Tucker's Witch, Ep. 3, "The Corpse Who Knew Too Much"

It's a busy morning in the Tucker household. Rick bemoans his lousy gambling luck. Amanda uses her witchy powers to make sure the toast doesn't burn. (Which, to be honest, has got to be safer than jamming a knife in the slot of the toaster.) And everyone's favorite mom-in-law, Ellen, celebrates the viciousness of nature.

Suddenly, gunshots ring out!

See…told ya!

It turns out that the Tuckers' next-door neighbor, Larry Shears, was forced to draw down on the milkman. (Hey, when the guy drops off sour cream instead of yogurt, he better start duckin', I say!) Soon thereafter, ol' Lar goes missing, and Rick and Amanda, along with Larry's out-of-the-loop wife Debbie, begin to dig into the life of Laurel Canyon's most lactose intolerant resident. Needless to say, once the Tuckers start pulling on the thread of Larry's story, things start to unravel pretty quickly.

Just who is Larry? What's his deal? Who are the guys in the van camped out in front of Larry and Debbie's abode? How drunk can you get from eating old, fermented apricots?

Lotta questions...lot o' questions...

First, I think it should be pointed out that Larry is damn lucky that his milkman wasn't Reid Fleming. You pull a gat on that fellow, you better be prepared to empty all the chambers. Cuz if you don't, you're liable to be found stuffed into the drop-off box next to the front door!

This episode follows the now time-honored Tucker's Witch tradition of the why-dun-it as opposed to the who-dun-it. We see who is pulling the strings on the attempts on Larry's life — why, it's good ol' TV mainstay Lawrence Pressman as "George Fowler" — but we don't know why. Over the course of the episode, we see George sneaking around the Shearses' house planting bugs, stabbing guys with a screwdriver in the back of a van, skulking around the windmill at the Sherman Oaks Castle Park miniature golf course in the hopes of scoring a (bullet) hole in one. He ain't a nice guy by any stretch of the imagination. The pleasure in this episode, then, is discovering who George Fowler is and what's he got against a guy just trying to enjoy a bowl of cereal in his kitchen.

There are some fun mystery tropes happening in this episode, too.

1.) The ol' fake-office-in-a-warehouse gag.

Larry tells his wife that he works for Amalgamated Leasing. Now, has there ever been a company that is on the up-and-up that had the word "amalgamated" in its name? I think not. So, when Rick and Amanda take a drive over to Larry's office, they discover that Lar's story is anything but "amalgamated"...if you catch my drift. The offices of AL are behind the fences of a huge, windowless, drab-looking, soul-deadening facility.

Oh! I get it now...Larry works for Amazon!

2.) The ol' coroner-eating-while-working bit.

This one is an oldie but a goodie. When Amanda and Rick stop by to find out more about the milkman Larry plugged, Stucky the coroner is stuffing his face. When they go into the cooler to take a look at the body of dead Miami mob hitman, Tony "The Ferret" Landis (yeah, you read that right — The Ferret!), the Stuckmeister reveals that he's got a whole fridge worth of food and drink in one of the drawers! I'd love to take a tour through Hollywood history and get to know all the coroners in the movies and television who never let a cadaver on a slab come between them and a good pastrami on rye.

(Side note: you do NOT want to know where they keep the mustard!)

3.) The ol' trick of the cemetery-with-the-names-of-the-very-much-alive-characters-on-the-gravestones.

Sure, maybe this one is a little harder to come by in your average mystery show, but I still dig it. Why? Because sometimes it opens the door to...the supernatural! Is Larry a ghost? Has he been dead this whole time? That would be something, huh? Unfortunately, such is not the case here. But this trope does point to the fact that Larry is not really Larry at all. Who is he, then? And who is the Larry Shears buried in the cemetery?

Speaking of just who is buried in the cemetery — it looks like Rick is checking out the gravestone for...Count Dracula?

