'Elementary' Season 1, Episode 18: 'The Deductionist' Recap

Scantily clad women dance around Holmes, who sits shirtless in a chair. They ask if he’s ready to get into the act, and handcuff him to the chair. They shut off the music and begin to rob him. They ask where he keeps the money, and threaten him.

He calls and the police come in from where they were waiting. Holmes asks if he can keep the cuffs he has picked.

Watson tells Holmes it still smells like stripper. She says she has to go to her place, she has heard from her landlord that her subletter is having wild parties. He reminds her she could live there, rent-free, but she loves having her own place.

A man named Krebs gets a “delivery.” It’s a prison inmate. He asks if his sister is there yet, and Krebs reminds him per an agreement he isn’t allowed to see her while there. He explains the kidney donation surgery.

They wheel him in, handcuffed, and inject him with anesthesia. He counts down from twenty, falling asleep. They ask the officer to remove the cuffs. The nurse notes there seems to be something wrong with the IV—the anesthetic is pooling. The man leaps up, slits the officer’s throat with a scalpel, takes his gun and shoots the medical team.

The man’s name is Howard Ennis. He escaped, leaving quite a body count. Holmes recognizes the name—he stalked women on the Internet and killed 13 before being arrested eight years ago. All the victims were tall blondes. They called him The Peeler. He skinned people.

Everyone is horrified by the scene, the bodies. Holmes thinks a bit. He says that Ennis pulled the IV, slowed his heart rate with practiced meditation for the machines, and attacked. He points out a tiny blood stain on the table, created from yanking out the IV.

They find a message in blood on the doors. “Shedir.” The name for the southern-most star in Cassiopeia.

Outside, a pretty blonde profiler speak to the media about the situation. Holmes pooh-poohs her, someone he worked with long ago.

“I deduce. Enormous difference.”

She comes and he introduces her to Watson. He reminds her that Ennis’ sister is there. He notes that she wrote a book on Ennis, but after claiming he had surely suffered sexual abuse, she was sued by his parents.

Gregson goes to talk to Patricia Ennis. She says she didn’t want Howard’s kidney… but the doctor’s said it would save her. She says they hadn’t spoken in years, but she has letters. She sees the profiler on the news, and asks if she’s helping.

“She did it once, she can do it again.”

Watson goes back to her apartment, and chats with the maintenance man who is working on her oft-broken radiator. He tells her that three floors up, a boy got in trouble for watching a porn—made right there. Her sublet had been using the apartment to shoot porn.

Watson finds Holmes lying on a table. She tells him she is getting evicted.

Holmes is looking up at an arrangement of Cassiopeia he has set up. He points out murders on the stars. He thinks he it is a code meant to be cracked—the police are meant to go to the next star. He glares at the profiler, Ms. Drummond, again, and tells Watson he slept with her.

He goes to tell Gregson that the star murders are a distraction. Gregson tells him that Drummond just told him the same thing.

Dressed in a hoodie and glasses, Ennis goes into a store and stands behind a blonde in line. He shows her his gun, and shoots the cashier, and a bystander. He asks the blonde to do him a favor—take his picture with her phone. She obliges. He holds up a newspaper with his face on it and smiles.

The police speak to the woman. Gregson is angry at Holmes and Drummond, who claimed he would lay low. Drummond thinks he changed his routine to get cash from the drawer to get out of town. Holmes shoots her down. Why would Ennis leave the blonde alive when she would prove such a temptation to him? Watson asks if Holmes thinks he is leaving a message.

Watson goes to see the man, Cooper, who lives in her apartment. She yells at him. He told her he was a documentary film maker but he needed money.

“Man, did this get screwed up. After you took the apartment back I was gonna ask you out.”

At home, Watson tells Holmes she knows why he doesn’t like Drummond. She wrote an article about him, though she didn’t refer to him by name. Watson did research on her. He tells her that originally he was trying to help bring her into his deductive methods, but she was using him, profiling him. He admits she saw his struggle with addiction coming, and he did not.

Gregson is getting increasingly upset. Watson suggests that the randomness, the going against his profile, is deliberate, to confuse them.

Bell comes in… Ennis is on the phone.

