When Did Elementary Jump the Shark?

[TMC]

https://popculturereferences.com/whe...ump-the-shark/

In a feature looking at if or when a TV series "jumped the shark," Brian asks you all to determine when (or if) Elementary jumped the shark.



Today, we look at when (or if) you folks believe that Elementary “jumped the shark.”

This is “Just Can’t Jump It,” a feature where we examine shows and whether they “jumped the shark.” Jumped the shark (coined by Jon Hein) means that the show had a specific point in time where, in retrospect, you realize that show was going downhill from there (even if, in some rare occasions, the show later course-corrected). Not every show DOES jump the shark. Some shows just remain good all the way through. And some shows are terrible all the way through. What we’re looking for are moments where a show that you otherwise enjoyed hit a point where it took a noticeable nose dive after that time and if so, what moment was that?

Elementary was a long-running drama based on Arthur Conan Doyle’s iconic detective, Sherlock Holmes. Here, Sherlock Holmes (Johnny Lee Miller) is still a brilliant detective, but he is also a drug addict driven out of England in disgrace who requires a sober companion, Joan Watson (Lucy Liu) to keep from relapsing into his addiction. He works as a consultant with the New York Police Department, specifically with a Captain Gregson (Aidan Quinn) who he had impressed in the past when working together on a case at Scotland Yard, prior to his drug addiction, and Gregson’s top detective, Detective Marcus Bell (Jon Michael Hill). While being his companion, Joan shows off tremendous skills as a detective herself, and when Sherlock is finally no longer in need of a sober companion, he instead offers to make Joan his detective partner.

So first…DID IT JUMP THE SHARK? I don’t believe it did.

WHEN DID IT JUMP THE SHARK When he suggested it, my friend Paul argued to me that he thinks the show jumped the shark right at the end of the series, where Holmes fakes his own murder in order to frame the seemingly undefeatable villain who had previously ordered the murder of Sherlock’s father (through untraceable means, of course). Paul thinks that once Sherlock returned alive after three years, it would have caused a mistrial. I think the show does a decent enough job explaining that Sherlock arranged it so that while his murder was the INITIAL crime that the villain was arrested for, once the police had him in custody, they were able to discover many, many, many other crimes, and thus Sherlock’s murder was no longer the linchpin to the case. But yes, that’s Paul’s problem – he thinks that stretched credulity too far, and so he thought the show jumped in the finale.