By Darren Johnson
Campus News
My wife, Eileen, made a grisly discovery recently.
If you happen to belong to Amazon Prime, which we do, you also qualify for a free streaming app called Prime Video, which has a lot of free TV shows and movies.
But she also discovered it now has TV channels dedicated to particular shows. One channel just shows “Dateline” in a loop.
Now, I hadn’t seen “Dateline” in a while. I assumed it was like “60 Minutes,” profiles of Walter Mondale and such.
But apparently the whole show is about murder mysteries now. Usually one spouse or significant other killing their partner and trying to get away with it.
“Dateline” really stretches out each story and they have some tricks. For example, they will sometimes interview the person they eventually reveal, in minute :55, to be the convicted murderer. But that person is obviously in prison. So they must sweet-talk the warden and are allowed to interview the person wearing street clothes in a room that doesn’t look like a prison.
A recent episode, though, I saw the interviewee — who they had tried to falsely paint as innocent early in the show, only to fool the viewer later — sitting in a stiff chair in a relatively spartan room, in street clothes, but I saw some legal books in the background. Why would this guy, a musician by trade, have fancy bound legal books? I surmised it must be a prison law library. He was in prison! It was a trick! So, in minute :22, the whole show was ruined. “Oh, he’s the murderer,” I told Eileen, spoiling that episode, which she instantly lost interest in.
In any case, watching “Dateline” in a loop (I hear “20/20” is basically the same show, too), I’ve learned the following:
- If your spouse takes out a huge life insurance policy in your name, you probably don’t have much longer to live.
- If your spouse is spending a lot of time with a personal trainer, they are probably having an affair — and, the trainer happens to be a murderer for hire, too!
- If we learn early in the “Dateline” episode that the body was quickly cremated, an autopsy refused, yeah, that’s a bit suspect. It was the spouse.
- If your spouse starts being extra nice and bringing you beverages — especially if it looks like antifreeze, say, Mountain Dew — it IS antifreeze. You are being poisoned.
So, be careful out there, everybody! Thankfully for me, Eileen just brings me Mello Yello. Doesn’t look like antifreeze at all. I … feel … aacckk!
Darren Johnson publishes Campus News, a New York college newspaper available on lots of campuses, and he is now in a coma. You can still try to email him at editor@cccnews.info.
Facebook Comments