This episode suffers from a lack of basic common sense, which is something I was worried about after the last few rocky episodes.
To summarise, a son and daughter push their father to his death due to him finding a file containing a plot to steal an expensive vase belonging to a woman who goes missing shortly after he is murdered.
This has a solid idea behind it, and I think if it was told better could have made for a decent watch. Unfortunately, the writers must have had a bit too much to drink leading up to Christmas because this episode is riddled with dumb decisions by the characters and strange decisions on the episode layout.
The priceless vase that was the motive for the murder is not given any attention in the episode until the detective is revealing how he solved it. Given the fact that I was watching this hoping to try and piece some bits together myself (as some people do when watching murder mysteries), it was highly aggravating for fake motives to be spread throughout the entire episode only for the real one to be introduced late on when you have no chance of figuring it out.
Right before the big reveal scene at the end the detective asks a young girl named Riley to stand at the spot where the murder took place and scream to see if they could hear it at the villa. For some bizarre reason that I cannot begin to try to explain, they do not allow you to see the results of this and just cut to Riley being back in the house again. This decision left me baffled, and I felt like the show was asking me to just go along with it when the detective said that everyone could not hear Riley screaming, as there was no way for the viewer to know that until he said it himself.
This could have been a bit more excusable if the method of the murder was smart and the murderers seemed competent, but unfortunately when I sat down to watch the episode with my family I laughed through the explanations of how the murder took place.
I'll start with the biggest offender first, and that is the treatment of the file. The file contains evidence of the plan to steal the vase and the motive for the murder. When the father finds the file and confronts his children about the plot, after arguing with them he casually tosses it on a bench in the garden like it's not a big deal at all. Then after the murder takes place the woman who goes missing finds the file on the bench and looks inside, getting a good look at the entire plan. This already has a problem, as this means that after he finished arguing with them and tossed the file away, the children didn't remove the file from the bench at all or destroy it, and instead opted to leave in lying around it broad daylight for anyone to read. After hitting the woman over the head and retrieving the file, you would think that the daughter would then proceed to destroy the evidence, right? Well, instead she hides it in a see-through bottle. The woman who saw the entire motive for murder and witnessed the victim's final words? They didn't make sure she was dead and instead let her roam around the island for a few days. This one file puts so many flaws in logic in this episode it's honestly astonishing. Even the existence of the file at all should be in doubt, considering this isn't Scooby-Doo and the murderers could have simply organised the theft online instead of leaving evidence lying around at every turn.
Speaking of leaving evidence lying around at every turn, they recorded the victim screaming so they could seemingly change the time that the murder took place. Clever, right? What is not so clever is carrying this phone on you during the days following the murder and not destroying it. Sure, it would look suspicious, but not nearly as bad as having a track of the victim screaming on your phone.
Luckily for the murderers, the victim was just as much of an idiot as them. During his precious final words, when he can say anything to provide the two listeners information on his murder (perhaps who pushed him or a motive), he says "It's behind you". A line so vague it could be literally anything, and it takes the police team over half the episode to figure out. Unfortunately it takes the audience even longer since the vase he's referring to isn't addressed until the solving scene. Would it really have been so hard to say "I was murdered by my children"? He clearly thinks about what he's saying too, because he pauses halfway through saying it to think. This one line basically turned an easy solve into an impossible one for no reason.
I've seen people complaining online about it not feeling like Christmas, but given that it's set on a hot Caribbean island, I'm fine with that. Cultures are different and it may be celebrated differently there (I'm not caught up on my Caribbean Christmas celebrations enough to say for certain).
To summarise, there's a motive that isn't introduced until the murder is essentially solved, murderers who seem to leave evidence lying around whenever they have the opportunity, and a victim who can't be bothered enough to help to solve his own murder properly. I didn't even mention that the woman who hears the victim's final words, finds the file full of evidence and goes missing has a fiance who takes up a large chunk of runtime and plays next to no part in the story besides constantly asking the detective how things are going.
I have watched this entire show up to this point and have not wrote any reviews before this one, as I never felt any need to. Each episode felt like a light hearted murder mystery for you to play along with and try to solve, and not something that needs a review as you knew what you were getting. Sure, some murder stories were weaker than others, but they all had a logic to them, and criminals with motives you could pick up on and slowly piece together throughout the episode. This episode, to put it bluntly, has none of that.
This episode is now what I consider to be the worst of the entire show, and is bad enough to make me come onto imdb less than an hour after watching it and write this review. I highly recommend you do not watch it, or if you plan to, watch it from another room while doing something else.
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