Now, I know that we are only three episodes into the series, but we have to assume that Rick and Amanda have known each other for a good long while. We aren't sure about how long they've been married, but I think it's safe to say that they've been (legally) sharing a bed for at least five years? That's a conservative estimate. So, if they've known each other that long, and Rick is fully aware of Amanda's extrasensory powers, then why is he always so dismissive of her intuitions? If I had a wife that could unlock a door simply by looking at it or get a glimpse of an important clue just by handling a client's magnetic key card, I'd find her little hunches and what-not to be a bit more credible. Alas, Rick always seems to find his wife's visions to be a cute, if creepy, diversion from the actual case and its clues.

Amanda: You know, there's something else. When I touched that card, I got a flash of an old steeple in a cemetery.

Rick: Aw, swell, that's all [the cops] need.

Amanda: There's more. I saw a tombstone. It had Larry's name on it.

Rick: Terrific! That's a real cheerful intuition you got going there.

Dammit, Rick! Trust your wife, for the love of Mike! Ask better questions! Heck, ask ANY questions!

Our beloved side characters get the short shrift in this episode, it's sad to say. Alfre Woodard's Marcia is given only a single scene, and it's your standard clue and exposition drop, but she does get one good line in:

Marcia: The warehouse is a dead end. Amalgamated Leasing rents it. They pay on time, and they pay by mail.

Rick: They also like to hire people who've been dead for thirty years.

Marcia: Yeah, I heard of hiring the handicapped, but this is ridiculous.

Marcia also gets to wear one of the ugliest dresses these eyes have ever seen.

YIKES! How can you do that to woman as beautiful as Alfre Woodard? For shame, Costume Department, for shame!

Barbara Barrie as Ellen gets a bit more screen time. At the beginning of the episode, while Rick is trying to drown his sorrows in a bowl of cereal over the baseball scores, Ellen is pretty pumped up that the birds are duking it out in the backyard.

Ellen: Oh, the bluejays are fantastic!

Rick: Oh, two unearned runs in the ninth — big deal!

Ellen: I mean the birds. They are battling the sparrows over food.

[Sound of milkman being shot next door.]

Rick: They get mean when they're hungry.

Later, Ellen has to pull a Florence Nightingale (avian pun!) and nurse a few of the birds back to health. Were they injured on the battlefield? Not quite...

Amanda: Oh, the poor thing. It's not dying, is it?

Ellen: No, it's drunk.

Amanda: Drunk?

Ellen: He gorged himself on old apricots. You know the ones beginning to ferment? Then, he got drunk and fell out of the tree.

Well, if I were a bird, and it was my time, getting blotto on old fruit would not be the worst way to go, amirite?

Even good ol' grumpy Lieutenant Fisk (Bill Morey) isn't around much in this episode. He grumbles at Rick over the dead milkman at the beginning, and he grumbles at Stucky (who looks to be eating a box of Entenmann's donuts) over the current case's latest corpse at the morgue, but he does come good at the end and saves the Tuckers' bacon. Although, if the traffic on Sunset Boulevard had been any thicker, who knows what would have happened!

Time for a trip to the "Hey! It's that guy!" Department: as I stated above, the bad guy in this episode is played by Lawrence Pressman. Name doesn't sound familiar to ya? Well, you just might find that the guy's got a face like a clapper — because it's gonna ring a bell.

Lawrence Pressman started his acting career on The Edge of Night. Premiering on CBS in 1956, Edge was a daytime television soap opera with a noir sensibility. It was created by Irving Vendig, a writer for the Perry Mason radio show. The Edge of Night (or just plain Edge of Night as it became known in its final few years) featured loads of murders and masked killers. Sounds like my kind of soap!

