Television: Elementary, "End of Watch"

Well, it wasn't at all as I expected after last week's previews. The emotional aspect of the show had to do with Holmes being upset that someone at his recovery meetings had started an anonymous blog (or Tumblr) featuring things he'd said. "You're very quotable," Kitty tells Holmes. But rather than being flattered, Holmes feels betrayed, exposed. It's a similar reaction as to his having discovered Watson's manuscript. The idea that others might take his words, his work, and recast them really bothers him. Probably goes to his desire for control, and also to his singularity—this proof that he has touched and connected with others shakes his ability to see himself as autonomous and completely free of attachment. Even if he doesn't attach to others (and that's debatable, but it's how he sees it), others clearly connect with him.

The A plot was about a police officer named Alec Flynn who'd been shot and killed while on duty, though no one is sure whether it was a targeted attack or just someone out to pop a cop. But Holmes finds Flynn's firearm is a fake, and after a few meandering threads they discover Flynn had, after being injured in the line of duty, become addicted to painkillers and, while assigned to the armory, had begun selling the weapons and replacing them with fakes. So much for his honorable funeral. And that, it turns out, is what the murder hinged on. When Flynn's big police funeral is cancelled, another cop is killed—more specifically, another cop from the armory. Because the killer is someone who wants to raid the armory while all the cops are away at the funeral. With Flynn's funeral cancelled, the baddie needed another dead cop for another big send off to ensure the armory would be on skeleton crew.

An interesting enough story, and the episode was solid if not astounding. As for Holmes and the Tumblr, it's an interesting and somewhat different take that he would go to great lengths to protect what he considers his privacy (rather than preen and be flattered, or even start his own blog). This was the winter finale; we'll see what they come up with for spring.