Columbo - S/D

I just started Rockford Files after finishing the classic Columbo run. It's different enough but definitely darker. It makes me realize how restrained Columbo really was. No guns, no car chases, everybody is cool as a cucumber for the most part.

Is there any episode at all when Columbo takes a fist to the face? Rockford gets pummeled half to death in his own trailer every other week.

My favourite is #11 - I really need to get my "watch all of columbo" project off the ground though.

― dear confusion the catastrophe waitress (ledge), Sunday, July 17, 2022 3:33 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

We're up to the final 70s episode, The Conspirators, which looks like it's going to be very silly indeed. Then we're on to the 80s episodes which I've seen very few of, I think we're probably in for a very mixed bag.

very very very

Man the Johnny Cash as malicious Cessna pilot episode takes forever to get through

I quite enjoyed that one, Cash does an entertaining job

It's good!

I mean it's a fairly low-stakes episode, even by the standards of Columbo, but there's plenty of fun to be had with Cash's costumes and the bizarre 70s interiors, and Cash is relatively sympathetic by the standards of Columbo murderers

Yes, it's one of those ones where Columbo is most apologetic for catching the murderer. Good ending too.

I think that ep would be in the top 10 for me. Love the last scene in the car.

(xp) almost apologetic not most apologetic!

Is there any episode at all when Columbo takes a fist to the face?

Yes, there are at least two such incidents in the 1990s. Columbo and George Wendt get roughed up by Rod Steiger's henchmen at the end of the disappointingly flat Strange Bedfellows episode, although all is not as it seems.

Columbo gets a proper fist to the face when posing a small-time crook in the Undercover episode, which was an adaptation of an Ed McBain 87th Precinct novel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pdjZgnMLqc

Thank you, I appreciate your research

Going to rep a new-ish podcast that’s both rewatched the show but also had really good interviews with writers and scholars about the show.

https://www.iheart.com/podcast/53-the-shabby-detective-91672189/

It’s done by Chris Stachiw (from The Kulturecast) and Mike White (from The Projection Booth and the Cashiets du Cinemart zine)

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rude tbh

In the episode I’m up to (s4?), the lieutenant is first seen looking in the back seat of the police commissioners car (which he had to borrow because his was in the shop) looking for his signature green cigar (why is it green)

Just watched “a friend in deed” and it seemed kind of …sad? that C brakes up the conspiracy between the two friends. Like let them just live with what they did, that’s punishment enough, isn’t it?

I’m starting to think I can skip the usually belabored opening sequences and just start watching when C arrives at the scene of the crime

wtf, no.

This show is so screenshot worthy that I’m going to have to stop watching on peecock and pirate instead

I watch Columbo on Tubi and Chrome won't let me screenshot but Firefox will.

Haha outsmarted that Detective Columbo, dude has no idea I’m the murderer. He’s just got one more question for me and then I’m off the hook

— Dolphin Pilot (@TheAmitie) August 7, 2022

At the same time as this show encourages the love for the titular character it does the same inversely in equal measure to loathe the criminal. That’s just not reality and that’s what makes the show a bit unreal and uncomfortable. Who isn’t worthy of mercy?

That's not always true though, some of the murderers are presented fairly sympathetically. Not often but it does happen.

Obviously the worst thing about the murderers is not their murdering but their arrogant and condescending attitudes.

Definitely. Not all of them are Jack Cassidy or Robert Culp though.

Cash and Pleasance eg are wildly likeable / empathetic within the text

but those episodes wouldn't work the same way unless MOST of the other murderers were presented as being cunce tho!

McGoohan is a tragic figure in "By Dawn's Early Light".

The show is basically class warfare, the schlubby blue collar working class guy against the snobby elites who use their wealth and power to try and conceal their crimes. It's not always necessary to portray his opponents as sympathetic IMO, because with a few exceptions, they are The Worst.

yah, but the tragedy is largely bcz he’s willfully signed on to a system that will never value or support him iirc? (obv the not-very-hidden moral is that it will treat his charges / trainees worse…)

((McGoohan having way more fun in at least two of the later eps he also directs, but with much less sympathy for sure)

(xp to tom)

yah, but the tragedy is largely bcz he’s willfully signed on to a system that will never value or support him iirc? (obv the not-very-hidden moral is that it will treat his charges / trainees worse…)

i read this as talking about Columbo and the police force at first...

Paul Verhoeven OTM

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/aug/10/a-sweet-simple-salt-of-the-earth-scruffball-why-i-love-columbo

That's given me a warm fuzzy feeling inside.

Love Falk’s physical comedy - the early episode where he stumbles down a hill to get to a car wreck in the Hollywood hills. And in “exercise in fatality” where we see our hero in a blue tracksuit on a treadmill, jogging tiredly while he questions the suspect

Making his way from the crowd to the stage in ‘74 to accept some award, he trips coming up the stairs and then rights himself using his arms like plane wings.

It’s not that Paul Verhoven

Unless you already thought that an article on Guardian Australia that talks about what streaming service carries Columbo in Australia would be by the Australian film critic Paul Verhoeven, in which case it is

Must you shatter our hopes and dreams

RoboColumbo, make it so...

Showcolumbos

Starship Columbos

Spotted a young Bruno Kirby in the cadet academy episode

His dad's character in that episode recurs (nearly all in eps directed by the cadet academy episode's guest star)

Every episode has such a wealth of character actors, I watched Murder Under Glass yesterday which featured Louis Jourdan, Michael Gazzo (who played Frank Pentangeli in The Godfather Part II), Alan Alda's brother Antony Alda, and Shera Danese who was married to Peter Falk, among others. Part of the pleasure is spotting actors you (semi) recognise then looking them up to see what else they appeared in.

Yes, I remember watching the Eric Rohmer film "La Collectionneuse" and the lead actor in it turned up as the murderer in a (not very good) later Columbo not long after.

Blink and you'll miss it, but Jamie Lee Curtis confiscates Columbo's contraband doughnut in 'The Bye-Bye Sky High IQ Murder Case'

Brilliant comic seen from The Bye-Bye Sky High IQ Murder Case sees a surly @jamieleecurtis confiscate #Columbo’s contraband donut! Love it! 🍩😄♥️ pic.twitter.com/j4tHeakVNx

— Lieutenant Columbo (@columbophile) September 11, 2019

saw that one just recently. i got the sneaking suspicion that the writer(s) had a ADC Accutrac 4000 and then reverse engineered a convoluted way it could be used to commit murder.

couldn't help myself and looked up info on the turntable. apart from the clever programmability, it's pretty much a cheap plastic toy. i would hope a person of means who is a member of a mensa-like society would pride themselves on having some high-end audiophile shit. this guy had two of these bad boys, one at home, one at the club. anyway, can't buy taste i guess.

That episode alone has Theodore Bikel, Samantha Eggar and Kenneth Mars in it!

Dean Stockwell just showed up in the cruise ship Episode
I thought he was murdered back in season 2 lol

It would have been nice if sometimes they presented a couple of suspects and then we shadowed C as he determined whodunnit instead of always letting the audience in and C always having a sixth sense about who the perp is