Emma Fielding Mysteries: More Bitter Than Death

Look... check your expectations before going into a movie like this. It's very light entertainment for sure and is full of holes but it does the job. Courtney Thorne Smith is a commanding lead and the supporting cast do well. These movies are a nice throwback to the 1990s and 2000s before Marvel came in and destroyed cinema forever.

It's the third episode of Emma Fielding Mysteries. Emma Fielding (Courtney Thorne-Smith) finds herself in another murder mystery when her supportive retiring superior Dr. Althea Harrison is poisoned during a banquet. The suspects include those fighting to take over. FBI agent Jim Conner (James Tupper) happens to be there after he got recruited by Emma for a speech. Meanwhile, her TAs Joe and Carey are growing closer and worked as servers at the party. The group is joined by pompous archeologist Duncan Thatcher with the bad British accent.

This is the best of the three episodes. It helps that the mystery is a fairly standard one. Essentially, someone is killed and all the suspects are in the room. It's classic. It also helps that the younger characters get their own romance. That takes the romantic pressure off the leads. While Tupper and CTS are really pretty people, their chemistry is set at a slow simmer. The younger couple is better and they provide a nice parallel relationship. This is not breaking any new boundaries but it is a very solid movie for Hallmark with the possibility of extending this franchise.

Courtney Thorne-Smith is back once again as our female Indiana Jones, Emma Fielding and this time she's back at Kenzer College. During the course of a banquet some valuable art is ripped off and when it resumes the president of the college who is retiring collapses and dies at the podium.

The theft, the death of the president and some secret society like Yale's Skull And Bones are all interconnected, but not quite in the way you would think. Emma Fielding's young friend Adam DiMarco was thinking of joining the elite group, but finds them not worthy of his time and the members not worthy of his company.

FBI agent James Tupper is back as well to lend a bit of legality to Smith's sleuthing. Looks like the Emma Fielding series will go on.

She just happened to remember a tunnel system they ran under campus buildings but when the museum was built no one thought to be sure it couldn't be broken into and the square in the floor was left there? And she lifted 2 blocks of flooring up like they we're nothing and yet nothing seemed to support them and no floor joists ran through those spots. What!!!????

This is the best of the three Emma Fielding mysteries so far, but still not up to the standards of my three favorites (Hannah Swensen's, Aurora Teagarden and Mystery 101). I am enjoying the relationship building between archeologists/professor Emma Fielding and FBI agent Jim Conner. I appreciated this episode because it introduced a romantic rival in fellow archeologist Duncan Thatcher.

There is a special event at the university organized by Emma, bringing in a veritable who's who in the archeological world...at least in North America. Emma has invited her friend Jim Conner to give a talk on antiquity fakes. On the opening night, the key note speaker and president of the organization is murdered as a sub plot, one of Emma's students is trying to become a member of an elite skull and crossbones like organization. One of the initiation activities involves stealing an artifact from the archeology department.

As mentioned this is my favorite of the three Emma Fielding Mysteries, mainly for the romantic developments...but there has always been something slightly awkward about the Courtney Thorne-Smith role and in this episode I found the Duncan Thatcher character to be equally awkward, especially as his accent seemed to come and go. The series is really a recommendation for me unless you are hardcore or have nothing else to watch, but if you are watching the series...more bitter than death is the best.