Murder, She Wrote (TV Series) A Nest of Vipers (1994) User Reviews

Psssssst, What's the Scoop Around Animal Park?

[WeatherViolet · 6/10 · 4 May 2010]

Season Eleven opens with this Rick Mittleman-penned episode about power struggles, graft and corruption, infidelity, blackmail, venomous creatures and murder set in Los Angeles Animal Park. Rick Mittleman has been writing television scripts since 1960, and authors two screenplays for the "Murder, She Wrote" series (his most recent to date).

Los Angeles, California, Chronicle Newpaper reporter Jimmy Russell (Glenn Taranto) has been trying to scoop television reporter Joyce Hacker (Susan Blakely) for information leading to a possible breaking story about City Councilman Joe Gandolph's (Dion Anderson) investigation into corruption at Animal Park (and what to do about it).

Norman Gilford (Jerry Hardin), chief officer who operates Animal Park, has reportedly been accepting bribes and payoffs to embezzle Animal Park funds, a factor for which Mark Atwater (David Beecroft) blackmails Norman Gilford for half of his take.

Kelly Michaels (Lisa Darr) serves as Los Angeles Animal Park operations Assistant and also as the fiancée of Mark Atwater. Bea Huffington (Corinne Bohrer) also works in Norman Gilford's office as a secretary/receptionist.

Doctor Ray Stinson (John Dye) serves as Animal Park Veterinarian, at its Veterinary Medical Clinic facility, with Ted Fraley (Taylor Nichols) at his side, as animal caretaker.

While Ray likes Bea, Bea likes Ted, and Ted likes Kelly, while Kelly likes Mark, and Mark likes Joyce, who agrees with Norman, who disagrees with Mark's "Earth Speak" organization, which campaigns to discharge ailing animals and endangered species from captivity.

And so, while everyone takes different sides regarding the preservation of unfortunate animals, tempers begin to flare over romantic infidelity and also the preservation of Norman's position, which Joe Gandolph seeks to abolish...or maybe to close down Animal Park altogether, while someone secretly slips Joe Gandolph secret information for the Chronicle, while wearing a disguise.

Kelly welcomes Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury) to tour the facility a year after Jessica has become acquainted with Ray and Ted, who have invited her to visit Animal Park. So, now that she plans to set her next manuscript to a murder in the zoo type of mystery with animals as suspects, she has come to the right place.

One evening when Jessica types upon her laptop in an Animal Park office, Joe Gandolph sneaks into the snake chamber to meet his secret contact, when he stumbles across a body, which has been injected with "Black Mambo" snake venom, while the victim squirms and perishes before his eyes.

Jessica emerges from the next room once the murder has been committed, and so she and Joe are questioned as witnesses by LAPD Lieutenant Gabriel Caceras (Gregory Sierra), who investigates with old acquaintance Jessica at his side.

(This may be incorrectly interpreted as a goof, as the character of Lieutenant Gabriel Caceras makes his first "MSW" appearance in a dream sequence, but Jessica is widely known to renew acquaintances with many characters who have not appeared before their series' introduction. She may have known him before the dream and seems to have met him since, as he says that it's been a year, rather than two years.)

At any rate, a rather wide geometric figure of unrequited romance gone sour needs to be sorted through, as well as the trail of secret dealings around Animal Park, for Jessica to figure whodunit amid "A Nest of Vipers."

The cast is rounded out by Meadow Williams as Docent, and Billy Mayo as Sergeant Nutley.

This episode represents the first television role by Billy Mayo, as well as the second of two MSW" appearances each for Meadow Williams, John Dye and Glenn Taranto, the second of three each for Corinne Bohrer, Lisa Darr and Jerry Hardin, the third of four for Taylor Nichols, the fourth of four for Susan Blakely, and the fifth of six for Gregory Sierra (and his second of three as LAPD Lieutenant Gabriel Caceras).

A great start to the new series.

[Sleepin_Dragon · 8/10 · 17 November 2023]

Jessica is at an animal park Los Angeles, researching her new book, which happens to be set at a similar venue. Jessica becomes aware that the park is being fleeced by those at the top, and is soon investigating a grizzly death at the park.

I had wondered if the quality of this show was going to diminish as it begins to draw to its end, the first episode of the penultimate series, and it's a very good one.

There's nothing like death by snake bite to captivate the audience, it really does work, cracking episode.

There is one glaringly obvious clue to keep an eye out for, one which gives away the killer's identity quite easily, keep your ears peeled.

Susan Blakely steals the show for me as Joyce Hacker, she's excellent, and I just adore that early 90's chic fashion that she has going on, she looks so glamorous.

8/10.

Death by snake venom

[TheLittleSongbird · 6/10 · 23 November 2017]

Have always been quite fond of 'Murder She Wrote'. It is a fun and relaxing watch that makes you think as you try to unwind in the evening. If one wants more complex, twisty mysteries with lots of tension and suspense 'Murder She Wrote' may not be for you, but if you want something light-hearted and entertaining but still provide good mysteries 'Murder She Wrote' fits the bill just fine.

