Murdoch Mysteries (TV Series) Shipwreck (2015) User Reviews

The heart of a good mystery

[miles-33108 · 9/10 · 26 November 2016]

A young woman, Jeanette Rajotte, has a heated argument with her priest in the presbytery of her church, seemingly about some decision she needs guidance with, and runs out into the night. Her body is found in the morning at her parent's grave by the gravedigger, François Robichaud, who tells Murdoch that Miss Rajotte's parents died while she was a child, and she was raised by nuns from the Sacré Cœur Convent. The priest, Father Daniel Lebel, is visiting a sick parishioner that morning, but is due back for a meeting with someone from the bishop's office. All of the people Murdoch meets talk with French-Canadian accents.

Dr. Grace confirms that Miss Rajotte died as a result of a blow to the head. Murdoch is pleased to be reunited with his childhood mentor, Father Keegan, who is touring the diocese as a spiritual adviser to the parish priests. It is obvious that Fr Keegan helped to instil a youthful scientific curiosity in William Murdoch and they begin to work together. The reunion with Fr Keegan sparks in Murdoch some traumatic childhood memories of a shipwreck in his parish in which several aboard died.

Fr Lebel does not keep the appointment with Fr Keegan, so in Inspector Brackenreid's eyes he is their main suspect, though Murdoch allows for the possibility that some harm has come to Fr Lebel also. The dead woman worked at the parish as a cleaner and according to the priest's cook, Lebel was a good man.

So, why has Fr Lebel disappeared? Does Fr Keegan know more than he is sharing with Murdoch? In taking on board so much from Fr Keegan, has Murdoch built a house on sand? This is a taut episode, set in a community that is in many ways closed to outsiders. But Murdoch is very much an insider in this case. We see a lot revealed about his faith and the way it and he blossom when under less constraint than usual.

Despite ctyankee1's review, there is absolutely nothing in this episode that bears on transgender issues; there is nothing in this episode about lesbian issues; it is simply that a central character is a woman who feels she is called to serve God in a way not open to women in the Catholic church of 1902. The matter at the heart of the mystery is how people behave when they discover that a person they implicitly trust because of their position in the church when that person arrives in a parish, and later they explicitly trust when pastoral relationships build up, turns out not to be the person they thought they were. Indeed that plot lies at the heart of many a good mystery.

Great episode for insight into Murdoch

[katherinemch · 9/10 · 28 August 2021]

You surely know that bigots love to make mountains out of molehills, as is the case in any Murdoch episodes that mention the slightest hint at any taboos being violated. In this case it's barely even a molehill. There is a woman who has an intense need to follow a career path open only to men, so like the secretly-female MD "James Barry" (a real and fascinating story) Ogden and Murdoch compare her to, she did what she had to, to achieve her calling. And the only harm to people would have been if they found out (unless you believe in superstitions like the sacraments etc being actual magic and gods being real and all- in which case, you could imagine that the fact she was given this calling BY GOD, like Joan of Arc, would perhaps make her rituals legit despite her gender).

She's not crossdressing because she's trans, nor an activist like when Dr Ogden crashed that men's club, she's just super duper devout and being as close to her God as possible is her only priority. Seems a bit odd to me that apparently-religion-oriented reviewers are finding that upsetting, seems like they should be able to relate at least so far as to pity her conundrum even if they think she made the wrong choice.

