv, JW and her mother are close, so what does she think about all this? Why isn’t she there when she shows up to the house? And Henry is even more manipulative when he shows up at the brownstone, whining re: “being friends again.” 

That all leads, inexplicably, to JW seeing the missing girl embrace her mother, supposedly sending her back into the stiff, unloving, creepy arms of Dad. 

Just a total fail. Even the wake-up trope or Clyde would’ve been welcome instead.

Here’s how it should’ve played out: Cassie’s right. The Dad was abusing the daughter. But he didn’t kill her, she ran away. Cassie befriends the girl, who’s now on the streets. In fact, she and the girl are lovers and they concocted this plan so that Cassie could claim the inheritance and then they’d run away together. The FBI agent came sniffing around, and actually wanted a cut of the dough, but instead they killed him and framed the dad, cause he’s a perv. But dad feels guilty and confesses, and the girls won’t turn on each other, and the cops/Sherly don’t have enough evidence, so they get away with it. That would be a refreshing change.

Sherlock knowing about The Heart Bled Blue and not telling Watson because he assumed the pseudonymity was on her behalf and staying out of that family dynamic (parallel to Joan knowing about Mycroft’s leukemia months before Sherlock was told and never telling him she knew first, to avoid complicating the sibling conflict further; in contrast to Cassie knowing where the real Mina was and telling no one, for her own gain and others’ harm).

Parallels between Cassie’s Mina and Moriarty’s Irene personas, in addition to all the times Sherlock has used disguise and accent to con others, for lack of a better term. How good a liar he can be. Tricks, like setting the flash bomb to work around the lack of a warrant. Even if he’s doing it “for good” it’s still deception. The range of moral spectra different characters cross to justify various means and ends.

Who exactly is the most private person Joan knows, and what other reasons lie beneath her anger besides not forgiving her father. The lyrics to the closing song — “All we do is hide away” — and everyone who’s hiding something from someone (which may be themselves).

In both cases, the story would have worked just as well — and in my mind infinitely better — if sex was never brought into it. I’d have no problem with Watson Sr’s explanation that he wrote the books to be close to his daughter in the aftermath of inadvertently destroying their relationship by cheating on her mother, if the narrative didn’t involve him writing sex scenes based on her. His unauthorized writing about her would still be a conflict between them, but not a pointlessly prurient one. Her reference to “kung-fu fights” notwithstanding, it would have avoided the stereotyped sexualization of Asian women by white men. The notion of writing to try to understand someone else could have been used to explore why Joan wrote The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes, for example. (As an aside, the pat happy ending between Joan and Henry doesn’t work either way, and that story should be a season-long exploration to parallel Sherlock’s relationship with his father.)

Similarly, Joan becoming friends with Mycroft and talking about Sherlock together would have been more than enough to piss off Sherlock and would have saved us all from the horribly executed retcon that scarred season 2. She could still have felt betrayed by the secrets Mycroft kept from both of them, and the conflict between Sherlock and Mycroft could have had history and depth instead of being expressed as a territorial pissing contest over who seduced whose woman.