November 15, 2024 • 36 mins
We conclude the 4th season of Columbo with the episode "A Deadly State of Mind" wherein George Hamilton is a suave hypnotist of ladies -- one in particular played by Leslie Ann Warren. He has designs on her while also conducting "research" for his work. Her husband as other ideas.
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Speaker 3 (02:25):
Welcome to the shabby Detective, yet another Columbo podcast. I'm
your host, Mike Woit Jenny, of course, is mister Chris Tashue.
Speaker 5 (02:31):
I prefer to be known as the gay Blade.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
All right, so it shall be. On this episode we
were talking about the sixth and final episode of season four,
A Deadly Seat of Mind, directed by Harvey Hart, written
by Peter S. Fisher, who's been the showrunner this season.
It originally aired April twenty seventh, nineteen seventy five. I
(02:54):
admitted last month that I screwed up thinking that all
of these were ninety minute episodes. This is another seventy
minute episode. I have to say, probably could have been
a sixty minute episode because there's a little bit of
time wasting in here, at least in my opinion. But Chris,
I'm very curious, what did you think of a Deadly
state of Mind?
Speaker 5 (03:13):
There he goes everyone saying that there's a little bit
of time wasting in this episode. This is one of
the Colombo episodes where Columbo knows who did it the
moment he sees him. And we've had this conversation before
about this. We'll continue to have this conversation about this
as we continue to watch this show together. They can
do it well, they can do it right, they can
(03:35):
do it in a way that works. This is not
one of those episodes. I actually am disappointed with this
episode because I enjoyed the performances. I really like Leslie
and Warren. Obviously, I don't know have we talked about this.
You're not a fan of Clue. You are a fan
of Clue.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
I didn't see Clue until just a few years ago
and really enjoyed it. And yes, I love Leslie and Warren.
She is so great.
Speaker 5 (03:59):
She's great, but like, yeah, yes, oh yeah, oh yeah,
Victor Victoria, that's right. I saw that earlier this year
as well. sEH, she is wasted here because she plays
a character that we've seen before and they give her
one note which is constantly exasperated. It's not that she
(04:20):
can't do it, and it's actually far from it. Leslie
and Warren is a very talented actress, so she can
do it. It's just that is really not making the
most of her abilities as an actress to pigeonhole her
into one thing where she's just oh my god, that's
like her whole character. And given that this is Colombo,
given that we spend a lot of time with these characters,
(04:42):
along with Colombo, You and I would prefer to have
a character that's not written so one note, especially when
we're gonna spend half of the damn episode with her
and we're also meant to at some point empathize with
her plight and feel bad for her and then even
feel worse for her when George Hamilton hypnotizer to jump
(05:03):
off of a ledge, which is we'll get to that
when we get to But I think this episode's fine.
It definitely could have been ten minutes shorter, and it
definitely needed one more Luki lou as they would say
of the writer's room. Because it's just fine. There's nothing
to it that I think imminently sets it apart from
(05:23):
any other episode, other than maybe the reveal at the end,
which is such a fucking cheat. Okay, once he gets
hung up. The reveal at the end of this episode
is such a crock a fucking shit. They should be
a shame to themselves. Okay, you get to do this
one time, you motherfuckers. This is like in the Sopranos,
they have something similar with It's like, oh is a
brother fuck you show? You get one opportunity to do this, Colombo,
(05:48):
and I hope you don't do it again, because this
is utter bullshit. They literally it's like having a card
in your pocket the whole time and never letting anybody
see it. Ooh, here's the actual and it's oh cool.
So the reveal aside. I thought this episode was fine,
but to your point, there's about ten minutes in here
that could be cut. I'm assuming we're on the same
page as of what those ten minutes are.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
Oh yeah, we'll get there, definitely. What about you, Mike,
You're right when it comes to Leslian Ward, She's already
got her voice to contend with. I love her voice.
I love her. I love when she shows up in
things I'm already mentioned Victimtoria. I really love her in
Color of Night, basically whenever she's there, Like she played
(06:31):
a great Lois Lane in this musical version of Superman
that aired on TV years and years ago. I just
can't get enough of her. She's got the voice, though,
and when we meet her, she's being age regressed through
hypnotism to a little girl state, and she never really
changes her voice out of that. She's a little girl
(06:52):
through this whole episode, which makes it tough that George
Hamilton is so attract to her. Of course she's a
beautiful woman, but she just gets infantalized through this whole episode.
Wouldn't you go for someone else? And then this whole
weird thing of like him, what is it is? He
writing a book doing research.
Speaker 5 (07:14):
And reminds me of Michelle the book Michelle remembers that
ended up being debunked about a woman who has regressed
in a turned out she was like raped by a
satanic cult. That was like, oh, now we're doing this
thing too. Oh yeah, yeah, but what it just done?
They don't go anywhere with it, They don't really do
anything with it. No, and then they pull a Robert
Colt towards he's a well, I guess Leonard Nimoy where
(07:36):
he's doing all this, but he's also a doctor, so
it's oh. But then there's actually like the doctor machinations
of it all happening as well. And then we have
the other doctor that he's also schmoozing with. There's a
lot going on here and ultimately to what end none,
it's another episode of Columbo shows up, looks George Hamilton
up and down and goes he did it.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
As soon as he him for a light. He basically
knows and he hasn't over for the lighter yet. Yeah,
that's so conspicuous. And I don't know if he knows it,
but we know it as the audience. We might even
know before Colombo does, because it's just there. You go.
You're tripped up just because of the emphasis and weight
they put on this match, and just that after the
(08:21):
murder he immediately starts smoking and you're like, oh, okay,
that's going to come of it, because it seems so conspicuous.
Speaker 5 (08:29):
That in the tire when they do the shot they
close up the tire. Yeah, I was like, wow, are
we stupid? I get it, Like again, seventies fine, whatever,
not writing seventy five, not necessarily writing. I don't know.
I don't even want to give him that because that's
on the fucking case. No, because this show is better
(08:51):
than that, exactly. Show has been better than that consistently,
and that like when they close up to the tire
going through the muddy, I was, Oh, I hope that
does and come back. It's a boy Jesus episode. It subtlety,
What is that we've lost all attempts at subtlety all
of a sudden.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
It reminds me of Luckily when like when the Cassavettes
kills the pianist and he comes out later on after
they've found the body and all that stuff, and he
comes out and he's got the no flower on his
jacket and stuff, and I'm like, okay, yeah, that's or
(09:29):
he has the flower at that point, he didn't have
the flower and the original thing. Can they give us
a little bit of a hey, check this out, but
we've seen the flower fall and all this. It doesn't
feel nearly as ham fisted. And that's the thing with
Harvey Hart directing this, it shouldn't be as ham fisted
as this. But yeah, be a lot more subtle, please.
Speaker 5 (09:50):
No subtle tea is not the name of the game
with Colombo anymore, which is fucking bizarre, because does I
don't feel like the show lacks subtletya. I feel like
the show for the most part, the least subtle thing
about the show is the fact that he constantly feels
like Colombo always knows he's going to catch the person
the moment he sees them. But I'm okay with that.
We've dealt with that now enough that I'm sure I
(10:11):
sound like a fucking broken record for some people. But
at the same time, the best episodes of this show
make it so that there is some doubts, so that
there is a little bit of back and forth, a
little bit of give and get with Colombo and the murderer.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
The murderers right.
Speaker 5 (10:26):
And in this episode we get the tantalizing secondary murder,
which we haven't had in a while.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
No, it's been a little bit. And it's weird too,
because the first murder is a crime of passion. It's
when Steven Elliott is Carl Diner attacks George Hamilton as
doctor Mark Collier Our Collier. I guess they pronounced it
in this and it's okay, good crime and passion cry
to be a big man, and hey, I'm taking Nadia
away from you. And when he finally supposed to do it,
(10:55):
Ellie's just no, we are We're not doing this to
go ahead and just try to beat you up. Steven
Elliott as Carl Donner, as soon as I heard his voice,
I just immediately went to a role that he would
play quite a few years later in Beverly Hills Cop
He plays the chief of police in Beverly Hills itself
(11:18):
and has a great, very distinct voice in that which
Eddie Murphy makes fun of. And he's using the exact
same voice in this very Stcenorian, very voice of God
type of thing. I'm like, Okay, this works. I like
him because I wish there was a lot more of him.
