While in Connecticut for a convention, Jessica hears the dying confession of a hitman and uncovers a mysterious safe house housing an important foreign dignitary.
Season 4, Episode 16: Murder Through the Looking Glass (February 21, 1988)
Forget cozy Cabot Cove tea parties; this week Jessica is dealing with rogue federal agents, South American rebel leaders, fake priests quoting Henry David Thoreau, and enough Cold War paranoia to make John le Carré dizzy.
Who’s in it, outside of Angela Lansbury?
Cliff De Young as Father Patrick Francis. De Young is a prolific character actor with an extensive television and film resume spanning decades. He famously stepped into the role of Brad Majors in Shock Treatment, the bizarre, ahead-of-its-time musical sequel to The Rocky Horror Picture Show. He also appeared in the sci-fi cult favorite The Craft, Promised Land and the Frank Langella Dracula. Before turning to acting full-time, De Young was the lead singer of the 1960s pop-rock group Clear Light, giving him genuine rock-and-roll pedigree before he started playing fake priests on Murder, She Wrote.
Laurence Luckinbill as Sgt. Milton Cooper. Genre fans instantly recognize him as the iconic Vulcan renegade (and half-brother of Spock) Sybok in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. He also appeared in the 1970s supernatural horror classic The Sentinel. Luckinbill married legendary actress Lucie Arnaz (daughter of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz) in 1980, making television royalty a permanent part of his family tree.
Robert Reed as Jackson. Forever cemented in television history as the wholesome patriarch Mike Brady on The Brady Bunch and its various spin-offs. While mostly known for wholesome family fare, Reed broke typecast boundaries by playing darker, complex guest roles in gritty television procedurals and made-for-TV thrillers.
Mark Shera as Van Buren. Best known for playing Officer Dominic Luca on the hit 1970s crime drama series S.W.A.T. (1975–1976).
Dan Shor as Pierce. He was Ram in Tron and the historical figure Billy the Kid alongside Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure.
Gregory Sierra as Sanchez. A definitive 1970s and 80s character actor famous for playing Julio Fuentes on Sanford and Son and Chano Amengual on Barney Miller. Sierra played completely different one-off characters on Murder, She Wrote multiple times before the producers finally decided to lock him into the recurring role of Lieutenant Gabriel Caceres because they loved working with him.
Karen Valentine as Ellen Cosgrove. Beloved television star who shot to fame playing idealistic teacher Alice Johnson on the hit comedy-drama series Room 222, earning an Emmy nomination along the way.
Victor Mohica as Delgado. He was in The Ghost Dance.
Smaller roles are played by Tom Reese as a hitman, Lynn Philip Seibel as dinner chairman, Wayne Heffley as a guard, Kirk Scott as Adams, Brian Carpenter as a desk clerk, Rosemary Alexander as a policewoman, Hugh McPhillips as an older priest, Elizabeth Kent as admirer #1, Kenneth Zavayna as Admirer #2 and Kerry Leigh Michaels as admirer #3.
What happens?
While in Hartford, Connecticut, for a New England Booksellers Association event, Jessica witnesses a car crash. The dying driver—a professional hitman—mistakes her for a priest and gasps out a dying confession: he just shot a man named Carl Cosgrove from Farmington in the head and the heart.
Local police skepticism leads Jessica to investigate the Farmington estate herself, where she discovers a high-tech DSS (Department of Special Security) safe house protecting a South American rebel leader, Comandante Delgado, who is posing as Carl Cosgrove. Soon, real agent Adams turns up dead with the signature two bullets and internal affairs, rogue operatives, jealous subordinates and workplace romance muddy the waters.
Jessica is eventually brought in officially by the Secretary to use her deductive superpowers and an emergency beacon lipstick to smoke out the killer among the government’s finest.
Who did it?
Van Buren. He was passed over for promotion in favor of a younger man, felt his career had hit a dead end, and was bought off by the foreign government opposed to Delgado to eliminate both the rebel leader and any agents standing in his way.
Who made it?
This episode was directed by Seymour Robbie and written by Robert Van Scoyk.
Does Jessica dress up and act stupid? Does she get some?
She plays along with the DSS operation and gets briefed by high-ranking officials, though she skips the wild disguises this time. She certainly doesn’t act stupid. Instead, she runs circles around the spooks, even if they subject her to an annoying recitation of her resume. As for getting some? Absolutely not. Unless you count a brooding internal affairs agent posing as a fake priest tracking her down in hotel shadows and public parks as romance, this week is strictly business.
Was it any good?
It’s a fun, wildly convoluted spy-thriller departure from the standard village murder. Sure, the logic of every single DSS agent using the exact same fake identity (Carl Cosgrove) and a safe house with a single security guard holding off international assassins is completely bonkers, but I expect that by now.
Any trivia?
- The episode title nods to Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There.
- Jessica’s full maiden name is revealed as Jessica Beatrice MacGill Fletcher—MacGill being the real-life maiden name of Angela Lansbury’s mother, Moyna MacGill.
- The church scene was filmed at St. Brendan’s Catholic Church in Los Angeles, which also featured in Armageddon and Fight Club.
- Jackson mentions that Jessica outwitted a KGB agent and helped two Russian ballet dancers defect, referring to the events of “Death Takes a Curtain Call.”
Give me a reasonable quote:
Jackson: “I found his company bearable… most of the time.”
What’s next?
The Gambini family winery is the takeover target of organized crime, and it’s up to Jessica to uncover who is behind the murder of a mafia hitman. John Saxon is in it!
