E3:6. "The master beckons."

"From these scratches on the drawer, it appears someone tried to pick the lock," Kitty Winter observes, being sent to a crime scene in Mr. Elementary's place. And I busted out laughing. Why? Because the scratches, in a three inch radius around the lock, locked a bit like a monkey with the shakes was trying to attack the lock with a rock. Are the criminals in Elementary-land really that bad?

Well, given that just about anyone can be a consulting detective in this universe, well, maybe they are. Later, we learn that the crime scene is mainly a cover-up, but even for that . . . monkey with the shakes. Seriously.

Joan Watson is back this week, and she and Kitty start the episode by bonding over talk of their mutual issues with their teacher, the guy who still occasionally stands like he should have a knotted handkerchief on his head ala a Monty Python Gumby. And then they all go on an investigation with him, a consulting detective three-way at this point, and one wonders how they bill the client for the package deal.

"I have some more of Clyde's things," Kitty says upon showing up later at Joan's apartment, sent there on an errand by Mr. Elementary to deliver a turtle's things. The point of this, so ridiculously made, is that Mr. Elementary monopolizes the time of his apprentices with his own demands. And what is Joan's solution to this issue?

She offers to stick help Mr. Elementary out in Kitty's place so Kitty can have time off to have a social life.

Really.

Why isn't every feminist and self-respecting female in America protesting this subservient female crap? Joan is apparently Mr. Elementary's equal as far as NYPD is concerned, after her year of "training," and yet she is constantly putting up with this utter ass because . . . why? He's the dominant male of the consulting detective species?

When Sherlockians called Sherlock Holmes "the Master," as they have for the better part of a century, it wasn't because he treated anyone, Watson, Billy, Lestrade . . . anyone, as a slave. And maybe Mr. Elementary isn't treating "his girls" as slaves. The point, one supposes, is that his skills are so great that, like many an eccentric genius, they tolerate his failings to spend time with his greatness. And yet Elementary had never put that greatness on display -- especially with its crying need to elevate Joan to his level as an equal at detection. Lord, what a mess this show is.

You know, I would actually like to analyze the mysteries themselves in these episodes on occasion, but the interpersonal drivel is just SO irritating. Kitty exposes a corrupt casino, causing the casino head to become the most reasonable, generous, understanding guy running a casino ever. And then Joan solves the case. And yet they both tolerate the seriously handicapped male who . . .

Okay, is this show a fantasy fiction for women who think all males are just irritating and replaceable, or men who like bossing women around and having them take it? Or trying to play both sides of that fence?

Mr. Elementary's final explanation that he kept Kitty busy to keep her from being too interested in a boy, followed by Kitty's admission that it made her feel protected and loved, followed by Mr. Elementary's offer to invite Kitty's boyfriend to hang out with them both . . . weird, weird, weird.

In order to suit the demands of its own contrived premise theories, Elementary has constantly twisted the facts of human relationships, rather than let a factual-seeming relationship or two drive its premises. And you know what the true Master of criminal detection called that?

A capital mistake. Two and a half years in, one would think they'd be getting that figured out.