Still reeling from the after effects of last episode, Watson tries to reconnect with Detective Bell to see how he is recovering and Sherlock throws himself into training with Alfredo to try to avoid his guilt.
Meanwhile, Donald Hauser, a hedge fund manager who was recently revealed to be running a ponzi scheme, is interrupted as he tries to kill himself- by a man who tortures him to death. His body is discovered by Hauser’s personal chef Chloe Butler, a former client of Watson from her days as a sober companion.
As more people connected to the Ponzi scheme die, Holmes and Watson attempt to track down the killer from all of Hauser’s victims. Watson is forced into a dilemma as Chloe reveals vital information to her in confidence. Meanwhile Alfredo introduces Holmes to Randy, a young man who Alfredo thinks Holmes would make a good sponsor for.
Tropes:
- Ambiguously Jewish: Donald Hauser is heavily implied to be Jewish due to his last name Hauser being a Ashkenazi Jewish last name, him being partially based on Bernie Madoff and his family who were Jewish, and more relevantly, the fact that stealing from a charity for holocaust survivors was the one line he would never cross. Jacob Weiss is also implied to be Jewish, having a Ashkenazi Jewish last name, running a charity dedicated to reclaiming money looted during the holocaust to return to survivors and being played by Richard Masur who is Jewish.
- Asshole Victim: Zig-Zagged and Inverted with the two main murder victims and played straight by the final victim.
- Donald Hauser was a corrupt scam artist and white collar criminal but he has already reached the edge of despair by the time the episode starts, so viewers are likely sympathetic to him as his killer stops him from commiting suicide to so he can be tortured to death. The eventual reveal that he was killed because he wanted to make amends for some of his crimes and reveal a criminal that disgusted even him further muddies his status as an asshole victim.
- Rosalie Nuñez was a reporter who managed to bring down Hauser's scam with her reporting. Her death is used to ensure that even viewers who still think Hauser is an asshole victim have a victim they want justice for and to raise the question of why would someone want to kill both of them.
- Nelson Maddox plays it straight, being a drug dealer and killer involved in stealing money from Holocaust victims, as well as the killer of Hauser and Nuñez.
- The Atoner: Donald Hauser attempted to set right some small part of his wrongdoings before his death by revealing Weiss’s embezzlement to Rosalie Nuñez. His attempt at atonement does eventually get Weiss and Maddox arrested once Holmes and Watson get involved but also causes him and Nuñez to be tortured to death first.
- Bait-and-Switch: The opener has Hauser raise his gun to his lips, a shot ring out and Hauser fall to the floor screaming because an unseen assailant has kneecapped him.
- Can't Kill You, Still Need You: A very dark variation occurs at the start of the episode when someone stops Hauser from killing himself, so he can instead torture Hauser for information before killing him.
- Chekhov's Gun: The Holocaust memorial in the charities lobby at the start of the episode comes up again at the end. Sherlock realizes Weiss was laundering the money he was redirecting from Holocaust survivors through Maddox’s gallery and can match those names to names on the memorial proving the connection between the two.
- The Cobbler's Children Have No Shoes: Sherlock is surprised to discover that Alfredo, a security consultant, has a poor home security system.
- Confess in Confidence: Chloe gives Joan vital information about a former dealer, Nelson Maddox, but uses her status as a former sober client to demand Joan not reveal how she knows this to the police. This means that Joan and Sherlock need to scramble to find some other way to prove Maddox’s connection to the case before he escapes.
- Couldn't Find a Pen: Maddox writes THIEF on Hauser’s wall in blood after killing him. It's never addressed if he did that because he was actually angry at Hauser for his Ponzi scheme or if he did it to cover up his actual motive for killing him.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Hauser and Nuñez are both brutally tortured for information before their deaths. In Hauser’s case the torturer starts by shooting out his kneecaps to prevent him from committing suicide of his own free will.
- Double-Meaning Title: "Internal Audit" refers to the process of a company looking over its own finances for irregularities. It refers to both the white collar crimes that motivate this episode's murder and the process of self assessment that Holmes undertakes about his role in Bell's shooting and if he is ready to be a sponsor.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Hauser may have happily stolen from and scammed most of his clients but in his work as the CPA for a charity seeking reparations for Holocaust survivors and their families he was entirely honest. He was even so disgusted that the director was embezzling money that one of the last things he did before his death was to ensure that a journalist knew about it.
