Reviews

Dale Kingston murders his uncle Rudy, because he's learned he won't inherit the old man's art collection. He tries to pin the murder on dear, dotty, delightful Aunt Edna, divorced many years earlier from Rudy. There are complications eventually — including from the girl who helps him with the hit on Rudy.

Many episodes start with a huge house, a shot of the exterior, a wealthy someone in the way, and the murder. Kingston plants all the evidence and arranges the crime scene without speaking and in fact during these few moments there is hardly any sound at all. Until the gunshot, and then a doorbell.

Kingston establishes his alibi, such as it is, by attending a gallery exhibit opening reception and looking at his watch multiple times, or asking other people to look at theirs. He thinks his plan rocks, and he thinks everyone else exists to help him carry it out — if only by confirming when he was at the party. Some of the art jokes are pretty good, though.

This is not my favorite episode by far, though it has a high rating here on IMDb. Ross Martin — an actor I generally enjoy and one known for being an acting teacher — descends into madness as the murderer. He starts to screech, and do stupid things. Perhaps it's purposeful, as Columbo comes closer and closer. I dunno; it grates.

One awesome scene is with the landlady, looking at the scrapbook. Watch for it!

Culled from The Columbo Case Files: Season One.

Her mom thinks she's useless and she's none too fond of herself, but Helen Stewart believes she witnessed a murder. Turns out military cost overruns did not originate in the 1980s. Were we to check, we'd prolly find unscrupulous blacksmiths ripping off the Continental Army on bullets …

You might say offing the dude in front of a huge bay window lacks foresight — but he makes up for it in resourcefulness when cornered. Overall, the suspect is fastidious, formal, and pretends to fall in love with the witness … who begins to "doubt" her account still more, for more amorous reasons.

Enter Columbo.

His adversaries are beginning to take a recognizable shape — a rich, smart, and powerful one. It makes them proud … and they make mistakes. Or to put it another way, then comes the fall.

Have you noticed the cops are cowardly in Columbo? People are always telling them what they do and don't want, and whether they're doing their job properly, and when they don't have any more questions, like some kind of Jedi knight: "This is not the suspect you are looking for … "

(Note the later cop shows where offers are always interrogating some poor slob, who never wants an attorney. Revenge is sweet, or superiority and arrogance have simply switched sides.)

Nice touch with the gulls screeching over the gunshot.

And look for Gen. Hollister doing a passable Victor Kiam impression.

The ending is touching but I can't tell you how.

Culled from The Columbo Case Files: Season One.

After Culp's character, a private detective named Brimmer, inadvertently kills Kennicut's wife, the lieutenant must show how, and even why. This is going to be interesting, because Brimmer himself isn't sure why: this is the first accidental killing in Columbo.

Not that it matters: it's Brimmer's temper — he's … well, brimming … with it — and there would certainly be a legal situation here, anyway. And in fact there is.

Because Brimmer had already been trying to blackmail the missus, who was making time with someone who was not the master. Culp's character hopes to use this as leverage against her, or more precisely with her for leverage against her husband, who owns newspapers.

He looks that part, too: much more Charles Foster Kane than the goofy dude in the first episode of next season — a guy who also supposedly owns a newspaper.

So when Mrs. Kennicut makes the classic TV mistake of telling the major bad guy everything you're going to do, well her trajectory is set. Of course she didn't know he would … well watch.

In this episode, I think Columbo suspects the killer fairly quickly: he seems "on" immediately … he gets a sense of Brimmer's temper … and really, there aren't many other options.

Culp's Brimmer merits special mention: he's excellent. The terseness in speaking, in actions — he is precise, cutting, and careful, and not careful enough. And you'll like watching him try not to bust out laughing when Falk is into his patter.

Meanwhile, Columbo is always noticing, always asking questions — and he's funny about it, as in the palm reading scene, and he's audacious, as when he's riffling the golf pro's appointment book.

He keeps moving forward — what's the other guy going to do? Resist?

Culled from The Columbo Case Files: Season One.

Mystery novel writing partners Jim Ferris and Ken Franklin — Ferris & Franklin, like Levinson & Link — are breaking up. So the latter ices the former, which won't bring the lucrative writing team back together but will satisfy other, deeper, desires.

