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This is Reese's "excited" face. 

It's a good day to be a CBS series: Just like last year, the network has issued a mass renewal encompassing most of its schedule, ordering new seasons of 14 of its primetime series. Let's do this the easy way, shall we?

Renewed today:
2 Broke Girls
48 Hours
60 Minutes
The Amazing Race
Blue Bloods
Elementary
The Good Wife
Hawaii Five-0
The Mentalist
Mike & Molly
NCIS: Los Angeles
Person of Interest
Survivor

Renewed previously:
The Big Bang Theory
How I Met Your Mother
CSI
NCIS

No word yet:
Criminal Minds
Golden Boy
Two and a Half Men
CSI:NY
Vegas

Obviously, this news means most of CBS's roster will remain intact going into the 2013-2014 season. Most of today's renewals were givens; of the shows that are still awaiting verdicts, Two and a Half Men will almost certainly return—the network is currently in talks to bring it back, so it's a sure bet once all the necessary contracts are signed. CSI:NY is a long shot, as is the moving-to-Fridays Vegas. I'm also not liking Golden Boy's odds. Finally, Criminal Minds is on pretty solid ground; like Two and a Half Men, paperwork is probably the only reason it wasn't included in today's announcement. 

Which renewal are you most excited about? Which non-renewal are you most concerned about? 

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Elementary S01E07: "One Way to Get Off"

First things first: While we did see bees, they were not in Sherlock's house/under Sherlock's care, so no cokes this week. BUT it's looking more promising that cokes may appear on the horizion, in the form of bees under Sherlock's care. So don't give up, thirsty Elementary fans.

As for the show, I'm sorry, but I found this week's episode absolutely abysmal. To wit:

1. Once again, Watson and Sherlock were divided for an episode. Ostensibly because Sherlock was giving Watson the cold shoulder after she dared to confront him about Irene. Holmes reset to his resentment and distrust of Watson, telling her he would never share personal experiences with her because he didn't want to cheapen his memories by "allowing them to become grist for your tedious recovery mill."

Hopefully the writers heard the revelation about their own writing that seeped into that line. The recovery jargon Watson keeps spouting is sounding hollow and repetitive these days, you'd think seven episodes in there would be a personal investment beyond sober-buddy responsibility between these two fated BFFs.

2. Talk about a hatchet job on the NYPD. They've gone from criminally negligent to just plain criminal, with a cop planting evidence at a crime scene to send a murderer to jail, and then that "worked out" because luckily the guy was actually guilty this time. Also it defies even my blunt, broken instrument of deduction that Cap'n Gregson wouldn't recognize one of the station's own mugs when cataloguing evidence at a crime scene back in the '90s. Even if the NYPD has random mugs coming in and going out of the station kitchen so fast that they can't keep track of them all, that was a weirdly distinctive mug and wouldn't Aidan have noticed that the key piece of evidence was also the vessel of coffee he had PERSONALLY HANDED to the serial killer during interrogation? (With like, maybe his OWN fingerprints on it?) He should have retired at the end of this episode, period. He is a bad police guy! He did not seem that interested in solving crime!

3. Part of why Cap'n Gregson is now officially the worst police chief ever is that he refused to listen to Sherlock. The writers tried to sidestep this issue by implying that Gregson's distrust of Sherlock was built on his own ego/fear for his career/denial that his partner could have planted evidence. But still, if we're going to have to go through cops putting their hands on their hips and screaming, "Who is this guy? Get him out of here!" in every episode, I will lose my mind. Sherlock has solved their last six significant crimes more or less on his lonesome. He should have a modicum of credibility no matter how crazy the things he he says are.

4. There was a desperation to keep this week visually interesting that manifested in kind of awful ways. The crime scene was grotesque, and once again how are those extras supposed to put this on their reels? A pillow over the face doesn't play well on a reel.

Then we had the tangential sex dungeon that Holmes found on a hunch, a freaking SEX SLAVE subplot that was used to clear the biggest suspect. Um, this would have actually been a fascinating whole episode, as sex slaves are a very real thing around the world and rarely get the attention/awareness they deserve, but no, it was titillating window dressing.

And of course there was Sherlock popping into a police interrogation room and throwing a ball or an orange or something into a suspect's face while screaming "THINK FAST!" to prove a point. Sometimes this show is like a Simpsons version of a detective show, like some parody of how ridiculous a brilliant detective's methodology can get in the hands of careless writers. Of course Sherlock Holmes needs to bolt into a room and throw an orange in a man's face. Such is the nature of careful observation.

5. So a dreamy teen was seduced/trained by a psychopathic killer to continue his serial murdering? What does that remind me of? What TV plot have I seen recently that Elementary is homaging or ripping off? Oh yes, Elementary did basically this exact plot a couple week ago in "Child Predator." After last week's intricate Fabregé egg of a mystery plot, the show reverted to a story it's already told. Disappointing.

6. Watson creeped up on Sherlock's old recovery home, talked trash on him with his old counselors and psychiatrists (who apparently could give two sh-ts about doctor-patient confidentiality), and came home with a big bundle of letters to righteously turn them over to Sherlock. Um, Thanks?