Pressman also appeared in episodes of such shows as Marcus Welby, M.D., M*A*S*H, Hawaii Five-O, Cannon, Murder, She Wrote, and others. He never seemed to stick around these shows for more than an episode. If he did get a second episode, it was usually as a completely different character. (The memories of TV audiences weren't nearly as long as they are now.) He did star in a 1977 TV dramedy about a blended family called Mulligan's Stew. It ran for seven episodes. Later, in 1981, he starred in a sitcom called Ladies' Man about a male journalist trying to make it at a woman's magazine. That one lasted for sixteen episodes. It wasn't until the late 1980s that Pressman would finally strike gold with a series that lasted for more than a single season. In 1989, he began a five year stretch (that sounds like a prison term, but it's not!) as Dr. Benjamin Canfield on Doogie Howser, M.D.

Well, that's it for this episode of Tucker's Witch. Overall, I like "The Corpse Who Knew Too Much" because it moves all over the place — we're in Laurel Canyon, then it's the miniature golf course in Encino that I see all the time when I merge off of the 101 and onto the 405, then we head to the morgue, then to Lt. Fisk's office. Lawrence Pressman is a good villain, too. He's got such a friendly face, but when he starts getting all stabby with a screwdriver in the back of a van — look out!

Stay tuned for our coverage of episode four of Tucker's Witch, "The Curse of the Toltec Death Mask." In the meantime, maybe it's time to make the switch to alternatives to dairy? There's just too much lead in the milk nowadays.

Tucker's Witch, Ep. 2, "Big Mouth"

Hollywood gossip reporter Jewel Porter comes home one night to find that someone has left her a present in her bathroom. It isn't a lavender-scented candle — it’s a cobra! The next day, she contacts the Tuckers to investigate. She shows Rick and Amanda a threatening letter from the killer and tells them that these sorts of things are all part and parcel of the gossip game. Amanda suggests that since there was an attempt on Porter’s life then the police should be called, but her idea is nixed. Porter doesn’t want the police and the subsequent media attention their presence would bring. The gossiper doesn’t like to be gossiped about, natch.

Soon, however, due to some expertly placed explosives, the decision is made for Jewel Porter. The bodies begin piling up, as do the suspects and red herrings. There’s Porter’s personal assistant and would-be gossip reporter, Darren. Porter’s fellow gossip-monger Nathan Blye also makes the list of usual suspects. You have to suspect the husband, Terry, and his secretary/mistress, Christy. And because all of Jewel’s money goes to her daughter if she kicks the bucket, then Dawn, as well as her secret husband, Andre (Porter’s masseur) have to be in the line-up.

Will the Tuckers figure it all out? How is Amanda going to use her powers to crack the case? What does a cat statue have to do with it all? And who or what is the “alien force” that Dickens seems to think is sneaking into the Tuckers’ garbage cans at night?

There are two things I want to set straight right from the start. One, I understand the name of this episode is “Big Mouth,” but Martha Raye does not make an appearance, so don’t get your hopes up.

Two, the killer is Andre. Before you begin screaming “SPOILER ALERT!” at me, just know that we’re shown that Andre is up to no good from the very beginning. Unless Jewel Porter has a mongoose infestation in her bathroom, I can’t think of any reason outside of murder for Andre to leave a cobra in her bathtub. So, like the pilot episode, the viewer is privy to information that the Tuckers are not — namely, the killer’s identity — and the whole thrust of the story is to watch them unravel the clues and figure it all out.

That’s all well and good, but Andre’s identity as the killer could have easily been hidden from the viewer’s ken. I mean, that’s what POV camerawork and well-framed shots of the killer’s hands in black leather gloves are for, no?

The how-dunit/why-dunit formula works on Columbo, because we love watching the good lieutenant nag the suspect to death with his insights as he meticulously pieces all the clues together. I’m not so sure it works for Tucker’s Witch. This episode has enough would-be suspects that the viewer could have had a lot of fun working with the Tuckers to figure out who the killer is. Instead, because we know it’s Andre from the beginning, it isn’t as satisfying a watch. Rick and Amanda are a cute couple, but “cute” don’t cut it when we have to watch them work their way through clues and red herrings that we know ultimately don’t mean a thing.

