Death Takes a Curtain Call

Season 1, Episode 9
Dec. 16, 1984

Insert 'In Soviet Russia...' joke here.

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.

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