Holmes shoves Watson out of the nest by giving her sole responsibility for finding a missing woman.
Background: Holmes's father asks Holmes to help an attorney, who in turn wants Holmes to help his assistant (Rebecca). It is Rebecca's sister Callie who is missing and has been for six months; Rebecca thinks Callie's husband Drew may be to blame. (This made me wonder whether the writers were thinking of Drew Peterson when they wrote the episode.)
Meanwhile, Holmes develops an interest in an old case in which a woman was first given flowers by a stranger on a subway platform, then was pushed in front of the oncoming train by him. Callie mentions the incident in her farewell video to her husband . . . But why was Callie so hung up on it?
After interviewing Drew, Watson is convinced he killed his wife. Holmes moves things along by sending Drew an anonymous text message to "gaslight" him.
C Plot: Watson has been neglecting some of her old friends and must make time to see them. They stage an intervention, having heard Watson has become a private detective. With her drug addict client for a mentor. (Okay, yes, when you put it that way, it does sound a little crazy.)
Watson and Alfredo (that's a story from a previous episode, but in short 'Fredo is Holmes's sponsor) follow Drew to a storage facility where he removes an heirloom trunk belonging to his missing wife—one he had previously lied about having. Watson gets caught trying to check the trunk for Callie's body.
Between her friends' reaction and landing herself in jail, Watson begins to think she isn't cut out to be Holmes's protégée after all. But while visiting Rebecca to apologize for being "too aggressive" with the investigation, she sees a photograph of Callie in a jacket matching the description of the subway pusher.
So now the reason for Callie's fixation on the crime seems clear.
In a clever twist (finally! good job writers!) it turns out that Callie's video was made more than a year before. But in order to make it look once again like his wife had left him, Drew was forced to re-enact an old subway tragedy, and so became the subway pusher.
The one problem I do have with this twist is that it is somewhat unfair to the audience because viewers have not been given all the information (the earlier subway tragedy story) and therefore are unable to put together the entire story themselves.
Too, it does tend to be glaringly obvious when the writers use things like Drew Peterson and subway pushing, or other relatively fresh headlines, as springboards for stories. I find it a bit distracting.
Meanwhile, the introduction of one of Watson's friends (Em . . . Which is almost like M . . .) as a journalist has the potential of adding a new layer of interest to future proceedings. Assuming Watson ever has the time for her.
Watson's eventual victory appears to scrub her initial misgivings. What I would have liked to have seen is perhaps a little more concern on Holmes's part that he might lose his sidekick. I think this project of teaching Watson to be a detective has revived him somewhat, and it would be intriguing to explore the other side of that, i.e., what might happen if he were to lose this particular lifeline. Or if it were even seriously threatened.
This was a good episode, but all the character development seemed very superficial. Watson's concerns were over almost before they began. By the end of the show she was happily changing her online profile to read "Consulting Detective." So while the plot(s) were pretty solid, the interplay and emotions were perfunctory at best, and Elementary really does better when delving deeper into souls than storage bins.
Note: Next new episode isn't until April 4. They seem to be spacing them out and saving up the bulk of remaining eps for May sweeps.
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