October 18, 2024 • 38 mins
Season 4 continues with "Playback," an episode starring another Cassavetes alum, Gina Rowlands. Unfortunately, she's sidelined as a innocent bystander and wife to the episode's murderer, played by Oskar Werner. He's a fan of gizmos which aid his plan to murder his mother-in-law but, of course, they're ultimately his undoing.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Welcome to the Shabby Detective. Yet another Colombo podcast, As
if there needed to be another Colombo podcast. I'm your
host Mike White, joined of course, by mister Chris Tashue.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
One might say, I'm a woman under the influence.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Oh, we are talking tonight about the episode Playback. It
is the fifth episode of the fourth season. It aired
originally on March second, nineteen seventy five. It's seventy minutes, Chris,
I forgot that there's a seventy minute episode in here.
But I'll tell you what. This one feels about two
and a half hours to me. This one really missed
(01:02):
the mark for me. But I'm curious what you thought
about Playback having been your first time seeing it, or
so I suppose.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Yeah, boy, so all of the nice things that we've
been saying this season may stop here for a brief moment. Yeah.
This episode feels like a mix of things that we've
seen already. But in a lot of ways it reminds
me of the Robert Kulp episode from last season, where
there was the camera aspect to it or the video
(01:31):
camera aspect to it, and then there was also the
thing with Chuck Connors. Oh the dude with the Projectionists
that was also a closed circuit TV thing. Chuck McCann,
Chuck McCann, And now this is how it's solved. Finally
is the closed circuit TV. Like they've been edging us
this whole time of close circuit TVs, We're gonna do
it at some point. Oh, it's finally here, and it's
(01:54):
so not exciting. It's such a disappointing episode that this
is the worst episode of this season. Without a doubt,
this season has been I think every episode this season
has been pretty good so far. Actually, this is the
weakest one, and I think it stems from a couple things.
I think it stems from Oscar Werner not really being
(02:18):
of the same caliber of actor that we've seen up
unto this point, especially this season in particular, and also
again to get back to the how ketchum of it all,
this is one of the lamest how ketchums because again
it's we've seen this before, we've just never seen them
take it this far with this singular idea, and now
that they have, it's, oh, so this is why they
(02:39):
haven't done this up until this point, because it's not
particularly compelling.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
It reminds me of the last Jack Cassidy when we
saw where he was going around setting up his alibi
like crazy.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
It is nine to fifty. Man, if I ever do
that someone like the next day, someone would be like, Yo,
he's trying to fucking murder somebody. What time is it,
my good man? Would you like to inform me? It's like,
why are you saying this out loud? So obviously are
you trying to establish that you were somewhere at a
specific time? Yes, you were.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
And the other one it reminds me of is the
one from the first season suitable for framing. Again, very
purposeful in setting up the alibi. When that one to forget,
they use the electric blanket to get the body warm
and throw off the time of death. And then what
does our main bad guy do. He goes to an
art gallery. So I'm just like, oh god, I've seen
(03:30):
the art gallery thing. I like the little thing in here,
which again probably could be cut. And I know they
said that Fulk actually rewrote the scene, but the scene
where he's at the art gallery and he's going around
looking at all the different art and then he's, oh,
this one doesn't have a label on it. Well, sir,
that's the ventilation, Chef Wan. I'm like, it took a
(03:51):
long time to get there. Took her a while to
build up to this.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
It did. I thought it was funny though, but to
your point, it definitely is. It's a joke that takes
too long to get to the payoffs. And it's another
one of, as we like to say, one of them
goddamn falkisms that this show just has sometimes, and that's
just the reality of this show. We've seen it before.
I think that this scene is better than a lot
(04:17):
of the scenes that we've seen, but that's not saying
much because most of them don't even get a laugh.
It's just pedantic bullshit with Theeter Falk just doing whatever
he wants for five minutes at least. There's a funny
gag in this one, and I think the gag works
rather well.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
I think that I agree with you that Oscar Verder
is really not at the caliber of a lot of
the other people we've seen, especially Comparabiltic Van Dyke or
even last month when we talked about Robert Vaughn. Just
so many good villains that we've seen, and Werner just
doesn't hold water that well. And the biggest thing for
(04:54):
me is I don't follow his motivation as closely as
I do with other people. It just doesn't seem okay, yeah,
he's got the typical harpy mother in law that he
wants to murder that he does murder the whole edition
of his wife with Gina Rowlands, his wife Gena Rowland's
playing Elizabeth. I don't really get the feel for all
(05:16):
of the relationships. And they take a while with this
murder to set it up and everything. This is not
one of those oh we got to get Peter Falk
on screen within the first five minutes. It's not like
last week where we see him on the shore. Sorry,
it's not like last month where we see him on
the deck of the ship and talking with the purser
and the captain and all this stuff. Well, it takes
a while before we get there.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Tenty minutes of an hour and twenty minute episode essentially.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
And I'm like, Okay, I don't understand all of the
relationships that are happening here. I don't feel like Martha
Scott is nearly as shrewish as she should be. Like
I don't hate her, and no, I don't. I don't
like him. I don't hate him, I don't like him,
He's just there. Also the spot on names too, with
(06:00):
her being Margaret Midas, I'm like, Okay, I guess she's
the person who has all the wealth here and he
wants to get that wealth. And also just that the
big reveal is that the guy had a fucking clapper.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Yeah it's yeah, oh god, yeah. The cloud in the chair, folks,
a poltergeisted us. While not only is the way that
the case is solved really just uninspired and so uninteresting,
but all of the things that are introduced, all of
the other avenues that end up just being culled to
(06:38):
sex for Colombo to end up in are so uninteresting,
including what you just alluded to with the clapper, like
the door opened and then the thing it's like, oh my,
I don't care, it's not enough, so we know this
is not going to be enough. And on top of
everything else, yet I already alluded to Oscar Warner not
being able to really hold his own against Peter Falk.
(06:59):
That motherfucker was guilty. The moment Columbos season, this is
one of the episodes where I'm like, this dude was hosed.
The moment Columbo started talking to him. When he's talking
to the officer, and Colombo kneezes. I've watched that scene
a couple times now, it's not a sneeze. It's him
like making like a That's the way I'm interpreting it
(07:19):
now that I've seen it a couple of times. Is
him just like making like a raspberry noise, essentially saying bullshit,
that's what happened. Oh, it's a sneeze.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
Okay, Yeah, when he comes in and it's just like,
all right, yo, let's see these cameras. Oh, the murderer
just happened to not be captured on camera? Whatsoever? Is
that about the most suspicious thing you've ever heard in
your life? It is for me.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
That's the other thing. That's like the most obvious thing.
The thing with the camera is so obvious. I don't
even understand why they need to do anything else than
that he knew where to stand there you go. Only
two people would have known, and he knew. That's all
you need. Literally, there's nothing you don't need. An invitation
to an art gallery or anything that should have been
(08:06):
enough to hang that motherfucker by his neck. Like, Oh,
and Columbo just goes, shouldn't there be two cameras? And
he doesn't go any further with that. It's I don't know.
It's like this episode was written by someone who or
two people Booker Bradshaw and David p Lewis, who don't have,
in my opinion at least what it takes to write
(08:27):
this kind of show. Well, and you know what, this
is the first time they've written for the show. And
I'm not gonna go hunting down to see if this
is the case, but I'm gonna go out on a
lemons say that they probably don't write a whole lot
for the show. If they write again.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
Yeah, I'm not sure if they do or not. I'll
have to look that up.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
One would assume that when you have an episode like this,
it's just not for me an episode that does anything. Well,
all it really does is it has some great Peter
Faulk moments, but those aren't enough to carry an episode,
and that's the problem. This is the only episode that
(09:04):
was written at least by Booker T. Bradshaw was also
an actor and an executive at Motown Live Show, and
you can hear a little bit about that a few
episodes ago when we spoke with Emily Hasty about her
book and she talks a lot about tenaflying there. So
he was one of the guys on there as well
as Booker Bradshaw, and I guess that's how they got
(09:26):
in touch with Levinson and Link for this one. And yeah,
it just did not.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Work, even the thing with the whole Here's what was
on camera before, and here's what's on camera after. We
just saw that last season with the tutin black or
season two sorry, where we saw Gena Rowlands's husband John
Cassavetti's with the carnation versus not the Carnation, right, right,
I've seen this all before. I just wanted to yell
(09:52):
ats TV.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
By the way, Booker Bradshaw was in Coffee, which is
like a blast from the past. Oh boy, he was
the villain Coffee.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
I'm looking at his picture. Yeah I remember him. Yeah,
he's fantastic.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
Yeah. It's a shame because the writing of this episode
fails the episode so much. Bernard el Kowalski has directed
at least one or two episodes of the show, Like
I know he directed an Exercise in Fatality and at
least one or two other ones. It's shocking to me,
because the parts of this episode that are good. I
think for me, the best part of this episode is
Genie Rowlands. Like the shame about this episode is that
(10:27):
Gina Rowlands is in this episode and this episode is
not good, like really good. In this episode, she is
one hundred percent the best part of this episode the
only time she's in the show, the only time she's
in Colombo, and her husband is in a much better
episode than she is. Not one of the best episodes
we've seen, but in the top third. This is definitely
in the bottom third of the episodes that we've seen.
