Elementary, one of our favorite detective drama/comedies returns to CBS tonight with an all new Thursday February 5, season 3 episode 13 called, “Hemlock,” and we have your weekly recap below. On tonight’s episode, a debt collector is murdered, and Holmes [Jonny Lee Miller] and Watson [Lucy Liu] try to narrow down the suspect pool from thousands of consumers who owed the victim money. Meanwhile, Joan’s relationship with Andrew progresses when he asks her to meet his father.
On the last episode, as Kitty began to unravel due to the imminent threat to her safety, Sherlock and Joan intensified their efforts to help her. Also, the origin of Sherlock and Kitty’s relationship was revealed. Did you watch the last episode? If you missed the episode we have a full and detailed recap right here for you.
On tonight’s episode as per the CBS synopsis, “when a debt collector is murdered, Holmes and Watson attempt to narrow down a suspect pool of thousands of consumers who owed the man money. Meanwhile, Watson’s relationship with Andrew progresses when he asks her to meet his father for the first time.”
Are you looking forward to the season 3 episode 13 tonight? Be sure to come back here later tonight at 10 PM EST for our awesome recap of this episode. 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 often to get the most current updates!
Sherlock talks about a woman that was found drained of blood – her name was Elizabeth Short – the Black Dahlia. He’s hanging around half naked with a woman who asks how he can solve a murder from the 40s and he says he did it with the Whitechapel killings and she’s shocked that he solved Jack the Ripper. He shows her some case files then shows the other naked girl he has there and she asks if they can do something besides talk about murder.
Sherlock talks in another language with a foreign man who then asks if he’s lonely. Sherlock says that’s not the point. He talks about Wilson and an alias to his sparring dummy. He’s going stir crazy. A woman, Jill Horowitz, comes to see him and says she heard he was the best PI. She says her husband Steve is an attorney at one of the top law firms in NYC. She says he’s been distant and working odd hours. She says he’s a terrible liar for a lawyer.
She suspects him of an affair and says she hasn’t seen him in two days. Sherlock says he’s not cheating but missing. She thinks he left her for another woman and asks him to get her proof for divorce court. He says he’s not a shady PI who does cases like this but says she caught him on a bored day. Joan meets Sherlock at the law office where he’s sketching. He tells Joan she had sex this morning and asks if Andrew is in town. She says he’s back for good.
Sherlock says she must be thrilled and she tries to act like she is. She asks why they’re looking at a cheating case and he says he’s used to having a companion and the brownstone feels empty. She says he can always call her but he says he won’t intrude on her independence. He says that the receptionist told him that no one by Steven’s name works there. A guy comes out and says Steven was fired six months ago. The guy says he doesn’t know what to tell them and can’t talk any longer.
Sherlock calls the number Steven’s wife gave them. A woman answers and says he works there. Sherlock and Joan head for the back door then call the number again. A phone rings and he asks if Steven is in. He says they have a racquetball date. They sneak up on the woman and ask why she’s pretending to be the secretary of a man who hasn’t worked there in six months. She’s caught off guard.
She takes them into a conference room and begs them not to tell anyone what she’s doing. She says they’re always looking for an excuse to fire people. She says Steven pays her on the side to answer the line and says it’s mostly his wife who calls. She says Steven and Jill aren’t the most connected couple and she’s not surprised he fooled her. She says the law firm name opens a lot of doors and says he probably wanted to keep up appearances.
She says she handled his mail and says he didn’t have much savings but was getting money from somewhere. She says some of the calls he got were shady. She says he also paid her in cash like he didn’t want a paper trail. She says he paid her most recently a couple of days ago and hands over the envelope. There’s no return address and has a Long Island postmark. There’s a stain on it and Sherlock licks it. He says it’s horchata – a Salvadoran food.
Sherlock tells the woman she’s free to resume her life of petty deception. They head to Long Island and find the horchata place. They look around for signs of Steven and she asks if he’s thought of getting a roommate. He says sometimes he thinks she really gets him then she says something like that. She says he could take in one of his interesting acquaintances, not a stranger. He asks who she has in mind and she suggest Mrs Hudson. Then she asks about the nose.
