Elementary, one of our favorite detective drama/comedies returns tonight with with an all new Thursday November 20, season 3 episode 4 called, “Bella.” On tonight’s episode, Holmes [Jonny Lee Miller] investigates when a groundbreaking artificial intelligence software program is stolen, but he enlists Joan’s [Lucy Liu] help after he becomes more interested in disproving the computer’s abilities than in tracking down the thief. Meanwhile, Joan confronts Sherlock about his motives when she learns he has contacted her boyfriend without her knowledge.
On the last episode, Sherlock helped a math genius from his network of “Irregulars” experts after he stumbled upon a body while participating in a math puzzle competition. Meanwhile, Joan attempted to extend an olive branch after she learned about Kitty’s past. Did you watch the last episode? If you missed the episode we have you covered with a full and detailed recap, right here for you.
On tonight’s episode as per the CBS synopsis, “when a groundbreaking artificial intelligence software program is stolen, Sherlock agrees to take on the case, but enlists Joan’s assistance in solving it when he becomes more interested in disproving the computer’s abilities than finding the thief. Meanwhile, Joan confronts Sherlock about his motives after she learns he has been in direct contact with her boyfriend, Andrew, without her knowledge.”
Are you looking forward to the season 3 episode 4 tonight? Be sure to come back here later tonight at 10 PM EST for our live recap of this episode, which is sure to be an awesome one. In the meantime, hit up the comments below and let us know how excited you are for season 3.
Tonight’s episode begins now – Refresh Page for Updates
Sherlock watches his turtle eat and Kitty comes in and says she’s tired of taking Clyde the turtle back and forth between he and Joan. He says he’s busy and she says he’s watching a turtle. Turns out, he’s leeching himself. The doorbell rings and he says he’ll need a minute because he’s dizzy. The guy there is Edwin Borstein and he says a friend of his recommended him. He says someone broke into his AI lab and stole something. He has a photo of the perpetrator but the photo the security program took shows the mask.
Edwin says the program is unique. He says the program is called Bella and says she’s remarkable. He says the program made a remarkable request last week. Sherlock doesn’t believe the man has made this breakthrough. Edwin says she’s never been connected to the internet but she asked to be hooked to it. Sherlock says true AI doesn’t exist but Edwin insists Bella is that thing.
Sherlock and Kitty go to Edwin’s company with him. He says a program called Eugene Goostman recently broke through a barrier and was emulating a 13 year old boy. They go to see Bella. Edwin introduces his partner Melinda and they show him the little doll they wired to the speakers that represents Bella.
Sherlock sits and says hello to the doll. He asks if she asked to be connected to a network and why. She says information is there and useful to solve problems. He asks how she arrived at the concept of useful. Bella asks for more information. Sherlock says he needs time alone with Bella. She keeps saying – I don’t understand, can you tell me more.
She says the existence of network was intuited from data sets. He asks what she means by useful and she gives a definition. Kitty takes a break because she’s annoyed. She calls Joan to come in because Sherlock won’t stop. Joan knocks on the door and asks if he’s going to break the computer. He says no and Joan tells Kitty to ride it out and use the fire extinguisher on him if he starts breaking things.
Sherlock asks Bella about love. She says she doesn’t understand and asks to be told more. He says he loved his mother, Irene and Joan to some extent. She says the concept of love exists because it serves a need. She says a better question is why is love needed. He wakes Kitty and tells her to tell Edwin he’ll take the case free of charge and says he’s going to go sleep for a couple of hours.
Joan comes to Sherlock’s and Kitty tells her Sherlock is awake but rather useless. She finds a kid there with Sherlock – Mason – and he tells the kid to let Joan in. He’s working with Mason because he’s an AI modeler. He also has others on screen to help debunk Bella. He says he’s working for free so he’s not working for them and is free to find what he finds.
He says they are paying Joan a fee, though, so he tells her to get to work finding who stole the program. He tells her to get cracking and he has every confidence in her. She and Kitty look at the footage and Kitty says the guy went right for it and must have known what it is. Joan says he’s an older guy and points out liver spots and teeth yellowed from years of smoking.
They go to the outside of Edwin’s company and look for a likely spot where the thief may have been casing the place. Joan asks how she felt about the meeting and Kitty says she was kind of confused. Kitty points out an apartment with a good vantage point and they go to check it out. Joan sees a cigarette butt and says it’s Galouise unfiltered and leave nasty stains.
Sherlock tells Joan and Kitty they can’t refer to Bella as “she” anymore so it won’t humanize her. Joan says she thinks they found where the guy was watching. They don’t know who he is but they have a DNA match and it’s the same guy that stole the first complete match of the human genome. They show Sherlock the sketch from the Harvard robbery and he says the guy is known as Raffles.
