Teresa Reviews A Murder Is Announced (2018)
Teresa reviews A Murder Is Announced (2018), episodes 21-24 of “Ms. Ma: Nemesis,” and cheers the appearance of the real Ms. Ma, bestselling novelist.
(c)2024 by Teresa Peschel
Agatha adjacent: 1 revolver
You’ll recognize the central idea from Announced, but that’s all you’ll get.
Quality of episodes: 3½ revolvers
Too much plot stuffed into too little space to do justice to Announced and Ms. Ma’s story.
Read more of Teresa’s Agatha Christie movie reviews at Peschel Press.
Also, follow Teresa’s discussion of these movie on her podcast.
If you’re familiar with the concept of Chekov’s Gun, whether in film, text, or on stage, you know that if a gun (or anything else dramatic) is announced with fanfare early on, that item should, very dramatically, show up later.
We know Ms. Ma had stolen the identity of a reclusive mystery novelist. In episode five, there was a bizarre scene where Ms. Ma found herself hustled into a luxury hideaway by a suspiciously dressed woman who could have been her twin. This woman told her a vague story accompanied by the promise of seclusion, freedom from outside interference like social media and newspapers, all her needs catered to, and great floods of time to write her next great book. At the time, I thought it was a hallucination on the part of our Ms. Ma, who had indeed been struggling as she fled the prison asylum, reentered society under a false name, and hallucinated regular visits from her dead daughter.
I was wrong! That was not our Ms. Ma, trying to get justice for her dead daughter and clear her name, fantasizing about being set up in a luxury hideaway. That was the real novelist, Ma Ji-Won. The mystery woman was our own Ms. Ma, doing her darndest to keep the real novelist out of her hair and under wraps so she couldn’t interfere.
And so, in Chekov-approved fashion, Novelist Ma appears on schedule to cause trouble for Ms. Ma. To keep them separate, I’ll refer to them as Novelist Ma and Ms. Ma. If you’re paying close attention, the actress playing both characters works hard to distinguish them. Even when they’re dressed identically, Novelist Ma swings her hips, wears her hair loose and flowy, swaggers, struts, is loud, rude, and abrasive. Our Ms. Ma, having learned the benefit of not being noticed, does none of those things.
The sole person to spot Novelist Ma is the blind, bedridden mobster, Jang Il-Koo. He listens to what his ears tell him and remembers the rude, abrasive, unpleasant woman who’d interviewed him years before. That woman is standing next to his bedside, not our Ms. Ma. He informs Ko Mal-Koo who then, in a dramatic scene worthy of Chekov, points out to Eun-Ji that if she’s seeing Ms. Ma, then who’s the other Ms. Ma she’s talking to on the phone?
Novelist Ma is in Rainbow Village not just because she’s trying to solve who stole her identity. Her dream luxury hideaway has become a prison where she can’t write a single word. She escapes, probably by stealing the Door Dash guy’s car which she abandons on the street to block traffic, and while reveling in dessert has the waitress approach her and ask if she’s in town to solve that town’s mysterious crimes. Huh? Novelist Ma is nonplussed but she’s capable of listening when it suits her. She gets the story, does some research, and arrives in Rainbow Village to confront her doppelgänger.
Our Ms. Ma can’t have Novelist Ma running around loose. Novelist Ma has the upper hand. She makes her demands, wanting to know everything that happened, especially the details of the murders our Ms. Ma solved. Those stories are inspiring. They might become her next novel; they might even become a major bestseller. She’s got major doubts about her writing talent. Her debut novel was a blockbuster, her second novel not nearly so well-received, but what should she do to overcome her sophomore slump? If she uses (and I do mean use) our Ms. Ma, she’ll be back on top.
The more you see of Novelist Ma, the better you understand why mob boss Jang Il-Koo has a low opinion of her. She’s blackmailing our Ms. Ma. When she learns that becoming Woo-Joon’s guardian means inheriting his fortune to manage she signs on immediately. When she learns the truth about our Ms. Ma’s husband, she plans to blackmail him too. She’ll be rich even if she never pens another bestseller.
So what does this have to do with A Murder Is Announced? Not very much! This part of the plot was underwritten to the point that I’m not even sure if some of the rival librarians one town over have names. Rival librarians? Yep! Our Rainbow Village library ladies are hot on the trail of a special award plaque but to earn it, they must defeat their rivals in a mafia murder game. They arrive at a mansion with our Ms. Ma and Chief Jo, while Novelist Ma lurks in the background, and confront their opposites. Ms. Cha gets a short scene and then vanishes. Ms. Do, next to her, wearing a multi-strand, big, fake pearl choker, hangs around longer.
Chief Jo gets the murder party going, the lights go out early, a man appears waving a flashlight and a handgun, shots are fired, and as you’d expect, Ms. Do is wounded in her ear, and the mystery man is found dead on the floor. He’s revealed to be the blackmailing, shaggy-haired Ahn Seong-Tae from The Mirror Crack’d episodes. Where has he been since he disappeared after his wife and partner in crime, Bae Hee-Jae, was poisoned? Who knows. Novelist Ma strongarms our Ms. Ma into a bet. Whoever solves the case first wins and the loser disappears forever.
Complication upon complication ensues, none of which has anything to do with Announced’s plot. There are hints, particularly about corporate double-dealing and potentially disinherited relatives, but they come to nothing.
What’s important is that because our Ms. Ma must cope with her double, she realizes the pearl-choker-wearing Ms. Do is also not who she claims to be.
In the meantime, Eun-Ji forces Inspector Han to realize that his open-and-shut case was not just deeply flawed. It was much, much bigger than he or Prosecutor Yang Mi-Hee thought.
All your suspicions about Prosecutor Yang Mi-Hee are verified at the climax. She’s deeply involved. She’s a very scary woman, scary enough that Choi Woo-Joon’s father, in jail for murdering his wife, is afraid to even breathe her name. That doesn’t save him. Prosecutor Yang Mi-Hee also fulfills one of Agatha’s classic tropes: Blackmailers always get punished. At the same time, although she doesn’t know it, she accidentally protects our Ms. Ma by using another classic Agatha trope: When you bash someone’s head in with a rock, you make identification much, much harder.
The plot is thickening and we’re 2/3 of the way. Will our Ms. Ma figure out whodunnit? Let’s find out!
