Episode 14: They're F@#!kin' with Pepper

TONIGHT ON MURDER, SHE WROTE, we're feeling very Brian De Palma neo-noir. 

Writer and sleuth Jessica (Angela Lansbury) joins her niece, Pamela (Belinda Montgomery), who is suffering from major PTSD after her husband, Johnny, has died, so they go on a girls' weekend cruise to get her nerves right. 

You see, the husband just couldn't cope with his being... adopted? Really? That's the scandal that led to him taking his life? Ok, well, apparently that was too much for him, and now his birth mother might be back to torment Pamela into joining him in the afterlife? What a month. 

Rather than wonder who's guilty of murder, most of our time is taken up by figuring out which woman of a certain age might be hounding our guest heroine, who seems on the brink of several breakdowns. 

Perhaps it's sexy ship purser Diane (Lynda Day George)? Or is it the somewhat dotty secretaries on vacation (Vicki Lawrence playing straight man to Jo Anne Worley's scenery chewer)? A doctor (Rosemary Forsyth) with her newlywed husband (Lawrence Pressman)? They're all on board the ship that looks suspiciously like the Queen Mary. 

Between scares and near-misses, we are charmed by the steward Ramon (Paul Carafotes) and enamored with sexy geek Russell (Andrew Parks) in their fitted era-appropriate trousers. And if you want someone a little more age-appropriate for Jessica, we even have Leslie Nielsen as the crusty but fetching Captain Daniels, in the role usually held by a skeptical police detective. 

Gird your loins for some suspenseful hoochie coochie as MY JOHNNY LIES OVER THE OCEAN promises to be a rollercoaster that leads Jessica to reach for the wine bottle. Oh, Ramon!