Elementary: Ill Tidings

November 28, 2016 3:56 PM - Season 5, Episode 6

Holmes and Watson investigate a mass murder when a chef and his patrons are poisoned after dining on a tasting menu tainted with snake venom.

Genevieve Valentine's AV Club Review gives the episode a B+

Nerdophiles offers up a recap & 4.5 stars

Also, the return of Fiona. (Kind of.)

posted by CMcG (3 comments total)

I didn't understand why they had to search to find the poisoned patrons. The chef died within seconds of eating the poison, so wouldn't everybody have died at the table?

And, once again, the show tells us about character stuff instead of showing it. I was never particularly invested in Sherlock/Fiona, but that she has been invisible until it's time for the off-screen break-up is just.... argh!
posted by oh yeah! at 5:27 PM on November 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

Chef died in the middle of the shift, the luncheon was the very first seating of the day so there's a plausible enough time alignment. I think having one of the laced plates on the chef's station was a function-over-form thing so the characters (and the plot) had something to point at, and didn't make much sense in context.

I liked Fiona and I'm sad she's been hacked out of the cast so clunkily. She was a compelling match for Sherlock. I imagine that nobody felt comfortable writing for her, seems like a difficult character to place into a show like this. Sherlock was the same way at first, of course, where he preferred to work alone and with minimal interference from anyone else. But he's come around since then, and incorporating another character—especially a non-central one—with similar atypicalities seems really difficult.

Camera notices the cook's hands along with Sherlock at the beginning, FWIW.
posted by carsonb at 8:23 AM on December 10, 2016

I was, in fact, invested in Sherlock/Fiona, and fuck everyone for ruining that.
posted by Navelgazer at 8:59 PM on June 22, 2020