Story opens with one of them working and one of them driving up in a very expensive car. What we hear is the clackety-clack of the typewriter — because that's what's important: the writing not the car. And because the guy who directed this episode, before he became Steven Spielberg, is an awesome artist; in fact, he credits this episode with getting him the job of directing "Duel" — his first film.

Speaking of the typewriter, Ferris and Franklin met in a typewriter shop — which is awesome. I learned to type on my dad's IBM Selectric III. We had it in a room off of a single hallway and on it I learned to type, and prolly watched some Columbo as I did.

Columbo loosens his tie even more as we move through the proceedings, and we see something very sweet: he's being very kind, this time to the wife of the victim. There's a fine mix of hard-nosed ("this man killed your husband") and tender. It's good to watch.

Culled from The Columbo Case Files: Season One

They still haven't settled on a font for the credits, but from the minute we see a woman's hands pasting together the ransom note, we know we're in for something different.

A high-powered attorney who kills her husband, who is also high-powered: in fact, that's how she got that way, which is part of the set-up. One of them is nicer than the other. Guess which one.

Tech is big in Columbo, from scissors snipping words from newspapers and scissors snipping reel-to-reel tape to punch-cards that call you and pretend to be someone who is, well … dead. And we have a female murderer — the first of several we shall see in the series.

If you like 1970s décor — big, bright, gaudy, whites, silvers, golds … and that doesn't even get to how brown everything is. Then again, I like the nice chocolate tights as much as the next guy … well, maybe the guy after that. Well, if you like that sort of thing, you'll be right at home. I'd like a bit less, but whatya gonna do?

The mother-daughter catfights are shrill and sharp and melodramatic. Columbo is more rumpled than in the original, as we will come to expect. Not totally but a bit more flyaway, and the trench coat slightly less clean-and-pressed. He has this cousin Ralph …

Enjoy the "idiosyncrasy" scene.

Culled from The Columbo Case Files: Season One, by Paul Hughes

I now have the entire collection, all 35 years, nearly 70 episodes in all, and I've seen each of them at least twice, most of them more than that, and a few favorites nearing 10 times apiece.

I've watched every episode again, and then again. I must confess — it is after all an essay about the truth and its tendency to will out — that this got harder, as I went. Because in watching closely to write the best guide I could, I had to look at the shows — writing, acting, and even Mr. Falk — differently. Among other differences, I looked more closely. And at a few points I grew weary; there was discomfort and dreariness.

But the tighter angles and heavier analysis also showed me why we watch.

Why we watch at all, and why we keep watching — and why it matters — even if we can't say why, and don't need to know to like it more and more each time. The qualities that draw us in, and keep us there, are the ones that bloom, that burrow deep, without our even noticing.

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It's because it's true.

The Columbo we love — and the Columbo we love to watch annoy hell out of the murderers, until some of them beg to be caught and taken away just so the questions will stop — all of it stems from the deep truths of stories — and about human nature itself.

There's the restoration of order of course, order of many kinds, and there's the reminder to the rich that the rule of the universe is you get what you need not what you think you deserve and that even money and power and your supposedly foolproof plan cannot protect you, if you kill.

There is how Lt. Columbo solves the crime, which we the eyewitnesses have seen: namely by gamely paying attention and asking questions. Those are deep practices not unrelated to love.

There is also his essential kindness: how even when he's tracking the killer — even we know he knows and that realization is slowly dawning on the murderer, too … he's unfailingly … nice.

He is nearly unfailingly good.

Lt. Columbo is — to use words said to be more in demand today than 40 years ago, but that are actually ever-welcome — genuine, authentic, and real. He actually is intrigued (to take an actual example, from Episode 1:2) about what to do when decorative soap sticks together after it's used.

When he notices stuff it's not that he's being annoying, or that he's weird. These are quirks, odd, whatchamacallit … idiosyncrasies … even to us … but that's because we're not that consistently questioning, caring, and kind.

I think he truly is intrigued, curious — even at times in wonder — about such things.

When in every episode, every … single … one … he notices at least a half-dozen details, niggling crummy little curiosities, it's because he really wants to know. Of course — at times he's showing the murderer the game is not only afoot, but that it's almost up.

But he also knows life isn't like that, or shouldn't be, and what we just saw just doesn't fit … and why not?

He knows it should be otherwise, and if it's not, something's wrong and needs to be righted.

And of course it's because the account of life the murderer gives — from who they blame for all their ills, to what they say, to how they leave the crime scene, to how they behave afterward, and the explanations they give for all of this — is utterly false.

