# Stupidest solution to TV mystries/crimes? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [February 16, 2018, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupidest-solution-to-tv-mystries-crimes/808948 "2018-02-16T19:24:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2018, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupidest-solution-to-tv-mystries-crimes/808948/41 "2018-02-19T16:28:10Z")
> [@teela\_brown](#): > > A _Sherlock_ episode: > > The (potential) murderer’s technique was to push a shiv through a military man’s tight uniform belt. The idea was that the tight band kept the victim from feeling the dagger penetrate him, and death by exsanguination only happened when he took the tight belt off that night when undressing. > > Sherlock guessed this because an earlier uniformed guy almost bled to death from an unfelt wound in his side. He deduced that the earlier guy was just a practice victim. > > It’s too stupid to think that a tight belt would prevent you from feeling the pain of being stabbed. I remember spraining my eyes by rolling them the night I watched that episode. Sherlock is quite an entertaining show, but holey moley do the plots not hold together if you stop at the end and try to piece back together what actually happened. I believe the same episode as the stabbing you mentioned also had a guy who would serially seduce women (in this case, trying to covertly gain information from them), and then instead of taking them to a hotel, or an apartment, he would take each one to a house that was currently vacant because someone had just died, claim it was his house, spend the night, then never be seen again. Right… because houses of people that just died are swank and sexy and fully stocked, not full of, I dunno, hospital beds and grieving relatives. (And of course this all led to his eventual downfall…) ---
**Author:** ![simster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/simster/32/1047_2.png) [@simster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/simster)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2018, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupidest-solution-to-tv-mystries-crimes/808948/42 "2018-02-19T17:02:48Z")
> [@Mahaloth](#): > > I think in the pilot episode of Jonathan Creek, the killer did it with their toes. They had the killer’s toe prints because he/she stepped on a scale earlier on. It was lame. CSI with the broken toenail and matching it to clippings from the bathroom. ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2018, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupidest-solution-to-tv-mystries-crimes/808948/43 "2018-02-19T18:59:05Z")
> [@simster](#): > > CSI with the broken toenail and matching it to clippings from the bathroom. They did this on _ **CSI** _? I saw it on _ **Columbo** _. It was the episode where Matthew Rhys murders a guy by hanging him, and then leaves a fake suicide note on his computer. Fast forward two hours. I’m watching _ **The Americans** _, and Matthew Rhys murders a guy by hanging him and then leaves a fake suicide note on his computer. Holy crap! :eek: The lad must have had an incredible sense of _deja vu_ doing that episode. (Or maybe he pitched the idea to the writers himself. Who knows? 😕 ) ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2018, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupidest-solution-to-tv-mystries-crimes/808948/44 "2018-02-19T19:08:43Z")
Well, there was that _Matt Houston_ episode about a murder on a film crew. The poisoned and dying man, an actor, gasped out “Dane…Dane…” leading the title detective to eventually accuse the director, since he and the actor had worked together on a stage version of _Hamlet_ years earlier. ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2018, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupidest-solution-to-tv-mystries-crimes/808948/45 "2018-02-19T19:15:18Z")
There was an episode of _ **The Saint** _ where a scientist of Russian origin was murdered and managed to write out C-O-P in his own blood before he died. Care to see if you can guess how Templar was able to finger the murderer? :dubious: The man had a colleague named Soran. In Russian, this is written as COPAH. ---
**Author:** ![Sir\_T-Cups](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ed655f/32.png) [@Sir\_T-Cups](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sir_T-Cups)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2018, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupidest-solution-to-tv-mystries-crimes/808948/46 "2018-02-19T19:21:51Z")
> [@terentii](#): > > There was an episode of _ **The Saint** _ where a scientist of Russian origin was murdered and managed to write out C-O-P in his own blood before he died. Care to see if you can guess how Templar was able to finger the murderer? :dubious: > > The man had a colleague named Soran. In Russian, this is written as COPAH. What a staggaring coincidence! I have a cabanah that has the same name! ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2018, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupidest-solution-to-tv-mystries-crimes/808948/47 "2018-02-19T20:36:54Z")
> [@terentii](#): > > It was the episode where Matthew Rhys murders a guy by hanging him, and then leaves a fake suicide note on his computer. > > Fast forward two hours. I’m watching _ **The Americans** _, and Matthew Rhys murders a guy by hanging him and then leaves a fake suicide note on his computer. > > Holy crap! :eek: The lad must have had an incredible sense of _deja vu_ doing that episode. (Or maybe he pitched the idea to the writers himself. Who knows? 😕 ) There was an early episode of _Law & Order_ with Eli Wallach. At one point, the detectives are interrogating him and have put a couple revolvers he had access to on the table in front of him. I hope it was a deliberate callback to _The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly_. ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2018, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupidest-solution-to-tv-mystries-crimes/808948/48 "2018-02-19T20:44:02Z")