Speaker 5 (11:35):
Ultimately, the real problem with this episode not that I
hadn't thought about this, but it's more apparent the more
I sit here and think about it, wouldn't the right
answer be if you're the two of them, just say
it was in defense, like he was attacking her self defense,
so fragile. Yeah, Like, I don't get it. This is
pure self defense. She's being attacked and he, George Hamilton,
(11:57):
defends her. He doesn't intend to kill him. He hits
him once and kills him. That a coroner would see that,
I don't know. I feel like that's maybe my real
issue with this episode is that I think at its
core the premise is completely flawed. Like one percent, it's
shockingly flawed.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
Frankly, yes, I agree with you, one hundred percent out
of all of that.
Speaker 5 (12:20):
For the first time in the run of this show,
these two people did nothing to deserve what they ended
up doing to themselves. Additionally, they should have just been
like it was self defense in the story, like literally,
that's it. Like it's fucking bizarre to me. It's not
that it doesn't make any sense, but there's other ways
to get around this. Just have George Hamilton show up
(12:41):
and kill him, just right, Just have George Hamilton attack
him because he's berating him, because he's talking down to him,
because he's taking offense at his manhood or something anything
more than just he starts attacking her, a frail woman,
and this guy defends her. As far as I'm concerned,
that's self defense. Like it undercuts the episode entirely from
(13:03):
the get go.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
Yeah, instead of this Kakamaimi story about two guys in
ski masks coming and robbing the place and attacking him
from behind.
Speaker 5 (13:12):
With a gun with it she's a terrible liar and
then he kills her in the hokiest TV hypnotism way.
That again, Look, I've been hypnotized. You can go check
out an episode of Scary Stories We Tell I did
with my friend Emma, who hypnotized me on the episode.
I got hypnotized for real. I'm not joking. She didn't
make me cluck like a fucking chicken or walk off
(13:32):
of a cliff. That's not how that works. That's the
television version of hypnotism, which doesn't help the reality of
what hypnotism is, which actually helped plenty of people. This
is this like TV bullshit. And what I don't get
is why wasn't George Hamilton just like a hypnotist then
why was any like why was he a fucking doctor
who's doing research on again, what Robert Kolpe was doing
(13:57):
research on, like the ability to like plant messages or
retrieve messages or debate someone through the use of external triggers.
And they did it better than the Robert Gulp episode.
Why do we have to do it here at all?
Speaker 3 (14:11):
Slumbo's sitting on the couch doing the whole mumbling and
I don't Yeah, it could work. That whole scene, that
whole segment of the scene could be cut out completely.
It's just like it's so much like little pieces of
fat on this episode. Or I'm just like, all right,
I guess it's good to see, like, who's going to
(14:34):
complain about saying more Peter Fall But at the same time,
it's no. I like the leanness of this. I like
how quick this thing moves. I like the stories. Like
we're definitely going to review the season, but there's been
a lot of better episodes this season where it's just
(14:54):
like this clue and it's just like, all right, this
is great and you don't even have for any of
this takamami stuff. Like the scene at the hospital with
him trying to find the room and he's going down
the tape and he can't find him.
Speaker 5 (15:07):
Oh my god, it was so much fun when we
saw him talking to the woman with the forms before
the hospital or wherever the hell that was. Remember, they
love doing that, Like somebody's just Peter Folk is like, hey,
what do you want to do this season? Some dumb shit. Okay,
I don't know how much money he was making permitted
on this show, but he's just ten minutes of bullshit.
(15:27):
That's a new payment on my Alpha rameo or whoever
the fuck it is. Yeah, it's huh. That in the
dinner party scene, Holy shit, come on, episode Like, yeah,
why don't we just look at George Hamilton and say
this motherfucker did it. There's nobody else that could even
remotely fucking be and it's not kicking around the room.
Let's take this guy and arrest him because he clearly
(15:50):
did it. But oh, by the way, we're not gonna
have any of the most obvious reasons or ways we
catch him be the reason he gets caught.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
Mm hmmm.
Speaker 5 (16:01):
It should have been at that dinner party. They should
have caught him at the dinner party. That would have
been fun. That would have been a nice payoff.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
It would have been like a parlor scene. And Agatha
Christy yeah.
Speaker 5 (16:10):
Yeah, sure, wat Holms, yeah yeah, but I do elementary
they even fucking say it. Fuck you, come on, I.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
Do like this idea of George Hamilton being so brazen
that he's going to go over and pick up the
phone and make this call and basically murder Leslie and
Warren from the party that Columbo is at. I'm like, okay,
I appreciate what a big man you think you are.
Speaker 5 (16:38):
If you stick it, come let me show you to it.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
You're right that it had that parlor scene turned into
or the dinner party turned into a parlor scene, I
think that would have been way better. And yeah, Colombo
even sees like that whole thing of him sitting on
the couch that I was talking about. It's basically an
excuse for him to see the lights coming through the doorway.
And I'm like, okay, but you could have gotten to
that so many other ways. So yeah, it's just bizarre
(17:06):
why they made some of these decisions.
Speaker 5 (17:09):
And again, I would love to have been in the
writer's room when they were making the decisions. But Colombo
shows up pretty early on in the episode to Leslie
and Warren's apartment and George Hamilton's there, and here's another
way that he's incriminated himself. I don't know. This is
one of the episodes where this guy's incriminating himself with
Colombo constantly, and then for the episode to end the
(17:30):
way that it ends with all of this incriminatory evidence,
and then it's just but just kidding. It's a Martin
Landau thing. Guys, what the least you are? Technically they've
already done it. They technically already done it, but they
subverted the expectations when they did it with Martin land
Here it's this is how you do it when you're
gonna do it right exactly.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
I appreciate that Bruce Kirby's in this one. I don't
know if the character name is the same as the
last time we saw him with the Patrick mcgoin Military Adams.
She say, yeah, he definitely seems to have that same attitude,
just like, what is this guy's problem?
Speaker 5 (18:06):
Yes, he's not taken by Colombo's chicanery the way we are.
Speaker 3 (18:11):
Yeah, and then it's nice. I know you're not a
big fan of the ending of this, but I really
do see Fred Draper show up, who we've seen now
so many times, including when we watched A Woman under
the Influence. He's Gina Rowland's father in that one, and
don't forget he was like scraping makeup off of Vera
Miles's face in the Cosmetics episode. And then here he
(18:33):
shows up in this And I accidentally flipped to season
six and the thumbnail because this is now showing on
Amazon Prime as well. The thumbnail on Amazon Prime for
season six, episode one. Fred Draper's just standing there all alone.
I'm like, Okay, it's great that he was a regular
on here. I thought that, what's the other guy's named,
(18:54):
val Lewis? I thought he was more regular, But I
think I'm seeing more Fred Draper these days.
Speaker 5 (19:00):
Are you telling me you liked the ending or you
just didn't find it as much of an affront as
I did.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
I didn't find it as much of an uffront. I
liked Fred Draper quote unquote playing blind but not being blind,
like affecting. It's a total cheat to make him incriminate himself.
Speaker 5 (19:20):
Very as a brother, a secret brother, like.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
It's very which kid? The negative was destroyed in the
camera kind of prestige. Yeah, where it's just, bro, I
know that this guy is blind. How do you know?
Because how puts you in the spot.
Speaker 5 (19:39):
So I like that aspect of it. I don't like
the he had a brother. I wish it was just
he was blind and you incriminated yourself. That's it. I
don't know why they needed to have They overcomplicated it.
What would the issue have been if it was just
like I saw you hit the thing? Oh he's blind.
How would you know he's blind? Oh? Because because you
(20:00):
saw him. You don't need any more than that. Do
you need any more than No, you don't need to
be like, well, he had a secret brother and it
was the brother that you saw. It doesn't do anything.
It doesn't make this any more of a gotcha moment,
it's the same outcome. It's so silly. It's just this
weird little cheat that again, like when there's a secret
brother or a secret twin. I just thanks Chris Nolan.
