MEMORY LANE: REMEMBERING "MURDER, SHE WROTE"

I may be wrong, but frankly, I doubt it. -- Jessica Fletcher

I confess: I did it. I watched all twelve seasons of MURDER, SHE WROTE and the four full-length TV movies which followed its cancellation. That's 264 episodes (not including the movies) and boy, did that take some time -- and by time, I mean a couple of years. I don't actually remember when I began my quest, but it was probably 2020 or so. Why did I do this? Why spend those hours watching a rigidly formulaic, cozy mystery show that ran its course decades ago? The answer, on the surface anyway, is profoundly simple: I enjoyed it. There is a deeper mystery, however, to why I was able to stick with the project, and for once, it is not "nostalgia." We will however address that riddle presently. For now -- and I'm going to resort to these cheap puns through this whole blog, so you may as well resign yourself -- to cases.

For those of you living on Mars who have never heard of it, MURDER, SHE WROTE ran for a mind-boggling 12 seasons, from September 30, 1984, to May 19, 1996, and could have run longer if not for the stupidity of network executives, whose salaries are always in inverse proportion to their cranial capacities. It is by far one of the most successful and iconic TV shows of all time, when its star, Angela Lansbury, died recently at the age of 95, there was an outpouring of public grief which far exceeded that which is normal for a television star of yesteryear. It had a deeply personal quality to it, as one experiences when a distant but beloved relation passes away. There are, of course, many iconic TV shows, but MSW was different from most, because it did not utilize an ensemble cast. Nearly all the eggs were in Lansbury's basket, and she carried them so well that many people born after the show's cancellation are as familiar with it as those who watched it live on television in the 80s and 90s.

The premise of MSW was almost comically simple. Jessica Fletcher, a widowed, recently retired schoolteacher in the small, seaside New England town of Cabot Cove, writes a mystery novel to alleviate her grief and boredom. Her witless nephew Grady (Michael Horton) sends it off to a publisher without her knowledge, and before she knows it, she's a bestselling author. Jessica's lively imagination, keen eye for observation and her deductive faculties, however, make her an ideal amateur sleuth in real life. And since people seem to be murdered whenever Jessica is around, she naturally puts these talents to use by tracking down the killers, usually much to the annoyance of the local police, and the relief of whatever person has been wrongfully accused of the crime. Sometimes those police are the Cabot Cove sheriffs, the bumbling but goodhearted Amos Tupper (Tom Bosley), and later, the tougher and sharper Mort Metzger (Ron Māsak), respectively; but when Jessica travels, as she frequently does to promote or research her next novel, well, there's always a harassed, bumbling local cop on hand who either fights incessantly with her or rather pitifully seeks out her aid. At home, Jessica's best friend, the crusty town doctor Seth Hazlett (William Windom), who refers to her sharply as "woman," is her principal confidant, sounding board, and sparring partner: unlike everyone else in town, he is not in awe of her, a fact she seems to enjoy and appreciate. While on the road, Jessica occasionally had the help of private eyes like Harry McGraw (Jerry Orbach) or Charlie Garrett (Wayne Rogers), or secret agent Michael Hagerty (Len Cariou), all of whom cause her as much trouble as they alleviate. No matter what the circumstances, however, Jessica will get her man -- or her woman, by the final credits.

Running as long as it did, MSW employed a staggering number of actors, many of whom later became famous: Joaquin Phoenix, Bryan Cranston, Linda Hamilton, George Clooney, and Neil Patrick Harris (to name a few) all made guest appearances on the show in the infancy or early stages of their careers. Indeed, a sort of sport can be had in spotting such people, as well as legendary character actors or faded stars from the golden age of cinema, many of whom it is rumored Lansbury insisted on employing, just to keep them working.

The most startling aspect of MSW is the rigidity of its formula. A standard episode goes like this:

1. Jessica arrives in town (unless she's in Cabot Cove, in which case she's already there). Here she meets an old friend or makes a new one. She also meets a rotten creep who everyone overtly or covertly wishes would die, especially said friend. Before the second or third commercial, the creep is found murdered, and the friend becomes the prime suspect.

2. With the help or hinderance of the local constabulary, Jessica investigates the crime in the hopes of clearing her friend's name, discovering that many others had motive, means and opportunity to commit the murder: she interrogates them and makes a general nuisance of herself, sometimes to the point of becoming targeted by the killer herself. The cops stolidly insist on the guilt of her friend and refuse to investigate anyone else. (A common refrain is: "We already have the killer, Mrs. Fletcher!")

3. Via a small epiphany at the last moment, usually prompted by noticing some small detail such as a stain, a torn piece of clothing, an offhand remark, etc., Jessica realizes who the killer is, and either tricks them into giving themselves away within earshot of the police, or confronts them in the standard Agatha Christie drawing-room fashion, identifying the murderer before the others, explaining how the murderer tripped themselves up and extracting the inevitable confession.

There were, of course, variations on the theme: sometimes the friend in need was a relative, or a friend of a friend, an enemy, or even Jessica herself; and sometimes the killer turned out to be someone outside the pack of "usual suspects," such as the investigating police officer, or the very person who pleaded for her assistance at the beginning of the episode. There were a few stories that had overtones of horror or international intrigue, while some were broadly very comedic. All were recognizably part of the same pattern and concluded in almost precisely the same last-second-rescue manner. In some stories, the apprehension of the criminal was more tragic than triumphant, and at least one episode where it is implied that full justice was not done with the outcome; but the criminal was always caught. In this regard, i.e. from a purely structural standpoint, MURDER, SHE WROTE was virtually identical to PERRY MASON.

