Neville

On 4/23/2024 at 7:13 PM, Khan said:

Definitely!  I probably should list them all in a spoiler tag, though, lol.  Bookend and two-hour episodes notwithstanding...

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Episode 1.19 ("Murder Takes the Bus") has the rare distinction (for any mystery show, I think) of being an episode where the killer murders the victim one way to cover up the other way they murdered them.  You have to see that one to believe it, lol!

Episode 1.22 ("Funeral at Fifty-Mile") has one victim, but, as it turns out, multiple culprits.

Episode 2.10 ("Sticks and Stones") reveals a semi-recurring character (won't say whom!) as the culprit, with one murder having been committed before the episode's start.

Episode 2.13 ("Trial by Error") finds Jessica serving as jury foreperson.  The jury ends up exonerating the defendant, but are they truly innocent? 

Episode 2.20 ("Menace, Anyone?") is perhaps the strangest episode in MSW history.  The investigating detective is murdered halfway through, leaving it up to his partner (and, of course, Jessica) to finish the investigation; and rather than have the killer confess to Jessica and the detective, it's left up to another character to confess for them (with the flimsiest-sounding excuse that suggests to me that the actual confession scene was tossed and what ended up on air was a reshoot).

Episode 3.3 ("Unfinished Business")...well...let's just say there's a reason why retiring police detective Barney Kale's one, unsolved case that he's determined to solve now has been unsolved all this time.

Episode 3.8 ("Magnum on Ice") is part two of a crossover with "Magnum, P.I.," picking up where the "Magnum" episode left off.

Episode 3.12 ("The Corpse Flew First Class") features two crimes - a murder and a theft - that occur on the same flight to London.  The crimes appear to be connected, but are they? 

Episode 3.13 ("Crossed Up") has Jessica confined to her bed for the duration, due to a muscle sprain or some such.  Sort of an homage to "Sorry, Wrong Number."

Episode 3.14 ("Murder in a Minor Key") ended up being a sort of test run for the bookend episodes, with Jessica narrating her latest novel to the folks at home.

Episode 3.21 ("The Days Dwindle Down") is a quasi-sequel to the 1949 film noir "Strange Bargain."  Jeffrey Lynn, Harry Morgan and Martha Scott all reprised their roles from the movie, but the original film's ending was changed in order to service the MSW plot.

Episode 4.5 ("The Way to Dusty Death"), an obvious homage to "MacBeth," includes a married couple who essentially get away with attempted murder.

Episode 4.6 ("It Runs in the Family") does not feature Jessica at all.  Instead, it's up to her identical British cousin, Emma McGill, also played by Lansbury, to get to the bottom of things.

Episode 4.9 ("Trouble in Eden") has Jessica going undercover as a madam.  (Yep, you read that right, lol.)

Episode 4.19 ("Just Another Fish Story") has a culprit who would become a semi-recurring character.  (Although, I really wish they hadn't, lol).

Episode 5.1 ("J.B. as in Jailbird") is pretty self-explanatory - but, basically, she has to solve the mystery from behind bars.

Episodes 5.7 ("The Last Flight of the Dixie Damsel") and 5.8 ("Prediction: Murder") both feature an uncredited Dale Robertson as Frank Fletcher's old military buddy, Lee Goddard; aside from his appearances, however, the plots are unrelated.

Episode 5.15 ("Alma Murder") begins with the actual murder - or, rather, its' immediate aftermath, with one character doing their best to clean up the crime scene before the police arrive.  Jessica is brought into the investigation only after the fact.  (And no, it's not an open-ended mystery either).

Episode 5.16 ("Truck Stop") features an extended flashback sequence, narrated by Jessica's friend in a recording they made before their death, with music and cinematography very reminiscent of 1940's melodramas.

Episode 6.4 ("The Error of Her Ways") begins the way most other MSW episodes end, with Jessica and the investigating detective confronting the culprit.  Marian Randall gives the performance of her life, however, as she screams to the heavens above that she did not murder her husband, Clark.  Then, Marian herself turns up dead, and that's when things get REALLY interesting, lol.

Episode 7.1 ("Trials and Tribulations") begins with a car chase (a rare occurrence for non-violent MSW) and ends with a very unexpected twist.  (Episode 8.17 ("To the Last Will I Grapple With Thee") ends in a similar, but (IMO) more ingenious fashion).

Episode 7.4 ("Hannigan's Wake") is an episode centered around a murder that occurred many years before, and features (IMO) one of the most devastating conclusions in their entire run.

Episode 7.7 ("The Return of Preston Giles") is hard to talk about without giving away some of the plot, but it's the first time Jessica encounters someone she helped put away in an earlier episode (in the series pilot, to be more specific) and it's also the only incidence I can think of offhand where Jessica herself does not explain "how they did it" and why.

Episode 7.14 ("Who Killed J.B. Fletcher?") has Jessica, with help from members of a local chapter of her fan club, solve not one, not two, but THREE related murders.  (I'm not sure, but I think that was a record for the show, lol.)

Episode 7.21 ("Tainted Lady") is, in many respects, a standard MSW episode, but the twist here is that the main suspect is a woman whom Jessica had cleared years before in another, unrelated murder investigation.

Episode 8.13 ("Incident in Lot 7") would be a routine "J.B. in La La Land" episode, except that it includes several references to the movie "Psycho," including a cameo from "Alfred Hitchcock" himself.

Episode 9.9 ("A Christmas Secret") includes a victim who, for the first and only time in MSW history, survives their attack.  (Ah, the magic of Christmas, lol).

Episode 9.13 ("Dead Eye") involves the real-life JFK assassination, although they're very careful not to rewrite history or offer baseless theories.

Episode 9.15 ("The Petrified Florist") has a twist ending that's either really clever or a total cheat, depending on how one looks at it.

Episodes 11.17 ("Murder a la Mode") and 11.19 ("School for Murder") do away with the "Tonight on 'Murder, She Wrote'..." and give us cold opens instead.

Is the twist one you mentioned the episode

in which everything turned out to be story imagined by Jessica? I liked this one. And authors have to get their idead from somewhere anyway.

 

11 hours ago, AMCOLTLLover said:

Sina‘s actress is taking a break from UU for a while. It was announced two days ago.. 

Nah, this was just a gossip magazine speculating and using a click-bait headline. The article said nothing like this. „Unter Uns“-Star Valea Scalabrino will eine Auszeit! (tvmovie.de)

I have only seen the episodes that aired at the end of the 1970s/beginning of the 1980s. But are the "Tracy" and "Jeff" mentioned in the summaries Tracy Quartermaine and Jeff Webber? They were married?

For me, it was actually the opposite. Sable was IMO much more sympathetic and her behaviour more understandable than Alexis'. So much, that I barely saw her as a villain.

Also, Annie Douglas from Sunset Beach.

Coming back to a discussion from a few pages ago. I actually loved Heather as a villain in the early 80s. Yeah, she was a bit all over the place, but she was highly entertaining and made a great duo with Scotty.

Sorry, wrong topic.