Last night’s Murdoch Mysteries episode, Sir. Sir? Sir!! could have been entitled Invasion of the Murdoch Body Snatchers. In an offbeat but comical Halloween episode, Murdoch (Yannick Bisson) and Crabtree (Jonny Harris) investigate a strange astrophysical occurrence that has a peculiar influence on some of their fellow officers’ personalities.
The episode begins with Higgins (Lachlan Murdoch) looking up and seeing a meteor falling from the sky. He walks down an alleyway and comes across what looks like a lumpy green piece of an asteroid. He taps on it with his nightstick and a gaseous substance comes out of it, which sprays into his face.
The next day, Higgins returns to Station House No. 4. He is smiling like a lunatic, holding a plant and acting like a Stepford Wife. He begins to eat the leaves of said plant.
Elf Aliens?
George Crabtree and Detective Watts (Daniel Maslany) are dispatched to a farm to investigate an occurrence related to the celestial goings-on. As they’re riding in a carriage together, George imagines what creatures from other planets would look like and is of course, ripe with theories: “maybe they have no heads, like squid, or maybe they’re elf-like and friendly.”
Murdoch and Brackenreid (Thomas Craig) find the odd-shaped, lumpy piece of green stalagmite that fell from the sky and sprayed Higgins. Julia (Hélène Joy) and Miss Hart (Shanice Banton) investigate. Julia determines it’s organic, but has no idea what it actually is.
Whatever landed on the farmer’s property has created a large, circular hole in the front of the barn and a huge crater in the ground. George stays with the farmer and Watts wanders around the property, only to discover what looks like a new species of frog. Watts returns as a changed man, with a Stepford personality similar to Higgins.
In the meantime, Higgins heads to the morgue, grabs Miss Hart and says “what is going to happen is for the best.” Miss Hart screams.
Later, Murdoch travels to the farm with Crabtree, where they discover one of the strange frog-like creatures and take it back to the station house.
Something Is Definitely Off
Crabtree tells Julia that Higgins “is off his nut,” and that Watts’ personality is also off.
On a stroll through Toronto with his wife Margaret (Arwen Humphreys), Brackenreid also starts to notice something is off. “We haven’t gotten a single call today,” he says, as people tip their hats to him and say hello. “Everyone’s being so damn pleasant.”
Margaret tells him to enjoy it. “The world is not often this way,”
“I know, I just don’t much care for it, ” Brackenreid responds.
George Is Right!
Murdoch had recorded the sounds of the creature in the crater and George finds him listening to it in his office.
“George, do you know what this means? You were right, we are being contacted by other creatures.”
He goes down to the morgue to find Julia but is instead confronted by Miss Hart, Detective Watts and Constable Higgins.
When Murdoch returns to his office, George tells him the aliens are “taking us over one by one – you or I could be next.” He realizes it’s already too late for Murdoch when he says: “There is no alien invasion, George, the creature I found was just a moth.” George mentions that, just moments earlier, Murdoch had agreed with him.
“That was a joke, George, I was pulling your arm,” Murdoch replies, with a disturbing laugh.
George backs away. When he finds Julia, he informs her that William has become one of “them”.
Julia returns home to find William in a bathrobe and he is acting as bizarrely as George said he would.
You Don’t Want Romance?
“Would you like to have romance?” he asks her. As he opens his mouth, one of the bizarre frogs comes out of it. Julia screams and shoots William three times. “You don’t want romance?” he says and falls to the floor.
Director Craig David Wallace then uses a classic split screen phone conversation between George and Julia, which ramps up the tension even more.
“I listened to George Crabtree and I killed my husband,” a distraught Julia tells George.
“He wasn’t your husband anymore, he was some sort of bug,” George replies.
In the end, it is up to Crabtree to save Toronto, and perhaps the entire planet. He does discover what he believes will kill the creatures, but is he too late?
Murdoch Mysteries went all out for Halloween this year, even the theme song for season 12, episode 6, Sir. Sir? Sir!! began with some ghoulishly chilling music.
This episode was obviously an homage to movies like Invasion of The Body Snatchers. What it most reminded me of, however, was the Star Trek episode This Side Of Paradise, where spores from plants turn everyone into happy, mindless drones, even Spock, who is well known for being devoid of emotion.
New episodes of Murdoch Mysteries air Mondays at 8 p.m. on CBC. If you missed last night’s episode, you can watch Sir. Sir? Sir!! here.
Just saw S12#6 Sir!Sir!Sir! which was stupid and had no resolution. Why would I waste time watching this again?
It was strange but I enjoyed it. I think the writers were just having a bit of fun. 🙂
Don’t forget “It May Look Like a Walnut” episode of the Dick Van Dyke Show featuring Danny Thomas. That one wound up as a dream sequence. A little more resolution than the Murdoch version, but I sort of liked how it just ended. My wife and I thought it was going to be a two-parter, but really that didn’t make sense either since the entire cast was afflicted at the end.
