Television: Elementary, "The Games Underfoot"

Remember when Atari buried all those ET cartridges in the 80s? Whoever wrote this episode sure does! A year or so ago those game cartridges were unearthed and went for big money, thus spurring this episode of Elementary.

An archaeologist named Eddie is murdered and his apartment set on fire. The winding path of investigation leads to the fact Eddie had a secret dig—namely in search of buried cartridges of the game Nottingham Knights. He hoped to find them and sell them.

Instead he found hazardous waste.

Without going too far into the details, Elementary stays true to form in that the culprit in this case is the rich guy. That's the show's favorite kind of bad guy. And I'm not saying capitalism and corporations can't be bad, or that rich people can't be self-interested bullies, I'm just saying Elementary falls on that pretty regularly. I'd like to see them do something different.

B plot involves Alfredo trying to reconnect with Holmes and Holmes seemingly avoiding him. But Holmes has valid reasons for attending new meeting sites. Like most achievers, he shies from the haunts that remind him of failure. Progress, for him, means moving on to new pastures. It's a flaw—being unable, unwilling to face people and admit you're less than perfect—but an understandable one. And in this case he's praised for being selfish when it comes to his rehabilitation.

The only truly amusing moment in this episode is when Watson bests Holmes at a video game. I feel like the episode could have used more of that.

I also wasn't sure I fully bought into Alfredo and Holmes "hanging out." But maybe that's a guy thing that I just don't get. In fact, there was sufficient awkwardness that maybe it's a guy thing Holmes doesn't get either but feels obligated to try or do. If that's the case, it was actually quite well done.

I wanted more from this episode. I thought Holmes + video games could have been really fun, but it ended up not really being about the games and therefore not being as much fun. It was a solid episode but failed to live up to my hopes and expectations.