• ok they got an actual lol out of me with the gas mask helmet
• It feels really cheap to have Sherlock join MI6 and then have him leave between seasons. Like, this is a whole huge thing that just happens off-screen and ultimately appears to have virtually no effect on ANYTHING. Very sloppy storytelling. I get that apparently they wanted to have Sherlock and Joan be estranged for a while, but this is such a bizarre way to do it.
• This hilariously huge Manhattan apartment that is neither rent controlled nor courtesy of Sherlock's rich daddy!!! faaaaake

• Kitty is such a good addition to the cast <3

• Honestly this plot with Sherlock and Harlan is adorable.
• Love watching Kitty and Joan navigate their relationship.

• divided custody of Clyde oh my god.
• I remember this episode! Sherlock trying to figure out love by taking to an AI through a baby doll is classic.
• “Kind of feel like hugging you right now.”
• Am I misanthropic and miserable or is it totally weird that Joan surprised her boyfriend by joining him on an overseas business trip? I think I would not be happy if a significant other did it without talking to me about it. Like, I would probably love to have them come! But to have it sprung on me without my input makes my Myers Briggs-J want to absolutely lose it.

• The casebook! 474 pages!!
• I do not love this stuff with Gregson’s daughter?

• Does this early scene count as passing the bechdel test? They're talking about Holmes but they're also talking about their jobs... always a gray area.
• I’m not a survivor so I have no idea how well they’re handling everything with Kitty, but it seems very sweet???

• Ms Hudson!!! Now can we have some Alfredo?
• Omg Sherlock reading Joan about her dating life is just soooooo House MD.
• Kitty is such bangs/hair goals.
• I just want Joan to figure out what will make herself happy. The older I get the more I identify with and admire her. Trying multiple careers, starting over, still figuring out romance. I’m seeing her very differently as a 32 year old than I did as a 24 year old.

• I give zero shits for this “poor hunted cops” stuff, Ms. Hudson and Alfredo should be regulars that we see in every episode instead of the cops.

• Alfredo!!!
• “You have your work. You have me.”
• Again, I know very little about the addict experience but this is so affecting. What an interesting angle to lean into for an adaptation. They didn’t do it for titillation or for drama like on House, but for an honest look at how addiction affects life.

• Lord I am reallllly over-identifying with Joan.
• NEVER. TALK. TO. THE. COPS.

• “I feel that I have thrived here not because of who I am, but because of who I have come to know.” What a good line. I know I joked about when the show falls into House M.D. territory with dialogue just becoming characters aggressively describing one another, but when a character shows SELF AWARENESS and does this about themself, I swoon!
• Mycroft is such a fuckweasel!!!

• I appreciate still getting a Thor Bridge adaptation even though there was already a reference.
• “I consider you to be exceptional.” This whole final conversation is so much. You know, this really does feel like watching House did in a lot of ways. Spacing out during case related stuff I really don’t care about and then squeeing over two minutes in a final scene between two leads who are obviously in love but the show wants to pretend aren’t. Takes me right back to college.

• This cold open is literally the same as the beginning of The Knight Before Christmas 😂
• While I agree with Sherlock’s premise that morality and legality are not the same thing, I have issues with his application of this in his work, and this episode is really important for teaching him a lesson about letting the means be worthy of the desired ends.
• And I love this final conversation between him and Marcus, because we get to see the sweetness and insecurity of Sherlock trying his best to be a good friend and make amends, but we also get to see the totally valid anger directed at him for his failures.

• that was... fine?

• We love a purple prose voiceover!!!
• GOD this painting of Joan, I can’t even.
• I’m of two minds about the “give Moriarty a kid thing” but i think they handle it as well as you could, and tbh this episode slaps? JLM and Natalie have great chemistry, and like I said: episodes where characters you love actually have something at stake in the A-plot always hit different than your average case of the week.

• more character work and relationship development among the cast, yes show, thank you!

• “It’s not a collage. I don’t do crafts.” LOL
• Joan gets to give Sherlock a rude awakening!
• I find Holmes’ smutty pen pal thing so charming, in contrast to the girls the show often parades around his apartment. Is it stereotypical to make her older? IDK, but the fact that Sherlock is still sort of shy and in awe of her is sweet and feels less like titillation for the audience and more like a genuine expression of “here’s a character who is unconventional and whose taste is a little bit off the beaten track” than threesomes with hot twins.
• The fake 95 Theses ahahaaa. “Those who disagree shall be vigorously tickled!”

