Truth is stranger than fiction
in our writer's room, all the time.
It's a matter of taking all these little pieces
and these disparate elements and pulling them together.
That's what we really devote ourselves to
when we're spending time in this room.
We have this incredible staff
of extremely bright and extremely curious people,
who dig into every corner
and find these fascinating stories.
Twists and turns are absolutely important.
Maybe more important to us than most shows.
I am constantly blown away by the kinds of stories
that the staff comes up with.
There are things that...
You know, my initial reaction is, "That couldn't possibly be true."
That's not really happening out there in the world somewhere.
People aren't really doing that.
Someone didn't try to commit a murder that way.
I had no clue that a mere handful of people
held, literally, the keys
to the entirety of the Internet.
Any idea what those are?
When Jeff King brought that up,
I had a hard time buying it, but it's true.
The IAO controls core security for the entire Internet.
These people are many things, Watson, but mundane... they are not.
The most difficult task we have as writers is trying to outsmafl
the smartest man in the world.
And for me, personally, I think a lot of other writers, too,
how you end up doing that is to take him places he's never been before.
Because then you don't have to just outsmafl him,
you can take him somewhere where you want to see him learn,
where he's required to learn about something to then solve a case.
So for me, and for a lot of us, it's all based on the research you do.
Can you find a world that's compelling and interesting
and will challenge Sherlock in an interesting way.
The other piece of it is mining the depths of the human soul
and human capacity for doing ridiculous things
and crazy things that don't always make sense.
And on this show, I think we do keep our villains to a high bar,
as far as, are they acting logically, are they doing something smart?
So I think, with Sherlock, yeah he's got a logical brain,
but if you do something illogical, I think he does bump up against that.
And that is compelling and interesting.
A lot of our most successful episodes
continue to unfold themselves as Sherlock is investigating.
I think episodes where we hit outside the bull's eye is stuff
where everything already happened and Sherlock's just parsing through it.
So I think "lll Tidings" is interesting and fun because it's the idea that,
to commit a crime takes a lot of work in and of itself,
so we always have Sherlock investigating...
the investigative side of what has happened is always complicated.
VVell, sometimes, the doing of the crime is complicated.
We've been looking for the killer on the wrong floor.
This isn't some Byzantine stock plot, it's an art heist.
And it's happened right under our noses.
"lll Tidings" is a great example where
it takes one crime to be able to do the second crime.
And why that's helpful is you feel like Sherlock is always trying to catch up
to what's being done ahead of him, which I think is a fun feeling.
I like to write that. Feels like there's more action going on,
where, you know, they're in the Stock Exchange and the paintings get stolen
literally from underneath them.
A lot of time when we're, like, who can we have Sherlock face off against
we want our villains to be smart and have good planning skills.
So “lll Tidings“ is one where, like, that was a complicated crime to pull off.
And because it was complicated, it suggests it requires a smart person
to pull it off, which means our nemesis that episode
is as smart as Sherlock, and that's always tasty.
I have to give you credit for devising such a clever hiding place, Mr. Lima.
He will be arresting you now.
According to legend, the Jade Seal grants whoever owns it
the "Mandate of Heaven," divine right to rule China.
DOHERTY: I'd heard of it. I knew it was a meaningful thing.
I think I thought it was in a museum somewhere.
Robefl Wolfe knew the whole story,
pitched it to me and the other writers,
with, you know, great delight, and it was something we had t0 do.
It was a no-brainer.
This green rock... was it, um...
Did it have a square base,
about four or five inches, each side?
Sounds about right, yeah.
WOLFE: When you're writing for the greatest detectives
in the history of literature, the oases have t0 be worthy of them,
and that means we stuff an extra twist or two into every case that we do.
There are certain objects that have
a certain mythology around them that are really fun.
There's ones that most Americans have heard of,
like the Holy Grail or, you know,
there's ones that are more obscure, like the Spear of Longinus.
But there are these great cultural artifacts,
and the Imperial Jade Seal of China truly is probably
the most valuable missing object in the history of the world.
