Elementary: Our Time is Up

May 22, 2018 3:19 PM - Season 6, Episode 4

Watson considers a major life change after reading her own therapy file while she and Holmes investigate the murder of her former psychologist.
posted by litera scripta manet (9 comments total)

I enjoyed this episode right up until the very end. What I liked:

I'm glad we're getting to see a bit more of Joan and Lin together. Without Kitty around, this show doesn't have many female recurring characters, and it's nice to see Joan have someone to talk to who is her own person, not someone who she shares with Sherlock.

Although there wasn't super noteworthy about the case aside from it being Joan's former therapist (although if it hadn't been for the previously, I wouldn't have even remembered that Joan saw a therapist on the show), but I still thought it was a more interesting case than we sometimes get.

However, the Joan looking into adopting a child felt like it came out of nowhere. I mean, I get she was inspired by reading her therapist's notes, but I don't feel like it's ever anything she's really talked about before.

More to the point, as a woman who has no interest in having children, I liked seeing a strong female character who was for the most part not defined by her romantic relationships and who seemed fulfilled without having kids. (I know she dated that guy who got murdered, but it still hasn't been a huge focus.) I wish they had just ended this storyline with what Lin had to say about it.

Also, I could see Joan adopting a kid making sense if the show weren't renewed for a 7th season, so they wouldn't have to deal with it on screen, but since the show has been renewed, it's hard to imagine the show having her go through with it.
posted by litera scripta manet at 3:26 PM on May 22, 2018 [3 favorites]

Regarding Sherlock's PCS, I'm kind of getting tired of his only symptom being headaches. Not to minimize how disruptive headaches can be, but at the end of season 5, his symptoms really seemed to be interfering with his work, but we've yet to see that here, for the most part.
posted by litera scripta manet at 3:28 PM on May 22, 2018

Having Rusty Venture in this episode was confusing.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 2:09 PM on May 23, 2018 [1 favorite]

As someone with post-concussion syndrome, I like seeing him try out different weird crap; it’s very familiar, even if I haven’t spent time in a Victorian sensory-deprivation tank yet.

The ending bothered me so much that I thought to come here and complain, for the same reasons litera scripta manet listed. Throwing a baby into this would be awful. I hope it turns out to not be what it seems.
posted by The corpse in the library at 8:54 PM on May 23, 2018 [1 favorite]

The bit about Joan adopting a kid might be mirroring Lucy Liu's decision to have a kid through surrogacy. Like Joan, Ms. Liu chose to have a kid late in life without a partner. The mysteries are not the central concern of the show anyway. Why not introduce something new?
posted by rdr at 12:50 AM on May 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

Fear of jokes about diapers and such. I associate shows about babies with laugh tracks.
posted by The corpse in the library at 12:02 PM on May 24, 2018

My problem with the possible-adoption plot is how inorganic/manufactured it felt, which has been an ongoing issue with he Joan-centric arcs throughout the course of the show. And I’d been enjoying that they’d had several scenes between Joan & Lin which had nothing to do with Sherlock, thinking “hey, maybe the writers have finally figured out a way to give Joan a subplot that isn’t contrived and creepily gendered”, and then, boom, she’s suddenly inspired to look into adoption because she was negged into it? Maybe if they’d just had the conversation between Joan & Lin in this episode and dropped it for a bit, maybe having it come up again in subsequent episodes in connection with the murder-of-the-week plot as she continued to explore her feelings, and then later on have her taking more concrete steps towards adoption or fostering, and letting it develop as slowly as the ‘Sherlock’s new friend is a serial killer’ arc? But this way did not work for me.
posted by oh yeah! at 12:23 PM on May 24, 2018 [2 favorites]

More to the point, as a woman who has no interest in having children, I liked seeing a strong female character who was for the most part not defined by her romantic relationships and who seemed fulfilled without having kids.

Speaking as half of a couple who spent a long time not having interest in having children, and due to circumstances ended up adopting one: I agree with you 100%, and I saw that ending coming a mile away. BUT I'm pleasantly surprised that she was talking to an adoption agency at the end, rather than a sperm bank or an ex-boyfriend.

I hope that thread either (a) takes a long time to go anywhere, or (b) just ends up as a flimsy lead-in to the adoption agency scandal they end up investigating next episode.

Fear of jokes about diapers and such. I associate shows about babies with laugh tracks.


Agreed, but at least with adoption it could turn out to be a 10-year-old. Still definitely not what the show needs though.

Regarding Sherlock's PCS, I'm kind of getting tired of his only symptom being headaches. Not to minimize how disruptive headaches can be, but at the end of season 5, his symptoms really seemed to be interfering with his work, but we've yet to see that here, for the most part.

I assume the drugs he's taking have reduced his symptoms from full-on hallucination to just headaches. I did entertain the notion that Michael the Serial Killer could be a hallucination for a while, but I think they've shown him independent of Sherlock enough to make that unlikely.
posted by mmoncur at 2:37 AM on May 26, 2018

I'm still mad they ditched Sherlock's girlfriend without a fare-thee-well after spending so much time at least trying to build her up as a character (even if only as a challenge in Sherlock's life). I, too, hated the ending. This is a thing Joan seriously has never mentioned until this episode and suddenly she's like "OK, let me talk to some adoption agencies because my dead therapist thinks I have a tendency"

Because, look, many people who might make great moms nonetheless have other totally fulfilling ways to be human. She also makes a great detective. And this episode was definitely setting up "Having a kid" and "Being a detective" as sort of opposing one another (i.e. she does one because she didn't do the other) even though that wouldn't be necessary.

Like, as others said, I could see it building up gradually over time, but this felt clunky and dumb. Also I'm Still Mad™ about a baby/pregnancy arc on Murdoch Mysteries which turned a great female lead into a blithering baby-minded person being tended to and condescended to with her doofus well-meaning husband. Not that there's anything wrong with that, generally, but it seems like a way to make a female character turn into a totally different female character and I resent it.
posted by jessamyn at 11:46 AM on May 27, 2018 [2 favorites]