Elementary: A Study in Charlotte
February 19, 2016 5:16 PM - Season 4, Episode 13 - Subscribe
A botany professor and a group of students are murdered with poisonous mushrooms; Joan makes a discovery about her neighbor.
Pretty good case-of-the-week, it was the usual runaround between suspects but I enjoyed it.
- The stuff with the landlord next door was good filler, and Richard Kind made the character so sympathetic that I felt genuinely bad for him living next to Sherlock, and the last scene with him was downright sweet. I hope they make him a recurring character, having him stop by to wonder what the strange smell is every now and then would be amusing. He would be a good Hudson-type character. (They had a Miss Hudson briefly, but she was nothing like that character.)
- The mushroom-dispensing professor was also such a good actor that I felt really bad when he died -- I thought maybe he didn't drink enough and would survive.
- No mention of Fiona at all -- but Sherlock is so private it fits his character.
- Looking at IMDB, I feel bad for all of the people who are credited as "Poisoned Hipster".
- I enjoyed the bits taken from Conan Doyle's "A Study in Scarlet" -- poison, the word RACHE mistaken for "Rachel", and Mormons (although the Mormon wasn't the murderer or the victim of revenge this time.) That story also introduced Inspector Gregson, who only appeared in a few Holmes stories and is echoed in Captain Gregson here.
- The bit with "RACHE" first thought to mean "Rachel" and then revealed by Holmes to be the German word for "revenge" (from Conan Doyle) was also used in the first episode of "Sherlock", "A Study in Pink." This made me think I had somehow already seen this episode for a little while.
posted by mmoncur at 2:40 AM on February 20, 2016 [2 favorites]
- The stuff with the landlord next door was good filler, and Richard Kind made the character so sympathetic that I felt genuinely bad for him living next to Sherlock, and the last scene with him was downright sweet. I hope they make him a recurring character, having him stop by to wonder what the strange smell is every now and then would be amusing. He would be a good Hudson-type character. (They had a Miss Hudson briefly, but she was nothing like that character.)
- The mushroom-dispensing professor was also such a good actor that I felt really bad when he died -- I thought maybe he didn't drink enough and would survive.
- No mention of Fiona at all -- but Sherlock is so private it fits his character.
- Looking at IMDB, I feel bad for all of the people who are credited as "Poisoned Hipster".
- I enjoyed the bits taken from Conan Doyle's "A Study in Scarlet" -- poison, the word RACHE mistaken for "Rachel", and Mormons (although the Mormon wasn't the murderer or the victim of revenge this time.) That story also introduced Inspector Gregson, who only appeared in a few Holmes stories and is echoed in Captain Gregson here.
- The bit with "RACHE" first thought to mean "Rachel" and then revealed by Holmes to be the German word for "revenge" (from Conan Doyle) was also used in the first episode of "Sherlock", "A Study in Pink." This made me think I had somehow already seen this episode for a little while.
posted by mmoncur at 2:40 AM on February 20, 2016 [2 favorites]
It would be nice if Kind did some casual recurring, but I can't imagine they'd be able to use a chunk of the week's guest-star budget up on him if he's not central to the plot. Here's hoping the writers find a way to throw a corpse into his path someday so he can hire Sherlock. It seems at odds with his usual stance on recovery to let Joan do all the heavy lifting in making amends for his past drug-influenced bad behavior, to just send a jar of honey in lieu of making a face-to-face apology, so I hope they did it because they were saving the Miller+Kind scene for a future episode.
posted by oh yeah! at 7:16 AM on February 20, 2016
posted by oh yeah! at 7:16 AM on February 20, 2016
as a former mormon, i thought they handled the mormon stuff really well! the pictures of him and his missionary buddies cracked me up. i also love the idea of a mormon guy who balks at a tattoo but will have a drug lab. it strangely fits with some mormons i've known - more concerned with the appearance of wrong doing than actually doing right. i enjoyed this episode muchly.
posted by nadawi at 8:29 AM on February 20, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by nadawi at 8:29 AM on February 20, 2016 [1 favorite]
Loved seeing Richard Kind and Sarita Choudhury, but what I really loved was the way they made our knowledge of the RACHE clue as a reference distract from its use as a clue! Most Elementary episodes are not so full of references to the books, but it's nice to see it occasionally.
posted by ubiquity at 8:30 AM on February 20, 2016
posted by ubiquity at 8:30 AM on February 20, 2016
Agreed, it would be nice to see Kind a few times a season.
I was also relieved that the biggest guest star was not the guilty party.
posted by pmurray63 at 9:26 AM on February 20, 2016
I was also relieved that the biggest guest star was not the guilty party.
posted by pmurray63 at 9:26 AM on February 20, 2016
The stuff with the landlord next door was good filler, and Richard Kind made the character so sympathetic that I felt genuinely bad for him living next to Sherlock, and the last scene with him was downright sweet. I hope they make him a recurring character, having him stop by to wonder what the strange smell is every now and then would be amusing. He would be a good Hudson-type character.
Agreed! And I loved the reference to the old drug-addled Sherlock tossing out an unused email address to brush off a pesky neighbor, which Sherlock didn't directly own up to, in part because he couldn't really recall much of that period of his life.
posted by filthy light thief at 3:38 PM on February 20, 2016
Agreed! And I loved the reference to the old drug-addled Sherlock tossing out an unused email address to brush off a pesky neighbor, which Sherlock didn't directly own up to, in part because he couldn't really recall much of that period of his life.
posted by filthy light thief at 3:38 PM on February 20, 2016
This episode ended up giving me deadly mushroom-related nightmares, I don't even know why! It wasn't, like, unusually scary or anything, it just apparently stuck in my brain.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 7:26 AM on February 23, 2016
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 7:26 AM on February 23, 2016
I loved his "Again, I was on drugs" bit when they were discussion the neighbor.
posted by The corpse in the library at 11:11 AM on March 11, 2016
posted by The corpse in the library at 11:11 AM on March 11, 2016
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posted by clavdivs at 7:55 PM on February 19, 2016 [2 favorites]