> [@Robot\_Arm](#): > > There was an early episode of _Law & Order_ with Eli Wallach. At one point, the detectives are interrogating him and have put a couple revolvers he had access to on the table in front of him. I hope it was a deliberate callback to _The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly_. Maybe they were pulling the same trick Columbo played on Dick van Dyke when he got him to identify the camera he’d used in murdering his wife. Incriminated himself real good that way, he did! :smack: ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2018, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupidest-solution-to-tv-mystries-crimes/808948/49 "2018-02-19T20:58:44Z")
One that bugged me is the reveal in the Columbo episode “The Most Dangerous Match”, where deaf chess master Laurence Harvey attempts to murder another player by shoving him into a giant trash masher. But he’s not (quite) dead, as the trash masher shut off before he could be pulverized. The “evidence” is that the trash masher has an automatic cutoff, and that a deaf person attempting to use it as a murder weapon wouldn’t know it shut off. But it had already been suggested that the (not quite yet) dead man accidentally fell into the trash. So both an accident or a deaf murderer leave the same evidence. Columbo, more than almost any other show, must hand wave the trials. Columbo, unlike say, Brenda Leigh Johnson, doesn’t get a confession so much as an admission. I’d love to see what the LT’s conviction rate would be in real life, once these defendants (yes, they all are guilty, I know) gets into court with competent defense. Remember folks, don’t ever talk to the police (especially if you are actually guilty) and don’t try to outsmart genius detectives. They have more experience at it. ---
**Author:** ![gigi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a587f6/32.png) [@gigi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gigi)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2018, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupidest-solution-to-tv-mystries-crimes/808948/50 "2018-02-19T22:00:35Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > I think of that as the magic bullet clue. I see that TVTropes calls it [the Omniscient Database](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OmniscientDatabase). Paging Garcia, Criminal Minds. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Wallaby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/dc4da7/32.png) [@Wallaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wallaby)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2018, 9:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupidest-solution-to-tv-mystries-crimes/808948/51 "2018-02-21T09:53:32Z")
I still reckon _ **Red Dwarf** _ had the best answer to the JFK assassination. They took JFK back in time from 1964 to 1963 and he shot himself from the grassy knoll- ‘It will drive the conspiracy theorists nuts!’. ---
**Author:** ![Horatio\_Hellpop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2018, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupidest-solution-to-tv-mystries-crimes/808948/52 "2018-02-21T13:37:20Z")
There was a _Banacek_ episode where a football player got dogpiled onto in the middle of the game and disappeared. Turns out he was wearing a paper jersey with one of the other team’s jerseys under it and both teams had the same color helmet. The Wednesday Mystery Movies just never got the respect that the Sunday ones had. ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2018, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupidest-solution-to-tv-mystries-crimes/808948/53 "2018-02-21T14:38:17Z")
> [@Horatio\_Hellpop](#): > > There was a _Banacek_ episode where a football player got dogpiled onto in the middle of the game and disappeared. Turns out he was wearing a paper jersey with one of the other team’s jerseys under it and both teams had the same color helmet. The Wednesday Mystery Movies just never got the respect that the Sunday ones had. That was a particularly bad one for what I call the “Banacek cheat”. Several, but not all, episodes didn’t play fair. If you watch the disappearing scene in the beginning of the episode, the guy without a helmet near the pile is black, but in the reveal, he is white. So even if you were Sherlock/Monk, it would be impossible to solve this one as a viewer, because the facts changed. Other than that, remember that the QB was involved as were the players in the pile, and created a distraction, so the method isn’t that unbelievable. Still, modern HiDef cameras would have caught the whole thing from multiple angles. 🆒 ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2018, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupidest-solution-to-tv-mystries-crimes/808948/54 "2018-02-21T16:16:23Z")
> [@Horatio\_Hellpop](#): > > There was a _Banacek_ episode where a football player got dogpiled onto in the middle of the game and disappeared. Turns out he was wearing a paper jersey with one of the other team’s jerseys under it and both teams had the same color helmet. The Wednesday Mystery Movies just never got the respect that the Sunday ones had. I remember that one, too, and I just saw it again not all that long ago. The actual player who was kidnapped was lured off the field and an impostor came on in his place. Then the impostor was tackled near the sidelines and the extra jersey torn off. When the pile was untangled, there was just the ball and a helmet left on the field, and the helmetless player blended in on the sideline. I don’t know that I’d call it a cheat. It was definitely memorable. ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2018, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupidest-solution-to-tv-mystries-crimes/808948/55 "2018-02-21T16:21:11Z")
