Murder, She Wrote episode 2...Deadly Lady

Sheriff Amos Tupper

"A multimillionaire is swept off his yacht during a hurricane near Cabot Cove, but his four daughters aren’t exactly drowning in sorrow." from the Murder, She Wrote Definitive Episode Guide

This is the episode we are introduced to Sheriff Amos Tupper (Tom Bosley aka Mr. Cunnigham from Happy Days) of Cabot Cove.
Jessica helps out a 'hobo' Ralph by cooking him breakfast for weeding her garden. But she soon figures out that he is not actually a hobo, just some retired businessman who wants to see America from another prespective.
Jessica gets called down to the docks...a wealthy millionaire, Stephen Earl, has been swept overboard and presumed dead by his four daughters...did one of them do it?
Jessica returns to her house to find Raplh still there. She gives him her deceased husband, Frank's pipe.
Jessica figures out that the yacht would've been in the eye of the storm and the sea would have been calm.
One of the dughter's freaks out and says that she shot him on deck. Sheriff Tupper arrests her there and then.
Jessica sees a picture of Stephen/Ralph in the local paper and rushes back to her house with her good friend Ethan...but he's gone! At the same time a body is found on the beach it's Stephen Earl/Ralph!
Jessica is well pissed off.
When they confront the daughter, Maggie Earl, that claimed to have shot Stephen/Ralph she breaks down and tells them that the two of them had actually planned his 'death' to prove that one of the daughter's boyfriends is a golddigger but now he is actually dead.
Jessica says that there's no way the body was in the water for three days.
Looks like half of Cabot Cove are searching the beach for clues...a pair of shoes are found with a broken heel. They are Nan Earl's shoes...did she kill her father!? They make her try them on and they fit.
They take her to the policde station so her goldigging boyfriend can make an idiot of himself with her hiding in the other room.
Jessica confronts the rest of the sisters about the shoes, saying sisters often borrow each others clothes and shoes.
The daughter who claimed to have planned their father's death breaks into Jessica's house...she killed him in the end! She confesses to everything and then threatens to kill Jessica...but of course Jessica had called Sheriff Tupper and he was listening to the whole conversation.
With the murder sovlved Jessica goes sea bass fishing eith Ethan.

Outfit of the Show: Jessica wore a fluffy white cardigan with black fish on it that looked nice and warm.

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The First Episode of Murder, She Wrote...The Murder of Sherlock Holmes

Image via WikipediaIt looks like ITV3 is showing Murder, She Wrote from the beginning, which is the perfect opportunity for me to 'live blog' them!
The pilot episode was a full length TV movie but is now shown as a two parter...Jessica Fletcher, a retired teacher from the small town Cabot Cove in Maine heads to New York City to publicise her first novel. While there she gets invited to a costume ball at her publisher, Preston Giles' mansion; where one of the guests Caleb McCallum (Brian Keith, the dad in The Parent Trap) who is dressed as Sherlock Holmes, is murdered! He's found dead, face down in a pool.
Ned Beatty's the local police detective trying to solve the crime.
Wait a second...Mr. McCallum is dead afterall! So who's dead? It's the private detective Baxendale.
In what will become a recurring trend, Jessica's nephew Grady is the suspect.
I'll finish this tomorrow when I watch part 2...
So, Jessica is following a suspect, Ashley Vickers, on a bus in NYC, of course going through a dodgy bit.
She gets off the bus and is mugged by two thugs...and one of them is Andy Garcia! She gets saved by a black kid, who we're supposed to think might mug her too, but turns out to be a fan.
Ned Beatty's detecive gets called to Captain McCallum's boat...and gets stopped by two police officers, they all find a body in the sail!  It's Caleb McCallum!
Oh my...Jessica's just been kissed by her publisher!
She's now getting a train back to Cabot Cove...btw: nobody actually takes the train in the U.S., it is purely a romantic image used by the film and television industry.
She looks at a newspaper and then suddenly rushes off that train onto another one, for some reason only know to her...at this time.
She ends up going back to Giles' mansion...and her suspicions are correct the first man she's loved since her husband died is the murderer!
And finally, she heads back to Cabot Cove again...telling Grady she's never coming back to New York City and she might not write another book too!
But we all know that whe goes on to write lots of books and solve lots of crimes!

