Elementary Recap: “Deja Vu All Over Again”

Elementary Recap: “Deja Vu All Over Again”
Original Air Date (CBS): Thursday, March 14, 2013
Season 1 Episode 18

by Solomon J. Inkwell:

FADE IN:

6 months ago:

In the subway, a man plays the violin while others wait for the train. A young woman receives flowers from a strange man as she waits on the subway. The hooded figure claims his girlfriend has cancelled their date, so he didn’t want to throw the flowers away. As she calls a friend to tell them about the event, the man pushes her onto the tracks to her death.

Later that evening, Watson is enjoying an evening out with friends. She is talking with them about her new career as a Sober Companion when she receives a call from her supervisor about a new client he would like for her to take on. To which she adds, “What kind of a name is Sherlock?”

CUT TO:

The present day:

Watson is working with Holmes’ new sponsor, Alfredo, who is teaching her to break into cars per Holmes’ instructions. It is part of her new training regime. Though she is careful, she ends up tripping the alarm. Arriving at Brownstone, Watson learns that Holmes’ father has asked to cash in a favor related to the $2 million dollar loan he had given to Holmes. The task is simple enough—assist one of his father’s attorney friends in an investigation. However, Holmes detests attorneys, especially ones with whom his father is acquainted. Nevertheless, Holmes is indebted to his father.

They arrive at the office that is shielded with bulletproof glass. As it turns out, it isn’t the attorney who requires assistance, but the attorney’s assistant, Rebecca. Rebecca’s sister, Callie, has been missing for around 6 months. Holmes and Watson are shown a video Callie had left for her husband. In it, she tells her husband she is leaving him. She was moved to do so by the incident of the woman who was pushed in front of the train citing that life was too short to spend it with someone she did not really love. After the video, Rebecca confesses that Callie’s marriage has been a type of on and off relationship. Callie was prone to run off and had done so before. However, she had never been gone for so long. Callie’s credit cards have not been used since her disappearance, adding to the suspicion that something bad had happened to her. Rebecca believes that Callie’s husband has done something to her. There is a trunk, an heirloom of Rebecca’s family, which was in Callie’s possession before her death, one just large enough to contain a body. The trunk has not been found since Callie’s disappearance.

As they leave the conference room, Holmes tells Watson that he wants to assign the case to her…alone. Holmes wants to go after the subway pusher. He leaves it to Watson to tell his father of their new assignments.

Later at Brownstone, Holmes examines footage of the subway incident. He has little to go on, really. The perpetrator had managed to hide his face from the cameras with his hoodie. He has a beard and he is tall. The only discriminating clue is an odd patch on the man’s jacket sleeve. Watson is planning to visit Callie’s husband, Drew. Overall, neither of them has too much to go on. Watson receives a call from one of her friends who she has inadvertently stood up for drinks that evening. They make new plans.

During their interview, Drew tells Watson that Callie was always a complicated person. She had left him once before, but never for this long. It wasn’t arguments or disagreements that kept a wedge between the two, but Callie’s overall discontentment with their lives together. Drew tells Watson that Callie had been distant and withdrawn since the subway murder. He then adds again that Callie took the trunk with her. Drew wants her to come back, not so much so they can be together again, but so he knows that she is okay.

As Watson leaves the Drew’s office, she calls Holmes to say she is convinces that Drew killed Callie.  When she returns to Brownstone, she plays a recording for Holmes from a previous interview with Drew during which he says almost the identical script he had spilled to Watson, even down to the inflection of his tone. He sounds completely rehearsed. Holmes asks if Watson wants direct help, and she says not at the moment. She does ask Holmes what his next steps would be. Holmes retrieves a box of untraceable cell phones. Then, he asks Watson for Drew’s phone number. He texts Drew that he knows what he did and that he killed his wife. After Holmes is done, he tells Watson to track Drew and watch his reaction.

Later at the station, Holmes and Gregson conduct an interview of a suspect in the subway case. The man has worked in the same office as the woman pushed onto the tracks, though at first he doesn’t admit to knowing her. Better yet, Holmes has deduced the man had previously been stalking the woman before her death. Finally, the man admits to knowing her, even stalking her, but never would he have killed her. To prove his innocence, he tells them that he can produce a video of the murder as he was taping the woman with his cell phone the day of her death. They review the footage, but once again the man’s face is hidden.

