“500 Homes for Sale; I Had to Buy One Right Next Door to the Sloans.”
As I’ve been saying while reviewing the various seasons of Diagnosis: Murder, I hadn’t watched the show much after it ended until I started rewatching my DVDs. My memory from back then was that season eight was disappointing. I was curious to see what I would think of it twenty plus years later.
If you’ve missed the show, it starred Dick Van Dyke as Dr. Mark Sloan, who works at Community General hospital, a teaching hospital in Los Angeles. For a doctor, he sure finds himself getting involved in quite a few murders. Fortunately for him, his son, Steve (played by real life son Barry Van Dyke) is a detective with the LA police department. Rounding out the regular cast are Dr. Jessie Travis (Charlie Schlatter) and coroner Dr. Amanda Bentley (Victoria Rowell). Since Community General is a teaching hospital, we also have Alex Smith (played by Barry’s son Shane Van Dyke), a current medical student.
Over the course of this season, Dr. Sloan solves the murder of the woman he hired to redecorate his office. When Steve is in the hospital after an accident, he witnesses a murder, only he can’t find any evidence of it the next day. Dr. Sloan joins a reality TV show in an effort to find a killer. Dr. Sloan investigates a case with ties to his father, who walked out on him when he was a boy. Both Jesse and Amanda find themselves in the running for an inheritance, but only the last person alive can claim it. And in the final episode, a documentary crew (made up mostly of Barry’s other kids) come to film about the disappearance of a nurse twenty-five years ago.
My memory of this season was thinking that, if the show had gotten another season, Charlie Schlatter would have been worried about his job. That was because I remembered Jessie being missing from a number of episodes. Watching it this time, what I noticed is that Victoria Rowell’s Amanda is also missing from a number of episodes. In fact, there are only five episodes where all four of the main characters (who are all still in the opening credits) are in the episode. And, for some of those episodes, Jessie and Amanda are hardly there. Honestly, one thing I always loved at the show was these four characters and their relationships. Watching them work together to solve the murder of the week was part of the fun. No wonder this season isn’t as good for me. It is missing that key element.
Helping to fill the gap a little is Shane Van Dyke’s Alex Smith. I still wonder if he would have become a series regular had the series gotten another season. I would have hated to see him taking the spot from either Jessie or Amanda. Mind you, I actually do like his character and thought he did a great job on the show. And if he was there with the others, I thought he brought a fun dynamic to the core four. Mind you, he was only in six episodes this season, so he definitely wasn’t the driving force between the others not being around as much.
I’m very curious why it was that we saw so much less of Jessie and Amanda this season. As I said, they were still in the opening credits. I’m wondering if it was a budget thing. This wouldn’t be the first time that a cast member vanished from the show because of budget, after all.
Because of the cast changes, the show relies a lot more on Barry Van Dyke to carry the show. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s not the dynamic I tune in to watch.
And let me make it very plain that all five of the actors I’ve named so far do a great job on screen. It’s just not the dynamic I want when I want to watch Diagnosis: Murder.
Some of these episodes are only okay as mysteries as well. We get more stories where we know who the killer is early on and we are watching to see how Dr. Mark Sloan can figure it out and prove it. That works sometimes, but it feels drawn out others. I think the writers had to find ways to fill time without the regular character interactions, and it hurt the show.
I didn’t recognize as many guest stars this season as I often do. The seasons of stunt casting are definitely behind us at this point. Still, I found some rather fun guest stars, some of them in early roles. This was 2000 to 2001, after all. Those I recognized were K Callan, Sean O'Bryan, Joel McHale, Raphael Sbarge, Chad Michael Murray, Cloris Leachman, and Anthony Tyler Quinn. The guest stars were good as well.
To be clear, I’m not saying that season 8 is bad. It’s just not good either. It’s decidedly average.
The DVD set I have is six discs with all twenty-two episodes from the season on it. There aren’t any extras, and it has the show’s original full frame and stereo.
I do wonder how this season would have been if they had known this was going to be the final season. I definitely think we would have gotten what aired as the final episode earlier in the season and gotten episodes twenty and twenty-one as the season enders. Would we have seen more of Jessie and Amanda?
And yes, I know there are two movies made after the season finished. I’ll look at them next summer, but I am looking at this as the official end of the series (mainly since I don’t remember liking those movies at all).
Since this show usually followed the typical pattern of shows from the 90’s with little carrying over from week to week, I did find it interesting that one of the episodes was a direct sequel to a season seven episode.
And we get two very special episodes, one talking about body image and one about the dangers of gambling. They were very much lectures at times, but they did manage to still have decent mysteries.
There are some episodes here that fans will enjoy, so they’ll find it worth it to watch season eight. But if you haven’t started Diagnosis: Murder yet, you’ll definitely want to start with an earlier season.
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