S05.E13: Over a Barrel

[juliet73]

27 minutes ago, shapeshifter said:

I know I've seen the maple syrup plot on another crime show. Bones? Castle? One of the L&Os? Psych??

Mom

I missed the reason why Sherlock was shaving his head. Could someone please fill me in. Thanks! 

[Vermicious Knid]

They didn't explain why a New Yorker was a rabid fan of a Canadian hockey team. There's already the Rangers and Islanders, and the Devils right across the river. No need to go 500 miles and into another country.

[7-Zark-7]

Ugh. This show is so boring, and yet I watch it every week. I keep hoping it will get interesting.  Like, maybe if Joan warns the guy not to take another step because of the sniper and he's so distraught about his son that he steps into the line of fire. 

Anyhow, there is no way all of those police would not keep Sherlock informed of the state of ticking clock. If he didn't have the answer in time, Sherlock would have made up a believable fall guy story just long enough to get Joan out of there.  

[laserlady]

4 hours ago, shapeshifter said:

I know I've seen the maple syrup plot on another crime show. Bones? Castle? One of the L&Os? Psych??

Battle Creek -- in the episode "Syruptitious" (that's where I've seen it before, at least).

Edited February 2, 2017 by laserlady

[clb1016]

3 hours ago, laserlady said:

Battle Creek -- in the episode "Syruptitious" (that's where I've seen it before, at least).

Yes!  Loved Battle Creek.  Canceled much too soon when so many inferior shows are given more opportunity to connect with an audience.  Should have tried it in another time slot at least.

[Clanstarling]

On 1/30/2017 at 9:16 AM, Kathira said:

And I'm sure Sherlock knew, even if Watson didn't, why Everyone wanted to watch her shave Sherlock's head. It was very intimate and hella sexy.

As it is every time I do the same for my husband (w/o a web cam, of course).

On 1/30/2017 at 8:05 PM, Chyromaniac said:

So, the kid essentially got beat up so that he wouldn't be around for the black market syrup smuggling.  This syrup has been illegally sold to restaurants all around the NYC area, to this very day.  Maybe I've just watched too much L&O, but I feel like they should've been able to beat the statute of limitations just by tying the assault to the ongoing criminal enterprise.  I mean, I appreciate "tolling" as an inventive solution to the problem - but it felt weird to me that they've uncovered what appears to be a fairly substantial conspiracy, and it's kind of not even acknowledged at the end.  Overall it was an interesting case, and the actor who played the dad is always great.  I just wish somebody would've gone all Jack McCoy on hockey/truck guy's @$$...

That's what I was expecting. The information about tolling was interesting, I'll admit, and produced a "sexier" ending, but I thought - no problem, they've got the guy on all these other charges. Live and learn.

I totally missed that the guy's son OD'd. What I thought I heard was that he was beaten, went into a coma, and eventually died from it. Wierd.

My SIL makes artisan maple syrup (here in the US), and it is astonishing how much sap is required to make it. I may be a little off on this, but I think she said it took 30 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup. (still kind of ticked that she hasn't sent us some as a gift...) Anyway...all those barrels are not just a lot on their own. That's a lot of trees that got tapped.

On 1/31/2017 at 5:37 AM, paigow said:

BTW: The Graham Norton episode is on-line. Danny Boyle & the cast [dudes only] discuss T2. Obi-Wan & Sherlock are completely bald

Online where? I do watch it on Youtube, but I've had spotty results looking for full length episodes.

[paigow]

This article from 1991 helps explain why syrup is so valuable today....

http://www.nytimes.com/1991/05/15/us/sugar-maples-sicken-under-acid-rain-s-pall.html

[Athena]

A quick reminder not to share links or means of Flying to England or Other Places for shows. We know people watch it through means but unless it's the official way, we don't allow posts about it. Thanks!

[Athena]

14 hours ago, Vermicious Knid said:

They didn't explain why a New Yorker was a rabid fan of a Canadian hockey team. There's already the Rangers and Islanders, and the Devils right across the river. No need to go 500 miles and into another country.

People become rabid fans of sports teams for a variety of reasons. Maybe his parents were from Quebec. Maybe he lived there for college/when he was younger. Maybe he saw a player or game he was very inspired by as a kid. It's less surprising given that it's the Habs. Montreal and Quebec view hockey as a religion in a way that other hockey fans don't quite achieve. The Habs are the only NHL team in the league to predate the NHL and it's one of the longest continuous hockey clubs in the world. It's an institution.

[sinkwriter]

Quote

I missed the reason why Sherlock was shaving his head. Could someone please fill me in. Thanks! 

