Listen, I think we were all hoping for a “Cool Rider” kind of year and instead we ended up freezing on stage, taking off our star crowns, and hallucinating out of our fucking minds from the stress of it all.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with the deliciously campy Grease 2, the girls of Rydell High’s talent show decide to perform something akin to the “Calendar Girl” song but with more of a home-spun “Chicken Soup with Rice” feeling to the music.
Our protagonist, Stephanie, is supposed to be the big December finale. But she’s distraught over the fate of her love, who has been attacked by a motorcycle gang (a much meaner version of the original Grease’s mostly lovable T-Birds) and is presumed dead. Yeah it’s a downer. This causes Stephanie to enter a fugue state. Fortunately, her disassociation also involves some off-the-cuff song-writing abilities, which gives us “(Love Will) Turn Back the Hands of Time.”
I thought this was powerful stuff when I first saw it at 8 years old. In the years since, it’s felt pretty ridiculous. But I’ve come back around. I love it again. I think this is the kind of saccharine shit my cold, cold heart needs right now.
If that doesn’t work for you, this one should. If ever there was a “Hard Candy Christmas,” it’s this year:
Long extolled as an example of thriving on your own, this episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show wonders just the opposite.
At the end of the workday, Ted, Lou, and Murray share a drink in Murray’s office. The conversation quickly turns to how great Mary is and how odd they find it that “a woman like Mary never got married.” They all start to consider the fact that she hasn’t met the right person and maybe there isn’t even anyone worthy of being married to her. (Wow, so so much to unpack there.) And then they all start to fantasize about being married to her.
Murray’s fantasy is first: A much younger Mary and Murray share an apartment where Murray writes poorly and Mary praises everything that comes out of his mouth. A very pregnant Mary then announces to Murray that she is with child. They’re both super excited. Murray then apologizes for being so self-focused that he didn’t notice his wife has a giant womb. He admits that he’s barely even seen her because she’s been working several jobs while he sits at home and writes all day. Mary then delivers their baby by herself in the bedroom while Murray continues to write. Wow! She’s SO great.
Ted’s fantasy is next: We see Mary and Ted on their wedding night. Mary is disturbingly horny for Ted. Underneath his dress shirt, Ted wears a t-shirt with a photo of his face on it because of course he does. Then fantasy Mary turns the tables on him. She won’t sleep with him. Even in his fantasy. Which is great. Then she leaves him. Alone. In his fantasy. Oh to be Ted’s therapist.
Lou’s Fantasy is Last: In Lou’s fantasy they’re about 95 years old and still working at WJM – TV News. In this fantasy, Mary receives a postcard from Rhoda who is still waiting for Joe to return (cringe). Another fun fact is that this fantasy occurs circa 2027 but the newsroom hasn’t changed at all in 50 years! All throughout this fantasy Mary keeps hinting about being blissfully happen except for this ONE THING. Finally, we learn that the one thing marry is upset over is that she and Lou have never consummated their marriage. Lou explains that he doesn’t have romantic or sexual feelings for her, which seems like something he should have mentioned earlier like probably before the wedding. But then Mary takes her hair down and wow old Lou has a change of heart!
At the end of the episode Mary walks into the office just as they’re all leaving. She’s returned early from a date. Lou and Murray both tell her that the guy would be very lucky to have her end up with him. Ted tells her she should be sure to sleep with him if they get married (yikes).
Very Special Bizzaro Lesson: Maybe I shouldn’t speak for all women, but I do find the thought of three of my male coworkers sitting around the office and fantasizing about sharing a life with me to be a very off-putting group activity. They’re definitely all respectful (except for Ted), but it would have been a great episode if just one of them had realized that Mary was better off alone than in any of the scenarios they imagined for her.
That’s the end of our Bizzaro Series to cap off a very bizzaro year! 2020 sure has been weird, but I am super grateful for all you Very Special Readers! One small silver lining of having so much time on my hands these days is that I’ve been able to brainstorm more ideas for this blog over the past few months than I have in the past few years combined. So stay tuned for more in 2021!
This episode opens with Trudy and Stan Switek a stakeout in the outdoor area of a shopping center. While looking for their suspect, they get distracted by two men sword-fighting in 1960’s esque space alien costumes. Stan recognizes them from other stakeouts and says their always connected to a crime wave that follows them. They don’t seem to be clear on whether or not these guys are involved with any larger conspiracies or if they’re just a couple of monkey-wrench abstract theater performers who also commit ad hoc crimes. Regardless, Stan isn’t maintaining a low profile around these two. He yells at one of them for grabbing a passerby’s ass and also call him out for pick-pocketing a separate individual.
Shortly thereafter the man Trudy and Stan appear to be waiting for arrives in the courtyard. Stan points out another shifty looking dude and asks Trudy to keep an eye on him while he pursues their suspect. Trudy’s mark appears mesmerized by the sword fighting aliens and then seems to have some sort of panic attack that involves him ripping his own shirt to shreds. He then rushes up the stairs and throws his body through a plate glass window. There is truly never a dull moment on Miami Vice.
