3.13.2014

Television: Elementary, "The Hound of the Cancer Cells"

Interesting choice to show the viewer how Barry Granger dies and then set it up as a mock suicide. Holmes works out the truth in a matter of minutes, so . . . What's the point of the setup?

Granger was running clinical trials on something called "The Hound"—a breathalyzer designed to detect cancer similar to how dogs supposedly can. But Granger was accused of falsifying trial data, so . . . Holmes and Watson approach Granger's business partner Hank Prince because Prince stood to lose a lot of money if The Hound were to fail. But Prince has an alibi; he was with his girlfriend.

Meanwhile, Bell has asked Watson to find an awol witness, Nicole Watkins. Watson tracks her to a favorite, retired high-school teacher named Manny Rose. Watkins, it turns out, is pregnant and in hiding for fear of retaliation for her promised testimony. Rose tells Bell he wants to testify in Watkins's place. Which of course would be perjury, so Bell politely declines the offer.

Video of Granger arguing with a woman leads Holmes and Watson to a travel agency that, based on the security, isn't really a travel agency. Turns out the woman is a Mossad agent, which is like a travel agent only . . . not.

The Mossad woman was a college friend of Granger's and Granger had approached her to try and find out who Adam Peer—the person who slandered him—really is. She refused to help, and then Granger turned up dead. Feeling Peer may have been the one to act against Granger, the Mossad woman (whose name I didn't catch) gives Holmes a flash drive filled with e-mails to help find out the truth about Peer.

As it turns out, Granger was . . . partly Peer. He split the duties with another pharma insider. And she didn't kill him; she was flying home from San Francisco with some coworkers.

So Holmes and Watson fall back on the idea of corporate espionage, that a rival company might have killed Granger to slow down development of The Hound.

Now remember Prince? From earlier? His estranged wife, with whom he is in the midst of a messy divorce, has been found shot dead with Prince's gun. Again he pleads the girlfriend defense. And they use the whole "my gun was stolen" thing again, too, which this show falls back on a lot.

Prince says that if someone killed Granger maybe they're setting him up for a murder rap, too.

(But Prince's estranged wife did have a restraining order against him. Feels pertinent.)

Holmes and Watson identify a company called Ratner Science as the nearest competitor to The Hound. But the head of Ratner explains they've been following Prince's little company and they would simply buy the company if The Hound were to be a success.

Aha! It falls together. Prince was hoping to stop his wife from getting a big chunk of money in the divorce. He tried killing Granger first, thinking it would slow down The Hound and its development. But with Ratner sniffing around, it was time to get the wife out of the picture for good. As for the girlfriend, well, of course she was lying.

As for the Rose/Watkins thing, Rose decided to take matters into his own hands and killed the gang member who'd threatened Watkins, only to be shot and killed by the gang member's cronies.

Cue some kind of terrible music.*

And also Bell's "return to active duty" party, which Holmes only reluctantly agreed to attend, only to find himself standing with Bell outside the bar. They decide to go get coffee instead.

Once again, the story came back to the first guy we met, though they did an okay job of writing it in circles before landing there anyway. The B plot with the teacher was sadly weak. Just a so-so episode overall.

*Can I just emphasize how much I absolutely hate the trope of pseudo-music video at the ends of drama shows? Some Sarah McLachlan-esque song comes on and we get cuts of various characters doing random things as if it's supposed to matter at all. When the only real intention is to manipulate the emotions of the viewers. Look, if you've done your job well (writers, directors, actors), you don't have to twist our arms or our hearts. This particular way of "summarizing" the hour needs to die.

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