Season 3, Episode 13: Crossed Up (February 1, 1987)
Even when Jessica is sick in bed, people still die, and she’s in the midst of it all.

Who’s in it, outside of Angela Lansbury?
William Windom and Tom Bosley are back as Dr. Seth and Sheriff Amos.
Michael Horton? Oh no. Grady is in this.
Colleen Camp plays Dody Rogers. She’s been in everything from Battle for the Planet of the Apes to Clue, Sliver, Death Game, Police Academy 2 and 4, Smile, and so much more.
Tony Dow plays Gordon Rogers. He’s Beaver’s brother!
Stephanie Dunnam plays Leslie Cameron. She was in Silent Rage and Play Dead.
James Carroll Jordan plays Adam Rogers, Gisele Mackenzie is Mona, Sandy McPeak is Morgan Rogers, Henry Brandon is Abel Gorcey, James McIntire is Deputy Wells, and Yolanda Nava is a TV announcer.
What happens?
Jessica has hurt her back putting in new windows, so she’s stuck in bed. Dr. Seth says that she needs at least a week more bed rest and gives her a Life Alert bracelet in case she falls and can’t get up. So she’s stuck with Grady making every tuna fish recipe he knows, and if you’ve seen the horrible women Grady has dated on this show, you know that he loves the smell of tuna.
She picks up the phone to call someone and overhears a voice hiring someone to kill an old man. She begs Grady to go tell the news to Sheriff Amos, and he runs out on his bike, nearly getting run over, which makes me sad because I’d love to watch Grady get run down, have the van back up and then roll over his fecund corpse again.
Anyway, everyone acts like J.B. is an idiot, not someone who has already solved two seasons’ worth of murders. Amos just wanted to eat at Mona’s Diner, which means that, from what I’ve seen so far on this show, a small town like Cabot Cove has at least five diners, so nearly one diner per hundred people who live there. No wonder the tourist trade is so important.
The murder Jessica was trying to stop happens, and it’s lumber industrialist Jedediah Rogers, who has three boys — Adam, Gordon and Morgan — who are all about to get rich. Except, well, his journal and will are missing. He also has a granddaughter, Leslie, whom Grady bones up over. She tells him that her grandfather was changing the will to give her all the money and that she has his journal.
Meanwhile, Jessica is solving the case from her Serta. Abel Gorcey, the man who would be the killer, died hours before the actual murder. Amos ends up interrogating everyone while wearing a tape recorder so he can play it for Jessica, who suddenly hears an allergic Gordon on TV and realizes — that’s the killer.
Then this goes all giallo, and a masked killer breaks into J.B.’s place to knife her. Lucky for her, Seth gave her the bracelet, and she called the fire trucks just in time to save her life.
Who did it?
Dody is working with Gordon.
Who made it?
This was directed by the last episode’s bad guy, David Hemings, and written by Steven Long Mitchell and Craig W. Van Sickle, who created the TV shows Cobra and The Pretender.
Does Jessica dress up and act stupid? Does she get some?
No, she’s too busy being in pain and under the covers.
Was it any good?
Yes! It’s Rear Window, but still fun.
Any trivia?
The lightning bolt during the storm is the same one that the U.S.S. Minnow sailed past in the opening of Gilligan’s Island. They flipped the shot, so you don’t recognize it.
Give me a reasonable quote:
Jessica Fletcher: Do you ever get the feeling that you’ve overlooked something obvious? That you’ve done something wrong?
Dr. Seth Hazlitt: Yeah. Every time I vote for Amos.
What’s next?
Jessica tells the story of her new novel about a college student accused of killing his music professor, who plagiarized his compositions.
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