"Thanks for hunting down a bunch of super personal stuff bout me and then making a show about how you're not going to invade my privacy. You kind of already did by finding this stuff in the first place." Also, girl was eating smoothies in every scene this episode. Is she on an all-liquid diet or are they trying to insinuate she has her own addictions? Wheat grass, probiotic addictions?

7. Finally, and this made me furious, Irene Adler had better have faked her death. Because if the show is going to drop a name bomb like that and then instantly dismiss it into flashbacks, that's a wasted opportunity and just plain rude. I want Rachel Weisz, dressed like a raver, on my screen yesterday. So Sherlock had better either be lying to Watson (cringe) or Irene better have done what a good adventuress does and faked her death so she can reappear quite shortly, or else I will truly let this show have it.

QUESTIONS:

1. Irene Adler: still alive, right?

2. Is Watson technically doing more sophisticated deduction work than Sherlock?

3. Can someone explain to me why the guy with depth perception issues was even a suspect? For the life of me I could not follow that thread.

4. What did you think of this episode?

View the original article here

It's been a hell of a fall season so far, hasn't it? Typically by the time we get to this point (omg how is it November already?), half of the new fall shows have already been canceled. But somehow only two freshmen series out of 21 total have gotten the axe—so which ones do we think are going strong, and which ones would we've killed weeks ago? We started to answer that question just over a week ago with the first installment of our patented 4-Episode Test, and now we're back with round two.

Episode ratings are out of five stars.

Arrow

Verdict: Keep watching.

While by no means the best new drama of the fall season (hi there, Last Resort!), Arrow offers fun, comic book-y fare plus Stephen Amell doing parkour and, oftentimes, not wearing a shirt. There are still kinks to work out (those expository voiceovers! Finding a balance between action and drama!), but there are also plenty of interesting mysteries surrounding the narrative (what's Moira up to? What happened on the island?), and the series features a strong dynamic between Amell's Oliver Queen and David Ramsey's John Diggle. Perhaps most interestingly, though, Arrow has shown early signs of wanting to think about class and racial tensions, making it something worth keeping an eye on as the TV season progresses. —Noel Kirkpatrick

Beauty and the Beast

Verdict: Quit watching.

I did not care for the pilot of this show. In my opinion (which is by definition subjective, but in this case also 100 percent accurate), Beauty and the Beast is the worst new show of the fall season. However, I will allow that this show had the potential for becoming a watchable guilty pleasure if it ever embraced its own weirdness and became something much different than what we saw in the pilot. Over the course of four episodes that didn't happen, but Episode 3 did show signs of life when it cut to the chase and turned the two title characters into essentially flirtatious teenagers (seriously, a scene in which they exchanged phone numbers was downright charming). Unfortunately, the entire police procedural angle remains a disaster; it's the least plausible police station since Cop Rock and the actual cases of the week are deadly boring. The serialized storyline—mostly to do with a top-secret organization called Muirfield that once employed the lead character's mother and also CREATED the beast—is a step up, but still falls short of any other show with a shadowy conspiracy element. Beauty and the Beast has still not found a way to make the beast's constant stalking of the beauty anything less than disturbing. Actor Jay Ryan does what he can with the non-character he's being asked to play, but the world's worst haircut is doing him no favors. Finally, we're starting to get to see more of "the beast" in actual beast form and the prosthetic makeup is laughably terrible. Sorry, makeup artist, but if you were a contestant on Syfy's Face Off, you would've been berated by Glenn Hetrick and sent home for this. Anyway, yeah. Still terrible, still boring. —Price Peterson

Chicago Fire

Verdict: Quit watching.

Chicago Fire isn't a terrible show—but it isn't terribly interesting, either. The action sequences lack the kinetic quality you would expect from people walking into fire, the dialogue ranges from basic to intolerable, and the stories are rote at best. The biggest issue the series faces is its Superman problem: Station 51 is filled with white hats lacking character flaws. I respect firefighting as much as the next guy, but Chicago Fire's hero worship for those riding the big red truck is so overwhelming that it reduces the opportunities for anything compelling. In Episode 3, a villain (Detective Voight) is finally introduced to act against the whitest hat of them all (Casey) but his weapons so far have been a gravelly voice and minor vandalism. It's like he's taking revenge classes from Carrie Underwood. If this show isn't going to be a case-of-the-week kind of series, it's going to need to raise the stakes for its characters—and with the quickness. Otherwise, it's just an opportunity for hot actors to get topless. And that's what cable is for.
—Nick Campbell

Emily Owens, M.D.

Verdict: Test results inconclusive.

If we were doing half stars, I would have lowered each of these grades by half a star, but I was feeling generous and rounded up. This show is completely driven by the other-worldly adorableness of its star, Mamie Gummer. I don't mean that in a bad way; the episodes are tolerably written, the characters decently interesting, but Gummer lights up the screen. Still, I'm wondering how long it'll be before that glow wears off. In the pilot Emily gave Will, her buddy from med school, a very unfortunate speech about how she'd been crushing on him for years. I'd hoped his rejection of her would allow her character to move on to bigger and better things, but she keeps awkwardly orbiting the guy, trying all sorts of immature things to get over him. The show is also trying waaay too hard to be Grey's Anatomy: The Early Years. —Julia Bergen

Elementary

Verdict: Keep watching in hopes the show solves its problems.