It is, in all likelihood, the one, the only, the original
Imperial Jade Sea! of China.
Hello, hola and eoh wasseo, gamers and gamerettes.
WOLFE: One of the things that we do all the time, or I do all the time,
and a lot of the writers do is we look for weird stuff.
And interesting stuff.
And I stumbled across an article about the world of e-sports.
I also watched some people playing games
and people watching them and donating money to them.
I thought those were interesting things.
The episode "Rekt in Real Life."
A lot of mystery shows, it would have been sufficient just to get to...
the victim was the agent for this player that everyone wants.
And they killed him in order to strike this deal.
That's plenty for most shows.
It's not enough for a Sherlock Holmes mystery, in our opinion.
You need that extra twist or two.
O.G.'s murder was ultimately triggered by something far larger in scope.
He died because of global warming.
The idea of, you know, someone dying in a reality show
was also an interesting thing.
- [PAINTBALL GUN FIRING] - Got you.
[SHOTGUN COCKS]
A lot of shows would have just spent their time in the reality show.
They never would've gotten to Akello and his history.
They wouldn't have gotten to the gun corruption. It would've been...
"Oh, she was killed in a reality show and the winner gets a million dollars.
Which of these eight contestants killed her?
Oh, it was a producer who did it because he was having an affair
with one of the contestants."
Okay, that's a perfectly valid mystery, but it's a little bit...
It's like two steps shy of being a satisfying Elementary
in our point of view. [CHUCKLING]
The wonderful thing about writing Sherlock Holmes
is, you know, Sherlock Holmes is one of those characters
that isn't just a fascinating character,
but he brings a very high bar of expectation
on the kind of stories we send him t0 investigate.
And that gives us a great challenge.
The stories that Sherlock Holmes investigates
have to be worthy of Sherlock Holmes.
We did an episode this season called "Pick Your Poison,"
that starts out with someone
stealing Joan's identity as a physician to write illegal prescriptions.
According to the scrip this guy used to overdose,
you're the one who wrote it.
That's a very big and real problem, by the way.
For obvious reasons, physicians
are among the most targeted for identity theft.
They steal the credentials of a physician
to get their license number and DEA number
and write false prescriptions.
Also, the opioid epidemic in the country
is a huge problem, and one that I wanted to do a story about.
We've identified multiple improper opioid scrips,
all bearing your license and DEA numbers.
Obviously, someone stole my information.
I haven't practiced medicine in ten years.
There are real repercussions around that for a physician
if a physician hasn't done the proper diligence
to make sure that someone isn't abusing opioids,
isn't filling multiple prescriptions from multiple doctors,
so Joan can really be on the hook for this.
Twenty pads per box, 100 pages per pad.
[SIGHS] That's 10,000 more opportunities for addicts to overdose.
VVhere the story goes, after the usual Elementary twists and turns,
is that a victim of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy,
discovered what his mother was doing to him
and murdered her for it.
And the physician who was also murdered was collateral damage.
She had to know what she was risking, but she tried to save you anyway,
and you killed her for it.
Five years into a show, I still feel like we're treading new ground
and making things fresh and exciting.
It is really hard to come up with the stories.
We have a great staff here.
We all spend a lot of time reading a lot of news,
reading a lot of what's happening in business and tech.
And you know, the thing about working on a show like this
is every area of life and every page of the newspaper
is important, is someplace where we might discover a story.
KING: Drama, storytelling, is interesting when it's messy,
when things don't go right, you know.
Is the famous adage of, if your story goes “A, then B, then C, then D,“
you're doing something wrong. If your story goes, "A, but B,
and therefore C, but then D," you're doing something right.
Above all else, I'm happy that our bar
for what makes an Elementary story, continues to be exceedingly high.
And I can say that as a writer who pitches things that don't meet that bar,
and you realize, “Wow, the standard around here is really high.“
And it's great that it is,
because it means that a hundred episodes in,
I think we're still making a show that's compelling
and interestingly written and really excites audiences.