Ennis asks if Drummond is listening in. He tells her she is not aging well. He tells them he’s going to tell them what he is up to—and Holmes interrupts saying it isn’t necessary. It’s about Drummond.

“You detest her… because she solved you… she de-mystified you.”

Ennis says he knows who Holmes is. He read Drummond’s article on him. He says he wants to humiliate her, yes, but not because of what she did to him… because of what she did to his family. He says his father was a good man and it wasn’t his fault that he ended up that way. Ennis tells them his father hanged himself after the book came out, and his mother died soon after.

He tells Gregson all he has to do is give him Drummond.

Holmes quips that he thinks the demands are reasonable.

Holmes goes to Ennis’ bunker. Holmes points out that the newspaper clippings, the souvenirs from victims, they’re arranged. The cell phone was left there for them to find on purpose.

“This room represents who he was not who he is.”

Holmes insists Ennis is working to become profile proof.

He asks Drummond about the sexual abuse. He points out that the allegations she used in her book were anonymous, from a neighbor. He compares it to what she said about him, using quotes he said and making them seem like quotes from outsiders.

At home, Watson prepares to go to bed while Holmes broods. She suggests maybe Drummond’s article wasn’t correct. She predicted the drug issue, but he overcame it. She also suggested he would never have a friend, and that’s been proved wrong.

Watson turns and realizes Holmes is watching the porn made at her home on mute. She watches in horror as the star grabs a spatula. Watson pauses it, looking at the radiator.

Holmes wakes Watson early. He says there was a disturbance at Patricia Ennis’ home. They go, and Gregson tells them there was no disturbance, but neighbors who hadn’t realize Ennis’ connection throwing things through the window.

Watson wanders toward the kitchen. She notes that everything in the kitchen is something that a patient with kidney issues should not be eating. Holmes sniffs a glass. He finds essential oils in the cupboard, which are toxic to the renal system when ingested.

Drummond speaks to Patricia. She tells her she believed the things about their parents, but admits that she made up a source. She paid a neighbor to claim he was the one she spoke to. She apologizes for what happened to the family. Patricia asks her to come closer. Under the bed, she readies a pair of scissors.

Bell get a call outside the room. Holmes tells him what has happened, and he races in, but Drummond is already bleeding on the floor.

“You can arrest me now. It’s done.”

She explains later that her brother devastated the family, but Drummond’s book destroyed them. Her brother came up with the plan. Watson tells her Drummond may survive, and Gregson points out that she’s going to jail, and her kidneys are ruined.

Gregson gets a call from Ennis. He heard Drummond is still alive. He says he will have to keep making his point.

Holmes picks up a radio off a cleaning cart and checks the station he heard in the background. It is weak. He goes off, telling Watson he will call her shortly.

Ennis comes back to his location, suspicious. Holmes calls out to him. He tracked him down via the station he overheard on the phone call, which is badly signaled and only covered a small location. He found his abandoned building. He says that they were both profiled by Drummond. She destined Holmes for “self-annihilation.”

He tells Ennis that she also says that, at his core, he is a coward. He would shrink from confrontation on equal terms. On the table, there are handcuffs and a gun. If he is indeed a chicken he will take the handcuffs. He hopes Drummond is wrong about him. He tells him if he does prove her wrong and takes the gun, he will reach for him.

Ennis races for the gun, and Holmes hits him with his striking stick.

Gregson is mad that Holmes engaged him on his own, but he said he needed to know something… however, he won’t, for years.

Watson goes to her own place and finds the man working on the radiator again. She tells him in the videos, some shots have tape wrapped on the air valve, some don’t. Almost as if it were whistling during the shoot, and someone fixed it…

Why would Bruce do something like that? Maybe because her apartment is rent controlled, but if she violates her lease and has to leave, he can charge market value. He reminds her other people have electrical tape. However she tells him the actors verified he was there the whole time, participating in an unlicensed production. Which is against the law.

She tells him she wants him and Cooper to pay to store and move her stuff. And to buy her a new couch.

Watson sees Holmes at the hospital. Drummond will recover. He gives her a new spatula. He gives her a new toothbrush too, but she is confused. No one did anything to her toothbrush in the movie… he doesn’t answer.