'Elementary': Season 1, Episode 20: 'Dead Man's Switch' Recap

Watson comes downstairs to find Holmes tattooing himself. She wants to plan for his one-year sober anniversary, but Holmes says he won’t be accepting his chip.

He gets  call from Alfredo, who has a friend who needs his help.

They go to see Ken Whitman. He is Alfredo’s sponsor. Ken explains that two years ago his daughter Eva used a fake ID to get into a club. A man named Brent Garvey slipped something into her drink and raped her. After he was charged, two others came forward. Eva was doing better… but then he got a video in the mail of Eva and Brent. A note demands $10 thousand or the video will be released.

Ken explains he paid it. A few weeks later they asked for more money. And again. Holmes takes the case.

He and Watson stake out a man—Charles Augustus Milverton—whose bank account matched the one in the letter.

When he leaves, Holmes breaks into his flat. He opens his laptop. He finds videos of the other girls who were raped. More videos pop up—he is a professional blackmailer. Watson alerts him that Milverton is coming back—Holmes cuts to the back door but someone is there as well. He hides.

Milverton sits. He notices the other man, and says “please,” but is shot multiple times. Holmes cannot see the killer. The man gathers up Milverton and the laptop.

Holmes goes to see Gregson as he is leaving. He tells him to watch the DVD and then join him in the conference room.

Holmes explains what happened. He keeps it all hypothetical, in case the accomplice learns of the death and releases the DVD. He cannot report the murder, officially, for this reason. He want time to find the accomplice. Gregson wonders if the accomplice might  also be the murderer.

At home, Watson has gone through the records Holmes brought back. There is a ledger, probably the pay offs. Watson is concerned about Holmes after what he saw.

Holmes wants to go see Garvey, in case he was the accomplice, working from prison.

They find him beaten to a pulp, recently jumped. They ask about Milverton, who is friends with his dad and visited. He knows about the fail safe. He says that he didn’t give Milverton the tape; he kept them in a storage unit and it was auctioned off when he was arrested. Milverton was blackmailing Garvey, too.

In the ledger, he makes 10% payments to someone named Henry8. Alfredo texts—someone is at Milverton’s door.

When they get there, he’s gone. Alfredo says he got into a cab. Alfredo describes him, and says it’s odd but he swears he saw him before. Holmes decides to regress him. He tries to get Alfredo in the trunk.

Watson pulls up a video on her phone—a lawyer commercial for Sheriff Duke. That’s the guy.

They go to see him, but he says the name doesn’t ring a bell. Holmes smashes his diploma on the wall and points out it is a fake—Duke is not licensed. He admits to knowing Milverton but says he is not his client… rather the other way around.

He says that Milverton told him if any sensitive information came across his desk he would use it to help them both get money. He insists he is not the fail safe.

At home, Holmes has bought sobriety chips off the Internet to see what the fuss is about. He says two years ago Milverton referred a client to Duke, a man named Abraham Zelner, who sued an airline for removing him from a flight. He is morbidly obese. Holmes postulates “Henry8” is his code for the fat man.

Gregson calls. A man was trying to dump a body in wet cement. The man claimed he did it because he was being blackmailed. It is Anthony Pistone, the father of one of the other victims. The media already has the story—knowledge of Charles Milverton’s death is out.

They talk to Anthony. He tells them he left cash under a park bench for one of the demands, and followed Milverton. He says he smashed the laptop. Gregson notes there was damage done to the victim’s face, post-mortem. Anthony says when he knew he was going to be caught, he thought the body was laughing at him. He smashed him with his boot.

Holmes is furious that Anthony put the victims of blackmail all at risk. Bell tells Holmes that the address for Zelner was a butcher’s shop, and they can’t find any record of his existence.

Watson calls him—Alfredo says his sponsor just got a new blackmail demand from Charles Milverton.

They look at the e-mail. The accomplice is not releasing the information—he is taking over the business. Milverton’s plan backfired, and for the moment, secrets are safe.

Alfredo wants to talk about Holmes getting his chip, but he says he can’t accept it. He doesn’t want to be reminded of his failure. Alfredo tells him milestones aren’t about him—they’re about the people striving to do the same and seeing that it can be done.

Holmes is sitting in Watson’s room when she wakes. He thinks he has uncovered the identity of Henry8 and Zelner. He thinks Zelner was a made-up name. He sued the airline in an obesity-related lawsuit, and accepted their low offer because his fake name might not stand up to scrutiny. So Holmes thought perhaps he had done it before. He looked into lawsuits, and finds code names.

He didn’t find the real name… but he did find photographs for a few of the cases. The same man under different identities, although Stuart Bloom does not match the pattern of the code names. Holmes thinks that is his real name and his first lawsuit.

They go to Mr. Bloom’s house and let themselves in. The floor is covered with something—cat litter. Watson starts coughing—the litter was put down to absorb strong odors.

They find Bloom dead in the bathtub.

They bring in the police. He has been there about a week. There is a boot print on his chest. Holmes says Milverton killed him—the cat litter, the boot match. But if Mr. Bloom hasn’t stepped in for Milverton, who has?

Holmes admits to Watson he ordered the chips to get a rise out of her, to spark a conversation. He says that he can’t accept the chip for his one year of sobriety, because he has not been sober a year. He explains that he snuck out of Hemdale when he was sick. Watson reminds him that he was still sober for the rest of the year, not including that one day.

He is upset, as a man of details, that he had decided to not use drugs, and then used them. He says he is having a hard time telling Alfredo and it didn’t seem right to tell him before telling her.

He gets Charles Milverton’s autopsy report, which he doesn’t think is very helpful since he was there when he was shot. Watson looks at it—finding it odd that Pistone only stepped on part of his face. Holmes remembers there were scars there that are now destroyed.

He goes in and sees Anthony, about to leave on bail.

They say that four months ago, he went in, saying he was mugged. Watson says they think he lied—Anthony tracked him down and beat him, until Milverton offered him a piece of his business. Holmes notes the scars look like the emblem on his ring.

Karen, they note, is not his daughter but his stepdaughter, and they have a history of not getting along. Now, with two fail safes, Milverton took out Bloom.

They found Milverton’s laptop at Anthony’s office, not smashed. It was in the desk of his brother, who confessed to helping. He will be going back to prison.

Holmes goes to talk to Alfredo.

As he touches up his tattoo, Watson notes it is after midnight and thanks him for his real anniversary. She gives him a gift.

It is a framed quote:

The woods are lovely,

Dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And Miles to go before I sleep.