Jessica Fletcher is in New York City dealing with some problems with the cable hookup in her apartment. While chatting with her cable repairman, we learn that his girlfriend’s birthday is coming up and Jessica is invited. After Jessica suggests that he give his girlfriend a gift that could only come from him, he gets the idea to bootleg her cable hookup — which inadvertently results in her having access to surveillance video of her neighbor’s apartment.
When the surveillance video shows someone getting murdered and they all realize that the people on the TV look familiar, Jessica investigates!
Just the facts:
The episode initially depicts a man (Norman Elgort) getting run over by a car in front of the building where Jessica is attending a birthday party, but this victim ultimately survives and this is not the main crime at center of the episode.
Click on the text below to reveal spoilers.
Click to reveal the victim
It was Gwen Noble, who is married to a man who owns a jewelry business!Click to reveal the killer
It was Augie Grumbacher, an employee of the Noble jewelry business!Click to reveal the weapon
It was a gunshot!Click to reveal the location
The murder happened in the apartment belonging to the mother of the girlfriend of the jewelry thief! (The body was later found in a drain pipe.)Click to reveal the motive
The killer was confronted for stealing the diamond for himself and planning to double-cross the jewelry thieves that he was working with! (And the victim was also working with the jewelry thieves because her husband was planning to divorce her and leave her with nothing.)Click to reveal the major clue
It was the “salad dressing” stain on the carpet that actually corresponded to the olive oil used in jewelry cutting!Cast of characters (in order of appearance):
- James Kiriyama-Lem as a lie detector test Examiner.
- Dan Ferro as Roy Phipps, a suspected robber who is undergoing a lie detector test at the beginning of the episode. This is Ferro’s second and final appearance on MSW; he previously appeared in “Double Jeopardy“.
- John Capodice as Lt. Giordano, a cop investigating robberies and overseeing the lie detector test (and who apparently previously met Jessica Fletcher).
- Jessica Walter as Gwen Noble, the chair of a museum committee that Jessica is part of; she is married to the owner of a jewelry store. This is Walter’s fourth and final appearance on MSW; she previously appeared in “Unauthorized Obituary“.
- Betty Freeman as Committee Member #1 (referred to as “Margaret”) at the museum committee meeting.
- Gary Hershberger as Rob MacKenzie, Jessica’s cable guy. This is Hershberger’s second of three appearances on MSW; he previously appeared in “The Legacy of Borbey House“.
- Aaron Lustig as Augie Grumbacher, fine stone repairman at the jewelry store.
- Kathryn Cressida as Darlene Faber, a salesperson at the jewelry store.
- Heidi Kling as Kitty Colfax, girlfriend of Roy Phipps posing as a dance-a-gram girl so she can take surreptitious photos of the safe at the jewelry store.
- Charles Hallahan as Barry Noble, the owner of the jewelry store who is married to Gwen and having an affair with Darlene.
- Don Yesso as Leo Kositchek, former associate of Roy Phipps who just got out of jail for an old heist they pulled together.
- Doris Roberts as Mrs. Leah Colfax, Kitty’s mother and local grocery store owner. This is Roberts’s second and final appearance on MSW; she previously appeared in “Shear Madness“.
- Perrey Reeves as Susan Constable, an aspiring nurse who lives in Mrs. Leah Colfax’s apartment and who is dating Rob the cable guy.
- Vincent Howard as Susan’s College Professor who is at her birthday party. This is Howard’s fifth and final appearance on MSW; he previously appeared in “Portrait of Death” and “Murder — According to Maggie“.
- Stephen Quadros as Axel Dorsey, a member of Roy Phipps’ heist crew (the other being the uncredited man playing Norman Elgort).
Final thoughts and other trivia:
I don’t have much trivia about the episode itself, but the premise did make me recall that there were a number of story lines in TV shows from the early to mid 1990s involving illegal cable hookups.
One notable example I remember is an episode of Mad About You in which one of the lead characters causes a New York City blackout while trying to get an illegal cable hookup. This was part of a major TV event on NBC called “Blackout Thursday”, in which this blackout was also a premise of an episode of Friends that aired the same night.
Interestingly, this “Blackout Thursday” event happened on November 3rd 1994 — just three days prior to when this Murder, She Wrote episode aired on November 6th!
Murder, She Watched 