(10:49):
It would almost have been better if she was the
one who had killed her mother, because then we would
have at least had we can go to that well
with her and see her kind of like being MANI fuelative,
because that's the thing. Her character's played completely straight here.
Her character is the sad woman in a wheelchair like
that's I know. It's such a fucking bummer.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
It's like a stereotype.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
I want to be able to do things for myself.
Oh my god, yeah, we know. It's so yeah, it's
so on the nose, like over and over again, they
don't do anything interesting here. It's like they just every
opportunity that they're given to take the most obvious out
they take it. I mean, even to the fact of
Tricia Noble playing a woman who may be having an
(11:35):
affair with him. Like with Oscar Werner's character, it's not
I mean, a couple glances is really all we get.
But like again, there's a hint at there being even
more going on, and I'm thankful that they didn't go
down that route because I didn't need to see that,
because that would not have added to anything, and if anything,
it would have just given us ten more minutes of
an episode that's already an hour and fifteen minutes, but
(11:58):
like you said, feels like it's too and half hours.
This is Yeah, this is one of the longest feeling
episodes of the show that we've watched. And it is not,
by any stretch of the imagination, the longest episode we've seen.
It's one of the shorter ones at this point.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
I don't want to be mean to Oscar Werner, but
it at this point in his career and he didn't
live for very long to get dead when he was
sixty one, but by this point he had been drinking
pretty hard. And he looks like the contemporary of the
Mother rather than the contemporary of Gina Rowlands. Yes, which
(12:33):
also throws it off for me because thinking back to
this episode, sometimes I forget that Gina Rowlands is even
in this one, and then when I do remember, I'm like,
but what did she have to do?
Speaker 2 (12:44):
Nothing?
Speaker 1 (12:45):
She has nothing to do in this episode, and she's
just basically, oh yeah, I'm the one that saw the
door open. She's the lynchpin to get this going. And
I'm like, Okay, why aren't you not like Leslie Nielsen
in that Susan Clark episode where you suddenly figure out, oh,
something might be going on here with my husband and
(13:07):
I might have to cover for him, and I'll lie
or do whatever I need to, and then I have
to be broken. Give me a This is the same
year that A Woman Under the Influence comes out. We
talked about that quite a few months ago. What an
amazing performance. We know she can give these killer performances.
Faul can give these killer performances. He does it every
month here when we talk about him here on The
(13:29):
Shabby Detective.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
Where is that?
Speaker 1 (13:32):
Where are the chops?
Speaker 2 (13:34):
Here?
Speaker 1 (13:34):
Instead, it's just so milk toast and like I said,
I don't give a shit about Werner one way or
the other. I don't hate him, I don't love him.
It's not seeing Robert Vaughn screwed over or some of
these guys where you just oh, oh, here it comes,
Here comes the big moment. Oh he's gonna where's the
moment for Tick van Dyke to go over and grab
that camera. It's just such a wet fart.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Yeah. And at the end, it's this is a yet
at another one of these episodes where the circumstantial evidence
is so circumstantial. I genuinely don't think he would have
been caught. I feel like he gets away with it,
and he's so rich that he could Look. Is Gina
Rowlands now never going to trust him? But I'm sure
he could probably convince her that this didn't happen. There's
enough circumstantial evidence. Here is what this feels like. And
(14:19):
that's on top of everything else. The best Columbo episodes
are when he really gets him at the end, like
he really gets him here, he doesn't really get him.
He more or less admits that he did it, but
not really. He's just take me to jail, which is fine,
but Oscar Werner just Yeah, he doesn't play sad sack,
which we've seen with the Donald Pleasants character. And he
doesn't play like raging asshole like we've seen with the
(14:41):
Robert Kulp characters. He's just there and there. Yeah. I
really feel like, again, it should have been Gena Rowlands
as the murderer in this episode and getting to see
this duplicitous nature of her where she is a woman
in a wheelchair, but she's also conniving and kind of
and able to make these things happen even if she
(15:02):
is in a wheelchair. And again I'm not saying that
as ablest or anything. I'm talking about the way this
is portrayed in Night in yone, nineteen seventy eight or
whatever this is where or seventy five, where these kinds
of characters are being played completely as stereotypes, which she is, like.
It would have been much more interesting if she had
been the murderer, but there's no universe in seventy five
where they're doing that.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
Unfortunately, at least they didn't put her in peril like
there's a fighter in peril, or she's gonna roll down
a cliff or something like that, like the famous scene
that Paul Rudd likes to shack in me. Yes, at
least we don't get that. But yeah, it's like with
Oscar Werner, you could with that accent that he has
(15:44):
and just the gravitas of this guy as an actor,
he could have been a war criminal that is hiding
out or something. I think he's a little too young
for that. Maybe, but I don't know. Nineteen seventy five,
the war was thirty years prior. Maybe he could have
done stuff. Like I said, he's looking pretty long in
(16:05):
the tooth into this episode. I would have believed that
he had done some shit in Nazi Germany and he
knows about it, and eventually his mother knows about it
and her mother in law, and she's going to blackmail them.
And when Gena Rowlands finds out what a horrible person
she was married too, she has to give him up
or something.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
Anything would have been better than this, Anything would have
been better than what we got here, which is just
again for me, when you have an actress as talented
as Gina Rowlands is, who every time she's on screen
and look, she just passed away recently. This is she's
just recently passed away. She's one of the few actors
who when she's on screen with Peter Falk, she holds
(16:45):
her own, if not upstages him. And that is something
that they really pissed away, is what it feels like.
Did no one see a woman under the influence? Did
you motherfuckers not see that? And you were like Oscar Werner,
is that we know you do female villains in this show.
You've done it already several times. So it's not that
I just I don't get putting Gina Rowlands in a
(17:06):
wheelchair and going this is good, this is enough, and
then not even having her factor into the climax of
the episode, really just having her sit there and kind
of act the act surprised like it's such it is
such an immense disappointment of an episode because Gina Rowlands
is in the episode. That's really what this feels like.
And we talked about this before on this show and
(17:27):
other shows, especially on something like Midnight Viewing, which we
do with Father Malone. Oh, this is the only time
Xyz actor is on this show and this is a
less than stunning episode. What a shame. This is one
of those times because again, like we've also already alluded
to Peter Falk and Gina Rowlands have a history together
and A Woman under the Influence was a movie I
(17:48):
have no interest in rewatching because of how good the
two of them are in the movie, and every time
they're on screen here you can see that. It's just
the context of their characters should have been a little
better thought out.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
Yeah, last month when we talked about an episode directed
by Ben Gazzara bringing in all the friends, you get
Timody Carey, Ben Gazara, all these guys I can't remember
Freddy last name, Cassavetti's. Of course, you get all these guys,
and yeah, this one is just, yeah, we'll just we'll
have Gina here, not give her a whole lot of
(18:21):
stuff to do, make her fucking murder victim, do something
to give her more ash. When even when it comes
to this idea of the gadgets, Okay, you got the cameras,
you got the dimmer switches, you've got the clapper, there's
not a whole lot else and the watch, Yeah, this
(18:42):
should have been like a whole fetish thing of his
because we've already seen most of this stuff in these episodes.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Literally, we've seen this all before.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
Exactly. The clapper is the only new thing. But I'm
just like, yeah, no, if this guy's obsessed with gadgets,
make him be obsessed with gadget. Give them a fucking
robot arm to play chess again, and then we can
talk about Lawrence Harvey again.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
Yeah. It's genuinely shocking to me that they go as
hard into some of the things in this episode that
they do with the technology, and then they just leave
it hanging, like you've already alluded to when we haven't
really talked about it. But the house that they live
in is like the fucking smart house. It is the
kind of house that would have been at like the
World's Fair, where look at the House of the future,
(19:26):
Like trick doors and like a safe room that you
can control the entire house from, and it's all wired
up with cameras in every room. It's like, this is
literally what people have in their houses now in twenty
twenty four. And yeah, they do very little with that.
