This show seems to be getting into the habit of depicting murders that accidentally cause collateral fatalities, and then largely glossing over the incidental victims. The only real purpose served by the death of the balloon guy was to allow Sherlock's crack about the murder victim also being the murder weapon; beyond that, it was irrelevant to the plot. Seems kind of gratuitous. (That was a good line, though -- but it would've been better if it hadn't been just a pointless sidebar.)
I do like the way this show delves into obscure issues of law and business like air rights. And of course Sherlock even has an answer for the rhetorical question about "old people smell."
The dog Eustacia Vye was named after a character from Thomas Hardy's
The Return of the Native. That novel was originally published in the literary magazine
Belgravia, which also published one of Arthur Conan Doyle's short stories, "The Great Keinplatz Experiment" from 1885, more than two and a half years before Holmes's debut. As it happens, the second-season premiere of
Sherlock was called "A Scandal in Belgravia."
And next week,
Elementary does
The Hound of the Baskervilles! It seems like a Holmes production has to tackle HOUN at some point, and it would have been strange if Jonny Lee Miller didn't have a take on it under his belt.
Just as long as they go a different route than
Sherlock did. Anyway, the episode will be called "Hounded" and is written by Robert Hewitt Wolfe, who seems to be on an adaptational kick lately, since his last episode was "A Study in Charlotte."
And oh, my... the episode after that is written by
Doctor Who scribe Paul Cornell, and is called "You've Got Me, Who's Got You?" Quite an interesting choice of title, considering that Cornell has written for DC Comics (notably the brilliant
Action Comics "The Black Ring" storyline with Lex Luthor as the protagonist).
EDIT: Oh, by the way, I forgot to acknowledge that this episode quoted one of my favorite Holmes lines from the canon: "It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data." Which is from "A Scandal in Bohemia," followed by "Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts." This was one of Holmes's favorite maxims as well, used three times in the canon, second only to "When you have eliminated the impossible" etc. In
A Study in Scarlet, he phrased it as "It is a capital mistake to theorise before you have all the evidence. It biases the judgment." And in "The Adventure of the Second Stain," he phrased it as "It is a capital mistake to theorise in advance of the facts."
It's not an entirely accurate sentiment; after all, the whole purpose of a theory is to make testable predictions that can be supported or refuted by gathering more data. But it's correct insofar as that a theory is a proposed explanation for the data/facts you already have. And it's a good reminder to be patient and gather as much data as possible before formulating an opinion, rather than jumping to a conclusion based on first impressions. Which is something that most people on the Internet could stand to learn.