Except for Columbo. It’s always the rich/famous dude.
No one even on TV does that anymore. It’s been likely for decades that you have no idea what even heroin is cut with. The days of similac to cut heroin are long gone.
I think the trope was busted back in 1980 on a “Tenspeed and Brownshoe” episode, where Jeff Goldblum’s character, merely a tyro at detective work, took a finger full of unknown drugs in his mouth (rather than a tiny taste) and went tripping.
Columbo doesn’t count-- different formula. It wasn’t a whodunit, it was a ‘howcatchem’.
Columbo had its own formula, which sometimes got changed up, but was usually:
- Smug, entitled rich and often famous asshole kills somebody for reasons, in meticulously planned fashion.
- Columbo shows up, gravitates right toward the killer, but plays dumb. Starts asking questions of the killer as if he’s clueless and needs help.
- Killer’s guard is let down, starts volunteering way too much info.
- Columbo starts closing in. Killer begins to realize Columbo is not so dumb after all, but is still smug about it. “Ah, a worthy adversary!”. Starts to taunt Columbo.
- Sometimes killer has to kill a second victim who knows too much (maybe 5-10% of Columbos). This is often the murder they get busted for, not the first.
- Columbo sets up a scenario that will get the killer to incriminate themselves inadvertently.
- Killer confesses. Asks “when did you first suspect me?” Columbo says “5 minutes after I met you”. Killer says “wha whaaa?!?” Columbo says "because you did (or didn’t) do (or say) thing that an innocent person would do (or say).
My floor plan doesn’t even support putting a couch against the wall. Either it’s against the front window, or it’s against the stair railings, or it’s against the fireplace, or the kitchen island.
Sure. Even somewhat larger living rooms aren’t laid out to conveniently place sofas and couches in the middle of the room. Ours has doors at the ends on either side so it works out to allow a passageway behind the couches.
You write for television, don’t you?
Nah, just watched a whole lot of it.
Ha, that’s an excellent summary. Predictable in format but I bloody love Columbo.
I suspect TV sets are almost always designed with the couch in the middle of the “room” because it allows the actors to sit on the couch facing the camera, while also leaving space for actors to walk around the set and enter/exit the scene without having to walk in front of the actors on the couch.
But in my experience it’s not an uncommon arrangement in real life, either. I have my couch in the middle of the room because I feel like it divides the space between the living room and entryway better.
So do I. I enjoyed the typical Columbo formula. Some of my least favorite episodes were the ones in which they mixed it up and strayed from the formula, like the one where Columbo lets the aging actress off easy because she has dementia and forgot she killed somebody. I want to see smug, arrogant asshole murderers get hoist with their own petard, dammit!
Another person with couches in the middle of the rooms(two (large) rooms, two couches)
I don’t find this as weird as when you have 4 or more sitting down to dinner, and one side is empty, while the other side is crowded
I’d probably enjoy detective shows more if I could stop glancing at the clock to see if this suspect is the last one… “Nope, looks like the ex-partner is the 8:35 suspect. I bet the entitled preppie son-in-law will be the 8:50 one…”
In L&O Criminal Intent, Goren always did this-
Find some tiny clue that leads him to suspect the rich person.
Then get him into the interrogation room and trick him into confessing.
For some reason, these rich killers with lawyers never thought to say “I want my lawyer”, which happens a lot in the other L&O shows.
I’m sure couches are mostly found against a wall. I can’t think of any home I’ve lived in or visited often with couches in the middle of the room until we moved here.
ETA: I now remember for a little while we had a couch out in the middle of the room in our last house. It never worked well that way and the couches ended up against the wall anyway.
I had a relative who hired a fancy interior decorator to redo her living room area. She ended up with a couch positioned diagonally in the middle of the room and some other weird stuff. None of it lasted long.
If it was good enough for “The Last Supper”, it’s good enough for TV.
I remember some comedian quoting Jesus as reserving a table for 26. “So there’ll be 26 of you!?!” “No, just me and 12 friends, but we want to all sit on one side…”
They were posing for the Last Supper photographer.
Hard to say on the mostly. Depends a lot on the room size. Every where I’ve done it, it effectively made separate room, usually an extension of a hall
My late husband did this. It was something I changed very soon after he passed
I get the feeling you haven’t watched all that many episodes. Because that describes like zero episodes in season 1 and about 1 in season 2.
But yes, people who refuse the SHUT UP in interrogations just annoys the crap out of me. You know the writing is weak when you start rooting for the killer. The Closer is really bad at this, but I watched an OG Perry Mason the other night where he got the killer to confess on the witness stand. SHUT UP, dude!
That’s an old Bob Newhart routine.