In the 80s one of the favorite things to drop into TV shows and films was the Russian defector. Someone who was so opposed to the Communist USSR that they would flee their homeland for America's Capitalist shores.
In 1974 ballet star Mikhail Baryshnikov did just that. To Canada. Eventually he would become a US citizen in 1986. In 1985 though he would make this:
White Nights would see Baryshnikov and Gregory Hines dance their way across Siberia and back to the loving embrace of the US. Hines plays a US defector TO the USSR who realizes the error of his ways through defector FROM the USSR Baryshnikov. It co-stars Helen Mirren and Isabella Rossellini and its theme song - Say You, Say Me by Lionel Richie - won an Oscar. It's a romp.
One year before White Nights would teach us all how to dance ourselves into loving Capitalism. Jessica Fletcher would help a pair of Russian dancers defect to Maine...
The best ballet a high school can produce.
So J.B. and her friend Leo go to see a really not very good ballet in Boston. At the door he is handed a special program by a gay named Palmer. Palmer is played by a man named Paul Rudd. He is sadly not the one you want him to be. The program has a number 18 written on it. It corresponds to a locker or something. We don't get to see much because it's curtain call and the stars are missing!?! Oh no!
Subtle & sophisticated.
Alexander and Natalia are pretending to be a chauffeur and a passenger. Leo is Natalia's uncle. They all run off to Cabot Cove in a Rolls Royce. Because why would you do anything low profile when you can drive a Rolls?
Ethan dresses the Russians up in silly fishermen costumes and Jessica makes friends with William Conrad. Who does his best to play a fat KGB major instead of a fat US crime solver. This is Ethan's last episode, which may or may not relate to his secreting away Russian citizens. We will never know.
This outfit is why Ethan was kicked off the show.
Jessica stays in Boston because the guard for Alex and Nat was murdered. William Conrad loves J.B. Fletcher because naturally they have her books in Soviet Russia. He lets her help solve the murder.
On a very special Dimitri and the Fat Man.
There's a smug Ruskie-hatin stage manager, an anti-Soviet protester and a gaggle of suspicious ballet dancers. This ain't no Black Swan though. Well it kinda is though. The real killer is another dancer because she LOVES Alex and would rather frame him for murder then allow him to live in peace and freedom and the Bible.
The FBI is weirdly introduced late in the game through a guy bugging Jessica's phone and faking a Maine accent worse then Tom Bosley. But it doesn't go anywhere and seems to be there for some resemblance of 'if this really happened'. But why bother?
You do not F with Americans. Even those played by English people.
Jessica gets the jealous dancer to admit her murderous ways after tricking her to drive to Cabot Cove with the creep stage manager. Then we are told that Alex and Nat have run off to Portland, Maine to defect while this was all going down. William Conrad seems to have known this and not care. He implies that he'd love to defect so he could go 'fishing' with Jessica. The end.
I mean...'fishing' isn't really a good sex metaphor but ok. He kisses her hand and tells her that every man likes to be compromised some of the time. Get it girl.
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