Jessica visits her old friend, private investigator Harry McGraw (Jerry Orbach), in Boston, who has become entangled in the high-stakes world of boxing.

Season 3, Episode 16: Death Takes a Dive (February 22, 1987)

Thanks to her latest run-in with Harry McGraw, Jessica discovers that she is now the manager of a down-on-his-luck prizefighter who is looking to retire following his next fight. And while getting a crash course on her new endeavor, she has her hands full trying to clear Harry in the murder of a shady fight promoter.

Who’s in it, outside of Angela Lansbury and Jerry Orbach?

Doc Penrose? That’s John Amos from Good Times.

Ernest Borgnine plays Cosmo Ponzini. You may know him from From Here to Eternity. I know him from Super Fuzz.

LeVar Burton plays a newsman named Dave Robinson. You may not recognize him without his  Star Trek: The Next Generation goggles.

Bradford Dillman is Dennis McConnell. Wow — that dude battled eco-horror in the 70s like no one else.

The law in this is Lt. Casey, played by Ray Girardin.

Holy Adam West, Batman! Adam West is in this as Wade Talmadge.

Caren Kaye is playing Lois Ames, Michael McGrady plays Sean Shaleen, Lynn Moody is Pam Collins, Harold Sylvester is Blaster Boyle, Bill Capizzi is a doorman, Richard Balin is a commentator, Marcia Moran is a waitress, Richard Bravo is Sanchez, and Jeff Langton is a boxer.

What happens?

Jessica Fletcher heads to the mean streets of Boston to visit her favorite sentient trench coat, private investigator Harry McGraw. Naturally, Harry is chin-deep in gambling debts and managed to get himself wrangled into the high-stakes, low-morals world of professional boxing. He’s got a sure thing in a heavyweight named Blaster Boyle, but he needs J.B. to bankroll the training. Jessica, ever the softie for a rogue with a Brooklyn accent, cuts the check only to find herself acting as the official manager when Harry gets framed for the murder of Wade Talmage, a fight promoter who was about 10% human and 90% slime.

The suspect pool is deeper than a spit bucket. You’ve got a sportswriter out for vengeance because Talmage ruined his father, a fighter named Sean Shaleen, who doesn’t realize he’s being played and a mistress done wrong.

Oh yeah. The sure thing heavyweight, Blaster Boyle, isn’t just a fighter; he’s a gentle giant with a glass jaw and a heart of gold, making the stakes feel personal. Jessica isn’t just protecting Harry’s freedom; she’s protecting Blaster from being sold out by the vultures circling the ring.

Who did it?

Boxer Sean Shaleen. He was tired of being a pawn in Talmage’s games and decided a shotgun blast was better than taking a dive.

Who made it?

It was directed by Seymour Robbie and written by series creator Peter S. Fischer.

Does Jessica dress up and act stupid? Does she get some?

She does do a training montage. Also, I fully believe that Harry McGraw has gotten up in her guts and had more than a few bowls of Cabot Cove Clam Chowder, if you know what I’m saying, and I know you do.

Was it any good?

It was pretty good!

Any trivia?

This extended episode served as a backdoor pilot for Harry McGraw’s own short-lived spin-off series, The Law & Harry McGraw.

John Amos and LeVar Burton both played Kunta Kinte in Roots.

Harry McGraw is supposed to be 47. Now I feel old.

Give me a reasonable quote:

Harry McGraw: I know. But I sold them something even better. The inside story of a tough, resourceful private eye who single-handedly broke open one of the largest murder cases of the decade.

Jessica Fletcher: Single-handedly?

Harry McGraw: So I exaggerated a little. What’s a little white lie between friends?

What’s next?

Jessica investigates when an artist is murdered, and his prized painting is missing.

Amateur astrologist Englebert Ames (Anthony Heald, Silence of the Lambs) can’t wait for Halley’s Comet, but his wife Charlene (Kate McGregor-Stewart) couldn’t care less. She’s more interested in going to a fancy event with her parents, but he knows this is the last chance he’ll have to see the famous space event. The tension between Englebert and Charlene serves as a satirical look at suburban misery. While Charlene is obsessed with the social status of her parents’ party, Englebert’s obsession is literal escapism.