Let me preface this post by saying this is not a good episode. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Miami Vice was consistently best in its first two seasons with some great episodes peppered throughout the latter three. This season four episode is an example of the weaknesses that plagued the series in its final years. It’s truly unfortunate because Trudy is one of the most underutilized characters in this show and she’s the unequivocal the star of this one. I wish the writers had given her better material to work with.
The bizarre plot elements start off very quickly in this episode. Trudy saw the man crash through the window and she saw him bleeding out from his carotid artery. But at the morgue, the medical examiner tells her that the man only has a superficial scratch over his carotid.
Also, am I supposed to believe that this is a morgue with the weird art posters and poor lighting?
Back at headquarters, Trudy goes over the case with Tubbs. Everything about the dead guy’s personal effects seems pretty normal except that he was carrying twenty-four jars of peanut butter in a shopping bag and had over a thousand dollars in cash. He also carried a strange photo of what appears to be a very sad looking houseboat.
Based on photo alone, Trudy tracks down the mysterious location in the next scene. Clad only in teal stilettos and a bright purple scooped-back body-con dress, Trudy boards “The Sapphrophyte” and encounters MORE JARS OF PEANUT BUTTER. They’re all opened and arranged in a circle on the floor.
As an orange mist rolls across The Sapphrophyte, James Brown joins her. I think it’s better if you watch this part for yourselves.
This must have been cutting-edge technology for 80’s TV. I wonder how much they spent on this.
Meanwhile the dead man’s wife shows up at the station and wants to talk to Trudy, but no one knows where she is. She hasn’t been in all morning, so they assume she’s sick. Crockett talks to the grieving wife in Trudy’s stead. He learns that her husband disappeared under mysterious circumstances and she hasn’t seen him for two years. She was with him at the time of his disappearance and woke up with a circular pattern shaved into her hair. She also couldn’t account for the past twelve hours. THAT IS ABSOLUTELY TERRIFYING.
At the morgue, his wife is unable to identify the body because the body is MISSING. Evidently, Trudy has signed for its release. Back at headquarters Tubbs determines that the name of the mortuary Trudy listed on the release form is fake. And Switek confirms that the address is that of a Dairy Queen. Then Chris Rock (playing electronic file clerk, Carson) starts talking about the vice team being mentioned on the “Starchaser Bulletin Board” — a “computer bulletin board” he’s part of but Gina brushes him off.
Castillo asks Carson to tell him about the board. Carson clarifies that Trudy was actually the only one mentioned. The board is dedicated to UFOs and the dead man appears to be from the “Elko Abductions.” Castillo asks for the backstory on the abductions and Carson begins to describe how two couples — oh wait sorry we don’t get to hear because suddenly Trudy walks in singing “I Feel Good” like nothing at all strange has happened. The team stares dumbstruck as she walks over to her desk and burns the photo of The Sapphrophyte.
Understandably, the team starts asking her a whole lot of questions. Trudy insists she didn’t sign the body out of the morgue. She also says she spent the night partying with Lou De Long (James Brown). She explains that she met him at the dead guy’s houseboat. When Castillo asks why she burned the photo, she just shrugs.
Carson asks Trudy to tell him the name of the disco or explain it in anyway, but she isn’t able to. She says it was like a dream. Carson tells her that she has “memory displacement,” which happens in alien encounters. So Castillo has him removed from the room. Gina is tasked with getting Trudy to a doctor while Crockett and Tubbs track down Lou De Long.
They find him at a seminar on alien abductions. Tubbs and Crockett introduce themselves to Lou and tell him that they all know Trudy. When he denies knowing her, Tubbs calls him a scammer and threatens to expose him unless he gives them info about what happened with Trudy.
Lou denies that the alien thing is a scam, but he does say that the experience of alien abduction is not one that he would recommend. They take him to see Trudy and she’s shocked that he’s middle-aged. You see, the Lou De Long that Trudy went to the club with was young Lou De Long and he looked just like the man the record she’s had since she was thirteen.
When Trudy realizes that Lou’s signature isn’t on the album that she thought he had signed for her the night before, she starts to unravel. Lou explains to her that the abductors take memories and use them. He believes her but he wasn’t with her. With Lou’s help, Trudy begins to remember “two men with weird eyes and purple auras.”
Castillo tells the team to go back to the houseboat and see what they can find, but no one can find it. None of the reports contain the address. While the detectives try to figure out how to track down the houseboat, Carson states the obvious: just ask the wife.
The wife is staying at the “Tropical Motel.”
As they pull up to the hotel, Crockett and Tubbs see the wife being thrown into a black sedan by two suits. They try to follow the car, but their car won’t start and a bright blue beam of light descends upon them. After the light passes, Tubbs uses a nearby pay phone to call for help while Crockett works on the car.
Crockett gets the car working again, so he and Tubbs decide to investigate the wife’s motel room. Tubbs supposes for the sake of argument that the abductions are real. It would stand to reason then that the wife was taken because the aliens don’t want her to reveal the location of the houseboat. Tubbs also posits that Carson might be an alien plant. This is all too much for Crockett who decides it’s too crazy to even think about.