- Fake Charity: Downplayed by the holocaust survivors charity run by Weiss and Hauser. Their work was mostly legitimate and Hauser ran it above board even while he was stealing from his other clients. But Weiss was pocketing several major settlements and had already stolen millions from those the charity claimed to help.
- Knee-capping: Maddox starts his torture of Hauser by kneecapping to prevent him from killing himself.
- He Knows Too Much: The reason all three victims in this episode die. Hauser is killed because he knew about Weiss and Maddox’s crimes, Nuñez is killed because Hauser sent her the evidence, and Maddox is killed because Weiss knows the police are onto him.
- Interrupted Suicide: Donald Hauser is about to shoot himself but is interrupted by Maddox who ends up killing him anyway.
- Intrepid Reporter: Rosalie Nuñez, the reporter who brought down Hauser's pyramid scheme. He later reached out to her about revealing the embezzlement going on at the charity, which results in both their deaths.
- Nervous Tics: Holmes figures out that Hauser’s personal chef Chloe Butler is hiding something based on her nervousness at the crime scene. This and her weak alibi leads him to consider her the first suspect they should look at. In this case though, he is entirely wrong about why Butler is nervous around the pair, since Watson eventually reveals to him that Chloe was a former client from her work as a sober companion who was surprised and nervous running into Joan.
- Percussive Therapy: After feeling loads of unresolved guilt and frustration from Bell's shooting and exacerbated by his frustration at being unable to beat a security system on one of Alfredo’s cars, Holmes resorts to just kicking the car door to let off steam. Alfredo has to stop him from doing anything else, because the cars are not his but his employers' and he could lose his job if they get damaged.
- Pet the Dog: Hauser was callously stealing hundreds of people's savings with his fraud, but was an honest bookkeeper for the Holocaust reparations charity he worked with. Sherlock discussed this trope wondering if Hauser viewed this as a way to make up for the bad things he did.
- Pillow Pistol: Alfredo sleeps with a bat next to his bed and brings it with him to confront the man breaking into his house... who turns out to be Sherlock.
- Ponzi: Hauser’s hedge fund is referred to as a Pyramid scheme, though the similarities to Madoff and lack of any references to him making his investors recruit means it was likely meant to be a Ponzi scheme.
- Ripped from the Headlines: The Ponzi scheme at the heart of the episode shows some similarities to the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme and came out shortly after the well publicized conviction of his brother and accomplice Peter Madoff.
- Starts with a Suicide: Brutally subverted in the opener. Donald Hauser is a hedge fund manager facing life in prison after his Ponzi scheme starts to fall apart. We see him silently weeping as he sits at home watching news reports about his crimes, drinking heavily and bringing a gun up to his mouth. The audience hears a gunshot and then Hauser starts screaming in pain, someone else having shot him in the leg to prevent him from killing himself.
- Stealing from the Till: Weiss was redirecting settlements his charity filed into his own pockets and killed three people directly or indirectly to cover it up.
- Suspect Existence Failure: Subverted when Maddox is eventually discovered murdered, but evidence in his car quickly shows that he was the killer of Hauser and Nuñez. He was actually killed by an accomplice to prevent him from being caught by police and revealing their scheme.
- Technical Euphemism: Maddox uses "entrepreneur" and "distributor to a discrete level of clientele" to refer to his work as a drug dealer to rich people.
- Who Murdered the Asshole: Donald Hauser was a hedge fund manager who had just been revealed to be running a massive Ponzi scheme with hundreds if not thousands of victims. He was found tortured to death and Sherlock determined that his killer stopped Hauser from killing himself so they could personally kill him. This forces Holmes and Watson to figure out which of the enormous number of people who wanted revenge on Hauser actually killed him.
- You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Alfredo eventually convinces Sherlock that his instincts to want to help make him a good fit for being a sponsor. Randy, the man Sherlock ends up sponsoring, gives a one line version of this trope after Holmes explains his terms for sponsorship."You're sober. You have been for a long time now. Of course I find the terms acceptable."
