I'm rewatching every episode of Columbo

Cafe Society
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So, I like to have a go-to show that’s entertaining enough but doesn’t take a lot of laser focus to follow the plot when I’m doing busywork or exercising on the elliptical. I found every episode of Columbo on Tubi TV and it fits the bill perfectly.

Some random observations: every show is basically the same, but there’s something enjoyable about that, like comfort food-- it’s such delicious shadenfreude watching Columbo gradually trap the arrogant, entitled murderer in a web of their own lies and missteps. There are slight variations, such as the secondary murder because someone the murderer knows tries to blackmail them. Peter Falk does such a great job inhabiting the role.

I have some memories of episodes, having watched with my parents as a kid, or catching the occasional rerun in my 20s. But there’s a lot I don’t remember. Seeing the guest stars has been fun. Some highlights:

  • Two separate appearances by Leslie Neilson, pre-‘Airplane!’ when he was still playing it serious as a heart attack. UInfortunately he didn’t play a murderer in either episode.
  • Both William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy played murderers.
  • Dick Van Dyke played a murderer-- that was a bit of a surprise. Wonder if that was the only time he ever played a bad guy in anything? He was a surprisingly good arrogant asshole, too.
  • A young Jamie Lee Curtis playing a waitress
  • A young Kim Cattrall

The endings are often kind of disappointing and WTF-ish. Though Columbo figures out who the murderer is right away, he often does not have enough evidence and has to trick the murderer into giving themselves away.

Sometimes the way this is done is pretty good (the murder gun found hidden in the elevator skylight, and a replica repositioned so its outline can be seen in the ceiling light panel, prompting the murderess to retrieve it, thus implicating herself ).

Others are just plain stupid. like Columbo getting the fake ESP researcher to try to kill him with the magician’s guillotine-- there’s a safe / unsafe switch so the blade will cut through a melon but not a neck onstage. Columbo switches the safe / unsafe labels and has the killer do the trick on him, assuming the killer would try to kill him. If the killer had decided, I don’t know, maybe not such a good idea to try to kill a homocide detective, and chose the wrongly labeled safe setting, no mo Columbo.

Colombo trivia: who played the murderer most often? I figured it must be Jack Cassidy when I saw him for the third time, but no, he and Robert Culp are tied for second with 3 apiece. The winner, with 4 episodes playing a murderer, is:

Patrick McGoohan

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You guessed it - Frank Stallone!

…wait, wrong pop culture reference.

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And a very young Gwyneth Paltrow; Blythe Danner filmed an episode while pregnant.

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Part of the fun is seeing Columbo deal with high-tech gadgets involved in the case - with the standard for high-tech shifting over the decades (a typewriter with a ball, not individual strikers, a VCR (!), etc.).

Loved watching the older Columbo take down those arrogant college kids (with Robert Culp as not-the-murderer, but the murderer’s father for a change)

Van Dyke plays a somewhat villainous character in “Cold Turkey” - a minister who starts with good intentions but finds himself going to more and more extreme actions to get what he wants.

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He was a bad guy in the 1990 Dick Tracy movie. IIRC, it was supposed to be a plot twist that his character was actually a bad guy, and he was cast specifically to take advantage of audience expectations that he would never play a bad guy.

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I happened to catch an episode a few days ago and one of the victims was played by Shera Danese. I had no idea who she was, and looked her up on IMDB. I was amazed to discover that she had been in 6 episodes of Columbo. The video running on the page showed her in Checking Out, starring Peter Falk. So it was no surprise to find that they were married.

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He also had a similiar secret bad guy turn [spoiler for a 15 year old movie]

as one of the trio of genial old museum watchmen about to retire who turn out to be the villains of the piece in Night at the Museum (and cameos in the sequels).

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I’ve been watching Columbo reruns, too, as the OP says, for comfort food TV. I like that there’s a formula-- part of the comfort food effect. Was the show always two hours long? That’s waaaay too long. The Columbo-esque trademark mannerisms wear a little thin after the fourth instance of heaping flattery on the murderer, mentioning stuff My Wife likes, and repeatedly almost leaving the room-- “Just ONE more thing, sir, please.”

But it’s always rewarding when Columbo springs the trap and the bad guy cannot escape. Hehe. Not like other shows (I’m lookin’ at you, Law & Order) where the murderer often got away with it because of a legal/procedural technicality. But almost as often was shot dead on the courthouse steps after the verdict by the victim’s family. So there’s that.

I always have the IMDB open on my kindle when I watch old shows. It’s fun to see people Before They Got Famous. Not to hijack, but I’ve been watching The Fugitive on Pluto and have seen a really young Robert Duval and Bruce Dern (who was completely unknown and got last billing).

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I have been re-watching Columbo too! I watch it every night before bed and fall asleep to it. I’m on season 5 now. I also have IMDB open while watching it…there’s some decent trivia listed for each episode.

A really young Katy Segal is in an episode that her dad directed. I wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t read the trivia.

Peter Falk was only 43 in the first season! That’s only a year older than me. I have no idea how old Columbo is supposed to be. I think the character is supposed to be timeless.

