'Elementary' Season 1, Episode 4: 'The Rat Race' Recap

Watson goes to find Gregson, asking for a private talk. She hasn’t heard from Holmes in over 3 hours. Gregson isn’t too concerned… but Watson has an arrangement, where they can’t be out of touch more than 2 hours. She explains to Gregson that she lives at his place… no, wait. Recluctantly she explains her position with Holmes, who she worries has relapsed, and she asks Gregson’s help in finding him.

In mild darkness, Holmes wakes up, disoriented, his hands cuffed together and legs zip tied.

Two days earlier: Watson is getting coffee with a friend, only to find out it’s a set up with a guy named Aaron as her friend brings him over and dashes in an “ambush set-up.”Aaron is interested in her texts to Holmes, which have so many abbreviations they’re little more than random letters.

Cut to Holmes explaining that “IMSHO” (In his not-so-humble opinion) language is evolving and that he can see that she met a man—he can tell because she put her hair up. She asks why he made her come back, and he says it’s because of their agreement—he has a mysterious errand to run and doesn’t know how long it will take. An investment firm has summoned them to appear before the board of directors. He doesn’t know why—Gregson had recommended his services.

Jim Fowkes explains in front of the board members that a man named Peter Talbot in their firm did not show up for a very important conference call. Millions of dollars are on the line. Holmes will take it for his usual rate… to a factor of 12. When he begins to demonstrate his abilities on the people present, they are quick to agree he is worth it.

He and Watson go to visit Talbot’s office, and Holmes admits he doesn’t have a usual rate, but she can help him make one up. He looks at the office and notes that only one book on the shelf has a spine that’s been cracked regularly, which happens to have a small black ledger hidden inside.

It’s full of lovely, scantily clad ladies. “A menu,” Holmes calls it. He would have to hide the expensive prostitutes, and notes in his computer two separate addressed for accountants. Martin Rydell handles the “executive private” account. Holmes calls in Donna, the assistant, and has her make reservations at the most expensive restaurant in town for him and Watson, which is also an opportunity to try out his expense account…

At the restaurant, where he and Watson are very underdressed, Holmes sends over the most expensive bottle of wine to a man in a frayed suit, who is clearly trying to propose to his girlfriend.

Rydell meets them, looking confused. Holmes says he doesn’t actually want to open an account with him, but he does want to discuss how he hid Talbot’s predilection for expensive hookers in the expense accounts. When Rydell tries to leave, Holmes hints that he will sell him out. He agrees to start talking, dropping where he might be able to find Talbot. In the background, the lucky man who received the good wine has a happy new fiancée.

On their way to see the apartment where they might find Talbot, Holmes tells Watson he read a text from Aaron inviting her out, and accepted a date on her behalf, which doesn’t please her. They go into the apartment pretending to have a warrant, which no one asks to see, and find Talbot, dead in a chair of an apparent overdose.

When the police arrive, Watson asks if Holmes is okay, seeming concerned that seeing the heroin might be enough to cause a relapse. She wants him to go outside—his job is done, he has found Peter Talbot. Holmes disagrees. He thinks Talbot has been murdered. He thinks someone has given Talbot the shot which killed him. Detective Bell is skeptical, but Holmes thinks someone must have dosed his lunch with heroin first, rendering him insensible, so they could administer the other dose.

They go to talk to Talbot's wife. She is hurt. Her husband had told her the girls and the partying were behind him. Watson gets worried as Holmes stares hard at the pictures of the heroin, but he blows her off, asking the wife where she was during the hours of 6 and midnight. She was at an auction for Habitat for Humanity. She says she is shocked but not surprised. Her husband had been very stressed since starting as COO. He had used to tell her he thought the last guy had dropped dead to get out of it. Holmes perks up.

She explains the previous COO died of a peanut allergy when a restaurant used the wrong oil in his lunch.

At home, Holmes gets off the phone with the chef who prepared the meal that killed the previous COO. The man, Gary Norris, was fanatical about avoiding peanut products. He ate every take-out meal from the same restaurant, since he had an arrangement with the chef never to have peanut oil around. The chef believes someone put the peanut oil into the food on purpose.

Watson says earlier when she asked him about being around heroin, he seemed like he had wanted to say something. He tells her he’s forgotten what it smells like. He changes the subject and asks her about her date, but she says she’s not going on it, he needs her. He said he needs privacy. He tells her to go, and he’ll do a drug test when she gets back.

