one tiny thing that just struck me:

How far the show went out of its way to make it clear that Holmes wasn’t sexually pressuring Irene. He offered her his “bet,” and I can imagine a zillion other shows that just would have left it there as a sexy “edgy” flirtation, but no – Holmes stopped himself in the middle of the flirt to make it clear that he was not conditioning his silence about her thefts on her going on a date with him.

Similarly, when he came to see her after she refused to go out with him again, obviously someone somewhere was afraid he’d look like a stalker, and so he began his speech by making it very clear that he understood it was her right to refuse him – I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a show actually spell that out in words before, because we’re all supposed to understand that the romantic couple is meant to be and therefore all’s fair, etc etc.