(20:24):
It's just a little bit of a cheat. And the
show doesn't cheat like that. The show tends to be
upfront with what it's doing, but in the execution. It's
why we like it so much, not because it's withholding
information like this. We like this show because it plays
its cards, and it plays its cards. We don't like
this show because it withholds information like a secret mystery box,
(20:45):
like a Damon lindelof show.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
Now with the prestige. Wasn't that him creating a clone
and murdering the clone every time the trick happened?
Speaker 5 (20:55):
Was that what it was? But I thought one of
them had a brother at some point.
Speaker 3 (20:59):
Yeah, maybe Bailhead a brother. I don't know. I thought
Hugh Jackman was murdering his own clones over and over
again thanks to mister Nikola tesla David Bowie, yes, yeah,
doing a great tesla yea. And Andy Serkis as his
apprentice or his helper.
Speaker 5 (21:16):
That's right. Yeah, Yeah, It's just I don't know. Again,
I'm not bemoaning the you were the one there, so
you saw it aspect of it. I'm just bemoaning like
adding another thing in an episode where it feels like
they've already added stuff that was unnecessary, that they worked
themselves into these weird corners with as it is, and
then to work yourself into another weirdo corner because you
(21:39):
want to have the guy have a secret blind brother.
It's whatever, Hugh show. Fine, Okay, if you want to
do it, fine, if you're gonna do it, you might
as well just do it with Gusto and have him
walk in from stage right in the closing moments of
the episode, which is literally what happens.
Speaker 3 (21:56):
So yeah, yeah, it's not the best. There are aspects
to it that I like. It's funny because we keep
talking about how this one feels like kind of one
of those almost like a magpie episode where you're just
like taking little bits and pieces from other stuff and
cobbling them together. And it's funny because when I was
working at Blockbuster all those many moons ago, I don't
(22:19):
think they had that many Maybe they did, but they
definitely didn't have that many episodes of Colombo. But they
did have prescription for Murder, which we talked about that
all the way back.
Speaker 5 (22:30):
And speaking of many moons ago.
Speaker 3 (22:32):
Yes, like young Colombo, not chabby Detective Colombo, but the
cover art for that, I didn't know what Jean Berry
looks like, and I had to say that the caricature
of him is not very good. I used to always
think that was George Hamilton. So I thought that this
was a very popular episode of Colombo because I was like, Oh,
(22:56):
they've got the vhs for it, like the only VHS
of Colombo store with George Hamilton and peterful cut in
the cover. No, you're idiot. The boat doctors both psychiatrists,
so as you're talking about they're pulling little pieces. I'm like, yeah,
just like this, And like Columbo doesn't go off on
(23:17):
Hamilton's that's I don't want to say, assistant co doctor
doesn't go off on her, but he definitely is pretty
angry when she's trying to blow him off and he's, hey,
I'm talking about murder here, the murder. I'm not mad Colombo,
but very serious Colombo.
Speaker 5 (23:34):
But don't you like the parallel of the rats following
the lines and Colombo following the line, yeah clever, so clever,
like whatever.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
So you're trying to say that the Rats are more
clever than Colombo. I don't think so.
Speaker 5 (23:49):
I fucking doubt it.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
That's good that you picked up on that though.
Speaker 5 (23:53):
Yeah, the lines and the thing are the same colors
and everything, So to what end who knows. But yeah,
it's unfortunate. But at the same time, like there, Like
you mentioned, there have been plenty of good episodes this season.
Speaking of recapping the season, I think we had overall
more good episodes than bad.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
I think you'd like exercising fatality a little bit more
than I did. The Bob Conrad episode, Bob to his friends,
Bob to his friends, and I know you're a big
friend negative reaction. The Dick van Dyke episode that still,
to me is right there towards the top.
Speaker 5 (24:30):
It's up with the Nimoy episode for sure.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
If I made a top ten, that might fit into it,
just because that whole were you witness to what he
just did? Were you a witness? I mean that alone.
I just fucking loved that moment.
Speaker 5 (24:44):
Yeah, the were you a witness to what he just did?
Is really that's up to the patch of the first
Patrick McGowan episode's pretty great as well. Yeah, Troubled Waters.
Troubled Waters had the problem of Columbos on a boat
and he walks into the guy who does it immediately,
which you know, again at whatever, I guess like foo
the feather Man. Yeah, that aside, that kind of again
(25:07):
a little bit of a not a cheat, but I
get a little bit of a cheat to get it
to be like, oh, okay fine. Other than that episode,
I think it's probably Negative Reactions the best of the season.
But I think Troubled Waters is the second best episode
of the season. Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
I would probably put by Dawn's surday Light as the
third best of the season.
Speaker 5 (25:26):
Yeah, and then I think beyond that, everything else is
vying for fourth place. I would say Playback and Deadly
state of Mind are definitely the lower end of things,
and I think Playback is probably the worst episode of
the season by not a big margin. I think that well, actually,
I think Playback might be one of the worst episodes
of the show that we've seen. So given that that's
(25:47):
the case, I don't know. A Deadly State of Mind
has its problems, but at least it's only seventy minutes. Yeah,
can you imagine if this was ninety holy shit, twenty
more fucking good night? Twenty more minutes would feel like
an hour with this episode, Oh, let's see them play
clue at the fucking party? Oh oh god, I can
(26:07):
only imagine what falk nonsense we would have gotten. But
at the same time, it could have been fun. I
just don't need to see it. You don't need to
see it, and you've already said pretty early on this
episode's already ten minutes too long, let alone if we
gave it another twenty holy only thirty minutes too long.
Speaker 3 (26:24):
Next season's going to be interesting. There are some real
high highs and some real low lows. I don't think
any of them really hit the same highs as the
ones that we've mentioned for this season, but if not,
they're pretty darn close. There's two next season that I
go back to pretty regularly, and ironically enough, they're directed
(26:48):
by the same person, so that's nice. And then McGowin
comes back in force next season, also directing two episodes.
Did you see what I did there? Not my favorites,
and one of them might be the worst Columbo episode ever,
So dear God, Yeah, it might be because if you
(27:10):
were to all the authors that we've had on here,
all the fans, all the people that we've talked with,
I would not be surprised if every single one of
them put this one in the lowest tier, like even
at least of the NBC years, like the ABC years
definitely miss more than they hit. But yeah, this one,
(27:32):
especially because season five is going to be pretty good.
Season four was really solid, Season six, I think we're
going to get some great ones as well. So when
you have a stinker of this caliber amongst all of those,
it makes playback look like fucking Emmy worthy.
Speaker 5 (27:50):
Oh dear God. Yeah, how bad? Huh.
Speaker 3 (27:52):
I'm not going to spoil it and say which episode is.
Speaker 5 (27:56):
I feel like at this point I will know when
I watch them.
Speaker 3 (27:59):
Oh you shirt, certainly? Yes?
Speaker 5 (28:01):
Is it it? Does it start bad? Is it like
just as does it just get into it immediately?
Speaker 3 (28:07):
I think? So it's one that I will actually skip
during a marathon. Oh wow, Okay.
Speaker 5 (28:15):
Yeah, And the fact that there's a consensus as well
is not great. So I liked season four. I think
season four of the show was pretty good. The Dick
Van Dyke episode, I think being the standout. If every
season has one standout episode that I think is a success,
And given that there's six episodes a season, it's not enough.
That's like barely enough to be considered a season of anything.
(28:37):
Even now fucked fucking Game of Thrones was at least
eight for fuck's sake, Even that show needed two more episodes,
especially in the most recent season House of the Dragon.
But six episodes is not a season of anything. That's yo,
that's fucking two episodes more than like a mini series.
Speaker 3 (28:53):
Really, why to say season six is only three episodes long?
Speaker 5 (28:58):
That is a mini series? Is that limited time event
if anything? Shit, that's pretty crazy. But I think at
the same time, I'm again, we know that the way
that this show look This episode aired April twenty seventh.
