Since I’ve completed my summaries for all the Season 8 episodes, I wanted to find out what fans think is the best (and worst) of Murder, She Wrote‘s Season 8 episodes set in Cabot Cove. (I specifically focus on the Cabot Cove episodes because, if you ever ask a Murder, She Wrote fan what their favorite episodes are, they almost invariably respond with: “Any episode set in Cabot Cove!”). I have previously run similar polls to find out which Cabot Cove episodes are fan favorites in Season 4, Season 5, Season 6, and Season 7, and so this post is a continuation of that.
At the beginning of Season 8, Jessica starts teaching at Manhattan University and as a result gets herself an apartment in New York City. Whereas most previous seasons had five episodes set in Cabot Cove, there were only four such episodes in Season 8. I’ve listed them all below, and if you need a refresher on what each episode was about, you can click on the episode title to take you to my trivia summary for that particular episode. (Note: While Ep.1 “Bite the Big Apple” starts in Cabot Cove, it is not included in the list below since the main mystery actually takes place in New York City.)
- Episode 4: Thicker Than Water
- Episode 12: The Witch’s Curse
- Episode 18: Programmed for Murder
- Episode 21: Badge of Honor
In the past, I found that the best way of collecting this information would be to set up a survey using Google Forms which allows fans to rank the episodes from 1 (best) to 4 (worst).
Edit (June 22nd 2022): The survey results have now been tabulated!
Exactly 70 people responded to the survey in the two week span from June 6th until June 21st 2022. The image below summarizes the breakdown of their votes for each episode.
Based on these results, the episode “The Witch’s Curse” is a clear winner! More than half of those who responded to the survey (36 people out of 70) ranked that particular episode as number 1.
The ranking and average score for each of the episodes is summarized below:
- First: “The Witch’s Curse” (average score = 2.0)
- Second: “Thicker Than Water” (average score = 2.4)
- Third: “Programmed for Murder“ (average score = 2.7)
- Fourth: “Badge of Honor” (average score = 2.9)
Notably, although approximately the same number of people ranked “Badge of Honor” and “Programmed for Murder” as “worst” (with 23 vs 22 votes, respectively), there were significantly fewer people who liked “Badge of Honor” best. That episode only received 6 votes for “best” compared for 12 votes for “best” given to “Programmed for Murder“.
Although the results have now been tabulated, the survey itself will remain open in case anyone else still wants to cast their vote. I will occasionally check on the results and will update this post again if the results change significantly. You can access the survey here: https://forms.gle/kB2TSiWyiXFw3T6P7.
Murder, She Watched 
My favorite show was the Fan Club where Jane Withers is murdered over a dog. She was claiming she was JB Fletcher having her own ID card with her name on it. Lots of stars &silliness because no one believes she Jessica Fletcher.
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This is about what I expected. While many of us love The Witch’s Curse, and enjoy delving further into Mort’s life with Thicker than Water (we almost hear Adele!), it’s very hard for fans to watch Seth be put through such a tough time in the other two. Badge of Honor is a tearjerker, and the characters are unlikable. Seth fights with Mort to protect his friend, and it’s a downer. Programmed for Murder is not much better, due to Seth’s abilities as a doctor being questioned ,and it’s hard to watch, so is the death by poison of Judith Chapman’s character. It’s one if the most disgusting and awful murders, and I avoid it. So the bottom 2 are probably overall pretty unpopular, the upper two are pretty good!
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