The Case of the Skin-Deep Scandal

The Skin-Deep Scandal is an interesting installment.

I’m not sure what Della’s doing fishing; she never liked it during the television series, as specifically mentioned in at least one episode (The Scarlet Scandal). She could have decided she liked it later on in life, or maybe she was bored and decided to give it a try and had beginner’s luck, but more likely, the writers didn’t know about her preferences and just thought they’d throw it in as a gag that she caught fish and the guys didn’t. It’s cliché, but admittedly amusing.

I see Ken got a haircut. I liked how pretty and long his hair was before. I’m a sucker for soft hair, and the more of it there is, the softer it is!

I’m glad that they didn’t extend the scene of Morgan Fairchild’s nasty character Alana hanging out with her lover. I wonder whether the scene really cut off there or if MeTV just made a cut there. It looked a little like an unnatural cut when it moved to the next scene. Either way, it was perfectly welcome.

It was immediately clear that Alana would be the murder victim as soon as she appeared and started being a jerk to everyone she came in contact with, but I was confused over who would be the defendant. Sometimes they make that just as clear, but this time it was murky until after she was dead and her poor husband was implicated.

I liked him; something about him reminded me of Joseph Campanella as he appears in the 1990s and 2000s. Poor guy, being married to such a nasty person and still loving her. He’s either really stupid or else he saw some decency in her. And he doesn’t seem stupid.

And for once we have a girl who does not become a girlfriend! P.I. Lauren Kent is one nasty cookie from the moment she meets Ken. It’s kind of fun to watch them try to work together, especially since there’s no romantic attraction. But she gets even nastier when she reveals to the audience that she’s not working alone, but for the murderer, and she’s willing to become an accessory by leading Ken out so he can be killed. She gets her just desserts when the murderer decides to kill her instead.

The murderer, by the way, is totally off his nut. It is very sad that he loved Alana so much and she just used him all over the place. But for him to decide she has to die, and still say he loves her in court, he can’t be a very sane man. He knows what love is? Um, yeah, I doubt it. I’d say in reality it’s the defendant who knows what love is.

I figured Alana’s age thing was just a fraud to get publicity, so I wasn’t too surprised when that was the case. But apparently, according to her chemist, the Ingenue formula really did work and just wasn’t ready. If they knew it worked, I have to wonder why they’d have to release a version that didn’t work. It seems more like the murderer just wasn’t making sense again.

Lieutenant Brock was fun in this movie. I like how congenial he’s become to Perry and Ken. To my remembrance, he did not start out that way when they first started using the character.

The ending of the movie just made me raise an eyebrow. Perry and Ken are so jealous of Della catching all the fish last time that they decide they’re going to tie her up and leave her like that all day long? To me that goes beyond a simple tease and is getting pretty nasty and mean. But then again, I’ve never liked teasing in general and I often think Perry’s (and Della’s) teases towards Paul in the series aren’t very nice. From Paul’s reactions, he seems to think so too.

Along those lines, I did finally see the missing epilogue to The Vanishing Victim episode, and it made me just as annoyed as I figured it would. Maybe Perry was trying to teach Paul to give some money to charity instead of spending it all on himself, but I really don’t think he had a right at all to just grab the check and give it to Steve when Paul just thought Perry was letting him have it. The only thing I liked about the scene was getting to see more Steve.

But anyway. This movie has some interesting scenes, and I liked that this time the token girl wasn’t a love interest, but overall I didn’t like it as much as I’ve liked some others.