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As you may remember, Watson stopped being a surgeon because a patient died under her care and she got sued for it. While she's out at the patient's grave, his son asks her out for coffee. He's dropped out of college, but he's got a great plan to buy a bar and all he needs is five thousand dollars. This is obviously a scam and the kid is just going to blow the money, but Watson still spends most of the episode waffling and asking Holmes for the money. At the end, she offers to pay four times as much for the kid to go back to college, but he doesn't go for it. Still, Holmes gets her to try to consider her mistake to be an accident that's best left in the past, which is nice.
Meanwhile, a mathematician has been murdered. And a mugger out in the alley has been shot, although no one thinks he's important. Holmes quickly reveals that what appears to be an empty room actually has walls covered in writing only visible under a blacklight. This writing is the kind of crazy-person mathematical doodling that you might remember from A Beautiful Mind, and it has to do with the "P versus NP" problem. In this show, solving that problem will have two immediate results: you'll win a million dollars and you'll also be able to crack any computer security or encryption in the world. So you can see how it's suspicious that someone who was working on that has been shot. Judging by the handwriting on the wall (har har) he had a partner, but no sooner does Holmes identify that person than that person turns out to have also been murdered. Oops!
The second dead person was being monitored by a security company that was concerned about the prospect of computer security suddenly being obsolete. But they had been assured that his solution was nowhere close to being done. And who assured them of that? Professor Tanya Barrett, who also helped out identify the partner in the first place. So she's obviously suspect number one, especially since her dog matches hairs found at the scene and she had a gun that matches the shootings. But she has an ironclad alibi, as shown by a restaurant's security footage and its embedded timecode. So maybe she was being framed by her ex-boyfriend, who sent threatening emails!
And then the mugger wakes up from his coma and pins the murder on Barrett. It turns out she had the solution to P versus NP all along, and she used her magical security-breaking powers to hack her boyfriend's emails and change the restaurant's timecode. She also stole hundreds of millions of dollars, but they don't really figure into the plot.
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Want more? The full recap starts right below!New York at night. A mugger waves a knife in a victim's face. After he gets the guy's wallet, he ignores the protest of "Please. I don't want any trouble" and punches him in the face. We follow the mugger into an alley, where he sees a shooting through a window. When the shooter comes down into the alley, the mugger tries saying he doesn't want any trouble. And it doesn't work this time, either; the mugger gets shot.
A graveyard. A woman lays flowers at the tombstone of Gerald Castoro, who was a beloved husband and father. Oh, hey! It's Watson! And she's noticed by someone named Joey who calls her "Dr. Watson." Joey strikes me as someone who's up to no good, but to be fair, that's just because he's played by Jeremy Jordan, who played Jimmy the Jerk on Smash. It's probably not fair to hold that role against him, but that's what's happening. Deal with it. She's putting flowers on Joey's father's grave, and of course that's what he's here for. He came the day after the anniversary to avoid his mother. Watson agrees that he was a good man. Gerald lays down his flowers and offers to buy her coffee. She tries to beg off, but he insists.
Gregson and Bell are at the alley crime scene where the mugger was shot. Holmes strolls up, apologizing for being late, and Bell says that he's not actually wanted at all, since he just heard about the murder on his scanner and Bell texted him not to come. Holmes claims to have received a text saying, "Yes, please. Now. Triple smiley face, with tongue protruding." Bell points out that Holmes is actually reading a text from someone named "Bella" from months ago. And with that out of the way, we might as well let Holmes work the case, right?
The victim inside the house is Felix Soto, a math tutor who lived alone. He's lying on his back in the middle of the room. The mugger's name is Benny Charles, and he seems not to have known Felix. They know that he was mugging someone right before, so he seems to have just ducked into the alley to count his swag. Which we, the audience, happen to know is exactly what happened! Benny survived, but he's in a coma right now. He's just waiting until a plot-relevant time to return to consciousness.
Holmes looks around and decides there are too many remaining valuables to assume a motive of robbery. Bell says a neighbor heard an argument. Holmes goes into an empty room and investigates the walls from an inch away. Bell noted on his own that it's weird that just one room would be completely empty. He considered the possibility that the shooter took something off the walls, but there aren't any nail holes. Holmes asks if Bell has always been this observant, and Bell gets in some quite acceptable sarcasm about how before Holmes came along, no one in the NYPD had ever closed a case.