What is ever, ever to be done about a procedural where you thoroughly love the main characters yet seriously detest their weekly adventures? Dogged by unflattering comparisons to BBC's knockout Sherlock series, Elementary's concept of an NYC-based Sherlock Holmes struck me as well worth investigating, and for leads you'd be hard pressed to find actors easier on the eyes and more singularly fascinating than Jonny Lee Miller and Lucy Liu. However, the pilot's early promise has been continually eroded by ham-fisted, preposterous cases that depend more on the audience's suspension of disbelief than Holmes' deductive reasoning to make any kind of sense. A criminally stupid police department and crimes neither logistically possible nor emotionally probable weaken Elementary as a mystery series. Still, the settings, leads, and character development are all there—the day someone brings an Agatha Christie book into the writer's room, this show could take off. —Lily Sparks

The Mindy Project

Verdict: Keep watching, it's getting weirder in a good way.

The Mindy Project's pilot felt—like pilots are wont to do—overworked, over written, and sort of wooden. Thank goodness I was contractually obligated to watch the three episodes that followed it, or I might have missed out on the very original, odd comedy it became after it was greenlit. Since the addition of former felon/extremely charismatic Nurse Morgan (Ike Barinholtz, a.k.a. Ivan Dochenko from Eastbound and Down Season 3) in Episode 2, there's been a sharp uptick in the level of comedy and surreality (Mindy was also revealed to have a chocolate fountain on her desk in that episode). Perfectly, the absurd humor is grounded in beautiful, glossy production values and solid story structure. My only complaint is the two dreamy doctors. They're meant to provide a love triangle for Mindy, but both suffer from a total lack of chemistry. No chemistry with Mindy, with each other, or with the audience. As a pure comedy though, my hopes are high. —Lily

Nashville

Verdict: Love it. Definitely keep watching.

Nothing about Nashville's premise looked like anything I'd choose to watch, but its cast and pedigree guaranteed I'd at least check it out. Boy am I glad I did. Nashville's pilot was one of my favorites of the season; it mixed soap elements with a plausible behind-the-scenes drama of famous people and their powerful svengalis without ever losing the organic character work of obvious forefather Friday Night Lights. The second, third, and fourth episodes continued the high-quality writing, but an obvious element of telenovela plotting began to set in (shoplifting! Affairs! Drug addiction!) that made Nashville seem sliiiiightly less grounded than it did in the pilot. Still though, no other show currently on TV is as good at summing up the characters' emotional states via musical performance (nope, not even Glee). A particularly charged duet between Connie Britton's character and her hunky longtime collaborator in the second episode was one of the most stirring and emotional moments I've seen on TV in a while. Also, even a plotline as hoary as Hayden Panettierre's character's shoplifting incident still bore higher-quality fruit than expected: Juliette's disastrous attitude about it in the press was surprising and hilarious. So while it's not clear whether Nashville can maintain its initial grace and realism or if it will lapse into cheap drama (a new subplot involving Rayna's husband's ex-girlfriend looks worrisome), for now Nashville is one of network TV's best series, bar none. —Price

Vegas

Verdict: Pretty even money.

CBS jumped into the period-piece game with Vegas, which boasts a great cast but also a bland premise: There's a new sheriff in town! The character of Ralph Lamb is old-school country and solves crimes the old-fashioned way, with old-fashioned detective techniques and good-old knuckle sandwiches. See how many times I used the word "old"? Vegas is a comforting procedural drama with costumes, and doesn't aspire to be much more than that. So far the cases appear to hover somewhere near the "tolerable" level, with slight swings in each direction, and the long-term season arcs have barely been tapped. Vegas could turn into something much more interesting, but for right now, it seems content to play with pennies instead of taking risks for big bucks. —Tim Surette

View the original article here

Elementary S01E16: "Details"

If you didn't spend last night feeding fistfuls of lukewarm spaghetti to your lover at a fine chain restaurant, or throwing down a tarp in front of a fireplace and setting up the equivalent of a Cold Stone Creamery toppin' bar to incorporate into your lovemaking with your significant other, then you were best off watching Elementary, which steered clear of conventional Valentine's Day themes to center on the two kinds of love that touch me the deepest: unconditional filial loyalty, and the weird "meeting of the minds" vibe that characerizes Sherlock and Watson.

Sherlock, in a teary stream of whispers, told Watson he was better with her, more focused, and maybe he'd eventually figure out why. While it was all in a soap opera tone that I doubt the show would have used if Watson was being played by, say, John Krazinski, I'm glad the writers cleared the air about Watson not being an official sober companion anymore and essentially lying to him. I'm glad they made the point that he encouraged her to move on while still admitting that he'd like her in his life. I'm ECSTATIC that they are Watson and Sherlock, crime-solvers, now, 300 episodes in. But as much as I wanted to just squee out and enjoy the season's most heartfelt moment (embedded in an episode where JLM had previously thrown tennis balls at her and chased her across the house posing as a masked invader), I felt really vigilant, as a critic, about detecting and therefore calling out any romantic threads present in the exchange. Because that mustn't ever, ever, ever happen.