Watson, who has been casing Drew’s art studio, calls Holmes to advise that Drew has not reacted oddly at all to the accusatory text that was sent. It is then that Watson remembers her friend with whom she had made plans for the evening. She can’t believe that in the hustle of the case she had forgotten her date again. Holmes tells Watson to go to her commitment as he has arranged for Alfredo to watch Drew for a while.

As Holmes hangs up, he notices that when the pusher steps into the scene of the subway, the violinist had suddenly stopped playing and immediately left the area. This prompts Holmes to deduce that the violinist knew the perpetrator.

Watson arrives at her date night with her friend only to find that the group has staged an intervention for her. They are worried about Watson’s new career choice as an investigator.  Watson is, of course, insulted by the insinuation that she does not know how to make her own life choices. She receives a text from Alfredo who indicates that Drew is on the move and takes her leave. Watson finds Alfredo and they follow Drew to a storage area. They watch as Drew drags the trunk to his SUV, the very same trunk that he had said Callie had taken with her. After Drew locks the trunk in the back of his car, he goes into the building to talk to the caretaker. After is inside, Watson, against Alfredo’s advice, attempts to break into Drew’s car to get a glimpse of what is inside the trunk. Unfortunately, she is caught by a guard before being able to do so. Drew comes out with the caretaker and they confront Watson who tells the group that she believes the body of Drew’s wife is in the trunk; however, when they open the trunk nothing is inside.

Alas, Watson is arrested for her breaking and entering. Holmes arrives to bail her out and tells her that Drew told the police that he had sold the trunk out of the need of money. He had bought it back to return to Callie’s sister now that so much suspicion was being raised. Holmes commends Watson on her instincts and, while she was incorrect about the trunk, Holmes doesn’t believe she is wrong about Drew’s involvement in Callie’s disappearance. Holmes then proposes that they team up since their cases are intertwined.

Later that evening, Holmes and Bell visit the violinist who is playing on a street corner. After some questioning, they discover that the violist is also a pick-pocket. He had stolen the pusher’s wallet some time before. The violinist had left the subway when he had seen the pusher in fear that he would be recognized. Finally, Holmes asks about the patch on the pusher’s jacket.

Holmes is filling Watson in on the ornate patch when Gregson enters the conference room. Gregson has invited Drew to the station and if Watson will go apologize, Drew has agreed to drop the charges. Holmes immediately takes offense to the proposal as he believes Watson is correct in her instincts. However, to appease the situation, Watson concedes.

Later, she goes to visit Rebecca to tell her that she has failed to identify the whereabouts of her missing sister and that Drew appears to be innocent. As they talk, Watson notices Rebecca’s digital picture frame. In it is a picture of Callie wearing a familiar jacket with an even more familiar patch on the sleeve—the same patch Holmes had shown her at the station. Rebecca states the jacket belongs to Drew.

Holmes and Watson review the links between the two cases under the instance that Drew could be the subway pusher. But, how could Drew have a video of his wife referencing the subway incident? How did the murder affect Callie so much without her knowing of Drew’s involvement?

Drew is brought back into the station to be questioned about the pushing incident. He claims the jacket was his, but he had given it to Goodwill. As they continue to drill into Drew’s lies, it is uncovered that the video of Callie’s departure was actually filmed some 18 months before when she had left Drew the first time around. In it, Callie was actually referencing another pushing incident where a teacher holding flowers was pushed in front of an oncoming train. Since Drew had the perfect alibi with the Callie’s video, he needed to recreate the pushing incident to make it appear as if Callie had been referencing the other young woman whom he murdered. Backed into the corner, Drew gives up the ghost.

Later that night at Brownstone, Watson receives a call from her friend, Emily, who had staged the intervention. Emily, a journalist, had just been assigned a story to write about the subway pusher murder. She tells Watson she is proud of her. Holmes asks Watson to come downstairs to check out some files that have arrived from a friend. Of course, Holmes states he had figured out Drew was the murderer within moments of the case, but had wanted to test Watson.

As we close, Watson accesses her professional profile on her computer and changes her employment description from “Sobriety Counselor” to “Investigator”…

Now, it is official.

You can view the episode, via CBS, here.

DarkMedia contributor Solomon J. Inkwell (James Grea) is a screenwriter and author of juvenile horror. He is the author of Vickie Van Helsing and Haunting Thelma Thimblewhistle from the Dead Anna series.  His forthcoming works include The Frighteneers and the screenplay The Winter Files. You can find out more about Solomon and his not-so-dead friends here.