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Today on Murder, She Wrote...Dead to RIghts

Jessica reluctantly agrees to help her former researcher on a murder charge despite the fact that the woman is a pathological liar. (from http://jesmaine.tripod.com/mswseason9.html)



Jessica is still in Cabot Cove. Her assistant, Dana, heads back down south to Portland, Maine after helping research a book. Dana is applying for a job at a securities company. She's totally blagging it.

OMG! It's Hodges from CSI. He play this guy Todd at the securities company.

Dana totally messed up on the research on Jessica's book and she has to re-do all of it.

Then Dana pretends to be Jessica and gives herself a glowing reference to Ethan Stevens, the boss at the securities company. So she gets the job.

Mr. Stevens has been doing insider trading and fraud. He gets threatened by his partner. 48 hour...48 hours.

Jessica's at dinner with a publisher. Mr. Stevens, thinking he had talked to her earlier that day, comes up and says hi. Jessica is flummoxed by the conversation.

Jessica comes to the brokerage to confront Dana. She's still lying about pretty much everything. She's shocked when Jessica tells Dana that's she knows Dana a 'big fat liar'. (my words not Jessica's)

Mrs. Stevens confronts Dana and basically threatens her...'He is my major clown.'

Later on that night...Mr. Stevens is shot after saying...'Dana, what are you doing?'

Even though Dana's a 'big fat liar', she's no murderer. But she's arrested for his murder. Her prints, hair and blood were on the gun and she had GSR on her hands.

Dana's public defender, Vincent Polaski. asks Jessica to investigate the case for her because his P.I. is in rehab. He guilts her out and she ends up doing it...as long as 'she can go for 5 minutes without lying.'

Her blood was on Mr. Stevens desk because she claims to have lost an earring in his office.

The prosecutor, Bruce Hastings, looks like a cross between Gordon Gekko and Pat Riley.

Jessica and Polaski think that Dana had inside help getting a job at the brokerage because she knew too much about it. So they go Polaski's grandma, Wanda, who's a computer hacker.

Of course the inside guy is Hodges...I mean Todd. Dana and Todd went to the same high school in Vermont. Mrs. Stevens shows up with Baker Lawerence, Mr. Stevens, partner.

The police psychologist says Dana has 'borderline psychosis'...no duh.

Jessica wonders why Mrs. Stevens and Baker were in Ethan's office on the day of his funereal.

Polaski and Jessica go to check out Stevens office again. The security guard pops in and out. They hide under the desk. It's made of jasmine wood, which is 'unusually soft' there's no way she hit her head on the desk...someone had to have hit her over the head with something.

Holy Crap the prosecutor was Ethan Stevens partner in crime! And his killer!

Dana goes into therapy for her lying.

Today on Murder, She Wrote...The Big Kill

The murderers of a fisherman and a banker have nearly the same M.O., but are the crimes connected? 

(from http://jesmaine.tripod.com/mswseason9.html)

It was a dark and stormy night in Cabot Cove...The Sheriff, Mort, shows up at the cove and helps fisherman Henry carry something onto his boat, but he is clueless as to what it is, he's just being nice. And then one of the Warriors, Michael Beck, turns up and threatens the other fisherman Al.

Oh yeah...the plot...I was too busy uploading the picture of Michael Beck...money and armaments and smuggling.

Henry the fisherman calls the Sheriff and says he has something important to tell him. He does this after giving his daughter $1,000 from poker games...she doesn't believe him.

There's a traffic jam in Cabot Cove because of an over-sized truck from the evil company that MichaelBeck works for. It's owned by Chad Everett, he used to be famous too. He has a mustache in this.

The Sheriff goes to meet Henry on his boat and finds him dead...carbon monoxide poisoning.

Al has some guy tell him that he can't be 'shipping' the merchandise he has. He calls someone and threatens them.

Eve the local real estate agent is 'in love' with Chad Everett's character, Martin Fraser, and is helping out networking etc for the 'underwater imaging' thing.