> [@Robot\_Arm](#): > > I remember that one, too, and I just saw it again not all that long ago. The actual player who was kidnapped was lured off the field and an impostor came on in his place. Then the impostor was tackled near the sidelines and the extra jersey torn off. When the pile was untangled, there was just the ball and a helmet left on the field, and the helmetless player blended in on the sideline. > > I don’t know that I’d call it a cheat. It was definitely memorable. I believe that that method is inspired by a classic Houdini stage illusion. As I recall, he would ride a horse onto stage, wearing a fancy outfit, surrounded by assistants. Then a curtain is raised up, and then dropped, and Houdini is gone! In fact, he has ripped off the fancy outer outfit, which is flimsy, and is just standing with the assistants. ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2018, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupidest-solution-to-tv-mystries-crimes/808948/56 "2018-02-21T16:36:23Z")
> [@Wallaby](#): > > I still reckon _ **Red Dwarf** _ had the best answer to the JFK assassination. Nah, I think [this guy](https://youtu.be/DXRslcMsGlQ) is on to something. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2018, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupidest-solution-to-tv-mystries-crimes/808948/57 "2018-02-21T18:33:01Z")
A similar illusion is responsible for the modern image of ninjas. What we think of as “ninja clothes” is actually the attire for the stagehands in Japanese theater. They’re visible on stage, but the artistic convention is to ignore them. So one Japanese playwright made a play about ninjas, where he needed a character to “appear out of nowhere”, which he did by dressing the character as one of the stagehands until the big reveal. Real ninjas would wear whatever was least conspicuous, often beggar’s rags. Anywhere but at a Japanese play, the black-pajamas getup would be highly conspicuous. ---
**Author:** ![furryman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/furryman/32/99_2.png) [@furryman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furryman)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2018, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupidest-solution-to-tv-mystries-crimes/808948/58 "2018-02-21T20:51:22Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > A similar illusion is responsible for the modern image of ninjas. What we think of as “ninja clothes” is actually the attire for the stagehands in Japanese theater. They’re visible on stage, but the artistic convention is to ignore them. So one Japanese playwright made a play about ninjas, where he needed a character to “appear out of nowhere”, which he did by dressing the character as one of the stagehands until the big reveal. > > Real ninjas would wear whatever was least conspicuous, often beggar’s rags. Anywhere but at a Japanese play, the black-pajamas getup would be highly conspicuous. I love Uratsaei Yatsura where one of the characters was rich enough to employ a whole band of ninjas who were all dressed like traditional Japanese stagehands. ---
**Author:** ![Asuka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@Asuka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asuka)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2018, 3:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupidest-solution-to-tv-mystries-crimes/808948/59 "2018-02-22T03:27:08Z")
It’s not a mystery but it is an incredibly stupid solution to an everyday problem In the movie “G.I. Joe Retaliation” [spoiler]The big bad disguised as the President invites all the nuclear powers of the world to a peace conference to talk nuclear disarmament. Once there he suddenly orders all American ICBM’s immediately launched at every single nuclear country in the world and in a panic the rest of the countries launch all their own ICBMs in response. However this was all a trick as he self-destructs every American nuke now in orbit which forces the other countries to do the same. Now he has achieved true disarmament as nobody else on Earth has nuclear missiles left, not even America. However since he is working for Cobra that also means they’re able to now threaten the world with a space laser to hold them hostage as that’s the last superweapon left on Earth. The massive problem with this plan is two-fold. 1. ICBM’s don’t have self-destruct sequences nor would they ever, it’s a Hollywood myth. If you could self-destruct your own ICBM’s there’s no doubt the other side would figure out a way to hack that so they could shut down the entire opposing ICBM arsenal at once. 2. This also doesn’t factor in the normal strategies of leaving a strategic reserve for counter-strikes as well as all the non-ICBM nuclear weapons such as cruise missiles, nuclear bombers, and nuclear submarines, especially since Russia still has a considerable stock-pile of nuclear bombs for bomber use. Even the space laser thing is sketchy if you pretend that’s the reason why the ICBM’s all have to be destroyed (since it they could be used to destroy the space laser) since we have conventional missiles that can take out orbiting satellites just fine.[/spoiler] ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2018, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupidest-solution-to-tv-mystries-crimes/808948/60 "2018-02-22T20:03:07Z")
> [@Robot\_Arm](#): > > I don’t know that I’d call it a cheat. It was definitely memorable. By cheat I meant that, in the beginning of the episode, when the (fake) kidnapping occurs, the helmetless player milling about is black. But the kidnapped player was white. When Bannercheck does his “here’s what happened” reveal, the flashback (correctly) shows a white player milling about. So if you were an eagle-eyed detective, you could not have solved the case because the show gave false clues. It’s hard to be smarter than the TV detective when he cheats. In Project Phoenix, when the train pulls into [del]Los Angeles[/del] Boston, you can see inside the box car that was in front of the stolen flatcar. There is standard junk and dunnage there. But when Bananacheck reveals the solution, the open box car door this time clearly shows the large winch used to remove the flatcar. Banacek has a few more episodes where the heist as described wouldn’t work but that’s a different kind of stupid. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupidest-solution-to-tv-mystries-crimes/808948.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupidest-solution-to-tv-mystries-crimes/808948.md?page=4)