On top of everything else, there's like a literal room
from a James Bond movie in this house. It looks
(19:49):
like a Ken Adams designed room, it really does, and
they do nothing with it. They do nothing with it
comparatively to the amount of time that they spend looking
at the CCTV footage in the security guards room, which
is where we spend a lot of How catch him
of this episode and them going nine thirteen or nine
forty two? You know what? Hearing them repeat times on
(20:10):
a fucking clock is not interesting episode. I don't care
how many times you say it.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
There isn't a lot of colorful characters in this episode either.
Like we've talked before about the Vito Skoti when he's
trying to sell him the funeral plots or the grave
sites and things. It's like, okay, that can be all
cut out. That's okay, But it's nice to see Vito
Scoti in that.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
It's just color.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
Yeah, in this one, there's not a lot of color
like I was expecting. Even Just tell me more about
the security guard, what's his background? Tell me more about
the people at the art museum, what's their back. I'm
getting nothing. I'm getting no victy back. I'm getting no no.
Does this painting? Can you make this match my bathroom?
Like missus krabit's in there that those kind of things
(20:53):
like where are the colorful characters?
Speaker 2 (20:56):
Yeah, it's and that's the thing, even Oscar Werner's character,
and this is the thing I want to really put
out there. And again, like it's not Oscar Werner's fault.
I don't think his character is like such a fucking nothing.
It's such a nothing character. He's almost like impish, and
he paints a target on himself immediately, and he's pathetic
the moment we see him. He's just pathetic. That's the
(21:17):
word I would use. He's a pathetic character. And it
doesn't really work because he makes himself look guilty the
moment Columbo comes in there. There's nothing about this character
that is remotely intimidating or you think this guy's gonna
get away with it. Like he literally looks a sack
of shit the moment he's on screen, Like he's just
it's obvious that he's this pathetic, sad sag the moment
(21:38):
he's on screen, and then you see, oh, the mom's
taking the business, the mother in law's taking the business
away from him, and so he just pulls out a
gun and shoots her, like on top of everything else,
Like it's not even a creator Like we've seen so
many creative ways for people to get murdered on this show,
and this is just bang, I'm gonna shoot her. I'm
gonna make it. I'm gonna I'm gonna use the close
circuit TV to air the air false footage, Like wow,
(21:59):
is that trope? Is that a trope? In things? It's
gotta be right looping the CCTV footage? What is this? Toys?
What is this immabs? Yeah? Yeah, any other of these
like multitudinous things where we've seen that a million times.
I'm sure they've done it in at least one Marvel
movie at this point, if not several. And here we
are in Colombo seeing it and they don't do it
very well. It's it's not compelling. It's not a compelling
(22:23):
position to put your episode in to have to resolve itself.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
Even when it comes to the security Guard's a guy
who's watching the CCTV. Shure, he's watching it so avidly,
And I'm like, do you do this every night?
Speaker 2 (22:33):
Sir?
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Are you actually watching this footage every single night? Just
staring at these monitors? By this time, you would think
he would have I don't know, jigsaw puzzles or a
newspaper or something else, and then that could cast some
doubt on the guard was doing this, or the guard
had to go and see, yeah, he had a bladder
(22:55):
infection and he had to keep using the bathroom or something.
But there's nothing interesting. There's no like we've talked so
much just in this season about the layering of the
clues one after another, and Colombo has to come in
and just knock this one down, knock this one down.
The way he gives people excuses and like, oh, what
do you think about this? And then the person has
(23:16):
to come up with their bullshit answer, and Werner does
that a few times. It could have been this, Oh yeah,
I didn't think about that. But it's so low key
compared to some of the other people. Maybe it's just
I don't know. It's like the register it's played in
is like a minor key.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
Yeah again, I don't I have not seen Oscar Werner
in anything else, So maybe that's just the the acting
stylings of him as an actor. But the character as
he's written in this episode is so low key and
so just I don't know. Again, Like I said, impish
because the moment Columbo season, but that this is the
guy who did it. It's so painfully obvious that this
(23:52):
is the guy who did it. That's what I would say.
This is one of the best examples of a bad
episode because it's I'm not I'm saying we as the audience,
don't know that Colombo knows immediately. But the best episodes
are the ones where we see Colombo come to that realization.
He's not just walking in from Dayu's X right and
(24:13):
going this is the guy, right, And that's this episode,
Like in a nutshell, he's like the moment Colombo locks
eyes with this guy, like you're fucking toast pal, He's
got your number and there is nothing you can do
about it. And yeah, I'm trying to remember the last
time we saw one of these episodes where it's like,
I guess the Robert Vaughan episode was like that, where
it's like Colombo runs into him initially on the boat
(24:35):
in the boat, but at least in that episode, Robert
Vaughan does a lot to put himself in a position
for it to be like Colombo really has to nail
him to the fucking wall in that episode. In this episode,
this guy nails himself to the wall and Colombo just
has to look at him and be like, you did
this to yourself, pal, Sorry.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
And I think for Werner the big titles for him
are Jewels and Jim Height four fifty one, and then
oddly Voyage of the Damned. Those seemed to.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
Be every Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
I was looking at his filmography and he was doing
stuff back in the forties and looking at a picture
of him from at Roika in nineteen forty nine. Had
he been a Nazi in the war, I could have
bought it. It could have been something more interesting. We're
going to see an episode I think maybe next season
where there is a war criminal and it plays so
much better when it's okay.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
So you keep bringing it up because I was like,
is this a thing that the show's gonna do well?
So yeah, okay, I'm excited now because that's interesting.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
Yeah. It just makes more sense for somebody with that
accent to have this going the accent.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
Yeah, And that.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
Would have made him more interesting, because, like I said,
he's just so dull as a character, and I feel
so bad that he's just that. Again, it's not Oscar
Werner that we're picking at. It is the character that
he's playing. It just how poorly written it is and
just how uninteresting the character is, and.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
On top of everything else, the motivation for why he's
doing what he's doing is I don't know how to
put this but generic. We've seen it before. We've not
just seen it before, we've seen it plenty of times
in this show. It might be the trope that they've
gone to the most at this point of I'm taking
the business away from you donald pleasance. We saw it there,
(26:23):
robbing it here.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
With the reculpe with the football team.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
And that's probably we're probably forgetting a couple on top
of everything else. It's the most generic place to go
with this kind of character, because again, we're dealing with
rich people, and rich people having businesses taken away from
them that make them a lot of money, I guess
is reason enough to murder someone. And we've seen that
over and over and over and over again on this show,
and I don't need to see it again. I'm sure
(26:47):
we're going to see it plenty of times before the
end of the series again. But if they're going to
do it, do something with it. Don't just do this.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
Aust McDonald going all the way back or mentioned suitable
for framing before Os McDonald thought that his uncle was
going to give all of those painting to somebody else,
and that really made him mad and tries to set
up the ants. She has nothing to do with it,
like again trying to pin the murder onto somebody else,
Like where's that aspect of it that would have made
(27:16):
this again more interesting, like setting up like Jack Cassid,
he's setting up like forces that are out there trying
to murder people and oh they tried to murder me
or the Requiem for a Falling Star. Oh yeah, they
went after they killed my secretary, but they're really after
this guy, and where is that? Like, where's the intelligence
(27:36):
of switching things around and pinning things on other people
or casting aspersions onto other folks. So he's muddying the
waters to make it a lot harder to catch him.
Any other detective would have gone off on these wild tangents,
whereas Colombo can just cut through those things. He has
nothing to cut through in this episode.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
No Oscar Werner literally just shows up and pretty much
paint a target on his forehead and says it's me.
I did it. Yes, I am the one.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
But I assume might think it is another person, but
it is obviously k me.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
Yeah, I will say, though, in the scene where him
and Columbus are standing outside of the window and he
has those sunglasses on by the Lord in Heaven, I
used to have a pair of sunglasses like those. I
found him. I forget where I found them, but I
found him somewhere, and either are clearly women's sunglasses, and
I kept them, and I don't know where they are anymore.
But I wish I still had them, because they are
a spit and image of those sunglasses he's wearing. And
(28:33):
those are some wild sunglasses. They are, without a doubt,
the most asshole sunglasses one could have had. You looked
like Willy Wonka from Tim Burton's Will He Wanka movie.
That's the energy of those sunglasses there, really is.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
I can see that. Even just like his suit where
he wears the light shoes that go with the suit.
It's like, all right, this guy's kind of a dandy.
But again he doesn't carry it nearly as far as
he should.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
No, And boy, if they had gone in that direction,
that show would never do that. Not in nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
Yeah, that would have been way more interesting had he
been having some sort of a gay affair at the time,
like something that would uh man.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
That's not Colombo though, that's poker Face twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
Yeah, and his fellow cops. There's no real good interplay
with the other officers. There's no like Officer Wilson here
to question him. There's even Bruce Kirby two months ago
when we talked about the military episode. There's not him going, oh,
look at what I have to deal with this guy.
Look at this weirdo out here comb and the grass
looking for stuff? What is this? None of that. These
(29:36):
guys are just like, yeah, lieutenant, oh you're getting a cold.
I'm so sorry to hear that.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
And where's that?
Speaker 1 (29:41):
Give me more of the cold stuff? He gets worse
throughout the whole episode or something. You got dog here?
Dog barely has anything to do.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
Come on, guys. They added a lot of stuff, but
they didn't do anything with him.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
It's like that meme of the little figure with the
stick poking at something, going come on, do the thing.
This whole episode it just felt like I was poking
it with a stick, going come on, be good.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
Be better than you are, which is not great. Yeah,
and it's a real shame that it's coming in the
fourth season because pretty much every episode this season has
been really good. Yeah, and this feels like a season
two episode. You know, the show hasn't gotten its feet
underneath it yet, like it's still figuring out where it
wants to go with things.
Speaker 1 (30:22):
I think there were some more solid episodes in season
two than there were with this one. This att twod
in Black kicked off the first season or second season.
That's true other than this.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
That's true. Yeah, is this one of the worst episodes
of the show. It might be. It's in a lower third,
which would make it, Yeah, which would make it one
of the worst episodes. I don't think it's the worst episode. No,
I don't know. Gina Rowland's being in this episode and
not being used very well is that is almost like
an affront to It would be one thing if she
(30:53):
hadn't been in Woman under the Influence Price year, if
she wasn't already Gina Rowlands in a lot of ways,
like if she was just I don't know, Gena Davis
Cerca nineteen eighty two or something of Okay, fine, she's
early enough in her career, whatever, But there's none of that.
This is Gena Rowlands as Gina Rowlands in a lot
of ways. Yeah, that would put this in the lower
(31:16):
quorder of the episodes we've seen, not even third lower quarter,
because I think that is a real big problem and
I think that is a genuine issue that this episode has.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
Yeah, well, we talked next month, we'll go through the
whole season, which is pretty easy because it's just six
fucking episodes. You'll remember then and you'll say, oh, play
back was probably the worst episode of the season. But
when we talk in four, five, six, seven years and
look back at Klumbo overall, you're gonna forget that this
(31:46):
episode even exists.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
Really, it's that much of a meth So, so are
your so is it that much of a met or
does the show really get that? Is it also the
show starts evolving?
Speaker 1 (32:00):
No, I'm saying that there are going to be much
higher highs than these lower lows. Of course, there are
some low ones, like when we start talking about the
ABC years, it's going to be like a race to
the bottom, and it's going to be a real rarity
that we see a good episode, and there's probably always
going to be like this could have been better, Yeah,
but overall was okay. And then if you think back
(32:21):
to something like negative Reaction or Troubled Waters or by
Dawn's Early Light. You'll be like, oh, yeah, those were
great episodes, and there's going to be some of those
coming up in seasons five, six, seven, eight.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
Well, and that's more what I meant. I figured, I'm
sure that the highs will be high, but I was
more alluding to the fact that the lows are going
to be I think, much lower. Oh yeah than this.
As much of a low as this is, I know
because I've just heard you allude to it and talk
about it that similarly to when Perry Mason came back.
It's like, some of those episodes are just not good,
(32:58):
and I look, I don't know what to think about
the show yet when it gets to like old man
Peter Falk running around veh Glumbo, because I've never seen it,
but I can imagine how bad this will get. Let's
put it that way, because we've seen it with these
kinds of shows, especially with the show that has a
different writing team week to week and even different director
(33:20):
and even different actors in terms of the main cast
other than Peter Falk. But yeah, I have no preconceived
notions that this episode's probably really not that bad. In
the grand scheme of things, and I probably will forget
how middle of the road it ultimately is, because I'm
sure it is ultimately just kind of middle of the
road in comparison to the whole show. And what is that,
(33:43):
like season five or six, six, where we get to
the ABC years? I mean, we still have one more
season of the show, I think, right, No, we.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
Still have quite a few those seasons. Six is only
three episodes. I want to say that the universal NBC
stuff was all the way to season seven, and then
season eight is when we start the ABC mystery movies
all those years later. That's eighty nine when he comes back.
Speaker 2 (34:11):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
Season seven ends in seventy eight.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
Okay, so we have three more seasons of good Colombo
before it becomes old Daddy Colombo. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
I won't say they're all good. We're gonna have our highs, no, Yeah,
but there are some really high highs. Even with the
first episode of season six, that one is one of
my faves. Hopefully you like it as much. Even with
season five, there's a couple in here I'm just like, oh, yeah,
that's a good one, and then there are a couple
where I'm.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
Like, yeah, yeah, that was all right, Like I said,
this season I think, for the most part, has been
pretty solid. This is the one episode that's sticking out.
I don't know if the next episode is that way.
I know the next episode is George Hamilton and Leslie
and warrens some pretty big names, some pretty big people.
I hope that they're used compared to the way Gina
Rowlands is used here. But George Hamilton's not exactly the
(35:03):
same caliber of an actor as Gena Rowlands is.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
That's very true. And I don't think that Leslie and
Warren's on screen for too long.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
And I don't know why I.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
Thought every single episode this season was in the ninety
minute mark, because that's another one that's at seventy minutes.
So if people were yelling at their podcast listening device
that you know, hey, these aren't all ninety minutes, I apologize.
I don't know where I got that idea from.
Speaker 2 (35:29):
Well, and like you've already said some of this, we
are very lucky that there is not more of this
episode because this episode felt long enough as it was.
You didn't need to see another twenty five minutes of this.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
Really, Yeah, until we come back next month, Chris and
talk about a deadly state of mind? What are you
working on these days?
Speaker 2 (35:51):
Everything that I'm working on, including all of our shows
that are just being bombarded with ads, Thanks Spreaker, can
be found over at weirdingwaymedia dot com, where the stuff
that I work on, the stuff that you work on,
and the stuff that we all work on is kicking
around over at weirdingwaymedia dot com. Other than this one
little thing that you and I work on with our
friend mister rich HadAM, which is ranking on Bond, which
(36:13):
can be found over at mine and your respective patreons
patreon dot com, slash culture cast or patreon dot com
slash Projection booth. That that's us talking about James Bond
once a month, and if that's the thing you're into,
you should totally check it out. What about you, Mike?
Where can people find the things that you're working on?
Speaker 1 (36:30):
It's really weird, but it's the same place, Weirdingwaymedia dot com.
That's where you can find just about everything other than
that Patreon exclusive at the ten dollars and up level,
you can hear us talking about mister James Bond, the
Secret Agent and mister Kisskissbang Bang, who's doing way too
much kiss for Patrick mcgoin to handle. But it's not
(36:51):
the last time we'll hear from about Patrick McGowin. Trust
me on that one, folks. But yeah, maybe Before we
head out, I want to thank John Walker for our
open theme and Colin Gallagher for our closing theme. Collen's
got more music over at Modern Silent Cinema. I think
you can pick up almost everything that he's done on
band camp highly recommended, and I'm not sure if John
(37:12):
puts out his music, but he's always good with the score.
So thank you very much to those guys. Thanks so
much to you Chris for continuing this journey of shabbiness
with me, and thanks to everybody for listening. I always
appreciate the feedback. Thanks so much for taking the time.