Steven Spielberg directed the first episode. Later on in the series one of the characters is a boy genius. They named the character Steve Spelberg in his honor.

The episode I am watching now, he’s wearing a new fancy raincoat that his wife got for him. He can’t stand it. He keeps trying to lose it but the young detective he’s working with keeps finding it and returning it to him.

Such a good show. Peter Falk is just amazing.

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Talk about Before They Got Famous! :smiley:

I just watched a relatively recent (1990) episode where he was befuddled by a fax machine. Was that really new tech in 1990? It seems ancient now. Wikipedia has a fair amount of history on it but not clear when it really entered the cultural zeitgeist.

Hey, so we did get to see the real-life Mrs. Columbo in the flesh! (Nobody better mention Kate Mulgrew :roll_eyes:). Nice piece of trivia.

Thanks for the tip! If I already watched that ep, will definitely have to rewatch.

I did notice that! He did a pretty good job; wonder if he ever amounted to anything in Hollywood.

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Oh another interesting thing I found…there’s an early episode where the main character keeps spraying everyone with Silly String. If you read the history of Silly String, the stuff had barely been patented by the time the episode came out and it definitely wasn’t in stores. Someone on the production crew must have known the inventor and got ahold of a can to use in the show. It doesn’t have any bearing on the plot and the use of the Silly String is very random.

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Englishwoman Jenny Hammerton has a blog, ‘Silver Screen Suppers’. She is obsessed with the golden era of actors, and lists and makes Recipes of the Stars. Tremendous fun, everyone from James Dean to Ava Gardner … She’s a super fan of Columbo and has written ‘Cooking With Columbo’, a cookbook featuring recipes and foods mentioned in Columbo episodes, plus a detailed outline of those episodes. (A ‘Murder She Wrote’ cookbook is in the works!)

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No, I would say most of the eps were 90 minutes, but there are two-hour eps sprinkled throughout, so it wasn’t a seasonal change.

While I’m not a big fan of the character, I really want to know what the rest of the department thought of him. And did he act like a bumbler back in the squad room, or was that just a put on for the suspects?

When I lived in LA, I was a fan of Barney’s Beanery. It’s like “comfort food” to see Colombo go there so often. If I’d only known watching it growing up that someday, too, I would be there.

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With the help of the screenshot in this MeTV.com article and some fast-forwarding, I found the scene she was in. I don’t think if I would have recognized her otherwise, even if I knew she was in the ep and watching for her. Even her voice, though the article says it ‘is unmistakable’, didn’t sound like the voice I’m used to at all. And I’ve heard her voice plenty in Futurama.

The in-show canon on that is a bit inconsistent. Sometimes he appears absent-minded and bumbling in scenes when he doesn’t have to, when the suspect is not around, and other times he shows flashes of astonishing skill and competence in various areas other than detectiving. I suppose he could be both; absent-minded and bumbling in some areas, savant in others.

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There’s an episode where one of the higher ups (police commissioner?) kills his wife and specifically asks for Columbo to take the case. I’m not sure if the commissioner asks for him because he’s a very egotistical man and he thinks Columbo is going to be easy to fool, or if because he’s very egotistical and he wants to prove even The Great Columbo can’t pin it on him.

There’s another episode that takes place in Mexico, where Columbo is on vacation and is in a fender-bender. The lead detective in the town that has impounded his car gets him out of trouble, because Columbo is known as a legend in the town. In a previous episode, Columbo had caught a murderer on a cruise ship before the cruise had docked and the whole department knows him from this feat. Also in that episode, Columbo is very sharp and hard-nosed when he’s around the Mexican detective, but a bit bumbly when he’s with the suspect.

Also in several episodes Columbo is with a new young detective, who he’s supposed to be training. So one would assume he’s got some clout.

Also, the show kind of revolves around the fact that he is sent to be the lead on very high profile cases. So I would assume the department does know he’s very capable.

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The department does some very expensive excavating on Columbo’s say-so too, so he’s got some pull.

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Gwyneth Paltrow’s cousin Hillary Danner plays the sweetheart of a murder victim (a young composer) one of the '90s episodes. She is gorgeous! :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

Katey Segal is in the episode where Jackie Cooper is the senatorial candidate who murders his campaign manager. She plays the secretary (not the one he’s banging) who sits outside his office and interacts with Columbo.

So aside from Shatner and Nimoy, Trek alumni include Joanne Linville, Mariette Hartley, Ricardo Montalban, and Walter Koenig. Any others?

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“Charlie X” (Robert Walker, Jr.) is in the episode that also features Robby the Robot and a very young Jessica Walter (Lucille Bluth)

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I watched that episode the other day! The person who played the killer/Silly String sprayer was Roddy McDowell.

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I think my favorite episode is “Forgotten Lady,” with Janet Leigh and John Payne as two old Hollywood film stars. It’s one of the few episodes where Columbo knows who the murderer is but lets him/her go. It’s also the only episode I got my daughter to sit down and watch with me from start to finish.

Leigh’s domestics were played by Maurice Evans and Linda Scott, both of whom were baddies on Batman.