When I finished binge-watching Poirot episodes, I struggled to find another crime series to watch. I gave a half dozen a try, but I didn’t like any of them. The gritty, realistic ones were trying to hard, and the quirky one was too twee for my taste. The latter wasn’t bad, and I might revisit it, but it didn’t really hold my interest. Before I went on the Poirot rampage, I had been watching Criminal Minds. I stopped during Season Four when I hit the ‘that darn internet’ episode, but out of desperation, I started watching it again from where I left off. Let me be clear. I think Criminal Minds is a mediocre-to-competent program. Production is slick, and the acting is competent for the most part, but it’s basically the fast food of TV shows. Comforting, deep-fried, and unthinkingly consumed. It’s especially noticeable when you binge-watch the show and see how same-y every episode is. Horrific crime shown in the first five minutes. Obvious suspect introduced within the next ten. The team flies out and is often greeted with hostility. The case touches one of them in a personal way, and they have conflict over how to deal with it. Then, after more gruesome scenes, they figure out who the real culprit is and arrest him/her. The suspect rarely escapes, unless it’s one of the nemesis enemies.
The episode that caused me to stop watching the show actually turned out to be OK. It wasn’t an indictment on the internet as much as it was an indictment on the twisted individual who was using the internet to wreak mayhem and destruction. I started watching again, and I plowed through the whole series.* I noticed that as the seasons progressed, they started running out of ideas. That’s not uncommon with a long-running series, and it’s even more apparent when you watch the episodes back-to-back-to-back in a fairly short amount of time. I would say that when Paget Brewster was written off the show was the time it went off the rails. She was never my favorite character because she was too good at everything, but the team chemistry did take a hit once she was gone.
It was also interesting to know the behind-the-scenes tidbits such as the show was trying to save money in the later seasons by having Emily on only periodically and the same with JJ. Even later, they did the same with Spencer Reid, and it was always obvious that the show was doing it out of monetary reasons rather than for any narrative value. By the way, can we talk about Spencer for a minute? He’s one of my favorite characters because he’s highly intelligent, vulnerable, and awkward. He’s not a hunk like Derek or a Type-A family man like Hodge, or even a bon vivant celebrity writer like Rossi. He’s painfully aware of his societal shortcomings, and he reacts to things in a more human way than the other characters. When he got a girlfriend, I was very pleased, even if the relationship was unconventional. When they *spoilers* killed her off before she and Spence even got to kiss, I was pissed the fuck off. Apparently, she wasn’t well-received by the fan base, but she was perfect for Spence. Smart, hyper-focused, and pretty, but not flashily so. She was exactly the kind of woman I would have chosen for him. It really made me mad that he wasn’t allowed to be happy for once on the goddamn show.
The stories got sillier and more gruesome as the seasons went on. I hated the Jennifer Love Hewitt character, but it wasn’t her fault. I liked Jeanne Tripplehorne, although at first I was put off by how eccentric they made her. She was odd just for the sake of being odd. She softened over the season into a believable character, and I was quite unhappy to see her go. As for Aisha Tyler, well, she did the best with what she was given, but the character isn’t well-written. My favorite recurring character is JJ’s husband, Will, but that’s mostly because of his slow, delicious drawl, which I find insanely hot. Side note: Their two boys on the show are A.J. Cook’s (the actress who plays JJ) in real life, which is weird to me.
Anyway, I was pretty much grimly watching by the seventh season, but I felt I had to finish it for no good reason. I know there’s been even more drama this season with the firing of Thomas Gibson, and I’ll probably watch it when it comes to Netflix, even though watching it leaves me with an empty feeling in my stomach. It’s not the gruesomeness of the content, nor the grim subjects; it’s just the empty calories I’m ingesting. There is nothing deeper than what is being shown on the screen, and there’s a sense of dissatisfaction once I’m done. It’s not a terrible show; it’s just I’m sure there are hundreds that are far better.
Next up, after watching five to ten minutes of several different shows, was Crossing Jordan. I had seen a few episodes of it back in the day when it aired, but it never really grabbed my interest. I watched the pilot more out of desperation than anything else, and I was already rolling my eyes from the very beginning. The first scene is of Jordan in anger management group therapy because she was ordered there by her work–she kicked her boss in the balls–and then, she manages to get her old job in Boston back. Her boss, the velvety-voiced Miguel Ferrer as Dr. Garrett Macy, uses a puppet to do his emotional talking for him (suggested by his therapist). Lily is the ultimate manic-pixie girlfriend/hippie-dippy peace-out chick, and I really hated her in the first season. I’ll get to that in a minute. I really liked Jordan’s dad and their interaction, and there was enough in the pilot to make me watch the next episode.
