“I Wouldn’t Want to Give You Readers the Impression That Bodies Just Wash Up At My Feet.”
I was hoping. I really was. Even though the first of the Diagnosis: Murder reunion movies was as bad as my memory of it had been, I was truly hoping that Without Warning, the second post series movie and final outing for these characters, was going to be better. Sadly, it isn’t.
The premise this time involves a woman who washes ashore in the beach. Dr. Mark Sloan (Dick Van Dyke) is present when her body is found. As his son, Steve (real life son Barry Van Dyke) starts investigating, the trail leads him to a migrant camp and a deadly disease that could become a pandemic. With all that medical drama, there’s plenty of story for Amanda Bentley (Victoria Rowell) and Jessie Travis (Charlie Schlatter). We also get the return of young resident doctor Alex Smith (Barry’s son Shane Van Dyke) who had been in a handful of episodes of seasons 7 and 8. Plus, there’s reporter Ellen Sharp (Kimberly Quinn) who reappears from a season 8 episode.
Obviously, this storyline is going to hit differently today than it did in 2002 thanks to Covid. However, I remember not really liking it even back then. It’s pretty stressful no matter when you watch it, and I was sure someone we knew was going to get sick. Yes, watching them figure it out did make for a good medical mystery.
However, if that were the only problem with the movie, I could mostly move on. Sadly, it is far from the only problem.
There’s way too much story for the hour and a half running time. As a result, we get some resolution to storylines dumped on us in act three with no buildup. Honestly, I’d forgotten about that storyline. But when they just dropped that on us, it bothered me again. There’s some interesting stuff in the other mystery storyline, with some deducting I enjoyed. But it wasn’t enough to make up for the other short comings.
If you thought the last movie had lectures, wait until you get a load of this one. We’ve got racism (again) in spades. Then there’s the ethics of medical testing and new drug development. And migrants/farm workers. Yes, racism could cover that one, but it really needs its own category. The result is this gives Mark Sloan a chance to lecture multiple characters. Some of these issues are things that might be interesting to address, but not with the strawmen that are set up here. And, it was time that could have been used to better develop the mystery.
We do get more lighthearted scenes in this movie than the last one, but most of them come at the expense of Steve. Yes, he’s been the target of jokes in the past, but it wasn’t nearly as painful as it was here. It didn’t help that they made him a complete idiot when it comes to detecting. Yes, Mark is always the one solving the cases on the show, but Steve was never this clueless.
And the less said about the romance of this movie the better.
We do get some scenes with the characters together and in familiar sets, which I appreciated. And the actors are all fine at bringing those characters to life.
It’s a shame to see the legacy of this show ruined by these extremely poor follow up films. If you are a fan who wants to see a much better continuation, track down the tie-in novels. There are eight of them, and they were written by one of the show’s former writers and producers. Lee Goldberg picked up the novels after season six of the show, which was when he left. But they actually feel like Diagnosis: Murder stories. My only critic is that, after the first book, they focus a bit more on Mark than the ensemble. But it’s a minor complaint.
If you are a fan of Diagnosis: Murder, I’m warning
you away from Without Warning.
It’s sad that such a fun series has to go out on this note.