A bit of fun? Maybe, but they should have felt an obligation to the millions of viewers to be faithful to the spirit of the series. On this and other platforms, most people have expressed their dislike of this episode and have said how it could easily have been done right. Longtime viewers become invested in, and care about, the characters they love. They don’t like to have their chains yanked.
We’re just now watching these shows. Love the historic characters, references to technology we now take for granted and slightly different names for now common investigative techniques.
This episode was different and totally out of the normal show realm and should have had a dream ending or at least a huge alcohol infused party that saves everyone.
We haven’t watched the next episode yet, but from other comments, I’m assuming there is not any explanation or solution given as to how the towns folk go from aliens back to normal.
Weird to say the least.
I agree. I Watch this episode last night. I can’t tell you how disappointed I was. I also thought maybe they would do a dream sequence or some thing. I was even going to start it over I thinking maybe I was out of the room and missed some thing. I started the next episode and it didn’t seem to reference it at all. That’s how I’m reading your post as I Google today trying to find out about that episode and what did I miss. Well apparently a lot of other people feel the same way that I do. How did all those people suddenly become normal? I thought George would go out to the farm and blow up that hole and then everybody would go back to normal.
I do like the series so I’ll probably continue watching, but I was really really disappointed.
Absolutely stupid.I wonder what the Jennings family thought about it.
I thought Murdock had jumped the shark. I can’t remember an episode where events that significant are not at least seemingly resolved, at least in a future show. I don’t see subsequent shows referencing back to the bug a boos, but I feel pretty unresolved. Wasn’t the stomach pump invented back then? Maybe the bugs all got the flu and died returning the zombie cast to their normal ballyhoo.
Given their frequent references to the future,
Someone should have mentioned “BeatleMania”.
Never the less, there should have been a
resolution of some sort. Like George waking
up and believing it really happened.
But as it turns out, it was just a Halloween surprise.
You have to remember that this was first broadcast during Halloween as a ‘stand alone” episode.
This season Murdoch Mysteries has lost its allure. The Higgins episode was ridiculous and The Invasion of the Body Snatchers (want to be) absurd and silly. I don’t think I’ll be watching it anymore. Is there a different writer. It’s not up to the old standard!!
I respectfully disagree. I think it gets better every year. This was its best season yet, in my opinion.
Disagree, Bonnie. Idiotic episode.
Have just viewed this in France – October 6th 2919 so not on Halloween and not a “stand alone” episode. So stupid that I won’t watch the series again. I didn’t tune in to see science fiction.
Interesting comment, considering the series often uses a science fiction gimmick of some sort.
I agree. I’ve been a loyal fan since the beginning of the show and this season has been a great disappointment. Did they change writers? Does the cast want to end the series?
Amazing. Just watched and my wife and I are still scratching our heads. We have come up with several possible endings.
So different not like the usual Murdochm, but great all the same.
Have some tea and think about.
Agree that although I enjoyed the episode, it should have had some resolution – Crabtree’s dream would have been perfect!
All the writer would have had to do is to take the last minute of the show and have Crabtree wake up and realize it was a dream resolution problem solved
I kept picturing it as George’s new novel and considering he was sitting at the typewriter and appeared daydreaming ….
I agree with everyone else that the episode lacked resolution. It should’ve been a dream.
Or it could be a book george is writing.
Ridiculous and stupid
What did he say husbands and wives do he used a a word it was t romance?
Huh? The single only horrible Murdoch episode.
I also felt unresolved and thought that the writing was not as cohesive as most of the episodes in the series. I did enjoy the possibilities it presented and had hoped that it would be a two part episode or at least get some resolution in the future.
This episode stank to high heaven. Stupid, dumb. Next time make a Christmas episode. And, have an ending
The lack of an ending (or whatever it would have taken to make it right) is its fatal flaw. It’s really hard to imagine that this episode wouldn’t have engendered serious objections at the time.
I really enjoyed this crazy episode, even if just for the giggle of thinking of the actors trying to keep a straight face while filming. But seriously, writers, Crabtree should have awakened from a dream at the end, even if just to lift his face with a wide-eyed glare. That would have been the topper to make one last giggle.
I was highly entertained with the storyline until they failed miserably to give us a credible ending. I think they owed us that much and I hope they never do that to us again. I am a “Monk” fan and their writers never treated us to such an insulting and meaningless episode. I do love the Murdoch Mysteries but really….don’t do that again!!!!
I think I am with the majority. Fun episode (for Halloween) but would have been good if George awoke from this dream as the resolution.
Has anyone considered that all the other stuff in other episodes comes about eventually… Ha!Ha!Ha!