Jessica Fletcher: Hot for Homicide?
By: Alex Fox Rudinski
Tags: Crime, TV, Culture, Art, Mystery

More evidence that the people who make television fundamentally do not understand television: every episode of Murder, She Wrote begins with a trailer for the episode you are currently watching. It’s essentially, “Next week, on…” — it even opens with a similar introduction. But for some unknowable reason, it’s spliced in front the very episode it’s hyping. It’s like, you don’t have to convince me, bro. I’m already here.

It’s thirty seconds of dramatic-sounding-but-plot-irrelevant moments, all excerpted from whatever context made them intelligible. It produces exactly the same feeling as standing at the head of a line, waiting for the clerk to call you to the counter — can we please get on with this already? And then, often just after someone screams bloody murder — either discovering a corpse or realizing they are about to become one — in jaunts the title music, always jarringly cheery. It’s a comedy smash cut, funny almost every time.

At least you get to see this in the introduction.

During this time, I always think the same thing: am I sure I like this show? I’m genuinely unsure of the answer: I think my opinion is in some kind of quantum superposition, both positive and negative. When IMDb asked me to rate it, I admit that I was flummoxed: where do you put that on a ten-point scale? Well, Mr. IMDb, I hope you accept reviews in the form of narrative essays posted to entirely different websites!

TV Used to Be Like This, I Guess

Despite my ambivalence, I have to admit: Murder, She Wrote is a show I regularly choose to watch. But it’s like turning on a monster truck rally. As long as some stuff gets smashed, I guess I got what I signed up for. If I’m mad that the monster truck rally doesn’t contain a thoughtful discourse on the metaphor of the monster truck in contemporary society, that’s on me. Some things must be taken on their own terms, whether monster trucks or probable murderesses.

But there’s also a lot of baloney in here. It’s from 1984, and it hasn’t been refrigerated.

Jessica Fletcher, played by the ever-delightful Angela Lansbury, is a grandmotherly woman with a teenager’s name. Her eyeballs are the first thing you notice: it defies belief that her eyelids hold them in. All the better to see you with, I imagine Jessica would say. It’s the kind of response she would find funny, but I can also see her threatening someone with it. She is a detective because she has written popular mystery novels. Oh, and because she literally cannot avoid homicides.

Living in the age of prestige television that we do, it’s easy to forget that television used to be broadly terrible. Even though Murder, She Wrote was one of the most popular shows of its period, it still reflects the lamest elements of 1980s television. The camera zooms for both comedic and dramatic effect, but only ever makes me nauseous. Jokes are accompanied by jarring musical stings. Showy transitions are the editor’s favorite, but certainly not mine.

It must seem like I’ve selected this particular frame for comedic purposes, but honestly, I wasn’t even trying. They’re all like this Look, I’ve even included a woman with comparatively normal eyeballs, for comparison. Let us not speak of the eyebrows.

But it’s the listening that’s the most unpleasant experience. Perhaps I have grown soft, pampered by the highly-refined television so readily available today. But in Murder She Wrote, it feels like almost no one is even trying to act. I am delighted when they are killed, because I won’t have to hear them talk like a human ATM anymore.

Great swathes of the show are like this, listless and flat, energetic but empty. I can’t tell you much about them, because, not coincidentally, these are moments that social media’s gravitational pull waxes the strongest. I scroll half-attentively through Twitter, waiting for the fun part to come back. The fun part is invariably Angela.

Dame Angela Lansbury knows how to deliver a line, thank you. She expertly parses the claptrap she’s been given with a practiced and characterful rhythm that helps you forget its mostly rubbish. She’s magnetic, when she’s focused: Jessica might be an odd duck, but once she hones in on a homicide, she’s cuttingly perspicacious.

These are my favorite moments of the show. I see Jessica narrow her eyes, and I know she’s poised to shrewdly disassemble the conniving murder’s plot in one masterful sweep. Lansbury is an undeniable bright spot, and a broadly illuminating one: it’s her charm that keeps the show watchable. Had a less winsome actress helmed the ship, I doubt I’d be streaming it at all.

Murder, She Did?

If you know anything about Jessica Fletcher, you know she is the only person you could convict of being a serial killer on circumstantial evidence alone. There is simply no way a human being can be even indirectly involved with a minimum of 264 murders. Either an angry Greek god cursed her to forever walk the earth as a homicidal franchise of Typhoid Mary, or she’s killing them herself.