It feels desperately important to me that Watson and Sherlock in their male-female incarnations never take on a romantic angle for reasons that are hard to articulate but hey, that's my job, so here they are as syllogistic treatise if you will:

1. It's very rare that a platonic female character appears in any kind of "buddy" genre TV or film. If there are two friends who stay friends all the way to the end, 99.9 percent of the time they are either both male or both female.

2. If a female friend is introduced, it's insinuated that she wants some kind of romantic reward in exchange for her friendship. That, or narrative romantic urges complicate the relationship until it's untenable. (Dawson's Creek theme playing in anyone's head right now?)

3. This has the effect of keeping female characters largely relegated to B stories, appearing as two-dimensional trophies and villains, and implying that males and females cannot have satisfying longterm platonic relationships.

4. Without cultural models or acknowledgement of a reality where women can be platonic friends, tacit permission is given in the real world for sexualizing any co-ed interaction and therefore keeping professional venues male-only. Encouraging male coworkers on some level to feel more comfortable with the guys, encouraging female students to feel more valued when they are sexualized, etc. This breeds a general distrust and alienation between the sexes and a closing of ranks against members of the opposite sex trying to network within "gendered" industries.

5. Thus half the human population is kept out of the best and most exciting storylines on and off screen.

"Details" stayed just this side of making Sherlock's invitation to apprenticeship romantic, and it's my fervent hope that they can continue to develop the unique Watson-and-Sherlock, platonically-in-love vibe that Robert Downey and Jude Law effortlessly channel.

When a man and woman can lock eyes like that and it's not presumed they're making sloppy, violent love in their off hours, then it will truly be a more perfect world.

T'otherwise, I loved that again we had a smaller story this week. We rounded out Detective Belle (Bell? screw it, I'm going to assume Belle), giving him dimension and depth as a character. While we know him as a fairly uptight but promising police detective, in his private life he was guarding a dark secret: that his brother was an over-acting Julliard graduate going full "method" for his upcoming one-man-show as a gangbanger. His brother practiced speech after speech about not ratting on his gang brothers while Marcus quietly brought him groceries, but his resentment at years of having to support his brother by attending small black box productions of "The Harmful Effects of Tobacco" and "Ubu Roi" was palpable.

Eventually it was discovered one Sgt. Reyes had carefully framed Belle, but there was no earthly way a viewer could have deduced that. The incriminating information was all told via flashbacks of unseen footage thrown through a green-blue filter. Still, the problem of the week was dramatic enough and small enough that that wasn't entirely off-putting.

I was also a sucker for the act of the brother writing "was not marcus" in blood... that really did warm the cockles of my heart and was one of the few instances where writing in blood looked sort of probable and plausible (well done, art department). I was also heartily glad he survived his run-in with a villainous female coworker who'd been having sex with his brother and then went CRAZY over business-place drama, as women are wont to do, and killed several people. Gals, am I right?

I did take issue to Sherlock insisting "Don't you think I have as much respect for Cap'n Gregson as you!" Sherlock, he punched you in the gut a couple weeks ago and we've yet to see him solve a single case without you pointing out serious flaws and shoddy police work, so maybe don't respect him that much? Maybe even apply for his job? Just a thought.

Anyway, assuming you didn't spend last night painting your lover's body with chocolate tiger stripes, what did you think of Elementary?

QUESTIONS:

– Do you agree that it's vital for Watson and Sherlock's dynamic to remain extremely platonic? What vibe do you currently get from them and what tensions would you like to see emphasized?

– Have you ever had a friend or family member who made you go to tons of amateur theater productions and was it a chore?

– Did anyone get you something cool for Valentine's Day?

– Writing stuff in your own blood on a hardwood floor to solve your own murder: Would you bother with it if you were bleeding out?

– Are you 100 percent ecstatic that Sherlock and Watson are officially Sherlock and Watson now because IIIIIIIII AAAAAMMMMMMM!!!!!!

View the original article here

Elementary S01E14: "The Deductionist"

Last night's Elementary was blessed with a golden opportunity: Airing after the Super Bowl gave the show basically an opportunity at a second premiere, such was the number of new viewers who would be exposed to it. And to give Elementary full credit, its cold open made the absolute most of the opportunity, with a lowest-common-denominator hook, custom-made to snare football fans: namely, two women in bikinis shimmying around Sherlock.

True, it's not for nothing that Super Bowl Sunday is the #1 day of the year in incidences of both sex trafficking and domestic abuse, but doom and gloom aside, introducing the violent mystery the show had in store with a fluffy whipped-cream garnish of pure sex appeal was a brilliant way to go, and the writers justified it with a cute-enough button (Sherlock captured the lap-dancing robbers that had been arousing and bamboozling NYC!). From there the episode went into one of Elementary's cooler and most terrifying mysteries: A convict taken out of jail to donate his kidney to his sister hops off the table in the O.R., absolutely slaughters his team of surgeons, and escapes onto the streets.

