LogFAQs > #925781690

ParanoidObsessive posted...

I_Abibde posted...

And, wherever she goes, people die. Kind of a menacing show, really.

It's even worse than that. She lives in a town of a few thousand people, and literally like 20 people are being murdered there every year. That's a higher crime rate death toll than the current world city with the highest murder rate, by almost a factor of 10.

Cabot Cove is like a nightmarish Stephen King hell-town, yet no one there seems to be phased by this at all. Worse, they all still seem to see it as a quiet little town when it is literally the most murdery place in the entire world. People living in Robocop's Detroit were less likely to die than the average citizen of Cabot Cove.

Jessica Fletcher is clearly a demon who feeds on human souls, and who secretly arranges murders she can "solve" to stay close to the action. And she's trapped all those people there, prevented them from realizing the danger and trying to escape.

In later seasons, her hunger clearly grows, forcing her to leave Cabot Cove and travel around the world to seek out even more souls.

To undercut your embellishments and humor, I should point out that even in the early seasons, most of the crimes aren't happening *in* Cabot Cove itself. The first murder case is in NY and she's just starting her book tour, in addition to things happening in surrounding towns (which kinda share the same medical examiner). Plus Cabot Cove's size is depicted inconsistently. And yes, later on she gets an apartment in a city when she's teaching.

I'm just wondering what was going on with Cabot Cove and the area *before* Jessica Fletcher started solving mysteries. Did they just have a lot of unsolved crimes? Or did the murder rate spike when she started writing? >_>

ParanoidObsessive posted...

The first problem is the repeat cast as different characters issue I already mentioned, which really fucks with my ability to immerse into a setting and care about the plot, because it takes me out of the characters. I'd almost prefer they just recast every season with complete unknown actors who can really breathe life into a role, so in my head that actor IS that character.

I'm sure you've seen a lot of actors in other things, even ones who star in other works together. More importantly, there are fewer recurring actors than you think and their significance varies season to season. Two of season 1's leads don't appear at all in season 2 (and one doesn't really appear again in the franchise), one of the supporting characters becomes a main character (and almost unrecognizable), another supporting character also rises in stature, and the guy who played Dr. Harmon is relegated to a minor recurring role.

Granted, I'll concede that sometimes an actor is distracting -- the show eventually picks up Kathy Bates. It's impossible to see Kathy Bates and not think, "Oh, that's Kathy Bates!" She's had a lot of iconic roles over the years, but she mostly sticks out as herself.

However, most of the cast members are only there for a season or two. A few that are more prominent and leave -- like Jessica Lange -- I missed almost immediately. (Although her roles had an element of sameness to the extent that she always has something resembling a redemption arc despite doing awful things.)

ParanoidObsessive posted...

But the second big problem is how they portrayed the first season.

Season 1 sucked. There's not much need to go past that. Before I started watching, I was told by multiple people to skip season 1 and just start with s2/Asylum. (I was also told to skip Hotel.)
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