Then, Lara Burns (Sarah Rush) comes into his room, right out of the telescope, and claims that she disappeared when she and her fiancé watched the comet in 1910. She’s been riding it with Sir Edmund Halley and, of course, she falls for Englebert. By the end, Charlene and Halley (Fritz Weaver) are back on the comet, and our hero has found his love.

Who knew Halley’s Comet wasn’t just a ball of ice and dust; it’s a cosmic cruise ship. The idea that Sir Edmund Halley is still alive, riding his own discovery through the vacuum of space, adds a charming, almost Victorian-sci-fi layer to the story. The ending of this one is rare: the protagonist isn’t punished but rewarded with a literal soulmate from another century, while his overbearing wife finds her own match in the stern historical figure of Halley.

This was directed by Warner Shook, who appears in Creepshow, Knightriders, and Dawn of the Dead; he also directed “Grandma’s Last Wish” in season 1 and “Deliver Us from Goodness” in season 3, as well as two episodes of Monsters. It was written by Harvey Jacobs and Jule Selbo.

While not the most frightening episode, this may be one of the weirder ones. Unlike the grim irony of most episodes, “Comet Watch” leans heavily into romantic screwball comedy and magical realism. It’s often cited alongside episodes like “The Geezenstacks” as examples of the show’s willingness to experiment with tone beyond pure horror.

A sensationalist TV presenter is killed, and suspicion falls on one of the clients whose products he maligned.

Season 3, Episode 15: The Bottom Line Is Murder (February 15, 1987)

J.B. is on the road to Denver, Colorado, to visit her old friend Jayne, whom she hasn’t seen in 7 years, and to give an interview at a station where her friend’s husband works. Despite being a widower of a certain age who continually has people die all around her, Jessica stays busy. Of course, as soon as she gets there, someone dies.

Who’s in it, outside of Angela Lansbury?

Adrienne Barbeau is Lynette Bryant. If anyone ever says a bad word about her, you can legally kick them. Look it up.

Jessica’s old friend, Dr. Jayne Honig, is Judith Chapman, who plays Gloria Simmons on The Young and the Restless. 

The law around here, Lt. Lou Flannigan, is Barry Corbin. The warden from Stir Crazy!

Pat Klous is Clare Henley.

Robert F. Lyons, from Avenging Angel, is Steve Honig.

Rod McCary is Kenneth Chambers. He was also in Stir Crazy, as well as Night of the Demons 2.

Joe Santos, Dennis Becker from The Rockford Files, is Joe Rinaldi.

Robert Warren is played by Morgan Stevens.

Celebrity trash collector Bert Tanaka? Oh my! George Takei!

In smaller roles, Brian Matthews is Ryan Monroe, Paul Tompkins and Robert Buckingham are reporters, William Ian Gamble is a security guard, and Mark C. Phelan is a cop.

What happens?

Kenneth Chambers is the TV newsman behind the hot news program The Bottom Line. So hot that it’s made at an independent Denver station, but whatever. He’s a total jerk, which, as we all know in the world of Murder, She Wrote, means that he will be the person who dies.

Anyway, Jayne is driving Jessica to the station and casually mentions that her husband Steve is super stressed and that she’s stopped being a career woman to help take care of him. If you guessed that he’s the producer that Kenneth yelled at, you’re right. They meet station manager Robert Warren, who remarks that he’d sure like Jayne to leave her husband — and his best friend — for him. That’s how people talked in 1987. So when you take your work sexual harassment digital test, that is also why.

Also: Robert was once one of Jayne’s patients, as she was once a therapist. 

Also also: When they are all at dinner, Steve leaves to go work late, and Robert cockblocks him after he leaves, saying that he worked late on the same night but was there alone.