 He's in it too. His name is Henry Gregg. You probably recognize him, he's in everything. Usually a bad guy like in this, Carl Ward, he threatens Mr. Fraser. Wants half the money he gets from his contract.

A second body is found on the docks with almost the same wounds as Henry, it's Carl Ward!

Michael Beck's character, Brian Bentall, doesn't seem to be a bad guy, he's super smart.

Henry's daughter gets a package from him that he sent before he was killed. It's his log book and a bunch of other evidence.

Jessica goes to see the Sheriff about something...I've kind of lost track of the comings and goings of the so called plot.

Jessica sees some ropes in some guys truck and of course knows where she's seen it before. They are Mr. Fraser's boat.

AN INTERNATIONAL ARMS DEALER IS IN CABOT COVE!?!

Mr. Fraser has an alibi, he was with Eve...until breakfast both nights. Nudge, nudge. Wink, wink.

Seth the doctor says 'Gossip gets round this town faster than a phone call.' Which triggers Jessica into solving the murders.

They go to see Mr Bentall to drop some hints...oh no! He did it! But Why?

He goes to the docks to get something and they confront him.

A very old cell phone was used in the murder...seriously, it's a brick.

Poor Eve...Mr Fraser is going to jail. But don't feel bad for her, a handsome gentleman needs her to find him a home in Cabot Cove.

Today on Murder, She Wrote...Final Curtain

Jessica is back in Cabot Cove.

Some 'famous' retired actor, David North who is from Cabot Cove, rents the local community center to put on a play before taking it off Broadway. They hold auditions and some bloke, Lyman Taggart, who 'drove all the way from Bangor!' goes all aggro because he sucks and doesn't get in the play.

David North was really good friends with Seth, the doctor, growing up in Cabot Cove. Even 'dating the same girls'...um, okay.

Lyman shows up at the restaurant that they're having dinner at and threatens Mr. North. Seth steps in, even though he's old and been drinking. Seth's recovers from his hangover at Jessica's and gets a call there that David's in trouble. He drives into town with Jessica.

Lyman Taggart goes all postal on Jessica in town...totally unbalanced...so obviously the murderer...or is he!?!

David is in the dressing room drinking cuz he's not feeling confident. Sam gives him a pep talk and than he's okay.

Jessica and the sheriff are watching the table read through and some annoying couple starts gabbing away. The sheriff yells 'DO YOU MIND!?!' at them and ends ups getting cast in the play.

The director and producer are talking about David's lame manager, Eric Benderson, and how he's suddenly getting 15% of the gross from the play.

It's the cast party and crazy ol' Lyman has shown up again and makes a scene. Seth is driving Jessica home and remembers he's forgotten his eye glasses, so they head back to the theater and find Eric Benderson with a massive head wound and ultra violet paint spillt all over. He dies at the hospital. Who killed him?

Turns out Lyman is nuts and is a celebrity stalker. They go to the Lighthouse Motel, randomly Lyman is there , he sees them and runs off. One of the rooms is on fire, it turns out to be Eric Benderson's room. Lyman is arrested. He says that he saw David North go into the motel...did he start the fire? Did he murder Eric?

The sheriff and Jessica go to the house that David North is staying at, they smell gas, breakdown the door and find him passed out on the bed. David claims that someone knocked him out from behind. Seth examines him and says that's impossible. Jessica says that the door was locked an n signs of a break-in...was he trying to commit suicide!?!

They found pictures under the bed in Eric Benderson's room. There is a picture of a car that David's friend, Vincent, had died in, in a car accident. Jessica's figured it out again!

David's rehearssing and Jessica just happens to stand in. Someone flips the switch and David's got UV paint all over him. He did it! Eric Benderson was blackmailing him! David was the one driving the car in the accident not his friend, Vincent! He was drunk as a skunk. David also started the fire to get rid of evidence.

Lyman was a total red herring, of course.

Seth is upset of course but stands by his old childhood friend.

For once the end shot isn't of Jessica smiling or laughing but falling asleep in front of her computer.

My favorite line: 'She's making sounds only a squirrel can hear.'