Elementary, 1x02 "While You Were Sleeping"

At the beginning of Elementary's second episode Joan Watson has dragged Sherlock Holmes to a session of a drug abuse support group but instead of listening to his 'comrades' Sherlock repeats a mantra over and over inside of his head. He does so in order to avoid feeding his brain with unnecessary information since the human mind is an attic one has to take care of and keep tidy to maintain splendid mental achievements. Filling the brain with useless knowledge, its finiteness is stodged to that extent that it cannot absorb any new and probably more important information unless one decides to delete any prior memories. At least that is how Sherlock's brain works. Shortly, he is called by Gregson to assist in a case that does not seem to be that difficult to solve at first glimpse but turns out to set a series of murder with peculiar circumstances rolling, committed by a apparently comatose woman. After finding out about the woman's twin sister, Sherlock reaches an impasse as the sisters prove to not be monozygotic twins, however, the motive for murder is connected to an inheritance dispute that arose after the twins' wealthy and well-known father had died and children who were begotten in several love affairs are now to benefit from the dead father's heritage. A hint that is spotted by the detective in a second support group session serves the correct solution of the case and proves that it can be useful to Sherlock to occasionally listen to others and make room for seemingly unnecessary information in his brain attic. As in the previous episode, Sherlock shows off his skills in deduction and raises suspicion in Gregson's assisting officer Bell who is convinced by the detective's abilities in the end and shakes hands with him as a sign of a well-functioning collaboration in the future.

Elementary, 1x01 "Pilot"

The pilot episode of Elementary serves as an introduction to a brand new adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle's detective icon Sherlock Holmes. The setting changed radically in that the plot is set in New York instead of London what is comprehensible since the production company CBS Production Studios is American as well. Sherlock Holmes, played by Jonny Lee Miller, has suffered from drug-related problems and has come to New York in order to check into a rehabilitation centre before he escapes on his very last day of rehab and moves into one of his father's barely furnished flats in Brooklyn. On that very day, Dr Joan Watson, a former surgeon who has lost her profession due to a patient's death, starts her work as Holmes's sober companion, hired by his father, and has to be his flatmate for the next six weeks. In London, Sherlock has worked as consulting detective for Scotland Yard and now he wants to continue his profession by assisting the NYPD in their cases, either by receiving phone calls or spying on the police radio, accompanied by Watson who he introduces to Captain Toby Gregson as his valet. By using his distinctive and some kind of weird method of investigation, modern technologies such as his smartphone with an additional lense for high-resolution photos and the help and advices of Joan Watson, Holmes solves the promiscuous case of murder of the wife of an psychologist. That crime is so interwoven that even brilliant Sherlock has difficulties to decode the mystery, gets on the wrong track judging from the false clues the true murder has constructed in order to not get caught and, finally, Watson finds the most important detail that leads to the solution.

We as viewers are introduced to the series as witnesses of the crime that is being investigated in the pilot episode of Elementary. Everything is set in slow motion, we see that a red-haired woman is being attacked by a masked man when suddenly the camera becomes shaky and the action rushes while we follow the burglar right behind his steps, chasing the woman to her bedroom where she desperately tries to reach something we cannot see because of our limited perspective. So the viewer is sucked into the plot right from the beginning and does not have any choice to keep his or her distance to the crime that is happening right in front of him or her. In the end it almost seems that we even change positions with the culprit but when the scene reaches its climate the introduction is cut and comes abruptly to an end what leaves us viewers stunned in our chairs, maybe even disturbed.

You can find my detailed analysis of Sherlock Holmes and Joan Watson's characters underneath the cut. Feel free to give me some feedback or do some corrections as well as additions to my analysis. : )