Sunday, April 6, 2014

Elementary - The Many Mouths of Andrew Colville


The latest unusual case involving a pair of murders whose victims are found with deep bite marks on their necks brings back a troubling moment from Watson's (Lucy Liu) past involving a former colleague (Bruce Altman) who she's always felt let a killer die on the operating table. The guilt is even stronger now that she learns of the possibility that the police may not attributed the crimes to the wrong man.

After drudging through an enormous amount of dental records provided to Sherlock Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller) by his internet hacker pals, the detectives discover they are no close to finding their killer as the teeth marks come from a set of dentures matching not only the long dead killer but also 8 former prison inmates who all received a matching set.


Eventually whittling their way down the list, Holmes and Watson once again set their sites on a specific suspect (Robert Stanton). Given his criminal history of sexual deviancy, his lack of alibi, his attempt to flee, and the fact that his dentures match the marks found on the new victims, Captain Gregson (Aidan Quinn) is more than happy to charge him for the crimes. However, after examining the man's current medical status, Watson is far less sure he could have physically committed the murders.

Offering a nice set of twists and turns before the detectives begin searching in the right place for the true motive of the new murderers, the unusual denture murders offer a unique set of problems for Holmes and Watson (and the opportunity for Holmes to sing the songs of Frozen in a prom dress albeit sadly off-camera). The choice to tie the murders into Watson's helps get her on the case and offers a distraction to solving it, but, as Holmes remarks, Watson's true problem isn't so much her doubt about her colleague letting the man die as her own thoughts at the time to follow that same path.

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