No Way To Treat A Body begins with Quincy (Jack Klugman) moving his girlfriend, Ginny Drake (Marj Dusay), into a creepy old rooming house where several oddball eccentric types reside. Later when Ginny chases her dog up to the attic, she finds the mummified corpses of two women stashed there. Quincy and the police are called in to investigate, and the next evening Ginny finds two additional mummified bodies in another part of the attic. Quincy performs the autopsies and determines that three of the corpses were the sisters of the owner of the house, Ruth Kaufman (Bibi Osterwald) and died naturally, but another was a boarder who was murdered which leads to further investigation into her death. Quincy and the police learn that Ruth kept the death of her sisters a secret for years so that she could continue collecting on an annuity and they now must find out if she also committed murder to continue the charade.
In some ways, this is a great Quincy episode that is perfect to watch around Halloween. There is a cold case style murder mystery featured in a haunted house style setting, and this coupled with a good balance of spooky and funny content is pretty entertaining. I especially appreciated the guest star performance of Bibi Osterwald who plays the eccentric and animated Ruth Kaufman which is a real hoot.
All of that said, there are some ridiculous parts like the police not searching the entire attic and house when the first two bodies were found leaving it up to Quincy's girlfriend finding the other bodies just footsteps away a day later. Seriously?? I also found it pretty silly that the corpses were positioned to be sitting at a table like they were playing cards. Since they were hidden, what was the point of this? Was someone who walked up to the attic and saw that to think that they were interrupting a high stakes poker tournament and just leave? I also don't understand how the bodies were so well preserved being up in the unventilated attic of an old home in California, wouldn't any excessive heat and humidity have decomposed the bodies at an increased rate?
As long as you don't get too hung up on any of that nonsense, this is quite an enjoyable, entertaining and unique Season 4 episode, just be sure to watch it in the right frame of mind.
