We're Off to Kill the Wizard

Season 1, Episode 8
Dec. 9, 1984

That's actually a good freeze of her. Happy. Well lit.

So maternal. How'd that work out for ya Joaquin?

Before I go anywhere on this. Joaquin Phoenix is in this episode. For like a second. Jessica plays maternal angelic whatever figure and fixes his bike.

She's staying with his family. They are mysterious relatives. Aren't they all.

So Jessica and the kids and their mother (who says like one thing the whole episode and it's about how great Jessica is) all go to a brand new theme park.

They go because a creepy man shows up in a limo and invites them...as you do.

Not that kind of hung

The theme park has a horror theme. But it looks more like a Ren Fair. And the horror elements seemed based on medieval torture porn and graveyards...so not really horror at all. The owner is Horatio Baldwin. Who sounds like Dom DeLuise and enters the show by bring fake hung.

He quickly shows himself to be a royal dick. He wants Jessica to open a Mansion of Murder with him. Which...he obviously doesn't know her...then he threatens her and gets a bit rapey with an auto door lock thing.

Jessica gets a great line about how she writes for people who read and he makes cheap attractions for children who can't tell the difference between real and fake and then walks off.

Then he locks himself in his office and dies. By gunshot? Maybe? It's a classic Sherlock Holmes locked room mystery.

Steve is such a good boy
He was in Sharknado
I'm so proud

We quickly are introduced to a bunch of suspects. The accountant, the architect, the wife, the secretary. Jessica is kidnapped by the wife. Which is apparently how these people roll because CORRUPTION!!! She wants Jessica to solve the murder because she needs the insurance money. OBVS. J. B. is offered a ton of cash for it. Then is let go.

The wife is Steve's mom from 90210 by the way.

The secretary thinks she killed him because they fought and then she left him alone. And then he died. Which is not how it works but OK Laurie.

She finds it because...there isn't much reason given

Jessica finds a secret compartment in the desk with the cunning use of matches. It's empty. Like all of the leads in this episode. So many red herrings this outing. It's kinda lame, but fun.

Did I mention that the accountant was Les in WKRP in Cincinnati? Loni Anderson isn't in the episode or it would soooo good.

Les tries to run off with a briefcase full of money but trips and the cash goes flying. This being the 80s - a huge crowd gathers to grab at it. The economy was bad in case you didn't know.

It turns out it is money he is owed. Maybe. I don't remember them actually resolving this one. It doesn't matter, we don't see Les again.

Jessica goes to the office. She discovers that the light in the phone has been cut. And the ringer. She figures out how it happened. From a cut wire. I think this stretches the audiences ability to suspend disbelief in the magic powers of deduction that J. B. Fletcher possesses but whatever.

She calls Phillip. And asks him to meet her in the Tunnel of Horrors. He beats her there and finds a secret compartment in a scary as all that is holy giant Horatio face that talks and makes groaning sounds. It's some Zozobra shit. It was all a blackmail thing, which is dull.

I think there's meant to be a metaphor of Horatio
being like the wizard of Oz, but...no

Philip tries to kill Jessica but it's a mirror and then the cops show up. It turned out that Phillip was in the room. He pushed Horatio down on accident. Then faked a suicide. He hid until after the cops broke down the door. Then ran out after they left.

Then Jessica gives Laurie the money Erica gave her for solving the case. The end.

Really this is all an excuse to talk about the favorite plot point for all the shows in the 80s - corruption in business and shady executives. The trope of the evil, sleazy, 80s businessman is so ingrained that Martin Scorsese is dredging that well for his new movie despite Wall Street having already been made.

I mean, it's a good trope. And at least in 1984 it was mostly a new one.

Hit, Run and Homicide

Season 1, Episode 7
Nov. 25, 1984

In April of 1983 Viking published Stephen King's 13th novel, Christine. Eight months later in December the John Carpenter film version of Christine came out.

This is interesting because:
A) That film got made FAST honey. Like real fast.