Then George Takei’s character finds Kenneth dead, and if this were made in 2026, he would look right at the camera, Fulci zooms right in on him, and he would say, “Oh my!” Kenneth has been shot, and would you look at that, Steve has a gun in the back of his car. It’s not as if everybody didn’t want to kill this guy, but this being J.B.’s world, of course the husband of her best friend is the suspect.

There was just a mob guy who makes teddy bears that threatened everyone on the show’s life, and no one suspects him.

Jessica and junkman George Takei work together to spring a trap for the real killer.

Who did it?

Robert Warren, who didn’t want to kill the TV host, but really wanted Steve dead because he really wasn’t joking about being in lust with Jayne.

Who made it?

This is the first episode directed by Anthony Pullen Shaw, who is Angela Lansbury’s son. It was written by Steven Long Mitchell and Craig W. Van Sickle.

Does Jessica dress up and act stupid? Does she get some?

No. I am getting enraged.

Was it any good?

It’s fine. 

Any trivia?

This is the second time Adrienne Barbeau was on the show. 

Give me a reasonable quote:

Jessica Fletcher: I don’t know how you spotted me, but you certainly had me pegged. I am a writer. Crime is my beat. Murder my specialty.

What’s next?

John Amos! Ernest Borgnine! LeVar Burton! Adam West! Jessica visits her old friend, private investigator Harry McGraw, in Boston, who has become embroiled in the high-stakes game of boxing.

Biff (Greg Mullavey, Mary Hartman’s husband) doesn’t get kids. His new wife, Helen (Beth McDonald), has a son, Timmy (Seth Green!), who keeps claiming he has monsters all around him.

Instead of being toughened up and not believing in these supernatural frights, as Biff wants, Timmy decides to make peace with those things that go bump in the night, which include a boogeyman in the closet, an octopus under the bed and a witch in the bathroom. Biff wants to make a man out of Timmy through verbal abuse and threats of physical violence. Ironically, his cruelty works, just not the way he intended. Timmy does toughen up. In fact, he becomes so cold and calculating that he manages to domesticate literal demons.

By the end, when Biff and Timmy are left alone, the drunken stepfather threatens to paddle our hero. Instead, the monsters follow Timmy’s orders. Sure, Biff died of heart complications, yet we know the actual culprit. But then, we must wonder: are these scary things real or just how Timmy deals with abuse? Or maybe that’s what Biff deserves for killing Ernie, his stepson’s pet potato bug. If the monsters are a coping mechanism, Timmy is essentially “weaponizing” his trauma. The heart attack Biff suffers is a convenient medical cover-up for a child’s revenge.

The most chilling part of the ending isn’t Biff’s death. It’s the fact that the monsters are now afraid of Timmy. This suggests that to survive a monster like Biff, Timmy had to become something even more terrifying. He didn’t just reclaim his space. Now, he has become the new landlord of the dark.

James Steven Sadwith, who directed and wrote this, would go on to make the Elvis and Sinatra TV mini-series.

Jessica tells the story of her new novel about a college student accused of killing his music professor, who plagiarized his compositions.

Season 3, Episode 14: Murder in a Minor Key (February 8, 1987)

This is the first of fourteen “bookend” episodes in which J.B. Fletcher tells us about the plot of her latest novel instead of actually wandering around Cabot Cove solving murders in person. We only see Jessica at the beginning and the end of the show — and maybe during a quick commercial bumper if you’re watching it the way the television gods intended: with advertisements for cough syrup and Ford Tauruses interrupting everything.

So if you tuned in hoping to see Jessica Fletcher snooping through drawers, asking polite questions that make killers sweat or making a surprised face, apologies. This one’s more like an episode of Murder, She Wrote Presents: The Stories Jessica Fletcher Is Writing While Everyone in Cabot Cove (and Everywhere Else) Is Temporarily Not Being Murdered.

Who’s in it, outside of Angela Lansbury (who is barely in it)?

Rene Auberjonois, whose name I can never say correctly, is Prof. Harry Papasian. You may recognize him as Odo from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

Former teen star Shaun Cassidy is Chad Singer.

