Bill Reviews Case of the Pennsylvania Gun
Bill reviews Case of the Pennsylvania Gun, and liked the mix of evocative British villages and fishing jokes.
Fidelity to Holmes: 2 sawed-off shotguns
Holmes literally fishes for clues in the murder of a man in an isolated castle.
Quality of episode: 4 sawed-off shotguns
Watson challenging Holmes puts their friendship on an equal footing.
Although Sheldon Reynolds paid the Conan Doyle estate for the right to use one story (“The Red-Headed League”), that didn’t stop him from stripping parts of the canonical stories for the show. After all, the series was sold to American television and the Doyle boys were too busy indulging the sweet life on their father’s dime to check up on him.
This means that Holmes fans can watch each episode and exercise their little grey cells — sorry, wrong icon — playing “spot the reference.”
In this game, points are awarded for a direct use of a story trope, with bonus points for a clever callback to the stories.
For example, this episode opens with Holmes deliciously reciting from a book the names of villages (“Bippery Cross, Burrow Crags, Burlston Junction”). “What foreigner reading these could ever think of us as stiff and sober-minded people?”
Hearing Burlston reminds Watson that a murder was recently reported there. Was Holmes planning on investigating? By sheer coincidence, he’s planning on doing a little fishing there. Watson is skeptical. He sees Holmes playing with a large gaff and quizzes Holmes about his intentions. Holmes insists he’s interested in fishing with his equipment. Watson points out that if Holmes was a real fisherman he’d call that his tackle. “What do you deduce from that, Holmes?”
“Obvious. Your fishing friends either lack experience or vocabulary. We deep-sea fisherman are in the equipment class. None of your nasty little bundles.”
The episode is full of little lines like that.
At the castle, they meet the police inspector. On the surface it seems simple: The castle’s owner was blasted in the face with a sawed-off shotgun of American make. The suspects are his wife and Morelle, an American guest. Morelle says a man shot the host and fled through the window, but the presence of a large spider’s web outside says otherwise. Open-and-shut.
Inside, Morelle tells them that 20 years ago, he and the host were gold prospecting with another man in Arizona. They sold the gold mine and divided the money among them. One man moved to England and bought the castle, while the other man — who spent all his money — claimed he was cheated and vowed revenge.
Time for Holmes to go fishing “for red herrings,” he says. Watson takes the inspector to a pub for an hour and then later Holmes announces that he’s was going to drain the moat. Morelle is caught pulling clothes from the moat, and he tells the true story. Everyone else has fled, leaving the inspector to find them and Holmes to return to 221B.