Post by Ron Howard Voice on Jan 31, 2014 8:31:08 GMT -5
Mr. Brimmer, the private investigator, blackmailer, and murderer played by Robert Culp, is so creepy and detestable that even the most basic physical movements seem creepy. At one point there’s a woman in the room and he simply stands up, but when he stands up I panic about what he’s going to do. When Columbo warns him that the murderer may be a hot-tempered man, Brimmer obliges a few scenes later by letting his temper explode.
Culp is a pretty terrific creepy killer, though not exactly charming, as Columbo’s finest rivals have been. But he does wear enormously wide neckties; you could practically use them as throw rugs. And he sets up a fake robbery so well that for a while there’s nothing connecting him to the case.
It’s fun to watch Columbo spend a good fifteen or twenty minutes thinking that somebody else is the murderer. He pulls his usual “this detail that’s bothering me” shtick on the victim’s husband, the dignified Ray Milland, but Milland is concerned enough to bring in his private detective. That ends up being too bad for the PI, because he’s not at all interested in solving the case. (He doesn’t do much to mislead Columbo, though.)
This episode presents two main threads that get woven throughout the series: first, Columbo’s comic relief value. The detective arrives in the movie at the side of the road, getting lectured by a fellow cop on his ancient jalopy’s broken turn signal. His driver’s license is expiring in a week, too.
More interesting is the other way Columbo supplies comic relief: class warfare. The series goes to great lengths to portray fabulously wealthy murderers and victims, in contrast to the shabby lifestyle of Columbo himself. There’s a scene where he observes the murderer’s car, sees rust patterns, and deduces a house by the ocean. But what it looks like to us, at the time, is a scene where Columbo’s awestruck by jealousy over a sleek black car parked right next to his bucket of spare parts. This immediately follows a moment when Columbo says farewell to Milland and Culp, walks to a grandiose set of carved wooden double doors, opens it, and steps into the closet.
There will be more socioeconomic commentary throughout the series, and these reviews. Hell, I even wrote an undergraduate paper on linguistics and class difference in the episode “A Friend in Deed.” Given the way Columbo slouches his way around the rich and famous in this episode, now’s a good time to get you used to that.
I don’t think this is one of the better-written episodes. Unimportant dialogue (like the golf pro scheduling an appointment with a student) sounds amazingly stiff and fake, and Culp blowing his stack right after Columbo’s warning is clumsy. And I don’t even want to talk about that godawful sequence where we see Culp clean up after the murder, splitscreen, projected onto his eyeglasses. Man that was terrible. On the other hand, when the sleazy PI offers Columbo a job, the resulting scenes are a great source of enjoyment, and the final trap is both a big gamble and an exquisite payoff.
One more thing count: I only heard one, and it was spoken by the murder victim!
Just-gotta-tie-up-loose-ends count: zero?
Just more than one more thing:
- Man, what a sleazy operation that PI runs.
- I love the moment where Columbo walks through a metal-detecting gate and doesn’t set it off, for two reasons. One, he doesn’t carry a weapon. Two, you just know the set guys put the cheapest gate they could find up there and we’re buying that it’s all high tech.
- I’m ambidextrous and I cannot pull off the write-with-both-hands trick.
Culp is a pretty terrific creepy killer, though not exactly charming, as Columbo’s finest rivals have been. But he does wear enormously wide neckties; you could practically use them as throw rugs. And he sets up a fake robbery so well that for a while there’s nothing connecting him to the case.
It’s fun to watch Columbo spend a good fifteen or twenty minutes thinking that somebody else is the murderer. He pulls his usual “this detail that’s bothering me” shtick on the victim’s husband, the dignified Ray Milland, but Milland is concerned enough to bring in his private detective. That ends up being too bad for the PI, because he’s not at all interested in solving the case. (He doesn’t do much to mislead Columbo, though.)
This episode presents two main threads that get woven throughout the series: first, Columbo’s comic relief value. The detective arrives in the movie at the side of the road, getting lectured by a fellow cop on his ancient jalopy’s broken turn signal. His driver’s license is expiring in a week, too.
More interesting is the other way Columbo supplies comic relief: class warfare. The series goes to great lengths to portray fabulously wealthy murderers and victims, in contrast to the shabby lifestyle of Columbo himself. There’s a scene where he observes the murderer’s car, sees rust patterns, and deduces a house by the ocean. But what it looks like to us, at the time, is a scene where Columbo’s awestruck by jealousy over a sleek black car parked right next to his bucket of spare parts. This immediately follows a moment when Columbo says farewell to Milland and Culp, walks to a grandiose set of carved wooden double doors, opens it, and steps into the closet.
There will be more socioeconomic commentary throughout the series, and these reviews. Hell, I even wrote an undergraduate paper on linguistics and class difference in the episode “A Friend in Deed.” Given the way Columbo slouches his way around the rich and famous in this episode, now’s a good time to get you used to that.
I don’t think this is one of the better-written episodes. Unimportant dialogue (like the golf pro scheduling an appointment with a student) sounds amazingly stiff and fake, and Culp blowing his stack right after Columbo’s warning is clumsy. And I don’t even want to talk about that godawful sequence where we see Culp clean up after the murder, splitscreen, projected onto his eyeglasses. Man that was terrible. On the other hand, when the sleazy PI offers Columbo a job, the resulting scenes are a great source of enjoyment, and the final trap is both a big gamble and an exquisite payoff.
One more thing count: I only heard one, and it was spoken by the murder victim!
Just-gotta-tie-up-loose-ends count: zero?
Just more than one more thing:
- Man, what a sleazy operation that PI runs.
- I love the moment where Columbo walks through a metal-detecting gate and doesn’t set it off, for two reasons. One, he doesn’t carry a weapon. Two, you just know the set guys put the cheapest gate they could find up there and we’re buying that it’s all high tech.
- I’m ambidextrous and I cannot pull off the write-with-both-hands trick.
