Elementary (TV Series) Breathe (2018) User Reviews

Good and surprisingly socially conscious for this show

[mgconlan-1 · 8/10 · 3 August 2018]

I watched the latest episode of "Elementary," "Breathe," in which Leland Frisk (Brian Donahue), who's supposedly a corporate relocation specialist - a man who helps corporate executives move when their companies assign them to a different city - but is really a serial killer, is found dead from cyanide-laced wine in his office. Sherlock Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller) and Dr. Joan Watson (Lucy Liu) find that the elaborate files on various individuals in Frisk's office, which at first they think are material he's using to blackmail them à la the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Holmes story "The Case of Charles Augustus Milverton," are actually records of the people who've hired him to commit murder and he keeps the files in case any of them decides to report him to the police. The primary suspect in Frisk's murder is Cal Medina (Joaquim de Almeida - he's Portuguese, as the "m" instead of an "n" at the end of his first name gives away; ironically, given the role he plays here, both his parents were pharmacists!), who runs one of those scavenger drug companies that buys crucially important "orphan" drugs (so called because the diseases they treat are incredibly rare) and jacks up the prices on them. He did that in 2014 with a drug essential for the survival of people with cystic fibrosis, raising the price to $1,000 per pill, and the cops believe that Medina hired Frisk to kill a rival researcher who had developed another drug to treat cystic fibrosis that would provide competition. While all this is going on Goodman's script, effectively directed by Christine Moore, contains a subplot about Dr. Watson's ongoing desire to adopt a baby, and the screwups of her attorney Gary (Paul Anthony Stewart) that have cost her the opportunity by blowing her appointments to house visits and the like. Holmes starts taking an interest in Watson's adoption and even starts child-proofing the house and putting away some of his kinkier exhibits and home decorations. This was a good "Elementary" and a nice use of elements from the original Holmes canon to spice up a thoroughly contemporary story that also drew on a major modern-day political issue - the ability of nasty capitalists to jack up drug prices simply because the patent system says they can - one would more readily expect from a show produced by Dick Wolf than one from Robert Doherty!