'Elementary' Season 1, Episode 16: 'Details' Recap

Watson comes home late. The bulb is out in the foyer.

She hears a voice—“tell me where Holmes is and I’ll let you live.” Watson tries to run but is tripped by a wire.

The masked man is Holmes. He’s testing her ability to defend herself.

Bell is on his way home when a car drives up beside him. It begins to shoot at Bell, whose car hits road work, and flips.

Gregson, Watson, and Holmes examine the car. Bell is all right. Holmes compliments him with how many enemies he has made—he does excellent work. Bell says he knows exactly who did it.

Bradshaw, a gangster, drug king pin. Bell explains that Bradshaw was smart. He was arrested when someone planted heroine, but he got out soon. Bell continued watching him, and cleaned up most of the men from his team.

Bell shows Holmes the car that Bradshaw loved—the same one that drove up next to him.

A police woman comes up to tell Bell someone is there to see him—Holmes can tell Bell has slept with her and that her partner is jealous because he wants to sleep with her. He can see that she boxes and maybe Watson can spar with her to work on her self-defense!

Gregson goes to see Bradshaw, who is in the park. He tells them his car was stolen. Bradshaw isn’t cooperating. Holmes asks if he wagers. He tells him he can sink the basketball from a long shot for information. Holmes chucks the ball backward.

“He wasn’t going to tell us anything anyway.”

Bell goes to see someone… the “Mr. Cheese” his policewoman told him came by the station. Mr. Cheese is his gang name. He’s on parole. Bell gives him groceries.

Holmes looks up on Bradshaw. He was especially good at staying out of trouble, and using his minions to do his work. Watson points out it’s strange that Bradshaw went after Bell rather than make someone else do it. Holmes says it’s a personal grudge, and that will make a smart man stupid.

Watson gets up to order food. Holmes hits her in the back with a tennis ball. She knocks over his wall of locks to punish him.

A woman sees a man sitting on her stoop. She tells him he has to leave but he doesn’t move. He is dead. It is Bradshaw.

Holmes arrives and sit next to him, mimicking his pose. He smells him. The policewoman is Paula, Bell’s sex partner. He asks her about boxing, but gets distracted smelling a wet cardboard box on the ground.

Gregson comes, and Holmes tells him it seems he has uncovered evidence that Bell killed him.

He and Gregson go to see him, and Holmes admits he doesn’t think it was Bell.

Watson speaks to her therapist, who wants to know if she has any post traumatic symptoms. She says that her pattern is becoming troubling. First she won’t tell Holmes that she now lives there unpaid, and now she is putting herself in danger. She thinks she should move on.

When she gets home, Holmes is blaring music… to cover up his ballistics exam.

Outside Mr. Cheese’s work, Mr. Cheese tells Bell that he reached out to his contacts… and he got a name. Bell gets annoyed that he violated his parole by contacting old friends, and Mr. Cheese—Andre says he just wanted to help his brother.

Bell gets texted to meet Sherlock. He goes to the Brownstone. Watson tells him Holmes thinks someone is trying to frame him for the murder of Bradshaw. Holmes shows him the gun he’s been using—he found it at Bell’s apartment, hidden and newly used.

Holmes talks to Bell quietly after laying it out with Gregson. He tells Bell someone had a key to his apartment to get in. Bell calls in Andre. He mentions the boots, the track marks found in the cardboard. He gave his boots to his brother. Andre is furious Bell thinks he might be involved. He and Andre argue, and Andre punches him.

Holmes and Watson go back to Bell’s to look for more evidence, but Holmes is getting frustrated that he can’t find any. He also reveals that he knows Watson lied to him about being his sober companion.

“It became clearer and clearer that you were not staying for me, but for yourself.”

He proposes she stay on permanently, and let him teach her. He will pay a stipend that covers what her father paid her. He offers her a partnership, and tells her to think it over.

“I am better with you, Watson. I’m sharper, I’m more focused. Difficult to say why, exactly. Perhaps in time I’ll solve that as well.”

Bell bangs on Andre’s apartment. He can hear the TV but Andre won’t let him in and he wants to apologize. The door opens and he goes in, to find his brother bleeding profusely on the floor. He calls in an ambulance, and grabs his brother to him. He sees Andre has written something on the floor.

“It was not Marcus.”

Holmes and Watson check out the aftermath. Holmes is upset. He didn’t realize Bell had a brother, even being in his apartment. Holmes believes it’s the same shooter. Andre realized it was a set up against Bell.

They go to wait with Bell in the hospital as they stitch up his brother. Bell tells them how he had Andre set up to get out on early parole by cashing in a big favor, when he was in jail, but Andre wouldn’t rat on his other drug members. Watson realizes that Bell was the one who turned in the Bradshaw detail, and busted them for planting evidence.

Gregson calls in Officer Paula Reyes. He accuses her of all the crimes. He notes she was questioned for planting the heroin in Bradshaw’s home. She dated Bell, and had a key to his apartment. They show her the eyelets from the boots she used to plant evidence and then burned.

Andre and Bell watch her arrest on the television. Bell apologizes to him for what he said. Bell notes that he was shot in the back and he couldn’t have known it wasn’t him—like he wrote in blood. But Andre says he did know, and they were family.

Watson tells Holmes she wants to be paid Thursdays. She will live there until she finds a place, and Holmes will go to group meetings with her. And one more thing—she hits him in the face with a ball.