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The reason it works is because it's true and real and deep. And this is possible because the writers knew — know — Lt. Columbo, and everything about him.

The facts aren't as important as the truth. There are inconsistencies over the series in the show's telling of the man: whether he can cook, let's say, whether he drinks, and even about his beloved missus. But the truth, as ever, lives on well past the facts.

And so does Columbo.

The writers know everything about Lt. Columbo … Peter Falk knew … and now, at any time, we can too.

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Peter Falk died June 23, 2011. The obituaries began June 24, 2011 — my fifth wedding anniversary.

Still married and still watching, I also confess to liking 1970s episodes the most: the ones I saw as a kid, the ones with all the kitsch. I may simply be too close to episodes from the 1980s and 1990s: too close to the parachute pants and mullets, too close to the technomusic.

Maybe an overacting killer embarrasses me when it's from the years I came of age. The 1970s just seem more like fun.

And Columbo is a joy to watch, no matter what the year.

And that's why we do.

Paul Hughes is a writer in Southern California. This essay is excerpted from The Columbo Case Files: Season One. Thank you for reading.

For my wedding, I asked for and received the Columbo DVD collection. Complete to that point, it ended with the double helping of Seasons Six and Seven, and back copy text touting the guest stars like Kim Cattrall and Ed Begley, Jr. Plus a "captivating conclusion in these final episodes."

Those "final episodes" aired on TV in 1978. But instead of ending, Columbo kept coming for 25 more years. The last one ran in January 2003.

Altogether, the show aired over 32 years; 35 counting "Prescription: Murder," made in 1968.

One half the biblical "three score and 10" is not, well, half-bad for TV.

And the Levinson & Link character is even older, dating to a mid-1960s play, and a single episode of a different TV show, with a different actor, in 1960. By then the man who would become iconic — Peter Falk as Lt. Columbo — had already been nominated twice for an Academy Award.

So the show began before I was born, the play is older than my parents' marriage, and even my dad, who introduced me to the 1970s TV series when I was in elementary school, hadn't himself graduated from high school by 1960.

Why then do I watch?

Why then do we?

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When asked why they watch, most people say something about the character of Lt. Columbo.

As so many of the episodes are quite similar to each other — through 35 years of episodes, we'll see recurring set-ups, returning guest stars (as murderer and/or victim, or even in supporting roles), and sets and backdrops used over and over — this makes sense. After all, if the shows are mainly the same, it's the character we're going to be interested in. And people care about people.

So even if it's the same Universal Studios back lot — where the show was made, and which often played its own role in episodes — and even as we attend a class on the social history of the 1970s, it's not exactly the same Lt. Columbo. The character develops.

So one thing we're saying is it's not just the character "Columbo" but the character of the man.

In fact, when Peter Falk himself was asked why the show endured, he always mentioned people connecting with "the lieutenant" and his homespun ways: his many stories of numberless quirky relatives, his affection for Mrs. Columbo, his never quite ready for prime time rumpledness …

He was Everyman … putting away murderers.

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Of course, there have also been grievous mistakes in supposing why he's so popular.

For instance, in 1973, when the show was only two years old, a New York Times writer said "the most thoroughgoing satisfaction" of the show was "the assurance that those who dwell in marble and satin, those whose clothes, food, cars and mates are the very best do not deserve it."

The emphasis is in the original. And it's not true.

That's not why we're satisfied and not why we connect with Columbo the show or Columbo the man. The point is not they don't deserve it. If we thought that, we'd be judging the killers based on their wealth — supposedly something they do to us.

No.

The point is even the rich are subject to the same laws, moral or otherwise, as we are. This isn't to say the rich don't get away with it in real life; in fact our love for Lt. Columbo affirms this. Because on the show, they don't get away with it.

Most of us do not begrudge people their money. In fact, in the good news / bad news department, we aspire to it.

But we don't want them to receive special treatment because of it. And yes, we've been known to give them that special treatment ourselves … and yes, we want that money, along with a special life, too … if we ever get that cash.

But the show is there — the lieutenant is there — to remind us it's wrong.

We don't care if they own a BMW. But. If they push it off a cliff, with their spouse (already dead) behind the wheel, and pretend it was a kidnapping gone awry, and try to weasel their way out of it, and lie like a bad toupee — we want them nailed.