Elementary 1.03 - "The Rat Race" Review

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What happens when a large company’s C.O.O. goes missing and they want to keep it quiet?  They call in Sherlock Holmes of course. But then what happens when a disappearance turns into a murder and that murder indicates a string of murders that point to someone climbing their way up the company’s corporate ladder?  Well then you have this week’s episode of Elementary.


So we opened the episode up with Joan letting the cat out of the bag to Captain Gregson fearing that the missing Sherlock has had a relapse.  Now what we could have seen was a massive fallout from this revelation.  Instead we got a touching scene at the end of the episode between Sherlock and Gregson where he revealed he’d known the whole time.  He is a police officer, he does his homework.  You could tell that Sherlock wasn’t bullshitting an excuse when he said the reason he hadn’t told him was because Gregson had held his work in such high esteem so he didn’t want to take that hit to his own ego.  Gregson has also decided to keep a lid on it for now, but of course the real trouble is going to end up coming from when someone like Detective Bell finds out about this little secret. 

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Meanwhile, Joan flexed her own deductive muscles throughout the episode.  Her friend set her up on a date and she feels that he was lying about being married.  Sherlock of course encourages her to look him up to see if she was right, which she was.  Of course it ends up not being an affair as a marriage for political asylum, which doesn’t excuse his lying about it.  Or her snooping, which after Sherlock’s touching scene with Gregson we get another between him and Watson.  Sherlock explains that while seeing the puzzle in everything has its perks it’s a lonely life because people don’t appreciate being studied.  I’m wondering if I’m wrong about him eventually relapsing and she winds up sticking around Sherlock for her own reasons.

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Joan was AGAIN the pivotal piece in the puzzle, not in cracking the case this time, but in saving Sherlock’s life.  This episode establishes that Sherlock has a habit of using acronyms when he sends texts to Joan to a level of indecipherability.  IMLTHO = In my less than humble opinion, I think I’ll use that with a few friends myself and see what reactions I get.  At one point, Sherlock convinces the murderess to text Joan that he’s fine or she won’t leave him alone, and she types a lengthy piece saying that (while driving I might add which is very dangerous).  But the fact that the text looked like it came from an adult and not a teenager was enough of a tip off that he was in danger and it wasn’t just a relapse.

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It wasn’t just Joan that saved his life when we got a call back to the many locks Sherlock loves to pick.  Several episodes back we saw him doing it and I assumed it was to clear his head, but it appears it’s also good practice as he was able to pick his way out of the handcuffs he was in.  We also get to see him later in the episode practicing further, because I’m sure the time it took him to crack them wasn’t to his satisfaction.  It makes me wonder if any other odd habits he does while deducing will come back into play in a later episode as a much needed skill.

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Overall I think this episode was my favorite so far. While the case of the week itself was neither here nor there I enjoyed the relationship developments between Sherlock, Joan, and Gregson.  Next week it appears we’ll be dealing with an angel of death... and not the kind we see on Supernatural.  Also if you haven’t been living under a rock you’ll know that Elementary has been picked up for a full season on CBS, so we’ll be having plenty more cases to come.