Ahhhh…enough about what I think is wrong…let’s talk about what this episode gets right. Let’s start with our supporting players, Alfre Woodard and Barbara Barrie. Somewhere in the multiverse, in a world where Tucker’s Witch is a big, big hit, there are episodes - possibly in the third or fourth season - where Marcia (Woodard) and Ellen (Barrie) solve crimes, either as a team or separately, while Rick and Amanda are off on vacation somewhere. Instead, we have to make do with the few minutes per episode each is granted.

In this case, we get to watch Amanda’s mother, Ellen, try to outwit a “hostile alien force,” i.e. a raccoon that’s been getting into the trash every night. After speaking to someone from animal control about what to use as bait in the traps for this tiny invader, Ellen, a bit preoccupied, lets Amanda and Jewel Porter’s daughter, Dawn, know that there’s dessert to be had:

Ellen: I couldn’t find any marshmallows, so I had to use sardines.

[Amanda and Dawn look confused as Ellen walks away.]

Ellen [spinning back around]: Oh! I made a lovely cake. Would you like some?

It’s a sweet gag that highlights Ellen’s flibbertigibbetiness.

Back at the office, Marcia is used as an exposition dump, spitting out clues and motives. We also get a snippet of snark about Jewel Porter:

Rick: Where would we go to get a list of Jewel Porter’s professional enemies?

Marcia: The Academy Awards.

Boom. Thanks, Marcia.

What else is going on in this episode? Well, we’ve got one of my favorite mystery tropes: the typewritten note with off-set letters that lets the detective know exactly which typewriter was used. As he investigates one of the threatening letters Jewel Porter received, Rick notices some odd characteristics:

Rick: I tell you what I get…I get the letter M out of alignment. It’s a manual typewriter, not an electric. Some letters lighter, some letters darker, which tells me the person was using a hunt-and-peck method.

That’s some good, ol’ fashioned sleuthing!

There’s also an appearance of a guy in a gorilla suit. What’s more, it’s Andre, stalking the catwalks above Jewel Porter’s TV show like a hirsute Phantom of the Opera. After cutting the ropes on the lights over Porter’s head in hopes that she gets smooshed (spoiler: she doesn’t), Andre the Ape cuts and runs out of the studio and disappears into the Universal backlot. We get a great look at the false fronts of the buildings as Rick searches for the would-be killer.

Threaded throughout this episode are charming moments where Rick tries to piece together a “lost” evening. It seems ol’ Rick got a little tipsy at a party and mislaid his jacket…his sock…and much of his memory. It has nothing to do with the main plot, but it’s fun seeing Amanda and Marcia make fun of him as little by little his activities that night are revealed to him.

Rick: Why don’t you use your magic for something more useful like helping me find my jacket?

Amanda: You probably left it at Tina and Jerry’s last night. Boy, did you get blotto.

Rick: I was not blotto. I never get blotto. I was attacked. Whoever heard of Portuguese vodka? [Concerned.] Was I that bad?

Amanda: You were fine once you stopped bullfighting with the schnauzer.

Ah, it happens to the best of us, Rick!

In the “Hey, it’s him/her!” department, working the desk in Jewel Porter’s office is none other than Liz “Raquel Ochmonek” Sheridan. Sheridan should be a familiar face to TV viewers, especially fans of ALF. Sheridan made a career playing fussy, put-upon types, and this role is no different.

This has nothing to do with the show itself, but I did notice a moment where whoever digitized the original media for Tucker’s Witch failed to properly edit the image. During a scene at the Tuckers’ office, we get a shot of Amanda flanked by sprocket holes. As someone who used to work for a media preservation company, it’s a neat reminder that these shows don’t just live in the bodiless realm of the internet. They have an actual, physical form. It’s also a moment that makes me wonder if the company responsible for digitizing this show is hiring – I’m very detail-oriented!