• This cold open just makes me wish tattoo shops could be open so I could get my next ink 😭
• Just to get my one complaint out of the way, I’ll always be sad we got a CHAS adaptation but Holmes and Watson weren’t together holding hands during the murder.
• This show does Holmes as an addict sooo well, and I know I always say it but JLM's performance is so great.
• THE ROBERT FROST POEM IN A PICTURE FRAME DO U EVER CRY????

• Thor Bridge reference!
• “We are not having a moment.” So classic.
• As is this conversation on the bench. I melt.
• Moran is so effectively creepy.

• “For what it’s worth, he’s not bringing his wife either.” Like HELLO??? You know, I completely understand that the implications would be Bad if they genderbent Watson and then had a proper H/W relationship in this (or any) adaptation, as if they had to manipulate it to be hetero in order to go through with it, but my god please let Holmes and Watson just be in love y’all!!!! Rômançé!!!
• “I will not allow any harm to come to you. Not ever.” “You can’t promise that.” “And yet I have.” VOWS!!?!??!?
• I am such a SUCKER for male characters trying to ditch their ladies for their protection during their quest, and the female character being like How About No. love that trope yes thank you more please.
• Do I ever get tired of praising JLM’s acting? Negatory! He’s so great in this final scene with the Irene reveal.

• Why did Natalie Dormer have to blow up like she did, good for her but I missed her on the show. That said, try and tell me her American accent for Irene in the London scene doesn’t sound like Jessica Day doing an old timey newscaster in New Girl. You can’t.
• “This is your home.”
• Remember when I thought this was going to be the show's Reichenbach arc? Lolllll.
• What a great Moriarty reveal. Truly an inspired piece of adaptation, probably one of the cleverest things anyone has done with the canon in a long time. Both of the other prominent recent adaptations of the last decade forced Irene to be a minion of Moriarty’s. I like that Elementary went whole hog, just made them the same person. There’s something about taking Holmes' two obsessions and combining them that I enjoy. And Elementary's approach still gives Irene agency. I don’t know how to say this without coming across all #girlboss 👏🏼MORE👏🏼FEMALE👏🏼MURDEROUS👏🏼CRIME👏🏼BOSSES👏🏼 So I don’t want to claim that this is a more Feminist approach, or a more faithful adaptation, it’s just that I genuinely think this idea took one or two more minutes of thought than the devastatingly boring approaches of the Ritchie movies and BBC Sherlock. It almost becomes a commentary on these other adaptations that use Irene mostly as a Holmes no homo love interest. Was Elementary free to do this because it didn’t need to no homo Holmes since it made Watson a woman? I just, I compare this all to Sherlock especially and I’m baffled at the prestige of the one and the CBS procedural-ness of the other. Part of me wishes the writers of Elementary could have had the budget and the format of Sherlock, but there’s something about Holmes stories that almost wants to be a long running episodic procedural, despite the fact that this means that along with the highs comes some real lows. It’s baked into the thing.

• “Too angry to be afraid.” Joooooooan!
• You know what, I actually forgot about this whole fake-out plot until pretty late in the episode. Very nice. They do such a good job setting it up with the fight between Joan and Sherlock and then cutting away.
• “Would you have preferred I just killed you?” “Yes.” Gutted!!
• Omg this hospital scene is so House. Let’s just have characters read descriptions of one another to one another in an intense voice! Drama!! Now there’s a Holmes adaptation I haven’t thought about in a while. It barely counts tbh. But ohhhhh that House/Wilson hurt so good. Shout out to 2008 when I wore my tinhat proudly and 100% thought that was the actual direction they were going with the show.
• Joan is the only other person who can surprise Moriarty. Love to see it.
• And he names a bee after her!!! ROMANCE!!!!

• I don't have any deep thoughts about this one, I just like the whole thing between Joan and Sherlock about the tea.
• Oh shoot I forgot about this ending scene. "If there's someplace else you have to be..." "Not tonight, Watson." I am such a sucker for characters silently supporting each other with their presence. He's not there 'cause he wants to meet the ex, he's there for her. ;___;

• ugh the sisters thing. did they tone down this stuff later in the show? it's so tedious.
• CASTERLY ROCK SECURITY. Is that an ASOIAF reference or is casterly rock something else too?
• Sherlock is so pushy but so sweet, and so sincere underneath the bluster!

