Lazy Movie Weekend: There's Something About Jessica

In the last year or so, I've witnessed two different people stop along the side of a busy county parkway to pick up a bag of garbage someone else left on the side of the road (or maybe it fell out of the bed of a truck). Both people put the bag of garbage in the truck of their car, and drove off to dispose of the garbage and feel good about doing their part to help keep our lovely county nice and clean. Being a good citizen is a beautiful thing.

Both times, my brain went in the exact opposite direction when I witnessed both of these good citizens being good citizens. Because I have consumed a steady television diet of procedural dramas and true crime documentaries, I immediately thought to myself, "What if there's a body or body parts in those bags? They just put body part garbage bags in their trunks AND their fingerprints are all over the bags, so if the bag is found in the dump and the police analyze it, they're going to be a suspect in a murder all because they were being good citizens." This is legitimately how my brain works. I would never, ever pick up a bag of trash on the side of the road because I've seen every episode of CSI at least three times and I know better. Marg Helgenberger has taught me well.

I know, I know. My brain is a weird place to exist. Just last week, one of my co-workers asked me something and when I answered in an oddly specific way, he looked at me like I was an alien. Everyone has their own way of thinking, and apparently, my brain likes to go the true crime route in most situations. I don't know why, but that's how it works. The most recent incident happened not too long after I started watching season one of Murder, She Wrote on Amazon Prime. My inner Jessica Fletcher, because we all have one, is on overdrive.

Murder, She Wrote was a drama series that ran on CBS from 1984-1996, back when tv shows had over twenty episodes each season and you had to be home in time to watch or tape a show so you wouldn't miss out. It starred international treasure Angela Lansbury as a retired English teacher from a small Maine town who becomes a famous mystery writer and helps whatever local police force solve murders whenever she happens to stumble into a situation where a murder occurs. And one occurs all the time. It doesn't matter if she's in her little hometown of Cabot Cove or jet-setting around the world, murder seems to follow Jessica everywhere. And she's always a step ahead of the police and always unmasks the killer.

I haven't watched an episode of Murder, She Wrote since the early 1990s. I used to watch it with my grandma when we'd visit Detroit. She liked mysteries and horror fiction (me and my brother got into horror fiction because of her). I decided not to get cable when I moved, so I've been relying on Netflix and Amazon Prime for my entertainment. I've binged Schitt's Creek, AJ & the Queen, the Aaron Hernandez docuseries, and the Netflix docuseries about the cat killer who internet sleuths tracked online after he killed an actual person. I stumbled upon Murder, She Wrote as I was building my watchlist on Prime, and decided to dive in last week. I know how to rock a Friday night - Murder, She Wrote, wine, and a cat snoring. Perfection.

Anyway, I'm not even done with season one and I'm completely overwhelmed by the sheer number of famous people who were on this show. There's an entire Wikipedia page devoted to guest stars of the show. Here's a quick sample of the guest stars so far (I'm on episode 14):

• Jose Ferrer
• Martin Landau
• Lynn Redgrave
• Lorna Luft 
• Genie Francis
• Jerry Orbach
• Leslie Nielson
• Gabe Kaplan (there was another guy from Welcome Back, Kotter on a separate episode)
• Milton Berle
• Jeff Conway
• Vickie Lawrence 
• Andy Garcia
• Robert Goulet
• Jo Anne Worley

Depending on how many seasons I decide to watch, I'll be treated to guest appearances by Armand Assante, Michael Beck, George Clooney, Maxwell Caufield (freaking Rex Manning), Piper Laurie, and Janet Leigh. Was appearing on Murder, She Wrote the hot, hip thing to do in the 1980s? I don't know, but I'm 100% behind this.

Guest star awesomeness aside, I'm intrigued by the overall concept of Jessica Fletcher. One fan theory posits that Jessica is, in fact, a serial killer. If you only look at the Cabot Cove episodes, over 200 murders occur over the course of the series in town with a population under 4000 people. Does death just follow this woman or is she really a devious serial killer, leaving death and destruction in her wake? If she's not the killer, it's very possible her nieces and nephews are. Her nephew, Grady, is involved in two cases in season one and would go on to be a recurring character throughout the rest of the series. Two of her nieces and a cousin are also involved in cases. How does so much murder find one family?

Jessica is a lady about the world. She's a widow and doesn't have any children of her own, so she travels all over the place. After her writing career takes off, she goes to New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, New Orleans, and some random island in the Mediterranean. She has friends and family everywhere and is such a jet-setter. She helps two Russian ballerinas defect to the US, and ends up in Congress after the congressman from her state ends up dead. She also solves his murder, and helps the other congressman (who just so happens to be the dad from The Monster Squad) from Maine pass a bill to protect the cove.

