4/7/2023 0 Comments Columbo cavorite sayingWe are perched on the murderer’s shoulder until the deed is done and the alibi is faked, and we see everything for ourselves. Whatever the circumstances, there’s no editorializing by Columbo or anyone else. Do they have a sympathetic reason for what they’re doing? Are they forced into a corner? Is it a crime of passion? Quite a few Columbo murderers are victims of blackmail, gotta say, and while some are definitely cold-blooded, no one kills for the fun of it. I mean, Columbo can’t really show up until someone’s dead, or at least missing.** So, nice, nasty, or somewhere in-between, we get to know the murderer on his or her own terms first. Plus, however creative the special guest murderer might be–and mind you, more than one episode involves animals as a murder weapon–the flow of almost every Columbo episode follows a set routine, and that routine spotlights the murderer first. These stories are about how Columbo manages to outwit the murderer: howcatchem, not whodunit. We know who the murderer is it’s in the first scene and the TV Guide. Columbo episodes aren’t really mysteries at all. The story is always David and Goliath at its heart though. It’s as if instead of taking up a sling, David just followed Goliath around, distracting him with compliments until he tripped over his own giant feet and knocked himself out. Columbo is always a big fan of the murderer, or at least his wife is, and as such, he’s genuinely the nicest Fury ever to hound a person to their just reward. And of course, Columbo is only too happy to feint with obsequiousness, enthusing about the murderer’s home, their car, their possessions, their accomplishments. He spends a majority of one episode (“Double Shock”) being harried by the victim’s meticulous housekeeper for tracking messes throughout her employer’s home as he tries to solve his murder. He’s frequently mistaken for the help, a driver, a trespasser, even an actual bum, and sometimes that’s by other police. And yet, of all the cops in the world, these masters of the universe will be taken down by this cop: an apparently* absent-minded, starstruck, cowlicked peasant with scrupulously diffident manners, as dingy and intrusive as his half-smoked cigar and as impossible to read as his shining glass eye. If Elizabeth Warren doesn’t want to tax you, Columbo doesn’t want to catch you. The means and motives of murderers of the week run the gamut, but they are all, every last one, in the 1%. homicide detective to the stars, is a class warrior. Lieutenant Columbo, Columbo, “Try and Catch Me.” ![]() Because there’s niceness in everyone, a little bit anyhow. And I’ll tell you something else, even with some of the murderers that I meet, I even like them, too, sometimes, like ’em and even respect ’em–not for what they did, certainly not for that–but for that part of them which is intelligent or funny or just nice. It’s full of nice people, just like you, and if it wasn’t for my job, I wouldn’t be getting to meet you like this. Oh, I like it a lot and I’m not depressed by it, and I don’t think the world is full of criminals and full of murderers, because it isn’t.
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