Crossword Mysteries: Terminal Descent

After volunteering to participate in a crossword solving competition with a new supercomputer, crossword puzzle editor Tess Harper finds herself swept into the investigation of the bizarre murder of a tech CEO, who heads into an elevator, speaks to it, asking for the parking garage, and the elevator actually answers him. But instead of going down, it starts ascending. As it plummets he cries out to the interactive computer programming that runs the elevator, BB, but it hits the bottom.

Death by elevator makes a change from a stabbing or poisoning. This is a decent, if a little convoluted mystery that made it hard to keep with the characters, addition to the excellent Crossword Mystery starring cutie Lacey Chabert and Brennan Elliott.

Tess is so irritating. Does she need to prove something, or make herself seem important? Is she competing with Logan? She wanders alone into dangerous places, playing detective. She learns important info and doesn't tell Logan, her detective friend. They went together to the hospital hoping to find out who the murder victim had been visiting, and yet when Tess later discovers that it was his former business partner, she keeps that info all to herself entirely. Nor does she tell Logan what she later learns about another potential suspect, Jessie. Tess comes across to me as nosy and needy, not a busy crossword editor who occasionally is helpful in police investigations.

On the upside, I was interested in the premise - computer versus organic brain in solving nuanced puzzles. I was also interested in the privacy invasion aspects of the government deal.

My wife and i like Lacey very much. We like all her movies. I read a critique of her on a past movie. A man said she giggles throughout all her movies and it irritated him. I never noticed. I looked for it here and he was right. My God, she was giggling constantly throughout the movie. Constant, non stop giggling. I heard some actors read these review sites. If she does, i hope she takes it as a respectful observation and addresses it. Many actors have acting quirks. Brad Pitt has to eat throughout every movie, Dicapprio has to smoke all movie long, Selleck cant do anything without chomping on a cigar, etc I guess Lacey has to giggle all movie long. Wish she would cut back on it.

This is as light as a murder mystery can get, but I think that's what most viewers of this genre want. The writers are obviously holding back in the relationship arc because they don't want to kill off the series, which is why I can't go higher than a 7 out of 10.

Lacey steals the show, even with her persistent giggle. She's perfect for this genre and her costar does well alongside her.

I have enjoyed the Crossword Mystery series but was disappointed with this new episode. Maybe it was rushed through production, or maybe they couldn't do retakes or shoot other scenes because of COVID, who knows, but my overall impression of this (like another HMM movie that recently aired) was that it seemed incomplete. It was still a good story and the actors fine, tho Logan's constant "Interesting" gets annoying, I gave this a 7, barely.

Let us hope the writers work in some better dialogue and we get a little more suspense in future "Crosswords".