- Title: Elementary – All In
- Title: Elementary – Art Imitates Art
- wiki: link
Elementary‘s two-hour event offers us two separate episodes connected by Watson‘s (Lucy Liu) discovery that she has a half-sister (Samantha Quan) who, while lying about her true connection to Joan becomes a client in need of Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller) and Watson’s help in “All In” when the real estate agent’s illegal poker game gets her marked for death. “Art Imitates Art” is only connected to the first episode through its B-story where Joan’s natural curiosity about her father and new half-sister creates conflict between the pair.
“All In” also offers the return of Agent McNally (Tim Guinee) when the investigation into the poker game leads the detectives into the middle of an ongoing NSA investigation. In both episodes the crimes which were committed actually hide the true intent of the criminals. In “All In” the thieves are actually spies using the access of one of the players at the game to help steal valuable intelligence. And in “Art Imitates Art” the murder of a young woman for her selfie not only leads Holmes to discover the identity of a man unjustly convicted of a crime but unravel the identities of two separate murderers along with corruption within a nearby police lab.
Joan’s connection to her half-sister proves to be a tenuous connection between the otherwise separate stories. I’m not sure if the pair of episodes were meant to be shown back-to-back as a two-hour event but taken separately I think each is more impressive than the whole. The return of the NSA is always fun for the audience (if not for Sherlock), but the complicated motives of “Art Imitates Art” are actually more interesting to see the detectives unravel.