The last episode aired March second, because this is part
of the wheel, right, So yeah, so you know, they
didn't need eighteen episodes of Columbo. They only needed enough
(29:20):
to stagger it with everything else. But it's surprising that
some of the episodes aren't great given that they didn't
need that many episodes. That's the other thing we give
shows like The X Files or any show that has
twenty plus episodes of pass per season, because you know,
odds are at a lot of averages. There's gonna be
a handful of great there's gonna be a handful of
amazing episodes. There's gonna be some great episodes. There'll be
(29:43):
plenty of good episodes, and there'll be a couple shit episodes,
and there will be some episodes small handful that are
complete dog shit. With the show like this, you don't
have that much to go off with, like one episode
being bad sucks more than two or three episodes being
bad in a twenty episode season, because this is six
or six, oh my god, three episodes. Oh my god.
Speaker 3 (30:05):
This is a pretty decent ending to this season. You'll
notice going forward, maybe with season five. Definitely, Actually with
season five, I think it really starts the will Colombo
be back or won't he type of endings, because we
talked about that a little, like I can't remember which
season it was, but there was one where it was like, oh,
(30:27):
they could have ended the show right here, and it
was a nice little send off for Colombo. You're going
to get those more and more as these seasons Golong
because of his shenanigans. As far as you Gotta pay
Me more. You got to give me more control those
kind of things. So they will start to put in
little endings as far as and that was the last
time we ever saw Colombo.
Speaker 5 (30:49):
Was it season two? I think it was trying to
remember what happened to Atney Coleman.
Speaker 3 (30:56):
Oh boy, you say Damney Coleman, I.
Speaker 5 (30:58):
Mark another episode? Yeah, yeah, I think it's funny. That's
very supernatural, right. That show had what six fucking endings
every season. After season two or three, they were like,
we could have just ended this show here. And it's
really that show ran so long. It ended during the pandemic.
Speaker 3 (31:16):
Oh Jesus.
Speaker 5 (31:17):
It started when I was in high school and ended
the year the pandemic happened. But that's the thing. Colombo
starts just as early and runs just as long. Columbo,
what by the end of it is pushing into almost
the nineties, right, late eighties. Yeah, good old Peter Falk.
He knew his value, and they really thought Colombo was
something special. Look, that's the thing. You don't cave to
(31:40):
a guy like that if he's not worth it. And
he's worth it. Peter Falk was one worth it and
even about like even a mediocre episode of Colombo is
still pretty good because you get to see Peter Falk
do it. This is we have another show in the
works that we haven't released yet, but we've been working
on it for almost a year now, and the main
(32:00):
actor in the main role didn't do much else in
the way of no he did a lot of other things,
but not as well known, is it. Peter Falk's the
same way. Peter Falk's kind of known for this. And
guess what if you're known for this, and you're as
well known as he ended up being known for this role,
you don't need anything else. Some people like Harrison Ford
(32:21):
who have three or four well known roles to their name,
but some people like Peter Falk only had the one.
And when you have statues in random Polish cities to
young people Hungarians Hungarians, there might.
Speaker 3 (32:35):
Be in Poland too. I don't know very.
Speaker 5 (32:37):
Well, but I think at the end of the day,
when you have something like Peter Falk is Colombo, you
don't need anything else, and the quality shows out, it
plays out on screen, and yeah, even a bad episode
of Colombo is still worth it because of Peter Falk
just killing it. But he knew his worth good for
him and he was able to hold him over a barrel,
So fuck him, fuck him in the ear.
Speaker 3 (33:00):
Yeah, fuck them in the other year theme in both years.
So we are going to not come back to Peter
Falk on the episode. We're actually going to stay with
our good friends Levinson and Link for two things. I
don't know if Link was involved in The Gun, the
nineteen seventy four TV movie directed by John Badham. I
(33:22):
know Levinson definitely was, and they both were involved in
the execution of Private Slovak, which stars another Columbo alum
with Martin Sheen. And then ironically The Gun stars Steven Elliott,
who just got murdered in this episode. So they definitely
favored some actors, some people behind the scenes as well.
(33:45):
So yeah, we're going to take a two month respite
here and talk about two TV movies that came out
in nineteen seventy four, So right around the time of
this episode that we were discussing tonight and kind of
the end of the season, Colombo and We'll have some
fun with some TV movies in the meantime.
Speaker 5 (34:05):
Their friend Martin Sheen, Ramon, Antonio este Ah, see Ce
see everybody.
Speaker 3 (34:14):
Yeah, we've got some great there's some really good actors
in these TV movies, so I'm looking forward to it.
I've never seen either of these. I remember reading about
The Gun forever ago, and it feels like I've seen it,
but I don't think I've ever sat down and watched it.
It was very tough to find for a while.
Speaker 5 (34:32):
Charlie Sheen is in the other movie. Really yeah, a
very young Charlie Sheen in his second film role.
Speaker 3 (34:38):
So one's got Martin, the other's got Charlie.
Speaker 5 (34:41):
No, both has one of Martin and Charlie. And you
know what, I'm pretty sure that movie is winning. Okay
with Tiger Blood.
Speaker 3 (34:48):
With tiger Blood running through street, what.
Speaker 5 (34:51):
A fucking nightmare, what a n like five minutes right?
Speaker 3 (34:56):
Oh god, yeah, I did like the auto tune song
version of that.
Speaker 5 (35:02):
Yeah, that was winning Tiger Blood. Oh my god, everybody
was into Charlie Sheen for five minutes.
Speaker 3 (35:09):
Yeah. I'm surprised he hasn't come out of some sort
of like Maga spokesman or something crazy like that.
Speaker 5 (35:14):
He was just fun crazy. He was crazy with none
of the problems. He was just a fucking whack of
do He was just, Oh, I'm having a good time.
I'm rich and I don't care.
Speaker 3 (35:23):
Like he was crazy with a C instead of crazy
with three k's.
Speaker 5 (35:27):
Yeah, baby, crazy now is not as much fun as
it used to be. It's a lot less fun and
a lot more what's the word serious and horrifying?
Speaker 3 (35:35):
Yeah, and a lot more public too.
Speaker 5 (35:37):
Yeah. Well, Jesus Christy.
Speaker 3 (35:39):
Yeah, we used to talk about how we needed to
have discussions about mental illness in America. We still need
those discussions, but we don't need to see the mental
illness on display as much. Thank you.
Speaker 5 (35:49):
I disagree with you entirely.
Speaker 3 (35:53):
I like crazy girls.
Speaker 5 (35:56):
Who the hell don't.
Speaker 3 (35:59):
Well, Chris, and until we come back next month to
talk about the execution of Private Slovak? What are you
working on these days?
Speaker 5 (36:06):
Everything I'm working on is audio based, other than one
thing that's a YouTube video, and all of that can
be found for the most part at weirdingwaymedia dot com,
which is where all the stuff that you and I
work on can be found, because that's the network that
you and I started. What two years ago? Three years ago? God?
I even remember it.
Speaker 3 (36:23):
It's time flies, man, time.
Speaker 5 (36:26):
Flies when you throw a clock out the fucking window.
What about you, Mike? Where can people find you and
the things that you work on.
Speaker 3 (36:31):
Pretty much the same place, Weirdingwaymedia dot com. That's where
all the shows that you and I do, other than
the one show that we do for patreons for both
the Culturecast Patreon at patreon dot com slash Culturecast and
the Projection Booth Patreon, which is patreon dot com slash
Projection booth. And that is ranking on Bond. That is
our monthly discussion of all things James Bond. We're joined
(36:55):
by our dear friend mister Richard Adam a Verger Adam's
paranormal bookshelf in order to talk about James Bond Jimmy
Bond to his friends or in that weird casino royal
that we talked about all that time ago. But we
are bruising through things. We're up to Roger Moore. I
think we got two more movies until Timothy Dalton, so
(37:16):
I'm looking forward to that because I love me some
Timothy Dalton. I want to thank John Walker for our
opening theme song. And mister Colin Gallagher who has a
new book, actually two books out, so definitely check out
Colin's work. You pick up both of those who were
at Amazon Colin Gallahager did our final theme song, the
awesome Busanova theme. So much to him and thanks to
(37:39):
you for listening. Please rate and review the show wherever
you get it. We'd greatly appreciate it.
Speaker 5 (38:10):
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I have to speak to an expert.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
Welcome to the shabby Detective, yet another Columbo podcast. I'm
your host, Mike Woit Jenny, of course, is mister Chris Tashue.
