@villain mentioned that we should have this, and so we should. I had never seen Columbo until about a year ago, when we ended up watching the first few eps on hotel room Tubi in the midst of an otherwise uneventful family visit to the U S of A, since then I’ve been pretty obsessed and got the DVD box set of the whole series.
We’ve been working our way through them in order, I think just about finished with season 3. I love this show so much, but it is not the kind of thing you can really binge because every episode is basically the same. I really miss episodic TV, especially when it is as well done as this.
A lot of Columbo episodes seem to operate with the logic of like a recurring SNL character. You tune in just to see the things Columbo does that you know he’s gonna do. These things include
Always being a lil hungry or sleepy wherever he goes
Talking about his wife and the Columbo’s Wife’s family EU in general
Always making sure to give the landline number of whosever’s house he plans to be at to anyone who might need to call him, so the entire scene can be interrupted for Columbo to take a phone call in a hospital or random suspect’s apartment or something
Act sheepish about his piece of shit car
Ingratiate himself to whatever rich blowhard asshole did the murder that week while also managing to convince the perp that he is completely incompetent, then trap him in a psychological prison from which the only escape is a full confession
What are the other things you know Columbo is always gonna do
There was a string of episodes that all featured Columbo like, not quite planting evidence, but fabricating some key detail that he knew was true anyway that was going to help him coerce his victim to confessing. I don’t really like those episodes as much, it’s more fun when he’s able to do it without playing dirty.
Another fun thing to do is to look at what LA used to look like, and look at all the old weird Hollywood character actors with faces and voices that just don’t exist in the world anymore
Columbo has that trap card energy which I think is a big part of its cross-generational appeal. I never watched it enough to see if there were any episodes where Columbo’s reputation preceded him and the killer actually knew a bit about him ahead of time and whether this might ruin the usual flow.
there’s a great 90s episode when he actually pretends to be being seduced by Faye Dunaway as the killer the whole time and then at the end he’s having a drink with his colleague and he expresses that he was actually falling in love with her a little bit, but what can you do, going to go take the wife bowling
Peter Falk was the most incredible mensch… I learned from the recent Elaine May biography that he was the one who suggested to her that she hide the negatives of Mikey and Nicky in Connecticut when the studio was trying to repossess them from her to finish the movie without her consent because he was from Connecticut and he knew that no one could be bothered to go there or figure out if they had jurisdiction
I think I also read some interview with him once where he expressed some skepticism that Cassavetes was in fact “self funding” his movies because Peter Falk was disproportionately just giving him the Columbo money
I love Columbo’s little tech obsessions with the all the latest gadgets the 20th century has to offer. Could watch Peter Falk be delighted at answering machines and VCRs and email and whatnot all day.
okay here’s my theory on which of my favorite murder mystery series are good for what:
Poirot:
Tightly wound plots where the question “whodunit” is genuinely interesting
Watching a fussy little man get upset. oh no a crumb has upset the genius who hates crime
Rich people screwing each other over for no reason
A sense that these people are gonna get what’s coming to em, and Poirot’s gonna tell them how despicable they are
Columbo:
A god damned goblin is about to solve this crime
– But sometimes…he gets real serious, and you know the goblin thing is just a weird act
A sense of impending justice for the whole runtime
– although it usually fizzles right at the end because he’s got some weird kinda gotcha that just would not hold up in court whatsoever
Sympathy for the victims, sometimes
watching people underestimate him never gets old, and when they don’t underestimate him it’s even more shocking
hes so rumpled
Poker Face:
Natasha Lyonne
The whiplash of watching someone die, then getting to know them with full knowledge that they’re going to die
These murderers have got to be the worst out of the three. they’re just all so petty and selfish and awful awful awful
– watching them suffer is maybe the most satisfying
Charlie Cale is actually blundering and incompetent, unlike Columbo, and so the question of “how is she gonna get out of this mess” is much more relevant
The plots are really tightly wound here as well, and it never feels like a false Gotcha even as they get increasingly implausible
anyway i think columbo has some of the worst plotting of the major murder mystery series, but they’re still a joy to watch. and so often the actors get to chew the scenery, just take entire mouthfuls out, and I love it.
I’m mid-season-2 and i kinda burned out but i’m gonna go back to it. Also I’ve been watching on my itty bitty phone so it’s all like this:
also i think that columbo maybe gets at the class thing better than most, although none of them seem to be trying directly. just the fact that these rich assholes underestimate columbo because of how he looks and sounds is enough to be commentary
poirot is rich and snotty, so anything he says is suspect
Poker Face isn’t that interested in class dynamics, as it’s more about the individual cases and Charlie as a character.
I recommend again that people watch Elsbeth, it doesn’t have the “serious artistic writers and actors are doing Columbo for the first time in who knows how long” cachet of Poker Face but it really is as good (and given that it’s a modern CBS show of all things, could be graded on an immense curve and doesn’t need to be)
I think I should probably check this out–I was really enthusiastic about Poker Face after the first 3 episodes but eventually kind of soured on it for all the reasons @vastlecania mentions. I in particular did not like that they had to contrive some reason to put Charlie in physical peril in every episode, just seemed totally unnecessary every single time.
Anyway I thought that I would enjoy High Potential, which on paper sounded kind of like the USA TV Network version of Poker Face, but in the first episode at least basically seems like… well, it’s exactly that, except in a bad way. Perhaps Elsbeth hits the sweet spot better
Oh one more random Columbo thought before i try to do real things for a minute, the more Columbo I watch the less impressed I am in retrospect by Altman’s “The Long Goodbye.” I mean, I still love that movie but like Falk was halfway there already and not even trying to do it in a hipster way or whatever
to me it felt like an extension of the other murder mystery thing where this character is just surrounded by murder all the time. how many people died in Cabot Cove and how was jessica fletcher involved in all of them
even columbo falls to this sometimes. there’s at least one episode i’ve watched where the murder happens long after columbo gets involved, despite him being in homicide. somebody’s gotta die!!!
so yeah it felt just as unlikely so since i’ve already suspended disbelief for one it was easy for me to do the other. but also yeah i getcha it’s a bit contrived.
(oh i also think i was okay with it because she leads a very unstable life and basically lives out of her car for the whole series and that’s a god damned dangerous life)
it makes sense, but this is also like why i found it so stressful. at least columbo has the might of the LAPD behind him, and also seems to be pretty good at avoiding sticky situations. Charlie just seems to walk blindly into every possible dark corner of the world, and is way too willing to reveal her special powers to people before knowing anything about them. it kind of makes the gimmick of the show collapse on itself immediately? But maybe that’s the joke? IDK.
I guess I just wanted the show to be more about her learning how to take care of herself and use her gifts more strategically, rather than just like… bumbling her way in and out of predicaments randomly.
I like Any Old Port in a Storm best. I love when Columbo mentions anything about wine and Donald Pleasence immediately changes gears from tightly wound to filled with excitement and joy about having somebody to talk about/share his passion with – even if it’s somebody investigating him for murder. He can’t help but get excited and it plays perfectly into Columbo’s little “aw shucks, I don’t know much outside of Two Buck Chuck and Boone’s Farm but I’d sure be keen to learn a thing or two from an expert like yourself” schtick.
It’s just so stressful! It would take me a million years to try to find a way to express why Charlie Cale’s predicaments hit me so much differently than the standard hard boiled detective trope of getting the shit beat out of you for stickin your nose where it doesn’t belong or whatever. Like, Philip Marlowe getting forcibly morphined in a slummy hotel… Classic… Charlie getting shot and left for dead in a ditch under a tree… Too spicy for me