"A Nest of Vipers" is a very watchable and not bad start to Season 11, which to me is among the weaker seasons of 'Murder She Wrote'. It is a long way from a gem though, and only just scrapes average. The mystery is fun and intriguing enough and it goes at a good pace, there are also not that many surprises and thematically and in terms of story direction a lot of it treads familiar ground.

The dialogue is a little contrived in places and a few of the conflicts somewhat soapy. The less than experienced actors (generally the younger actors and those who have not been in more than one episode) are a bit dull.

On the other hand Angela Lansbury is terrific (when has she ever not been in this role), and she is aided by worthy support from Glenn Taranto, Susan Blakely, Jerry Hardin, Taylor Nichols, John Dye and Corinne Bohrer. While it is not a great mystery, the story engages and interests enough and the ending is not an obvious one or a ridiculous one (not always the case with episodes from Season 9 onward or so).

Production values as always are slick, stylish and suitably cosy. The music has energy and has presence but also not making the mistake of over-scoring, while it is hard to forget or resist the theme tune. The writing is thought-provoking and does generally a good if never exceptional job with the lightness and cosiness of the show. The setting is used to good advantage and the murder is a clever one.

In conclusion, very watchable if scraping average. 6/10 Bethany Cox

A nest of vipers

[coltras35 · 7/10 · 5 August 2022]

Jessica visits the zoo to research her latest novel, where a venomous snake kills an animal rights activist. Mystified as to how the black mamba could escape, the amateur sleuth tries to discover whether there was a human hand behind the incident.

There's the usual "horrid" victim getting it in his neck quite literally ! The mystery is very clever. This is a decent episode where a black mamba is suspected murder but is soon exonerated as he only bites from a tree, and where the victim was there was no tree.

Too much illogic here for a higher score

[FlushingCaps · 5/10 · 17 May 2023]

Jessica visits Los Angeles to do research on zoos for an upcoming novel. She runs into the MSW typical situation of a widely-unpopular person working for the business at hand, with several people who dislike the man, a number of romances, past and present, and some shady dealings we only get hints at, in the beginning.

As one reviewer has pointed out, the police lieutenant investigating this week's murder, played by Gregory Sierra, is named Gabe Caceras, who recalls working with Jessica before. Now Sierra has played a detective before on this series, but not with that character's name-except for the one episode where it was all a dream Jessica had. I guess we are to accept that at some point Jessica did assist Gabe, but they never made an episode about that incident.

As the title and early scenes suggest, there will be someone killed by a venomous snake. When it happens, the lieutenant fully believes the death to be an accident until Jessica points out how the location of the death makes that virtually impossible. The snake had no way of dropping down on the victim from above-as that breed is stated to do, and it seems impossible that the man would have let the snake wind around him climbing from the floor to bite him in the neck-where the wound was.

I don't think you need Sherlock Holmes to have immediately figured that a man standing in a room would never have been bitten in the neck by a snake.

Other things bugged me about this episode including the use of "animal park" instead of "zoo." At least a few times, including by the top man at the place, the term "zoo" was used interchangeably. Why use four syllables when one says the same thing?

We had way too-much soap opera stories about various romances. I know why but whenever they get too much of this it weakens the story.

The biggest bit of silliness involves Jessica's reason for being there. She lives in Maine and New York, but goes 3,000 miles to get some basic research information about zoos to help her with her next book? One of the pieces of information involved her seeing a young alligator and being told that he's too small to swallow the key item she was thinking of having a gator in her novel swallow. She immediately said she'll change her story in that regard. All she would need to do is have it be an older, much larger alligator. Since she hasn't yet begun her book, I cannot fathom how it would not be possible to write it with a larger gator.

Furthermore, she is given an empty desk space in the zoo's administration building to use. I do not see how she needed to do her work there, at night after everyone left, when she could easily have taken whatever info she had and typed it on her laptop in her hotel.

Actually, I do know the reason. It was so she could be at the zoo after hours, and see the various people's comings and goings to help her know about the murder. But it seemed so unlikely that even as a famous person, they would give her after-hours access to the zoo, working there all alone in the offices.

It wasn't a terrible mystery otherwise, but definitely below the usual for this fine series. I scored it a 5.

Instant death by snakebite?! And, yes, this is a snakey episode.

[planktonrules · 3/10 · 4 August 2023]

WARNING: This episode of "Murder, She Wrote" is chock full of snakes. If you have a severe phobia about snakes, you might just want to skip this one.

The episode is set at a struggling zoo. The director is a crook and the place has become run down due to his mismanagement and skimming. In the midst of this, one of his opponents is found dead...dead from a Black Mamba snake bite.

I hate snake bite scenes on TV and movies because the writing is often very lazy. I've seen quite a few programs and films where people are bitten and die seconds later...but this is not how snake bites work. A snake bite from a Mamba takes about 7-15 hours to kill...and there ARE snake antivenoms that could save you even from such a super-toxic snake. Zoos surely would have this on hand. So, a MAJOR part of the show is simply wrong...and the writer should have done a minimal amount of research and they would have learned this.

Overall, I liked seeing all the cool animals, but the episode itself was really illogical. FlushingCaps's review found MANY more illogical aspects of the show (such as why would Jessica go to a zoo in Los Angeles to do research when she lives in Maine and New York??)...and they are right on every count!