5.10.2017

Television: Elementary, "Fly Into a Rage, Make a Bad Landing"

So Chantal is hospitalized after an attack, and all indications are her ex-husband Roy is the culprit, right down to the urine sprayed all over the bed. Roy reasonably points out that, having been a cop, he knows better than to do something like that [throw his DNA all over a crime scene]. But his history of violence is working against him.

As it turns out, however, the attack has roots in Roy's work as a private investigator. Maybe. When Roy ends up dead via what is meant to look like a suicide, Holmes and Watson drill down. The discovery of a safety deposit box filled with cash leads them to believe Roy was being paid off by someone. Someone who was tired of paying.

After more digging, it turns out Roy's partner killed him after setting Roy up to take the fall for Chantal's attack didn't work.

A fairly straight forward story, though I haven't seen enough of Marcus and Chantal to feel any strong feeling about their relationship, or to even feel very sympathetic toward him specifically. The revelation that he grew up in an abusive household felt pat, too, rather than empathetic. Which is a shame because I do like Marcus Bell as a character. There's just a disconnect in the way they inject his backstory (and the same is true of Gregson as well)—I still don't feel like he's a fully fleshed character. More like the writers sometimes say, "Oh! We should do something with him." And they do for an episode or two and then go back to whatever.

Character development has been rather thin all around this season. Holmes and Watson appear to be in a kind of holding pattern. This is what comes of five years with someone, I guess. Instead of working with the existing characters, the show attempted to introduce new ones like Shinwell. But that's not what viewers want, not what (and who) we tune in to see. Elementary has devolved into an somewhat outr&eactue; procedural that lacks the charm that once set it apart, which is to say its unique take on old characters.

No comments: