Switched to Remember WENN while making the bed and doing chores. Hilary and Jeff are "Strange Bedfellows" when Scott encourages them to join opposite parties in the race for Pittsburgh's city council. They spend Scott's big debate arguing until Betty brings in a third candidate, a folksy former baseball player who reminds them that politics takes more than pretty speeches or claims. It requires real dedication to local needs, no matter how seemingly trivial.
The staff learns more about each other than they probably wanted to when they're quarantined after sound effects man Mr. Foley (Tom Beckett) comes down with a mysterious rash. The "Close Quarters" is fun at first, with Hilary's attempt at dinner, dancing afterwards, and Hilary revealing that Jeff didn't handle his time in England as well as it appears. As the weeks drag on, the cast begins to get on each other's nerves...until the doctor reveals he was totally wrong about his diagnosis.
Hurried out even before the second episode ended to bring out the recycling. Jessa picked me up 10 minutes later. I would have been happier about her boyfriend Mike tagging along if she'd told me he was coming. I had no idea. She hadn't mentioned him when I texted her and asked her to eat out on Monday instead of Tuesday. I felt like the third wheel all day.
At least he paid for our brunch at the Turning Point. This small but popular breakfast eatery on Haddonfield Road in Cherry Hill was so busy when we arrived, we had to wait for 25 minutes for a table to be ready. At least we got a rather nice corner table when we did get seated. I kept things simple with their "breakfast combo," two eggs, two pieces of meat (I went with bacon), two pancakes, and greens with citrus dressing. I really liked the option of the greens instead of potatoes. It made a large, heavy meal much lighter. Mike had a mushroom omelet. Jessa had eggs in a spicy tomato sauce with vegetables.
My original thoughts for today were the American History museum in Deptford or one of the libraries, but it's a holiday, and the museum is only open on weekends. Jessa loves thrift shops, and I hadn't been to the Moorestown Mall last month when I was off, so I suggested the Goodwill and Barnes and Noble there. I don't think they were very interested in either. I did find five DVDs from Kino Video on the earliest movies, including The Great Train Robbery and the fantasy films of Georges Melies, The Essential Rosemary Clooney on CD (still in its original plastic!), and a cute Hershey's Special Dark coffee mug.
They mostly just wandered around the busy Barnes and Noble. I hit the jackpot. Selected hardbacks were half-price. I picked up The Enchanted Greenhouse by Sarah Beth Durst. Found Bewitched and Betrothed by Sarah Blackwell with the mass-market mysteries. The three-disc CD Legacy Collection of music from the Disney Parks over the years was 40 percent off. Dug two records out of their large and extensive music and DVD area:
The Rolling Stones - Flowers
Blossom Dearie - Great Women of Song (Fabulous collection that includes my favorite song from her, "They Say It's Spring," plus several songs in French. Amazon indicates there's a lot more of these collections for ladies like Billie Holiday, Nina Simone, Shirley Horn, Peggy Lee, and Helen Merrill - I'll have to look for them.)
I was hoping we could hit the Moorestown Mall proper after that, but it was getting late, and they hadn't been all that interested in Barnes and Noble, so we just went home. I don't know why Mike didn't go back the same way he came. He took the traffic-laden highway, then somehow ended up in the Fairview section of Camden. That was nerve-wracking. He claims it's been cleaned up since he worked there in the early 2000's, but still, it's Camden.
Finished out "Close Quarters" when I got home, then had dinner and watched Match Game Syndicated. I picked up with the week with lovely Lee Merriweather and Fannie Flagg sitting up front. One of the contestants came back because, cute as their kick line to explain the Rockettes to the other contestant was, the producers thought it did give her and unfair advantage. Fannie stuck around for the next week, this time joined by Dolly Martin and Robert Pine.
Listened to the Blossom Dearie LP after a shower. Dearie is best-known to my generation for introducing several songs in Schoolhouse Rock, including "Unpack Your Adjectives" and the lovely "Figure Eight." She was a popular jazz vocalist long before she did that series. In addition to "They Say It's Spring," we had her charming covers of the standards "'Deed I Do," "Tea for Two," "Someone to Watch Over Me," and "If I Were a Bell."
Finished the night at YouTube for mystery game shows. Some of the earliest game shows on TV were based around crime solving. Armchair Detective from 1949 is one of the earliest surviving TV game shows. The host and a contestant watch two short murder mystery skits and try to figure out "who done it" from the clues given. Sounds simple, but honestly, it's rather interesting, and the skits were well-acted.
Mysteries seemed to go over better in England, the land of Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers, than here in the US. Whodunnit was a long-running ITV show that basically ran on the same premise, with one full, layered mystery and a celebrity panel trying to solve it. "Happy New Year" from the end of the first season has an elderly millionaire in 1899 bitten by a snake in his safe and given a half-hour to let his family find out who had it in for him. No wonder this was a six-year hit in the 70's and is one of the few British game shows of its era to exist in full. The mysteries are twisty and interesting to watch, and it's fun to see the panel try to figure them out.
Cluedo from the early 90's is almost exactly the same deal with Clue characters instead of historical ones. Once again, a celebrity panel tries to solve a mystery seen as a series of skits. It's played like the board game, with the weapon, the room, and the suspect showing up in computer-generated "cards" onscreen. I'm absolutely going to have to check out more from both of these series. They're a heck of a lot of fun to watch. (I'm surprised they haven't tried something similar over here. We do have Clue in the US too.)
Modern mystery games come closer to police procedural programs like NCIS. Murder In Small Town X from 2001 has ten contestants playing detectives searching for clues to a murder in a fictional small town. At the end of the episode, two contestants are led to two different locations. One finds another clue. The other "dies" and is off the show. Fascinating if you're a fan of police shows and can handle the graphic nature of of the "killings." (Incidentally, the guy who won was a Bronx firefighter who died responding to the Twin Towers collapse later in 2001. There's a statue dedicated to his memory in the town where this was filmed.)
Streaming has gotten in on the murder mystery games, too. Escape the Night was one of the most popular shows on YouTube TV from 2016 to 2019. "The Savant" Joey Graceffa invites ten internet personalities to play types from the historical era of a house he supposedly inherited (in this case, the 20's) to see if they can find the objects needed to banish dark forces from the estate. If the end of the first episode is any indication, this one tips into horror turf, with dark rituals and demonic monsters. It was popular enough for Scarfetta to move it to Tubi and continue it as a miniseries last year.
Solve crimes in the US and England in these delightfully twisty and macabre murder games!
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