Murder, She Wrote (Season 5)

🍄🍄🍄🍄

On this date in 1925, actress Angela Lansbury was born. She masterfully played several roles in her lifetime, but she is best known to me as Jessica Fletcher on the long-running 80's and 90's series, Murder, She Wrote. I didn't start watching it until a few years ago when I first discovered cozy mysteries. Murder, She Wrote was a cozy mystery before the genre had a name.

Over the past few years, I've been working my way through the entire series. Thankfully, it regularly airs on more than one platform, so I have all episodes recorded and continuously recording since each episode only stays on the DVR for nine months. I finished watching season five earlier this year.

Season five premiered in 1988. The format hasn't changed. There are 22 episodes. Each episode is a one-hour long self-contained mystery. The only exception in season five is that the season finale is a two-part episode. Mystery writer, Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury), continues to find herself in the right place at the right time to assist the authorities in solving murders. 

We do have one significant change in season 5. Mort Metzger (Ron Masak) is the new sheriff in Cabot Cove. I really liked Amos (Tom Bosley) as the sheriff, so I wasn't sure how I'd feel about this change. I'm pleased to say I enjoyed Mort as the new sheriff. He is not warming up to Jessica too quickly, understandably so, but he's competent and I liked his character overall.

There are five episodes in this season set in Cabot Cove, Maine, Jessica's hometown. Most episodes are set across the United States and some are set internationally. The coziest ones continue to take place in Cabot Cove and they tend to be some of my favorites. Some of these episodes are "Mr. Penroy's Vacation" (EP 3), "The Sins of Castle Cove" (EP 17), and the two-part season finale, "Mirror, Mirror On the Wall". Some other standout episodes set elsewhere were "Wearing of the Green" (EP 6) and "The Last Flight of the Dixie Damsel" (EP 7), 

My rating of 4/5 is based on the average number of stars I gave the episodes. I rated all of them on a scale of 1-5. Most of them received four stars and none of them received fewer than that. I enjoyed all of them, but I marked some of them down one star primarily because I identified the killer early in the episode, sometimes even before the body dropped, or they were predictable in other ways. I didn't feel this way as often in the earlier seasons. I don't know if it's because the mysteries are weaker or because I've just become better at identifying the culprits. I will say that even when I identified the culprit early, I didn't know the how or why. So it was still fun to watch it all unfold. 

As in previous seasons, there are guest stars on each episode. Some of the faces I recognized in season five were Jamie Farr, Conrad Janis, Andrea Gray, Michael Constantine, Robin Strasser, Gloria Loring, Anthony Geary, Dinah Shore, and Robert Mandan. I didn't always know their name, so I had to do a little research to identify them.

I can see myself revisiting some of these episodes in the future. Although I will know the whodunnit, it will be fun to look for the clues or simply spend time with the characters again. Before I do that, however, I'm really looking forward to watching season 6.