As for the accusation that the characters/writers assume the best of suspects whenever, and only if, they are members of oppressed demographic groups, that is just extremely biased viewing! As I said when someone made the same claim over a Black suspect last season, who the gang believed innocent based on gut instinct... They say that about at least one suspect every episode, the vast majority of whom are ordinary white, middle class, cis-het men. But these hateful reviewers (why do they keep watching since the show upsets them so with its supposed SJW nonsense???) ignore that and flip out when a woman or PoC passes the "gut test". TONS of suspects pass the gut test in this show. The cops had lots of experience with people (as did Murdoch's mentor) so yeah, they do trust their instincts when a suspect just feels honest. It's not because "women and racial minorities are never bad people on this show"- there are plenty of murderous women and PoC, the murderer in this show for one, or the last show, are not "all white men because the show is pushing a view that white men are evil" for goodness sake! We see a dozen innocent white men interviewed for each episode. In the flashback murder in this episode, a white man kills to protect a pregnant woman- he's a hero whose exposure Child Murdoch protests against. My point is, it's absolutely unfounded to claim that the show demonstrates any bias of showing certain types of people in certain lights. They show ALL types of personal strengths and flaws in ALL types of humans. That is just a mirror of reality, no bias. Women exist, nonwhite people exist, gay people exist... all this show does is refuse to follow the custom of hiding that. Perhaps if you like to see shows where everyone is white and hetero and men are the only ones who matter, it's YOU who are guilty of pushing YOUR agenda on everyone else.

I do find the writing a bit childish sometimes (less so the last couple seasons, maybe a change in staff?) but as a lover of classic lit who has read my share of Tolstoy and Austen, but loves Zola best of all authors, I really value the way this show, like Zola (alone among his contemporaries) seeks to peer closely at people other than the majority. The poor, those in indecent professions, those in boring jobs like phone operators or janitors. Most fiction is escapist and so focuses on people we wish we could be- rich, educated, popular, lucky. But Zola argued that to really understand humanity, and to preserve a sense of who we were at one time for future people, we should look also at the seedier lifestyles, the downtrodden sad lives, the mentally ill, abused, unlucky... the ones most authors ignore because they're no fun to dwell on and sometimes even a bit icky. I believe this show follows that same philosophy. They look at all types of people, refusing to ignore any, even the types that others ignore. Lack of erasure is not the same as promotion, it is a neutral eye.

But that seemed a very minor part of the plot to me. It served to give us a unique motive for the murder (though I guessed the perp at the start, unfortunately for my fun lol), mainly, and also as a reason to bring in the guy who made Murdoch what he is- he's involved in the church and was visiting the "Dr Barry" priest.

To me the main point of this episode was to create a situation that would plainly show Murdoch that moral rigidity is sometimes bad. He did learn this before of course, when he let that vigilante murderess go free, but we still see his excessive rigidity and he obviously is destined to loosen up a bit through his marriage to a "firebrand" as Thomas amusingly called Ogden recently. Having the man who INSISTED he never conceal the Truth (welll... in the flashback the Father does do so re money for an orphan, so maybe the lesson back then was to never conceal the Truth specifically IN CASES OF MURDER?) around to talk about his own evolution into more flexible morality, is bound to be the most helpful step for freeing Murdoch in the long term. But immeditately, his reaction is largely bitterness that the Father so firmly insisted he (child Murdoch) adopt the "truth above all else" policy when that turned out to be wrong, causing Murdoch to have been perhaps unwisely rigid his entire youth. He seemed quite shaken to find that the role model he viewed as an example of perfection in both their faith and their mystery-solving process, is in fact not perfectly logical, and not perfectly aligned with doctrine. The famous Murdoch poker face gets a little grumpy and pained and even confused, in this episode- some fine acting by the lead.

I hope we see further evidence of personal change in the following episodes, as it could really add depth to the character, to see him grappling with accepting the lack of absolutes in life.

The point of the story is, imo, what the Father says to the Detective at the end: "Revealing the truth about Father Lebel would have hurt more than it helped". The whole story was arranged to give us an example of Truth not always being the most ethical option. I think that's an interesting topic to ponder.

When agenda drowns out creativity

[sfoyoitt · 1/10 · 16 January 2019]

A church employee is mysteriously murdered at a grave site, and the parish priest has disappeared. Sound like the gem of a good mystery? It certainly does! Then how could the writers of MM turn it into a 1/10 reviewed episode? Simple. By letting their endless - that's not hyperbole, it is ENDLESS - desire to stuff social agendas into every nook and cranny of episodic plotting.