Speaker 5 (02:31):
I prefer to be known as the gay Blade.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
All right, so it shall be. On this episode we
were talking about the sixth and final episode of season four,
A Deadly Seat of Mind, directed by Harvey Hart, written
by Peter S. Fisher, who's been the showrunner this season.
It originally aired April twenty seventh, nineteen seventy five. I
(02:54):
admitted last month that I screwed up thinking that all
of these were ninety minute episodes. This is another seventy
minute episode. I have to say, probably could have been
a sixty minute episode because there's a little bit of
time wasting in here, at least in my opinion. But Chris,
I'm very curious, what did you think of a Deadly
state of Mind?
Speaker 5 (03:13):
There he goes everyone saying that there's a little bit
of time wasting in this episode. This is one of
the Colombo episodes where Columbo knows who did it the
moment he sees him. And we've had this conversation before
about this. We'll continue to have this conversation about this
as we continue to watch this show together. They can
do it well, they can do it right, they can
(03:35):
do it in a way that works. This is not
one of those episodes. I actually am disappointed with this
episode because I enjoyed the performances. I really like Leslie
and Warren. Obviously, I don't know have we talked about this.
You're not a fan of Clue. You are a fan
of Clue.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
I didn't see Clue until just a few years ago
and really enjoyed it. And yes, I love Leslie and Warren.
She is so great.
Speaker 5 (03:59):
She's great, but like, yeah, yes, oh yeah, oh yeah,
Victor Victoria, that's right. I saw that earlier this year
as well. sEH, she is wasted here because she plays
a character that we've seen before and they give her
one note which is constantly exasperated. It's not that she
(04:20):
can't do it, and it's actually far from it. Leslie
and Warren is a very talented actress, so she can
do it. It's just that is really not making the
most of her abilities as an actress to pigeonhole her
into one thing where she's just oh my god, that's
like her whole character. And given that this is Colombo,
given that we spend a lot of time with these characters,
(04:42):
along with Colombo, You and I would prefer to have
a character that's not written so one note, especially when
we're gonna spend half of the damn episode with her
and we're also meant to at some point empathize with
her plight and feel bad for her and then even
feel worse for her when George Hamilton hypnotizer to jump
(05:03):
off of a ledge, which is we'll get to that
when we get to But I think this episode's fine.
It definitely could have been ten minutes shorter, and it
definitely needed one more Luki lou as they would say
of the writer's room. Because it's just fine. There's nothing
to it that I think imminently sets it apart from
(05:23):
any other episode, other than maybe the reveal at the end,
which is such a fucking cheat. Okay, once he gets
hung up. The reveal at the end of this episode
is such a crock a fucking shit. They should be
a shame to themselves. Okay, you get to do this
one time, you motherfuckers. This is like in the Sopranos,
they have something similar with It's like, oh is a
brother fuck you show? You get one opportunity to do this, Colombo,
(05:48):
and I hope you don't do it again, because this
is utter bullshit. They literally it's like having a card
in your pocket the whole time and never letting anybody
see it. Ooh, here's the actual and it's oh cool.
So the reveal aside. I thought this episode was fine,
but to your point, there's about ten minutes in here
that could be cut. I'm assuming we're on the same
page as of what those ten minutes are.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
Oh yeah, we'll get there, definitely. What about you, Mike,
You're right when it comes to Leslian Ward, She's already
got her voice to contend with. I love her voice.
I love her. I love when she shows up in
things I'm already mentioned Victimtoria. I really love her in
Color of Night, basically whenever she's there, Like she played
(06:31):
a great Lois Lane in this musical version of Superman
that aired on TV years and years ago. I just
can't get enough of her. She's got the voice, though,
and when we meet her, she's being age regressed through
hypnotism to a little girl state, and she never really
changes her voice out of that. She's a little girl
(06:52):
through this whole episode, which makes it tough that George
Hamilton is so attract to her. Of course she's a
beautiful woman, but she just gets infantalized through this whole episode.
Wouldn't you go for someone else? And then this whole
weird thing of like him, what is it is? He
writing a book doing research.
Speaker 5 (07:14):
And reminds me of Michelle the book Michelle remembers that
ended up being debunked about a woman who has regressed
in a turned out she was like raped by a
satanic cult. That was like, oh, now we're doing this
thing too. Oh yeah, yeah, but what it just done?
They don't go anywhere with it, They don't really do
anything with it. No, and then they pull a Robert
Colt towards he's a well, I guess Leonard Nimoy where
(07:36):
he's doing all this, but he's also a doctor, so
it's oh. But then there's actually like the doctor machinations
of it all happening as well. And then we have
the other doctor that he's also schmoozing with. There's a
lot going on here and ultimately to what end none,
it's another episode of Columbo shows up, looks George Hamilton
up and down and goes he did it.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
As soon as he him for a light. He basically
knows and he hasn't over for the lighter yet. Yeah,
that's so conspicuous. And I don't know if he knows it,
but we know it as the audience. We might even
know before Colombo does, because it's just there. You go.
You're tripped up just because of the emphasis and weight
they put on this match, and just that after the
(08:21):
murder he immediately starts smoking and you're like, oh, okay,
that's going to come of it, because it seems so conspicuous.
Speaker 5 (08:29):
That in the tire when they do the shot they
close up the tire. Yeah, I was like, wow, are
we stupid? I get it, Like again, seventies fine, whatever,
not writing seventy five, not necessarily writing. I don't know.
I don't even want to give him that because that's
on the fucking case. No, because this show is better
(08:51):
than that, exactly. Show has been better than that consistently,
and that like when they close up to the tire
going through the muddy, I was, Oh, I hope that
does and come back. It's a boy Jesus episode. It subtlety,
What is that we've lost all attempts at subtlety all
of a sudden.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
It reminds me of Luckily when like when the Cassavettes
kills the pianist and he comes out later on after
they've found the body and all that stuff, and he
comes out and he's got the no flower on his
jacket and stuff, and I'm like, okay, yeah, that's or
(09:29):
he has the flower at that point, he didn't have
the flower and the original thing. Can they give us
a little bit of a hey, check this out, but
we've seen the flower fall and all this. It doesn't
feel nearly as ham fisted. And that's the thing with
Harvey Hart directing this, it shouldn't be as ham fisted
as this. But yeah, be a lot more subtle, please.
Speaker 5 (09:50):
No subtle tea is not the name of the game
with Colombo anymore, which is fucking bizarre, because does I
don't feel like the show lacks subtletya. I feel like
the show for the most part, the least subtle thing
about the show is the fact that he constantly feels
like Colombo always knows he's going to catch the person
the moment he sees them. But I'm okay with that.
We've dealt with that now enough that I'm sure I
(10:11):
sound like a fucking broken record for some people. But
at the same time, the best episodes of this show
make it so that there is some doubts, so that
there is a little bit of back and forth, a
little bit of give and get with Colombo and the murderer.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
The murderers right.
Speaker 5 (10:26):
And in this episode we get the tantalizing secondary murder,
which we haven't had in a while.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
No, it's been a little bit. And it's weird too,
because the first murder is a crime of passion. It's
when Steven Elliott is Carl Diner attacks George Hamilton as
doctor Mark Collier Our Collier. I guess they pronounced it
in this and it's okay, good crime and passion cry
to be a big man, and hey, I'm taking Nadia
away from you. And when he finally supposed to do it,
(10:55):
Ellie's just no, we are We're not doing this to
go ahead and just try to beat you up. Steven
Elliott as Carl Donner, as soon as I heard his voice,
I just immediately went to a role that he would
play quite a few years later in Beverly Hills Cop
He plays the chief of police in Beverly Hills itself
(11:18):
and has a great, very distinct voice in that which
Eddie Murphy makes fun of. And he's using the exact
same voice in this very Stcenorian, very voice of God
type of thing. I'm like, Okay, this works. I like
him because I wish there was a lot more of him.