He’s a famous cat burglar who mostly steals art. They wonder why he’s moved on to tech. He says he will best Bella and she/it won’t baffle him again. He says that frees him up to work the case and find the thief. Joan’s BF tells her he’s been helping Sherlock on the case all day. She asks if he’s asked for help before. He says no and asks if it’s a problem and she says no.
Joan meets Sherlock at Burnett Technology – he says Kitty is running an errand. They are there to discuss many unsolved high tech thefts that all look like the work of Raffles. Sherlock thinks Raffles has a patron that is buying what he’s stealing and one of those with the interest and budget to afford him is Robert Burnett. He shows her the sketch of the head of his security – Rupert – who looks just like the sketch of Raffles.
She asks why he contacted Andrew and he says he had the aptitude and free time since he’s unemployed. She says he’s not unemployed, he just sold his company. The receptionist asks why they want to see Burnett and Sherlock tells her to tell him it’s about Raffles. He then tells Joan that Andrew had some clever insight and is a smart guy. The receptionist says Burnett will see them.
Burnett greets them and Sherlock says they know he hired Raffles to steal tech breakthrough son him. Sherlock says the scandal will destroy his company. Sherlock says all he needs to do is prove they delete Bella from all their servers or face scandal and ruin. He tells him he has one day to think it over. Sherlock shows Melinda a video of the files being deleted from Burnett’s servers.
They go to tell Edwin. He’s dead on the floor of the room where Bella lives. Melinda says Edwin has epilepsy. Joan says she’s a doctor and checks him but says he’s gone. Sherlock looks at the flashing screens of images going off behind Bella. Hmm… Did Bella set off flickering images to cause a grand mal seizure to kill her own creator? Interesting.
Marcus comes to work the scene. Melinda is distraught. Marcus says Edwin booted up the program and it instantly started the images that triggered the fatal seizure. Sherlock says this wasn’t random – he says someone infected the computer with a virus and says he was murdered. Melinda says that’s not possible since Bella isn’t hooked to the web or the network and they scanned her for viruses yesterday.
Melinda says only she and Edwin have access except when they allowed Sherlock in. She says to scan the machine for viruses and do what they need. She says she didn’t do it but says they need to consider that Bella may have been upset that Edwin denied her access to a network. Melinda says if Bella deduced that Edwin was the one variable keeping her from what she wanted.
She says Bella knew Edwin had epilepsy. Melinda says the relationship between program and programmer can become adversarial. Sherlock says a series of ones and zeros can’t commit murder. Sherlock says the machine is either a murder weapon or a murderer. He unplugs it and tells Marcus they can’t let it sit their hatching schemes. He takes Bella to Mason who scans it for viruses.
He says it’s completely clean and there’s nothing in the code he can see. Mason says it’s the button box thing – a theory from an AI conference. He says if a computer has a big red button on the side. When it solves a problem you push the button but then it wants the button pressed sooner and the best thing is to get rid of the human and build another machine to press its button.
He says they could eliminate all humans like that. He says you can’t reason with a computer because they have no emotions. Joan says he’s quoting terminators. Sherlock says unless the machines rise tonight, they have to solve a murder. Mason says they need to interrogate her. Mason asks Bella if she killed Edwin. Bella says no. Joan says she can tell they are about to crack her and leaves.
She goes home and tells Andrew she was questioning a computer. She sees the champagne and ask what they’re celebrating. He says he was trading ideas with a guy named Magnus. He says he’s flying to meet the guy in Copenhagen in a couple of days. He says he would have to spend some time there so it would be back and forth. He tells her Sherlock put him on an email chain and 36 hours later he’s on the way to Copenhagen. She laughs but knows what he did.
Next day, Sherlock listens to death metal when Joan comes in and shuts it off. She asks if he arranged the deal for Andrews to go to Copenhagen. He asks if she thinks he contrived all those chain of events. She says he could and Kitty refuses to comment. Joan asks why he’s listening to death metal. He says one of Edwin’s eccentricities is an affinity for this type of music.
He says Schuldiner is another enthusiast that Edwin swapped music with. This music was uploaded to Bella. Sherlock says they are listening for anything unusual. Kitty says this new song is by Goatwhore. Then there some noise that is not a song. Sherlock says something is encoded on there that’s not music.
Mason says it’s a file called greatshow.exe. They run it and it’s the images that triggered the fatal seizure. Joan says they could have killed him in an easier way but Sherlock says the killer may have wanted it to look like Bella did it. Marcus asks why and who would want that.