I actually remembered something while watching this episode, that indicates a troubling pattern. Throughout the entire first half, Murdoch is chasing the parish priest who is the primary suspect in the murder. There is nothing to suggest any other suspect, so Murdoch is focused. However, as soon as it is revealed that the priest is a woman, Murdoch's opinion changes entirely. He actually says these words:

"She speaks with such utter sincerity, I'm inclined to believe her."

So nothing has changed, literally nothing, except for the sex of the suspect he's been chasing, and suddenly, the "utter sincerity" of her statement absolves her of suspicion? Such is the toxic bias exhibited by the MM writing room. It is especially bad because they lack the talent to make their political statements subtle or dramatically interesting. The bias is so obvious, that it strains otherwise credible stories.

What this creates, in total, is a Murdoch world where white male wife-beaters apparently show up with such regularity, they are literally falling out of the clouds. Conversely, women characters can make willfully immoral, illegal, or unethical actions because "it felt right", and get away with it.

You can see this insidious bias creep into even the most simple events. Consider when Julia enters the Inspector's painting into a contest. Who does this?! No one I know would even think of doing so without consent of the painter. But it is typical of Julia's character - what she wants is right, and be damned with everything else.

Another reviewer commented on the religious issues in the episode, and they are there. Personally, all this whining about "my being a priest is between me and God" is nonsense. Okay, go form your own church with you and god in it. No one said being a Catholic is a social club open to all, that you get to change when you want. No, if you don't like the rules, don't join.

But as i said, these issues are dwarfed by the toxic feminism and social justice that is present in almost EVERY SINGLE EPISODE. Enough already.

Two priest not following the Catholic Church teaching

[ctyankee1 · 20 May 2015]

A woman is arguing with a Catholic priest about telling the truth. The woman is a cleaner in the church property and is a strong Catholic. A grave yard is attached is to the church and she goes out to pray by her families grave at times.

She is found dead the next morning. The day the police want to talk to Father Lebel who cannot be found Father Keegan from another parish comes down. He was to talk to Father Lebel. Keegan was one of Murdoch teachers as a altar boy and Murdoch trusted him.

It comes out that this 6ft tall thin man is a woman practicing as a priest. Murdoch gets upset. His truth teller Father Keegan does not seem to care and Julia Murdoch starts psychoanalyzing why the woman wants to be a priest and not a nun. It goes back to other comments I made that they want to make women superior then men an transgender stuff is brought not because she wants to be a man she wants the position of a priest which does not exist in the Catholic church in to the holy church of Christians. They also make it look like if you confess your sins to a priest they are forgiven. Sins are not forgiven by people only by God. If a person thinks they are getting a pass and their sin is off their conscience once they confess to another human they are highly misled.

Ms Lebel the priest says "God spoke to her" the writers are trying to make us believe how sincere she is an that god accepts this nonsense. The deceptiveness in this episode by the writers is amazing. If they think this is acceptable Bruce Jenner could be a nun and approved by God and accepted by the Catholic Church. Father Keegan the one in charge who keeps quiet for "The greater good".

How bogus this episode is, lies, change your sexual identity, fake a french accent and more.

As an aside everyone and anyone can go into the morgue where the dead bodies are and this is not logical especially if the person was murdered and I am sure in any morgue were the death of a person is being investigated.

In this series and many other shows not one person has dirty or wrinkled clothes unless they are the killers. Spotless actors no matter if they fall or run.

In the end they find out who killed the female cleaner. Just another episode to make us accept transgender, lesbians the "smart" women species and false Christian believes about these subjects.

More of the same garbage.

[tonyt286 · 1/10 · 5 February 2022]

Obviously this writer is all about women invincibility. But it is 1901. So let's be serious and get back to what made the show great. Between lesbian relationships and the fight for women's rights the show has swayed to what we have today. I love the shows but it better change or I'm gone.