'Elementary' Season 1, Episode 9: 'You Do It To Yourself' Recap

A man stares in horror as a masked figure holds a gun to his face. The masked man pulls the trigger.

Watson suggests taking Holmes’ temperature again, as he doesn’t look well. He insists it has dropped one degree, huddled in a blanket.

Despite his sickness, he answers the call about the man found dead in an abandoned building. The man’s eyes are missing. Holmes, ignoring comments about how terrible he looks, tells Bell that the man was shot elsewhere and dropped at the warehouse. He examines him. He decides that he was a professor—of East Asian studies, and had just returned from Thailand.

He checks his phone, using the colors of the man’s tie to determine which college he worked at, and finds him. Trent Annunzio.

They interview Trent’s wife, but she can’t think of anyone who would want to harm him.

Watson gets a call and steps out to take it. She seems amazed to hear from someone named Liam.

Holmes interrupts Trent’s wife, telling her that her husband was shot in both eyes. Someone bore a grudge, or was sending a message. He had enemies. She tells him he had been having late night department meetings, but hadn’t told her what they were about.

When they leave, Watson asks if she can leave them, and goes off.

Bell and Holmes talk to Trent’s teaching assistant, Brendan, but he says that Trent had left early—no meetings. Brendan opens Trent’s office for them, giving Holmes pause. For a department head, his office is strangely small. Holmes decides that he was not at a meeting, he was at a Chinese gambling group, which he attributes to the number 13 he notices everywhere (a lucky Chinese number), and was wearing red boxers for luck. Bell decides he was correct when he finds mahjong tiles that count as membership chips to gambling parlors.

Watson sees Liam, who is in jail, and using again. He is in for a hit and run, which he doesn’t believe he did. He thinks someone took his car for a joyride. He wants Watson to put in a good word for him and get him out, but she tells him she can’t help him anymore.

“You treat all the guys you slept with this nice, or just me?” he snaps.

“Just you,” she shoots back, and leaves.

Holmes, Bell, and Watson go to China Town to check out gambling parlors. They’ve narrowed it down to one. Holmes asks if he can help Watson with her client, as it is clearly distracting her. He wonders if the man is innocent, but Watson insists he is not.

Bell is having an issue because no one seems to speak English. Holmes notes that the man in an apron applied bleach to one small part of the club, but nowhere else. The man pretending to be the janitor who Holmes believes owns the club tells him that someone drank too much and vomited, but Holmes notes that someone was shot there. He tells them they can just check the footage from the security camera designed to look like a smoke detector.

They watch the footage, and see the masked man rob the gamblers and shoot Trent. Holmes wants to see the other footage—the one where you can see the man, since to get past the bouncer, he would have had to come in without a mask. Clearly the Chinese man was hoping to exact his own punishment on the murderer.

Reluctantly, the Chinese man hits a button, and reveals him.

Watson comes in while Holmes is going through mug shots on the department computer. Watson gives him his coffee, but he’s not thrilled that it is actually tea that she put herbs in to help him recover. He slides over the file for Liam that he helped himself to. He thinks she might want to be sure.

Bell comes in with the name of the murderer, Raul Ramirez. They bring him in. They found all the wallets on him, including the wallet of the victim.

Raul asks if he can give up information. He tells them he was hired. An envelope with a thousand in cash was under his door, and he got a phone call telling him he would pay another nine thousand to kill Trent and shoot him in both eyes. He was supposed to shoot him the next night in the parking lot of his work, but after following him, he knew about the gambling parlor. He figured he’d kill him and rob the others.

Gregson checks with his team asking who had it in for him. Holmes says that the person who took the photo was probably a friend or family member. Watson notes that there is a small odd rectangle in the corner—it is a photo of a picture in a frame, under glass, with a reflection in the corner. Holmes recognizes it a photo from Trent’s office.

They go to talk to the TA, Brendan, again. He lives in the same neighborhood as Raul. They know he applied for a job at Berkley and Ananzio’s letter shot it down. The police go to search his house.

Watson notes that Holmes is looking better. She teases him that the tea is working.

