Season 6 was originally intended as the final season of Elementary, and it would have been a strong season to end on if the show had not been unexpectedly renewed for a short seventh season. Here’s our take on season 6.
- “An Infinite Capacity for Taking Pains” – 6
- “Once You’ve Ruled out God” – 8.5
- “Pushing Buttons” – 5.5
- “Our Time Is Up” – 7
- “Bits and Pieces” – 8
- “Give Me the Finger” – 7
- “Sober Companions” – 2.5
- “Sand Trap” – 5.5
- “Nobody Lives Forever” – 4
- “The Adventure of the Ersatz Sobekneferu” –4
- “You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby” – 5
- “Meet Your Maker” – 7
- “Breathe” – 8
- “Through the Fog” – 8
- “How to Get a Head” – 6.5
- “Uncanny Valley of the Dolls” – 6
- “The Worms Crawl in, the Worms Crawl out” – 6
- “The Visions of Norman P. Horowitz” – 7
- “The Geek Interpreter” – 7.5
- “Fit to Be Tied” – 2
- “Whatever Remains, However Improbable” – 3
The average rating for this season is 5.9, which is pretty strong, but also a little misleading, as averages can be. A few bad episodes drag down what is otherwise mostly a good to very good season.
The problem with this season is, as it has been in previous seasons, the ongoing arc story. This time it’s Michael, a fellow addict who befriends Sherlock, then turns out to be a serial killer who is using the cat-and-mouse game with Sherlock as a substitute high to stay off drugs. Desmond Harrington gives an excellent performance as Michael, and the interplay between him and Sherlock is better handled than in most mystery series where the heroic detective faces off against a serial killer, but we are tired of serial killer stories altogether, especially stories about serial killers who have unhealthy emotional attachments to the detectives hunting them. The shadow of Professor Moriarty looms so large over the legacy of Sherlock Holmes that many writers forget that the professor was no more than a convenient plot device to kill off a character that Conan Doyle had gotten tired of writing. Holmes has never been at his best when chasing an enemy but rather when untangling a mystery, and that fact is as true today as it was a century ago.
On the other hand, the non-arc stories this season are some of the best ever written for the series. It looks like the writers pulled out all the stops for what they believed to be their last season. Many episodes are richly complicated mysteries that unfold through surprising twists and turns. Our highest rated episode this season, “Once You’ve Ruled out God,” at 8.5, begins with a murder by lightning gun, ends with a daylight diamond heist, and goes through stolen plutonium, neo-Nazi prison gangs, and terrorist threats to midtown Manhattan along the way. Your average television mystery series would be content to take any one of those ideas and make a whole episode out of it, but Elementary barely slows down to take a breath as this exhilarating episode rockets form one big thing to the next.
Other highly-rated episodes are similarly daring in the inventive problems they offer up for Sherlock and Joan. “Bits and Pieces” opens with Sherlock carrying a severed head with no memory of where he got it, “Breathe” finds Sherlock and Joan investigating the death of a professional assassin, and “Through the Fog” has a suspected biological attack on the police station as cover for a more daring crime. All these episodes come out at an excellent 8.
This season ends with Sherlock banished from the US, but carrying on his partnership with Joan in London, what would have been a fitting end for our characters. We hardly regret getting a little bit more of such an excellent series as Elementary, but if season 6 really had been the end, it would have been a final season to be proud of.
Image: Sherlock, Joan, and Detective Bell from “Sand Trap” via IMDb
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