Holmes announces that they need a blacklight because the wall smells like burnt matchsticks, which is a particular kind of ink. In the room, he finds a lamp with a blacklight bulb. When he has Bell pull the shades, the blacklight reveals that the wall is covered with math-related doodling. It's all the way up to the ceiling, which seems impractical. As does doing it on the wall in invisible ink in the first place, really. You could get twenty times that much doodling done in a notebook. And then keep the notebooks in a safe. Or just use invisible ink in the notebook! It's got to be easier than bringing in a stepladder because the only unused section of wall is above the doorway. I realize it's picturesque, but walls just aren't the best doodling surface.
Watson and Joey are at a diner. Watson is having trouble explaining the difference between a cop and a consulting detective. Joey explains that he's not graduating this year because he left college. But he's got "some stuff going on," in that he and a friend are about to buy a bar. He just needs a little more funding. Watson remembers Joey being excited about becoming an engineer. But he lost his scholarship for dropping out, so he can't go back. He is extremely unsubtle as he brings up the opportunity to invest in his bar. He reminds Watson of how she held his hand when his father got sick. He shows the place his father's picture will hang, and she asks how much he needs. Oh, Watson. Don't be a dummy.
Watson comes home to the Brownstone, and she's momentarily disconcerted to find a dumpy shirtless guy in the living room, studying the arcane mathematical symbols being projected on the wall. It's Rich Sommer, who plays Harry Crane on Mad Men. Sorry for calling you dumpy, Rich. It's just that, well...let's just move on. He directs her to the kitchen, where Holmes explains that he's Harlan Emple, a well-qualified mathematician. He's shirtless because his process involves not having anything between him and the numbers. He'll ring a bell if he needs to get naked. There's no real reason to have "naked Harry Crane" be appearing in viewers' heads.
He came to Holmes's attention when he claimed to have come up with a way to mathematically predict crime patterns in New York. It didn't work, but it was the right kind of crazy to keep Holmes interested. Holmes doesn't know if Felix Soto was doing real math, but the fact that he was keeping it hidden suggests that someone else might have wanted it. Watson changes the subject to money; she wants a $5,000 advance on her salary. She explains, and Holmes says she must believe in this young man. She doesn't quite admit that, but she wants to give him a chance. Before they can get any farther, Harlan shouts from the room that he has determined what the formula is: "And it is a doozy."
Holmes and Watson go in to get some learning. But Holmes has to explain to Harlan that there were two people writing: Felix Soto and someone else with different handwriting. Probably a man, because of handwriting details Watson calls out. Harlan says they were working on "P versus NP." It's a super-complicated problem, and I recommend reading Gödel, Escher, Bach. It's not really about P versus NP, but it's pretty close, and it's a great read. Anyway, there's a million-dollar prize for solving the problem, so there's a solid motive. Holmes suggests that Soto was arguing with his partner. Harlan says that Soto would have been working with a genius who was specializing in this problem, so there can't be all that many candidates. And he knows someone in the field: Tanya Barrett, a professor.
And here's Professor Barrett now! She didn't really know Soto, although she'd met him once. She wrote an article profiling all the mathematicians who specialized in the problem. She's happy to give them the list, although she doesn't think Soto would work with someone. She spent three years on P versus NP, but she decided it might be unsolvable, so she walked away. Holmes flips through journals until he finds a proof that interests in him because of the handwriting. It's by Cyril Nauer of Brooklyn. And there's a picture of Nauer, which looks a lot like the Unabomber. Holmes calls Bell to tell him they have a suspect, and Bell tells Holmes there's a second victim who got shot in Hell's Kitchen by the same gun. It's Cyril Nauer, of course. Nobody's all that surprised.
Holmes and Watson go to the morgue. Nauer and Soto are both there. Watson suggests they were both killed by someone who knew they were about to solve the problem, although Holmes questions how anyone would have known that. There were dog hairs under the sleeve of Nauer's coat, which Holmes attributes to him being dragged along the street. He also declares the hairs to be from a Boston terrier: "So...perhaps our shooter owns a dog. Almost something, I suppose." Normally, that's the kind of tidbit that Sherlock Holmes loves.
Watson changes the subject to that five thousand she wants, and Holmes asks who wants it and what their connection is to the man who died under her care three years ago. He knew she was going to see that grave because her sleeves smelled of carnations. She doesn't answer, and he presses a bit, claiming he just wants to make sure she doesn't get taken advantage of. Watson sighs and gives up some backstory: Gerald Castoro was her patient and needed surgery to remove his right adrenal gland. She nicked his vena cava and he bled into his abdomen. She'd gotten to know his family, because she was the nicest surgeon in the history of the world. The wife sued, and Watson had to go to court to listen to her say a lot of mean things about her. I like that she's going through this story about the end of her medical career while standing in a morgue. It's a setting that's both medical and symbolic of the end of things. Joey was seventeen and wrote her a letter forgiving her. Holmes asks if this is the first time Joey's asked for money, and of course it is not. He also needed a car. When she was a sober companion, she was making enough to pony up for a car? While living in Manhattan? Dang. I could do that. I'm sober, and for enough money I could easily be companionable.