In order to get the videos that showed proof of all the illegal shipment activity going on (with the trucks being loaded with all those barrels), Sherlock had to go to Everyone for help. In exchange, he promised to shave his head.

Although in actuality it was probably because Jonny needed to shave his head for his role in the Trainspotting sequel he filmed semi-recently. I've been waiting for Everyone to make Sherlock dye his hair blonde.

[frenchtoast]

I think it was to get the security footage for the assailant attending the hockey game. Agent McNally provided the FBI/NSA footage (shhh) because he owed Sherlock a favor. But I wasn't really listening that carefully because I was hoping there was a flux capacitor in the bag he was carrying.

[paigow]

frenchtoast - coincidence??? - is correct. 

[aemom]

On 01/02/2017 at 2:10 PM, sinkwriter said:

I've not seen that show or heard of such a thing before, so I had no idea where they were going with it when they opened the barrel and found maple syrup. I thought, okay, how are they going to explain this one! It was pretty unusual. Who would have thought you could illegally sell maple syrup. I mean, it's maple syrup! (Yum.)

When Marcus and Sherlock opened the barrel, before they identified the contents, my husband said "MAPLE SYRUP. It's our maple syrup story!" He was right and we had a good laugh.

They touched a bit about this on the show, but basically there are limits to how much maple syrup you can sell and for how much, and a lot of Quebec producers are not happy. This article explains a lot.

https://munchies.vice.com/en/articles/boiling-point-inside-quebecs-maple-syrup-war

Edited February 4, 2017 by AEMom
Typos

[jhlipton]

On 1/30/2017 at 5:13 PM, tennisgurl said:

{I}t would be nice in the future to see them taking some more "normal" cases, or else it looks like they think some cases are "beneath" them, even if it lead to a person dying.

Sherlock doesn't take cases to solve them; he takes them because otherwise he gets bored and tempted to relapse.  So Joan might work a "normal" or "boring" case, but Sherlock wouldn't.

On 1/30/2017 at 11:05 PM, Chyromaniac said:

I feel like they should've been able to beat the statute of limitations just by tying the assault to the ongoing criminal enterprise.  I mean, I appreciate "tolling" as an inventive solution to the problem - but it felt weird to me that they've uncovered what appears to be a fairly substantial conspiracy, and it's kind of not even acknowledged at the end. 

Yeah, once they found that the beating was connected to other crimes, some of which are still on-going, the statute of limitations became meaningless.

On 1/31/2017 at 9:48 AM, Athena said:

Sherlock convinced Marcus to search the premises: "What's that? It's the sound of evidence being destroyed. Following a Supreme Court case, you can go in and search without a warrant."  (not exact quote but most of it).

I hate, loathe and detest this trope, and Marcus should too.  Faking probable cause is against the law and any evidence found from it becomes a "poisonous tree".  There is no way the Marcus we know and love would use that kind of crap.

[paigow]

5 hours ago, jhlipton said:

I hate, loathe and detest this trope, and Marcus should too.  Faking probable cause is against the law and any evidence found from it becomes a "poisonous tree".  There is no way the Marcus we know and love would use that kind of crap.

Hostage countdown clock waiver for Marcus....

[Clanstarling]

9 hours ago, jhlipton said:

So Joan might work a "normal" or "boring" case, but Sherlock wouldn't.

When I was watching the montage of the father's approaches, I wondered why Joan hadn't taken his case when she was working by herself. IIRC, she took some pretty boring cases then, and a father's fight to get his son justice doesn't seem all that boring to me.

[theatremouse]

10 hours ago, jhlipton said:

I hate, loathe and detest this trope, and Marcus should too.  Faking probable cause is against the law and any evidence found from it becomes a "poisonous tree".  There is no way the Marcus we know and love would use that kind of crap.

I hate that contrivance as well, however in this specific scene it sort of read to me like at first Marcus did think he actually heard something and sort of didn't catch on right away that Sherlock was pulling that bullshit. Sherlock on this show can be confusing because sometimes he does actually hear something or see something small no one else notices. So there's this half-second double take of what? Or possibly it's just that I took him literally at first (mistakenly) yet that did make the scene sort of work better. It's still annoying because plausible deniability gets stretched so thin on cop shows in general, and doing that schtick is a crutch in the writing (unless the point is to call out that particular poison tree) but yeah, Marcus going with it didn't seem so very off to me.

[Loandbehold]

Well, if we're going to get annoyed at the trope in this instance, since Sherlock and Joan are consultants to the NYPD, anytime they break into a place, any evidence they gather is also "fruit of the poisonous tree" even if no police are present. 

