Fairly Short Review of Elementary 4x09 “Murder Ex Machina” -- Grade: C
The good -- JW’s deadly look to SH in the first scene; Mason’s appearance; and two good scenes -- the strip club (for JLM’s observation and the Russian spy) and JW’s dinner with Morland, where the writers actually deigned to recall narrative history and mention her relationship with Mycroft.
The bad -- Jesus, it’s not bad enough that corporate bigwigs are committing murders left and right, now it’s governments? And why have a story like this if you’re aren’t going to at least hint that Mr. International Muckety-Muck Morland would somehow be involved, especially since he’s actually IN the episode? They they try desperately to cover the fact that there are absolutely ZERO stakes for the leads, with Sherlock nattering on about every murder needs to be solved. But the murder plot was, as usual, impossible to follow and completely yawn-worthy. Really, who the f-ck cares about an international conflict that doesn’t directly affect the leads? And OMG, that loop job where he’s supposedly speaking Ukrainian was embarrassingly bad.
The ugly -- Okay, it’s great that JW has taken it upon herself to do a little checking-up on dear old Dad, and used medical clues to do it. But I sincerely hope that Morland was actually setting her up and using the whole “banking blood, taking tons of pills thing” to throw her off. And the fact that someone has tried to kill Morland can’t be that much of a surprise -- I mean, look at the freaking case they’re working on! There better be quite a few more twists on the horizon.
But what really irked the hell out of me is the fact that Sherlock continues to spy on JW by installing new brownstone cameras and not telling her, and then has the gall to hurl ugly innuendo-filled accusations he hurls at her on information he gained by doing so. I hate that she’s putting up with this bs on a regular basis now and not putting her foot down -- I mean, the writers have seemed to have completely forgotten the hard won battles of prior seasons. No real surprise there, but the fact is that JW has had NO emotional arc this season whatsoever, and neither really does SH. And it SUCKS.