He says he owns half of Washington Heights and doesn’t need his spare room. He says he’s found a way out of the conversation and points out Steven’s car parked nearby. They see it has a boot on it and a number of tickets. She says it’s been there a few days judging by the citations. They also see an office with SMH – it’s his company. Sherlock picks the lock and they head inside. It looks like it was shut down recently. Sherlock finds a moldy cup and says less than a week ago.
[2015-02-05, 11:43:00 PM] Rachel Rowan: Sherlock wonders which came first, business shut down or him going missing, Joan says the number of phones indicates they were selling something. There’s a carpet missing and a fire extinguisher gone. They also spot blood and some broken glass. Sherlock taps a piece of floor molding and finds some tissue. Joan says it’s brain matter. They call Gregson. At the PD, Gregson says preliminary DNA indicates the blood and brain matter belong to Steven.
Sherlock says the suspect is likely a man since a woman couldn’t have beaten his brains out but says he’s confident Joan could. She thanks him for the compliment. Marcus pulls the company records and says that he was the only owner. They also pull phone records for the business but says they won’t be ready til the morning. Gregson wonders if it was the wife and Sherlock says no or she wouldn’t have hired. She says to think about the roommate but Marcus says don’t look at him.
Andrew and Joan talk about his office space in town he’s looking for. She says it sounds like he’s settled on Bushwick. He says his dad called and is in town and wants to take them out to dinner. She hesitates then says she’s like to meet him. He promises her it’s low key. Next morning she goes to Sherlock’s and finds him talking to an angry woman who rants and says not to call her again. He says it was Ruth Talbot from New Mexico.
He says he’s been calling numbers from the phone records to find out what SMH does. He says all these people had a motive to kill Steven Horowitz. He tells Joan that Steven was a debt merchant. He explains that people who can’t pay their bills have their debt bought by shady collectors. He says there is $2.4 trillion in debt most owed to credit card companies. He says after six months, companies give up on collecting and sell it off.
Sherlock says you can get it for pennies on the dollar and then can harass the money out of them. He says it’s declasse but highly profitable. He says Marcus has the W2s and is bringing in Eduardo Pena, an employee. Sherlock says the industry is known for hiring felons and Pena has a history of violent assault. Sherlock shows Joan the W2s and she gets a text about dinner with dad from Andrew. He asks her why she lied about liking a restaurant she hates.
He says meeting the parents is an important milestone and asks if that’s why she’s so tense. Marcus shows up with Pena and he says he worked with Steven for months and showed him the debt collection ropes. He says Steven got a huge debt portfolio for cheap and called it the mother lode. Gregson asks why the offices were shut down. He says sometimes Steven tried to collect in person if a person was local and owed a lot.
He says he went to see someone last week and then came back and told them to go home and that they were done with the package. Marcus asks Pena how he knew that when he claims to not see the whole package. Pena says it’s a guess. He says Steven did fire him and he has a rap sheet but says Steven fired them all last week and he went to Ohio for a nephew’s party. Sherlock buzzes in and says Pena stole the debt list and just installed 14 phone lines in his place to run the debt collection operation himself.
Marcus says that’s fraud that can send him back to jail. He tells Pena to hand over the mother lode list. Sherlock tells Joan they need to look for large debts owed to someone in rural Connecticut. He says they need to know what scared Steven into closing his business. Sherlock tells Joan she shouldn’t feel bad about not wanting to meet the parent of a placeholder relationship. He says he’s never seen her display passion and that their break up is inevitable.
He says they can talk on the drive to Connecticut to talk to Owen Downey that owes hundreds of thousands in debt. They ring the bell and asks to talk to Owen. A woman in scrubs says he’s getting a treatment. They go to see him and he’s in a bed riddled with emphysema. She says he’s his aunt and works in a hospital in town. They show her the photo of Steven. She says he came out a few times and asks if he’s okay. They tell her he was murdered.
She says she knew Steven was struggling to find his way but was a good man. She says he came first collecting debt but then started talking to Owen then brought groceries and came to visit. She says he told her that he couldn’t live with collecting debt from poor people anymore. Sherlock says maybe Steve was killed for being a debt forgiver not a debt collector.