That brings us to the end of another episode of Tucker’s Witch. Next time, we’ll be talking about episode three, “The Corpse Who Knew Too Much,” which may be one of the most overused titles in the mystery genre. Before I leave you, allow me to remind you what to do the next time you drink Portuguese vodka. In the words of Rick’s buddy, Andy, before you drink it, you want to take this much olive oil and three tablespoons of cream cheese, then you’re safe.

Words of wisdom, Andy. Words. Of. Wisdom.

Which Witch is Tucker’s Witch?

I’ve become a sucker for mysteries. I’m not sure when it happened, but at some point in the past five years, I moved away from science fiction, fantasy, and horror and fell head-over-heels in love with private eyes, police procedurals, and amateur sleuths. The format doesn’t matter - books, old radio shows, movies, television programs - just gimmie a dead body, a killer, and someone who wants to bring the killer to justice, and I’m a happy camper.

Like any addict, I’m always looking for the next high or the newest drug. I always have one eye open for an author or a TV series I’ve never heard of or seen before. Patricia Wentworth and George Baxt, for instance, are writers whose novels I’ve just discovered. Wentworth’s cozy tales of Miss Maud Silver and Baxt’s use of famous classic Hollywood actors and actresses as sleuths are scratching a lot of my itches these days. But, as I’ve said, as an addict, I need more, more, MORE!

 

So, I was intrigued when I happened across a TV show I’d never heard of before on Amazon Prime: Tucker’s Witch. It looked to be right in my wheelhouse. Set in Los Angeles, the show follows the exploits of a husband and wife private investigation team (played by Tim Matheson and Catherine Hicks) as they delve into the seedy side of SoCal life. They have a great house in Laurel Canyon that they share with Amada’s mother, Ellen (Barbara Barrie). They are assisted along the way by their firm’s sole employee, Marsha (Alfre Woodard), and by Lt. Fisk of the LAPD (Bill Morey).

There were plenty of male-female detective teams on TV in the 1970s and 1980s: McMillan & Wife, Hart to Hart, Moonlighting, Remington Steele. What set the Tuckers apart from the crowd was the fact that Amanda was a witch. Armed with psychic and telekinetic abilities, Amanda used her powers - as well as some help from her cat, Dickens - to gain insights into the cases she and Rick worked on. Unfortunately, her control of these powers wasn’t 100%. Sometimes the visions she had were a bit too vague or her ability to pick a lock with a snap of her fingers failed her at the crucial moment.

The novelty of the above combined with there only being 13 episodes meant that I could move Tucker’s Witch to the top of my viewing queue with few qualms. What I discovered in the first and second episodes, however, was a mystery in and of itself.

After a brief prologue showing the murder (more on that later), the credits sequence for the pilot episode appears. The title of the show is presented as The Good Witch of Laurel Canyon. No biggie, I thought, lots of shows change their names after getting picked up. Then, the cast is introduced, and I am completely confused. Instead of Catherine Hicks, top billing goes to Kim Cattrall. Her co-star isn’t Tim Matheson, but instead is Art Hindle. What is going on here, I wondered? Nonplussed, I nevertheless went with the flow and continued watching.

A man (played by Ted Danson) takes a woman into the elevator of an empty Los Angeles high-rise for a little late night foolin’ around. Before they reach their rooftop destination, however, the man hits the emergency stop button and kills the woman, leaving her body in the elevator.

Amanda’s dreams are filled with stories of the three so-far unsolved “elevator murders.” Dickens, Amanda’s feline familiar, tells her that there has been a fourth, but the newspapers have nothing to report. Marcia calls during breakfast to tell Rick and Amanda that there has indeed been a new victim found, and there is a Miss Barringer at the office who claims to know the killer’s identity. Her sister was the second victim, and she believes that her sister’s ex-husband, Frank Kopcheck, murdered her.

Following up on their new client’s leads, Rick and Amanda discover that the woman’s sister and the latest victim both had a keyring inscribed with the letters “DM.” These letters are the logo and trademark of a video dating business called Data Match. Rick and Amanda individually pose as singles and sign up for Data Match’s services. While there, they meet the owner of DM, Danny Kirkwood -- played by Ted Danson!

