TRUE! - nervous - very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses - not destroyed - not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily - how calmly I can tell you the whole story.
Our personalities are capable of walking a tightrope of good and evil. Usually, we keep our balance, and we make it to the other side safely, our good intentions still intact. However, when there is a shift, for any reason, over the edge we go. How or why this shift emerges differs with all of us. What makes one man crazy only makes another man laugh. For some, it means murder. And the difference can be slight.
Poe understood that. The above quote is from "The Tell Tale Heart," his story of a murderer's conscience getting the best of him. Sometimes, the one person who cannot keep our secrets, is us.
I'd like to think my favorite misanthrope, Detective Munch understands as well.
He and Kay get a case involving a ten year old murder. Seems someone was buried alive inside a wall. Theatrical, even for homicide standards. Usually getting a cold case like this would drive any detective, especially Munch, crazy. But he's got a spring in his step. He's in love with his new girlfriend, medical examiner Dr. Alyssa Dyer, and nothing is bringing him down. In true Munch fashion, he screws it up immediately, sleeping with her cop roommate. Now he's got a secret, and the guilt is wearing on him.
But he's got a case to solve, and the lead suspect is a street "poet/drug dealer" Joseph Cadero. He's also obsessed with Poe. Starting to see a theme? Munch knows he has his man. Whose guilt will get the best of them first?
Throw in tons of Poe references, complete with a beating heart during interrogation, and a hell of an ending, and you've got perhaps my favorite episode of Season Four.
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