If I had to guess how the second season of Elementary was going to end, I wouldn’t have landed anywhere near the tone of “The Grand Experiment,” which reverses last season’s triumphant finale by blowing up the core of the series.
Elementary, after all, has done a fine job of loosely adapting Conan Doyle’s work in a contemporary setting, taking certain liberties that have really paid off in the long run. It doesn’t make the decision to use Mycroft in this way disappointing, but I wonder if the character could have remained compelling without having to get the British secret service involved.
Here’s the scorecard of recently announced TV cancellations and renewals, as we all bite our fingernails waiting for those final few verdicts to trickle in, particularly (I’m guessing), Nashville, Hannibal, and Community. UPDATE: Hannibal just renewed. ABC CANCELLED: Trophy Wife, Mixology, and Neighbors. (Comment: Trophy Wife was superbly cast and sweet and funny, if slight, …
Under-appreciated in critical circles, the CBS show Person of Interest is full of strong, unorthodox characters, both male and female, and strong plotting, as well as an examination of the ramifications of its premise, all of which combine together to make it a must-see.
There is a certain poignancy to Jonny Lee Miller’s version of Sherlock Holmes in how he acts tough when he is at his most vulnerable. When we saw his reunion with Moriarty earlier this season, it made sense that the easiest way for Sherlock to have to interact with that person was by using biting sarcasm and almost immature name-calling.
There really doesn’t even need to be a crime plot to frame an episode when the character is around, because these versions of the Holmes brothers and Watson can carry a full episode of material entirely through conversation
With only two episodes left until the finale airs, events are likely to get more and more hectic with the twenty-four activation of Samaritan. It could very well become a battlefield and that should be nothing less than the type of excitement that gets people’s nerves boiling.
After a solid episode last week that gave Joan Watson some of her most interesting material this season, Elementary returns with a more Sherlock-centric episode that, barring his interactions with his brother and nemesis, stands out as one of this year’s highlights for the character.
As long as Elementary has a home, episodes like “The Many Mouths of Aaron Colville” are always welcome. Though not ambitious in any way, it’s another good example of how the series can do an interesting self-contained piece while throwing in just enough character development to make it feel like we’re progressing
Person of Interest works really well a lot of the times when it keeps its stories simple and straightforward with a little mystery thrown in for good measure. “Most Likely to…” is exactly that and the show does it wonderfully.
After a few fairly by-the-numbers entries of Elementary in the past weeks, “The Hound of the Cancer Cells” grounds the detective series back into the sphere in which it usually excels: character.
After an unusually light episode by Elementary’s standards last week, Lestrade sticks around a little while longer in “Ears to You” – an episode only mildly less light. If the tone is still a little bit jarring, the use of Sean Pertwee’s Lestrade is much more effective this time around, as he gets to bounce off Sherlock and Watson in both entertaining and interesting ways.
Since its premiere, The Good Wife has done what is nearly impossible for most shows- it is stunningly smart, perfectly paced, and beautifully written, and it has only gotten better in its game-changing fifth season. Guest stars are nothing new to the show, which has the most creative and entertaining guest casting on television, and it uses these performers incredibly well, folding them into stories the audience is already invested in alongside characters we care about.
On the spectrum of tonal heaviness, Elementary usually leans to the lighter side of things, but it’s rarely as light as “The One Percent Solution” is.
The biggest strength of Elementary as a series is perhaps how well it draws on the relationships of its characters or else how it delves into their individual lives. Even if some episodes have crime plots that are a bit lacking, Sherlock and Joan can almost always elevate the material to make an episode stand out in a way it otherwise wouldn’t have.
One of the many smart decisions the Elementary writers have made has been coming back to Sherlock’s history of addiction again and again.
Cancel the Golden Globes. Cancel next year’s Emmys. Heck, cancel the Oscars just because. And give all the awards to Jonny Lee Miller, Jon Michael Hill and Jason Tracey for acting in and writing “All in the Family” – and this scene, specifically. If it’s ridiculous to clap while watching something by yourself, then call me ridiculous. In an episode of Elementary that couldn’t possibly live up to last week’s epic Moriarty adventure, the CBS Sherlock Holmes procedural returns wearing its two hearts on its two sleeves.
“The Diabolical Kind” begins like any other episode of Elementary might. Watson walks down the stairs, notices Sherlock sitting in his beekeeping outfit, makes a sarcastic comment about his laundry and exits the brownstone. What follows – a sequence narrated by Johnny Lee Miller, which we find out is from a correspondence with Moriarty – is “The Diabolical Kind” announcing itself as anything other than a typical episode of Elementary.
10. The Good Wife (CBS) This year, The Good Wife did the unthinkable. Five seasons (and almost 100 episodes) in, it blew up the show. The original premise, that the publically shamed wife of a crooked politician begins her life anew at a former flame’s law firm, is gone, replaced by a baroque melodrama of …
Survivor Review, Season 27, Episode 14 “It’s My Night” Airs Wednesday at 8pm (ET) on CBS The challenge when analyzing Survivor is finding thrills when the finale reaches a predictable ending. This trend has happened frequently in recent seasons, with Malcolm’s exit from the Philippines being a rare exception. Even so, there’s still plenty to enjoy with Blood …
…it’s actually an interesting example of how Elementary has the ability to create the feeling of serialization without relying on characters like Mycroft and Irene Adler. These last three episodes have really sunk their teeth into judging Sherlock for the kind of person he is.
Survivor Review, Season 27, Episode 13 “Out on a Limb” Airs Wednesday at 8pm (ET) on CBS In this current Survivor era dominated by returning players, it’s been intriguing to watch how they respond based on their previous experiences. Many over compensate and try to make big moves too early, while others avoid the target …
Two-hour finale! Can you feel the excitement? It’s hard, considering we’ve been looking at these same four teams as front-runners basically from the beginning, and that they never really broke out of their initial molds, but nice that the fun-loving Afghanimals still get to play, and that we get to finally see everyone really go for it in terms of breaking alliances for the million.