Holmes's phone rings. Bell thinks he should come check out Nauer's apartment. There are no blacklights, but there's a remote listening device. Holmes looks across the street and notices that the cluster of security cameras contains one pointed directly at Nauer's window. In an absolutely stellar piece of lateral thinking, Holmes hails a taxi, which he then climbs up on top of to reach the camera. He does promise to give the guy twenty dollars. And he finds a broadcast device on the camera, so they just have to find the receiver. That sounds hard to me. Receivers do not necessarily broadcast anything.
, Bell, Holmes, and Watson meet with Linus Roe, a large, intimidating man who runs Roe Encryption Technologies. Holmes is not intimidated and mentions illegal surveillance. Roe denies having heard of Cyril Nauer, Bell is happy to explain about the signal booster they found that broadcasts to Roe's company. And when they mention that Nauer's dead, Roe suddenly seems to have maybe heard of him after all.
In Roe's office, he admits that they were monitoring Cyril Nauer and that it was his idea. They were monitoring him because P versus NP is worth much more than a million dollars to encryption nerds: "A correct proof would render all modern encryption obsolete." I think that's theoretically true, but I'm not sure an incredibly complicated proof would lead directly to all encryption being broken the day. It might just prove that decryption was possible, not practical. I could be wrong, though; Roe seems pretty confident. He says he wants P versus NP proven; he just wanted a correct solution to be hidden until he developed a system of cryptography that could beat it. Surely people are already working on that anyway, right? If there's a chance your whole industry (and obsession) could be rendered inoperative, you should consider finding a system of encryption that doesn't rely on abstruse mathematical theorems that might or might not be true. Roe admits that they infiltrated Soto and Nauer's places and took photos. But they weren't anywhere near a solution according to their expert: Professor Tanya Barrett. Who, since she has appeared in the story twice, is almost certainly the killer.
Gregson and Bell agree with my logic, because Professor Barrett is now being questioned in the police interrogation room, rather than her spacious, airy office. She admits that Nauer and Soto were clearly working together and were about a third of the way to a solution, so she lied to Roe to get him to back off. Holmes asks if she owns a Boston terrier, and she does. But he didn't learn that through clever observation; they checked to see if she applied for a pet license. She also registered a handgun, and she promptly says it was stolen a month ago. She filed a police report, but Watson suggests that the gun wasn't really stolen. Everyone describes the obvious plan, but she turns out to have an ironclad alibi from 9 to 10. She was at dinner in Midtown from 8:30 to 10:30 with someone named Wayne Kaneshiro.
Bell's having trouble locating Mr. Kaneshiro, but the restaurant sent him some security camera footage. Holmes shows off by immediately identifying "two underage drinkers, an affair in progress, [and] a bartender who's been stealing from the till." They see Barrett walk in at 8:37 and walk out at 10:44. Well, then.
Holmes does shirtless sit-ups in his living room while facing a bunch of pictures. Watson comes down and complains about it being 2:00 AM. Really, she's just mad about him never going jogging by the river with her. Bell found Kaneshiro, who confirmed the alibi. Holmes claims that calisthenics increases blood flow to the brain. The pictures on the wall are of the other people from Professor Barrett's article on the theory that maybe it was some other P vs. NP person. Holmes switches to doing those pushups where you clap your hands between each one. This show is turning into Arrow with all the shirtless working out.
Holmes has decided to advance Watson the money, even though it's obviously suspicious that Joey showed up at his father's grave the same day as Watson. In Holmes's opinion, Gerald's death was an accident, and Joey is preying on Watson's guilt. But the money's in a shoebox and she's welcome to it. When she looks in it, she's quiet for a moment. It turns out to be $20,000, which is all the cash Holmes had on hand. That's kind of a lot! Holmes recommends giving it all to Joey and telling him to push off. Holmes says that mistakes belong in the past. Watson changes the subject back to the case: what if Tanya Barrett had a partner who committed the murders while she got herself an alibi? Holmes already discarded that, because if you're going to get a partner and an alibi, you wouldn't use a gun that could be traced back to you. Holmes suggests that maybe someone is purposely framing her.
Holmes catches up with Professor Barrett in the halls of her school. She's not happy to see him, but she's willing to talk about the possibility of her being framed. She told no one about Nauer and Soto's work. When Holmes asks if she has any enemies, she doesn't want to say. But she does: a few months ago, she broke up with some guy named Jason. And he sent threatening emails. She promises to forward him the mails after her class.
