What I’m Watching: Elementary

Elementary: Season 3, Episode 22 “The Best Way Out is Always Through” (B+)

This show does like to be as creative as possible about its cases, and it’s fun to see Sherlock stumped. Truth be told, he was correct and the inmate did not actually escape using any of the eleven ways that he deduced she could have and was instead killed as part of an elaborate plot related to swaying a gubernatorial race. What’s most entertaining about all this is the way that Sherlock casually drops information to Watson about how he’s done something that she would find very objectionable but plays it off as if it’s no big deal. Explaining that he used the underwire of her bra to help test her theory and would also need to replace her toothbrush were particularly amusing revelations. And then there are the more serious and affecting moments of intimacy between Sherlock and those he cares about, most evocative in this episode when Sherlock talked to Bell about having a tendency to magnetize people around him so that they feel isolated from others. I liked meeting Bell’s girlfriend Detective Scott, played by Afton Williamson, who plays D.A. Allison on “Banshee,” and I’m surprised that Bell of all people has such an aversion to the notion of internal affairs since he’s always been quite the straight arrow. Ending the episode with Sherlock and Bell using what he firmly believed was the real Stanley Cup as a receptacle for a game of toss was a nice instance of friendship and equal absurdity in the same moment.