The detectives find a disposable phone under his bed, used to dial Raul. Holmes brings Gregson aside and tells him he no longer thinks that Brendan is the murderer. He did not seem at all distressed when they went to look around the bedroom, and he seemed legitimately surprised to see it. Bell comes over and tells them they missed the show—he confessed. They’re handcuffing him and taking him away.

Holmes watches the video of Brendan’s interview and confession, where all he seems to be doing is agreeing with and re-wording the questions. Holmes has his mail, bank statements, etc. to try and get insight on him. Watson notes he downloaded a lot of music. Bad music.

Watson wants to talk to him about Liam. She looked over the pictures from the accident. She no longer thinks he really did it—the damage to his car would have left him battered. Holmes notes that there had been a series of joy rides in that neighborhood, but the cars had been hotwired. Watson notes that she had given him a keychain with a watch on it that seemed expensive but wasn’t—maybe someone took the key thinking they could steal the watch, and used it on the car.

Holmes asks how long she had worked with him before she slept with him. No judgment. She ignores the question.

Holmes goes to see Trent’s wife, recalling that he had seen homemade CDs with all the songs downloaded. She is having an affair with Brendan... and then framed him? Holmes suggests he was taking the fall for her.

She gives them an old manual that teaches how to beat someone without leaving marks. He also made her do horrible sexual acts. She doesn’t, however, admit to killing him and doesn’t think that Brendan would either.

She admits that Trent is not actually her husband. He was supposed to marry her and make her a legal citizen but he reneged. She was going to leave her "husband" and marry Brendan. Holmes wants to know why they should believe her.

She tells him that there are videos on the computer, ones where he beats her. She goes to show them, but the file is empty.

Watson goes to see Liam with the pictures of the accident. He apologizes for what he said to her before.

“We’ve had this conversation before; you’ve apologized to me before.”

She goes home to find Holmes with Trent’s computer taken apart on the floor. He suspects the wife is telling the truth, and is looking for evidence. He is worried now that he might have accidentally put her in danger of being deported without her baby daughter. He asks Watson to make more tea.

Watson tells him that they found Liam’s keychain, which was pawned. Liam was innocent. She admits she didn’t tell the truth—he wasn’t an ex client. He was just an ex. She met him when he came into the emergency room. Then he started using. Dealing with him is how she got into companionship.

The autopsy gets texted to Holmes, who notes that herbs found in his stomach were used for eye pain. Watson thinks back and remembers that in a photograph she saw everyone had red eye except him—she suggests melanoma of his eyes. Painful and untreatable.

They go and talk to Gregson and Bell. He suggests that Trent had himself killed. He found out his “wife” who he terrorized was having an affair, and happy. He found out he had cancer. He devised a plan to exact revenge on her, her lover, and to die quickly rather than suffer. He hired Ramirez, he destroyed the evidence (including his eyes), and he gave Brendan a motive.

The only problem was that Ramirez jumped the gun on the murder, rather than doing it in a way that would have made it look even more clear that Brendan had killed her.

Gregson is skeptical.

Watson goes into the bathroom, where Holmes is seated on the toilet, all his evidence on the walls.

“This is new,” she says. He tells her the new location will hopefully jog something. She tells him she needs to shower and he tells her to go ahead.

She looks at the map on the wall and notes that yes, Raul and Brendan were located very close to one another. Holmes pulls up the sex offender registry. There is another man in Brendan’s building, even closer than Raul. Why didn’t they use him instead? Holmes says perhaps he tried.

Watson goes to see Liam, letting him know that he is freed. She tries to leave but he tells her he’ll get clean for her. He owes her. He asks if she can find him somewhere, and she tells him she’ll make a call. But he has to do it for himself, not her.

Gregson and Holmes talk to the wife. They tell her that Trent had tried to contact the first sex offender before he got hold of Raul. He installed a camera in the hallway, suspicious, and told the man who contacted him he wouldn’t consider it without a thousand dollars. The camera caught Trent sliding money under the door.

However, she will still be deported. They tell her if she married Brendan that day, that Gregson can make some calls, and keep her in the country. The two embrace.

Watson is sitting in a hallway of a clinic. Holmes comes in, and she tells him she told him he didn’t have to come. He says he wants to meet the ex, but she doesn’t think he’ll show. She tells Holmes if he has somewhere else to be… but he tells her not tonight, and waits with her.