I am hooked on the show, but I haven't yet gotten a chance to watch the finale so I'm not reading too much of your message just yet (just in case you included a spoiler or two)...but I will be back here to add some comments on the show once I do get to watch it.

I plan on watching it this weekend and will get back to you on that, I liked that some of the staff from House MD moved over to this show. that's about all I got as of the moment

I have a low opinion of all shows Americans rip off from the original British. To my mind they are all pathetic.

well it wasn't the best script, however I found Sherlock to be well acted his mannerism ect...
i'd still watch it if its renewed

Does anyone know if Elementary was renewed for another season ,,,,I can't see how ...as now they have little or nothing to work with,,,

mycroftt, the show was renewed for a second season quite a while ago. As one of the biggest new shows of this past season, it was a no brainer for CBS and one of the first shows they renewed.

I finally watched the finale so I'm going to give my thoughts, but first I want to address the mention about BBC's Sherlock - these two shows have nothing to do with each other aside from being based on the original Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. BBC's Sherlock is more faithful to the original material from what I understand (don't kill me for it, but I've never watched that one so I don't know for sure) so if you're more of a Sherlock purist than that's the show for you. Elementary decided from the get go to change things up so they would stand out from the other show and not be so married to the original work, which will give them more flexibility going forward with their show. People were initially annoyed when they announced that Watson would be a female on their show, but to be honest, I think Lucy Liu is pretty good in the role and I've never cared much for her as an actress. Based on their decision to deviate from the original stories, we probably should've seen the twist of Irene being Moriarty from a mile away, but I didn't see it coming, and I would bet most didn't.

As for the actual finale, I agree it was weak compared to the rest of the season. But I think the reason I found it so weak was actually more based on my feeling like Natalie Dormer was woefully miscast as Irene. I never got the impression that Irene and Sherlock were ever really in love because they lacked chemistry together. It felt more like he was in love with an idea of her rather than what she was when they met, based on what we saw in the finale. I do think it was weak to have her show up at his hospital bed when she was know to the cops at that point considering how smart she supposedly was - A) why would she be so brazenly stupid to go see him knowing the cops would be around? and B) Why would she not have thought ahead that he might be setting up a trap for her? She is supposed to be his intellectual equal if not superior and yet this is when she makes a mistake? It was surprisingly careless for someone so exacting. So in that sense, it was poor or lazy writing for the sake of resolving a plot within the time allotted.

I am actually glad they didn't decide to make it a cliffhanger, where Moriarty was never revealed or Irene was never caught or anything like that so we didn't have it hanging over our heads forever the way some other shows have done (like the forever wait to reveal the mother on "How I Met Your Mother" or the dragging on of the Red John storyline on "The Mentalist" for example). I guess the point was to shock viewers that may have expected them to be loyal to the stories and make Moriarty his long term nemesis rather than deal with the character and put it to rest quickly. I kind of think that it now allows them to be sort of free with their story telling - I just hope it doesn't mean they resort to being a straight up standard procedural because that could get old fast. But I'm not a Sherlock Holmes enthusiast so whether they stick close to the original books or not doesn't matter to me... and I think it's a good thing they are continuing to differentiate from the BBC series as well. I may be in the minority there...

Well, the lead, Jonny Miller ? , is just too much fun to watch, and I will definitely continue on next season. I like his flightiness, sudden whims, etc. Truly a Sherlock recovering from drugs....

Johnny Lee Miller is the reason why I decided to give the show a try in the first place - and I do think he embodies the role quite well and is what makes it so enjoyable.

I do enjoy the show greatly, but I look at it more as its own show, rather than a reinvention of the traditional Sherlock Holmes.

I agree that Irene as Moriarty was ridiculous. The Moriarty mystery could have been the running background theme for the whole series, only to be solved in the very last episode of the show. His father as Moriarty would have been more interesting, I think.

Also, if Irene/Moriarty was so clever, as clever as Sherlock himself, I truly doubt that she would be so naïve as to visit him in the hospital only to get arrested. Ridiculous.

All of this being said, I will continue to watch Elementary as a crime detective show, with no thought of the Sherlock Holmes connection.

Cheers!

It would've probably been cooler to have Moriarty turn out to be his father, I agree with you on that ultraviolet. I'm not sure I would've wanted to have the character constantly looming for however many years the show runs (and this is CBS so to think 9-10 seasons at least is not unreasonable) might've gotten to be too much - I mean weren't people complaining about The Mentalist dragging out the Red John plot? It would've been the same thing had they decided to not resolve Moriarty until waaaaaaaay down the road.

I can only assume the bit of having Irene show up at the hospital was to show she truly did care about him after all or that she wanted to be sure he was truly twisted up and hurting over her deceit. Either way, for someone supposedly brilliant, it is a stupid move and the writers should've realized fans would call the show out for it.

I still think the point of dealing with Irene and Moriarty in one fell swoop was probably done to clear the deck and allow for next season to not be so dependent on being tied to the original material it is derived from so it is more broadly appealing to the masses and not a niche program for die-hard Sherlock fans only.