Her date with Aaron seems to have gone pretty well. He invites her out again, saying it’s nice to not have to hear about ex-husbands on a date for once. She says that’s easy, she hasn’t been married. Has he? He says no. He calls her a cab, and leans in for a kiss, but she blocks it with a hand shake.

Back home, Holmes has arranged a variety of pictures on the wall. Watson asks who they are—they are the employees of the company who have died over the last 10 years. He goes a spit swab drug test and asks how her date was. She says fun, but thinks that he lied to her when he said he hadn’t been married. Holmes says it’s easy enough to find out, but she doesn’t want him to cyber stalk Aaron. Ok, fine.

He checks martial records on his phone. He wasn’t married—he is married. He appreciates that her instincts were correct. Holmes gets a text: he was right, there were trace amounts of heroin in Peter Talbot’s salad.

Holmes goes back to the investment firm and runs a power point of the employees who have died in mysterious ways. He tells them that he thinks Peter Talbot was killed, as well as at least 4 others, and that it is someone within the company doing the murdering. He wants records, but the company won’t give them to him. Fowkes says that he was the only one with a career path like Holmes is describing. What is he saying, that he murdered 5 people?

“Well, this is a bit awkward, but I’d say that you’re a damn good suspect.”

He brings Holmes his check personally to his home later, telling him they also need to talk. Fowkes insists he didn’t kill anyone, and he didn’t kill the COO to take his place. He shows Holmes medical records that prove he was in the hospital when the first employee went missing on a camping trip. He shows him that one of the other men on the board of directors, Cho, was an intern at that office when the man went missing. He tells Holmes if he is looking for a sociopath there, they are all sociopaths.

Holmes is frustrated, things aren’t making sense. Cho wasn’t hired to the company for 2 years, why would he kill the first man? Jim Fowkes is the one who benefited. Watson gets a text from Aaron—he admits he is married but wants to meet her to explain himself. Holmes tells her to go, as an experiment in deduction. She agrees to go to get away from his obnoxious loud way of thinking—bouncing a basketball.

As she leaves, he notices that Donna, the assistant, was listed as a medical emergency contact for Jim Fowkes.

Watson meets Aaron, who wants to know how she found out he is married. He admits he lied. He tells her he works with a place where people seek political asylum. He explains that a woman from Kosovo whose father was a general in the war needed asylum and the US wouldn’t grant it. So he married her. She lives in Hoboken, he checks in on her from time to time. They can divorce in a year. He apologizes.

Holmes goes to see Donna.

“No one ever remembers the secretary, do they, Donna?”

He follows her into the parking structure, asking if Fowkes knew, or if she was working alone when she killed these employees to advance her boss, and thus advance with him? She says she’s seen executives like him come and go. He was so excited to tell her what he discovered, he followed her into an empty parking garage. She tasers him.

Cut to Holmes waking up, in the back of a car, bound as we saw him earlier. She tells him they’ll be at Fowkes’ country home soon, and in a week or two, someone will call in an anonymous tip, and the police will find him buried on the property. Fowkes is getting framed. She’ll get in with Cho. She notes that Watson has texted 5 times. Holmes tells her she’s very high-strung, and will probably get the police involved. Donna texts her.

Watson gets the texts, which assures her everything is all right, the phone was off. He is heading back and will see her soon. She pauses over “see you soon,” which is not written in Holmes’ usual shorthand.

Holmes, meanwhile, is refusing to dig his own grave despite Donna’s threats. He asks her how she got started on it, while using a binder clip from the car to try and pick his handcuffs. She starts to tell him, but is distracted by police sirens. She turns to shoot him but he has burst free, and tasers her.

After getting medical care, Holmes and Watson talk. He tells her he manipulated Donna into writing the text, hoping Watson would understand, and then the police could intercept his phone…

“I’m sorry, are you trying to take credit for the fact that I saved your life?”

It was a “collaboration,” he hedges.

She tells him she had to explain their relationship to Captain Gregson. Holmes goes to see him. He says he is sorry for not telling him the situation, and that he was embarrassed, but Gregson deserved to know.

Gregson said he did know. He will do them both a favor, and keep a lid on it.

At home, Holmes is practicing escaping from various kinds of handcuffs. Watson gets a text from Aaron, who she thinks is blowing her off for a dinner party next week that they had decided to go to. She thinks he might be weirded out that she figured out he was lying.

“It has its costs… learning to see the puzzle in everything,” Holmes tells her.