Rick figures out that each of the victims were married women who were using Data Match to meet new men. Their videotaped profiles are kept hidden in a backroom. Danny discovers that the tapes have been “borrowed” and trails Rick back to the Tucker & Tucker offices.

While Rick is on a “date” with Babs, a woman he believes may offer them more clues to solving the murders, Danny calls Amanda, asking her out on a date. Their destination? A newly constructed high-rise with an elevator that goes all the way...to hell!

Will Amanda escape from Danny’s clutches? Will Rick escape from Babs’s? Will Amanda’s powers help her or let her down?

All in all, it’s a pretty fun episode. Like Columbo, it isn't so much a whodunit as it is a howdunit. We know Danny is the murderer, but how are Rick and Amanda gonna figure it all out? There are loads of little humorous touches, such as Amanda using her powers to deal with a backyard peeping tom. The chemistry between Cattrall and Hindle is pleasant and believable, and both have the charisma for leading roles. The show may not have been groundbreaking television, but it had the promise to be entertaining. If I had seen this pilot back in the day, I would have looked forward to more adventures of the Tuckers.

Come fall of 1982, however, CBS replaced both actors with Matheson and Hicks in the roles of Rick and Amanda Tucker and re-shot the pilot as Tucker’s Witch.

Wha’ happened was Porky’s.

In between the pilot of The Good Witch of Laurel Canyon being filmed and CBS agreeing to pick it up in May of 1982, Bob Clark’s raunchy teen sex comedy was released to theaters in the United States and Canada. In that film, Ms. Cattrall portrays gym teacher “Lynn 'Lassie' Honeywell” whose turn-on is the smell of the equipment in the boy’s locker room. (I don’t write ‘em, folks, I just report on ‘em.) Alas, this turn-on was a turn-off to CBS executives. Cattrall was let go, and Hindle (who also had a small role in Porky’s) followed.

What’s interesting about being able to watch the original pilot and its reshot replacement back-to-back is seeing how the two episodes match up. Both the differences as well as the similarities are pretty intriguing. For example, in the remade episode, there are a few scenes that were trimmed or cut altogether. Camera set-ups were also different in some scenes. For every difference, however, there are plenty of things that remain the same. So much so, that you soon realize that they just reused shots when and where they could, which makes sense.

The biggest differences, obviously, are what Hindle & Cattrall and Matheson & Hicks brought to bear on their characters. While Kim Cattrall is very sexy and alluring (she is Samantha on Sex and the City, after all), Catherine Hicks has more of a girl-next-door quality. Both approaches work for my money. It would have been nice to see Cattrall get more of a run out in the role, but I love Hicks as Amanda Tucker. She has an earnestness about her that is perfect. Tim Matheson, too, has a charm and boy-next-door quality that Hindle doesn’t quite have. I like Art Hindle quite a lot. If you’ve never seen him in David Cronenberg’s The Brood, you owe it to yourself to check it out. Matheson just has more of a playful feel that makes him seem a bit more likeable. Watch the scene at Data Match when Rick is being shown around. Hindle doesn’t play it with the same devil-may-care attitude as Matheson, which I think is what you want in a private eye.

I want to continue talking Tucker’s Witch - I haven’t mentioned my love of Barbara Barrie as Amanda’s mother, Ellen, or the kickass convertible that the Tuckers tool around in - so I plan on throwing it into the rotation as a replacement for Wings every so often (which I promise we will return to soon). I’m also looking forward to writing about Tenspeed and Brown Shoe, the 1980 private detective series written by Stephen J. Cannell and starring Jeff Goldblum and Ben Vereen, as well as the Italian TV series Inspector Montalbano, based on the novels by Andrea Camillari. So, for the foreseeable future, it looks like we’ll be turning the tables on these private eyes and watching them watching them watching them...