YMMV / Diagnosis: Murder

• Complete Monster: See here.
• He Really Can Act: "Retribution" opens with Steve getting shot and left on life support. Mark spends the episode jumping between sheer parental panic and cold, hard fury. For a usually light-hearted show, the darker tone of the episode really takes the time to show off Dick van Dyke's range.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In "The Roast," Tim Conway's character is recognized by someone as the voice of a cartoon character. That same year, Conway started voicing Barnacle Boy.
  • In "Living on the Streets Can Be Murder," Bryan Cranston plays a homeless man named Walter.
  • A popular joke among fans of Mannix was how the heck he kept shrugging off so many injuries on the job. Well, when your go-to doctor is Mark Sloan, one of the best doctors in the business, then you have yourself a fine explanation.
  • "Flashdance With Death" has Elizabeth Berkley playing a stripper. Oh boy, would she certainly do so again a year later.
  • X Marks The Murder has Kurt Fuller playing a coroner who ends up being a murderer. He ended up playing another one (that thankfully isn't a murderer) a few years later.
    • It also wouldn't be the only time he'd play the killer on a show Lee Goldberg worked on.
  • "Murder X 4" has people with terminal illnesses committing murders in order to secure financial security for their families when they inevitably die from said illness. You have to wonder if this is where Milton Bobbit got that idea.
  • "Must Kill TV" has involves the television industry with Fred Willard as the killer. It wouldn't be the last time, either.
  • Timothy Omundson plays a crackpot and criminal with a grudge against the city's mayor. Years later, he would play Carlton Lassiter.
  • Who'd have thought that Dick Van Dyke wouldn't be television's only Dr. Mark Sloan?
• More Popular Spin-Off: It's this to Jake and the Fatman. It probably didn't help, however, that Jake and the Fatman was never rerun after its original broadcast on CBS.
• Narrowed It Down to the Guy I Recognize:
  • "Reunion With Murder" features Roma Downey and Corinne Bohrer as former sorority sisters of Amanda's, who are both suspects in the murder of a woman who was blackmailing them. Corinne's character turns out to be the murderer.
  • Played with in "Discards," in which involves a group of ex-spies being hunted down, As shown on the main page, the guest stars played spies on TV... and the killer is played by Phil Morris, who also played a spy on TV - but in the 1980s on the revival of Mission: Impossible; he's the only one who didn't play a TV spy in the 1960s.
• Nightmare Fuel: "The Last Resort" features Steve and his latest partner being sentenced to the Last Resort, a ward at Community General for police officers who need psychiatric evaluation. Aside from Steve becoming more and more aggressive to the point it looks like he actually kills a suspect, his partner tries to cover up the crime by planting a gun on the dead guy. Then we learn the partner's already been a bit unhinged ever since his wife ran off with their daughter. It turns out the partner had a psychotic break, killed his wife and daughter, hid their bodies, and blocked it out for years. Steve's supposed anger issues and shooting the suspect were all staged as part of the investigation, which is revealed after the partner locates the skeletal remains of his family.
• Spiritual Successor: Murder 101, the Hallmark Channel's series of Made for TV Movies starring Dick Van Dyke as Dr. Jonathan Maxwell and Barry Van Dyke as Mike Bryant, a private detective (not the doctor's son this time around).
• Tear Jerker: Much of The Movie Town Without Pity, as Mark and Steve try to both solve and come to terms with Carol's death. She'd had so many problems throughout her life, and she had finally straightened out and married someone she really loved; the video footage of her wedding showed them just how happy she was. And then she and her new husband were murdered. The end of the movie, where they scatter her ashes, is especially sad.

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