Doing it Wrong: 27 Seconds at a Time

More important than today’s doing it wrong is the fact that the ENTIRE RUN of “Murder, She Wrote” is available on Netflix Instant. Do yourself a favor and click “close” now, go to Netflix, and settle in. It’s no doubt a bajillion degrees where you are (when I left the house at 6 o’clock this morning, it was like walking directly into someone else’s exhale); you’re not going outside any time soon, and doesn’t Cabot Cove look cool and inviting? (Of course, the two-hour premiere isn’t set in Cabot Cove, it’s set in New York, where Jessica has to investigate the murder of a man in a Sherlock Holmes costume while also making appearances on “Donahue” — “Donahue”! — because she wrote a book that everyone absolutely loves but then she almost gets mugged in an alley near a theatre somewhere in a part of New York that I don’t think exists anymore because of Rudy Guilliani, but then she’s rescued by a young black man because it’s 1984 and America liked to learn lessons about tolerance in unexpected ways from the safety of its living room. Still, Burt Convey’s in it! Oh, and Brian Keith of TV’s “Family Affair”!)

As far as today’s Doing it Wrong, I’ve got this:

It’s only 27 seconds — like maybe he filmed it on his cell phone in between cases. And his gaze is just a skosh too much to the right, like he’s looking at something over your shoulder. Is it a co-worker, tracking how much time you spend on YouTube? Or is it fortune hunter Terry Jones, played by Richard Hatch in the second episode of “Murder, She Wrote,” titled “Deadly Lady”? Who can say? But you’ve got 22 more seconds to figure it out. It’s also not great that this particular bankruptcy attorney decides to throw stones from his glass house by maligning most of the collections industry.

But anyway, in the third episode of the first season of “Murder, She Wrote,” Jessica travels to San Francisco (where it’s only 56 degrees today and pardon me while I make a rude gesture in the direction of the West Coast) and learns that her niece Victoria’s would-be actor fiancé Howard Griffin (played by Jeff Conaway, RIP) isn’t working in life insurance as he pretended! I mean, you guys!!!