Something has been bothering me since 1991. I know, I know, sixteen and a half years is an awfully long time to be bothered by something, but trust me, I haven't been letting it preoccupy me for most of the time since then, it's just something that resurfaced recently with the release of Season 7 on DVD.
*** SPOILER WARNING ***
If you haven't seen the seventh season finale, "The Skinny According to Nick Cullhane," and don't want to know the ending until you do, stop reading now, because I'm going to reveal who the murderer is.
Jessica tries to referee Harry and Mort's verbal sparring match.
Okay, I'm going to assume that if you're still reading, you don't mind spoilers.
At the end of this episode, as Floyd is taking murderer Phil Mannox back to his jail cell, Jessica says something very strange. When Mort asks her how she knew Mannox was guilty, she replies, "Whoever was desperate enough to kill Nick, and who tried to kill me, certainly knew exactly what was in that book."
When I saw this episode the first time it aired, I remember thinking, "Huh?" When exactly did Phil Mannox go after her? When did Jessica even meet Phil Mannox? Sure, Gordon Forbes threatened to get rough if she didn't hand over Nick's manuscript, and who knows what he would have done if Harry hadn't showed up when he did to save the day, but Gordon wasn't the killer. When the episode was rebroadcast during the rerun season I watched it again. My response was still the same - "Huh?" And that has been my reaction every time I've seen this episode since, whether it be on syndicated cable or on tape.
When Season 7 came out on DVD I thought that I'd finally have the chance to put this little mystery-within-a-mystery to rest. By now I was thinking that maybe it wasn't me after all. Maybe the episode had been longer once, back when they thought Angela Lansbury was going to quit the series, and when she agreed to come back for Season 8 they cut some scenes to trim it back to the standard one hour length. That thought made me particularly keen to get my hands on the Season 7 DVD set. After all, that's what DVDs are great for - they don't omit anything, and sometimes they toss in extras - like director's cuts, and behind the scenes stuff. Now, admittedly the MSW DVD sets have included very few extras so far, but I figured that if there had been deleted scenes in "The Skinny According to Nick Cullhane," they'd turn up here. And if I really was just a preoccupied and unobservant teenager and had somehow blinked during a key scene way back in '91, well, I'd have plenty of opportunity to review the episode at my leisure on my laptop computer. Please, please, I thought to myself, don't let this just be a case of bad continuity! I HATE bad continuity!
So that's what I did - I popped in the DVD, and I watched the episode (and got some cool screen captures for you to enjoy here). And when it was finished, my reaction was ... "Huh?"
I HATE bad continuity.