I have seen such a deplorable smorgasboard of gratuitous cinematic violence, everything from The Master of the Flying Guillotine to Hobo With a Shotgun, and yet Innes a.k.a. "The Peeler" rising up from the operating table in nothing but a paper gown and killing everyone in the room still stood out as genuinely unnerving. I guess I've never seen someone in scrubs get stabbed; I just compartmentalize the genres of "medical drama" and "cops-fighting-villains," so the overlap felt weirdly scary and fresh and the way it was filmed and edited made it exponentially creepier. Violence for the sake of violence on TV isn't cool bros, but if you're going to throw in a violent bit to make your audience terrified of your villain, this will do the damn trick.

So then the Peeler was out and about terrorizing New York in every conceivable way, an FBI profiler showed up to figure out where he would go now that he was off his chain. Sherlock seemed tres awkward around her and finally screamed at Watson apropos of nothing, "IF YOU'RE ASKING IF WE HAD SEX, YES, OBVIOUSLY!" which was one of the more charming ways to use a character's social weirdness to cut to the heart of the matter. (Another line I genuinely loved, when Watson told him that thanks to his addiction, he had made a friend and then had to clarify "Me. I meant me." Awww you guys.) Yes, the profiler had knocked Sherlock's boots and then spilled his secrets to the world, and Sherlock was still a little tender about it, so this was something he and the Peeler had in common. Neither of them liked being "figured out" by an uppity blonde in the FBI whose profiles didn't so much "profile" as "talk a lot of shit." In fact, she had talked so much shit on Innes and his upbringing that his parents basically died of shame. Shame was the real villain here, truth be told.

Of course, the giant gaping hole in the logic is that if Innes gave two shits about his parents' feelings, he never would have gone about killing and peeling people in the first place—and also, umm, 100 percent of serial murderers were abused in some way by their parents. (All killers no, but serial murderers, the ones who make snuggies out of their victims' skin and so forth, they generally can relate to Carrie.)

Whatever, I'll allow it, it was still scary enough and sort of plausible enough, even when they got to the apartment of the sister whose kidney was ruined and they found her whole house stocked with foods that ruin your kidneys (cheeseballs and licorice, my two faves!!!) so they realized she was complicit in the Peeler's scheme, and that was a stretch, but I went with it and I enjoyed the ride. It helped that the actress playing the sister was absolutely convincing at being both sick and crazy.

Beautifully balancing this ultra-violent psychological thriller case was this weird subplot with Watson's apartment. As soon as I heard she had been subletting her apartment I said aloud to noboody, "Girl tell me you did not all a subletter loose in your house." I don't like to generalize, but subletters are shady. I've seen a subletter leave a pot of nipple paint out on the bathroom counter for all the world to see and I've had a subletter tell me to my face that three girls—and one of whom was his girlfriend—had died in his arms. I'm not kidding! And this was after he had ASKED ME OUT. You are really shouting out to the universe "Chaos Theory, show me what you got!" and throwing the door of your house wide open when you sublet, is all I'm saying.

Anyway, the fact that this show owned that and then turned it into this recurring weird visual joke—especially when they showed clips of that porn—was so weirdly funny and tangential and brilliant. I love that Elementary took a little leap there and injected some off-kilter humor that way, bravo. It balanced the grisliness of the Peeler somewhat.

But the final confrontation between Sherlock and the Peeler and the gun and the handcuffs— honestly, I didn't get it. I mean, I understood the words and the logic, but it seemed that by creating that situation Sherlock was proving her profile of himself true, not making any points about Innes. That Sherlock would self-destructively put himself and a gun across from a serial killer said more about him than who Innes was, no matter what he chose (gun or cuffs, and ultimately I'd say it's braver to take the cuffs and face down a confession than kill someone else in a man-to-man confrontation). I'd love a commenter's take on this exchange and what it meant for both of them.

So yes, a weird and wonderful episode. If this had been first experience with Elementary I'd tune in next week, so, Super Bowl opportunity: well won!

QUESTIONS:

1. On a scale of 1-10, how believable is it that a law-abiding woman would ruin her kidneys to revenge her parents?

2. Have you ever had an experience with a shady subletter?

3. What exactly was Sherlock offering with the gun and the handcuffs?

View the original article here

Elementary S01E13: "The Red Team"

Spies and counterintelligence must be tracking well on the giant algorithm machine that tells studio executives what to make shows about, because for the second time Elementary set a story in the little-known, high-stakes world of international espionage with an episode centered on "The Red Team," a phrase which brought me back to my college days where lots of fellow students wore the T-shirt "BE THE REDS!" which I think is grammatically incorrect yet totally charming. Needless to say, the episode was not about a beloved Korean sports team that the secondary characters were members of, but an elite National Secret Service squad that zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Here's the thing: The pitch of "Sherlock, but in New York City!" CUTS GLASS because of how unique NYC is. And New York has the weirdest crimes IRL. Like, just last year alone a sushi restaurant burned down because one of the chefs hoarded gasoline in soy sauce buckets, a father walked into a public school swinging a chain around his head and demanding to fight some 14-year-olds because someone was bullying his daughter, and a building superintendent broke into a tenant's apartment to sex up their dog. (Well, the dog thing happened in New Rochelle, but you see what I mean.) NYC has literal layers of people from every culture in the world who have grown set in their New York City-specific ways and are thrust together in this pressurized atmosphere, and that means the crimes that happen there are like, you know, interesting but instead we're getting mixed up in these big international spy dramas. I mean the climax of last night's episode happened in a seedy motel that looked like it was in Burbank. I know it's roughly $500 million a second to film in New York but Elementary doesn't even TRY to get anything about the city across except for like, hailing taxis. You know they have at least the same money Louie did in Season 1, but that rarely comes through in the cases. Sherlock living in NYC mostly translates to his house looking vaguely like a set from the film version of Rent. And more and more the crimes seem to happen in isolated, non-New York bubble locales, or in largely theoretical worlds like that of secret national service groups, Russian spies, international assassins, etc.

