Inexplicable TV Review: Who The Heck Wrote Murder She Wrote?

To confuse you, here is a hot picture of Angela Lansbury.

To answer the question posed in my entry’s title, I imagine that Angela Lansbury had quite a big hand in it. After all, she was listed as the executive producer for most of the episodes, and outside of her small group of friends on the show, Lansbury was the only person in each episode. (Side note: I don’t consider it a proper Murder, She Wrote episode if it was one of those fake ones where she just narrates at the beginning, and then you follow her friend, the reformed jewel thief, for the rest of the episode.)

I would like to say that my avid interest in the comings and goings of JB Fletcher correlates directly with my recent unemployment. However, that is a convenient excuse that is not available to me. I simply finished up on the whole run of Matlock and Columbo episodes – more on him in a future entry – and still wanted to poke at my “mystery” genre itch. I couldn’t find a good source for Perry Mason or Remington Steele or something else, so I settle on Angie.

If, for some reason, you managed to never see any of the 12(!) seasons of the show, most of them followed a rather simple formula. The first two-thirds of the episode may or may not feature the “murder” hinted at in the title, but you are introduced an array of disposable characters that served as suspects. Typically, MSW didn’t settle on the most obvious suspect (like a jilted ex-wife) as the killer. If it did, then usually the struggle would not be in the Whodunit, but in the Howdtheydoit.

A simple but effective framework, and it mostly served as a vehicle for Lansbury anyway. The woman does have some acting chops, you know, between the five Tony awards, six Golden Globes and a slew of Emmys, thanks to MSW. When I was a kid, I inexplicably liked Bedknobs and Broomsticks, a second-tier Disney movie from 1971 that starred her, so maybe I’m just pre-disposed to likin’ Angela Lansbury.

Anyway – Even with the pat structure of a typical MSW episode, there was still some initial tinkering. Like I finally doubled back and watched the pilot episode, which had JB Fletcher as not yet famous. Later in the series, it doesn’t matter where she goes; even backwater counties in Canada apparently get her books, and she’s recognized constantly. Oh, and also, in the first episode Lansbury almost gets mugged, stabbed and raped while walking down an alley in New York. You know, stuff happens.

As the series goes on, most of the episodes are set in Cabot Cove, a tiny fishing hamlet in Maine that has the highest murder rate of all-time, to make a hacky joke that everyone else already has. According to TV Tropes, the town’s murder rate is about 86 times that of the murder rate of the worst city in the world, and Wiki says that about 2 percent of the town’s population was murdered during the show’s run. (Also, as usual, pretty much everything on the TV Tropes page for the show is awesome.)

Finally, murder is just a game to JB Fletcher. The end of pretty much every episode was a still-frame of her laughing at something. “Oh, remember how your cousin was brutally murdered a few days ago? Well, stiff upper lip, Toby – Just think, his body is feeding the worms right now. Ha ha ha!” Thankfully, someone has already done the great service of making a montage of all of the bizarre still-shot endings on the show:

The chaos Law and Order inflicts on my life

Carmichael and Borgia - Good times, good times.

Law and Order is too good sometimes, which is more of a problem than you would think. I'm not alone in saying this, I'm sure, but once I start watching an episode, I almost always have to watch it to the end. It matters little who the cast is made up of; all the episodes are great.

(For the record though, my all-star lineup would be Ben Stone, Abbie Carmichael or Borgia, and Briscoe and Green. I preferred Stone's somewhat snide, even temperament to McCoy's bluster, Abbie and Borgia are stone cold foxes who are still good actresses, and the Briscoe-Green duo was by far the best the show ever had.)

The issue is that once I start watching an episode, I almost always have to finish. I've been late for countless things because I've just HAD to see how a certain episode finishes. The problem is compounded for Criminal Intent, my favorite of the Law and Order spin-offs, but even Special Victims Unit, my least favorite, can ensnare my attention at times.

And the worst thing is when you're watching the first half of a Law and Order, and following along intently, in rapt attention, on the edge of your seat... And then within 30 seconds of a scene starting, you realize you caught the last 30 minutes of this episode at a previous point, so now you have to find something else to watch for the last 30 minutes, until the next episode comes on. aaaahhhhhh.

I'm still waiting for a 24-hour Law and Order network, because 1) there are enough episodes to do it and 2) I think others are as obsessed with the show as I am. Heck, if you needed to fill out the programming schedule, throw in some shows that are like Law and Order without quite being it. Like detective shows! Matlock and Columbo would be great on my Law and Order channel. I realize there is a “mystery” channel that has Matlock on it already, but the rest of its offerings are things like Murder She Wrote and Diagnosis Murder, the sub par mystery shows.