• You know, I had forgotten about (or my memory underplayed) the show's penchant for letting Sherlock be a sexist dickhead but allowing Joan to comment on his misogyny, thereby having their cake and eating it too. My tolerance is not as great as it was in 2012.
• In general I find that I have less patience for cop procedurals now than I did in my early- and mid-20s. (Says the girl who got an X-Files tattoo last year...) Maybe I just OD'd on Bones and Criminal Minds? But even B99 exhausts me a little these days. As my politics have radicalized, I genuinely do have a harder time sitting through ~*copaganda*~. TXF is so far removed from any semblance of real-life criminal justice that it doesn't feel the same, but sometimes I watch all these police characters talking to each other and I just instinctively want to turn them off. IDK, it's a complicated feeling. 
• Crossover of this episode with The Americans, tbh. (Which I never did finish...)
• My dear Watson. <3

• "Reflection is for mirrors, can't you just hand me a report card?" Oh man I wish I had used this while working on my masters. 
• Random appearances from therapists is such a weird procedural staple. Well, actually lazy. "I need to have my main character verbalize or realize something, and I can't come up with an organic way to make it happen in the story. Time for a counseling scene!"
• "I'm gonna miss this. Working with you. I think what you do is amazing." His shocked face!!
• "I go where he goes, remember?" Wahhh!
• I have no attachment to the revenge thing for Holmes, but kudos as always for JLM's performance.
•  haaaaaands and the "I'm gonna miss this" callback, that's good tv!!!

• Oh heyyyyyy, Detective Bell. <3
• Always much love for this credit sequence.
• Uuuuuugh, I love Holmes the violinist. I can't remember whether his musicianship gets totally dropped after this or not. I don't remember it ever being brought up again before I dropped the show (circa season 4).
• Joan is so earnest and so structured in these attempts to get to know Sherlock, and yet he balks every time. How do her attempts change style and manner over the rest of these early seasons?
• This scene where Holmes recommends Hemdale to the guy from the case is just SUCH a good illustration of his empathy wrapped in awkward brusqueness. 
• The case in this episode is tighter than in the pilot. All the breakthroughs come from believable moments. I like the tension between the sisters. And the emotional beats for our regular characters are more consistent. 
• MIND THAT BIG HEART
• "You always know it. If you didn't, it wouldn't be penance." This episode really brings the Sherlock that I have always loved from the original stories and from fic and from other adaptations. Creative. Impatient. Empathetic. Scarred. Intelligent. 

• Is this the first ~rude awakening~ for Watson? D'awwww.
• When Sherlock thanks Joan for accommodating him, and he admits that he knows he's difficult, I just end up with hearts in my eyes. Self awareness! Her willingness to help him stay up not only helps them bond, but it's also an indication of her interest in detecting. And yet at the end of the episode, she still insists he get some sleep!
• This is not a standout episode, but it is a solid one. Once again, the case is solved by reasonable observations and deductions.

• I love kidnap fic. I love kidnap stories.
• (This Mark Ruffalo lookalike that Joan gets set up with, lol.)
• "I loathe bankers. They rigged the roulette wheel of commerce, very nearly destroyed the world economy, and they still think if they wear suits they'll be treated like respectable folk instead of the crooks that they are." COMRADE SHERLOCK! REDISTRIBUTE THAT WEALTH!!!
• marital records dot com lol (it redirects to CBS's website fyi)
• JLM is honestly so good in this scene with Gregson

• The way "I go where you go" starts off as an obligation, almost a threat in order to remind Sherlock someone is with him to monitor his behavior and sobriety, and later on turns into a statement of solidarity, just, ugh.
• Joan and Carrie and their sapphic dalliance <3
• David Harbour! I spent most of the episode trying to place him and finally had to look it up! S'up, Hopper.

• Yo it really feels like the writers have read Katie Forsythe what with this broken arm/abusive Daddy!Holmes backstory. 
• JLM's face at this first mention of Irene, I dieeeeeee

• Nnnnnnnnnot here for the implicit justification of law enforcement fabricating evidence. See! He was guilty! Good thing the coppers are looking out for us!

• Alfredo is SUCH a fantastic addition to this show and such a good example of its ethos of adaptation. Translating the "bohemian lifestyle and habits" of the Victorian setting means that Elementary's Holmes is going to value anti-establishment people and opinions, associate with social outcasts, and have little respect for--well, respectability. Having a Black ex-con recovering addict as a sponsor is a good way to show how Sherlock lives into this. Ya girl has only seen a couple of BBC Sherlock episodes many many years ago, but I don't recall much effort made to interrogate class or respectability in that show, when really it should be a pretty upfront factor in any adaptation. Having the BBC's Sherlock be an asshole doesn't interrogate respectability--that's personality not politics. It's about what Holmes wears, with whom he associates, etc. I mean, this Sherlock is still living off daddy's money but at least it goes further in its attempt. 

there are no more swords, no more boomerangs, no more weapons or skills or anything that can overcome his fractured leg, her failing grip, and the cadre of soldiers ready to burn two children in order to uphold their dream of sovereign dominion: “it looks like this is the end.”