counted on MURDER, SHE WROTE to quench their thirst for deceit, thievery and filth.
All this will change as of Sunday night, however, when fans tuning in for their weekly dose of suspense-filled mystery drama will instead be greeted by stereotypical characters, formulaic plots and tidy moralistic endings. Good will always triumph over evil, and crime will never, ever pay.
The changes are the brainchild of Aaron Schwartz, long-time producer of MURDER, SHE WROTE. According to Schwartz, Murder's new direction is an attempt to cure society of the damage inflicted by the MURDER, SHE WROTE formula of 'blood, blood and even more blood.' "When I first started Murder, I'd air anything the FCC would let me. Now that I'm a doddering old man, however, I'm haunted by the thought that shows like mine are responsible for the upswing in violence and crime," Schwartz stated. "Hopefully, by including a obvious moral message in every show, we can undo some of the damage we've done."
Schwartz plans to employ a variety of strategies to reshape America's attitude towards drugs, sex, violence and crime. One of the most important will be to replace glamorous villains with characters more representative of the forces of evil. Darkly handsome male actors that portray villains will face the choice of being fired outright or having one of their appendages replaced with an evil-looking hook. Cute and motherly villainesses will replaced by highly- intelligent, unattainable beauties which the public equates with greed, unscrupulous ambition and lack of sexual purity.
Just as all bad guys will be rude and abrasive, so to will the good guys be uniformly wholesome and cute. Overly pretty men and sexually-attractive heroines will be eliminated entirely. "Linking goodness with sexual beauty has led our nation's youth along a path fraught with sin," Schwartz stated. "I won't stop until once again, little boys and girls associate sex with babies and the burning agony of venereal disease."
The final key to MURDER, SHE WROTE's transformation will be the inclusion of an unassuming elderly woman whose upstanding character will contrast sharply with the manipulative greed of the show's villains. Pausing frequently to dispense nuggets of homespun wisdom, the little woman will champion truth and justice at every turn. According to Schwartz, scripts are being completely rewritten to showcase the as-yet-unnamed character. "We plan to have her save a naive youngster from temptation in every episode," Schwartz explained. "Of course, in a sense, her real task will to save society itself."
The toughest task of all, though, will be to preserve the show's patented plot-twists and whodunnit endings. "MURDER, SHE WROTE has always been the epitome of suspense, and we can't have viewers guessing the bad guy by the way they look or act," Schwartz declared. One solution being discussed is the inclusion of numerous ethnic minorities and fat people in each episode to serve as red herrings.
