• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Spoilers CODA / Litverse-End unnecessary?

Just speaking for myself, the reason I like the joke is just the incongruity of seeing this wholesome grandmother figure in Angela Lansbury (who I will always think of as Missus Pots first and foremost) turn out to be a cunning serial killer. It's just not as funny if it's, say, Miss Fisher or Lennie Brisco or Poirot.

That's rather amusing, since my first exposure to Angela Lansbury was probably as Mrs. Lovett in Sondheim's Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, the pie maker who turned Sweeney's many murder victims into her best-selling meat pies. And before that, one of her greatest claims to fame was playing the sinister, manipulative Eleanor in The Manchurian Candidate. If anything, that's probably how the "Jessica is the real killer" joke got started -- by people who knew Lansbury for her villainous roles and found Jessica's wholesomeness incongruous. (Well, that and just how long the series ran and how often the victims and accused innocents were friends or family members of hers.)
 
I'm sure that most people who do the "she's the real killer" joke either don't know, or don't give a shit (or both) about Lansbury's villain roles. They tell the joke BECAUSE.IT.IS.FUNNY. Why read any more into it than that?

I know, I know, nothing is ever simple anymore, everything has to have a fucking page and a half of subtext behind it, but sometimes a joke is just a joke.
 
Last edited:
That's rather amusing, since my first exposure to Angela Lansbury was probably as Mrs. Lovett in Sondheim's Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, the pie maker who turned Sweeney's many murder victims into her best-selling meat pies. And before that, one of her greatest claims to fame was playing the sinister, manipulative Eleanor in The Manchurian Candidate. If anything, that's probably how the "Jessica is the real killer" joke got started -- by people who knew Lansbury for her villainous roles and found Jessica's wholesomeness incongruous. (Well, that and just how long the series ran and how often the victims and accused innocents were friends or family members of hers.)

I'm aware of those roles, but my first exposure to Lansbury was from watching Beauty and the Beast and seeing Murder, She Wrote when visiting my grandmother as a child, so for me those will always be the first roles I think of for her.
 
There's a Doctor Who novel with lots of characters who are clearly expys of different mystery protagonists. At the end of the novel, it turns out that the Jessica Fletcher/Miss Marple one is a murderer, but not on purpose-- she unknowingly emits a low-level telepathic field that causes the people wherever she goes to do murders, which she then solves!
 
There's a Doctor Who novel with lots of characters who are clearly expys of different mystery protagonists.

Was it a Fifth Doctor novel, and was there an Albert Campion surrogate in it?


At the end of the novel, it turns out that the Jessica Fletcher/Miss Marple one is a murderer, but not on purpose-- she unknowingly emits a low-level telepathic field that causes the people wherever she goes to do murders, which she then solves!

Some concepts just make more sense as ongoing series than others. A homicide detective investigating multiple murders in the course of their career makes far more sense than a mystery novelist happening to stumble upon two dozen murders a year. I remember thinking back when Murder, She Wrote was new that it would've been easier to buy the premise as a standalone movie than as a weekly series.
 
Was it a Fifth Doctor novel, and was there an Albert Campion surrogate in it?




Some concepts just make more sense as ongoing series than others. A homicide detective investigating multiple murders in the course of their career makes far more sense than a mystery novelist happening to stumble upon two dozen murders a year. I remember thinking back when Murder, She Wrote was new that it would've been easier to buy the premise as a standalone movie than as a weekly series.
It was a Benny Summerfield book. Don't remember if they did Campion
 
There is also a Doctor Who novel where Jar Jar Binks is a actual DW character, I kid you not. :)
 
I confess I'm kinda with Christopher here. The "Jessica Fletcher is a serial killer" gag was funny the first 800 times somebody posted it. Nowadays it's just numbingly predictable.

"Oh Lord, here it comes again . . . as though nobody has EVER made this joke before." :)

See also: "James Bond is just a code name for a series of agents!" :)
 
Last edited:
I'm not arguing, just saying it's ironic how perspectives can differ.

Oh, I didn't take it as an argument -- that's how I took what you said, and I was just trying to contribute to that line of the conversation. Sorry if I came across as argumentative instead of conversational.
 
I confess I'm kinda with Christopher here. The "Jessica Fletcher is a serial killer" gag was funny the first 800 times somebody posted it. Nowadays it's just numbingly predictable.

"Oh Lord, here's it comes again . . . as though nobody has EVER made this joke before." :)

See also: "James Bond is just a code name for a series of agents!" :)

Don't get me started on the "Die Hard is a Christmas Movie" joke! That old chestnut makes its round every year about this time . . . :brickwall:
 
Charles Soule made a post with Vader and Luke crossing their red and green lightsabers that said that Return of the Jedi is a Christmas movie. I'll go with it.

Regarding Jessica Fletcher, I just assume that each episode is its own separate story and that they did not all happen in the same timeline. Perhaps they are visions or imaginings that she has about her life and travels; I do not say fantasies because people she likes are often dead at the end of things.

I'll say more about this later in the Book 3 thread, but I am coming around on how the Coda trilogy played out. As a wise Jedi once said, your focus determines your reality, and the perspective with which one approaches Coda matters a great deal in what one gets out of it.
 
Don't get me started on the "Die Hard is a Christmas Movie" joke! That old chestnut makes its round every year about this time . . . :brickwall:
That's been fascinating -- seeing it grow from a tiny little amusing in-joke to a hugely over-saturated, commercialized joke/statement that people take weirdly seriously and want to fight about.
 
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top