[johntfs]

4 hours ago, Clanstarling said:

When I was watching the montage of the father's approaches, I wondered why Joan hadn't taken his case when she was working by herself. IIRC, she took some pretty boring cases then, and a father's fight to get his son justice doesn't seem all that boring to me.

Maybe the other cases were more boring, but they wouldn't have been as unsolvable either.  A guy got mugged/beat up by some other guy months/years ago.  The only witness is dead.  Whatever evidence there was has long since been processed and led nowhere.  Unlike a lot of shows of this type, in the Elementary world, the police are competent, capable people.  If they have a weakness it's in a predisposition to conventional, "inside-the-box" thinking.  Sherlock and Joan help out by thinking more outside-the-box.  A case like this, however, is almost certainly going to be solved inside the box or not at all.  Joan knew all that and didn't want to waste her time on case that would never be solved when she could work on cases that could be solved.  Granted she was wrong, but it was a judgement call.

[jhlipton]

Just now, Clanstarling said:

When I was watching the montage of the father's approaches, I wondered why Joan hadn't taken his case when she was working by herself. IIRC, she took some pretty boring cases then, and a father's fight to get his son justice doesn't seem all that boring to me.

Just now, johntfs said:

Maybe the other cases were more boring, but they wouldn't have been as unsolvable either.  A guy got mugged/beat up by some other guy months/years ago.  The only witness is dead.  Whatever evidence there was has long since been processed and led nowhere.  

 But Joan wouldn't know it was unsolvable without doing at least a cursory glance at the case.  I think it's far more realistic for her to have taken it on her own than as own of the "team-ups" though.

Just now, Loandbehold said:

Well, if we're going to get annoyed at the trope in this instance, since Sherlock and Joan are consultants to the NYPD, anytime they break into a place, any evidence they gather is also "fruit of the poisonous tree" even if no police are present. 

On all the shows like this (Castle was another), they excuse it as "[X] works for the police, but isn't police", so if they find something and bring the "real" cops after, the trail isn't poisoned, because the "real" cops followed the rules.

[shapeshifter]

On February 2, 2017 at 2:01 AM, laserlady said:

ON FEBRUARY 1, 2017 AT 9:38 PM, SHAPESHIFTER SAID:

I know I've seen the maple syrup plot on another crime show. Bones? Castle? One of the L&Os? Psych??

Battle Creek -- in the episode "Syruptitious" (that's where I've seen it before, at least).

That's it! And IIRC, Battlecreek was kind of a cross between L&O and Psych.

[johntfs]

3 hours ago, jhlipton said:

But Joan wouldn't know it was unsolvable without doing at least a cursory glance at the case.  I think it's far more realistic for her to have taken it on her own than as own of the "team-ups" though.

Maybe so, but if that had happened, this episode wouldn't have happened.  The whole point of the episode is that Sherlock and Joan fucked up and let this guy down.  Because they did, a man is going to prison and another guy also got assaulted.  This real question is: Was said fuck up reasonable?  I'd say the answer is yes. 

We can presume that what we see Sherlock and Joan doing during any given season of Elementary is what they typically do.  They typically work "major cases."  Guy getting beat up but not killed isn't really a major case.  Sure, the son died, but he died in part due to his own choices.  He chose not to get help for his addiction.  He chose to "upgrade" his drug of choice to heroin.  While it's belied by a sentence in my first paragraph, the father chose to take hostages and assault a guy.  Sherlock and Joan's inaction may have been his impetus, but he's the one who chose to act on that impetus.

[jhlipton]

Just now, johntfs said:

Maybe so, but if that had happened, this episode wouldn't have happened.  The whole point of the episode is that Sherlock and Joan fucked up and let this guy down.  Because they did, a man is going to prison and another guy also got assaulted.  This real question is: Was said fuck up reasonable?  I'd say the answer is yes. 

I wouldn't even say that they "fucked up".  How many muggings are there in NYC in any month?  Are they supposed to look into all of them?  There was nothing special about this mugging as far as the father knew.  But S&J were supposed to make an exception for him -- why, exactly?

[Loandbehold]

Sssshhhhiiiitttt. If Clay Davis had mentioned the black market maple syrup right off the top of the bat, Sherlock would have been all over the case.

[paigow]

3 hours ago, Loandbehold said:

Sssshhhhiiiitttt. If Clay Davis had mentioned the black market maple syrup right off the top of the bat, Sherlock would have been all over the case.

If Daddy knew about the syrup, the case would have been solved without Sherlock & Joan. BTW "Shoreline 99's" sounds more like innocent boy-band wannabes than bad ass dealers. It's like they are getting non-scary names from The Blacklist - e.g. The Forecaster; Kings Of The Highway - etc....

