Sunday, October 23, 2016

E:5. 3. The baseball bat murder and the book review.

EDITOR'S NOTE: At his request, Don Murillo, the "Tiger of San Pedro" and "the most Canonical man in the Canon, will be reviewing CBS's Elementary for Sherlock Peoria this season. As the rest of the staff at Sherlock Peoria quit watching the show last season, we could not help but take advantage of his generous offer, spoilers and all. Take it away, Don Murillo! 

Don Murillo found the opening minutes of tonight's Elementary to be the most gruesome in any of the show's five seasons! A man in a trailer park was holding a bloody baseball bat over his next victim, who was vowing revenge for a friend who, if the gore on the ground was to be believed, lost their life to that horrible piece of sports equipment, much like the wooden clubs used in the American World Series which Don Murillo hears so much about!

But then Lopez informed Don Murillo that his eagerness for tonight's episode had caused Don Murillo to turn on the television an hour early, and to the wrong station! Joan Watson and her partner will be confronting the Andrew Dice Clay impersonator with the baseball bat another night, it seems!

Don Murillo turned off his television and went back to reading his copy of About Sixty, and Mark Hanson's essay on Don Murillo, whom he calls "Don Juan Murillo." To this, Don Murillo must quote another less popular, less successful dictator and cry: "Wrong!" Those closest to Don Murillo know that Don Murillo's true full name is Juan Don Murillo! And those who know Juan Don Murillo the very best know that "Juan Don" is a much more complimentary name when it comes to romance than "Don Juan," as Don Murillo's one-time butler Brunton was known.

Don Murillo finished Hanson's essay and ordered Lopez to change the station to the CBS . . . but what sorcery it this? Madame Secretary still holds sway? Ah, clever CBS! After Don Murillo's post of last week informed them that many fans were thinking they needed to change channels after Madame Secretary and missing Elementary, the network potentates let the earlier show run into Elementary's time! Clever!

So it was that Don Murillo turned back to About Sixty, and "The Adventure of the Norwood Builder," the other story in which the most Canonical man in the Canon, Don Murillo, is mentioned. Don Murillo carefully and slowly scanned the words of Mr. Vincent W. Wright, and though many good words were there, none of those words were "Don" or "Murillo." (Don Murillo does not consider "Don't" a form of "Don," regardless of what the search engines would try to tell us!)

Finally, at about that hour when a man gives his first yawn and glances at his personal secretary to be told the hour, Captain Gregson's voice is heard in recap, speaking of his girlfriend. Captain Gregson and his girlfriend, who turns out to be actress Virginia Madsen, are then having a date in Gregson's office, eating from boxes! Captain Gregson is certainly no Juan Don, Don Murillo can tell you that!

Virginia Madsen leaves to speak with El Sherlocko, giving him a false name, so as to keep him from speaking of the sequel to Highlander that she acted in, as she must often do. A naked man is murdered for some reason, and then Joan Watson appears in her pajamas as ironic juxtaposition.

Then, in the best mystery tradition of A Shot in the Dark, El Sherlocko and Joan go to a nudist colony at the request of Detective Bell. Joan wears a suit and tie, sans jacket, to bedevil Bell's obvious goal.

The quiet, soothing conversations of Joan Watson and El Sherlocko bring Don Murillo to that minute in Elementary when a man gives his first yawn and glances at Lopez for some entertainment. Lopez does the traditional dance of San Pedro, which the citizens are expected to perform for Don Murillo's amusement whenever he starts to drift toward slumber during the day's tyrannical chores.

Virginia Madsen does not enjoy that El Sherlocko investigates Gregson's romantic partners in this adaptation, which the Sherlock Holmes that Don Murillo knew in the Canon did not do. Don Murillo had the displeasure of meeting Mrs. Gregson when he came to London to . . . alas, that is a tale for another time. 

Joan Watson sleeps in sleeveless sleepwear the second pajama morning of the episode, when she was wearing much warmer sleepwear the night before. Those Elementarian chronologists like my editor will surely find this a clue as to New York weather changes, but Don Murillo is more interested in that the Elementarian pajamalogists will make of this twist in Joan's sleepwear patterns.

But it has been a long night of baseball bats and reading About Sixty, and Joan's bed looked so comfortable that Don Murillo cannot put his own peacock-down mattress and New Zealand dandelion fluff comforters out of his mind. So he must leave you now for sleep.

"You will not join me in pouring scorn upon her racist tale of woe."
                      -- El Sherlocko, from tonight's Elementary wind-up

"A Spaniard would write to a Spaniard in Spanish."
                       -- Sherlock Holmes, from Don Murillo's future collection, Quotes No One Ever Quotes.



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