Paul Clemens plays Michael Prentice.

Herb Edelman, who was married to Dorothy on Golden Girls, is Max Hellinger.

Karen Grassle (best known from Little House on the Prairie) plays Christine Stoneham.

George Grizzard is Prof. Tyler Stoneham.

Tom Hallick (The Young and the Restless) is Vice Chancellor Simon.

Jennifer Holmes, one of The Misfits of Science, plays Reagan Miller.

Mario Podesta! I mean, Scott Jacoby! He plays Danny Young.

Tony Award-winning Dinah Manoff, who played Maggy in Child’s Play, is Jenny Coopersmith.

In smaller roles, Alex Henteloff is Raymond Parnell, Brenda Thomson is a pianist, Paris Vaughan is Pauline, William Hubbard Knight is Lt. Perkins, Hope Haves is a young woman, Alexander Folk is Hargrove, Stephen Swofford is Templeton, and Parkwer Stevenson is Michael Digby, despite being uncredited.

What happens?

The bookend episode format was created mainly to give Angela Lansbury a break from the relentless filming schedule that came with starring in Murder, She Wrote. The show was wildly popular, and Lansbury was in every scene of almost every episode. These bookend stories allowed producers to keep the show on the air while letting her rest her voice and maybe enjoy a weekend without discovering corpses in Cabot Cove.

In addition to being a friend of the Grim Reaper and often giving the older men of Cabot Cove boners they didn’t know they still could, Jessica writes books. Here’s one she’s proofreading, all about Michael Prentice, a college student and musician who finds himself in a nightmare situation when his music professor steals his compositions and claims them as his own. This professor — Harry Papasian — isn’t just borrowing a few notes either. He’s lifting entire musical pieces and presenting them as his own work. It’s academic plagiarism mixed with musical theft, which in the rarefied world of university composition departments might as well be grand larceny.

Michael knows he’s being robbed but has no proof. So he turns to his friends Chad and Jenny, and the three of them hatch a plan that is either incredibly brave or incredibly stupid. They’re going to break into the professor’s office and retrieve the original manuscripts.

Because nothing clears your name like committing a felony.

Their plan actually works — at least at first. They sneak into the office looking for Michael’s stolen music. But before they can leave, someone calls the police. And when everyone ends up back in the professor’s office, Professor Papasian is dead. He’s been stabbed with Michael’s tuning fork.

The evidence is overwhelming: motive, opportunity and a murder weapon that belongs to their friend. But Chad and Jenny know Michael didn’t do it. So the rest of the episode becomes a race to find the real killer before his life is destroyed. They start digging through the professor’s professional and personal life, uncovering secrets, grudges and the kind of academic rivalries that make high school drama look like kindergarten.

Meanwhile, the episode occasionally cuts back to Jessica Fletcher happily proofreading the story and making editorial tweaks, which creates a weird meta layer. We’re watching a mystery that exists inside another mystery writer’s imagination.

Who did it?

It’s the professor’s wife.

Who made it?

Nick Havinga made tons of TV shows and movies, including The Girl Who Saved the World. This was written by Arthur Marks, who directed J.D.’s Revenge and Friday Foster. Oh yeah! He wrote The Centerfold Girls, which might be the sleaziest credit connected to the otherwise polite world of Jessica Fletcher.

Does Jessica dress up and act stupid? Does she get some?

Nope. She doesn’t dress up, she doesn’t trick anyone, and she definitely doesn’t get any romantic subplot. She barely appears.

Was it any good?

The mystery itself is decent enough, but the absence of Jessica wandering around politely dismantling people’s alibis makes the whole thing feel a little off. Watching other characters solve the case inside one of her fictional stories just isn’t as fun. Part of the magic of Murder, She Wrote is watching Lansbury gently interrogate suspects while pretending she’s just asking innocent questions. Without that, the episode feels like a regular 1980s TV mystery with a cameo introduction.

Any trivia?