Did I also mention that all the old, rich dudes on this show want to get together with Jessica? Her energy, her smarts, and her quick wit are like catnip to these dudes. I admire her ability to flirt without being awkward (not my skill set). She's never prim, but always proper and it's so much fun to watch her let go in her very Jessica Fletcher sort of way. She never loses her cool, and never gives too much away. There's something very feminist about her, although I doubt she'd be the first person to come to mind when you think feminist heroes, but the pieces are all there. Smarts, a photographic memory, awesomeness, nerves of steel, crime solving skills - Jessica Fletcher is my hero. She would appreciate my apprehension at picking up garbage bags on the side of the road. And if we followed those body part containing garbage bags to the dump, Jessica would find the killer in no time, putting the local police to shame with her mad skills.

Do yourself a favor, and spend your weekend solving mysteries with Jessica Fletcher. You'll be glad you did.

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You're Doing Everything Wrong: Procedural Drama Edition

I thought we'd end January on a pop culture note. What better way to mindlessly check out for a as long as it takes you to read this than to talk about procedural dramas? How many of you are settling in for a whole Saturday (or weekend) of watching Law & Order: SVU or NCIS reruns during a USA network marathon? You don't have to answer but always remember: I would never, ever judge you for that. Ever.

I was a huge procedural drama fan when I was younger (say 8th-11th grades, followed by right after college). Give me an episode of L.A. Law, the Mike Logan years of Law & Order, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, or even old school Hill Street Blues and I will be a happy person. My early love of these shows came from the fact that in my early high school years I really wanted to be a criminologist. I thought that was a cool sounding job and I read everything I could about being one. I even got to interview an FBI criminologist who went to our church for a school project. Somewhere between developing my crush on Mike Logan and getting the high school theatre bug, I slowed down on my viewing and my career goal. Later on, when I was working as an admissions counselor at Loyola, I would realize that like every teenager who came to my table at a college fair asking about our forensic chemistry program because they wanted to be a "CSI," I really didn't have the heart for the science part of this world. I know I chose the right path.

Another quality of procedural dramas have that I admire is the structure of the show. Much like a Hallmark holiday movie, there's a certain formula to procedurals. Law & Order (the whole franchise except Conviction) is a perfect example of clear structure: the police detectives (Law) have approximately 22 minutes to track the clues, interview witnesses, and find a suspect, all while smirking a bit and talking unlike any police detective you might actually know. If we're lucky, a suspect will run so Logan has to chase him and we get a little extra drama. Then the district attorneys (Order) have another 22 minutes to criticize police work, question witnesses, deal with slimy (mostly) defense attorneys, and have perfect hair. I'm sold especially if it involves a young Chris Noth (pre-Mr. Big), Jerry Orbach, Sam Waterston, and S. Epatha Merkerson.

If you move away from the highly structured universe of the Law & Order shows, procedural dramas are still structured in a way that most scripted television is not: bad guy/girl commits a crime, detectives/CSI/NCIS/FBI agents follow the clues, lawyers do lawyer-y things, and the case is solved. There can be completely shocking and awful and gruesome moments on these shows but even those moments fit within the very defined structure of the universe of whichever show you're watching. Key characters die (I'm looking at you, Lenny Briscoe), serial killers get away (the Miniature Killer on CSI is one of my favorite continuous plots), but there's nothing compared to many of the fantasy/sci-fi shows that are so popular now. No dragon swoops in and carries off Gil Grissom in any episode of CSI. No zombies chase the Criminal Minds agents through Mardi Gras while they track a killer. (Seriously, they tracked a killer in New Orleans once and it looked like it was Mardi Gras the entire episode and there was a New Orleans-y cop who really had more of a Cajun accent. I don't understand either.) Procedural dramas are completely grounded in reality regardless of the fact that a crime is solved (usually) in 44 minutes or less (an hour long tv show is actually only 44-45 minutes in length because of commercial breaks).

That's probably the other joy of a procedural drama: crime solving is super easy on these shows. We all know there is no way that any crime is going to be solved in 44 minutes or less UNLESS the criminal wrote a big "I did it" note for us to find. In theory, the episode is taking place over the course of a few days but it's always a little hard to tell since no one ever seems to go home and they all keep extra clothes in their lockers so how would you know the actual passage of time? On all of these shows, the very attractive cast finds the clues, uses really advanced technology and science, and occasionally they even have to do experiments to recreate conditions for things like decomposition or something else involving a fetal pig. It's almost always perfect; there's usually one episode a season where evidence is compromised and science is questioned but it always works out in the end. Grissom always figures something out to prove he's the best. I've never been able to figure out the wardrobe and styling on these shows; the women always look somewhere in the middle of casual Friday and business casual and the men are either completely suited up or look like they're heading to a club later. And everyone has perfect hair. Even when they're waist deep in a dumpster looking for clues, their hair is perfect and shiny.

