Functional Relationship in Crime Shows: Jessica & Frank Fletcher

Lansbury & Husband

A typical motif in drama and sitcoms occurs when the main character, often female, discovers that her dead husband was unfaithful. Sometimes, a grown child of the "other" relationship shows up. There's a lot of weeping and yelling followed by reconciliation and acceptance. Oh, look how advanced and forward thinking she is! 

I hate it. It is so entirely unbelievable and falls into the category of imputing to the dead whatever sorrow and well-meaning intentions the living wish to force on them. 

Hey, lady, maybe your husband was just a jerk!

In a Murder, She Wrote episode, Jessica is contacted by a woman desperate to help her son. The women (falsely, we discover) tells Jessica that the boy is Frank's son. She and Frank met in Korea, and he strayed. A fellow soldier of Frank gives Jessica a speech about how hard it was for soldiers away from home. 

She listens. She isn't entirely dismissive. But she is completely devastated. It isn't so much the straying that bothers her. It is that she thought she knew her husband. Her reaction is entirely believable. Not only would her husband have strayed and kept that secret to himself, he would have kept a life-changing occurrence (his child) from her. And he simply isn't the kind of man to abandon his own child. 

Did she even know him? 

Her entire world is rocked. She doesn't give herself a "go, girl!" speech and shake it off. Although the matter is cleared up at the end, the script leaves the impression that she would have been faced with a different dead husband than the one she thought she married, and she wouldn't have altered the dead to meet her expectations. She would have had to come to terms with a truth that might re-form her life. 

She's Jessica! She's tough! She can do it! But it isn't a cute blip--Oh, I forgive him. It's a foundation-rocking event.