I’ve been watching “Agatha Christie’s Marple” for the past few days and it’s pretty good! Marple adaptations all tend to have a better caliber of actors than a lot of bog-standard mystery shows (looking at you, “Madame Blanc”), and while Joan Hickson’s Marple is right up there with David Suchet’s Poirot and Jeremy Brett’s Holmes as “literally can never be beaten, these are the best anyone’s done it,” both Geraldine McEwan and Julia McKenzie do a fantastic job as Miss Marple.
Then I got to “The Secret of Chimneys,” Season 5 episode 2
and guys
Guys
So there’s a murder of a viscount, like there is, and this detective Finch rolls up and immediately spots Miss Marple (in her NIGHTIE! standing at the window like some kind of hussy, honestly Jane) and doffs his cap to her with that little smile that makes you go, “huh.”
At this point I’ve watched a couple dozen Miss Marple episodes where she goes through detectives like wildfire and this guy’s supposed to be a “*guru*” so I’m expecting some battle of the egos or something and like, Stephen Dillane is great! But bleh, I might have to skip this one.
Then my dude asks Miss Marple to SHOW HIM THE BODY, with a pleased little smile at her as she goes “uhhhhhhhh but my knitting?” (He even does that thing where you use someone’s honorific and wait for them to give you their name, and that’s when I was like “ohhh this bitch knows exactly who she is.”) What follows is what I can only describe as a meet-cute in the secret passageway where the viscount was shot (and in fact the body is STILL THERE) and where Miss Marple literally asks the police equivalent of “is there a Mrs Finch” and he looks at her like this:
At which point I’m like “ohhh my dude not only knows who she is, he deliberately came here without a sergeant so he could draft her,” and sure enough he just starts…handing her pieces of evidence like “hey babe can you decipher this note for me thanks love you” while Miss Marple is like, “this approval and camaraderie coming from a cop… not sure if want.”
Next is a series of romantic strolls through the gardens while they discuss murder, during which Finch reveals his undying love I mean his research into Miss Marple and the “dozen case files” of her previous exploits that he’s collected like some deranged fanboy. Miss Marple responds to this by BLUSHING LIKE A SCHOOLGIRL and stammering about how pish tosh it’s nothing really, and I couldn’t find a gif of it but he’s staring at her like this:
Yeah I bet u r tempted
He also makes a half-hearted attempt at negging her “amateur sleuth” status, only to then immediately assure her that he makes like, so much money being a big fancy detective and can keep her in all the yarn and garden seed she could ever desire.
There’s also a late-night tryst at the compost pile right after Finch has been (mildly) poisoned and Miss Marple is like “men are so weak” as she roots through the garbage for clues.
Not how he wanted their first date to go D:
The next morning there’s another murder which: bummer, but also allows the two of them to read love letters together and for Finch to give Miss Marple the following look as she explains how secret assignations among lovers can “quicken the ardor”:
Miss Marple then goes onto solve the murders and btw hands over the priceless diamond that’s been literally missing for two literal decades that she found in her spare time. The entire scene features Finch looking at her like this:
After the dust settles, Finch and Miss Marple have a lovely moment where he calls himself “another one of your casualties,” then super casually mentions that he’s probably going to have to go on assignment to use the diamond in a daring international espionage case and I can’t decide if he’s asking Miss Marple to go with him or simply trying to show her that he is cool and smart and would make an excellent wife, but either way the episode ends with her turning him down and Jane, we need to talk about your priorities.
Anyway I’ve already written 2K about the subsequent 10-year epistolary romance these two have following this episode because I make poor choices.
If you’re looking for a way to support Minneapolis and Minnesota right now, consider Sanctuary Supply Depot—they’re a great organization working to provide winter gear to unhoused residents in Minneapolis. There’s a polar vortex coming this week and while I hope every ICE agent occupying us gets frostbite and breaks their tailbones slipping on our unsalted sidewalks, people who don’t have shelter are ALSO going to suffer, and they deserve our help.
Alpha News, our local fascist outlet that “leaked” Jonathan Ross’s video of him murdering Renee Good, which also pushed George Floyd conspiracy theories, with an anchor married to loathsome fascist police union boss Bob Kroll (Liz Collin), has set up another doxx line, this time for ICE observers.
WE NEED THEM TO BE OVERWHELMED WITH USELESS INFORMATION.
Please help us! We are under occupation!
