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Columbo is probably my favorite show of all time. I've made Columbo threads before but this is the first time I've ever done on in TVIV. If you want to rewatch with me (almost) all the episodes are on IMDB tv which is completely free although you have to sit through commercials. It's really not that bad though when you're dealing with a show where every single episode is at least an hour like this. What is Columbo  You probably know what or who Columbo is already. Even if you've never seen the show his name's regularly used as an epithet for an amateur detective or a person who delivers probing questions, like Einstein for smart alecks, or Sherlock for, well the same thing people use Columbo for. A lot of times when people use it as a shorthand for a detective though they imply that Columbo was a hard-boiled grizzled guy, when in actuality that was the exact opposite of his persona. Columbo is unfailingly polite, he's extremely friendly and if a person's offended by him or his actions he will immediately apologize whether or not he's in the wrong. People are offended by his actions quite often, of course because another of Columbo's defining character traits is that he's schlubby. He wears a rumpled old raincoat that he never takes off despite living in sunny Los Angeles, he drives a twenty-year old (in the 1970s) poorly maintained death trap of a car that he's extraordinarily proud of because "it's a classic", and he's never seen without a cheap cigar at hand. He is mistaken for a homeless man on multiple occasions in the series. Columbo is also very bumbling. He'll lose his pen and ask to borrow one from the man he's interrogating for murder. He'll stop a line of questioning about where a perp was on the night of the murder to ask where he got those nice shoes and how much it might cost. He meets a celebrity in the investigation? You better believe he wants an autograph. He'll raid a murder victim's refrigerator because he had to skip breakfast to get to the crime scene on time. Columbo is also all an act. Well, not entirely. There's debate over how much of his persona is fabricated and how much is real. He shows a lot of these character traits when he interacts with the other cops at a crime scene which since the show never ever shows his home life (his wife is a constantly mentioned but never appearing character like Maris on Frasier) is the closest we get to seeing Columbo in his natural habitat, but there's no question that he plays these aspects up when he's interacting with people on the job. Columbo is extraordinarily observant and he's learned that people are naturally on their guard around cops, and when they are on their guard they don't drop clues or give info readily. When he asked where he got those nice shoes? It was so he could look at the shoes up close to see if it matched the scuff marks found by door where the victim was found. That autograph? To see if the celebrity was left-handed or right. When he raided that fridge? Well he was just hungry that time. Then we have the murderers, Columbo is an extremely formulaic show, and an excellent example that formulas aren't necessarily bad. The weakest episodes of the show are the ones where they try to mix the formula up a little. The murderers in Columbo are exclusively members of society's elite, movie stars, high-powered lawyers, gallery owners, politicians etc. The episode will always open with the murderer, show the motive for the murder (almost always money, status or blackmail) and then the murder itself and how it was committed. The murderer will always attempt to construct "the perfect crime". They'll come up with a fabricated alibi, a way to make it look like it was a robbery gone awry, or an accident. The cops will come, take one look at the scene, say it was an accident, but Columbo will spot one detail that doesn't fit that makes him think there's more to the story. Columbo will meet the murderer who will do something or act in some way that makes Columbo immediately suspect them of the murder and he will then begin investigating the murder. He'll introduce himself to the murderer, give them details of the investigation he probably shouldn't and then say how stumped he is by all these clues. The murderer who just can't let things go sees an opportunity and tries to give Columbo wrong answers on purpose to lead him off the track. The rest of the episode is a game of cat-and-mouse between Columbo and the murderer. Columbo is a mystery show with a lot of humor hidden within it, almost always derived from the class conflict of the working class Columbo and the posh people and environs he investigates. I'll be starting with Ransom for a Dead Man which is the second pilot for the show on account of the fact that the first pilot Prescription: Murder is one of the episodes which isn't on IMDB tv.
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Apr 19, 2020 09:48
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This really shouldn't have died an ignoble death. And really, we all have the time to marathon Columbo now. Watch it every Saturday on MeTV!
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Jul 18, 2020 08:44
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I love Columbo. Been watching it over the last couple of months and I don't know if its on purpose or not but almost all the murderers (so far, I'm in season 3) do a lot capital letters ACTING, chewing the scenery. It is especially fun compared to Peter Falk's understated acting as Columbo. There is also a surprising number of big names involved in the episodes. (and a future big name in the case of Spielberg directing the first episode of season 1).