If you could leave us some rating and review over
on iTunes, that really helps us out. And hey, now
(37:33):
you can actually listen to this on iTunes if you're
on an Android device. How crazy is that?
Speaker 2 (37:38):
Pretty crazy? As the mo
Welcome to the Shabby Detective. Yet another Colombo podcast, As
if there needed to be another Colombo podcast. I'm your
host Mike White, joined of course, by mister Chris Tashue.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
One might say, I'm a woman under the influence.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Oh, we are talking tonight about the episode Playback. It
is the fifth episode of the fourth season. It aired
originally on March second, nineteen seventy five. It's seventy minutes, Chris,
I forgot that there's a seventy minute episode in here.
But I'll tell you what. This one feels about two
and a half hours to me. This one really missed
(01:02):
the mark for me. But I'm curious what you thought
about Playback having been your first time seeing it, or
so I suppose.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Yeah, boy, so all of the nice things that we've
been saying this season may stop here for a brief moment. Yeah.
This episode feels like a mix of things that we've
seen already. But in a lot of ways it reminds
me of the Robert Kulp episode from last season, where
there was the camera aspect to it or the video
(01:31):
camera aspect to it, and then there was also the
thing with Chuck Connors. Oh the dude with the Projectionists
that was also a closed circuit TV thing. Chuck McCann,
Chuck McCann, And now this is how it's solved. Finally
is the closed circuit TV. Like they've been edging us
this whole time of close circuit TVs, We're gonna do
it at some point. Oh, it's finally here, and it's
(01:54):
so not exciting. It's such a disappointing episode that this
is the worst episode of this season. Without a doubt,
this season has been I think every episode this season
has been pretty good so far. Actually, this is the
weakest one, and I think it stems from a couple things.
I think it stems from Oscar Werner not really being
(02:18):
of the same caliber of actor that we've seen up
unto this point, especially this season in particular, and also
again to get back to the how ketchum of it all,
this is one of the lamest how ketchums because again
it's we've seen this before, we've just never seen them
take it this far with this singular idea, and now
that they have, it's, oh, so this is why they
(02:39):
haven't done this up until this point, because it's not
particularly compelling.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
It reminds me of the last Jack Cassidy when we
saw where he was going around setting up his alibi
like crazy.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
It is nine to fifty. Man, if I ever do
that someone like the next day, someone would be like, Yo,
he's trying to fucking murder somebody. What time is it,
my good man? Would you like to inform me? It's like,
why are you saying this out loud? So obviously are
you trying to establish that you were somewhere at a
specific time? Yes, you were.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
And the other one it reminds me of is the
one from the first season suitable for framing. Again, very
purposeful in setting up the alibi. When that one to forget,
they use the electric blanket to get the body warm
and throw off the time of death. And then what
does our main bad guy do. He goes to an
art gallery. So I'm just like, oh god, I've seen
(03:30):
the art gallery thing. I like the little thing in here,
which again probably could be cut. And I know they
said that Fulk actually rewrote the scene, but the scene
where he's at the art gallery and he's going around
looking at all the different art and then he's, oh,
this one doesn't have a label on it. Well, sir,
that's the ventilation, Chef Wan. I'm like, it took a
(03:51):
long time to get there. Took her a while to
build up to this.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
It did. I thought it was funny though, but to
your point, it definitely is. It's a joke that takes
too long to get to the payoffs. And it's another
one of, as we like to say, one of them
goddamn falkisms that this show just has sometimes, and that's
just the reality of this show. We've seen it before.
I think that this scene is better than a lot
(04:17):
of the scenes that we've seen, but that's not saying
much because most of them don't even get a laugh.
It's just pedantic bullshit with Theeter Falk just doing whatever
he wants for five minutes at least. There's a funny
gag in this one, and I think the gag works
rather well.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
I think that I agree with you that Oscar Verder
is really not at the caliber of a lot of
the other people we've seen, especially Comparabiltic Van Dyke or
even last month when we talked about Robert Vaughn. Just
so many good villains that we've seen, and Werner just
doesn't hold water that well. And the biggest thing for
(04:54):
me is I don't follow his motivation as closely as
I do with other people. It just doesn't seem okay, yeah,
he's got the typical harpy mother in law that he
wants to murder that he does murder the whole edition
of his wife with Gina Rowlands, his wife Gena Rowland's
playing Elizabeth. I don't really get the feel for all
(05:16):
of the relationships. And they take a while with this
murder to set it up and everything. This is not
one of those oh we got to get Peter Falk
on screen within the first five minutes. It's not like
last week where we see him on the shore. Sorry,
it's not like last month where we see him on
the deck of the ship and talking with the purser
and the captain and all this stuff. Well, it takes
a while before we get there.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Tenty minutes of an hour and twenty minute episode essentially.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
And I'm like, Okay, I don't understand all of the
relationships that are happening here. I don't feel like Martha
Scott is nearly as shrewish as she should be. Like
I don't hate her, and no, I don't. I don't
like him. I don't hate him, I don't like him,
He's just there. Also the spot on names too, with
(06:00):
her being Margaret Midas, I'm like, Okay, I guess she's
the person who has all the wealth here and he
wants to get that wealth. And also just that the
big reveal is that the guy had a fucking clapper.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Yeah it's yeah, oh god, yeah. The cloud in the chair, folks,
a poltergeisted us. While not only is the way that
the case is solved really just uninspired and so uninteresting,
but all of the things that are introduced, all of
the other avenues that end up just being culled to
(06:38):
sex for Colombo to end up in are so uninteresting,
including what you just alluded to with the clapper, like
the door opened and then the thing it's like, oh my,
I don't care, it's not enough, so we know this
is not going to be enough. And on top of
everything else, yet I already alluded to Oscar Warner not
being able to really hold his own against Peter Falk.
(06:59):
That motherfucker was guilty. The moment Columbos season, this is
one of the episodes where I'm like, this dude was hosed.
The moment Columbo started talking to him. When he's talking
to the officer, and Colombo kneezes. I've watched that scene
a couple times now, it's not a sneeze. It's him
like making like a That's the way I'm interpreting it
(07:19):
now that I've seen it a couple of times. Is
him just like making like a raspberry noise, essentially saying bullshit,
that's what happened. Oh, it's a sneeze.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
Okay, Yeah, when he comes in and it's just like,
all right, yo, let's see these cameras. Oh, the murderer
just happened to not be captured on camera? Whatsoever? Is
that about the most suspicious thing you've ever heard in
your life? It is for me.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
That's the other thing. That's like the most obvious thing.
The thing with the camera is so obvious. I don't
even understand why they need to do anything else than
that he knew where to stand there you go. Only
two people would have known, and he knew. That's all
you need. Literally, there's nothing you don't need. An invitation
to an art gallery or anything that should have been
(08:06):
enough to hang that motherfucker by his neck. Like, Oh,
and Columbo just goes, shouldn't there be two cameras? And
he doesn't go any further with that. It's I don't know.
It's like this episode was written by someone who or
two people Booker Bradshaw and David p Lewis, who don't have,
in my opinion at least what it takes to write
(08:27):
this kind of show. Well, and you know what, this
is the first time they've written for the show. And
I'm not gonna go hunting down to see if this
is the case, but I'm gonna go out on a
lemons say that they probably don't write a whole lot
for the show. If they write again.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
Yeah, I'm not sure if they do or not. I'll
have to look that up.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
One would assume that when you have an episode like this,
it's just not for me an episode that does anything. Well,
all it really does is it has some great Peter
Faulk moments, but those aren't enough to carry an episode,
and that's the problem. This is the only episode that
(09:04):
was written at least by Booker T. Bradshaw was also
an actor and an executive at Motown Live Show, and
you can hear a little bit about that a few
episodes ago when we spoke with Emily Hasty about her
book and she talks a lot about tenaflying there. So
he was one of the guys on there as well
as Booker Bradshaw, and I guess that's how they got
(09:26):
in touch with Levinson and Link for this one. And yeah,
it just did not.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Work, even the thing with the whole Here's what was
on camera before, and here's what's on camera after. We
just saw that last season with the tutin black or
season two sorry, where we saw Gena Rowlands's husband John
Cassavetti's with the carnation versus not the Carnation, right, right,
I've seen this all before. I just wanted to yell
(09:52):
ats TV.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
By the way, Booker Bradshaw was in Coffee, which is
like a blast from the past. Oh boy, he was
the villain Coffee.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
I'm looking at his picture. Yeah I remember him. Yeah,
he's fantastic.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
Yeah. It's a shame because the writing of this episode
fails the episode so much. Bernard el Kowalski has directed
at least one or two episodes of the show, Like
I know he directed an Exercise in Fatality and at
least one or two other ones. It's shocking to me,
because the parts of this episode that are good. I
think for me, the best part of this episode is
Genie Rowlands. Like the shame about this episode is that
(10:27):
Gina Rowlands is in this episode and this episode is
not good, like really good. In this episode, she is
one hundred percent the best part of this episode the
only time she's in the show, the only time she's
in Colombo, and her husband is in a much better
episode than she is. Not one of the best episodes
we've seen, but in the top third. This is definitely
in the bottom third of the episodes that we've seen.