He does, however, agree that Carson has been a little suspiciously close to the case. He decides to pull Carson’s record. Tubbs decides to keep investigating the alien angle on his own.
Meanwhile back at her apartment, Trudy is extremely on edge. So she decides to undergo hypnosis. It looks a little something like this:
Through hypnosis, Trudy is able to remember the location of the houseboat. When Trudy and Gina return to the houseboat, they find the wife’s dead body. Meanwhile a man who looks suspiciously like someone who was hanging around Lou De Long’s seminar watches them from close by.
Gina notices that the wife has a circle shaved into the back of her head. When Trudy crouches down to get a closer look, Gina notices that Trudy’s head has a similarly shaved spot. (She’s somehow able to see this even though none of us can see it when we look down at Trudy’s head.) When Gina points this out to Trudy she understandably freaks out.
Elsewhere, Tubbs talks with Lou again. This time in the middle of a crop circle with his gun drawn. Except it’s not really a crop circle, it is a “Jacob’s Ring.” Lou explains that this kind of pattern is created by spaceship landings. Lou says he’s there to wait for the “sponsors.” Tubbs clocks a couple of men watching them through binoculars but doesn’t mention it to Lou. Tubbs asks Lou who the sponsors are, but Lou doesn’t know and doesn’t seem to care. He’s just there to drop off the records from the seminar in exchange for $2,000.
Tubbs bids farewell to Lou and hauls ass out of there, getting involved in a game of chicken with the binocular men’s car along the way. Lou watches with a cheerful smile on his face as the binocular men’s car falls off a precipice. As they emerge from the wreckage, Tubbs holds them at gunpoint. Then and Lou have a fairly pleasant conversation with them.
The binocular men explain that they are federal agents conducting nuclear tests in Dade County. It’s all super duper top secret because of the Cold War. They say that everything Lou’s seminar attendees mistook for alien activity was actually related to their tests. Tubbs pushes back and says that doesn’t account for the missing people and the lost memories. The feds say these are all mere coincidences. Tubbs figures the dead man must have seen more than he was supposed to and that the feds did all of this weird shit to cover it up. But they say that they had nothing to do with any cover up. (Of course they would say that.)
Still working the alien abduction theory, Carson calls Trudy and tells her they need to investigate the houseboat again because he thinks it may be a communications station. Elsewhere, Crockett explains to Tubbs that Carson’s background looks clean. However, he’s brand new to his job and skipped his night school class at the community college that night. When Tubbs calls Switek to check on Trudy, he says she isn’t at her apartment, but she left a note saying she is with Carson.
Crocket and Tubbs race to the houseboat. (The creepy guy is still nearby.) Tubbs sees Trudy on the deck of the boat. She seems pretty out of it again. Crockett finds Carson in the cabin. Carson explains that someone was tugging the houseboat when he and Trudy arrived. The creepy guy then appears behind Crockett and shows him the ownership papers. Evidently, the dead guy left the houseboat to Lou’s seminar program.
Crockett, Tubbs, Carson, and Trudy leave the creepy guy behind on the houseboat. And as soon as they depart, a light turns on by itself, the radio starts whirring, and the cuckoo clock cuckoos. Shortly thereafter, the engine dies on Crockett’s speedboat. Behind them, they hear the tugboat horn. As they all look back, the houseboat explodes into a ball of fire.
Then Trudy wakes up from this horrible dream. Ah it was all a dream! We next see her arriving at work. She opens her desk drawer and…there’s the photo of the houseboat she supposedly burned. And an almost empty jar of peanut butter.
Very Special Bizzarro Lesson: I think first and foremost the key takeaway here is that nothing good ever happens at abandoned houseboats.
However, the most bizarre thing of all was that this is a Miami Vice episode with essentially no music. There’s like that one James Brown song and maybe one other song briefly while Trudy is in her apartment. Where is the music video vibe I want and need???? And why did they use a real James Brown song and attribute it to a fake character? I guess James’s team was like listen this is the worst script we’ve ever seen. You need to ask them to change your name in the show.
After my dissertation on Murder, She Wrote yesterday, I am truly aiming for a shorter post today. Thankfully, “Fresh Prince. The Movie” is a twenty-three minute episode and not, in fact, a movie.
Over a game of poker, Will tells his friend Jazz that he recently spent time in Alabama as part of the witness protection program because he a mob hit while working in a Philly restaurant. There’s a whole lot in that sentence, so I’ll pause while you take that in.
Will narrowly escaped death himself, but luckily a postal worker arrived and interrupted the hitman. Postal workers — heroes in 2020 — heroes in this one 1994 episode of Fresh Prince. Bizarro episodes are truly timeless.
After Will identifies the hitman in a lineup, the hitman is somehow left alone to fix his hair in the two-way mirror. Will decides to taunt him only to have the hitman punch through the glass and attack him. A guard shows up and saves Will in the knick of time. But the hitman escapes, leaving Will in danger.