Sherlock tells Gregson that Steven turned over a new leaf for some reason. Marcus says it’s like the Grinch giving back Christmas. He says the mother lode could have set him up for life and someone likely helped him purchase the debt since he didn’t have a lot of savings. Sherlock shows them eight men who were invested in Steven’s business. One is a known mobster, one is a sex trafficker, one a gun runner. None of them were good guys.
Sherlock says they just need to figure out which of these black hearts killed him. Joan tells Andrew’s dad about her change from being a surgeon to a sober companion to detective. She says it was more organic than it sounds. He tells her that it sounds like she found her passion and was open to it when it presented itself and didn’t settle. He tells her she’s quite remarkable and he wished they’d met before. She finds Sherlock watching his turtle paint and she punches him.
She says she hates it when he’s right and says it was totally a meet the parents thing. She says Andrew’s dad was amazing and it went so well but she didn’t want any of it. She asks what’s wrong with her and he says he has no expertise in love but it can’t be reduced to a checklist of traits. He says she may just have to recognize she just doesn’t want a relationship with Andrew and says she’s treating a kind man rather shabbily.
She asks why he’s making Clyde paint. He says he’s not forcing him and says Clyde likes it. Sherlock says he dug deeper and that Steven paid off his investors so it likely wasn’t one of them. He says maybe someone wanted a specific person to stay in debt. He asks why and then says he looked back at Owen. He says all the properties around Owen have been bought by a property development company called Stern for some unknown project.
He put the hacker network on it and says he now has to find out the humiliating price they want. They want a Super Bowl ring and he calls Phil Simms. She says he won’t hand over one of his Super Bowl rings but says she has no idea what he owes Sherlock. He brings her breakfast and clothes that he bought for her and says he hopes she likes them. He says they’re going to Stern Investments and says they’re planning to build a ski resort and need Owen’s property.
He says Owen’s house sits in the middle of their mountain lodge and is a hold out. He says his debts are the reason they could force him to sell and only six people knew about it – the board of Stern. If Owen’s debts were forgiven, the project could be ruined. Sherlock and Joan push into the board room and says one of them is a killer. A man says for them to get out and call their attorneys. He takes the card and says it’s possible that none of them is a killer but one of them likes to be spanked.
Sherlock says one is a geriatric, several are small women, one is near blind, one was with his dominatrix and one is peeling from a recent vacation. Sherlock says none is their killer but he likely knows who it is. They head to the law offices and look at a painting of Coleman Brown, one of the partners. Sherlock says Stern is represented by Steven’s old law firm. He says the law firm will earn a large commission once the deal closes. He says Coleman and Steven golfed together and likely pointed Steven to the debt mother lode.
Brown comes out and Sherlock says he heard they were looking at his painting. He asks if they need something from him and Sherlock says not at the moment. The man walks away and Sherlock tells Joan they’re going to build a case. He took the painting and says it won’t be missed once they take Brown down as a murderer, they would take it down anyway. They dig into Brown but are struggling to find evidence. She says she feels like the painting is staring.
She points out that he’s wearing horn rimmed glasses but says he’s now in rimless frames. She says there could be physical evidence after all. Brown is called down to the police station. He’s annoyed to see Sherlock and Joan are there and says they stole his portrait from the office. Gregson asks him about Steven and Sherlock says they know about the debt package he pointed Steven too and that he couldn’t abide that Steven was going to forgive Owen’s debt when they needed it for the ski project.
Joan says they found fragments of his glasses at Steven’s office and says they also found his print on the lens. Brown says he wants his lawyer and Gregson says his only bargaining chip is to give them the location of Steven’s body. He cuffs him and says they’ll call his lawyer. They give Jill the mother lode debt list. She says Steven could have told her he was fired. She asks what happened to them and Sherlock says he couldn’t say but the debt package could make her very wealthy.
He says Steven had other ideas about it but it’s up to her what she does. She leaves the papers there and goes. Sherlock later shreds it page by page. Joan picks up coffee for she and Andrew and they sit at a coffee shop. He asks what’s going on and she takes his hand and says he’s a great guy and she’s lucky to know him. He asks if he’s not what she’s looking for and she says she doesn’t know what she’s looking for. He starts to choke and keels over.
He goes still and she starts CPR. A woman had bumped into her just as she got her coffees and he accidentally took a sip of Joan’s. Was someone trying to poison Joan? Who would do that?
THE END!
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