(10:49):
It would almost have been better if she was the
one who had killed her mother, because then we would
have at least had we can go to that well
with her and see her kind of like being MANI fuelative,
because that's the thing. Her character's played completely straight here.
Her character is the sad woman in a wheelchair like
that's I know. It's such a fucking bummer.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
It's like a stereotype.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
I want to be able to do things for myself.
Oh my god, yeah, we know. It's so yeah, it's
so on the nose, like over and over again, they
don't do anything interesting here. It's like they just every
opportunity that they're given to take the most obvious out
they take it. I mean, even to the fact of
Tricia Noble playing a woman who may be having an
(11:35):
affair with him. Like with Oscar Werner's character, it's not
I mean, a couple glances is really all we get.
But like again, there's a hint at there being even
more going on, and I'm thankful that they didn't go
down that route because I didn't need to see that,
because that would not have added to anything, and if anything,
it would have just given us ten more minutes of
an episode that's already an hour and fifteen minutes, but
(11:58):
like you said, feels like it's too and half hours.
This is Yeah, this is one of the longest feeling
episodes of the show that we've watched. And it is not,
by any stretch of the imagination, the longest episode we've seen.
It's one of the shorter ones at this point.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
I don't want to be mean to Oscar Werner, but
it at this point in his career and he didn't
live for very long to get dead when he was
sixty one, but by this point he had been drinking
pretty hard. And he looks like the contemporary of the
Mother rather than the contemporary of Gina Rowlands. Yes, which
(12:33):
also throws it off for me because thinking back to
this episode, sometimes I forget that Gina Rowlands is even
in this one, and then when I do remember, I'm like,
but what did she have to do?
Speaker 2 (12:44):
Nothing?
Speaker 1 (12:45):
She has nothing to do in this episode, and she's
just basically, oh yeah, I'm the one that saw the
door open. She's the lynchpin to get this going. And
I'm like, Okay, why aren't you not like Leslie Nielsen
in that Susan Clark episode where you suddenly figure out, oh,
something might be going on here with my husband and
(13:07):
I might have to cover for him, and I'll lie
or do whatever I need to, and then I have
to be broken. Give me a This is the same
year that A Woman Under the Influence comes out. We
talked about that quite a few months ago. What an
amazing performance. We know she can give these killer performances.
Faul can give these killer performances. He does it every
month here when we talk about him here on The
(13:29):
Shabby Detective.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
Where is that?
Speaker 1 (13:32):
Where are the chops?
Speaker 2 (13:34):
Here?
Speaker 1 (13:34):
Instead, it's just so milk toast and like I said,
I don't give a shit about Werner one way or
the other. I don't hate him, I don't love him.
It's not seeing Robert Vaughn screwed over or some of
these guys where you just oh, oh, here it comes,
Here comes the big moment. Oh he's gonna where's the
moment for Tick van Dyke to go over and grab
that camera. It's just such a wet fart.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Yeah. And at the end, it's this is a yet
at another one of these episodes where the circumstantial evidence
is so circumstantial. I genuinely don't think he would have
been caught. I feel like he gets away with it,
and he's so rich that he could Look. Is Gina
Rowlands now never going to trust him? But I'm sure
he could probably convince her that this didn't happen. There's
enough circumstantial evidence. Here is what this feels like. And
(14:19):
that's on top of everything else. The best Columbo episodes
are when he really gets him at the end, like
he really gets him here, he doesn't really get him.
He more or less admits that he did it, but
not really. He's just take me to jail, which is fine,
but Oscar Werner just Yeah, he doesn't play sad sack,
which we've seen with the Donald Pleasants character. And he
doesn't play like raging asshole like we've seen with the
(14:41):
Robert Kulp characters. He's just there and there. Yeah. I
really feel like, again, it should have been Gena Rowlands
as the murderer in this episode and getting to see
this duplicitous nature of her where she is a woman
in a wheelchair, but she's also conniving and kind of
and able to make these things happen even if she
(15:02):
is in a wheelchair. And again I'm not saying that
as ablest or anything. I'm talking about the way this
is portrayed in Night in yone, nineteen seventy eight or
whatever this is where or seventy five, where these kinds
of characters are being played completely as stereotypes, which she is, like.
It would have been much more interesting if she had
been the murderer, but there's no universe in seventy five
where they're doing that.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
Unfortunately, at least they didn't put her in peril like
there's a fighter in peril, or she's gonna roll down
a cliff or something like that, like the famous scene
that Paul Rudd likes to shack in me. Yes, at
least we don't get that. But yeah, it's like with
Oscar Werner, you could with that accent that he has
(15:44):
and just the gravitas of this guy as an actor,
he could have been a war criminal that is hiding
out or something. I think he's a little too young
for that. Maybe, but I don't know. Nineteen seventy five,
the war was thirty years prior. Maybe he could have
done stuff. Like I said, he's looking pretty long in
(16:05):
the tooth into this episode. I would have believed that
he had done some shit in Nazi Germany and he
knows about it, and eventually his mother knows about it
and her mother in law, and she's going to blackmail them.
And when Gena Rowlands finds out what a horrible person
she was married too, she has to give him up
or something.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
Anything would have been better than this, Anything would have
been better than what we got here, which is just
again for me, when you have an actress as talented
as Gina Rowlands is, who every time she's on screen
and look, she just passed away recently. This is she's
just recently passed away. She's one of the few actors
who when she's on screen with Peter Falk, she holds
(16:45):
her own, if not upstages him. And that is something
that they really pissed away, is what it feels like.
Did no one see a woman under the influence? Did
you motherfuckers not see that? And you were like Oscar Werner,
is that we know you do female villains in this show.
You've done it already several times. So it's not that
I just I don't get putting Gina Rowlands in a
(17:06):
wheelchair and going this is good, this is enough, and
then not even having her factor into the climax of
the episode, really just having her sit there and kind
of act the act surprised like it's such it is
such an immense disappointment of an episode because Gina Rowlands
is in the episode. That's really what this feels like.
And we talked about this before on this show and
(17:27):
other shows, especially on something like Midnight Viewing, which we
do with Father Malone. Oh, this is the only time
Xyz actor is on this show and this is a
less than stunning episode. What a shame. This is one
of those times because again, like we've also already alluded
to Peter Falk and Gina Rowlands have a history together
and A Woman under the Influence was a movie I
(17:48):
have no interest in rewatching because of how good the
two of them are in the movie, and every time
they're on screen here you can see that. It's just
the context of their characters should have been a little
better thought out.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
Yeah, last month when we talked about an episode directed
by Ben Gazzara bringing in all the friends, you get
Timody Carey, Ben Gazara, all these guys I can't remember
Freddy last name, Cassavetti's. Of course, you get all these guys,
and yeah, this one is just, yeah, we'll just we'll
have Gina here, not give her a whole lot of
(18:21):
stuff to do, make her fucking murder victim, do something
to give her more ash. When even when it comes
to this idea of the gadgets, Okay, you got the cameras,
you got the dimmer switches, you've got the clapper, there's
not a whole lot else and the watch, Yeah, this
(18:42):
should have been like a whole fetish thing of his
because we've already seen most of this stuff in these episodes.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Literally, we've seen this all before.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
Exactly. The clapper is the only new thing. But I'm
just like, yeah, no, if this guy's obsessed with gadgets,
make him be obsessed with gadget. Give them a fucking
robot arm to play chess again, and then we can
talk about Lawrence Harvey again.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
Yeah. It's genuinely shocking to me that they go as
hard into some of the things in this episode that
they do with the technology, and then they just leave
it hanging, like you've already alluded to when we haven't
really talked about it. But the house that they live
in is like the fucking smart house. It is the
kind of house that would have been at like the
World's Fair, where look at the House of the future,
(19:26):
Like trick doors and like a safe room that you
can control the entire house from, and it's all wired
up with cameras in every room. It's like, this is
literally what people have in their houses now in twenty
twenty four. And yeah, they do very little with that.
