Elementary, Season Seven, Episode Five: Who is Odin Reichenbach?

Odin Reichenbach is coming! Odin Reichenbach is coming!

At least that's what the episode guides are telling me about tonight's episode of CBS Elementary, "Into The Woods." This season has had a really good flow of ongoing over-plot, and Odin Reichenbach is the big bad foreshadowed since way back, and since his name is "Reichenbach," well, here we go! (RANDOM SPOILERS AHEAD!)

"Odker" is apparently Odin Reichenbach's company and he's here from the start, doing his Ted Talk sort of thing. "Simple solutions for complicated problems." It's James Frain, fresh from playing Sarek, Spock's father, on Star Trek: Discovery, so he's potentially got "Sherlock Holmes descendent" on his resume. (Hey, who's to say the Holmes blood had to come from the human mother? Maybe there were a few human-lovers in that bloodline!) I know him better as Theo Galavan on Fox's Gotham, and season that with Orphan Black and The Cape, and you've got a great villain-actor ready to fill the Moriarty void. Can he?

A jogger dies just like Gustav Klinger did in Holmes and Watson, so the plot is already off to a great Sherlockian start. "Copy an 'A,' get an 'A," as a favorite podcaster of mine likes to say.

Odin Reichenbach has summoned Joan Watson out to his archery range with a donation to her gun buyback foundation to see if she can find who wants to kidnap Reichenbach's niece. She wants to help, Sherlock doesn't, and Sherlock thinks Joan wants to have sex with Odin Reichenbach -- a throwback to earlier days in the partnership, when he was always making little remarks about her sex life. Though since she did sleep with his brother Mycroft, well . . . .

Anyway, a murdered hog enters the murdered jogger plot, aside from Odin's problem, but that's the filler case, in my book. O-DIN! O-DIN!

Detective Bell is smart, he's going to a bar to wait until this part of the plot is over and we get back to Odin . . . and we do! Odin Reichenbach tells us his secret to life: Eight hours sleep!

Holmes and Watson go through every computer of every worker in Odin's office, which seems like a task of ridiculous complicatedness, and Sherlock even looks at non-computer things too. And then jumps into bed with Joan to answer a phone call, with is one of his most hysterical wake-up shtick bits, mainly because of how well it's directed. Who directed this one? Missed it in the credits, and will have to check later.

Man, this episode is doing the pinball-from-one-colorful-crime-thing-to-another like mad. Wine thief shooting man in the mouth, secret poker game, ricin poisoner coming for a hedge fund manager, bing-bang-boom! Wine auction! Tuxedoes! Joan's blonde hair with a bright red dress with dual skirt layers! O-DIN! O-DIN!

Not being very Zen tonight, or maybe too Zen. Enjoying the moments so much I'm ignoring the plot. Bad Sherlockian! Bad!

Still loving Marcus Bell's haircut this season. Looks good with a tux. They're really having fun this season, I think.

And Captain Dwyer is still around. Rather than investigating along with Holmes and Watson like Gregson, his role seems to be as a much needed Watson, to ask questions in disbelief.

"Reichenback" . . . Sherlock Holmes actually just pronounced it "Reichenback!"

He is a little irritated with Odin, as Odin Reichenbach created a false case just to test Holmes and Watson's skills, apparently wanting to recruit them for his larger purposes, which seem to have to do with everything that's gone on in the over-arching season plot so far.

Curious to see how Reichenback falls. (C'mon, the whole season has to be leading up to that joke, right? Remember, you heard it here first!)