(TV Series)

(1978)

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8/10
One of the best Quincy episodes... ever.
poolandrews16 February 2008
Warning: Spoilers
Quincy M.E.: No Way to Treat a Body starts as Los Angeles chief medical examiner Quincy (Jack Klugman) helps his latest young enough to be his daughter girlfriend Jenny Drake (Marj Dusay) move into 'Ruth's Rooming House' where she has rented an apartment, Quincy is horrified to see the large house resemble something out of a horror film but Jenny says it's cheap. That night Jenny's dog Harold disappears upstairs into the attic, Jenny chases him & discovers two twenty year old mummified bodies hidden up there. Quincy is on the case & performs autopsies to determine who they were & how they died, then the next day Jenny finds another two bodies hidden in the house. After autopsies Quincy finds that three died of natural causes but one was murdered, Quincy & Lt. Monahan (Garry Walberg) are determined to uncover the truth...

Episode 8 from season 4 this Quincy story was directed by Ron Satlof & is maybe my all time personal favourite episode of Quincy & there's a lot of great episodes to choose from. No Way to Treat a Body has everything that makes Quincy the show it is, it's extremely funny & humorous with several oddball residents & bizarre goings on, Asten is funny in this trying to denote the mummified bodies to a local museum & get his name on a silver plaque, there's plenty of mystery & intrigue, there's the traditional murder case to solve, the storyline is something a little bit different than the norm for these 70's US detective show's, there's a fantastic & varied performance by Klugman, it has a fast pace & several mummified bodies in an attic. What more do you want? I must admit No Way to Treat a Body made me laugh on many occasions with some quirky & funny events along with some funny people & dialogue. The murder mystery angle is well done & the eventual outcome is quite poignant & not that obvious. The story has a great hook to draw you in, when the bodies are found I was intrigued to find out who they were, how they got there & what happened to them. There are many memorable & magical little touches, many highly amusing scenes (like the huge blonde Amazon nurse who won't let Monahan & Quincy question a patient!) & a great story which I think is both original & highly entertaining. It only lasts for fifty minutes (without commercials) so it's not going to take long to see either, there are certainly worse ways to spend fifty minutes than watch this.

The house that Jenny moves into looks like it belongs in The Munsters (1964 - 1966) or The Addams Family (1964 - 1966) & I doubt I would want to live there. There are a few cobweb strewn attic type scenes that look like they belong in a horror film which are quite nicely done. I also think there are a couple of nods to Psycho (1960) here as well with mummified bodies & the like. The acting is very good here by pretty much everyone in it. Star Ed Begley Jr makes the second of his three Quincy appearances as a hippie type called Speed!

No Way to Treat a Body is a wonderful Quincy episode, if your a fan of the show & it's humour & quirks then your going to love this. However if you don't like the show then your probably going to hate it (although I think you will need a heart of stone not to enjoy it on some level) & it's as simple as that really. Probably my favourite Quincy episode, what higher recommendation do you need?
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8/10
Fun Halloween-style murder mystery
rayoflite2414 September 2015
No Way To Treat A Body begins with Quincy (Jack Klugman) moving his girlfriend, Ginny Drake (Marj Dusay), into a creepy old rooming house where several oddball eccentric types reside. Later when Ginny chases her dog up to the attic, she finds the mummified corpses of two women stashed there. Quincy and the police are called in to investigate, and the next evening Ginny finds two additional mummified bodies in another part of the attic. Quincy performs the autopsies and determines that three of the corpses were the sisters of the owner of the house, Ruth Kaufman (Bibi Osterwald) and died naturally, but another was a boarder who was murdered which leads to further investigation into her death. Quincy and the police learn that Ruth kept the death of her sisters a secret for years so that she could continue collecting on an annuity and they now must find out if she also committed murder to continue the charade.

In some ways, this is a great Quincy episode that is perfect to watch around Halloween. There is a cold case style murder mystery featured in a haunted house style setting, and this coupled with a good balance of spooky and funny content is pretty entertaining. I especially appreciated the guest star performance of Bibi Osterwald who plays the eccentric and animated Ruth Kaufman which is a real hoot.

