This is the second episode in the series and Columbo's character has changed. It resembles the fumbling detective that was to become so famous, whereas the first episode, "Prescription for Murder", presented him as neat, determined, and only a bit distracted.
Lee Grant, looking smashing, is the murderess. She shoots her husband at home, then schlepps his body elsewhere, after staging a kidnapping. The idea is to have her husband killed by non-existent kidnappers so that Grant can steal the ransom money that is otherwise unavailable to her because it's in a trust for a teen age girl.
The introduction of the girl, Patricia Mattick, who hates her stepmother and is hated in return, is a bit of a distraction at first. One wonders why she returned from her fancy boarding school in Switzerland after her father's death. Besides making venomous remarks to Grant, what does she hope to accomplish? However, she is instrumentalized during the unraveling of the crime.
Falk and Grant are both fine. Falk is introduced scratching around the front door, looking for a pen he'd just dropped. (He wouldn't have done that in the first episode.) We also see him scared as a passenger in Grant's light airplane. His fear of flying isn't as amusing as some of his later phobias because the point is made a bit too obviously, but, okay, it's an incunabulum.
A real stand out is Lee Grant. She purrs her way through the story, looking slightly bored when Columbo interrogates her, staring at him out of the corners of her eyes, as if too uninterested to turn her head. She's genuinely effective.
A nice job, overall, and it established the characters and situations we would become more familiar with over the years.
Lee Grant, looking smashing, is the murderess. She shoots her husband at home, then schlepps his body elsewhere, after staging a kidnapping. The idea is to have her husband killed by non-existent kidnappers so that Grant can steal the ransom money that is otherwise unavailable to her because it's in a trust for a teen age girl.
The introduction of the girl, Patricia Mattick, who hates her stepmother and is hated in return, is a bit of a distraction at first. One wonders why she returned from her fancy boarding school in Switzerland after her father's death. Besides making venomous remarks to Grant, what does she hope to accomplish? However, she is instrumentalized during the unraveling of the crime.
Falk and Grant are both fine. Falk is introduced scratching around the front door, looking for a pen he'd just dropped. (He wouldn't have done that in the first episode.) We also see him scared as a passenger in Grant's light airplane. His fear of flying isn't as amusing as some of his later phobias because the point is made a bit too obviously, but, okay, it's an incunabulum.
A real stand out is Lee Grant. She purrs her way through the story, looking slightly bored when Columbo interrogates her, staring at him out of the corners of her eyes, as if too uninterested to turn her head. She's genuinely effective.
A nice job, overall, and it established the characters and situations we would become more familiar with over the years.