Plot details I will skip-others have covered it. I have complained in the past about stereotypes in this series. One of them is that, other than Italians, killers are never part of a racial or ethnic group other than white Anglo-Saxons. So in this episode, everyone Jessica encounters in Hong Kong is Asian except for four-one being the husband of her 4,785th good friend Emma, played by France Nuyen, who used to be a doctor on St. Elsewhere. She and her husband Brian live in a mansion in Hong Kong, and it must have been expensive to move the Southern California home that used to be the governor's mansion on Benson over to Asia.
The two other main non-Asians are Brian's business assistants. We are given clear reason to suspect one of evil deeds early on, so when a white person is killed, we really know there is a "red herring" leaving the almost-only other white person as the killer. Sure enough, that's the case. There is one other white person featured, but never a hint of any personal involvement to make him a suspect.
More disturbing is that Jessica, once the killer is caught, explains what let her know who the killer was based on information from a phone call we saw her make-but we heard none of the message that was important, only her question to the person. She also told about seeing wet paint on a curb providing important info. Too bad we viewers never saw the "wet paint" sign on the curb as shown during Jessica's reveal.
They also had another trap Jessica used to get the killer to reveal their involvement. Like too many times before, once the killer got the needed piece of evidence from Jessica, there was plenty of time to kill Jessica with the gun in hand, but the killer thought it necessary to announce what was about to happen, giving the police time to rush in and prevent Jessica's murder. Time and again, killers in real life would have simply shot Jessica right before the police burst in, but the killers wait to talk more than necessary and that is how Jessica has survived all these years setting herself up in these traps. Luckiest lady in the mystery-solving business if you ask me.
I loved the wonderful Jim Hutton "Ellery Queen" series partly because every clue Ellery used was clearly seen or heard by the viewers. We just needed to be clever enough to put them together. Murder, She Wrote has done this many times. Usually we get most of the clues in sight or sound, if not all. This episode saw us get NONE of those key clues that let Jessica solve the case. There was one clue we did get but we had no way to tie it to anyone because the "who" involved there was never revealed to us until the final explanation scene.
I never saw this when it first aired. I had tired of the series some time before. Weak stories like this were surely the reason why a formerly wonderful series became so ordinary, or worse, by its last years. Too much of the same "formula" woven into all of the plots, along with the objectionable things I have pointed out make me give this one a score of 3.
The two other main non-Asians are Brian's business assistants. We are given clear reason to suspect one of evil deeds early on, so when a white person is killed, we really know there is a "red herring" leaving the almost-only other white person as the killer. Sure enough, that's the case. There is one other white person featured, but never a hint of any personal involvement to make him a suspect.
More disturbing is that Jessica, once the killer is caught, explains what let her know who the killer was based on information from a phone call we saw her make-but we heard none of the message that was important, only her question to the person. She also told about seeing wet paint on a curb providing important info. Too bad we viewers never saw the "wet paint" sign on the curb as shown during Jessica's reveal.
They also had another trap Jessica used to get the killer to reveal their involvement. Like too many times before, once the killer got the needed piece of evidence from Jessica, there was plenty of time to kill Jessica with the gun in hand, but the killer thought it necessary to announce what was about to happen, giving the police time to rush in and prevent Jessica's murder. Time and again, killers in real life would have simply shot Jessica right before the police burst in, but the killers wait to talk more than necessary and that is how Jessica has survived all these years setting herself up in these traps. Luckiest lady in the mystery-solving business if you ask me.
I loved the wonderful Jim Hutton "Ellery Queen" series partly because every clue Ellery used was clearly seen or heard by the viewers. We just needed to be clever enough to put them together. Murder, She Wrote has done this many times. Usually we get most of the clues in sight or sound, if not all. This episode saw us get NONE of those key clues that let Jessica solve the case. There was one clue we did get but we had no way to tie it to anyone because the "who" involved there was never revealed to us until the final explanation scene.
I never saw this when it first aired. I had tired of the series some time before. Weak stories like this were surely the reason why a formerly wonderful series became so ordinary, or worse, by its last years. Too much of the same "formula" woven into all of the plots, along with the objectionable things I have pointed out make me give this one a score of 3.