The feds send Will to Deliverance, Alabama where he lives in a trailer park and goes by the name “Floyd Palmer.” Will doesn’t love the idea of living in a small unincorporated area. He wants to know where the closest club is. The federal agent tells him, “The closest town is Hatred, Mississippi. I can check if there’s dancing.” Things don’t sound too promising.
That night a shadowy figure hovers over Will as he sleeps. (Meanwhile in the present day, Jazz is so enthralled with the story that he folds on a full house while Carlton wins with a seven high.) Will reveals that the shadowy figure is Uncle Phil! He and the family must assume new identities in Deliverance because they were also being targeted by the hitman — who is still trying to track down Will.
They’re all mad at Will for agreeing to testify against a murderer and ruining their Bel-Air lives. But eventually Uncle Phil comes around and tells Will that he did the right thing. The mood is better for a moment until Uncle Phil remembers he has to start working at the manure plant the next morning.
Will then describes how the hitman searched their vacant house in Bel-Air and found a letter from Hillary to Neiman Marcus asking that they forward her catalog to Deliverance. It’s unclear why this letter is still at the house and not in the mail, but oh well just roll with it.
Wait is this the brother from Everybody Loves Raymond?
With murder literally in his eyes, the hitman heads to Alabama. (In the present day, Jazz needs to go home. But Will and Carlton convince him to stay and keep playing poker because the next part of the story involved an encounter with a bear!) As it turns out the bear is a pet that belongs to another trailer park resident. The bear’s owner, Bertha, takes a liking to Will.
She then accuses him of getting her pregnant and her entire family shows up with shotguns, ready to kill Will This episode suddenly has some really bad To Kill a Mockingbird vibes. As it turns out it’s just a shotgun wedding and not an actual attempt to murder him.
Will persuades Bertha’s father, Hatfield McCoy, to wait until Will’s mother can get to Alabama for the wedding because he wouldn’t feel right getting married without her there. Hatfield is very understanding of this and supports postponing the wedding. Bertha then shows Will a photo she has of him that she will cherish until they can truly be together.
But wait, how did Bertha get a picture of Will?? Turns out it’s a copy of his high school graduation photo. The hitman has posted it around town in the hopes of locating Will. This is where Hatfield and his love of family really comes in handy. The shotgun gang agrees to protect Will and the Banks family.
When he shows up at the trailer park, Will confronts the hitman and says he isn’t afraid because he has “FAMILY.” That’s suppose to be the trigger word for his shotgun gang to jump out and help him. But they’re all passed out from moonshine.
At this point in the poker game Jazz runs out of cash, so Will and Carlton come clean and admit that they made up the whole story to distract Jazz — who is usually a much, much better poker player than they are. Later that night, Will wakes up at 3 am to someone banging on his door. It’s the hitman!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Just kidding, it’s Jazz with a mask that looks identical to the hitman Will made up in his mind. But honestly, that’s way way way scarier if you ask me.
Very Special Bizzaro Lesson: Lying to your friends makes them retroactively clairvoyant, which is scary as shit. I would just need to be sedated forever if I was awakened at 3 am by a physical manifestation of a spooky fantasy.
I’m going to ask you to engage in a little activity before you read this post. Hold an image of Murder, She Wrote in your mind and think of all the words you associate with the show. Here are some of the ones that come up for me: Cozy, gently-paced, feels like the inside of a leather bound book, less violent than an Agatha Christie novel, usually involves a murder but I still somehow feel like I’m drink a warm cup of tea — okay you get the picture. This, my friends, is none of those things. (If you want to watch along, Murder She Wrote is free on Peacock.) Are you ready? Let’s go.
1988’s “Snow White, Blood Red” feels like an aspiring writer went to the video store, rented The Lost Boys, decided Murder, She Wrote needed the same treatment, did a line of coke, wrote something on spec, and somehow that script ended up in the production pile for season 5, purely by accident.
In this episode, Jess is enjoying a ski vacation at the Sable Mountain Lodge courtesy of her nephew. While she waits for his arrival, she witnesses a lovers spat involving the owner of the lodge, a phone call with her “boyfriend”(Gunnar), and a very aggressive other man who snatches the phone from her hands.
Cut to the lodge bar where we meet Pamela. Let me pause here and mention how much I love her whole aesthetic. Pam is pissed because she signed a ski pro (omg you guys this is Gunnar from the telephone) on to endorse her company’s ski gear. However, she has just heard that he’s planning on not competing in the World Cup. Also she’s also heard he’s some kind of playboy. Wait, wait? Gunnar is the playboy??? The earlier scene made me think that the lodge owner was the player. To use an 80’s term: who’s zoomin’ who?
If you are on Etsy and you take custom orders, pop a link in the comments because I am willing to pay money for Pamela’s sweater situation.
So the big drama continues to be Gunnar’s potential retirement. His coach confronts him in the gym and they get into it. Things even get a little physical, but everyone emerges unscathed (thus far). Meanwhile, Pamela continues to shop around for a better pro to rep her brand. She has dinner with another pro, Larry, and tries to convince him to sign with her even though Gunnar is still under contract.