On top of everything else, there's like a literal room
from a James Bond movie in this house. It looks
(19:49):
like a Ken Adams designed room, it really does, and
they do nothing with it. They do nothing with it
comparatively to the amount of time that they spend looking
at the CCTV footage in the security guards room, which
is where we spend a lot of How catch him
of this episode and them going nine thirteen or nine
forty two? You know what? Hearing them repeat times on
(20:10):
a fucking clock is not interesting episode. I don't care
how many times you say it.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
There isn't a lot of colorful characters in this episode either.
Like we've talked before about the Vito Skoti when he's
trying to sell him the funeral plots or the grave
sites and things. It's like, okay, that can be all
cut out. That's okay, But it's nice to see Vito
Scoti in that.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
It's just color.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
Yeah, in this one, there's not a lot of color
like I was expecting. Even Just tell me more about
the security guard, what's his background? Tell me more about
the people at the art museum, what's their back. I'm
getting nothing. I'm getting no victy back. I'm getting no no.
Does this painting? Can you make this match my bathroom?
Like missus krabit's in there that those kind of things
(20:53):
like where are the colorful characters?
Speaker 2 (20:56):
Yeah, it's and that's the thing, even Oscar Werner's character,
and this is the thing I want to really put
out there. And again, like it's not Oscar Werner's fault.
I don't think his character is like such a fucking nothing.
It's such a nothing character. He's almost like impish, and
he paints a target on himself immediately, and he's pathetic
the moment we see him. He's just pathetic. That's the
(21:17):
word I would use. He's a pathetic character. And it
doesn't really work because he makes himself look guilty the
moment Columbo comes in there. There's nothing about this character
that is remotely intimidating or you think this guy's gonna
get away with it. Like he literally looks a sack
of shit the moment he's on screen, Like he's just
it's obvious that he's this pathetic, sad sag the moment
(21:38):
he's on screen, and then you see, oh, the mom's
taking the business, the mother in law's taking the business
away from him, and so he just pulls out a
gun and shoots her, like on top of everything else,
Like it's not even a creator Like we've seen so
many creative ways for people to get murdered on this show,
and this is just bang, I'm gonna shoot her. I'm
gonna make it. I'm gonna I'm gonna use the close
circuit TV to air the air false footage, Like wow,
(21:59):
is that trope? Is that a trope? In things? It's
gotta be right looping the CCTV footage? What is this? Toys?
What is this immabs? Yeah? Yeah, any other of these
like multitudinous things where we've seen that a million times.
I'm sure they've done it in at least one Marvel
movie at this point, if not several. And here we
are in Colombo seeing it and they don't do it
very well. It's it's not compelling. It's not a compelling
(22:23):
position to put your episode in to have to resolve itself.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
Even when it comes to the security Guard's a guy
who's watching the CCTV. Shure, he's watching it so avidly,
And I'm like, do you do this every night?
Speaker 2 (22:33):
Sir?
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Are you actually watching this footage every single night? Just
staring at these monitors? By this time, you would think
he would have I don't know, jigsaw puzzles or a
newspaper or something else, and then that could cast some
doubt on the guard was doing this, or the guard
had to go and see, yeah, he had a bladder
(22:55):
infection and he had to keep using the bathroom or something.
But there's nothing interesting. There's no like we've talked so
much just in this season about the layering of the
clues one after another, and Colombo has to come in
and just knock this one down, knock this one down.
The way he gives people excuses and like, oh, what
do you think about this? And then the person has
(23:16):
to come up with their bullshit answer, and Werner does
that a few times. It could have been this, Oh yeah,
I didn't think about that. But it's so low key
compared to some of the other people. Maybe it's just
I don't know. It's like the register it's played in
is like a minor key.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
Yeah again, I don't I have not seen Oscar Werner
in anything else, So maybe that's just the the acting
stylings of him as an actor. But the character as
he's written in this episode is so low key and
so just I don't know. Again, Like I said, impish
because the moment Columbo season, but that this is the
guy who did it. It's so painfully obvious that this
(23:52):
is the guy who did it. That's what I would say.
This is one of the best examples of a bad
episode because it's I'm not I'm saying we as the audience,
don't know that Colombo knows immediately. But the best episodes
are the ones where we see Colombo come to that realization.
He's not just walking in from Dayu's X right and
(24:13):
going this is the guy, right, And that's this episode,
Like in a nutshell, he's like the moment Colombo locks
eyes with this guy, like you're fucking toast pal, He's
got your number and there is nothing you can do
about it. And yeah, I'm trying to remember the last
time we saw one of these episodes where it's like,
I guess the Robert Vaughan episode was like that, where
it's like Colombo runs into him initially on the boat
(24:35):
in the boat, but at least in that episode, Robert
Vaughan does a lot to put himself in a position
for it to be like Colombo really has to nail
him to the fucking wall in that episode. In this episode,
this guy nails himself to the wall and Colombo just
has to look at him and be like, you did
this to yourself, pal, Sorry.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
And I think for Werner the big titles for him
are Jewels and Jim Height four fifty one, and then
oddly Voyage of the Damned. Those seemed to.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
Be every Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
I was looking at his filmography and he was doing
stuff back in the forties and looking at a picture
of him from at Roika in nineteen forty nine. Had
he been a Nazi in the war, I could have
bought it. It could have been something more interesting. We're
going to see an episode I think maybe next season
where there is a war criminal and it plays so
much better when it's okay.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
So you keep bringing it up because I was like,
is this a thing that the show's gonna do well?
So yeah, okay, I'm excited now because that's interesting.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
Yeah. It just makes more sense for somebody with that
accent to have this going the accent.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
Yeah, And that.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
Would have made him more interesting, because, like I said,
he's just so dull as a character, and I feel
so bad that he's just that. Again, it's not Oscar
Werner that we're picking at. It is the character that
he's playing. It just how poorly written it is and
just how uninteresting the character is, and.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
On top of everything else, the motivation for why he's
doing what he's doing is I don't know how to
put this but generic. We've seen it before. We've not
just seen it before, we've seen it plenty of times
in this show. It might be the trope that they've
gone to the most at this point of I'm taking
the business away from you donald pleasance. We saw it there,
(26:23):
robbing it here.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
With the reculpe with the football team.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
And that's probably we're probably forgetting a couple on top
of everything else. It's the most generic place to go
with this kind of character, because again, we're dealing with
rich people, and rich people having businesses taken away from
them that make them a lot of money, I guess
is reason enough to murder someone. And we've seen that
over and over and over and over again on this show,
and I don't need to see it again. I'm sure
(26:47):
we're going to see it plenty of times before the
end of the series again. But if they're going to
do it, do something with it. Don't just do this.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
Aust McDonald going all the way back or mentioned suitable
for framing before Os McDonald thought that his uncle was
going to give all of those painting to somebody else,
and that really made him mad and tries to set
up the ants. She has nothing to do with it,
like again trying to pin the murder onto somebody else,
Like where's that aspect of it that would have made
(27:16):
this again more interesting, like setting up like Jack Cassid,
he's setting up like forces that are out there trying
to murder people and oh they tried to murder me
or the Requiem for a Falling Star. Oh yeah, they
went after they killed my secretary, but they're really after
this guy, and where is that? Like, where's the intelligence
(27:36):
of switching things around and pinning things on other people
or casting aspersions onto other folks. So he's muddying the
waters to make it a lot harder to catch him.
Any other detective would have gone off on these wild tangents,
whereas Colombo can just cut through those things. He has
nothing to cut through in this episode.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
No Oscar Werner literally just shows up and pretty much
paint a target on his forehead and says it's me.
I did it. Yes, I am the one.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
But I assume might think it is another person, but
it is obviously k me.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
Yeah, I will say, though, in the scene where him
and Columbus are standing outside of the window and he
has those sunglasses on by the Lord in Heaven, I
used to have a pair of sunglasses like those. I
found him. I forget where I found them, but I
found him somewhere, and either are clearly women's sunglasses, and
I kept them, and I don't know where they are anymore.