Police station. Someone who is probably Jason denies knowing either of the dead people. He admits that his breakup had some unpleasant moments. Holmes quotes things like "You'll be sorry you let me go" and "You deserve to be hurt the way you hurt me." Bell says they know Jason met Soto and Nauer back when she wrote the article. Jason denies it, but his threatening emails got them a warrant. In 2010, he wrote emails complaining about having to meet Nauer and Soto specifically. Jason says, "I didn't write this." Holmes answers, "Nor did you place an order for 9mm ammunition earlier today." Jason is left alone with his thoughts so Bell can inform Gregson that he wants a lawyer. I bet he does! Gregson says Benny (the mugger who was shot, remember?) is awake, and Bell needs to get over there.
Hospital room. Benny doesn't want to say anything until the DA promises to go easy on him. Bell leans on him a little, and he gives it up: "She about five-six. Mid-thirties if I had to guess." It's Tanya Barrett. He's positive.
Police station. Holmes and Watson are studying the bulletin board full of pictures. They also have the restaurant's security footage. It's perplexing! Watson isn't going to take Holmes's advice with Joey. In the course of their conversation, Holmes observes that a beer at this restaurant costs only $2.50. Watson thinks that's awfully low for a reasonably classy place in Manhattan. She says, "The only time you see drinks that cheap is during Happy Hour." Yeah, but these days, "Happy Hour" is like six hours long. I guess they don't necessarily include 8:30 pm to 10:30 pm, though. She's questioning the timestamp, which now that she mentions it, is "09:45:15". Holmes calls it a "digital timestamp," which apparently means that it has just now occurred to them that the timestamp is added by a computer.
Holmes interrupts Professor Barrett as she's working on a problem on a whiteboard. He claims that she forgot to carry the one, but he's kidding. Watson gets to explain that Barrett was at the restaurant from 5:30 to 7:30. Holmes says that someone with the solution to P vs. NP could easily break into a restaurant's computer and change time codes. According to him, she teamed up with a computer programmer and they stole hundreds of millions of dollars from financial institutions, but then she learned that Soto and Nauer were too close. The programmer is Wayne Kaneshiro. And he's the hacker who let her plant those emails in Jason's account.
I'm going to come back to this, but first, let's close out the episode. Joey meets up with Watson in a diner, and she says she's investing. But in Joey, not in the bar. She offers him the money as a scholarship. In the form of a check. Joey doesn't want to go back to college, and he's a little hurt that she won't just give him money to blow on a bar. She says she wants to do what his dad would think was right, and he blows up at her: "My dad. The one guy who isn't here right now to help me because of you!" Classy. Watson says she'll support him in whatever he does, but the only thing she'll pay for is his education. She asks what he wants.
Brownstone. Holmes is looking at the P versus NP solution that was on Soto's walls. The NSA has asked the NYPD to surrender everything, including the solution and Tanya Barrett. She'll only explain her work in exchange for a deal. So that's how the show is going to back away from having all encryption be forever useless. I'm a little disappointed that Holmes is going along with this. The Benedict Cumberbatch Sherlock Holmes would never do that. You can tell, because he's also the Benedict Cumberbatch Julian Assange. Watson says Joey is thinking about her offer, but she's not holding her breath. Watson says she was going to pay Holmes back. Holmes would like to go with Watson the time she goes to the cemetery. Aw, look at him, learning to care about people.
Okay, so let's consider this murder plot. Keep in mind, Tanya Barrett is in possession of a secret that breaks all computer encryption immediately. So she needs a plan to kill two mathematicians before they also come upon the secret, and the best she can do is to have dinner at a restaurant where her partner hacks the timecode of the security video? And then she goes out and shoots them with her own gun? She thinks she's covered her tracks sufficiently by submitting a burglary report and creating fake emails to make it look like he's framing her? What about erasing the gun registration entirely? What about taking some of those hundreds of millions of dollars and buying a different gun? You have complete unfettered access to law enforcement databases; you could have your mathematician nemeses arrested for something. Or, apparently, you could put all your chips on the alibi plan and just wander the streets of New York blazing away at people without even changing your very identifiable look. And when the heat starts coming down and you've got hundreds of millions of dollars, you just keep working at your crappy professor job. Instead of making your escape to a country with no extradition, because, again, you have a secret that will let you break any security immediately, so it's not like the TSA is going to have you on a list.
Seems dumb, is all I'm saying. Tanya Barrett did not make the best use of her magic key.
Follow Monty on Twitter at @monty_ashley and read his blog, Mysterious Exhortations.