TV on DVD Buzz

This week’s TV on DVD Season I am going through and doing wrap ups of is the double sided 3 disc Murder, She Wrote Season 1 set. I will be posting about one disc each day until this Saturday. This is the wrap up of Side A of Disc 3.

“Tough Guys Don’t Die” - A detective is found dead shortly after talking to Jessica on the phone about an old case. Another detective, Harry McGraw, is found snooping around Jessica’s. Jessica believes the case she had the detective look into might have gotten him killed and Jessica wants to find out what the lead was. The case Jessica is looking into is about a murder trial about a physician getting off on a murder charge. It turns out that a judge knows about the real murderer in the case he originally was a defense lawyer for the physician. The real murderer was the judge’s friend that saved the judge during when they served together during war. Now that they know the the result of that case Jessica begins to look into the case of who killed the detective. Jessica discovers it is another detective that did it with the main evidence being a key chain sound on a tape the detective was making when he died.

“Sudden Death” - Jessica inherits part of a football team when her uncle dies. People are trying to buy her 4%, as it changes the balance of power from one man that wants to move the team to the group that wants to keep the team in town. The man that owns 48% of the team is found drowned at the football stadium. The watch that belongs to a man with a deaf girl that Jessica had made friends with is found with the body, but Jessica does not believe it could have been her. Jessica talks with the accused man and he says the watch was stolen from his locker. Someone tries to kill Jessica by locking her in the sauna room. Jessica discovers that the man was murdered at his own home and then moved to the stadium, which opens up the suspect pool to those at the party that evening. Jessica discovers who it was by looking at photos from the evening and noticing that one man changed his blazer because he got it wet drowning the owner.

“Footnote to Murder” - Jessica attends a writers award ceremony with a poet friend. When Jessica goes to return an umbrella that she accidentally took from the cocktail party that belonged to another author. That author is found dead in his hotel room and his manuscript is missing. The poet is suspected of killing the author because he cannot remember what he was doing that night and his umbrella was the murder weapon. To clear he poet friend Jessica investigates the murder. She talks to the author’s wife, who was overheard having a fight over money with the author. Jessica tracks down a man that wrote threatening notes to the author and discovers the supposed manuscript might have been written by that man. The police arrest this man and find the novel manuscript with him and he confesses to the murder. Jessica is not sure that the man really did kill the author. It turns out that the man’s sister killed the author because the author stole her brother’s manuscript. The incident was an accident and sort of self defense.

“Murder Takes the Bus” - Jessica and the Sheriff Amos Tupper are on their way to Portland on a bus. It rains and the bus has engine trouble and they end up at a little cafe. When Jessica goes back to get her book she finds one of the passengers murdered and the murderer must be one of those stuck at the cafe (i.e. everyone from the bus and the cafe owner). Cut off from others because the phone lines are down Amos starts the investigation starting with finding out about the passengers. The murdered man was recently released from prison for killing a co-robber during a robbery and the son of the man he killed was also a passenger on the bus. It turns out the driver’s daughter was killed in the robbery. The driver admits to putting the screwdriver through the ex-prisoner’s neck, but Jessica realizes the man was already dead when the screwdriver was put in his neck. Thus it seems he was not murdered by the driver. The supposed captain ends up hurting one of the passengers with his own gun while trying to keep him from contacting help via radio. The dead passenger’s book is missing and it seems it was taken because it leads to the stolen money, but it was taken by a librarian because it was worth a lot of money and not because it did turn out to have the key to the hidden money.