Speaker 5 (11:35):
Ultimately, the real problem with this episode not that I
hadn't thought about this, but it's more apparent the more
I sit here and think about it, wouldn't the right
answer be if you're the two of them, just say
it was in defense, like he was attacking her self defense,
so fragile. Yeah, Like, I don't get it. This is
pure self defense. She's being attacked and he, George Hamilton,
(11:57):
defends her. He doesn't intend to kill him. He hits
him once and kills him. That a coroner would see that,
I don't know. I feel like that's maybe my real
issue with this episode is that I think at its
core the premise is completely flawed. Like one percent, it's
shockingly flawed.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
Frankly, yes, I agree with you, one hundred percent out
of all of that.
Speaker 5 (12:20):
For the first time in the run of this show,
these two people did nothing to deserve what they ended
up doing to themselves. Additionally, they should have just been
like it was self defense in the story, like literally,
that's it. Like it's fucking bizarre to me. It's not
that it doesn't make any sense, but there's other ways
to get around this. Just have George Hamilton show up
(12:41):
and kill him, just right, Just have George Hamilton attack
him because he's berating him, because he's talking down to him,
because he's taking offense at his manhood or something anything
more than just he starts attacking her, a frail woman,
and this guy defends her. As far as I'm concerned,
that's self defense. Like it undercuts the episode entirely from
(13:03):
the get go.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
Yeah, instead of this Kakamaimi story about two guys in
ski masks coming and robbing the place and attacking him
from behind.
Speaker 5 (13:12):
With a gun with it she's a terrible liar and
then he kills her in the hokiest TV hypnotism way.
That again, Look, I've been hypnotized. You can go check
out an episode of Scary Stories We Tell I did
with my friend Emma, who hypnotized me on the episode.
I got hypnotized for real. I'm not joking. She didn't
make me cluck like a fucking chicken or walk off
(13:32):
of a cliff. That's not how that works. That's the
television version of hypnotism, which doesn't help the reality of
what hypnotism is, which actually helped plenty of people. This
is this like TV bullshit. And what I don't get
is why wasn't George Hamilton just like a hypnotist then
why was any like why was he a fucking doctor
who's doing research on again, what Robert Kolpe was doing
(13:57):
research on, like the ability to like plant messages or
retrieve messages or debate someone through the use of external triggers.
And they did it better than the Robert Gulp episode.
Why do we have to do it here at all?
Speaker 3 (14:11):
Slumbo's sitting on the couch doing the whole mumbling and
I don't Yeah, it could work. That whole scene, that
whole segment of the scene could be cut out completely.
It's just like it's so much like little pieces of
fat on this episode. Or I'm just like, all right,
I guess it's good to see, like, who's going to
(14:34):
complain about saying more Peter Fall But at the same time,
it's no. I like the leanness of this. I like
how quick this thing moves. I like the stories. Like
we're definitely going to review the season, but there's been
a lot of better episodes this season where it's just
(14:54):
like this clue and it's just like, all right, this
is great and you don't even have for any of
this takamami stuff. Like the scene at the hospital with
him trying to find the room and he's going down
the tape and he can't find him.
Speaker 5 (15:07):
Oh my god, it was so much fun when we
saw him talking to the woman with the forms before
the hospital or wherever the hell that was. Remember, they
love doing that, Like somebody's just Peter Folk is like, hey,
what do you want to do this season? Some dumb shit. Okay,
I don't know how much money he was making permitted
on this show, but he's just ten minutes of bullshit.
(15:27):
That's a new payment on my Alpha rameo or whoever
the fuck it is. Yeah, it's huh. That in the
dinner party scene, Holy shit, come on, episode Like, yeah,
why don't we just look at George Hamilton and say
this motherfucker did it. There's nobody else that could even
remotely fucking be and it's not kicking around the room.
Let's take this guy and arrest him because he clearly
(15:50):
did it. But oh, by the way, we're not gonna
have any of the most obvious reasons or ways we
catch him be the reason he gets caught.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
Mm hmmm.
Speaker 5 (16:01):
It should have been at that dinner party. They should
have caught him at the dinner party. That would have
been fun. That would have been a nice payoff.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
It would have been like a parlor scene. And Agatha
Christy yeah.
Speaker 5 (16:10):
Yeah, sure, wat Holms, yeah yeah, but I do elementary
they even fucking say it. Fuck you, come on, I.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
Do like this idea of George Hamilton being so brazen
that he's going to go over and pick up the
phone and make this call and basically murder Leslie and
Warren from the party that Columbo is at. I'm like, okay,
I appreciate what a big man you think you are.
Speaker 5 (16:38):
If you stick it, come let me show you to it.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
You're right that it had that parlor scene turned into
or the dinner party turned into a parlor scene, I
think that would have been way better. And yeah, Colombo
even sees like that whole thing of him sitting on
the couch that I was talking about. It's basically an
excuse for him to see the lights coming through the doorway.
And I'm like, okay, but you could have gotten to
that so many other ways. So yeah, it's just bizarre
(17:06):
why they made some of these decisions.
Speaker 5 (17:09):
And again, I would love to have been in the
writer's room when they were making the decisions. But Colombo
shows up pretty early on in the episode to Leslie
and Warren's apartment and George Hamilton's there, and here's another
way that he's incriminated himself. I don't know. This is
one of the episodes where this guy's incriminating himself with
Colombo constantly, and then for the episode to end the
(17:30):
way that it ends with all of this incriminatory evidence,
and then it's just but just kidding. It's a Martin
Landau thing. Guys, what the least you are? Technically they've
already done it. They technically already done it, but they
subverted the expectations when they did it with Martin land
Here it's this is how you do it when you're
gonna do it right exactly.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
I appreciate that Bruce Kirby's in this one. I don't
know if the character name is the same as the
last time we saw him with the Patrick mcgoin Military Adams.
She say, yeah, he definitely seems to have that same attitude,
just like, what is this guy's problem?
Speaker 5 (18:06):
Yes, he's not taken by Colombo's chicanery the way we are.
Speaker 3 (18:11):
Yeah, and then it's nice. I know you're not a
big fan of the ending of this, but I really
do see Fred Draper show up, who we've seen now
so many times, including when we watched A Woman under
the Influence. He's Gina Rowland's father in that one, and
don't forget he was like scraping makeup off of Vera
Miles's face in the Cosmetics episode. And then here he
(18:33):
shows up in this And I accidentally flipped to season
six and the thumbnail because this is now showing on
Amazon Prime as well. The thumbnail on Amazon Prime for
season six, episode one. Fred Draper's just standing there all alone.
I'm like, Okay, it's great that he was a regular
on here. I thought that, what's the other guy's named,
(18:54):
val Lewis? I thought he was more regular, But I
think I'm seeing more Fred Draper these days.
Speaker 5 (19:00):
Are you telling me you liked the ending or you
just didn't find it as much of an affront as
I did.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
I didn't find it as much of an uffront. I
liked Fred Draper quote unquote playing blind but not being blind,
like affecting. It's a total cheat to make him incriminate himself.
Speaker 5 (19:20):
Very as a brother, a secret brother, like.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
It's very which kid? The negative was destroyed in the
camera kind of prestige. Yeah, where it's just, bro, I
know that this guy is blind. How do you know?
Because how puts you in the spot.
Speaker 5 (19:39):
So I like that aspect of it. I don't like
the he had a brother. I wish it was just
he was blind and you incriminated yourself. That's it. I
don't know why they needed to have They overcomplicated it.
What would the issue have been if it was just
like I saw you hit the thing? Oh he's blind.
How would you know he's blind? Oh? Because because you
(20:00):
saw him. You don't need any more than that. Do
you need any more than No, you don't need to
be like, well, he had a secret brother and it
was the brother that you saw. It doesn't do anything.
It doesn't make this any more of a gotcha moment,
it's the same outcome. It's so silly. It's just this
weird little cheat that again, like when there's a secret
brother or a secret twin. I just thanks Chris Nolan.
(20:24):
It's just a little bit of a cheat. And the
show doesn't cheat like that. The show tends to be
upfront with what it's doing, but in the execution. It's
why we like it so much, not because it's withholding
information like this. We like this show because it plays
its cards, and it plays its cards. We don't like
this show because it withholds information like a secret mystery box,
(20:45):
like a Damon lindelof show.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
Now with the prestige. Wasn't that him creating a clone
and murdering the clone every time the trick happened?
Speaker 5 (20:55):
Was that what it was? But I thought one of
them had a brother at some point.