I grant that small concessions were made to the passage of time. In later seasons, Jessica relocates partially to New York City, ditches her trademark typewriter for a word processor, and seems to embrace more fully the fact she is no longer a widowed former schoomarm scribbling stories at her kitchen table, but a bestselling and internationally famous author. However, none of these things played a significant role in the show or caused any alteration of its formula. Fashion changed. Technology changed. Sets changed. MSW did not.

So where does this leave us? What is the legacy of MURDER, SHE WROTE? Is it still worth watching after all these years, or is it best consigned to the realm of fond memories which can only remain fond if left unexamined? Is there anything we can learn from its success or its ultimate demise?

Let's start with why the show ran so long, why it worked, why it became iconic even in the eyes of those who can't help but mock its rigid formula, its predictability, its ridiculous conceits and frequently cheesy endings.

MURDER, SHE WROTE was comfort food in the sense that the audience knew what was coming from the opening frame. In a sense it was like watching the same play, over and over again, with different actors using a different backdrop. The differences were sufficient to keep it interesting, and the similarities sufficient not to overchallenge the audience. And from its pilot episode very clear on the fact that it possessed a moral compass. As much as the audience enjoyed the loathsome villain getting killed off in the second act, Jessica made it plain in each and every episode that there was never -- never -- a justification for murder. I may be overplaying my hand here, but in this ultra-cynical and morally relitavistic age, a woman with a strong sense of propriety, excellent manners and unwavering moral standards was quite refreshing. Just as her sidekick Dr. Hazlett represented the crusty conservative who dislikes all change, Jessica was a throwback to a time when decency was regarded as strength and not naivete. Another attraction was its lack of attraction:
the fact that the show was so steadfastly, unabashedly unsexy. That is not to say there weren't beautiful women and handsome men on hand, or sub-plots driven by lust, tawdry affairs, sexual obsessions, etc.; but rather that the appeal of the show did not lie with the physical charisma of Angela Lansbury, who even as a very young woman in the 1960s (see THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE) had the appearance of middle age, or with that of the character she portrayed, who was straight-laced, frumpy, formal, and generally uninterested in romance. Like STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION's Captain Jean-Luc Picard, who was haughty and reserved, middle-aged and bald, yet won the hearts of millions of fans around the world, Jessica's appeal lay in her intelligence and strength of character.

This deliberate unsexiness also extended to the spirit of the series itself. It did not rely on the stylstic tricks many shows use to lure viewers: flashy cars, technology, bikini babes, throbbing musical soundtracks. In fact, it periodically made fun of such devices by pitting Jessica against Hollywood executives determined to dumb-down and sex up her mysteries for the silver screen. MSW nearly always retained the air of a "cozy mystery" while providing just enough action to remind the audience there were higher stakes than the mere solution of an intellectual problem.

Why is this a good thing? Well, for starters, it forced the writers to make a serious (if by no means always a successful) attempt to produce stories which were inherently interesting even without the afformentioned bells and whistles. More tangibly, it gave us a protagonist who was relatable in the sense of looking like an actual human being and having no particular appetite for adventure or the so-called finer things in life. She retained the house she had always lived in, never owned a car, and when traveling, her favorite order from room service was "tea and toast," a combination sufficiently boring to remind us of our spinster aunts rather than some female version of James Bond. And this brings me to my last point, no far distance from the previous: Jessica solved mysteries with a combination of moral courage and sheer intellect. She had neither brawn nor sex appeal to fall back on: she was neither enforcer nor seducer. Tom Baker once famously remarked of his character, Doctor Who, that he was a man who thought rather than shot his way out of trouble, and this applies to Jessica as well. Heroes who shoot down their enemies are as common as dirt: rare is the one who brings them down without so much as clenching a fist, much less picking up a gun.

All of this is a way of saying that the principal legacy of MURDER, SHE WROTE is that despite being hopelessly dated in contour and form, it is timeless, because it rests on eternal virtues and an eternal peculiarity: human beings love a mystery and will keep tugging at that knot until it unravels. Watching it now, in the 2020s, I found it the best kind of escapism, one that draws you in and poses a challenge but does not overtax either your brain or your emotions, and, like a theme-park ride, ends in a predictable way. MURDER, SHE WROTE stands in my mind as a testament to the fact that audiences are not as shallow, cruel, or dopamine-addled as modern network executives and writers believe them to be.

As long as it ran, MSW could have run longer, but those same executives decided to shorten the shooting schedule per episode, which overtaxed Angela Lansbury; they also made the quintessential studio suit mistake of switching its time slot, a blunder which killed more successful TV shows than can be counted. So what we can learn from its demise is that oldest of axioms: if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

When I walk down Memory Lane, I am usually in a nostalgic mood. Rewatching MURDER, SHE WROTE did not evince much if any nostalgia in me. It simply reminded me that there is a place -- a very large place -- in television, and in film and fiction, for heroes who do not wear capes, who do not shoot guns, who do not win beauty contests, and who wouldn't pay you a penny for caviar and champagne if tea and toast were on the menu.