Wed 3 Aug 2022
A TV Episode Review: WOMEN’S MURDER CLUB “Welcome to the Club†(2007).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , TV mysteries[3] Comments
WOMEN’S MURDER CLUB “Welcome to the Club†ABC, 12 October 2007 (Season 1, Episode 1). Angie Harmon (Inspector Lindsay Boxer), Laura Harris (Deputy D.A. Jill Bernhardt), Paula Newsome (M.E. Claire Washburn), Aubrey Dollar (reporter Cindy Thomas). Based on the characters in a series of books by James Patterson. Director: Greg Yaitanes.
This first episode was not the pilot for the series. That was a made-for-TV movie based on the first book in the series, 1st to Die, and which starred Tracy Pollan. (There are now 22 novels and two novellas in Patterson’s series, many of which were co-written by other authors.) The title of this episode is a bit misleading. It is assumed that reporter Cindy Thomas (for the fictional San Francisco Register) will be joining the other three in the “club,†but there is no club per se. In fact when she asks the others if there is a club, there is an immediate chorus of “noâ€s.
No matter. A club it is. Thomas introduced to the others as a fellow reporter to the woman who dies in front of Inspector Lindsay Boxer in dramatic fashion, falling from the top of a building where there are to meet and onto a car. As it turns out, she was also shot to death. The question is, what was the story she was working on, and what was she going to tell Lindsay about it?
The case is tackled and solved in the usual TV businesslike fashion. Filling the rest of the hour is a lot of subplots involving the various characters’ love lives, including Lindsay’s news that her ex has been promoted over her partner on the force and is now her new boss. The episode ends with the discovery that a serial killer that the women thought had been put away is now back, a vicious psychopath whose M.O. includes sewing the lips of his victims together before leaving them to be found, hence his nickname, the “Kiss-Me-Not” killer. I assume this will form the underlying story arc for the remainder of the season.
The series ran for just the one season, though, from October 12, 2007, to May 13, 2008. Of the four leading actors, I presume the primary focus was on Angie Harmon, whose striking brunette features make her the obvious choice for the role. Overall then, entertaining in a solid, workmanlike fashion, but without the extra “oomph†that would make the show must watching. (I have not read any of the books.)
August 4th, 2022 at 7:10 pm
Lack of “Oomph” is more than a fair description of the books and the series, both of which feel more like great ideas than great pay offs.
I can see the appeal to a certain reader looking for something to read a short chapter a night with a bit of mystery — nothing too challenging — some attractive heroines, a touch of soap, the same attraction of the series, but on television the superficiality shows.
Patterson said recently he basically publishes his outlines. It reads like that, and in the case of this series it looks like that.
August 4th, 2022 at 9:30 pm
Looking at the last sentence of this review, it occurs to me to add that I have never read *anything* by Patterson. I never had the feeling that I’ve missed anything I shouldn’t have, but I’d hate to be proven wrong about that.
August 4th, 2022 at 9:32 pm
And by the way, Angie Harmon and Mark Harmon are not related. I have read that they have also never appeared in the same movie or TV episode together, though if they were. I’d love to know about it. And watch it.
I wonder if they’re ever met. I assume that by now they would have.