Prized Possessions – MURDER IN A SMALL TOWN 1.04 Review

I find myself asking the big questions as I settle in for Murder In A Small Town 1.04 “Prized Possessions”.

Why does this show keep the book series name? It is generic and feels harder to market than necessary. It is hardly revolutionary to change the name of a book series to make it easier to market for TV. Southern Vampire Mysteries/Sookie Stackhouse became True Blood and that was incredibly successful. Obviously it is now too late but it just popped into my brain.

Somebody Save Me

So on this week’s Murder In A Small Town we get more Cassandra (Kristin Kreuk) and a Smallville reunion. We meet Emma and Charlie O’Brea and it seems the two are anything but happily married as Emma sticks a gun in Charlie’s face. We only hear the gunshot before leaving the unhappy home.

Emma is a former friend of Cassandra who she reaches out to help with a local project. Emma’s family is extremely wealthy and she easily agrees to help. She is also very interested in Cassandra’s romance with Karl. To the point you can feel the desperation coming off her to know that love is real. Honestly that might have been the most disturbing part of the whole episode for me. Cassandra’s no dummy and asks if anything is wrong on the way home but the response is of course everything is fine.

Everything stops being fine when Emma discovers a bloody scene in her house and her husband gone. Now we’re getting started in an episode that allows for more interaction between Karl and Cassandra than we had since the pilot.

So that is indeed Erica Durance playing Emma and I think she does amazing work here. I think the best way to describe her character throughout this episode is frayed. Though I wonder about how many readers are old enough to have watched Smallville when it aired just know this is pretty cool.

Karl Needs Communication Skills

Karl really drops the ball when it comes to his personal life. Maybe the fact that most of his stuff was still boxed up when Cassandra visited for the first time was a hint. When Karl’s daughter comes to live with hi following her expulsion we find out she knows nothing about Cassandra and their relationship. That goes down about as expected and I can’t really blame her.

I assume the expulsion for marijuana use is from the book? Or are Canadian Universities super strict, educate me in the comments. Honestly, Cassandra took it a lot better than he had any right to expect. I want to learn more about her and I really hope we skip over the tired trope of her hating Cassandra. Especially as the break up between her parents happened long before he met Cassandra.

We spend a little more time with Edwina as she gets to come a little out of her shell. I am convinced we will get an episode at least partly dedicated to her and what happened at her last job but not sure when that might be.

Good Stuff, Keep It Up

The mystery this week is great, it leads us all happily down a path thinking we’ve seen this so often before and then pulls the rug out from under us. We do not get enough twists in mystery of the week format shows and this is a good one.

In fact, watching Prized Possessions leaves me thinking that last week was a blip and this show is doing pretty well so far. How are you liking the show so far? Come talk about it in the comments or let us know via X/Twitter.

Also next week looks pretty intense.