I stopped watching procedural dramas in 2006 and it's all Tim Curry's fault. He started a two episode story arc on Criminal Minds at the end of the 2005 season. He played a serial killer who used a blackout to sneak into the homes of his victims and then kill them. Eventually, he would kidnap the daughter of one of the agents but it's in his first crimes that I completely could not deal with these shows anymore. He waited for his victims to do something like leave a window open a little bit or leave the front door open to go back to get something from the car to sneak into their home to kill them. He also hid in the shower in one part of the show. It was so simple: everyone closes their shower curtain when they leave the house. You wouldn't notice anything amiss because you closed the curtain. It creeped me out so much that I now leave the shower curtain open whenever I leave the house. This was the man who brought the most terrifying clown ever, Pennywise, to life. Now he's playing a serial killer who sneaks into someone's shower? I cannot do this anymore.

I didn't need procedural dramas. I had Gilmore Girls and RuPaul's Drag Race and Project Runway and Face/Off. Eventually I would start hate-watching Girls and Vinyl. Then Westworld would enter my life. And God bless Ryan Murphy and American Horror Story (except seasons 2 and 6). The only exception to this rule is NCIS reruns. My dad is a big fan so I tend to watch it with him when I'm over and I can't help but watch a marathon every now and then on USA. It's not the same level of creepy that the other shows fall into and who doesn't love Mark Harmon? I replaced procedurals with fast dialogue, pop culture references, and drag queens. If television watching is a game, I believe I'm winning.

Then I moved. Here's what happens when I move: I can't help myself with unpacking. I need to get as much done in the immediate 2-3 days after moving into a new place as I possibly can. I don't like boxes hanging around. I don't like not having my stuff where it belongs. I want to be settled in as quickly as possible. I used to listen to music while unpacking but with this move, for whatever reason, music wasn't helping with my unpacking. I didn't want to watch a new show in Netflix (of which I have many in my queue) and I've been slowly re-watching Gilmore Girls again but that's more of an after work "I need me time" kind of show. I happened to find a CSI marathon on the Esquire Network (yes, it's both a magazine and a tv network). The episodes were from the Grissom years (the only years that matter on this show) so I kept it on in the background as I unpacked my kitchen and my books and organized my closet. I remembered many of the episodes from when I originally watched the show and even some of the creepier ones didn't have the same effect on me now as they did when they originally aired. I didn't stop watching the mini-marathons on Esquire or WE Network (both show it during the week). Since moving into my new place, I come home from work and watch an episode or two while I make dinner and decompress from my day.

Then it dawned on me: I've been doing everything wrong when it comes to procedural dramas. The only way to watch them is to binge watch. On general principle, I don't binge watch television shows (Stranger Things and the Gilmore Girls revival being recent exceptions) because I like the idea of a show unfolding over time. That's the way I grew up watching tv shows since we didn't have DVRs or Netflix. I had to wait week after week to see what would happen next. Cliffhanger season finales were the best and worst thing to happen. Coming back to CSI and watching multiple episodes in one sitting has given me a new perspective on the procedural drama. I don't focus so much on the crimes occurring but the personalities and the interactions between the main cast. Sure, the crime they're investigating could be super gross (like the body soup in a bag in desert) or weird (the furry convention episode or the vampire/werewolf convention murder) or totally creepy (the Miniature Killer or the episode with the judge who might be planning to kill Grissom) or bizarre and a little funny (Lady Heather in the original few episodes she was in) but it all sort of blends together in one sitting.

I also know stuff about this show (like Sarah and Grissom are a thing or Warrick has a gambling problem that will eventually lead to his death) so I can watch for those plot lines in a way I didn't when I originally watched the show one episode at a time. Back then, it was about the grisly crime and the amped up science not so much about the characters. Now, I sit back and wait for a a joke about the case and some awkward interactions between at least two of the characters (because they're all so awkward) and I'm set. I count the number of times any of the women wear clothing that might be deemed inappropriate for the line of work they're in (mostly Catherine but it makes sense in the larger world of the show) and I wonder if poor Nick ever decided to get a dog because he always seemed so lonely. And the side characters? The police detectives and the lab techs; they're all so good. I still think there should be a Lady Heather/Gil Grissom spinoff show. I have no idea what it would be about but I'd watch it.

Thank you original CSI cast for your perfect hair, mildly inappropriate wardrobes, and awkward interactions. You've helped me see the error of my ways when it comes to procedural dramas. It's not about watching over time but watching in bulk. It's not really about the gruesome crime but the people solving said crime. Thank you for helping me to stop doing everything wrong.


Coming in February: Stuff I Love is coming back! This February, each weekend's post will focus on something I love in honor of the month of love.

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Grissom
Catherine Willows
Tim Curry meme 
CSI cast