Elementary - The Red Team

While serving his suspension from the NYPD (for kidnapping and torturing a serial killer in a warehouse), Sherlock Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller) continues his investigation into Moriarty and indulges his hobby tweaking conspiracy theorists online. This, unexpectedly, leads him to investigate a suspicious suicide involving a conspiracy theorist who Holmes quickly discovers was under government-level surveillance.

While going through the man's ridiculous binders of various conspiracy theories (including one or two doozies that Holmes fed him) he discovers one involving a massive hole in national security that might be a clue to the man's death. To test the man's hypothesis, Holmes sets out to find five other members who would know the results of the 2009 army war games in which the victim believed the secret was originally unearthed. After discovering another member in a long-term care facility for a somewhat mystifying case of early on-set Alzheimer's, that may have been caused by poison, Holmes believes the dead conspiracy nut may have stumbled on an actual conspiracy that led to his death.


However, when Bell (Jon Michael Hill) arrests another conspiracy theorist (Tom Riis Farrell) who admits to killing the first, and Lt. Gregson (Aidan Quinn) throws him out of the police station, Holmes and Watson (Lucy Liu) set out on their own which leads them to a set of empty offices and a man of military bearing (Chris Sullivan) who denies any knowledge of what Holmes is talking about and soon turns up dead himself. However, without meaning to, the mystery man gives Holmes the names of the other members of the "Red Team" (Ann Sanders, Richard Bekins, Michael Laurence, Reese Madigan) who he promptly gathers together for Gregson and the police.

Unwilling to tell their tale the members leave and only agree to police protection after yet another one of their number turns up dead. Although the killer isn't Holmes' first suspect, he is able to discern the motive for killing and talk the killer down saving one of Gregson's men in the process. Although some of logical steps of the mystery were a little skaky, "The Red Team" does a fairly good job at hiding the true motives for the murders. Holmes' success of solving the case while suspended gets him reinstated but doesn't come close to repairing the damage to his relationship with Gregson as the fallout from Holmes actions with M. will appear to continue to have consequences over the course of the season.