Their post about it:
This is something you can do 100% remotely that is VERY HELPFUL to stop observers from being intimidated out of doing this vital work. It is not an exaggeration to say spamming this line will save lives: the more observers we have, the fewer people ICE can abduct, abuse, murder, and send to concentration camps.
Looking at what national news outlets are up to right now, one might not realize a whole major US metropolitan area is, you know, sort of under attack by paramilitary forces. Wild.
im sorry the What is being What now???
While it’s not going unreported entirely, what’s been happening in Minnesota and in Minneapolis–Saint Paul in particular since Renee Good was murdered is not getting the attention it should be.
There are already 2000 gangsters from DHS deployed, and “hundreds” or “1000” more are on the way, depending on which Trumpland person you ask. As a point of reference, the Twin Cities’ actual police total just under 1200 (600 in Minneapolis and 590 in Saint Paul according to the depts’ sites).
The feds there are more or less attacking people at random. They’ve gone door-to-door for “citizenship checks” (completely illegal). They’ve knocked doors down when residents haven’t complied (obviously also completely illegal). In addition to abducting and brutalizing the immigrants they come across during their rampages, they’ve done the same to US citizens of color and are also harassing, stalking and physically attacking observers.
Below are some videos from observers. I’m linking to Bluesky because that’s where I saw them, though many are originally from/also available elsewhere. I apologize for the rancid formatting below but it was the best I could do quickly-ish. The images are previews; click the links in the timestamps to watch.
Dumb Meg (@dmbmeg.bsky.social) Jan 11, 2026 at 6:10 PM(You need to be logged in to see this—while it’s unclear what happened to the victim in this one, there’s no reported death so far; CW for heightened violence)
Dom Ervolina (@dominicervolina.com) Jan 11, 2026 at 8:42 PM(You need to be logged in to see this)
THE advantage of memorizing poetry is that when somethings happening, maybe even you’re in a situation or a location, you can just go “ok. lady of shallott time” and boom. you reclaimed your mental space and attention for YOU for the next ten minutes
Everyone should be able to do one card trick, tell two jokes, and recite three poems, in case they are ever trapped in an elevator.
— Lemony Snicket, Horseradish
i know this is humorous but! i learned from one of my college friends (who learned from a therapist) that reciting a poem you have memorized is a great grounding & focusing technique when you’re spiraling into anxiety or panic. i can personally attest that The Tyger has staved off several panic attacks.
so like if said “situation or location” is freaking you out really badly, “lady of shallott time” can help reclaim your mental health too
Ok everybody share what poems you can recite in case we’re trapped in an elevator.
I’ve got the first 42 lines of The Canterbury Tales in Middle English, the first 10 lines of Beowulf in Old English, the first canto of Tolkien’s Lay of Beren and Luthien, and Sonnet XVI by Pablo Neruda (“I love the handful of the earth you are”). I used to have the Proem of the Kalevala but I’m a bit shaky on it it now and I think i’ve only got the first two sentences. Anda handful of others I half-remember which i could probably do if I were with someone else who half-remembered the same ones and we could prompt each other back and forth.
How you can tell I’ve gotten into/back into a fandom: I start posting gifsets with deranged commentary in the tags, half-considered fic ideas, and pretty much nothing else.
How I can tell I’ve gotten into/back into a fandom: I start blocking all the reader and y/n fic writers, the bad-opinion-havers, and everyone under 18 cluttering up the tag.
OK I looked up the New Yorker article that the [SPOILER] I reblogged earlier is from and it’s honestly delightful. The New Yorker is a great magazine, btw — if you don’t have a news media org that you subscribe to and you’re looking for one, I HIGHLY recommend the New Yorker even with it’s obvious focus on, well, New York. It’s got lots of investigative pieces, essays, reviews, even fiction and poetry. My parents subscribed to it their whole lives; I still remember the stacks on stacks of New Yorker magazines in our house (and yes, often in the bathroom). Quality stuff.
ANYWAY with that pitch out of the way, I thought I’d use my subscription and put the article under the cut. THERE ARE SPOILERS, but it’s also about how the author (who is himself a doctor and has written a lot about the shit medicine is going through at the moment) learned something about his own field of medicine in a new way by watching the show. He also talks about the very real problems in the American health care systems and how the show shines a light on a lot of it, thereby perhaps alerting the public to the reality of how dire it’s getting. It’s a really good article (with, yes, some juicy tidbits).
What “The Pitt” Taught Me About Being a Doctor
It’s as if the show’s creators absorbed every important conversation in health care today—and somehow transfigured it into good television.