Speaker 3 (20:59):
Yeah, maybe Bailhead a brother. I don't know. I thought
Hugh Jackman was murdering his own clones over and over
again thanks to mister Nikola tesla David Bowie, yes, yeah,
doing a great tesla yea. And Andy Serkis as his
apprentice or his helper.
Speaker 5 (21:16):
That's right. Yeah, Yeah, It's just I don't know. Again,
I'm not bemoaning the you were the one there, so
you saw it aspect of it. I'm just bemoaning like
adding another thing in an episode where it feels like
they've already added stuff that was unnecessary, that they worked
themselves into these weird corners with as it is, and
then to work yourself into another weirdo corner because you
(21:39):
want to have the guy have a secret blind brother.
It's whatever, Hugh show. Fine, Okay, if you want to
do it, fine, if you're gonna do it, you might
as well just do it with Gusto and have him
walk in from stage right in the closing moments of
the episode, which is literally what happens.
Speaker 3 (21:56):
So yeah, yeah, it's not the best. There are aspects
to it that I like. It's funny because we keep
talking about how this one feels like kind of one
of those almost like a magpie episode where you're just
like taking little bits and pieces from other stuff and
cobbling them together. And it's funny because when I was
working at Blockbuster all those many moons ago, I don't
(22:19):
think they had that many Maybe they did, but they
definitely didn't have that many episodes of Colombo. But they
did have prescription for Murder, which we talked about that
all the way back.
Speaker 5 (22:30):
And speaking of many moons ago.
Speaker 3 (22:32):
Yes, like young Colombo, not chabby Detective Colombo, but the
cover art for that, I didn't know what Jean Berry
looks like, and I had to say that the caricature
of him is not very good. I used to always
think that was George Hamilton. So I thought that this
was a very popular episode of Colombo because I was like, Oh,
(22:56):
they've got the vhs for it, like the only VHS
of Colombo store with George Hamilton and peterful cut in
the cover. No, you're idiot. The boat doctors both psychiatrists,
so as you're talking about they're pulling little pieces. I'm like, yeah,
just like this, And like Columbo doesn't go off on
(23:17):
Hamilton's that's I don't want to say, assistant co doctor
doesn't go off on her, but he definitely is pretty
angry when she's trying to blow him off and he's, hey,
I'm talking about murder here, the murder. I'm not mad Colombo,
but very serious Colombo.
Speaker 5 (23:34):
But don't you like the parallel of the rats following
the lines and Colombo following the line, yeah clever, so clever,
like whatever.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
So you're trying to say that the Rats are more
clever than Colombo. I don't think so.
Speaker 5 (23:49):
I fucking doubt it.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
That's good that you picked up on that though.
Speaker 5 (23:53):
Yeah, the lines and the thing are the same colors
and everything, So to what end who knows. But yeah,
it's unfortunate. But at the same time, like there, Like
you mentioned, there have been plenty of good episodes this season.
Speaking of recapping the season, I think we had overall
more good episodes than bad.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
I think you'd like exercising fatality a little bit more
than I did. The Bob Conrad episode, Bob to his friends,
Bob to his friends, and I know you're a big
friend negative reaction. The Dick van Dyke episode that still,
to me is right there towards the top.
Speaker 5 (24:30):
It's up with the Nimoy episode for sure.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
If I made a top ten, that might fit into it,
just because that whole were you witness to what he
just did? Were you a witness? I mean that alone.
I just fucking loved that moment.
Speaker 5 (24:44):
Yeah, the were you a witness to what he just did?
Is really that's up to the patch of the first
Patrick McGowan episode's pretty great as well. Yeah, Troubled Waters.
Troubled Waters had the problem of Columbos on a boat
and he walks into the guy who does it immediately,
which you know, again at whatever, I guess like foo
the feather Man. Yeah, that aside, that kind of again
(25:07):
a little bit of a not a cheat, but I
get a little bit of a cheat to get it
to be like, oh, okay fine. Other than that episode,
I think it's probably Negative Reactions the best of the season.
But I think Troubled Waters is the second best episode
of the season. Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
I would probably put by Dawn's surday Light as the
third best of the season.
Speaker 5 (25:26):
Yeah, and then I think beyond that, everything else is
vying for fourth place. I would say Playback and Deadly
state of Mind are definitely the lower end of things,
and I think Playback is probably the worst episode of
the season by not a big margin. I think that well, actually,
I think Playback might be one of the worst episodes
of the show that we've seen. So given that that's
(25:47):
the case, I don't know. A Deadly State of Mind
has its problems, but at least it's only seventy minutes. Yeah,
can you imagine if this was ninety holy shit, twenty
more fucking good night? Twenty more minutes would feel like
an hour with this episode, Oh, let's see them play
clue at the fucking party? Oh oh god, I can
(26:07):
only imagine what falk nonsense we would have gotten. But
at the same time, it could have been fun. I
just don't need to see it. You don't need to
see it, and you've already said pretty early on this
episode's already ten minutes too long, let alone if we
gave it another twenty holy only thirty minutes too long.
Speaker 3 (26:24):
Next season's going to be interesting. There are some real
high highs and some real low lows. I don't think
any of them really hit the same highs as the
ones that we've mentioned for this season, but if not,
they're pretty darn close. There's two next season that I
go back to pretty regularly, and ironically enough, they're directed
(26:48):
by the same person, so that's nice. And then McGowin
comes back in force next season, also directing two episodes.
Did you see what I did there? Not my favorites,
and one of them might be the worst Columbo episode ever,
So dear God, Yeah, it might be because if you
(27:10):
were to all the authors that we've had on here,
all the fans, all the people that we've talked with,
I would not be surprised if every single one of
them put this one in the lowest tier, like even
at least of the NBC years, like the ABC years
definitely miss more than they hit. But yeah, this one,
(27:32):
especially because season five is going to be pretty good.
Season four was really solid, Season six, I think we're
going to get some great ones as well. So when
you have a stinker of this caliber amongst all of those,
it makes playback look like fucking Emmy worthy.
Speaker 5 (27:50):
Oh dear God. Yeah, how bad? Huh.
Speaker 3 (27:52):
I'm not going to spoil it and say which episode is.
Speaker 5 (27:56):
I feel like at this point I will know when
I watch them.
Speaker 3 (27:59):
Oh you shirt, certainly? Yes?
Speaker 5 (28:01):
Is it it? Does it start bad? Is it like
just as does it just get into it immediately?
Speaker 3 (28:07):
I think? So it's one that I will actually skip
during a marathon. Oh wow, Okay.
Speaker 5 (28:15):
Yeah, And the fact that there's a consensus as well
is not great. So I liked season four. I think
season four of the show was pretty good. The Dick
Van Dyke episode, I think being the standout. If every
season has one standout episode that I think is a success,
And given that there's six episodes a season, it's not enough.
That's like barely enough to be considered a season of anything.
(28:37):
Even now fucked fucking Game of Thrones was at least
eight for fuck's sake, Even that show needed two more episodes,
especially in the most recent season House of the Dragon.
But six episodes is not a season of anything. That's yo,
that's fucking two episodes more than like a mini series.
Speaker 3 (28:53):
Really, why to say season six is only three episodes long?
Speaker 5 (28:58):
That is a mini series? Is that limited time event
if anything? Shit, that's pretty crazy. But I think at
the same time, I'm again, we know that the way
that this show look This episode aired April twenty seventh.
The last episode aired March second, because this is part
of the wheel, right, So yeah, so you know, they
didn't need eighteen episodes of Columbo. They only needed enough
(29:20):
to stagger it with everything else. But it's surprising that
some of the episodes aren't great given that they didn't
need that many episodes. That's the other thing we give
shows like The X Files or any show that has
twenty plus episodes of pass per season, because you know,
odds are at a lot of averages. There's gonna be
a handful of great there's gonna be a handful of
amazing episodes. There's gonna be some great episodes. There'll be
(29:43):
plenty of good episodes, and there'll be a couple shit episodes,
and there will be some episodes small handful that are
complete dog shit. With the show like this, you don't
have that much to go off with, like one episode
being bad sucks more than two or three episodes being
bad in a twenty episode season, because this is six
or six, oh my god, three episodes. Oh my god.
