Columbo

[The Laughing Man]

Goodness gracious! No Columbo thread? Well, all is well with the universe now.....


"Uhhh, excuse me, just one more thing......"


quite possibly my all-time fav tv show....period. I just love that guy! Having always been delighted by Peter Falk (Murder By Death anyone? ), this was just the absolute perfect medium for him. Granted, the later shows after the series original run I almost abhor, but the original run was just one classic after another, always with an allstar studded cast and an almost perfect storm of actors chemistry and talent. Granted, it wasn't exactly mind boggling to solve the crimes because

The show popularized the inverted detective story format; each episode began by showing the commission of the crime and the perpetrator.

but that was the whole "charm" of the show, watching Columbo "apparently" stumble and fumble about as he proceeded to solve the crime, in some incredibly "un-othodox" ways....

Anyway, I loved the show, and love Peter Falk, and thought it at least deserved it's own thread....

[Marv]

Did you ever see the episode when he figured out who the killer was through the lack of fish found in a certain tank of water and that because he didn't count enough fish he thought that the, hitherto unfound body, must be buried under the tank?

Apparently you can only have a certain number of a certain type of fish in a certain amount of space. So to sum up;

less fish=less space=why less space?=dead body under tank!!

Twas ingenious!

[The Laughing Man]

that would definitely be my pet peeve with the show if I had one. That would happen all too often, heh. But for me it was all about watching those suspects squirm and rage at Columbo. Dam he was exasperating! Bumbling and fumbling your ass right to jail haha.

[ItisWritten]

There was one in which the killer devised his own Goldberg device to kill his rival and provide him with an alibi. Columbo arranged a confession by figuring the device wrong, so that the killer was compelled to show Columbo he was wrong.

[Cagliostro]

I hate to admit as a child of the 70's, but I never watched Columbo. It looked boring and "adult." I've never been one for crime dramas though, but I have developed an appreciation of Peter Falk, I think after seeing him in Wings of Desire and several interviews after. He's a funny guy.

[The Laughing Man]

you should definitely see Murder By Death then. One of my favs too.

[ItisWritten]

you should definitely see Murder By Death then. One of my favs too.

*Fires gun into air*
"Nobody move! I gotta use the can, and I don't wanna miss nothin'."
(Peter Falk as Sam Diamond, Murder by Death)

[Romeo]

I vaguely remembered Murder by Death from my youth - so looked it up several months ago and bought it. It's like an older version of Clue. And I think it's the only other movie I saw Ben Kenobi in.

Peter Falk is just the greatest, though! I LOVE the original "The In-Laws." Serpentine, Shelly! Serpentine!

LOLOLOLOLOL!!!!!!!

[Fist and Faith]

There was one in which the killer devised his own Goldberg device to kill his rival and provide him with an alibi. Columbo arranged a confession by figuring the device wrong, so that the killer was compelled to show Columbo he was wrong.

The classical music on the record player. When the arm goes back, it hits the magic marker, which falls on the thick book, which falls, sounding like a body falling.

[emotional leper]

Quick! From the picture at the top of the thread, guess which eyes is fake!

[Montresor]

Quick! From the picture at the top of the thread, guess which eyes is fake!

It's his right eye.

I have a soft spot for Columbo, if only because, while I was watching an episode, I came to the realisation that I was an atheist. Columbo for me, therefore, has a strange intellectual atmosphere which is seemingly out of odds with the actual program.

A likeable show, though absurdly formulaic.

[emotional leper]

I spent a lot of time watching Columbo when I wasn an ignorant ****, and remember it fondly. It was different from other shows that I saw at the time: Murder, She Wrote, Simon and Simon, Magnum, P.I., Law and Order, etc. There was also something about the Main Character that seemed lacking in alot of other shows. Maybe a year or two ago, just short of his 79th birthday, I heard an interview with Falk on NPR, which got into his early life alot, particularly the loss of his right eye. For some reason, that made me like his work all the more.

[Montresor]

He was a cool character. He was always the anathema of the silver-spooned and mega-rich villains he annoyed into confessions.

Peter Falk was also a very likeable guy. I'm actually more familiar with the more recent Columbo stuff, rather than the series from the '70s. I liked it. Sometimes it was great. But it was always, always unbelievably formulaic. Almost as formulaic as House...

[Romeo]

Wait - one of Peter Falk's eyes is not real? I never knew that - and thought for years that one of Sandy Duncan's *was* glass (it's not - check IMDB.com).

[Fist and Faith]

Are you kidding????? Sandy Duncan does NOT have a glass eye????? I thought that was a simple fact.

But hey, while playing golf, someone asked Sammy Davis Jr. what his handicap was. He said, "I'm a one-eyed Jewish Negro."

[Romeo]

LOL!!!!!!

[Damelon]

I saw one of Sammy's shows in Vegas. It was great!

[Cagliostro]

Murder, She Ate

[Fist and Faith]

Cag, that's one of the very coolest avatars ever!!!

[The Humbled]

Also a Columbo fan, love how the he twists the knife in the ultra-rich villains. Of course the crimes themselves are incredibly far-fetched and silly, but it's all in the way he interacts with the entitled classes tha gives the series its charm.

Wow, those are some shoes you got there. My wife... Say, do you mind if I ask you a question? A personal question? What do you pay for a pair of shoes like that?

And MURDER BY DEATH! Truman Capote. Didn't Peter Sellers play the Charlie Chan character? Soooo funny.