This is another sweater that I would be willing to pay money for if you can link me to an online thrift store with a good reputation. Thanks in advance.
While Pam tries to negotiate a new deal, Jessica arrives for dinner and cannot find a table because it is so crowded. This is 100% my experience of every single restaurant on a mountain during ski season. Jess ends up sharing a table with Ed, who is a detective from New York, and his wife, Sylvia. Dinner goes well. Everyone has a good time.
Cut to some night skiing where Gunnar is murdered by a crossbow. Yes, you read that correctly. Murdered by a crossbow ON MURDER SHE WROTE.
Honestly, my chief complaint about this show is that it can be a little too dull, so I’m really enjoying this change of pace and I truly want to see what happens. OH and also. There is a blizzard. And everyone at the lodge is now snowed in. So if you were the murderer and your plan was to kill Gunnar with a crossbow and then get the heck out of Dodge, you would be in some seriously deep shit right now.
Meanwhile, no one from the outside can reach the mountain to attend to Gunnar’s corpse! (This seems a little odd to me…I don’t know enough about inclement weather travel logistics to dispute it but…there was a murder…and you’re telling me they all just have to hang out with the body for a while????)
That is, in fact, exactly what they do. The lodge owner (I promise to learn her name before the end of this post) and her husband — not boyfriend — (whose name I also need to learn, sorry, sorry) enlist Jessica to help them with the dead man and obvious crime scene. At first, she resists…and that’s saying a lot for a woman who loves to get involved with murder whenever possible. But she’s like, no seriously you guys I’m a book writer who sometimes does some Nancy Drew stuff on the side, but I’m definitely not someone who could examine a body.
Cut to Jessica examining the body:
That’s a private security officer, presumably, in the back of this photo doing absolutely jack shit because he’s really just there to make sure people don’t get too high and fly off the mountain.
She is conducting this post-mortem examination with a gynecologist by the way. Being the only doctor on the entire mountain, he has been roped into helping. Meanwhile, Ed from dinner (who everyone thought had gone home) returns because they “ran into a snow bank the size of the Chrysler building,” which is the first of many annoying at best and offensive at worst statements in reference to Ed’s life in New York City.
Upon seeing the dead body, this dude promptly says, “Oh, beautiful. Well, in the South Bronx we learn to live with stuff like this. But here? How does it figure?” which is a genuinely awful thing to say. It’s especially shitty coming from someone who was presumably on the force during a number of high profile murders that happened right in the heart of midtown Manhattan around the time this episode was filmed. Did we learn to live with those too, Ed? Or do the rules only apply to the South Bronx?
But I guess it was better for tourism if the writers established the New Yorkiness of a character by denigrating a low income neighborhood where — this episode would have you believe — people get used to murder.
Nevertheless, Jessica tries to get Ed to take over the investigation…which like fine…he has a badge or whatever…ughhhhhhhh. But he refuses. And just in case you didn’t hate Ed before, wait until you hear his reason for not wanting to help: “If this was some punk pusher getting knifed under the the Deegan expressway, fine. But bows and arrows? I mean this is a little out of my league.”
In other words, Ed is a piece of shit.
Once Ed has made it abundantly clear that he is not capable of investigating rich, white people at a ski lodge, he finally agrees to help out as long as Jessica runs point. And you know what, she really should be in charge. She’s got a square head on her shoulders and she isn’t an insane piece of shit who thinks one murder victim is less worthy than another.
The cop and the gynecologist leave Jess alone with the body while she goes through his personal effects. In his pocket she finds a key to room 301. Shortly thereafter, the lodge owner gives her an urgent message that had been left for Gunnar that morning. It’s from a woman named Vicki and she has a Nevada area code. Jess calls the number and the man who answers the phone identifies the number as that of the “Tartaglia residence.” Jess asks for Vicki, but the man says she isn’t there and he doesn’t now when she will be back. By the way, he’s super irritated.
The establishing shots are great in this episode.
Jess takes the key to room 301 and starts poking around the room. The lodge owner’s boyfriend shows up and starts snooping while Jess is lying in wait. She confronts him with a lighter that belongs to his girlfriend, Anne. (The lodge owner’s name is Anne!) It’s obviously that’s what he’s there to retrieve. When Jess doesn’t hand it over immediately, he gets a little threatening. Dude seems unhinged, frankly. So she puts the lighter down on the end table where he can take it back without getting closer to her. She then moves closer to the hall door.
The husband softens up a bit after this, allowing Jess to get some key information out of him. Anne and he were engaged when he had an accident. Even though they did get married, he never felt that he was enough for her. But he swears that she was in the room for an hour after Gunnar left because he was staring down the hall watching the door like a creepy, stalker. I get that they’re married and she’s stepping out on him and so I’m judging a little less on the door staring…but it also doesn’t feel like that can go anywhere good.
