Murder, She Wrote, the (very) long-running 80s-90s TV series featuring Angela Lansbury as the intrepid J. B. Fletcher, is today widely known as the “insomniac’s delight”, not because it’s always available on reruns—though it is—but because it puts you to sleep. Who needs Nytol when you’ve got J. B. Fletcher on the case?
Yet, even crashing as I do about fifteen minutes into an episode, Murder, She Wrote has still managed to pique my curiosity, to wit: What is the deal with the “guest stars”? Back in the day, network TV was the ballgame, and big-time shows like MSW could throw around serios cash to attract real “stars” that viewers might actually want to see. For example, in “Lovers and Other Killers”, episode 7 from season 1, Mission Impossible stalwarts Peter Graves and Greg Morris both show up. Granted, the script gives neither of them anything interesting to do—there’s no indication that either the plot or the characters were written with them in mind and their roles could have been played by anyone—but still, it’s Pete and Greg! And the next episode, “Hit, Run, and Homicide”, features two actual if aging movie stars Van Johnson and June Allyson, just the thing for the geriatric crowd that was the target audience for MSW in the first place.
So what to make of the piquantly named “Murder Takes the Bus”, episode 20 from the first season, with guest “stars” Linda Blair and Larry Linville. Linda, of course, was world famous as the possessed Regan in The Exorcist. It would be going too far to call Blair’s subsequent career a “freak show”, though she did star in the “wildly controversial” made-for-TV movie “Born Innocent”, a teen chicks in prison flick in which she gets raped with a bathroom plunger, and also later posed nude in Oui magazine—not even Penthouse, for Christ’s sake. But who would want to see her on Murder, She Wrote? She wouldn’t be naked, that’s for sure, or raped with a plunger.
And then there’s poor old Larry Linville, Major Frank Burns in the “early M.A.S.H.”—the Col. Blake, Trapper John M.A.S.H. Who wants to see whiny Frank Burns?
So what was the deal? We’ll never know. Never.
Afterwords
There’s a far better way to enjoy Murder, She Wrote than actually watching the shows. Much as YouTube delights “Honest Trailers”, “Everything Wrong With”, and “Pitch Meeting” let us laugh at Hollywood’s bloated monstrosities—great grotesque zeppelins inflated by equal parts vanity and greed—Sarah Wilson, aka “PushingUpRoses,” does similar, though far more affectionate, sendups/takedowns of MSW episodes, also available on YouTube, including the episode that appears below, reviewing part one of a two-part “crossover” blending J. B. with none other than Magnum, PI. Since Sarah’s about 40 years younger than I am, our sensibilities don’t always mesh, which, frankly, is about two thirds the fun. She is particularly disrespectful of “Magnum”, which she apparently never saw, or even heard of. Kids!
