The Unfettered Critic – November 2024

AN INCREASINGLY COMMON TV TROPE has ripened into our favorite TV trope.

We hope that provocative sentence has prompted you to ask two questions. #1: What the heck is a trope? and #2: What favorite TV trope is that?

To answer your first question, a trope is an overused device, or stereotype. To your second question, we respond with a third question, the type of which you’d more likely expect to hear from a door-to-door “solictor:”

“Have you heard the words of The Magical Investigator?”

That’s our name for the exploits of a non-professional detective whose innate sleuthing skills sooo impress the local constabulary that the real cops—the licensed law enforcement officials—can’t resist taking advantage of his/her talents.

Considering that these savants operate freely without legit credentials, what else could they be but “magical”?

Magical Investigators have snooped around for longer than you’d think: some for more than half a century (think The Hardy Boys), others for just a few decades (like the protagonists of Murder, She Wrote, Remington Steele, Castle, Monk, The Mentalist, etcetera).

Their magical skills vary. Some, like Richard Castle and Murder She Wrote’s Jessica Fletcher, are clever writers who easily can dissect a tricky plot. Others, like conmen Remington Steele and The Mentalist’s Patrick Jane, know all about scams. And then there’s Monk, who actually was a crack licensed investigator until the murder of his wife so exacerbated his neuroses that he no longer could hold a real job. Still, his deductive skills remained sharp enough that the cops would have been idiots not to employ him as a “consultant.”

When carefully produced, these shows are irresistible. When they’re not, or when they’re blatantly based on similar shows—we take them off our “most arresting” list.

Magical Investigators abound, of course, in current series, too. Only Murders in the Building (on Hulu), winner of several Emmys for its great cast (Steve Martin and Martin Short in a TV series? Lucky viewers!) and tends to feature amazing guest stars (Meryl Streep! Nathan Lane!). Then there’s Elsbeth, which debuted last year on CBS, featuring Carrie Preston in the role she originated on The Good Wife. Elsbeth’s sort of Monkish, and if a celeb’s featured in an episode, you can bet that’s your killer. You’ll recognize that as a trope within a trope, lifted not so lightly from the classic fictional cop Columbo (The famous guest star always was guilty). Murders and Elsbeth are quite funny, but what with Elsbeth being a female Monk/Columbo, and Steve and Marty never quite leaving their established comedic personas long enough to “become” the fictional characters they’re playing, they’re not always “must see TV.”

As for really recent pilots, High Potential (ABC) is about a crime scene cleaner (a specially trained janitor) with a genius-level IQ. That set-up might make for good procedural fodder, but it’s pretty predictable. Still, we’re giving it a chance.

Finally, we’re not yet sure about the new Matlock (CBS). Surprisingly, it’s not a retread of the old Andy Griffith series, although the main character Madeline “Matty” Matlock (played by Kathy Bates) mentions that show a lot. She claims that when women reach a certain age, they achieve a level of invisibility that aids in sleuthing. She uses this superpower to work her way into employment at a high-powered NYC law firm, ostensibly to erase personal debt and provide financial support for her grandson. But by the end of the pilot episode, you realize that’s not why she’s there at all…

We’re hoping that her show’s continuing plotline, like her magical investigating, isn’t invisible as well!