But far be it from me to argue with the computer that runs Hollywood. It's the size of a refrigerator and voice activated and draws on both science AND magic for its computations, and I don't. Maybe I am not smart enough for last night's storyline? I honestly had a lot of trouble following the bouncing ball all the way through. A conspiracy theorist was killed, he had been bugged by Yossarian who said he was a marketing exec and not a spy with a Catch-22 reference code name but this hot team of super spies was being killed off BY OUR GOVERNMENT but they didn't want to talk about it to a Brit/the NYPD because they were proud to die for their country and also the last one alive would have this super valuable information to sell to Page Six and then one of the guys who had a wife in a wheelchair (and was either carrying a boombox or a big purse) decided to everybody else off to save her life and… I'm sorry I suffered this breakdown of understanding where my brain got just straight-up too bored to function and I just started mentally fixating on the shiny parts of the show that caught my magpie's eye. Like Lucy Liu's wet look!

And her boots! This episode was a foot fetishists' fant-ta-ta-saaaay. She was wearing some HOT BOOTS. Sherlock, also, I realized a lot of this show functions as a primer for the freshest in men's sweaters. He had so many holier-than-thou sweaters this week. And he kept doing like little muppet expressions. NOT A COMPLAINT!

It was exasperating how awful the NYPD were. We've seen Sherlock solve the last 11 cases singlehandedly and vindicate Gregson from framing a terrible murderer, and yet they were still icing him out at the station and getting angry at him for helping them out.

Then they horribly accepted his help and let him solve the case after rightfully admitting they were too stupid to sort out a box of Legos let alone a spy ring and then Gregson PUNCHED SHERLOCK IN THE GUT at the end for his troubles. How awful. What a bunch of just terrible stupid thugs. Hopefully the real police department is not as horrible but ever since that one cop tried to meet women online for the express purpose of cooking them I've given up hope on the 5-0. And also one time the LAPD pulled me over under suspicion of being a hooker!

Yes, it's true. I had a 5am shift at a hostel in Hollywood where I worked the front desk and made the hooker mistake of putting on chapstick before hopping out of my vehicle. A car pulled up and did that little "YOPYOP" sound and they pulled me over and wanted to know, "Where are you going, what are you doing, oh you have a job around here? Or really, at this hour? What kind of job? Well go over there and walk in the front door then, if that's the case. Who does that car belong to? Where's your daddy?" and all that kind of commentary. Let me tell you right now, I was NOT dressed the part of a streetwalker I had a giant navy blue crewneck sweatshirt on top of huge baggy jeans and sneakers and wet hair in a pony tail and chapstick. They wrote down my license number and everything! I slumped around feeling like Fantine for the rest of the day. So no, I'm not going to sit here and sing you a lullaby about how IRL as a whole the police are looking after us all day every day because each police department is but a tapestry of individuals and some of those threads are BROKEN.

Loved the bit with the turtle.

ALSO BEES. BEES. Okay, so from last episode, technically the first commenter to call out how I was wrong about the Sherlock's pet hive from the pilot never coming back again was THEOPRATT. I owe you a coke! DM me via this site with an address to send you your prize!

QUESTIONS:

1. What's your personal experience with police?

2. Does Elementary need some more of that "real authentic New York pizza" sort of tone or should it just keep doing its thing?

3. Is Gregson being totally ungrateful for that time Sherlock did his job for free and also that time he let it slide that he had framed a criminal with false evidence?

4. Are you getting tired of all these high-falutin' spy game type plots or are they exciting?

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Elementary S01E03: "Child Predator"

I find child murder inappropriate for television. I hate to sound like an old killjoy yelling at everybody to get out of her yard, but while I can/have/love to watch murder mystery after horror movie after action film where over-18-year-olds get taken out like mice under a lawn mower, just the sight of a gloved hand gesturing for a child to get in a car is a little too much for me. Elementary tried to find a loophole in the old "Don't use the most heartbreaking crime on earth for entertainment value" rule last night with a twist: The child we saw kidnapped in the opening was actually the mastermind behind all the subsequent child captures and murders. Still, this is just NOT how I like to relax, folks. Aren't there enough compelling ways to kill grown-ups without ratcheting up the stakes to, "Someone has your little girl!"?

