While in the hospital with a fractured leg, Jessica investigates the murder of a doctor.

Season 1, Episode 19: Armed Response (March 31, 1985)

Tonight on Murder, She Wrote…

Even in the hospital, Jessica causes people to die.

Who’s in it, outside of Angela Lansbury, and were they in any exploitation movies?

Barney Ogden is played by Eddie Bracken. He was Roy Walley in Vacation!

Melanie Baker is Victoria Carroll. She also starred in Nightmare in Wax, The Kentucky Fried Movie and was the voice of She-Hulk in the 1980s Hulk cartoon.

Dr. Samuel Sam Garver is played by Stephen Elliott. He was the police commissioner in Death Wish.

James Gammon was in Silver Bullet and plays Billy Don Baker in this.

Dr. Wes Kenyon. He appeared on the TV show Otherworld this same season and has also appeared in Deadly Eyes and Deadly Games.

The cop in this is Ly. Ray Kenkins. And that’s not just any cop, that’s Bo Hopkins, who played Crazy Lee in The Wild Bunch, plus he was in movies like Uncle Sam, From Dusk till Dawn 2, Nightmare at Noon, Fertilize the Blaspheming Bombshell, The Fifth Floor, What Comes Around and more.

Dr. Ellison is Martin Kove! Yes, Kreese! The helicopter pilot who screwed over Rambo! He’s in this!

Nurse Jennie Wells is played by Kay Lenz from House!

Kevin McCarthy was in more than 200 movies, but don’t we know him from Invasion of the Body Snatchers the most? He plays Milton Porter.

Nurse Marge Horton is Susan Oliver, who famously was Vina on the original Star Trek episode “The Cage.” Her mother was an astrologer, and amazingly,  she tried to be the first woman to fly a single-engine plane solo from New York to Moscow, but was not allowed into Russian airspace. She had a plane crash weeks after she left Peyton Place, and through hypnosis, could fly again, being elected pilot of the year in 1970. She also directed episodes of M*A*S*H* and Trapper John. MD.

Martha Raye shows up. We don’t have actors anymore like her, who we all knew was just Martha Raye, and she appears out of nowhere on shows like Murder, She Wrote.

In the small roles, we have Lucille Meredith, Paul Tuerpe, Fred D. Scott, Herbert Winters, Lavelle Roby (she was in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls), Denise Chesire (a mime and puppet performer who was one of the flying monkeys in Under the Rainbow) and Kimberly L. Ryusaki.

What happens?

Jessica goes to Texas to support a writer accused of plagiarism. When she’s picked up at the airport by lawyer Milton Porter, a kid knocks her over and she has to get her leg plastered up at the hospital, where she learns that Dr. Garver’s understudies, Dr. Ellison and Dr. Kenyon, hate each other. As Jessica listens to them fight — she had to get up with a broken leg to get a cup of tea because no one would help her — we discover that Dr. Garver has been drowned.

Everyone thinks it’s Jennie, who was Jessica’s nurse, but JB goes CSI and pulls off that old Murder, She Wrote trick where someone fired the gun once to kill someone and another time so no one knew when the murder happened. Also: Obviously, with a gun involved, this isn’t a drowning.

Who did it?

Dr. Ellison and Dr. Kenyon, who were tired of Dr. Garver making them fight one another.

Who made it?

Director Charles S. Dubin made tons of TV — 44 episodes of M*A*S*H*, 14 of Kojak, 11 of Matlock, the Topper TV movie, Death In Space, around 117 credits in total. It was written by Gerald K. Siegel, who wrote nine episodes of the show, as well as episodes of Darkroom and Salvage 1.

Does Jessica get some?

Not with that cast.

Does Jessica dress stupid or act drunk?

Not with that cast — wokka wokka.

Was it any good?

Good cast, somewhat boring episode.

Any trivia?

This episode is a lot like Agatha Christie’s They Do It With Mirrors.

Give me a reasonable quote:

Jessica Fletcher: Mr. Porter, this was an accident. I don’t want to sue.

Milton Porter: Hush, ma’am. Talk like that… put us lawyers out of business.

What’s next?

An unpopular show-business personality discovers that elaborate security systems are no guarantee of safety.