Now we jump to a scene with a little light acoustic guitar concert at a table with a pitcher of beer. This appears to be some sort of memorial service for Gunnar. During the memorial, Larry gets upset that everyone is having a little too much fun and leaves mid-celebration of life. In the meantime, Jess starts up a conversation in the cafe with Pam. She complains to Jess about the contract situation. She even says she “could have killed him,” but she’s just being metaphorical. Or so she says.
Cut to a spooky gloved hand with a crossbow. I mean we’re getting zoomed in shots of the arrow tip with spooky-ass horror music. What is happening on Murder, She Wrote right now???
I am honestly terrified right now.
We cut from the crossbow to Larry and Pam working out in the gym. Larry is still complaining about the memorial service not being somber enough. He then leaves Pam alone in the gym where Gunnar’s drunk coach accuses her of trying to force Gunnar out of his endorsement contract. He says she was embarrassed by Gunnar’s womanizing and set out to sabotage him. He also accuses her of having something to do with the murder. He wrenches her wrist and says that he’d kill her if she wasn’t a woman. GEEZE. So many terrible people in this episode!
This is maybe not the right time to bring up how much I like her headband but I think we could use another photo here anyway.
Pam heads into the locker room and finds some bloody workout clothes that look suspiciously like Larry’s. She enters the showers to look for a presumably injured Larry and holy crap honestly I have never seen something so graphic on this show as what she finds in that shower. There is a lot of blood and he’s been strung up over the shower head. Watch at your own risk:
This does not look like a scene from Murder, She Wrote. When was anything else on this show ever filmed in such a manner? The title of this episode feels extremely accurate because I am quite certain I have never ever ever seen so much blood on this show.
I know you’re all upset and I’m here to comfort you with another photo of Pamela’s excellent fashion sense:
Even in a tragedy, she is impeccably dressed.
As if the shower horror wasn’t enough, this episode raises the stakes yet again. The phones don’t work! They can still call within the lodge because of a generator, but Anne says they are “totally isolated from the civilized world.” Ed orders the entire lodge searched from top to bottom for the crossbow. And Jess is like Ed, you idiot we’re not just going to find it lying around somewhere.
Ed says there’s something a little off about the Coach in his opinion. This is is the first thing Ed and I have agreed upon all night. While he investigates this theory, Jess and Anne’s husband borrow a CB radio in a guest’s car. They manage to make contact with the sheriff just long enough to report the two murders, but then the radio loses the signal.
Back at the lodge, Jess asks Mike (that’s Anne’s husband’s name!) why he and Anne invited all of their friends to the lodge that week…you know…cause now they’re all dying…He tells her they were hoping to drum up some business and nothing more. She notes two out of the four previous World Cup team members are now dead. Just then, Johnny (the only remaining living team member aside from Mike) stumbles into the room. He’s been shot by an arrow, but he cannot identify the culprit.
Jessica theorizes the killer is left handed based on the way Johnny was injured. However, she also posits that his wound might have been self-inflicted. She thinks he could be picking off other team member in order to secure his spot on the next World Cup team.
I don’t like Ed, but I do like his sweaters.
That night Jess is awakened by a phone call from Ed’s wife. She says that Ed received a mysterious phone call and left their room with his gun! So now Jess has to trudge down this giant staircase in the blizzard to look for him.
As she tries the doors of the ski shop, Ed almost shoots her. He’s there waiting to meet a man who called him and said he had information. While Ed and Jessica discuss that this situation could very easily be a trap, the killer set them in the sites of his crossbow. Luckily, he misses.
Come on, Jess! You know better than that.
They see a man on a skimobile headed towards them. Ed shoots the person one the skimobile and he falls to the ground. With the unidentified assailant now down, Ed and Jess rush over to find out who the killer is. It turns out it’s…drum roll please…the coach!
But Jess isn’t so sure. She’s enlisted the gyno to extract the bullets from the coach’s body. She then meets Sylvia in the restaurant and inquires as to why Ed is in such a hurry to leave when he was part of the investigation. What hot shot cop wouldn’t want to brag to other cops? Ed’s wife said he just doesn’t want to fill out the paperwork…uh…okay.
When Ed walks in and says they have to wait for their fuel line to be repaired– I assume that’s Jess’s doing — she confronts him with the coach’s winter coat. Jess shows him that the coat only shows a bloodstain from one shot — meaning that the coach was already dead when the second bullet hit him. Jess thinks that Vicki’s husband sent Ed to kill Gunnar. Then Ed killed again to cover up his original crime by making it look like Gunnar was targeted for being on the World Cup team. She also thinks he’s pretending to be a cop…which would make sense with all the really on the nose stereotypes and the fact that he didn’t want to help investigate at all.
Jess then accuses Sylvia of helping Ed. After all, she was the one who lured Jess out of her room. And someone had to shoot the crossbow and start the skimobile. Also they were the only two people who even tried to leave the lodge before the roads were closed. Plus, when Jessica was double checking the crime scene, she noticed an internal phone next to sleigh bells in the car barn where the skimobiles are. And come to think of it, she is sure she heard sleigh bells in the background while speaking to Sylvia.
