On 4/23/2024 at 11:51 PM, Soaplovers said:

Two of the season 9 episodes you mentioned... I remember my late mom raving about both of them for being different.  She much preferred the one you mentioned had the twist ending (she was in the camp that liked the clever twist)

I kinda like those episodes as well.  They really shake up your expectations (which isn't easy for any long-running series to do) without turning MSW into an entirely different show.  I just wish Lansbury and her team had taken more chances like that in subsequent seasons, because it seems like once they had cracked the formula, they never strayed from it not even a little bit.

22 hours ago, DRW50 said:

Angela Lansbury's brother Edgar has passed at age 94.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lifestyle/arts/edgar-lansbury-dead-subject-roses-angela-1235890334/

94 is a good life and he had tremendous success all his own. I hope he is resting in peace, reunited with Bruce and Dame Angela. 

@kalbir and @Khan

Fun little article on MSW from the Guardian that just got published/posted the other day:

https://amp.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/article/2024/may/22/murder-she-wrote-episodes-where-to-watch-streaming-angela-lansbury

1 hour ago, soapfan770 said:

@kalbir and @Khan

Fun little article on MSW from the Guardian that just got published/posted the other day:

https://amp.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/article/2024/may/22/murder-she-wrote-episodes-where-to-watch-streaming-angela-lansbury

Thanks, @soapfan770!  That WAS a fun little read!

I can't tell you how much I'm still enjoying MSW reruns on PlutoTV, even if I've seen the entire series at least a half-dozen times through, lol.

Edited May 23, 20241 yr by Khan

Thanks for the link @soapfan770

Murder, She Wrote was a show I took for granted as a kid/teen but its a show I appreciate so much more as an adult. Even though it's been almost 40 years since the show began, it doesn't feel outdated and there's still that feeling of comfort and warmth when watching it.

Edited May 24, 20241 yr by kalbir

The article says the show is available on Apple plus which is incorrect.

It's only available on Pluto TV, FreeVee or Peacock.

I'm currently watching ..Murder Takes the bus on FreeVee. It's clearly HD quality.

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...

  Reveal hidden contents

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.

 

1 hour ago, Neville said:

Is the twist one you mentioned the episode

  Reveal hidden contents

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.

 

 

That episode was a letdown. 

Reminded me of the Dream season from Dallas.

9 hours ago, Neville said:

Is the twist one you mentioned the episode

  Hide contents

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.

 

 

Yep!  That's the one!

7 hours ago, Soapsuds said:

That episode was a letdown. 

Reminded me of the Dream season from Dallas.

Like I said, it's either really clever or a total cheat, depending on how you look at it, lol.

(I, myself, was happy to see MSW still playing with the format by that point.)

3 minutes ago, Khan said:

Yep!  That's the one!

Like I said, it's either really clever or a total cheat, depending on how you look at it, lol.

(I, myself, was happy to see MSW still playing with the format by that point.)

Imagine had Angela been shot. She goes into emergency surgery and we see Angela revisiting her previous mysteries and then flatlines. End credits.

10 minutes ago, Soapsuds said:

Imagine had Angela been shot. She goes into emergency surgery and we see Angela revisiting her previous mysteries and then flatlines. End credits.

You seriously want to kill off Jessica Fletcher, lol?

12 minutes ago, Khan said:

You seriously want to kill off Jessica Fletcher, lol?

No

It would've been a two part episode. Where she ponders if being a mystery writer and solver was alk worth it. Just to almost lose her life because of it.

15 minutes ago, Soapsuds said:

It would've been a two part episode. Where she ponders if being a mystery writer and solver was alk worth it. Just to almost lose her life because of it.

Frankly, I don't think that kind of story would have worked on MSW.  That's more like something you'd see from the Dean Hargrove/Fred Silverman Mystery Factory.

Edited May 24, 20241 yr by Khan

I second what @Khansaid...  MSW is a cozy mystery series with only one firm rule... Jessica Fletcher is spared from anything too intense and major.

Though I do admit the one episode with Andrew Stevens as a man interested in her and the underlying darkness of the episode was interesting.  And it was early enough in the run of the show where you could get away with something like that

1 hour ago, Soaplovers said:

I second what @Khansaid...  MSW is a cozy mystery series with only one firm rule... Jessica Fletcher is spared from anything too intense and major.

Though I do admit the one episode with Andrew Stevens as a man interested in her and the underlying darkness of the episode was interesting.  And it was early enough in the run of the show where you could get away with something like that

The first season's tone is interesting to examine, as you can see how Peter S. Fischer is determining the right tone for the show going forward.

For one thing, as has been mentioned upthread, Jessica herself is quirkier and decidedly more New England-y than she would be in later seasons.  Furthermore, the mysteries themselves are more "serious" and cerebral, with more clues than you'll ever see in subsequent years. (In the final season, you're often given only one clue!)

Look, for example, at how Harry McGraw is presented for the first time (in "Tough Guys Don't Die") and then compare it to his subsequent appearances.  In his first go-round with Jess, Harry isn't nearly as offbeat as he would become later on.  Aside from his brief disguise as an oilman to get some info from someone, a lot of the heavy comedic lifting falls more to Jessica/Angela than it does to Jerry Orbach.

You don't hear the unique turns of phrase that, for better or worse, would come to define Harry's way of talking.  The pacing isn't as comedic and the music isn't played for laughs either.  Even the police detective, played by Paul Winfield, isn't as comically combative with Harry as subsequent leadfoots would be. 

Instead, it's a fairly straightforward introduction for McGraw, one that goes along with the darker and (for lack of a better word) grittier tone of many S1 episodes, when they still toyed with Jessica exposing herself to real danger from time to time. 

And as for the other guest stars in S1 - they're probably the most motley crew you'll ever find on this show, too.  I mean, only in S1 will you see the likes of Gabe Kaplan and Jo Anne Worley, lol.  In subsequent seasons, perhaps as a result of the show's success, there seems to be a more concerted effort to hire guest stars of a better caliber.

By S2, though, the tone that will come to define MSW at least until David Moessinger's arrival is set. Jessica is more the "everywoman" that Angela wanted her to be.  As such, it falls more to the guest stars and recurring characters to be comical and quirky - which, in turn, forces the writers to write more lighthearted (and perhaps, less challenging) mysteries.  A format or approach that works pretty much until S6, when MSW becomes almost TOO cute - a corniness that isn't helped by the presence of the bookend episodes.

In some ways, then, the changes that Moessinger and his team make in S8 are welcome, but the show itself is "dumbed down" a bit more in the process.