By Claire Booth
The seventh and
final season of Elementary is here,
and it’s about time. The first of the thirteen episodes premiered Thursday
night and made the move I expected—from New York City to London. I’m fine with
that as long as I get my Jonny Lee Miller and Lucy Liu.
I was
skeptical when the show began in 2012. Did the world really need another
Sherlock Holmes adaptation? Perfection had already been reached with the Benedict
Cumberbatch-led Sherlock, also set in
the modern day. I grudgingly watched the first episode in 2012. It scored
points for shaking things up—moving the setting to New York City, making Dr.
Watson a woman. Interesting, but not enough to hook me. But then . . . then
came Jonny Lee Miller. Visions of his seminal performance in Trainspotting flashed through my head;
they were quickly doused by his complete transformation into Holmes. He took
the characteristics—the brusqueness, the condescension, the indifference to
social norms, the brilliance—and made them his own. The interplay of these traits
with other characters guarantee that, at least once an show, I’ll laugh out
loud. That’s a tricky thing to pull off in a drama, and Miller does it every
episode.
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| Lucy Liu as Joan Watson and Jonny Lee Miller as Sherlock. |
Miller and
show creator Robert Doherty also did something that other adaptations either ignore
or gloss over. They confronted Sherlock’s drug addiction head-on. Arthur Conan
Doyle showed the detective using cocaine throughout his short stories; Elementary took that and turned it into
a full-blown, life-devastating disease that Holmes has continued to battle
every season so far. It adds a layer to the series that I think makes it,
despite its American setting and female Watson, the most realistic of the many
Sherlock interpretations.
The show
also has fun with the canon—Holmes’s love, the mysterious Irene Adler, appears,
as does his brother Mycroft, newly slim and a successful restauranteur. And it
includes, in a wonderfully surprising way I won’t spoil here, the ubervillain Moriarty.
These characters
drive recurring storylines that have been the most enjoyable parts of the
series. The cases-of-the-week, on the other hand, can sometimes be too neat and
tidy and hastily resolved. Thursday’s season seven premiere was one of those.
The resolution was a little too pat. I’m hoping the episode is just getting
viewers set up for continuations of some of those overarching storylines. I’ve
got my fingers crossed that we’ll see the great John Noble as Sherlock’s immoral
businessman father again. I’d also love to see their twist on Doyle’s Inspector
Lestrade, now that they’re in London.
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| John Noble as father Morland Holmes. |
Elementary airs Thursday nights on CBS. Previous
seasons are available on Hulu.