Very Special Bizzaro Lesson: If you’re an arrogant jackass, who tries to flee a crime scene, a lovely mystery author will ensnare you in a trap you never see coming. Is this my favorite episode of Murder, She Wrote ever??? I’m really liking the Murder, She Wrote bizzaro world. I liked the thriller/suspense vibe in terms of holding my attention. I also very much love that this dude who was so flagrantly a jackass right from the beginning gets knocked down a peg by Jessica when he thought he was pulling one over on her. Annnnnd in a bizzaro world, it’s not even bizarre that murder follows Jessica literally everywhere she goes.
If you’re still reading this (probably my longest post ever) thanks for sticking around! And also please check out Murder She Drank as they live tweet this episode on Friday, December 18th!
Finally, quick shout out to Joanna at Murder, She Watched. That photo of Ed & Jess talking about motive came from her post on the episode. She also has a beautiful cast of characters for your reference! (Way better than me forgetting everyone’s names.)
2020 has been nothing if not bizarre. So let’s round-out the year with a look back the moments when your favorite tv shows got well, weird.
So in case you’re like — hey, hey wait as second what is a bizzaro episode anyway? It’s anytime a show breaks from form or tone in such a remarkable way that the episode gives regular viewers an uncanny feeling. As Pop Culture Crime says of one dark episode of I Love Lucy, “I felt like I was in the midst of a weird fever dream.” If that’s the vibe you’re getting from a show you regularly watch (unless that show is Twin Peaks) then chances are — you’re viewing a bizarro episode!
Stay tuned this week for an in-depth look at bizarre episodes of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Miami Vice, and Murder, She Wrote.
As the holidays draw near, a young heiress contends with the affections of a suitor handpicked by her mother. When the handsome chef, Harland Sanders, arrives with his secret fried chicken recipe and a dream, he sets in motion a series of events that unravels the mother’s devious plans. Will our plucky heiress escape to her wintry happily ever after with Harland at her side, or will she cave to the demands of family and duty? Mario Lopez, Justene Alpert, Tessa Munro, Chad Doreck, Martin Mandela star.
Official Description for “A Recipe for Seduction” from Lifetime. You can stream the full mini-movie on their website.
0:23 Title Card: A Recipe for Seduction 0:24 Camera zooms in on holiday family dinner. 0:30 Credits roll over tight shots of crispy fried chicken. 0:40 Dinner attendee compliments hostess, Bunny, on the excellent chicken. 0:42 Bunny claims she cannot cook; credits new chef with delectable chicken. 0:58 Dinner guest’s girlfriend rolls her eyes at another guest across the table. 1:20 Annoying dinner guest proposes to girlfriend, Jessica, who clearly does not love him. 1:38 Jessica stage whispers her resentment at the public proposal. 1:40 Bunny admonishes Jessica, who is clearly her daughter. 1:42 Jessica excuses herself from the table. 1:57 Bunny blames the rejection on Jessica drinking too much at dinner. 2:00 Camera dollies in. Bunny, reads the paper at breakfast table. 2:05 Jessica enters. 2:08 Bunny reams Jessica out for not using her body to improve the family’s status. 2:25 Bunny mentions that the bank is going to repossess their stately mansion. 2:40 Bunny tells Jessica she has to marry Billy so that Bunny doesn’t lose her nice house. 2:42 Harland Sanders enters. 2:43 Jessica is smitten by Harlan’s dimples and goatee. 2:58 Bunny tells Jessica that Harland is a head chef at a fancy restaurant, but she insisted that he leave the city, live in the mansion’s guest house, and cook exclusively for their family. (No mention of the families mounting debt is made in reference to this.) 3:29 Jessica ignores a call from Billy, the proposer. 3:47 Jessica offers Harland a tour of the grounds. 3:42 Bunny watches from the main door like she’s Jessica Lange in Hush. 4:08 Jessica tells Harland how much Billy sucks. 4:20 Harland tells Jessica about how he’s trying to change the world with his “secret recipe” (which does not appear to be sexual in nature). 4:40 Billy appears and confronts Jessica for embarrassing him. 4:48 Harland tells Billy to back-off. 4:54 “Beat it crouton, get back to the kitchen, and let me and my fiancee talk.” 5:03 Billy threatens Jessica. 5:08 Jessica runs away. 5:13 “Don’t call me crouton.” 5:17 Establishing shot of Whittendale Country Club. 5:23 The other guest from dinner answers a call from Jessica. He tells her he is meeting a guy from the farmer’s market for a date at the country club. 5:42 Jessica tells her friend that she hasn’t decided whether or not to accept Billy’s proposal but that she’s into Harland the chef. 6:00 “He told me he has this secret recipe that’s gonna change the world. And you know something? I believe in him.” 6:06 Jessica’s friend comments that this is the happiest she has ever been. [Presumably viewers around the world cheer for Jessica as she experiences a cis straight man being polite to her for the very first time ever.] 6:11 Jessica tells her friend, Lee, that her mother needs her to marry the man who threatened her in order to pay their debts off. 6:25 Lee ends their call because it is time for his date. 6:34 Jessica texts “We need to talk” to an unknown recipient. [Billy, perhaps?] 