Quincy M.E. (TV Series) Mode of Death (1979) User Reviews

Solid if unspectacular Quincy episode.

[poolandrews · 6/10 · 24 April 2008]

Quincy M.E.: Mode of Death starts as Los Angeles chief medical examiner Quincy (Jack Klugman) is called to a seedy cheap motel room where the body of evangelist & founder of the Devine World Church religion Franklin Osborne (Byron Morrow) has been found dead with a half empty bottle of Scotch Whiskey & a half empty bottle of pills found nearby. At first Lt. Monahan (Garry Walberg) suspects suicide, Quincy's autopsy proves inconclusive since the amount of alcohol & drugs in Osborne's system is marginal both ways & could have been a deliberate suicide or a simple accident. Quincy decides to delve further & orders a psychological autopsy to be carried out to find out Osborne's mental state & whether it was an accident, suicide or maybe even murder...

Episode 7 from season 5 this Quincy story was directed by Rob Holcomb & is a good solid Quincy episode that entertains & is perfectly watchable although it's doesn't stay too long on the memory. The script was in part written by Jack Klugman's sister Deborah (keeping it in the family...) & starts off reasonably well with a dead body found in mysterious circumstances in a motel room that at first looks like a typical case for Quincy to get his investigative teeth stuck into but after about the ten minute mark the episode shifts rather suddenly into moralistic message mode as Quincy orders a psychological autopsy & we follow Dr. Chase around as he treads very carefully around Osborne's friends & family to try & decide if he committed suicide or not hence the title Mode of Death. During this period Quincy takes a back seat & he's barely in it, apart from a classic scene between him & Asten over money & who is paying for the psychological autopsy as Quincy waves a dollar bill in his bosses face. Then about five minutes before the end Quincy does what he should have in the first place & proves Osborne was murdered. There's a fair amount of preaching about suicide & those who are contemplating it, it's the usual 'they need help' message with a bit of 'if they didn't need help then they wouldn't be trying to commit suicide' thrown in there as well. At only fifty odd minutes the episode moves along at a decent pace, the murder mystery element is packed into the last five minutes with a fairly dull psychological autopsy subplot taking up much of the duration & overall it's watchable if ultimately a bit forgettable.

As usual this episode is well made & competent but hardly going to win any awards for style. There's some nice humour like usual & the killer isn't too obvious. The acting is alright, as usual the regular's outshine the guest star's by a large margin. The guy who plays Kenneth Ross in particular is poor with a terrible accent & voice.

Mode of Death isn't the best episode of Quincy out there but it's still perfectly watchable & entertaining, maybe the fact Quincy isn't in it that much doesn't help & there are other Quincy episodes I would rather watch over Mode of Death but even average Quincy is still better than most telly show's at their best.

A nice change of pace.

[planktonrules · 7/10 · 22 April 2013]

"Mode of Death" begins with a famous TV evangelist being found dead in a hotel room--the apparent victim of an overdose of pills and liquor. However, when Quincy does the autopsy, why he took this combination is not clear--it MIGHT have been a deliberate suicide or it MIGHT have just been a mistake. The dead man's having mixed drugs and alcohol could have been the result of his intense congenital pain--in a misguided attempt to quell the pain. Or, the guy just wanted to die and took the lethal combination. So, Quincy suggests that they do a so-called 'psychological autopsy' on the man--have a consulting psychologist and his team determine which was the case. However, one word of caution, such 'autopsies' are NOT certainties--it is just a best guess.

This was an unusual show in that it is less a Quincy episode and more about Dr. Chase (Stephen Elliott). It makes you wonder if perhaps this particular show was meant as a possible spin off from "Quincy". I can't say. But I did appreciate two big things--first, that the psychological autopsy did NOT offer clear answers and second, that it introduced the concept of a psychological autopsy.

So is this show worth seeing? Yes. It's pretty good. I liked how it dealt with a tough subject without coming off as vindictive or insulting. Sure, one of the folks in the show ended up being a phony but the show was NOT some cheap attack against organized religion. Overall, a nice change of pace for the show BUT you wonder why Quincy wasn't very thorough when he did the autopsy for the first time--this was VERY atypical for this character.

Finally a decent season 5 episode

[rayoflite24 · 7/10 · 13 October 2015]

Mode of Death begins with a popular televangelist under investigation for financial fraud being found dead in a motel room. His death is believed to be the result of a fatal combination of prescription painkillers and alcohol, but questions soon arise when Quincy (Jack Klugman) conducts the autopsy and the amount of each that the victim consumed does not appear to represent a lethal combination. To gain further insight into whether this was a suicide or an accidental death, Quincy consults with a university team and requests that they conduct a "psychological autopsy" to help shed light on the cause of death. When the results of the psychological autopsy prove to be inconclusive, Quincy is forced to go back and investigate on his own both in the coroner lab and at the scene of the crime.

So far, this is one of the better episodes of Season 5 which has gotten off to a very lackluster start in my opinion. Although the set-up for this episode is strikingly similar to the Season 2 "Sullied Be Thy Name" episode where a priest is also found dead in a room under controversial circumstances, we still have a pretty decent mystery featured here and I thought the regular players as well as the guest stars all gave solid performances.

That said, this episode is not without problems in that it comes off rather disjointed. When Quincy brings in the team to conduct the psychological autopsy about a third of the way through, it's as if they suddenly take over and the entire focus shifts to them where they are doing all of the investigating with Quincy and the rest of the regulars noticeably absent. There is also a lot of post-mortem psychoanalysis which seemed to go way overboard to me because in the end it didn't really amount to very much.

I think most will find this episode somewhat interesting and entertaining, just be forewarned that you may need to do some fast forwarding during the scenes where the psychological autopsy team does their profiling ad nauseam.