[mahree]

On 2/5/2017 at 5:26 PM, jhlipton said:

On 2/5/2017 at 11:06 AM, Loandbehold said:

Well, if we're going to get annoyed at the trope in this instance, since Sherlock and Joan are consultants to the NYPD, anytime they break into a place, any evidence they gather is also "fruit of the poisonous tree" even if no police are present. 

 

 

On all the shows like this (Castle was another), they excuse it as "[X] works for the police, but isn't police", so if they find something and bring the "real" cops after, the trail isn't poisoned, because the "real" cops followed the rules.

 

 

Except that is not how it actually works.  If someone is a civilian but is working for the police, they are legally considered agents of the police force and are bound by the same strictures as police, even when they are not working under the direction and control of the police.  As such, any evidence that is illegally obtained is indeed fruit of the poisonous tree and would be inadmissible.  I suppose cops could argue inevitable discovery but that wouldn't work in all cases.  Better to just handwave it, I suppose.

Edited February 8, 2017 by mahree

[theatremouse]

The B&E that Sherlock and Joan do in general does not bother me as much because it's established as part of the characters and they did get caught at one point. So I accept that in-universe, they do that bad thing. It's not the "poisonous tree" itself that bugs me personally. It's specifically the construct "oh I hear <whatever> coming from inside! That means we can go in anyway!" This is overused on cop TV shows. I certainly hope real law enforcement don't pull that bullshit as frequently as TV would have it seem. The point is: writing that in is a crutch on the writers. It's not based in or used for developing characters. It's just "we have no logical way to get them inside, so...we'l just have them say this lazy thing and lalala it's all fine". It's a macguffin.

[jhlipton]

4 hours ago, theatremouse said:

It's specifically the construct "oh I hear <whatever> coming from inside! That means we can go in anyway!" This is overused on cop TV shows. I certainly hope real law enforcement don't pull that bullshit as frequently as TV would have it seem. The point is: writing that in is a crutch on the writers. It's not based in or used for developing characters. It's just "we have no logical way to get them inside, so...we'l just have them say this lazy thing and lalala it's all fine". It's a macguffin.

Yes, exactly.  

[fastiller]

On 2/8/2017 at 10:17 AM, theatremouse said:

. It's specifically the construct "oh I hear <whatever> coming from inside! That means we can go in anyway!" This is overused on cop TV shows. I certainly hope real law enforcement don't pull that bullshit as frequently as TV would have it seem. The point is: writing that in is a crutch on the writers. It's not based in or used for developing characters. It's just "we have no logical way to get them inside, so...we'l just have them say this lazy thing and lalala it's all fine". It's a macguffin.

The old 'exigent circumstances' ruse.  The variant to 'hearing something inside': "do you smell gas?"

[johntfs]

On 2/8/2017 at 9:17 AM, theatremouse said:

The B&E that Sherlock and Joan do in general does not bother me as much because it's established as part of the characters and they did get caught at one point. So I accept that in-universe, they do that bad thing. It's not the "poisonous tree" itself that bugs me personally. It's specifically the construct "oh I hear <whatever> coming from inside! That means we can go in anyway!" This is overused on cop TV shows. I certainly hope real law enforcement don't pull that bullshit as frequently as TV would have it seem. The point is: writing that in is a crutch on the writers. It's not based in or used for developing characters. It's just "we have no logical way to get them inside, so...we'l just have them say this lazy thing and lalala it's all fine". It's a macguffin.

In this case I thought it led to a small but real character moment between Bell and Sherlock.  Go back and watch Bell's expression.  He despises the idea of using that trope but Sherlock has him "over a barrel" because of the hostage situation with Joan.  Also, it's probably happened more than a few times with real law enforcement.  Cop shows are based (sometimes very loosely) on police situations and activity.

[HawaiiTVGuy]

On 1/30/2017 at 0:13 PM, tennisgurl said:

I thought they did too. It seems like they didn't take the case because the guys son just got beat up and that lead to his OD, and he wasn't murdered in some interesting and quirky way. And we can see that it would have taken them a really short time to solve the case, there's no way they couldn't have fit him in somewhere. Its nice that they felt bad and tried to get the father some help and the bad guy to jail, but it would be nice in the future to see them taking some more "normal" cases, or else it looks like they think some cases are "beneath" them, even if it lead to a person dying.

I don't know exactly how they "should have" treated him, but they are only two people, each time he approached them they were in the middle of a case, so it wasn't like Holmes was in the middle of one of his random experiments or thought exercises to avoid boredom or Joan was having brunch dates with her family.  It seems unreasonable to expect them to drop everything they are doing (especially since it was work for someone else) to solve an assault that had a long shot at success, even for a duo like Holmes and Watson.  

