What I’m Watching: Elementary

Elementary: Season 2, Episode 23 “Art in the Blood” (B+)

This episode opened by providing confirmation of something that most viewers might have pieced together by the end of last week’s installment: that Mycroft wasn’t just working with MI-6 but that he is in fact British intelligence. That helps put a lot of things that have happened into perspective, and also to paint him as a better person than he’s come off recently. Mycroft’s handler asking Sherlock to help with an NYPD case to help close out the Holmes service to the agency This show has been doing a lot lately with removed body parts, and I’m just glad that the missing arms were a way to introduce Emily Bergl as the deceased agent’s wife, who happened to have pictures of the invisible tattoos on his arms and hadn’t spoken up earlier because she was being watched. Sherlock being asked to come work for MI-6 certainly does present an interesting idea, though it contradicts Sherlock’s historical nature as a private detective and this show’s NYC setting, which I can’t imagine it would abandon. Any sort of decision will have to wait, of course, because Watson moving out and sleeping with Mycroft again are the least of their problems. Having to be the one to save his brother from a frame job is a great way of reconnecting the Holmes brothers, and it’s an excellent way to set up what is sure to be an exciting finale next week, which could change things as we know it in a big way.