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Murder, She Wrote

Franko

By Franko
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DRW50 Grand Master

DRW50

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I don't think they were in the wrong either. Friends was a show I never liked (and Matt LeBlanc and Lisa Kudrow are the only two people on there I find to be worth watching - not to derail your point), and it has dated very badly, much worse than MSW in my opinion. I don't blame Friends for the end of MSW, and I doubt Angela did either, but poking some fun at it wasn't a big deal. 

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kalbir Grand Master

kalbir

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Les Moonves knew exactly what he was doing when he moved Murder, She Wrote to a time slot that had been a dead zone for CBS since Fall 1985. At a time when CBS could not afford to have any tank jobs, he straight up sabotages their only scripted show that was in the 1994/95 Top 10.

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DaytimeFan Mentor

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Thank you. I had never seen it before. When she cried and had to drink both her tea and water, as her chin is quivering, in order to steady herself...that was really sad and made me mad. 

Yes, it was intentional sabotage. He murdered the show. For no reason whatsoever. As Angela said in the 60 Minutes piece, Sunday was always going to be a family evening (as it still is to this very day). 

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kalbir Grand Master

kalbir

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You're welcome.

It was sad. I felt so bad for her.

Angela carried CBS primetime on her back through some pretty awful years from the late 1980s to the mid-1990s, and it was terrible the way she was treated at the end after all she did for CBS. Murder, She Wrote and Angela deserved to have a proper farewell for the final season instead of being sabotaged. Les Moonves will forever be on my s--- list for the sabotage of Murder, She Wrote.

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soapfan770 Veteran

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Thank you as well @kalbir for sharing that 60 Minutes interview. 
 

Funny you mentioned the Friends episode. Some of my favorite MSW episodes deal with murder on a TV show lol along with the commentary. it was pretty obvious to me that the dying soap opera Jessica’s niece was on in “Murder in the Afternoon” was a stand-in for Search For Tomorrow while in “Murder According to Maggie” was obviously written by someone who hated Miami Vice & Top Cops and was also irate by The Equalizer’s cancellation. 
 

As for the move to Thursday nights I will say it disappoints me there wasn’t enough of a loyal audience that moved along with it so it could’ve backfired on Moonves. Oddly a year later when Diagnosis Murder got shuffled to Thursday nights it actually cracked into the. Top 30 up for a couple seasons there. 
 

Personally I enjoyed the pre-Corymore era I grew up with the late 80’s a lot more than anything post-1992. With the turn of the decade my family just stopped watching the show. No particular reason why myself and my siblings had other things going usually on Sunday nights and my parents had become addicted to Nick at Nite reruns instead lol. I think the last live MSW episode I caught was around 93/94 or so when Jessica was kidnapped in the middle of her book signing in Miami by Cuban/Russian smugglers and was locked in a car trunk. It was pretty campy bad.  I didn’t see most of the 90’s eps til a few years later when they ran on A&E. 

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Cat Mentor

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It's clear Moonves is a horrible misogynist who couldn't bear to give a woman, an older woman at that, her due for keeping CBS ticking along for over a decade. Murder She Wrote was popular and he couldn't stand that. As we know, he was particularly active in dismantling CBS's most popular women-centric shows, and pushing bro-centric 'dead hooker of the week' television. I think he had a real problem with women with power and star appeal generally, and wanted to put them down a peg or 5. He didn't have the balls to cancel MSW outright, the complaints would have drowned the CBS call center, and so cowardly moved it to Thursdays so that he could hide behind an 'excuse.'

 

As for the show itself, I often meet my parents for lunch on Sundays, and we are blessed with MSW reruns most of the day. I personally love the earlier seasons, and the middle seasons are when MSW were at their most classic and as I remember it. I understand why they moved Jessica to a NYC setting for the final season or so -- more organic story, because how many more people could get murdered in Cabot Cove?? But I missed the Cabot Cove setting and some of the regulars, and I'm glad the show dipped back to CC from time to time in that final year.

@DaytimeFan I remember that Parker Stevens episode and how ambiguous they left it, and how creepy his character was at some points. There was the suggestion that he was trying to befriend her on purpose, for similar reasons as with his paramours. MSW played outside the box with that one and kept the viewers on their toes. 

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