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Jul 18, 2020 16:49
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The best murderer is Jack Cassidy. Thats why they kept bringing him back
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Jul 18, 2020 16:51
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MrBling posted:I love Columbo. Been watching it over the last couple of months and I don't know if its on purpose or not but almost all the murderers (so far, I'm in season 3) do a lot capital letters ACTING, chewing the scenery. It is especially fun compared to Peter Falk's understated acting as Columbo. Lol William shatner's a murderer later on so just you wait.
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Jul 18, 2020 16:52
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I like to believe a lot of the murderers confessed just to get Columbo to leave them the gently caress alone.
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Jul 19, 2020 02:47
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FilthyImp posted:This really shouldn't have died an ignoble death. The last Columbo episode came out in 2003, and the only reason the character didn't get a proper final sendoff is because Peter Falk was diagnosed with dementia before they could film the last script. It's funny seeing this thread pop up when I'm nearing the end of a Columbo marathon (I'm about to watch the second William Shatner episode). I'd say the most notable episode considering the times is season 3 episode 8, "A Friend in Deed," which features an LAPD deputy police commissioner as one of the least sympathetic murderers in the show's history.
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Jul 19, 2020 03:17
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I don't like to marathon but like to slow burn like an episode every few days.BIG FLUFFY DOG posted:The best murderer is Jack Cassidy. Thats why they kept bringing him back Agree
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Aug 2, 2020 14:39
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FilthyImp posted:This really shouldn't have died an ignoble death. MeTV airs Columbo on Sunday nights at 8. I don't want to derail the thread too much, but MeTV has to be the best of all those digital sub channels. Their Saturday night programming block, headlined by Svengoolie, is really good. They air the Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock every Sunday-Friday evening. They air some good sitcoms and comedies in the mornings and evenings. Perry Mason twice a day. The station definitely is marketed towards boomers so you get all the awful ads you'd expect, but it's great overall.
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Aug 2, 2020 17:54
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Jose Oquendo posted:MeTV airs Columbo on Sunday nights at 8. I don't want to derail the thread too much, but MeTV has to be the best of all those digital sub channels. Their Saturday night programming block, headlined by Svengoolie, is really good. They air the Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock every Sunday-Friday evening. They air some good sitcoms and comedies in the mornings and evenings. Perry Mason twice a day. The station definitely is marketed towards boomers so you get all the awful ads you'd expect, but it's great overall. Theres 8 posts in a 4 month old thread. You can't derail a train this slow moving
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Aug 2, 2020 18:55
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BIG FLUFFY DOG posted:The best murderer is Jack Cassidy. Thats why they kept bringing him back Bobbin Threadbare posted:The last Columbo episode came out in 2003 FilthyImp fucked around with this message at 21:10 on Aug 2, 2020 |
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Aug 2, 2020 21:06
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Columbo Goes To College is easily the best of the 80s/90s films
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Aug 3, 2020 01:56
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Davros1 posted:Columbo Goes To College is easily the best of the 80s/90s films 100%. It would be way up there in the classic run honestly. Having rich frat boys be the murderers wasn't just an excellent continuation of the "Putting rich guys in jail" tradition, it was also timely then and timely now. The last line of the episode is one of the frat boys very confidently asserting that he won't actually be in any real trouble because the system's set up for people like him and his dad never likes to see his children fail
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Aug 3, 2020 02:09
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I'm up to Season 4 now and this show is good as gently caress
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Sep 25, 2020 15:26
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Hace posted:I'm up to Season 4 now and this show is good as gently caress Oh man, Negative Reaction is sooooo good.
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Sep 25, 2020 15:40
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MrBling posted:There is also a surprising number of big names involved in the episodes. (and a future big name in the case of Spielberg directing the first episode of season 1). Yeah, anybody sitting on the fence about checking out the show should know that the first episode is Spielberg and other people who took turns directing included Boris Sagal (Katey's father, who also directed movies like The Omega Man *), Cassavettes collaborator and generally cooler than you Ben Gazzara, and Patrick "The Prisoner" McGoohan. (*) and died in a gruesome helicopter blade accident
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Sep 25, 2020 18:52
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InfiniteZero posted:Yeah, anybody sitting on the fence about checking out the show should know that the first episode is Spielberg and other people who took turns directing included Boris Sagal (Katey's father, who also directed movies like The Omega Man *), Cassavettes collaborator and generally cooler than you Ben Gazzara, and Patrick "The Prisoner" McGoohan. Jonathon Demme directed one too. Hannibal Lector wouldn't have stood a chance against Columbo. Davros1 fucked around with this message at 01:03 on Sep 26, 2020 |
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Sep 26, 2020 00:47
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Didn't Patrick McGoohan play three or four different villains, as well as directing?
