Remember when Simon Says made John McClane wear that sandwich board decorated with a racial slur in Harlem? His statistical chances of survival at that moment were greater than that of an unassuming resident of Cabot Cove on any given day. In fact, a 2012 study revealed that Cabot Cove would be the murder capital of the world, with a higher per capita murder rate than Honduras. If you thought Cabot Cove was charming and idyllic, might I suggest you purchase a fixer-upper in Detroit?

In the perilous town of Cabot Cove, it seems like the most dangerous place you could possible be is anywhere near Mrs. Fletcher. This is the case for the poor, unwitting typist who agrees to type Mrs. Fletcher’s latest manuscript when Jessica breaks her arm whilst bike riding. While she’s in Jessica’s employ, the typist’s husband is murdered. She finds him dead when she arrives home from some, erm, extracurricular writing activities with a cute dude from class.

Instead of calling the police and explaining what happened, the typist decides it’s a good idea to call the cute dude from class and have him help her move her husband’s body to the lumberyard where he works late shifts. She is worried that she’ll be the prime suspect, so she freaks out and totally incriminates herself. Has she learned nothing about murder crimes from typing Jessica’s manuscript??

The next day the sheriff questions her and she’s got this awful story about going straight home and taking sleeping pills. She says she was out cold all night, and concocts some story about people making threats against her husband. Things begin to fall apart when her writing teacher notices that the title of her story is “Dagger of Love,” which obviously means she’s a murderer because her husband was stabbed with scissors. Basic Detectivery 101. Then finally, after 7 seasons of this crap, someone finally decides to cursorily acknowledge the high crime rate in this tiny town. The writing teacher’s wife announces, “Cabot Cove is getting to be as bad as New York” before she heads off to the market.

While investigating some guy at a diner who seems to have hated the dead man, the town sheriff learns that the diner man is an eye-witness to the body dumping. Yep, that’s a sentence you can easily follow, right? The diner man recognizes the cute dude from the writing class as the body dumper. Meanwhile, the editor-in-chief of the paper is trying to get information about the typist from Jessica, when he learns that the cute dude (an employee of the paper) has been arrested. He and Jessica rush down to the precinct. And then Jessica (with like pretty much no details of the crime) says to the sheriff “Am I missing something or was the murder committed somewhere else and the body moved?” And the sheriff is in total agreement and not at all like how the hell did you know that? 

But of course, she gets to tag along for the investigation. She heads over to the typist’s house with the sheriff and points out how the desk set in the living room matches the design of the scissors found in the cute dude’s trunk. When did she have access to that evidence?? Pretty much NEVER. Why is no one asking these questions??? But then everything gets overshadowed by the guilt that the body movers feel. They’re all like ugh okay we did it and we’re dumb. And Jessica Fletcher convinces the sheriff that the story is stranger-than-fiction, so they should definitely believe it. The typist admits that she made a pit stop on the way home, and the sheriff concludes that there was time for the cute dude to kill the husband by himself.

Then a mistress turns up. The dead man and the mistress had a fight and hit each other in the face. The mistress has a bruise and is like I didn’t kill him. I knew he slept around and we were just having a fight. He went home and his wife probably killed him. And then they find the typist’s story! And they’re like omg she totally did it! But then they notice that she’s in love with her writing teacher in the story. And it just so happens that she shows up at the precinct with the writing teacher’s umbrella mere moments later. And this is totally incriminating evidence. She also says she found the umbrella by her husband’s body. So they’re thinking it’s the writing teacher, but then they head over to his house and Jessica totally accuses the writing teacher’s wife.

The writing teacher was home sick, so she took his car (and umbrella) and murdered her ex-lover. (He hooked up with a lot of ladies, remember?) And the hard evidence that Jessica has is the fact that the writing teacher’s wife knew that the dead guy had dirty hands from changing a tire on his way home. She says that she doesn’t remember grabbing the scissors (obviously because she did not) but she confesses anyway (because she’s a guilty cheater). And everyone is like, “Well, she must have done it because she knew he had dirty hands.” And no one cares that Jessica Fletcher knew literally everything supposedly confidential about this case.

Here’s what really happened: This one baffles me. Jessica should have gotten caught here. I mean those idiots moving the body must have been the only thing that saved her. She knew the body had been moved without anyone releasing that information. She recognized the desk set as having the same design as the murder scissors, which she theoretically had never seen. I feel like at this point, she’s spent like seven years killing people and getting away with it so she wants to see just how obvious she can be without getting caught. It seems to me that the ex-lover stopped by the house wanting to confront the dead guy (who at that point was still alive). She saw his dirty hands and questioned how she could ever have threatened her marriage for such a loser, and then she rushes home and is so blinded by her guilt that she doesn’t even remember much of her interaction with her ex-lover. I mean, she CLEARLY says she doesn’t remember the scissors. Obviously, there was some severe evidence tampering, but like this doesn’t change the fact that everything she knows about this case makes Mrs. Fletcher either a psychic or a psychotic.