Grandma Fletcher

Murder, She Wrote opens with a scene from a bad murder mystery play. After a few moments the scene ends, the lights go up and the director calls a reset. Then there is a small burst of applause. The camera spins around and we see three older women.

The trio is identified as the refreshment committee from the PTA. One is Jessica Fletcher. The director thanks them and ushers them outside where Jessica reveals who the killer in the play is. The director is appalled.

Her long explanation reveals everything about herself. She is sharp-witted, observant. Later in the episode a reporter gives away the ending of her book, Jessica is horrified. To her, the two  reveals are very different. She can reveal because she figured it out. The reporter read the answer. It is hypocritical but key to the character. Jessica is the one who explains things.

I titled this post 'Grandma Fletcher' because this sort of busy-body, my-way-or-the-highway sentiment reminds me of my Grandmothers. Always firm, but always with a smile. The rightness could never be questioned. Hypocritical on things, but in a way that was almost passable. I see a generation in the character.

We see Jessica riding a bike, waving to every single person in every single shot. Cabot Cove is shown to be friendly, small, idyllic.

She catches fish. She paints her house. The smallness and not city-ness of the place is clearly defined. It is fishermen and high school students who come up to their 60 year-old teacher to talk shop before class.

The opening ends with her jogging up to her house as the phone rings...

Jessica Fletcher runs prettier than you do.

Her nephew, Grady, calls. He gave her manuscript to a publisher. She claims she is a teacher not a writer but the camera zips ahead a few months - best seller! Jessica is heading to New York, by train, to meet her new publisher.

The use of the train seems to put the role even more in the past. Angela Lansbury was 59 when the first episode aired. Younger than my mother is right now. The strange aging of the character into a vague late in life space would be continued throughout the run of the show. It is never clear how old Jessica is meant to be. She is permanently 70ish. Maybe.

When Jessica briefly meets the publisher she says he looks pale. That he needs to eat more apples. Then there is a weird montage of interviews where she is berated by snobs. Her quip, "You know, back in Cabot Cove the only thing we have with claws is lobster, and we eat them" is the stuff of every homespun saying ever uttered. In the first few seasons she uses many variations of 'back in Cabot Cove'. It eventually gets dropped as the character gains success and the show moves into a long-running formula.

For the rest of the episode she is at the right place at the right time: she trips a thief with a giant magic wand; she tries to keep a drunk woman from driving;  she makes a concoction of eggs, sugar, milk and a ton of other stuff to get wine out of a satin dress when club soda would do.

Shocking. That velour jumpsuit...

She is the first on the scene when a body is found floating in the pool. While the cops are questioning and searching Jessica is looking in the garden for clues. She is the classic busy-body. If this were a sitcom she would be the Ropers.

She becomes a voice of authority in every room she enters. The police ask her opinion without any prompting. She is smarter than everyone to a degree that is almost laughable. That the episode revolves around a Sherlock Holmes costume is appropriate. There are not two better busy-bodies who magically know the secrets of murder than Holmes and J. B. Fletcher.

I don't want to paint all Grandmothers in a negative light. And I know she is not technically a Grandmother. I look at her fondly because she is based on a generation of women who grew up during WWI and WWII. When seeing the minutia was a part of life. A part of understanding the world around you. You saw something, you said something. You looked out for yourself and each other. Because there were bad guys out there and they wanted to ruin it for the rest of us.

And we live in a time like that now. We are prepping a new generation of J.B. Fletchers as we speak. The heightened alertness of the war on terror. The constant fear of another war. The gun debate. The immigrant debate. The neo-culture war. I wait for all of us to reach our vague-70s so we can start solving crime.