Four of the actors would appear on The Golden Girls: Herb Edelman was Stan, Dorothy’s ex-husband; George Grizzard was Blanche’s ex-husband George, as well as George’s brother Jamie; Scott Jacoby was Dorothy and Stan’s son Michael and Dinah Manoff was next-door neighbor Carol, who spun off to Empty Nest. 

There is a real-life Murder. She Wrote book with the same title. Set in New Orleans during a jazz festival, Jessica is part of the investigation into the death of arts critic Wayne Copely, found dead near the grave of a voodoo queen. 

Give me a reasonable quote:

Jessica Fletcher: Did you ever try to argue with a computer? It is impossible. It’s like trying to talk sense to Amos Tupper once he’s made up his mind about something.

What’s next?

A sensationalist TV presenter is killed, and suspicion falls on one of the clients whose products he maligned. George Takei and Adrienne Barbeau? Let’s do it!

Kate Collins (Susan Strasberg) is afraid to paint over her old canvases. Yet after receiving a batch of bizarre paintings from her friend David (Ben Marley), she decides to whitewash one of the canvases and reuse it. Kate’s decision to whitewash David’s canvas isn’t just an artistic choice; it’s a symbolic erasure of the past. By painting over what already exists, she inadvertently hits the reset button on the linear flow of time.

Shortly after, she experiences a series of bizarre events, including falling down the stairs just as paramedics arrive at her door. She has somehow reversed cause and effect, allowing her to change reality. 

The episode delves into the concept of karma and the unpredictable nature of reality. Kate’s newfound ability comes with unforeseen consequences, as her chaotic lifestyle and whimsical decisions lead to increasingly dangerous situations. Kate tries to use her ability for minor conveniences, but because the “Effect” happens first, she is forced to commit the “Cause” to satisfy the loop. She becomes a slave to her own future. As she loses control of her abilities, the episode builds to a chaotic, explosive climax.

Directed by Mark Jean (who went from TV series directing to Hallmark movies) and written by Michael Kube-McDowell, this has Kate as a hippy who did acid in college, suddenly learning that there does need to be some order to the world, or things just fall to pieces. Yet this is another episode of Tales from the Darkside where things just happen. There’s no moral lesson; no one escapes. It just happens, and people die. We move on. I wonder if that’s what keeps this show from being considered in the upper echelon of TV horror anthologies? 

In The Twilight Zone, a character like Kate would be punished for her hubris. In Tales from the Darkside, she’s just… there.

The phone wires get crossed during a storm and Jessica can’t convince anyone that what she heard was really a murder plot.

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.

Will I ever get over the fact that Theodore Gershuny, who directed and wrote this episode, was married to Mary Woronov? Am I really that jealous of a person? Yes.

Based on a story by John Sladek, a former tech writer who was also the author of The New Apocrypha: A Guide to Strange Science and Occult Beliefs, in which he examined the supernatural from a materialist lens, this is the story of Susie (Jamie Ohar), who gets a stuffed bear from her parents (Marilyn Jones and Timothy Carhart). But is it just a teddy bear, or is it something more?

But did her parents even buy it? Neither of them remembers, and soon, bear marks are all over the house and anything that goes wrong is blamed on the bear. Basically: Kids are insane people who live in your house who are ready to kill you at any time. That’s what I learned from this. That and the fact that evil can be inside very small things, and perhaps you should just leave it alone unless you want to end up holding your child as a big bear breaks its way through a door.

The parents spend half the episode debating the logic of the bear’s existence. That’s because in Sladek’s world, the bear isn’t necessarily a demon; it’s a physical object that is simply wrong. The horror isn’t spiritual. It’s a failure of the physical world to behave in the way we want it to.

Plus, the bear acts as a surrogate for Susie’s own burgeoning agency and perhaps her resentment. More than her blaming the bear and trying to get away with it, she’s also in a psychodrama with her parents, as they are actually terrified of the idea that their daughter might be the one marking the house. The bear is just the medium for the chaos kids naturally bring into a sanitized adult world.