Speaker 3 (30:05):
This is a pretty decent ending to this season. You'll
notice going forward, maybe with season five. Definitely, Actually with
season five, I think it really starts the will Colombo
be back or won't he type of endings, because we
talked about that a little, like I can't remember which
season it was, but there was one where it was like, oh,
(30:27):
they could have ended the show right here, and it
was a nice little send off for Colombo. You're going
to get those more and more as these seasons Golong
because of his shenanigans. As far as you Gotta pay
Me more. You got to give me more control those
kind of things. So they will start to put in
little endings as far as and that was the last
time we ever saw Colombo.
Speaker 5 (30:49):
Was it season two? I think it was trying to
remember what happened to Atney Coleman.
Speaker 3 (30:56):
Oh boy, you say Damney Coleman, I.
Speaker 5 (30:58):
Mark another episode? Yeah, yeah, I think it's funny. That's
very supernatural, right. That show had what six fucking endings
every season. After season two or three, they were like,
we could have just ended this show here. And it's
really that show ran so long. It ended during the pandemic.
Speaker 3 (31:16):
Oh Jesus.
Speaker 5 (31:17):
It started when I was in high school and ended
the year the pandemic happened. But that's the thing. Colombo
starts just as early and runs just as long. Columbo,
what by the end of it is pushing into almost
the nineties, right, late eighties. Yeah, good old Peter Falk.
He knew his value, and they really thought Colombo was
something special. Look, that's the thing. You don't cave to
(31:40):
a guy like that if he's not worth it. And
he's worth it. Peter Falk was one worth it and
even about like even a mediocre episode of Colombo is
still pretty good because you get to see Peter Falk
do it. This is we have another show in the
works that we haven't released yet, but we've been working
on it for almost a year now, and the main
(32:00):
actor in the main role didn't do much else in
the way of no he did a lot of other things,
but not as well known, is it. Peter Falk's the
same way. Peter Falk's kind of known for this. And
guess what if you're known for this, and you're as
well known as he ended up being known for this role,
you don't need anything else. Some people like Harrison Ford
(32:21):
who have three or four well known roles to their name,
but some people like Peter Falk only had the one.
And when you have statues in random Polish cities to
young people Hungarians Hungarians, there might.
Speaker 3 (32:35):
Be in Poland too. I don't know very.
Speaker 5 (32:37):
Well, but I think at the end of the day,
when you have something like Peter Falk is Colombo, you
don't need anything else, and the quality shows out, it
plays out on screen, and yeah, even a bad episode
of Colombo is still worth it because of Peter Falk
just killing it. But he knew his worth good for
him and he was able to hold him over a barrel,
So fuck him, fuck him in the ear.
Speaker 3 (33:00):
Yeah, fuck them in the other year theme in both years.
So we are going to not come back to Peter
Falk on the episode. We're actually going to stay with
our good friends Levinson and Link for two things. I
don't know if Link was involved in The Gun, the
nineteen seventy four TV movie directed by John Badham. I
(33:22):
know Levinson definitely was, and they both were involved in
the execution of Private Slovak, which stars another Columbo alum
with Martin Sheen. And then ironically The Gun stars Steven Elliott,
who just got murdered in this episode. So they definitely
favored some actors, some people behind the scenes as well.
(33:45):
So yeah, we're going to take a two month respite
here and talk about two TV movies that came out
in nineteen seventy four, So right around the time of
this episode that we were discussing tonight and kind of
the end of the season, Colombo and We'll have some
fun with some TV movies in the meantime.
Speaker 5 (34:05):
Their friend Martin Sheen, Ramon, Antonio este Ah, see Ce
see everybody.
Speaker 3 (34:14):
Yeah, we've got some great there's some really good actors
in these TV movies, so I'm looking forward to it.
I've never seen either of these. I remember reading about
The Gun forever ago, and it feels like I've seen it,
but I don't think I've ever sat down and watched it.
It was very tough to find for a while.
Speaker 5 (34:32):
Charlie Sheen is in the other movie. Really yeah, a
very young Charlie Sheen in his second film role.
Speaker 3 (34:38):
So one's got Martin, the other's got Charlie.
Speaker 5 (34:41):
No, both has one of Martin and Charlie. And you
know what, I'm pretty sure that movie is winning. Okay
with Tiger Blood.
Speaker 3 (34:48):
With tiger Blood running through street, what.
Speaker 5 (34:51):
A fucking nightmare, what a n like five minutes right?
Speaker 3 (34:56):
Oh god, yeah, I did like the auto tune song
version of that.
Speaker 5 (35:02):
Yeah, that was winning Tiger Blood. Oh my god, everybody
was into Charlie Sheen for five minutes.
Speaker 3 (35:09):
Yeah. I'm surprised he hasn't come out of some sort
of like Maga spokesman or something crazy like that.
Speaker 5 (35:14):
He was just fun crazy. He was crazy with none
of the problems. He was just a fucking whack of
do He was just, Oh, I'm having a good time.
I'm rich and I don't care.
Speaker 3 (35:23):
Like he was crazy with a C instead of crazy
with three k's.
Speaker 5 (35:27):
Yeah, baby, crazy now is not as much fun as
it used to be. It's a lot less fun and
a lot more what's the word serious and horrifying?
Speaker 3 (35:35):
Yeah, and a lot more public too.
Speaker 5 (35:37):
Yeah. Well, Jesus Christy.
Speaker 3 (35:39):
Yeah, we used to talk about how we needed to
have discussions about mental illness in America. We still need
those discussions, but we don't need to see the mental
illness on display as much. Thank you.
Speaker 5 (35:49):
I disagree with you entirely.
Speaker 3 (35:53):
I like crazy girls.
Speaker 5 (35:56):
Who the hell don't.
Speaker 3 (35:59):
Well, Chris, and until we come back next month to
talk about the execution of Private Slovak? What are you
working on these days?
Speaker 5 (36:06):
Everything I'm working on is audio based, other than one
thing that's a YouTube video, and all of that can
be found for the most part at weirdingwaymedia dot com,
which is where all the stuff that you and I
work on can be found, because that's the network that
you and I started. What two years ago? Three years ago? God?
I even remember it.
Speaker 3 (36:23):
It's time flies, man, time.
Speaker 5 (36:26):
Flies when you throw a clock out the fucking window.
What about you, Mike? Where can people find you and
the things that you work on.
Speaker 3 (36:31):
Pretty much the same place, Weirdingwaymedia dot com. That's where
all the shows that you and I do, other than
the one show that we do for patreons for both
the Culturecast Patreon at patreon dot com slash Culturecast and
the Projection Booth Patreon, which is patreon dot com slash
Projection booth. And that is ranking on Bond. That is
our monthly discussion of all things James Bond. We're joined
(36:55):
by our dear friend mister Richard Adam a Verger Adam's
paranormal bookshelf in order to talk about James Bond Jimmy
Bond to his friends or in that weird casino royal
that we talked about all that time ago. But we
are bruising through things. We're up to Roger Moore. I
think we got two more movies until Timothy Dalton, so
(37:16):
I'm looking forward to that because I love me some
Timothy Dalton. I want to thank John Walker for our
opening theme song. And mister Colin Gallagher who has a
new book, actually two books out, so definitely check out
Colin's work. You pick up both of those who were
at Amazon Colin Gallahager did our final theme song, the
awesome Busanova theme. So much to him and thanks to
(37:39):
you for listening. Please rate and review the show wherever
you get it. We'd greatly appreciate it.
Speaker 5 (38:10):
It is Ryan Seacrest here.
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Football’s funniest family duo — Jason Kelce of the Philadelphia Eagles and Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs — team up to provide next-level access to life in the league as it unfolds. The two brothers and Super Bowl champions drop weekly insights about the weekly slate of games and share their INSIDE perspectives on trending NFL news and sports headlines. They also endlessly rag on each other as brothers do, chat the latest in pop culture and welcome some very popular and well-known friends to chat with them. Check out new episodes every Wednesday. Follow New Heights on the Wondery App, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to new episodes early and ad-free, and get exclusive content on Wondery+. Join Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And join our new membership for a unique fan experience by going to the New Heights YouTube channel now!
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