Crossword Mysteries: Terminal Descent

Crossword puzzle maker Tess Harper (Lacey Chabert) enters a competition with a supercomputer. Its creator, tech mogul Morgan Daniels, seems to be killed by his own AI creation. Police detective Logan O'Connor leads the investigation and Tess keeps getting involved.

There isn't enough romantic chemistry between Tess and Logan. They don't spend much screen time together and they don't have heat when they do. He even has a new hot female partner. If this franchise is to continue this way, it would be more compelling to follow Tess doing the investigations all by herself. I like her going into the biker bar and I like her using her book smarts. She should become a Sherlock Holmes type character without the need of a Watson. It may be a rule that Hallmark mysteries always need to have a couple but this needs an exemption from that rule.

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.

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".

7/10 - classic Hallmark Movies & Mysteries light-hearted fun is paired with a fun techy twist

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.