I just watched the murder mystery episode last night, and while this has always been one of my favorites, a number of things bothered me about it that I hadn't really noticed before.

1. The suspects in the first murder are named Phillip and Gloria. Weren't those the names of Dorothy's brother and sister? Nobody noticed this? The characters or the writers???

2. The investigation of the second murder takes place the morning after the body is found and Blanche is named prime suspect. Later we learn the second murder was a hoax. In other words, they play this horribly cruel joke on Blanche and then let her spend the entire night believing it to be true. How outrageous is that???

3. It seems to me that whoever planned the details of the second murder relied way too much on the fact that the other girls would go into Blanche's room after the murder. For one, they asked Rose to spray Dorothy's mirror with de-fogger. What if Blanche or Sophia had mirrors also? Or what if another guest had been walking by at the time? But what if the girls (or anyone else for that matter) had opted to avoid Blanche's room after the murder? How was anybody going to solve the case if nobody saw the crime scene and knew the important details?

Can you tell I read a lot of mystery novels? Seriously, I've always hated mysteries where the "clever" crime involves the murderer knowing exactly what people are going to do at a given moment. Too unrealistic for me.

Any thoughts?

I always thought it was odd that they assumed someone would ask for a mirror to hold under Kendall's nose. How many people would actually do this in that situation?
"How was anybody going to solve the case if nobody saw the crime scene and knew the important details?"
This is a very good oint you made. I never thought about it, but that's true. Anyway, this episode has always made me laugh. Especially the St. Olaf, right? part and the part where Dorothy holds the knife under Sophia's neck.

That's one of my favorite eps. But I do agree that it was cruel to play that joke on Blanche; it's not fair to treat someone like that and then tell them it's a joke.

Hey...

Dorothy's friend Trudy made her think she was dead after collapsing on the tennis court. Even Sophia said she looked dead. But she reappeared. So, Blanche wasn't the only one that got treated badly.

Wow, I forgot all about the Trudy episode. I guess that's pretty much the same thing, isn't it? I mean, it's one thing to play a practical joke on someone, but dragging it out for an extended period of time is just wrong.

(Now that I think about it, Cheers did this as well.)

As for the solving of Kendall's murder, I still say the actors assumed way too much about how events would unfold after the body was discovered.

Phillip and Gloria were Dorothy's brother and sister but I'd never noticed until you said it.

I think that is one of the best episodes