All of that said, there are some ridiculous parts like the police not searching the entire attic and house when the first two bodies were found leaving it up to Quincy's girlfriend finding the other bodies just footsteps away a day later. Seriously?? I also found it pretty silly that the corpses were positioned to be sitting at a table like they were playing cards. Since they were hidden, what was the point of this? Was someone who walked up to the attic and saw that to think that they were interrupting a high stakes poker tournament and just leave? I also don't understand how the bodies were so well preserved being up in the unventilated attic of an old home in California, wouldn't any excessive heat and humidity have decomposed the bodies at an increased rate?

As long as you don't get too hung up on any of that nonsense, this is quite an enjoyable, entertaining and unique Season 4 episode, just be sure to watch it in the right frame of mind.
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7/10
The intentional quirkiness almost gets in its way...
AlsExGal10 March 2024
... but it still manages to be a good mystery episode of Quincy with a bit of the spirit of Halloween injected, although this episode aired well into November 1978.

Quincy's girlfriend of the week is moving into a rather spooky boarding house inhabited by kooky characters. She is doing so because she is going back to school and she needs a cheaper place, so she rents the "side-attic" of the home. Quincy is against the idea - the home looks spooky, the residents look spookier, but the girlfriend is having none of it. This girlfriend has never been seen before on Quincy, and she never is again, although Quincy makes with the disingenuous sounding "Honey" like he did/does with all of the rest.

Did I mention she has a black cat? One night the black cat escapes the girlfriend's room and so she goes out after him. She winds up following the cat into the attic where she discovers the mummified bodies of two elderly women who are posed as though playing cards. This is certainly not your typical means of disposing of a body! Quincy is on the case, and eventually two more mummified bodies of elderly women are discovered hidden in the home, also posed as though playing cards! What goes on here? Watch and find out.

Ed Begley Jr. Is a guest on this episode, although he really has nothing to do with the denouement of the plot. Strangely enough his name is in giant letters on the opening credits as though he is a big star at this point - He is not. He really doesn't get larger roles until he becomes part of the cast on St. Elsewhere, in 1982.
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5/10
Quirky but highly flawed.
planktonrules20 April 2013
"No Way to Treat a Body" is an interesting episode of "Quincy" but it's also very highly flawed--with a plot that often makes no sense and too strong a desire to be quirky and goofy. I really think the show could have been much better had they cleaned up the script a bit.

The show begins with Quincy's girlfriend (one of about 42974 during the course of the series) moving into a weird old house filled with eccentrics. She loves the place--Quincy just thinks they're all a bunch of weirdos. Soon, the girlfriend makes a discovery--a couple bodies in the attic. But they're not just bodies--they are perfectly mummified bodies. It seems that the warm and dry attic was perfect for preserving the corpses. Soon, two more are discovered. Quincy's autopsies of the first three bodies show they died of natural causes. But, the fourth was murdered--and now a 20 year old murder case is opened. But who did it and why?

The biggest problem I had with the episode was the way the lady who owned this rooming house was written and how everyone reacted to her. She apparently stuck the bodies there to commit fraud and continue collecting on an annuity that only paid if four women were alive--and when three of them died, the fourth (the land lady) hid them and kept taking payments. When confronted, she says the annuity conmpany had cheated her and she was only getting what was rightfully hers. No one questioned this and everyone immediately agreed with her and saw no problem with this fraud or the three non-murdered corpses hidden in the attic. This made absolutely no sense and would undoubtedly result in the lady going to prison and the property confiscated. Yet, inexplicably, everyone loves this woman. In fact, the devotion of Quincy (who barely knows her) defied common sense--as is Monahan's sudden change of tune. The second biggest problem is that the film really tried way too hard to be quirky--so much so that it seemed a bit ridiculous. It also seemed like a reworking of the old film "You Can't Take It With You".

I think a lot of folks will enjoy this one--but I just felt it took a neat idea and tried way too much to be a funny episode. Logic be darned (IMDB won't let me use the other word)!
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