Elementary Season 7 Episode 6 Recap and Review - Command: Delete

(Spoilers ahead for Elementary S7E6, and episodes prior to it)

Elementary Season 7 Epsiode 6 picks up right where the last one left off. There were no indications in last week's episode (which I recapped here) that it was one of a two (or multi) part episode, so this came as a bit of a surprise. Not entirely so, in hindsight, given how abruptly Episode 5 ended. On the other hand, it looks like Odin Reichenbach is, as expected, going to be the primary antagonist for this final season of Elementary. We get to see more of him and his motivations here, and again follow the two-thread model of storytelling: one about Odin and the other about this week's mystery. As always, let's start at the beginning. 

We get a quick recap of the last scene from the previous episode, which continues on in this one. Odin continues expounding on all the good he's done and explains how he did it. He owns the biggest tech company in the world — Odker, a Google-Facebook hybrid of sorts — that allows him access to emails, videos, and social media posts of millions of people, which he uses to identify potential killers. He then turns 'good citizens/patriots' like Patrick Meers on to these potential killers who are executed before they get a chance to commit their planned crime. A completely remorseless Odin claims he has saved hundreds of lives, and wants to now recruit Sherlock and Joan to his cause. He wants them to help him refine his 'system' using their expertise of the criminal mind. Joan questions why he doesn't go to the authorities, but of course Odin can't because his methods are highly unethical and in complete violation of his products' Terms of Service, as Sherlock points out. 

After heading back to the brownstone, Sherlock destroys all their electronics that run Odker software, to avoid being spied on. Joan wants to make sure she and Sherlock are on the same page about not joining Odin — understandable given how often Sherlock leaves her out of the loop when making serious decisions, but more on that later. He confirms they are. Then we get a bit of exposition masked as dialogue on why it's bad for corporations to spy on people online, use this information to decide who potential murderers are, and then execute them. Thankfully, it's short enough to not get tedious. Joan and Sherlock agree that it won't be easy to stop Odin and consider their options. As this is clearly out of NYPD's league, they decide to leave Marcus and Captain Gregson out of the loop. When they talked about how Odker is a global corporation and Odin is like a funnel spider with his web spreading everywhere, my mind immediately flashed back to Arthur Conan Doyle's Holmes referring to Moriarty as a spider for a similar reason. I fully expected Sherlock to suggest turning to the Moriarty of this universe, Jaime Moriarty, as she once ran a huge criminal organisation which has influence across the globe. Or at least to his father, Morland Holmes, who took over that organisation after Moriarty was imprisoned. Instead, they choose to go to Agent McNally of the NSA. I was surely not the only one groaning out "No" at this point. It was obvious, to me at least, that this would turn out to be a futile exercise. And so it does. But I get ahead of myself. 

Once they have decided to take things to Agent McNally, Sherlock asks Joan to go help Marcus with a case he requested assistance on, i.e. our weekly mystery, which interestingly also seems to involve a future crime. Marcus, while investigating the sudden disappearance of a former cop, medical retiree Davis, finds that the latter has recently modified a gun into a sniper rifle, which is also missing, seemingly pointing to the possibility that he may have turned into an assassin. Joan and Sherlock are able to track Davis down and the NYPD get to him before he gets a chance to execute his commission — which turns out to be of the non-executing variety. He tells them that he was only asked to shoot at the windows of a particular hotel room to scare whoever was in there. Turns out the idea was to get the people in the room — a middleweight boxer and his security detail — out of the hotel room so they could be shot. Thus our detectives have an actual crime to solve, which as it turns out, is not that interesting or difficult to crack. I figured out who the killer was quite early on, and I usually don't guess these things. It's all very by the numbers and nothing we haven't seen on this show before. Once again, we get a little bit of Captain Dwyer — this time an interaction with Marcus that had me chuckling ("Pat on the back"). Must say, an Elementary spin-off featuring Captain Dwyer would be quite fun. His exhausted air and matter-of-fact straight talking are so very droll. 

To get back to the more interesting story arc, Sherlock meets McNally (who couldn't be more skeevy) and the latter agrees to look into the matter. He then comes back and asks Sherlock to get Odin talking about all the people he has had killed so the NSA can get an audio recording, using which they can then proceed. Sherlock complies, but the recording McNally produces is too clear to have been from anything other than a wire, which proves McNally is part of Odin's cabal, as Holmes puts it. McNally then tells Sherlock that Odin is still insistent that Joan and he be recruited and to enable this, he shows Sherlock files on all his friends and threatens harm to them and to Joan herself — the one sure-fire way to get Sherlock to reconsider.

McNally then meets with Odin and tells him he may be making a mistake Re: his insistence on recruiting Sherlock, but Odin counters that he knows Sherlock better in "all the ways that matter." He seems confident that Sherlock will come around and join him.

Sherlock, meanwhile, does that thing I was talking about before — he hides the truth from Joan, telling her only that the NSA is investigating and it will take time. He's clearly planning something, but what? My bets are still on Moriarty and/or Morland being involved before long. That seems like the only way for him to go. But, as a friend put it, him keeping things from Joan and trying to protect her is a bit sad because this is the one iteration where Holmes truly respects Watson. Would be nice to see him come clean and completely trust her before Elementary ends for good. 

(Elementary Season 7 is currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video, and will soon premiere on television on AXN)