B) The movie was made for $9.7 million. It made $21 million. For reference - The Cabin In The Woods (2012) cost $30 million to make and made just under $66.5 million. So basically the same sort of return. Just much much bigger.

Let's talk about pop culture for a second. Stephen King was arguably at his best in the 80s. His books went from book to film in months. They influenced the way people looked at genre. King changed publishing, for better or not. People read these things and then re-read them.

Television has always been the bastard son of media. It was viewed as the last stop in a career. A wasteland of bad acting, directing, writing. Of course many don't feel this way, myself included, but it is a truth.

The trickle down effect of culture from book to film to television is kinda fascinating. It is still with us today, though often the film gets skipped in favor of a premium cable TV show. Think Game of Thrones, Dexter, True Blood, Walking Dead, Longmire, et al. In the 80s books were turned into movie of the week or mini-series. There weren't really paths to long-form series for books. So the ideas filtered into shows is more blatant rip-off kinda ways.

Thus, one year after the success of Christine, Jessica Fletcher battles her own ghost car along the forested roads of Cabot Cove.

But first! It's Founder's Day. Let's all go to the clambake!

Exactly like Google

Jessica runs into her friend Daniel, an inventor of silly things that are not so silly from a 2013 perspective. Like a thing that hooks to your bike to tell you a bunch of health facts about yourself. Or a wireless security device. Or a driverless car. Like Google, but in a shed.

He makes a weird sonic plant growing thing that only seems to attract dogs. Which could also be helpful?

Eventually we get to the clambake. We see kids riding bikes. Ethan shows up to play baseball! All is potato salad and pie until this happens:

The car chases that guy down and then mysteriously drives away after only sort of hurting him. All without a driver.

The guy is Charles Woodley. He claims to be a former employer of Daniel who was invited here to hang out. Daniel says he hates the guy and would never do such a thing. Meanwhile we are introduced quickly to Daniel's son Tony and his fiancee Leslie. And another former boss of Daniel's, named Katie. It's very confusing with all the former bosses floating around. I had to rewind the episode twice to even catch Tony's name.

Then this happens:

That's apparently is another former boss of Daniel's. He's Charles' business partner. Or something. He's only in this long enough to grumble about travel by boat and then to get run over by ghost car. Which is a sedan by the way. I've never trusted them.

Sedan of DOOM!

They make a lot of really obvious and silly car comments. Like how much they are driving, milage between things, they say sedan a bunch, Leslie is a travelling saleswoman. It gets a bit silly. Sillier than normal.

Eventually Jessica thinks out loud at a very oddly blocked BBQ that she thinks the car might be hidden somewhere remote. Like a farm nearby. Why that farm? Because it's close to where the fedora guy got squished.

She heads out there on bicycle and finds the car. She gets in the car. The car locks itself. Sort of. A really obvious, gigantic, black van is right nearby and we see someone flip a bunch of switches that turn the car 'on'.

What follows is the worlds slowest, most beautiful car chase along Maine's scenic coast line.

Jessica almost dies, but doesn't. And then she plays a video game with Ethan and figures out that the milage on Leslie's rental doesn't add up to all her travel that she says she does. So she must be the killer.

They reconstruct the picnic but purposefully send the remote car at Charles and then Leslie gives herself away by running to the black van. It's all a scam between the two to get rights to some secret security program of some kind that is never defined. The end.

I know this post is long but I need to point out another theme in this episode aside from cars.

SCIENCE.

Daniel is portrayed as a kind of proto-Doc Brown. Weird hair, messy, gadgets that don't work. The typical 80s mad scientist. They even make him take a psyche evaluation. The remote used in the car is his design. Crazy town.

So aside from the tech angle in the actual crime, there's the gadgets that Daniel builds, that lab that I showed you earlier, and the video game. It's the future! J. B. style.

Also also.

Jessica has a wealth of friends in the tiny town that we never see again for the entirety of the show. TWELVE years of it. Never a glimpse of mention of Daniel again. Does she hate her friends? Do they mysteriously die after she writes books about them? Do they sue her? THE QUESTIONS!

Look at all the fucks she gives