On 1/30/2017 at 6:05 PM, Chyromaniac said:

So, the kid essentially got beat up so that he wouldn't be around for the black market syrup smuggling.  This syrup has been illegally sold to restaurants all around the NYC area, to this very day.  Maybe I've just watched too much L&O, but I feel like they should've been able to beat the statute of limitations just by tying the assault to the ongoing criminal enterprise.  I mean, I appreciate "tolling" as an inventive solution to the problem - but it felt weird to me that they've uncovered what appears to be a fairly substantial conspiracy, and it's kind of not even acknowledged at the end.  Overall it was an interesting case, and the actor who played the dad is always great.  I just wish somebody would've gone all Jack McCoy on hockey/truck guy's @$$...

I think the problem with tying it to the maple syrup being sold is that the only gang member that directly tied the assaulter to the smuggling was dead in the car crash, everything else they heard establishing the assaulter as the partner is hearsay.  So pretty much you would have the assaulter having assaulted the boy, and a gang smuggling maple syrup on the same night.  There might be a connection, but can you say it is "beyond a reasonable doubt"?  Tolling is much more certain of a plot point, and one that is actually realistic.  Don't you need to have your passport stamped to enter Canada now?  I know the cross-border transit is relatively lax, but I thought you needed a passport now.

[HawaiiTVGuy]

On 2/5/2017 at 5:56 AM, theatremouse said:

I hate that contrivance as well, however in this specific scene it sort of read to me like at first Marcus did think he actually heard something and sort of didn't catch on right away that Sherlock was pulling that bullshit. Sherlock on this show can be confusing because sometimes he does actually hear something or see something small no one else notices. So there's this half-second double take of what? Or possibly it's just that I took him literally at first (mistakenly) yet that did make the scene sort of work better. It's still annoying because plausible deniability gets stretched so thin on cop shows in general, and doing that schtick is a crutch in the writing (unless the point is to call out that particular poison tree) but yeah, Marcus going with it didn't seem so very off to me.

This is my take at the end of it all, and it turned out to be very fortuitous, but if I recall, it did not seem like the assaulter had any of his rights violated in the investigation so it is possible for the arrest to still stand.  Remember, no DIRECT evidence that was a fruit of the alleged illegal search would have been used against him.  The only evidence of the assault would have been his prior arrest and the photos of the victim.  Also, IIRC, the warehouse was foreclosed on (which I heard was something Holmes mentioned) and supposedly vacant, the bank or whoever actually owns the property has the expected right to privacy, not any illegal squatters.  Even if the gang had permission to be in the warehouse and thus had the expectation, then that would protect prosecution of them but not the assaulter.  

Edited February 14, 2017 by HawaiiTVGuy

[Loandbehold]

18 hours ago, HawaiiTVGuy said:

Don't you need to have your passport stamped to enter Canada now?  I know the cross-border transit is relatively lax, but I thought you needed a passport now.

You definitely need the passport to gain entry, but I don't recall if Canada will stamp it. The passport might just be used as a required proof of ID.

[HawaiiTVGuy]

2 hours ago, Loandbehold said:

You definitely need the passport to gain entry, but I don't recall if Canada will stamp it. The passport might just be used as a required proof of ID.

Hmm...if the passport is required, I am thinking there still would be a "paper" trail.  I am thinking customs needs to scan the passport to verify the authenticity even if they don't stamp a formal visa.

[paigow]

As a Canadian entering the US, my passport is scanned..never stamped..so the reverse should be true

[mtlchick]

Quote

They didn't explain why a New Yorker was a rabid fan of a Canadian hockey team. There's already the Rangers and Islanders, and the Devils right across the river. No need to go 500 miles and into another country.

Coming from Montreal, I know plenty of people who are hockey fanatics but HATE the Habs for their own reasons (some of the players, the coaching, management, etc.)  Being fans of the sport does not necessarily mean root for the home team by default, especially if the way the team has been playing as of late.  I did have to chuckle at the overabundance of extras in Canadiens fan attire and yet no sight of the logo.  

[HawaiiTVGuy]

On 2/20/2017 at 2:39 PM, mtlchick said:

Coming from Montreal, I know plenty of people who are hockey fanatics but HATE the Habs for their own reasons (some of the players, the coaching, management, etc.)  Being fans of the sport does not necessarily mean root for the home team by default, especially if the way the team has been playing as of late.  I did have to chuckle at the overabundance of extras in Canadiens fan attire and yet no sight of the logo.  

If it was an NBC owned show, I am sure there would have been plenty of trademarked logos.