To be fair, its not like Elementary was intent on rendering the loss of a child with gritty realism a la The Killing. The parents of the kidnapped little girl were introduced to the audience a few seconds before their televised interview and then got really mad when Sherlock came in and brought the media junket to a screeching halt. Grieving parents need their screentime, okay?! As much as we all loved Sherlock for stopping the interview in the most aggressive way possible (spray paint on the camera lens! Someone tell Lindsay Lohan to carry spray paint in her car and tag paparazzi!):

...but like, why was the family giving interviews so soon? Redonk. And then later they told the police chief he would be the FIRST ONE they'd go after talking to "the press." We got the impression that the second call they made after calling the police was to a PR agency for representation. Simmer, grieving TV parents! Simmer.

As for spotting tiny details and weaving them into a damning narrative, last night's episode was one of the more successful ones we've seen so far. Sherlock's glance at the kitchen led to the discovery of an Anna Nicole-lookalike mistress.

A paint scratch on a parked car told a tale of the kidnapper's van (shudder shudder shudder) and the banter between Sherlock and Watson was simply adorable. "I thought I was just a cavernous expanse between two ears," Watson coyly whispered at one point. After last week effectively drove a wedge between the pair, this week was about Sherlock vocalizing what he likes about Watson and validating her role beyond all the "sobriety twaddle"—she provides a sounding board, she actively assists in supporting him rather than interfering with his process. (Also she's provided several integral clues in the last couple weeks, but that was glossed over.) And how adorable was it when they fell in step doing squats? Lucy Liu gets extra points for doing squats in high heels.

The person in this episode who got a million points was Johnny Simmons, who took a break from the big screen to step into this juicy/thankless role as a child child-murderer, a 19-year-old who was first kidnapped and then used his superior intellect to direct his abductor and commit more and more murders (shudder). He seriously knocked my socks off both as a vulnerable brainwashed abductee whispering sweet nothings across the table from Sherlock and also as a "lettin' the freak flag fly" psychopath with an immunity deal taunting Sherlock in the park. Not to mention that gracefully handled some rather clumsy exposition speeches. I almost felt sad when cops picked him up because having him around a couple more episodes as a small-arc nemesis could have been cool, but hopefully his schedule was too full. Hire him, Hollywood, is what I'm saying! He great!

About the sweet nothings... there was a lot of whispering in this episode. There was a point where they were all watching Adam from behind two-way glass, Aidan Quinn, Watson, and Sherlock, and just whispering up a storm. Two-way glass is soundproof, right? Or was the perp on the other side sitting there thinking, "Is someone swishing around a rain stick on the other side of that mirror? What is going on?"

There was also a full spectrum of topless men last night, the hugely built and fantastically furry JLM bien sûr but also the serial killer appeared topless at a kitchen table in a back brace and it was pretty upsetting. Although, note to casting director/hair person: You did not pick enough of a weirdo for this serial killer. No offense to the actor (in fact, take it as a compliment!) but this is just not the face of a weirdo serial killler:

But you know who WAS weirding it up? Sherlock, who must have been given the direction, "You're not just a tweaker this episode, you're a tweaker on no sleep. Play it BIG!" If you've ever been around someone so exquisitely manic that they haven't slept for four days, you know that the body pulls on weird reserves of energy, making them increasingly jumpy and skittish until it's exhausting to be around them (I know from personal experience, long story, don't ask). In an attempt to capture both this energy and the Sherlock Holmes exactness and precise-itude, JLM was whipping around people and spinning on his heel like a nervous high school kid giving a cheeky presentation he'd worked on for way too long in front of a class. Just pure nerve. Well done, JLM, and also knock it off JLM! You're making me skittish.

Also, as much as I'm warming up to JLM's Sherlock, I fantasize from time to time about the roles of Sherlock and Watson being reversed and Liu playing a cold, icy, Sherlock to JLM's hunky Watson. Sigh! #fantasyseriesreset

So to sum: Aside from the regrettable content of the mystery, the way it was handled and the dynamic between Watson and Sherlock showed real growth and promise. As usual I had almost no patience with the actual B-story mystery going on, but the increasing detail involved in the mysteries and the actors, the characters, and their very cozy flophouse keep me coming back. Also are you THIRSTY GUYS?! Because there were no bees in this episode and don't even tell me tea = honey. Need to see wings and hear buzzing, people. Bet a coke would taste PRETTY GOOD RIGHT NOW but alas, no bees.

QUESTIONS:

1. Child murder: should procedurals steer clear?

2. Johnny Simmons: a young, male Meryl Streep?

3. How tall is JLM ?

4. Would you feel invigorated or collapse with exhaustion if you did 100 squats in a row?

5. Should stars being stalked by paparazzi fight back by spraying paint on the paparazzi's cameras?

Elementary "Child Predator" Photos

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Elementary S01E02: "While You Were Sleeping"

Are you READY for some FOOTBAAAALLL??!?!?! Is an inappropriate way to begin this post yet sort of encapsulates the "game day" tone of sitting down for the second episode of a series. The second episode of a new show reflects all the tweaks, adjustments, recasts and "forever" sets that will be in place for the rest of the season after the pilot was intially screened for the network. Not to mention souped-up, dramatic, artsy-for-the-sake-of-fartsy credits!