But I wish I still had them, because they are
a spit and image of those sunglasses he's wearing. And
(28:33):
those are some wild sunglasses. They are, without a doubt,
the most asshole sunglasses one could have had. You looked
like Willy Wonka from Tim Burton's Will He Wanka movie.
That's the energy of those sunglasses there, really is.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
I can see that. Even just like his suit where
he wears the light shoes that go with the suit.
It's like, all right, this guy's kind of a dandy.
But again he doesn't carry it nearly as far as
he should.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
No, And boy, if they had gone in that direction,
that show would never do that. Not in nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
Yeah, that would have been way more interesting had he
been having some sort of a gay affair at the time,
like something that would uh man.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
That's not Colombo though, that's poker Face twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
Yeah, and his fellow cops. There's no real good interplay
with the other officers. There's no like Officer Wilson here
to question him. There's even Bruce Kirby two months ago
when we talked about the military episode. There's not him going, oh,
look at what I have to deal with this guy.
Look at this weirdo out here comb and the grass
looking for stuff? What is this? None of that. These
(29:36):
guys are just like, yeah, lieutenant, oh you're getting a cold.
I'm so sorry to hear that.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
And where's that?
Speaker 1 (29:41):
Give me more of the cold stuff? He gets worse
throughout the whole episode or something. You got dog here?
Dog barely has anything to do.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
Come on, guys. They added a lot of stuff, but
they didn't do anything with him.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
It's like that meme of the little figure with the
stick poking at something, going come on, do the thing.
This whole episode it just felt like I was poking
it with a stick, going come on, be good.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
Be better than you are, which is not great. Yeah,
and it's a real shame that it's coming in the
fourth season because pretty much every episode this season has
been really good. Yeah, and this feels like a season
two episode. You know, the show hasn't gotten its feet
underneath it yet, like it's still figuring out where it
wants to go with things.
Speaker 1 (30:22):
I think there were some more solid episodes in season
two than there were with this one. This att twod
in Black kicked off the first season or second season.
That's true other than this.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
That's true. Yeah, is this one of the worst episodes
of the show. It might be. It's in a lower third,
which would make it, Yeah, which would make it one
of the worst episodes. I don't think it's the worst episode. No,
I don't know. Gina Rowland's being in this episode and
not being used very well is that is almost like
an affront to It would be one thing if she
(30:53):
hadn't been in Woman under the Influence Price year, if
she wasn't already Gina Rowlands in a lot of ways,
like if she was just I don't know, Gena Davis
Cerca nineteen eighty two or something of Okay, fine, she's
early enough in her career, whatever, But there's none of that.
This is Gena Rowlands as Gina Rowlands in a lot
of ways. Yeah, that would put this in the lower
(31:16):
quorder of the episodes we've seen, not even third lower quarter,
because I think that is a real big problem and
I think that is a genuine issue that this episode has.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
Yeah, well, we talked next month, we'll go through the
whole season, which is pretty easy because it's just six
fucking episodes. You'll remember then and you'll say, oh, play
back was probably the worst episode of the season. But
when we talk in four, five, six, seven years and
look back at Klumbo overall, you're gonna forget that this
(31:46):
episode even exists.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
Really, it's that much of a meth So, so are
your so is it that much of a met or
does the show really get that? Is it also the
show starts evolving?
Speaker 1 (32:00):
No, I'm saying that there are going to be much
higher highs than these lower lows. Of course, there are
some low ones, like when we start talking about the
ABC years, it's going to be like a race to
the bottom, and it's going to be a real rarity
that we see a good episode, and there's probably always
going to be like this could have been better, Yeah,
but overall was okay. And then if you think back
(32:21):
to something like negative Reaction or Troubled Waters or by
Dawn's Early Light. You'll be like, oh, yeah, those were
great episodes, and there's going to be some of those
coming up in seasons five, six, seven, eight.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
Well, and that's more what I meant. I figured, I'm
sure that the highs will be high, but I was
more alluding to the fact that the lows are going
to be I think, much lower. Oh yeah than this.
As much of a low as this is, I know
because I've just heard you allude to it and talk
about it that similarly to when Perry Mason came back.
It's like, some of those episodes are just not good,
(32:58):
and I look, I don't know what to think about
the show yet when it gets to like old man
Peter Falk running around veh Glumbo, because I've never seen it,
but I can imagine how bad this will get. Let's
put it that way, because we've seen it with these
kinds of shows, especially with the show that has a
different writing team week to week and even different director
(33:20):
and even different actors in terms of the main cast
other than Peter Falk. But yeah, I have no preconceived
notions that this episode's probably really not that bad. In
the grand scheme of things, and I probably will forget
how middle of the road it ultimately is, because I'm
sure it is ultimately just kind of middle of the
road in comparison to the whole show. And what is that,
(33:43):
like season five or six, six, where we get to
the ABC years? I mean, we still have one more
season of the show, I think, right, No, we.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
Still have quite a few those seasons. Six is only
three episodes. I want to say that the universal NBC
stuff was all the way to season seven, and then
season eight is when we start the ABC mystery movies
all those years later. That's eighty nine when he comes back.
Speaker 2 (34:11):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
Season seven ends in seventy eight.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
Okay, so we have three more seasons of good Colombo
before it becomes old Daddy Colombo. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
I won't say they're all good. We're gonna have our highs, no, Yeah,
but there are some really high highs. Even with the
first episode of season six, that one is one of
my faves. Hopefully you like it as much. Even with
season five, there's a couple in here I'm just like, oh, yeah,
that's a good one, and then there are a couple
where I'm.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
Like, yeah, yeah, that was all right, Like I said,
this season I think, for the most part, has been
pretty solid. This is the one episode that's sticking out.
I don't know if the next episode is that way.
I know the next episode is George Hamilton and Leslie
and warrens some pretty big names, some pretty big people.
I hope that they're used compared to the way Gina
Rowlands is used here. But George Hamilton's not exactly the
(35:03):
same caliber of an actor as Gena Rowlands is.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
That's very true. And I don't think that Leslie and
Warren's on screen for too long.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
And I don't know why I.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
Thought every single episode this season was in the ninety
minute mark, because that's another one that's at seventy minutes.
So if people were yelling at their podcast listening device
that you know, hey, these aren't all ninety minutes, I apologize.
I don't know where I got that idea from.
Speaker 2 (35:29):
Well, and like you've already said some of this, we
are very lucky that there is not more of this
episode because this episode felt long enough as it was.
You didn't need to see another twenty five minutes of this.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
Really, Yeah, until we come back next month, Chris and
talk about a deadly state of mind? What are you
working on these days?
Speaker 2 (35:51):
Everything that I'm working on, including all of our shows
that are just being bombarded with ads, Thanks Spreaker, can
be found over at weirdingwaymedia dot com, where the stuff
that I work on, the stuff that you work on,
and the stuff that we all work on is kicking
around over at weirdingwaymedia dot com. Other than this one
little thing that you and I work on with our
friend mister rich HadAM, which is ranking on Bond, which
(36:13):
can be found over at mine and your respective patreons
patreon dot com, slash culture cast or patreon dot com
slash Projection booth. That that's us talking about James Bond
once a month, and if that's the thing you're into,
you should totally check it out. What about you, Mike?
Where can people find the things that you're working on?
Speaker 1 (36:30):
It's really weird, but it's the same place, Weirdingwaymedia dot com.
That's where you can find just about everything other than
that Patreon exclusive at the ten dollars and up level,
you can hear us talking about mister James Bond, the
Secret Agent and mister Kisskissbang Bang, who's doing way too
much kiss for Patrick mcgoin to handle. But it's not
(36:51):
the last time we'll hear from about Patrick McGowin. Trust
me on that one, folks. But yeah, maybe Before we
head out, I want to thank John Walker for our
open theme and Colin Gallagher for our closing theme. Collen's
got more music over at Modern Silent Cinema. I think
you can pick up almost everything that he's done on
band camp highly recommended, and I'm not sure if John
(37:12):
puts out his music, but he's always good with the score.
So thank you very much to those guys. Thanks so
much to you Chris for continuing this journey of shabbiness
with me, and thanks to everybody for listening. I always
appreciate the feedback. Thanks so much for taking the time.
If you could leave us some rating and review over
on iTunes, that really helps us out. And hey, now
(37:33):
you can actually listen to this on iTunes if you're
on an Android device. How crazy is that?
Speaker 2 (37:38):
Pretty crazy? As the mo
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