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Sep 26, 2020 07:45
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Yeah, he's in a season 4, 5, 9, and 10. And amazing in all of them.
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Sep 26, 2020 09:09
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I'm bringing this thread back to life because well .. I'm still watching this! And I'm pretty sure I just watched the worst episode of Columbo. At the very least the worst so far. The final episode of season 5: "Last Salute to the Commodore" Surprisingly poor, considering it was directed by Patrick McGoohan but I guess he decided to have a galaxy brain moment and do the entire episode as a normal murder mystery where the murderer isn't unveiled until the end, instead of the normal Columbo formula. I don't really have a problem with that approach, it's fair enough after 5 seasons to try and do something a little different but the whole episode is just horrendously paced. And they decide that Columbo needs some young sidekick detective who then never shows up again as far as I can tell. If you're going to change things up I much prefer the subplot of the previous episode ("Now You See Him...") where Columbo is trying to get rid of the new raincoat his wife got him because it's too tight and he can't get rid of it. Only problem is that one of the other police officers keep finding it and bringing it back to him.
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Mar 20, 2021 19:16
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I can't believe the Columbo marathon thread doesn't have some variation of "Oh, just one more episode..." in the title.
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Mar 20, 2021 19:40
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MrBling posted:I'm bringing this thread back to life because well .. I'm still watching this! It's hard to say exactly what happened, but my theory is that it was a recycled script from a failed pilot or pitch that got a rush-job rewrite for Columbo. Maybe the network ordered one more episode as a surprise and everyone had to rush to get it done? I've noticed that the sound balancing for that episode is also atrocious, and the final scene with Columbo and the room full of suspects is dragged out to an agonizing degree.
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Mar 20, 2021 19:46
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MrBling posted:I'm bringing this thread back to life because well .. I'm still watching this! "Last Salute" is considered to be the worst of the "Classic" era. But you haven't seen bad until you get to the late 80s/90s films.
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Mar 20, 2021 19:58
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Davros1 posted:"Last Salute" is considered to be the worst of the "Classic" era. But you haven't seen bad until you get to the late 80s/90s films. I have seen the later movies, but I would still insist that "Last Salute" is easily the worst Columbo episode.
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Mar 20, 2021 20:09
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MrBling posted:Columbo is trying to get rid of the new raincoat his wife got him because it's too tight and he can't get rid of it. Only problem is that one of the other police officers keep finding it and bringing it back to him.
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Mar 20, 2021 20:13
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Am I remembering right there was an ep with Faye Dunaway where she pretty much falls for him and he likes her too and they're both resignedly sad when he finally gets all the evidence together? I seem to recall it being strangely sweet non-thing they had going on, and she wasn't an rear end in a top hat like most of his other suspects. See also Johnny Cash, who yeah, was the murderer but I think he was trapped in a lovely situation or something?
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Mar 20, 2021 22:45
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Sentinel Red posted:Am I remembering right there was an ep with Faye Dunaway where she pretty much falls for him and he likes her too and they're both resignedly sad when he finally gets all the evidence together? I seem to recall it being strangely sweet non-thing they had going on, and she wasn't an rear end in a top hat like most of his other suspects. See also Johnny Cash, who yeah, was the murderer but I think he was trapped in a lovely situation or something? Yes. This episode was written by Peter Falk himself actually and is one of the two best post-revival episodes along with Columbo goes to college which is king of the "God I want see these assholes go to prison" dynamic for maybe the whole series. Because it was written by the classically-trained actor whose played and thought about columbo for 30 years its actually unusually reflective and meditative about how Columbo feels about his job and duty although in the last scene its implied that all that reflection was as fake as the rest of him
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Mar 20, 2021 23:18
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Sentinel Red posted:See also Johnny Cash, who yeah, was the murderer but I think he was trapped in a lovely situation or something? But he wasn't a Saint since the wife had evidence that he was loving an underage parishioner/groupie and blackmailing him
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Mar 20, 2021 23:50
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MrBling posted:
This is maybe my favorite episode of Columbo, marred only by the lounge singer boyfriend's long-rear end terrible slow song that eats up like 5 loving minutes of screen time.