Is this is the face of a murderer? Only you can decide.

Indeed, according to a 2012 BBC Radio 4 study, if Jessica’s home of Cabot Cove was a country, it would handily eclipse the rate of violent death in even the bloodiest of modern-day nations. In 2012, Honduras topped the violent death list in the non-fictional world, cited at 910 per 1 million people. It’s plunged to nearly half as much today, but the nation still regularly earns a top ten spot in the crimson lists.

Cabot Cove doesn’t even break a sweat, racking up an astonishing 1490 per million. And Jessica Fletcher is involved in all of them, accidentally wandering right into the middle of every nefarious plot the ever-scheming residents of the Cove can concoct. In real life, I’d bet Jessica would be the kind of neighbor that makes you start looking at fencing online.

Given how frequently Jessica attends homicides, you’d think she’d become grizzled, flicking the dainty ash from her Virginia Slim with practiced grimness in a dank alleyway. Instead, it seems the opposite process has taken place: Jessica is positively tickled by every new killing. Her verve for violent death is almost unseemly, but you literally cannot keep her away.

Jessica is instantaneously on every case, impossible to stop. You can tell she’s been waiting for this moment. In truth, she probably expected it, by now: I wonder what kind of murder will happen today?, she idly ponders while brushing her teeth, in the same way you or I might wonder about the weather.

The police assigned to investigate whatever murder does happen today are invariably incompetent, regardless of their locale. They have all the determination of good detectives, but, in a critical oversight, none of the skill. At best, they are factory seconds from Detective’s Warehouse.

But fear not, because probable-serial-killer Spry Ol’dlady is here to politely harangue them into pursuing the case the way she’d like it done. This is apparently Jessica’s greatest investigative asset: the social impropriety of ignoring a persistent old woman.

For so-called “eyeball truthers” out there going “oh it’s just her glasses”: Bet you feel pretty dumb right now, huh.

Ironically, despite Jessica’s undeniable win rate, the police never grow to trust her. This isn’t just on Murder, She Wrote: it happens to lots of shows founded on fractious dynamics. Perfect example: X-Files. By seasons four, you’re like: Scully. Babe. You’ve seen aliens.

To my knowledge, Jessica has never once been wrong about a murder. The ironic thing is, if they police just listened to her, it would make their own jobs so much easier. They would have all the time in the world to do whatever it is that NPCs do when the main character isn’t around. It’s like refusing to use a calculator on a difficult math problem, and also you have no idea how to do math.

And yet, the police treat Jessica with incredulity at every opportunity, innumerates eyeing their calculators mistrustfully. Jessica is never deterred: she’s always there, unstoppable as an avalanche, hen-pecking a policeman into actually doing his job for once. Maybe that’s what U.S. policing needs: a unit of matronly nags.

My Verdict: A Show I Don’t Dislike

For all my complaints, I must be honest. I will absolutely watch an episode of this show tonight. And not ironically, either. I will follow the plot with moderate effort, and that will be enough. Murder, She Wrote has a quality that’s critical for television you don’t watch that closely. I always know exactly what I’m getting, and I know it won’t be difficult.

I can tell she’s disappointed in me.

Despite the show’s multifarious flaws, there’s a kernel of madcap charisma that pulls me in. It’s undeniable that Lansbury provides the lion’s share, and not just thanks of the billiard balls she has instead of eyes.

Watching the show, it’s hard not to like her. Her perpetual good cheer wears down your defenses, gradually sliding from grating to ingratiating, and soon you’re cheering her on. Each episode wins me over anew. Well, except for the episodes that grievously mishandle cultural issues, by far the most rotten of the 1980s baloney. These are the episodes I skip.

But not every show I watch needs to be perfect, I’ve come to realize. Some can even be a little bad. You can have high standards if you like, but the fact remains: you can’t watch Breaking Bad every day. You need some kind of lower-wattage entertainment to fill in the gaps, if only for relief from the effort it takes to engage in such powerful narrative.

When my brain is too smooth to think about anything, when the headlines have been too horrifying to handle for the 300th day in a row, when I need a show that tastes like store-brand seltzer in my brain, Murder, She Wrote is exactly on my wavelength.

There are days I need a break from reality, and that’s a place this show knows nothing about. Maybe that’s kind of a relief. Here, I am safe from the outside. Here, I have the luxury of being bored.

And by the way she holds that flag gun, I get the feeling she’s familiar with the real thing. I wouldn’t care to cross her.