They locate Schuldiner and bring him in to interrogation. He says he didn’t kill Edwin and asks why he would. Gregson says he mailed Edwin a disc with a computer virus that triggered the seizure that killed him. The guy says he’s a busboy and has no clue about computers. His real name is Michael. Joan theorizes that someone knew they corresponded and intercepted the package.
Sherlock says who would benefit most from the world thinking the computer killed Edwin. Joan comes in to see Sherlock. He’s got Bella there and is playing more death metal. He shows her the suspects. They are all employees at ETRA – an organization that researches all the ways humans can go extinct. Sherlock says they think one of the biggest threats is artificial intelligence.
Sherlock says they theorize that days after the first real AI is created, humanity will begin to die off. Sherlock says they sound like nutters as the enemies of AI. Joan asks if they think they killed Edwin to draw attention to their cause. He tells her to admire the beauty of his theory. She says it’s elaborate and actually makes sense. He says he sent Kitty’s to Michael’s apartment to look for a link.
Joan asks again if he set Andrew up with Magnus. She says she wants to believe it and he says he has no reason to excise Andrew from her life – he says he likes the man. She says he never mentioned that and Sherlock asks why he would and if she needs his validation. Sherlock rattles off a bunch of stuff and says Andrew understands their relationship.
He tells Joan she’s an important part of his life and a big part of why he came back to New York was to repair their relationship. He says Andrew accepts this without jealousy so he has no reason to ban him to Scandinavia. Joan says she believes him and feels like hugging him now. He tells her as a friend it would be a rash decision. Kitty texts and says his apartment is spotless and she can’t find a connection.
They agree he looks like the kind of a guy who lives in a dump. Michael tells them he won free cleaning services from a website. They show him the website doesn’t exist. They also show him the ETRA photos and ask if he recognizes the house cleaner. They tell him that the cleaner likely swapped his music disc for the killer one.
He points out a girl from a classroom photo and says that’s the one who cleaned his place. Sherlock tells Marcus that Isaac Pike is a professor and an ETRA alarmist. His student Erin, though, is now assisting him but she has no computer experience. Sherlock says they have enough to get a warrant. They go to the college and Marcus introduces himself to the wheelchair bound professor and his student.
Pike asks who Borstein is and what they’re talking about. Marcus says they wrote a virus and killed him. Erin says she wrote the virus and it was all her idea. Sherlock says she’s lying but Marcus has to arrest her. Sherlock says she’s clearly lying for her mentor. At the police station, Erin tells them she picked Edwin as a target, lurked on the websites and figured out who he was corresponding with.
She says she wrote the code, cleaned Michael’s house and swapped the disc. Marcus hands her some paper and asks her to write a little bit of code for them. Pike tells Gregson that Erin is a good person. He tells Pike that they’re searching his computer and if they find the virus, he’s done. Gregson tells Sherlock they have nothing to tie Pike to the crime and found nothing on his computer.
Gregson says his hands are tied unless more evidence shows up linking Pike to the crime. Sherlock gets a call on his cell and ignores it then ignores a call on the home line. Kitty tells him it’s Joan who wants to come round and help but Sherlock says Joan is too moral for this part of the investigation. He says they are going to work Pike’s family to get him to admit he did it.
Sherlock introduces himself to Pike on the campus the next day. He says they both know he killed Edwin and Erin is covering for him. Sherlock says he knows about his younger brother Joshua who has had drug issues. He says the young man has two strikes and they have a photo of him buying heroin which will make it a third strike. Pike asks if he confesses, will they get rid of the blackmail.
Pike tells Sherlock he researched him too and thinks he was in rehab himself. Sherlock says that has nothing to do with this and Pike says he doesn’t think a recovering addict would put another addict who’s clearly struggling. He says that requires machine logic to do that and he doesn’t think Sherlock would do that. Pike says this is about the survival of the human race and says he thinks Sherlock is bluffing.
He says Sherlock may want the world to think he’s an automaton, but they know better. He rolls away quite smug that Sherlock won’t do anything to his brother. Kitty asks Sherlock if he caved on the brother. Sherlock lies on the floor near Bella. He tells Kitty he needs a couple of hours more with Bella. Joan greets Andrew who is leaving for Copenhagen. She says he’s great and she wanted to surprise him.
She tells him she can go to Copenhagen with him for a few days and he’s thrilled. Sherlock asks Bella about the conspiracy. He tells her about Erin, Pike and Pike’s brother in general terms. He asks if it’s right to let the second murderer walk free. She says she needs more information. Sherlock looks at her curiously. That’s where it ends. Arrgh. No closure!
THE END!
