ELEMENTARY Recap: Flight Risk

Poor Watson, she is woken to the sounds, the VERY loud sounds of multiple police scanners. It’s what Sherlock likes to listen to while eating his breakfast.
Watson also mentions Sherlock’s Dad wants to have dinner with them since he is in town. Sherlock scoffs and says no thanks. Not that it matters anyway, Sherlock says his Dad is always too busy to meet with him when he is town. It was an empty gesture. Before Watson can do some scoffing at her own Holmes hears a code for a plane crash.
When he gets to the scene the Captain says they are not primary but that doesn’t deter Sherlock. In fact he finds a body in the sand amid the wreckage that was not killed by the crash, he was murdered beforehand ,and we have our case of the week.

He points this out to the head investigator of the NTSB. She like most people on this show doubt Sherlock Holmes knows what he is talking about. Google him woman! She finally comes around to his way of thinking.

Back at the precinct they question the charter company owner. He says only good things about Joe, the pilot. And because of that I’m calling him as the murderer. I think it is suspicious when someone says only nice things about someone else on a crime show. I could just be cynical but he is gushing about what a great guy the pilot is and it makes me wonder what he is hiding.
The detective who never believes Holmes’s knows what he is talking about has found out some information about the three passengers from the plane. They were lawyers working on a class action suit, a suit worth $100 million. In fact Hank, the murder victim, wanted to keep fighting on the case while his boss wanted to settle.
A call comes in from the NTSB; they found the planes black boss. What they hear is a bunch of fighting before the plane starts to crash. Only you never hear Hank during the argument, just the other passengers. Sherlock thinks Hank was killed earlier in the day and then his body was put on the plane in the cargo hold. Turbulence caused the plane to shift and the body to be dislodged. Sherlock says the crew and passengers didn’t know Hank had been killed and stashed on the plane. They now have a living breathing murder to find.

Holmes is in the precinct again going over the facts. Watson doesn’t some questioning of her own. She thinks that Holmes has been acting strange this whole case, not because his Dad is in town but because he has a fear of flying. He tells Watson to mind her own business. She doesn’t get to do any more questioning though because Detective Doubts-a-Lot says the footage from the hanger where the plane took off is ready to be viewed. They go to the hanger. On the footage they see an unidentified man arguing with Hank.
Sherlock analyzes the footage and comes up with a monogram on the shirt the unidentified man is wearing. It is the food company involved in the class action suit the lawyers were working on. Of course Sherlock and Detective Doubts-a-Lot track down the mystery man. His name is Ed and when questioned he does what all people being questioned on TV shows do, he denies knowing the victim. Sherlock calls his bluff. Ed comes clean; he was helping Hank with inside information. The fight was because Ed wouldn’t testify. Sherlock dismisses him as a suspect.

Meanwhile, despite Sherlock’s adamant claims that his Father always cancels plans, Watson meets up with Mr. Holmes for dinner. He wonders how Sherlock is doing. Watson says Sherlock is doing well in his post rehab life. Then Mr. Holmes asks how the sex is between her and Sherlock. She is shocked but quickly realizes this is in fact not Mr. Holmes. It is an actor hired by Sherlock. Something Sherlock knew wouldn’t be a problem because, Mr. Holmes never shows.

In the hanger with the NTSB Sherlock has an idea. This morning at the crash site Sherlock found sand that was different than the sand on the beach. It occurs to him now that it was sand put into the fuel tank of the plane before it took off. The sand being sucked into the filter caused it to clog and the fuel to not make it to the engine. The flight was sabotaged.
Sherlock surmises that Hank walked in on the person pouring sand into the fuel tank and was killed to cover it up. The killer stashed his body on the plane and assumed that when the plane went down, over water; all evidence would be washed away. Unfortunately for them the plane went down early over the beach.

Watson gets home and chooses to ignore Sherlock even though he is trying to gloat over a prank well played. Sherlock doesn’t let her silence keep him from rambling on; in fact he has a suspect he wants to question. When Watson says she isn’t going with him he says she should have trusted him when he said his Father wasn’t going to show. This gets Watson to start talking. She can’t believe he thinks she should trust him. Despite working together for weeks now he has never shared even the smallest bit personal history with her. She stomps up to bed.
Detective Doubt-a-Lot and Holmes pay a visit to Mr. Barts, one of the pilots for the charter company. Turns out he had an ugly disagreement with Joe, the pilot that died. Mr. Barts says it was nothing and they worked it out. The detective doesn’t believe him, so it’s not just Sherlock he doesn’t believe. Sherlock goes on to tell Owen Barts that according to the flight logs he got from the NTSB every time Owen flies back from Miami he records exactly the same onboard weight plus 66 pounds. Owen says it must be a mathematical error but as per the usual Holmes doesn’t think so. The extra weight of 66 pounds converts to 30 kilos. Holmes says Joe found out Owen was smuggling cocaine and was going to turn him in. Owen denies it, he has an alibi. He was with his boss helping him start his car.

The next morning Sherlock is in Watson’s room when she wakes up. He confides in her why he doesn’t like flying. It’s his way of opening up. She is still cross with him though because he is just telling her things she already figured out.
Sherlock’s phone rings, its Detective Doubt-a-Lot, the owner of the charter company is at the precinct to talk to them. When they get there Holmes has to cover his nose with his scarf because the owner smells so strongly of glue used to build model airplanes, and cars. Mr. Cooper tells them Owen asked him to lie and say he was with him at the time of Hanks murder, but he wasn’t.

They get back to Owen’s house but he has fled. They do find the murder weapon though. Detective Doubts-a-Lot says it is weird the murder weapon was left in the garage in plain sight and not even wiped off. Holmes examines it and determines that it was in the water until recently. He thinks it was planted at Owen’s after Owen was killed. Detective Doubts-a-Lot does what he does best and questions why Holmes thinks Owen is dead. Holmes then finds money, rolls and rolls of cash stashed in jars around the garage. Why would Owen leave without the money?
They now suspect Charles Cooper as the killer since he was the one that told them Owen confessed and could have been profiting from the cocaine smuggling as well.
I could have saved them all this deducing if they would have just listed to me earlier.

Cooper is being questioned while Sherlock and Watson look on. Watson thinks Cooper looks like he is dying. His color doesn’t look good I’ll give you that.
Sherlock has an idea, but Watson says she remembers an errand she has to run and takes off.

She goes to track down the actor Sherlock hired to play his Dad. A personal story the actor told her while pretending to be Sherlock’s Dad was true (she sees a scar on Sherlock’s wrist that corresponds). Watson wants to know how the actor, Alistair, really knows Holmes. Sherlock sent him a letter when he was ten praising him for his correct use of an accent in a radio show Alistair was a part of. They finally met and became friends. Watson says he doesn’t have friends, Alistair says she should revise her definition of a friend. It doesn’t apply to Sherlock. Alistair also confides that Holmes showed up at his apartment one night (before he got clean this last time) so high he was almost delirious. All Sherlock did was repeat one name over and over again.

At the precinct Sherlock goes in to question Cooper. Holmes thinks Cooper looks so ill because he was cut in a struggle to kill Owen. Owen cut him and he used model glue to stick the gash shut. That’s why he smells so strongly of it. Cooper keeps denying it but Holmes keeps laying out facts and threatens him with the death penalty. Cooper breaks and spills it all.

That night Watson gets home to find Sherlock putting his files from the case away. She has a question she wants to ask him, she wants Sherlock to tell him about Irene. He says nothing, he just stares at her.

Elementary airs Thursday 10/9c on CBS