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Mar 21, 2021 01:39
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Columbo has a pretty good diversity in terms of killers. Sometimes the killer is a terrible person, sometimes the victim is even worse. Sometimes the case is first-degree murder, sometimes it's accidental manslaughter, or even a case of self defense that would hold up in court but the killer panics and covers it up. A couple of times they don't even kill the right person.
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Mar 21, 2021 02:09
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have been watching this with a bunch of people and dear god how are all these murderers such idiots just got through Johnny Cash and did he seriously think a bunch of boy scouts were gonna turn over a log and find that parachute.
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Jun 24, 2021 07:24
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Columbo is also a great song by Wanda.
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Jun 24, 2021 09:20
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Columbo is one of my top 5 TV shows of all time. Out of the later episodes 'Columbo Undercover' and 'Columbo Goes To College' are as good as the best episodes from the '70s. 'Dagger of the Mind' otoh is one of the worst things I've watched on TV.
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Jun 24, 2021 11:20
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Rollie Fingers posted:Columbo is one of my top 5 TV shows of all time. Out of the later episodes 'Columbo Undercover' and 'Columbo Goes To College' are as good as the best episodes from the '70s. It’s p bad. The murderer manages to completely tie up all loose ends and stymie Columbo. So instead of solving the case through his careful observation he bullshits evidence that doesn’t exist and fools the murderer into making a confession. Columbo’s usually really good about depicting the way the police should work instead of fetishising and hero worshipping the way they actually do like every other cop show. May as well have him start carrying a loving gun
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Jun 24, 2021 16:58
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oh jesus im at season 2 now, and it definitely felt like it hit a quality bump from the stellar s1 finale. should i just skip it?
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Jun 25, 2021 00:14
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Absolutely not. Opening of season 2 with the conductor is one of my favorite episodes ever. You also get Leonard Nimoy as a murderous surgeon and the Cold War Chess episode with the most likeable Soviet on 70s American television ever is an all-timer Columbo episodes basically carried over almost no staff besides Peter Falk between episodes because it was treated as a bunch of TV movies by Universal/NBC. So thinking about it in terms of seasons like TV buffs do for other shows is pretty useless since the quality will just vary between individual episodes. For example the best episode of all time IMO (Now you see him) is immediately next to the undisputed worst (Last Salute to the Commodore) BIG FLUFFY DOG fucked around with this message at 04:31 on Jun 25, 2021 |
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Jun 25, 2021 01:34
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Annoyingly, at least in the UK, 'Last Salute To The Commadore' would get shown A LOT. It's a weird outlier of an episode that feels semi-improvised and has Falk blatantly boozed up the entire time, but I don't think anyone could call it good.
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Jun 25, 2021 11:24
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DrVenkman posted:Annoyingly, at least in the UK, 'Last Salute To The Commadore' would get shown A LOT. It's a weird outlier of an episode that feels semi-improvised and has Falk blatantly boozed up the entire time, but I don't think anyone could call it good. It doesn't even follow the Columbo formula. The killer turns out to not be the killer halfway through, and after that it's a traditional whodunnit right down to the last scene being an "I imagine you're all wondering why I called everyone to this room" big reveal and confrontation.
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Jun 25, 2021 21:11
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BIG FLUFFY DOG posted:It’s p bad. The murderer manages to completely tie up all loose ends and stymie Columbo. So instead of solving the case through his careful observation he bullshits evidence that doesn’t exist and fools the murderer into making a confession. Columbo’s usually really good about depicting the way the police should work instead of fetishising and hero worshipping the way they actually do like every other cop show. May as well have him start carrying a loving gun Also that it was supposed to be set in London yet 90% of it is filmed in California and they did an incredibly lazy job of making California look like London. Also the writer had obviously never visited London and still thought people in '70s London still spoke and acted like Dickens' characters. The murdered man's name was a play on Miss Havisham for god' sake.
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Jun 25, 2021 21:56
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The bits with Columbo sightseeing were great though. Also, him at customs.
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Jun 25, 2021 22:27
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