Starscream

I've never understood it when people spend so much time and energy on the bottom surface of their displays. It's the kind of thing that someone will only notice up close and, unless it's some sort of incredible tile mosaic, it's not going to move the needle. I'm the kind of person that really enjoys gaudy gingerbread houses, the more candy thrown on there, the better, I say. So I actually liked the first one the best, but I knew the second one would win and had no problem with it because it was fantastic as well.

Seriously. It really bothers me how much emphasis they've been putting on "Movies" lately when the mysteries are clearly what makes the channel stand-out from regular Hallmark Channel. I get the feeling that they may be closing up shop on Drama channel in the future and this is a side effect of such a move. The fact that the last Signed, Sealed, Delivered movie and JL Family Ranch 2 were originally intended to air on Drama and ended up on Mysteries got me thinking that Drama channel is on borrowed time. The huge slate of boring drama movies on HMM lately has me convinced it's true. I enjoyed Picture Perfect, so I'm sad we won't get another one. I thought it was much better than Matchmaker and Morning Show. I was never a big Hailey Dean fan, but at least they churned out a bunch of those for the people who like it. It's kind of telling to me though that they air Mystery Woman marathons seemingly monthly while Hailey Dean marathons are far less frequent.

I was mad that they ditched the cool theme song. I'm not sure why Hallmark chose to remove unique features of this series like the theme song and "Murder, She Baked" while still trying to act like it's the same series.

You're forgetting: Secretary Jarvis, Adam Eshel, Eli David, Tom Morrow and Mike Franks. It's also a bit unfair to dismiss all the redshirts (like Pacci, Langer and E.J.'s underlings) because they're almost universally male. I'm really not enjoying the show lately. It's like they want the viewing audience to despair more than they are when faced with their current situations in real life. Three episodes in a row now they've killed off a friend of NCIS and added in a main character departure to boot. No more PSA episodes this season, please! This show is in dire need of a Tony or a young McGee or a young Bishop, somebody to inject some nice heart into the program. They're all becoming hardened like Gibbs.

I assumed they already did it based on the look in the bullpen at the end of the episode. I'll join the chorus in admitting great disappointment in not seeing the Dolly Parton tree.

Three schedule changes in a month... Adding Little House during the day may be the most appalling change yet. 😒

The best part was when he refused the beer at the end since T.C. was a teetotaler. As far as I'm concerned, Tom Selleck must not appear unless he's playing Robin Masters.

I liked it but would have enjoyed it more without the huge banner on the screen at all times. I was surprised how long it took to find the body of Zee's doctor friend (and that he didn't look like a victim on Bones at that point).

I think Julianna's the only one I couldn't tolerate winning. Lorenzo and Megan have both put out many high quality efforts and Eva has been solid if unspectacular. Julianna seems like she's had more bad bakes than good bakes and has skated by because someone else screwed up worse that day.

Anything's possible when you consider how original Magnum explained how Higgins was really Robin Masters despite all evidence to the contrary. I've always rejected the Higgins=Robin Masters theory for various reasons, and I don't actually believe this Magnum is Robin, but I am game to entertain theories on the subject.

Did they mention the death of his dad and all that jazz in an early episode? I was thinking they did but it's been so long since I've seen those early first season episodes that I'm probably mistaken. Also, Magnum spending so much time out making calls from his surfski feeds into my conspiracy theory that he is the real Robin Masters and he was using that opportunity to set up the transfer to Higgins.

What I don't understand is why they bothered to bring back Robin Daniels only to dump him for this Nick character. I personally think Niall Matter is the posterboy for bland Hallmark leading men and would have preferred to stick with the Robin Daniels character.

She obviously wasn't around that time he pulled a "Palmer."

I don't know if it was sitting under the hot TV lights or what but Melissa's plaid decoration was messy as hell by the time she had won and they did the close-up of her cake. It wasn't just fingerprints. I thought the other two were more impressive on the outside (part of it is better color combos to begin with) and she benefited from using a unique flavor combo.

I thought Ruby Herring 2 was a huge improvement on the first one and I think the chemistry between the two leads is fine. They're no Wagner and Polaha, but I can't think of any other current pairing on HMM that is really much better. Morning Show and Hailey Dean are abysmal in that regard (Kellie Martin has more chemistry with Viv Leacock than the guy playing her new fiance). The real failing with Ruby Herring is the supporting cast of characters. Ruby's family was DOA in the original movie and the newsroom crew isn't much better. I think Derek and her new bff were the only decent choices. If they can bolster the supporting cast better, I think the series could be perfectly good.

Yeah, I don't know why Hallmark would be giving the Mystery 101 crew a hard time about ratings. Hailey Dean and Morning Show are the stinkers, ratings wise. I was surprised Darrow and Darrow had another movie considering the past ratings.

Yeah, I really get a vibe that these two wanna do it. Most of the pairings in these mystery movies seem like they could barely cope with holding hands. The most recent set of Aurora Teagarden movies was interesting to me because they seemed to go out of their way to pile on the PDA with Aurora and Nick, yet Aurora and Martin looked like they really were adhering to her mother's antebellum courting rules. Amy's dad (Robin Thomas) has been in a lot of stuff, but I'll always remember him as Prosecutor Burton "Death Row" Hawkins from the earliest episodes of Matlock. One thing that I wanted to point out, which I adored, was Amy having all the murder weapons from Clue on display behind her office desk. I don't remember if she had them in the first movie but they weren't there in the second movie. Her necklace is a Professor Plum player token.

Diagnosis Murder was dropped when they brought back Psych.

Thom can just write about the exploits of Agents Kellie Knight and Rick Towers. Most importantly, he still has Pimmy Jalmer.

My first thought when that happened was how would he not know that it was Delilah? Then I thought, "duh, she can't walk." I thought this episode -- with Delilah finding out what a real house of horrors that apartment is -- would serve as the impetus for them to finally move into a house. I'm not sure if I've ever seen anything nerdier than somebody drawing a heart with a cupid's arrow around an IP address.

I was wondering if they might go with the angle of the dad sexually abusing "Betty" and that's why she started abusing drugs. The father is "out of the picture" because the father is also the grandfather.

Considering that most of these movies are set in Seattle or Seattle-adjacent locations, the demographics are pretty fair. Setting those Hailey Dean movies in Atlanta? That's more of a challenge for Hallmark casting people and one they pretty much fail. I'm constantly remarking to anyone who'll listen that watching these Hallmark movies is like watching old Hollywood movies from the studio era with all the same actors in movie after movie.

I don't remember what they did with Die Hard, but I remember vividly that it was "yippee ki yay, Mr. Falcon!" in Die Hard 2 (Die Hard in an airport).

I was actually more irritated with Maggie for her attitude towards Teddy than blabbing about Catherine. She should be begging Teddy not to report her, not badgering her about telling Hunt.

They just need Teddy to go into labor. That little plot device she's carrying will be full term by the time the show returns.