So my dears, I thought it would be fun to try and deduce what notes Elementary got coming out of the pilot for this second episode/rest of the season using my own fine sense of observation (it's not that fine, I'm continually finding Oreos under my keyboard that are months old). And so with no further ado, here's my case file of "Notes CBS Probably Gave to Elementary!"

1. "We love the addict thing. Can you do more with that?"

They went hard to the hole with the Sherlock addiction in this series. We learned he had concealed from the police chief he consults for that he was a recovering addict (considering he works for free I'd guess it wouldn't be a deal breaker) and he instantly recognized a meth head CEO because of his frenetic eye blinking and pulled him aside to break it down junkie-to-junkie to get some key information on the case.

Holmes also got hit with his most important clue while engaging in an AA meeting. Clearly the torments of abstaining from horse or smack or twinkle-veins or whatever the kids are calling it these days has but SHARPENED his crime-solving abilities, an original enough take but WE GET IT, GUYS. Please don't just solve every crime by finding the addict involved and threatening them with exposure?

2. "Have Sherlock and Watson's relationship be the major arc of the series."

Sherlock put a five-week clock on Watson last night, signaling a possible mid-season finale all about Sherlock convincing Watson to stay on as his legit valet versus his sober buddy. As this is an origins story, it's fair enough that their relationship would be a major arc and to arc it has to start low so it can go somewhere. HOWEVER… part of the magic of the Sherlock/Watson dynamic is that they are two people who "click." Watson is kind of dumb in the original stories and his medium-smart brain struggling to solve stuff provides a wall for Sherlock to bounce off of, and his doctor skills provide a factual basis for deduction. While TV/Lucy Liu Watson did get a little more engaged in providing medical clues this episode (she did make a coma victim slap herself)...

I actually really hated how much they talked about their relationship. His violin! Her ex-boyfriends! Companionship! Let's be friends! No we will never be friends! I don't know, I like the idea that they come together and immediately are a fit, that Watson, whatever his/her lack of deduction, can read and appreciate Holmes in a way no one else can. I hope they get there sooner rather than later because the relationship talk is t.e.d.i.o.u.s.

3. "Lose the bees. Didn't Sherlock play a violin?"

The episode ending with the dulcet tones of a violin was a detail I very much enjoyed (I guess he had two violins, since he torched the other one in a small hobo fire to make a point to Watson about relationships) because I love violin music and it's such an important part of Sherlock as a character. I also appreciated that no honey dripped out of the walls and the bees were totally missing from this episode (Holmes elected to spend prime bee-keeping time picking a bunch of rusty old locks instead).

I would guess we won't see the bees again, both because it's an unnecessary amount of bother and trauma to put the art department and set dressers through, and because it made no effing sense. (New York City bee honey probably tastes like exhaust mixed with pigeon sh-t) If they come back, I owe three readers a coke.

4. "Can you make the mysteries a little more complicated? This is Sherlock Holmes here, not Jessica Fletcher."

My main complaint with last week's mystery was that Watson basically solved it. Watson was again, this week, picking up clues at the crime scene that similarly pissed me off (sorry, but I like Watson more as a deductive foil for Holmes) but then as the mystery unfolded I was cackling like a middle school bully. TWIN SWITCH CRIME: The lowest of the low. AND a woman PUTTING HERSELF IN A MEDICALLY INDUCED COMA as an alibi!!! She just got high and napped for a week, okay. The premiere's mystery was a little too simple and the murderer was the victim's husband,the first/only suspect we met. For all the fancy footwork of imaginary woman/woman in coma/woman has twin it was very obvious from the outset what was going to happen. The only tension was hoping I would be wrong, because a woman getting high all day in a coma and then going out and shooting people is um RIDICULOUS.

And ridiculous though it was, we had no chance to solve it because the key physical evidence was a pale band of flesh on the doctor's hand that I think we only saw in flashback. Part of the fun of a Conan Doyle Sherlock story is you're presented with the same clues as Sherlock so you feel (probably mistakenly) that you have a fighting chance of solving the crime before he does. But there's too few clues to reason through anything in Elementary, deduction is downgraded to wild guesses, and even that is not what they want. They want you to just sit back and be impressed by the twists and turns, but they did not impress-a me much.

That's actually probably my biggest note to procedurals in general, there's usually only time to present two suspects for a case, one of which quickly becomes improbable by being too obviously guilty. Generally, you pick the person who obviously could NOT have committed the crime and BAM, you're done. You know how they could manage their time and flesh out the mystery more? CUT OUT all the Watson and Sherlock bickering & being touchy feely with their feelings hoo-ha. Hopefully once Watson and Sherlock become more of a sure thing they'll up the ante on these mysteries and make them more compelling, not through providing improbable killers but by providing misdirecting clues.

QUESTIONS…

…What key differences did you notice between this second episode and the pilot?

…Were you baffled/furious at how the mystery went down?

…Did you get a genuine chill though when Sherlock was like "Why do you think she was still in a coma? Who did she have left to kill?"

…Junkie vibes: overpowering the Sherlock character or fueling him?

…Put "you owe me a coke" in your comment if you think the bees are coming back & if they do I'll get the first three such commenters a coke.

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