6:39 Jessica leaves the room. 6:41 Bunny creeps around the corner. 6:42 Shower water running offscreen. 6:50 Billy responds: “At country club, what’s up” [no punctuation.] 6:53 Bunny texts back pretending to be Jessica and asks him to wait for her there. 7:07 Billy drinks dark colored liquor while holding the ring box and feeling sorry for himself. 7:25 Bunny arrives and informs Billy that Jessica has feelings for Harland. 7:34 Billy laughs at the thought of Jessica dating a cook. 7:42 Lee and his date enter the room undetected by Billy and Bunny. 7:43 Bunny tries to convey the gravity of the situation to Billy, stating that Harland has a “secret recipe” that might make him famous. 8:00 Lee notices Billy and Bunny getting cozy at the bar. 8:02 Billy still isn’t taking it seriously so, in an even more twisted riff on The Graduate, Bunny offers to sleep with Billy whenever he wants if he marries her daughter. 8:24 Billy enters the empty kitchen. 8:38 Billy tests the blade of a large knife. 8:40 Billy puts the knife down. 8:46 Billy discovers a knapsack containing a color coordinated leather-bound journal. 8:55 Billy finds Harland’s secret recipe in the journal. 8:59 Billy hears someone approaching and hides the recipe. 9:00 Harland enters and tells billy that Jessica isn’t home. 9:14 Billy offers to buy Harland off. 9:20 Harland tells Billy he isn’t interested. 9:25 Billy tells Harland he knows about the recipe. 9:28 Harland looks shocked. 9:33 Billy lies to Harland and tells him that Jessica accepted his proposal. 9:55 Billy puts a check for 500,000 dollars in Harland’s pocket. 10:11 Lee arrives at the house and demands to see Jessica. 10:17 Bunny tells Lee that Jessica is out purchasing a new phone. [Wait why has Jessica been missing for so long. Is she okay???] 10:36 Lee tells Bunny he saw her seducing Lee. He’s going to tell Jessica everything. 10:43 Bunny hits Lee with a croquet mallet. 10:51 Jessica tries unsuccessfully to contact Lee with her new phone. 11:04 Harland confronts Jessica about the fact that Billy knows about his secret recipe. 11:34 Jessica stops Harland from leaving the property and confesses that she love him, not Billy. 11:49 Bunny calls Billy and tells him about this new development because she’s spying again, of course. 12:04 Jessica tells Bunny that she is happy with Harland and will not marry Billy. 12:16 Bunny tells Jessica that Harland has left the property. 12:28 Jessica searches for Harland in the kitchen. 12:45 A distraught Jessica hears muffled screams on the grounds. 13:00 Jessica rushes into a storage shed to find Billy attempting to murder Harland 13:12 Bunny rushes in to tell Billy that Lee has gotten free and she urges him to kill Harland quickly. 13:23 Lee catches Jessica’s eye from behind the shadows of the storage shed. He motions for her to keep quiet. 13:25 Harland head-butts Lee. 13:33 Billy comes at Harland with a knife. 13:34 Lee hits Billy with a croquet mallet. 13:39 Jessica pushes Bunny into a shelving unit. 13:50 Jessica and Harland kiss. 14:04 Title card: One Year Later 14:07 Lee officiates Harland and Jessica’s wedding. 14:26 Serenity Falls Health & Wellness Center establishing shot. 14:30 Camera dollies in on Bunny sitting alone on a bench. 14:40 Billy joins Bunny on the bench. They both have gray hair now. 14:45 Billy announces that he found Jessica and Harland before taking a big juicy bite of chicken leg. 14:56 Credits
Wait…why didn’t Bunny just marry Billy for the money instead of Jessica?
I’ve been cooking up a fun little end of the year celebration for this blog. In the midst of drafting one of my posts, I found this really great website called Murder, She Drank. They have printable bingo cards (fun whether or not you drink) and live tweet episodes twice a month. And it just so happened that I found them while drafting a post on one of their upcoming episodes “Snow White, Blood Red.” So if you want to have a little fun on Twitter this Friday, December 18th, here are the details:
A few years ago, KFC released a special for Mother’s Day romance novella featuring none other than Colonel Sanders. Well, it looks like Lifetime is running with that idea and airing a mini-movie with Mario Lopez this Sunday!
Unfortunately, if you’re looking for the novella that started the whole “Col. Sanders is a hottie” craze, they’re no longer available. But it doesn’t look like you missed out on much anyway. Here’s hoping the mini-movie is better or at least better at being bad.
Food Network’s Holiday Gingerbread Showdown has taken over my brain. If you need something to short circuit the anxious thought loops and pandemic stress — I highly suggest you drop everything and watch some gingerbreads STAT.
But here’s the thing! The free season on Hulu just was not enough. So I’ve turned to YouTube. And I’ve found some truly inspiring, VERY SPECIAL one might say, pieces that I am sharing with you below:
The Very Special Blog 
