In “Ancient History,” Joan and Sherlock investigate the murder of an assassin, and Joan tries to help a friend by finding out the identity of a one night stand.
The episode begins with a wreckage of traffic accident involving a motorcycle. A man lies on the side of the road, dead.

Meanwhile, Joan shops for a gift for Sherlock with her friend Jen. She finds a platypus skull for him because he’s bored since they’ve had no cases. Jen asks her to find a one night stand named Tony. She says he’s a photojournalist and he had to leave to go to Paris. Joan tells her she probably can’t find him, but Jen continues to ask. Joan asks Sherlock to join her in finding Tony, but he declines. Sherlock is searching through the cold cases, and insinuates Jen’s investigation isn’t interesting enough.

Sherlock and Joan head to the morgue to meet his friend Eugene, who lets Sherlock search the dead bodies to see if he missed something. They find Leo, the dead guy from the beginning of the episode. Joan says he died from the crash. Sherlock agrees but says Leo killed someone the day he died.

They take the case to Captain Gregson and tell him about Leo, a former Polish assassin. He was a nurse in Queens, but Sherlock believes he didn’t fully retire from the life because of some marks on his hands. They decide to go talk to Leo’s wife, Lara. She says she knows he had a bad life, but she doesn’t know anything about his old life. They were working to create a senior care home. Sherlock relates to her because of Moriarty and asks her to help them find out who Leo killed, but she says she can’t help.

At home, Sherlock calls people using aliases, trying to find out who Leo killed. Sherlock believes Leo killed someone he knew. Travis Hardwick is one of the men investigating in the senior care facility and he didn’t send any condolences to Lara, so Sherlock believes he may be the murder victim. Joan leaves him to the investigation and goes to the bar where Jen met Tony. Joan asks the bartender for information, but he doesn’t know anything. She sees an ad for Brazilian night and the bartender says people from the parade came to the bar.

Joan goes to meet Sherlock and they view a surveillance tape of Leo and Travis arguing. He’s been missing from work for three days. An employee tells them Travis texted her after the argument and said he was going to Jersey. Sherlock reads their lips on the tape and thinks Travis’s body might be in the construction site of the elderly care home. They find Travis’s truck and Joan notices a bit of concrete is darker and thinks maybe that’s where Travis’s body is buried. Sherlock finds a ticket stub in the truck and notices the motel across the street. They find Travis there with two women.

They question Travis about Leo. He says they ran out of money for the senior home, but Leo borrowed some money from a loan shark. They take some of the money to the police and find out the money is stolen. Detective Bell says the money is from a bank robbery from 2011 and the name he keeps finding in connection to the theft is Gertz.

Joan found a video from Brazilian night at the bar and thinks she might find Jen’s mystery man. Sherlock turns off the TV and seems jumpy. He then admits he is Tony. Shelrock confesses he met Jen because he was following Joan right after she arrived as his new sober companion. He apologizes and Joan is upset with him for betraying her trust.

The two go to find Gertz and ask him questions about Leo. He explains Leo was one of his mother’s nurses, so he loaned him $25,000. He said he received a visit from a Russian mobster, Grigori, who was looking for Leo. Sherlock calls Bell about the Russian mobster because he now thinks Leo’s accident was murder. They go back to where Leo’s body was found and find some cigarettes from Russia. They also learn someone was shooting at Leo. They didn’t hit him, but it did make him lose control. Finally, they discover find Grigori’s body down the road, which means he couldn’t have been the one shooting at Leo.

Sherlock studies the case information while listening to the sound of swarming bees on his tablet. Gregson arrives with information which states Leo stole around $30,000, which is why he left Europe. Joan and Bell visit Lara and tell her how Leo killed Grigori. She says she feels relieved now knowing he killed him in self defense.

Eugene calls Sherlock and reveals Grigori was on anti-anxiety medicine and heart medicine, so he should have had a psychiatrist. They go to visit Dr. Glassman, but the assistant tells them he’s busy. Sherlock says they can’t come back because he says he feels like he’s going to kill himself, so she has to take them back. They tell him Grigori is dead and Glassman says he was a frightening man. He gives them a name of one of Grigori’s associates, Marco Zupkof.

The group heads to Zupkof’s place, wearing bulletproof vests. They question Marco about his whereabouts, but he says he was mugged the day before the accident and stabbed in the leg, so he was at the hospital. Joan verifies his story and checked out the police report. Sherlock wants Joan to tell Jen that Tony is dead, but she declines. Sherlock looks over the evidence and realizes something looks familiar.

The group brings Lara to the station and confronts her about Marco. Sherlock discovered she saved Marco’s life and make a tourniquet out of her drapery. Leo actually called her to say someone had attacked him, so that’s how she knew where he would be. She’s the one that shot at Leo and made him crash. They searched the house and found evidence. She says Leo found out she made some films to make money to get to the US. He wanted to divorce her and ruin their plans for the senior home. She knew people were looking for him, so she called the mob.

Joan goes to meet Jen, who says Sherlock came to see her and told her everything. Jen slept with him again, but now knows there’s nothing between them. Joan returns home and tells Sherlock it was nice of him to help Jen create a baby. He’s silent and she judges his reaction. She remarks she almost got him, and he agrees.

Comments:

I really enjoyed this episode. I like when there’s an episode with various twists and turns. I did wonder if it was Leo’s wife, Lara, very early on, but I was unsure of her motivations. I liked the interaction between Joan and Jen. It’s always nice to see her spending time with her friends. I thought the Jen/Sherlock was entertaining and in character. I loved the last few moments of the episode.

Photo Courtesy of CBS