Let’s get the obvious out of the way–the plots of each episode are ridiculous. If I were watching only for the cases, I wouldn’t have made it past the first episode. The strongest part of the series, at least in the first few seasons, was the great cast of characters, excluding Lily. What’s my problem with her? She was too touchy-feely mixed with passive-aggressive narcissism. She had a crush on Dr. Macy, which I understood, but she was highly inappropriate in her dealings with him. I cringed at the way their relationship, as it were, was portrayed, and I was relieved when it was finally jettisoned. I really dug Nigel and Bug, though, and as I said, I wouldn’t kick Dr. Macy out of bed for eating crackers. I was put off by Woody when he first showed up (he’s a detective), but he really grew on me, at least until the final two seasons when the show decided to make him a jerkwad.
This is my problem with the show in general–all the characters grew to be assholes as the series progressed. Lily went from hippy-dippie to a goddamn harpy who was always going on self-righteous rants. Actually, that was the MO of most of the characters by the end of the series. They were all hateful, and the idea that they were a happy family was ludicrous. NBC didn’t help the show by airing episodes out of order, especially the first episode of season…five or six, I think, which they didn’t show until the final episode. As there was a major cliffhanger at the end of the previous episode, the mismanagement of the next season made no fucking sense at all. Anyway, the show devolved into everyone doing whatever the fuck they wanted because they felt it was the right thing and suffering no repercussions for it. I was really gritting my teeth by the time the last season rolled around, and I have no idea why I finished it. I said this about Criminal Minds as well, and I think that’s one of the drawbacks of watching a show on Netflix–it’s way too easy to passively watch episode after episode.
Another gripe I had was that characters would just disappear from the show without a mention or with an offhand comment seasons later, and it was clearly done from a monetary standpoint. The most egregious example was the disappearance of Jordan’s dad, and, yes, they explained it, but it was a very thin reason.
One of the other problems with watching series on Netflix is that they’re really meant to be watched one episode a week. Binge-watching them makes their weaknesses more evident, and it’s harder to gloss over the problems with such close scrutiny. There was a wackiness and an upbeat tone to Crossing Jordan in the beginning that disappeared around the fourth season and never returned. Oh! One other thing I didn’t like is the crossover between this show and Las Vegas. The latter is a wretched show that is nearly unwatchable. Ugh. Anyway, Crossing Jordan started with an interesting premise that went steadily downhill as the show progressed. I wouldn’t watch it again.
The third show I watched is Murder, She Wrote. I watched a shit-ton of it back in the day, and I found it amusingly quaint. Who doesn’t love Angela Lansbury sticking her nose where it doesn’t belong, and everyone allowing her to do it? Also, everybody wanted to mack on her. She was quite the siren of Cabot Cove! The number of times she almost canoodled with an elderly gentleman was quite inspiring. My favorite was Len Cariou playing an M5 spy. I found out from the Googles that he was the original Sweeney Todd to Angela Lansbury’s Mrs. Lovett, and that’s probably how he got the recurring role on Murder, She Wrote. He’s quite the dashing figure, and I can understand why she’s smitten with him, even if he is the rogue. I will say, the time he had her end up in jail ‘for her own good’, though, would have made me never talk to him again.
I talked about the plots of Crossing Jordan being ridiculous, but they are nothing compared to MSW. One of my favorite parts of the show was to guess who the actual culprit was and why s/he committed the crime, and I was right about ninety-five percent of the time. Even with the elaborate plots and all the red herrings, it wasn’t hard to discern the truth–at least not for a inveterate mystery reader such as myself. There’s usually one line of dialogue that gives it away, and it’s usually pretty heavy-handed.
I was ruminating the other day how this show could never have gotten made in this day and age because it’s so campy and over-the-top. There’s no attempt to make it realistic at all, and it’s not gritty. The acting is hammy, though it’s always a hoot to see the star power on each episode. It’s a bit sobering to realize how many are dead, however. And, did you know, there was a Magnum, PI crossover?
The only reason to watch is if you love Angela Lansbury as Jessica Fletcher, full stop. The writing is hokey, the plots are convoluted, yet easy to decipher, and the characters are hackneyed. And, yet, there’s something ineffably charming about the show that made me click episode after episode. That’s why when I reached the sixth season, I had a rude shock. There were several episodes in which Jessica Fletcher didn’t appear at all, except to set up the episode. It would be a story of one of her friends or a student or the plot of her book, and then she’d disappear until the final minute. I Googled it and discovered that she wanted to expand her horizons, so they crafted those episodes so she could do other things. Now, while I understand that she’d feel stifled on the show, she’s the reason people are watching. Having several episodes in a row in which she doesn’t star seems short-sighted, even if some of the episodes were decent. I quit watching after four or five of those episodes, and now the show is off Netflix. I can find it elsewhere if I feel compelled to watch the rest of the series, but I don’t right now. Even though I didn’t finish the whole series, I would still recommend it to anyone who likes cozies.
I have to find another show to watch, preferably a procedural of some kind. That’s what I like, even though it’s not very high-brow. I use the shows as background noise, essentially, so I don’t want something that I have to think about very hard. These three shows fit that bill perfectly, and now, I just have to find another. It can’t be that hard, right?
*Through Season Eleven because the current season isn’t on Netflix yet, obviously.