Post by Ron Howard Voice on Mar 23, 2014 19:18:06 GMT -5
If the AV Club had existed in 1971, “Dead Weight” would be the episode where we fretted that the show needed to start living up to its potential. The writing is unusually shabby for the series: the murderer is basically caught dead to rights by an eyewitness, but without a body to prove it, and while he waits on the body to show up, Columbo swallows a fishy story hook, line, and sinker. The killer, a retired war hero named Martin J. Hollister (Eddie Albert), claims that when a flighty young Suzanne Pleshette saw him shooting a uniformed man, she really saw him tripping and falling over while carrying a gun with nobody else in the house. Nobody points out the many illogical points, such as that, if the story were true, she would have thought she witnessed one person shooting himself, not one person shooting another.
Where things get interesting is when Pleshette doubts and recants her own testimony. She’s being seduced by Hollister, starting with a date as creepy as Will Arnett going out with Leslie Knope. Then there’s the creepiest invitation to see a guy’s yacht in history, and you start wondering if or when he’s going to murder her, too.
The plausibility is clinched by her sad domestic life, where she forms a lively comedy duo with her mother (Kate Reid), who belittles her at every turn. When Columbo shows up to question Pleshette, Mom takes a swig of booze in irritation. And when Columbo asks Reid what happened to her husband, the reply is, “Sent him out for Chinese food and I haven’t heard from him since!”
The solution is a clue that seems especially easy to follow up on, so the main pleasure is in seeing Columbo get around an uncooperative witness. Well, that and Eddie Albert looking dignified in evening attire and saying things like:
Murderer: Some men, Lieutenant, do not want to look like an unmade bed.
Columbo: *adjusts tie*
The fact that this is one of the low points of the series does not make it bad, per se. It just shows how high a climb there is yet to go.
One more thing count: three
Loose ends count: one
Just more than one more thing:
- Columbo’s badge is flashed in this episode, and clearly shows his first name is Frank. This early on, the series had not established the mythological significance of his “secret” first name.
- God, did I mention how creepy that date scene is?
- Great misdirection with a box being shipped out of the killer’s house, potentially containing a body.
Where things get interesting is when Pleshette doubts and recants her own testimony. She’s being seduced by Hollister, starting with a date as creepy as Will Arnett going out with Leslie Knope. Then there’s the creepiest invitation to see a guy’s yacht in history, and you start wondering if or when he’s going to murder her, too.
The plausibility is clinched by her sad domestic life, where she forms a lively comedy duo with her mother (Kate Reid), who belittles her at every turn. When Columbo shows up to question Pleshette, Mom takes a swig of booze in irritation. And when Columbo asks Reid what happened to her husband, the reply is, “Sent him out for Chinese food and I haven’t heard from him since!”
The solution is a clue that seems especially easy to follow up on, so the main pleasure is in seeing Columbo get around an uncooperative witness. Well, that and Eddie Albert looking dignified in evening attire and saying things like:
Murderer: Some men, Lieutenant, do not want to look like an unmade bed.
Columbo: *adjusts tie*
The fact that this is one of the low points of the series does not make it bad, per se. It just shows how high a climb there is yet to go.
One more thing count: three
Loose ends count: one
Just more than one more thing:
- Columbo’s badge is flashed in this episode, and clearly shows his first name is Frank. This early on, the series had not established the mythological significance of his “secret” first name.
- God, did I mention how creepy that date scene is?
- Great misdirection with a box being shipped out of the killer’s house, potentially containing a body.