I Never Said I Was a Role Model

I rewatch this episode from time to time, and it strikes me over and again just how committed it is to non-legal means of justice, which is particularly rare given that Elementary technically operates within the copaganda genre (with some room for outliers here and there).

When Kitty is about to murder Gruner, the man who sexually assaulted and tortured her, Sherlock shows up. Typically within the police procedural, Sherlock would be the Character Who Reminds [X] That Killing Is Wrong and Legal Justice is Right. But Sherlock doesn't do any of that. He tells Kitty that she deserves to know that he has found a way to prosecute Gruner. He tells her that this is an option if she doesn't want to wrestle with what it means to take a life. While following the law is not what Sherlock thinks Kitty should do, it is an option nonetheless. What would be unfair, Sherlock understands, is for Kitty to have no way out but to resort to murder.

Kitty responds, "What does that have to do with me? With what he did to me?"

And she's right, prosecuting Gruner has nothing to do with what he did to her. What the police wants is not what she wants. Kitty's assault was a singular event, and only she can determine what justice should be. It's an oddly refreshing take, given that most procedurals would remind to Kitty to uphold the law (e.g. SVU).

Sherlock replies, "Nothing. Everything. Wish I could tell you. If you decide that killing Gruner will make you feel whole again, I won't stop you. But whatever you decide, you will always be my friend."

I've thought a lot about this scene, and how it places Kitty's decision and Sherlock's love at the center of what justice should be. It also brings to the forefront Sherlock's struggle with addiction — he doesn't have many friends which means that his gesture of love is completely genuine. It's a gesture of unconditional love from a stoic man who finds it difficult to love, to a woman whose experience of love has been destroyed by sexual abuse. It doesn't matter to Sherlock if Kitty kills Gruner because the fact that she is his friend will always come first. In the end, Kitty realises that she is offered something she has wanted for so long but thought she couldn't have. That is, someone loves her so much to the point where she feels, for the first time, that she is able to say it back and mean it. So it is beautiful that the episode ultimately conludes with Kitty saying: "Do you know what I haven't said to anyone in a really long time? I love you. Isn't that the saddest thing?"

BROOKLYN NINE-NINE (2013–2021) S06E11 | The Therapist

The Smithsonian Institution owes its existence to John Quincy Adams, who fought to make sure James Smithson's donation to establish an institution for the "increase and diffusion of knowledge" was realized.

This mission was shared by John's wife Louisa Adams, who once explained to her 11-year-old son, future historian and diplomat Charles Francis Adams, why we study history.

She said, “History is a little irksome to a young hand, but very soon becomes interesting and is always instructive. It is true it frequently represents human nature in a degrading point of view; but it represents it justly in all its varieties, which are equal to the sublimity of virtue, and to the lowest grades of execrable vice.”

She went on to write, “Many a tyrant was once good and innocent, and many have been urged to crime by misconceived ideas of virtue—continue this study. It will expand your mind, and guard you against false reasonings and false principles, things the most dangerous to youth, as once imbibed they are most difficult to eradicate.”

She understood how dangerous—and effective—falsehoods could be in shaping young minds. So did the United Daughters of the Confederacy in the 1890s when they started dedicating Confederate monuments in public spaces with ceremonies and lesson plans intended to indoctrinate children as "living monuments of the Confederacy," defenders of the Confederate cause and white supremacy.

How might Louisa Adams, and the rest of the Adams family, feel about the Smithsonian no longer allowed to share history, as Louisa put it, "justly in all its varieties, which are equal to the sublimity of virtue, and to the lowest grades of execrable vice" if those vices don't square with the new mandate to scrub anything "divisive" that fails to adequately celebrate American exceptionalism.