He is not a nice man, he says. Nor is the other guy.

In the most recent episode of Elementary, Sherlock's anger screws things up repeatedly and the hour ends with him being quite unnecessarily dickish toward Joan, insisting angrily he is not and never will be a "nice man" and self-consciously dealing a blow to their partnership.

But compared to Patrick Jane, Sherlock's lack of niceness is relatively superficial, overlaying a deeper comparative good-guy-hood.

He is, due allowance made for his past, mistaken willingness to murder Moriarty, merely, as he says, acerbic - and disagreeable, offensive, annoying, and prickly.

That is the whole of his not niceness.

As to Jane, more than once diagnosed accurately as a highly intelligent and effective sociopath, his superficial niceness enables his deeper and much more serious not-niceness, exemplified in his career as a successful, arrogant, and still remorseless con artist.

The difference shows as well in their reasons for being what they both are, consulting detectives working with the police.

For Holmes, this is what he has in lieu of a paying career, though we are given to understand he could do well as a private dick and sometimes does take private cases.

His work with a squad of New York homicide detectives fills his days, takes his mind away from his addiction, and provides the discipline, order, and self-esteem he crucially needs.

His general nastiness undermines his ability to work with the cops and more than once jeopardizes his relationship with them, as in the episode under discussion.

Worse, as in this episode, it threatens his relationship with Watson, though he and she know as well as we that his continuing relationship with her is at least as crucial to keeping him from a self-destructive relapse into addiction as his work.

For Jane, on the other hand, his consultant's role is just a way of tracking down the man who killed his wife and daughter so he can personally kill him.

He has already murdered a follower of Red John who had deceived him into thinking he was the evil one, himself.

The same superficial and professional niceness that enabled him to fleece the aggrieved - mostly aggrieved women - in the past now enables him to charm the California Bureau of Investigation - again, especially the women.

And it enables in particular his crucial relationship with Lisbon, without which he could not continue with the CBI and piggy-back his own search for Red John on theirs.

In fact, his charm is such that most of his cohorts on the CBI are well aware that he works with them so he can find and kill Red John and for no other reason, and are actually OK with that.

Interesting lesson, here.

Interesting, too, that I started this note intending to comment on Holmes's awful haircut and punkish, grubby, and anti-elegant grooming that so suits his general twitchiness and addict anger.

And that, too, is in contrast with Jane, whose grooming suits his charm.

Still, we ought not to push the contrast too far.

As noted, Sherlock for years planned to murder Morarity for killing his own one true love, and in the episode under discussion intended to frame a serial killer rather than see him escape punishment.

And yet I don't think it's correct that the two characters are equally not nice inside, the difference being that Sherlock is also not nice outside while Patrick is charming.

Jane spent his whole life, from adolescence on, being a villain.

Not so, Sherlock.

Not by a mile.