How to Dial a Murder

Welcome to the Shabby Detective, yet another Columbo podcast. I'm your ost Mike White joined me, of course, is mister Christashue. Mike, I'd like to offer you a laurel and hearty handshake. We are talking about the fourth episode of the seventh season. It is called how to Dial a Murder previously known as two Titles.

The script has the laurel and hardy W c Fields Citizen Kane murder case, which is maybe as long as the Bye Bye Sky High IQ murder case. And nowhere near is catchy. It really rolls off the tongue like a mouthful of gravel. Formerly Snips and Snails and Murderer's Tales. Yes, that was Tom Lazarus bringing that to us.

There a lot of revisions for this script. Did get to read the screenplay for this, which is a treat in itself. This one came out April fifteenth, Taxa nineteen seventy eight. It is a blissful seventy three minute episode and it stars Nicole Williamson. Yes, Nicole is a man's name in this case, and I col Nicole Williamson.

Most people know him as probably Merlin from Excalipur. Most people know him from Exorcist three. Yeah, I guess you're right. He's got that great voice. Yeah, oh my, his voice is the best part is if you don't know what he looks like and you hear his voice.

Okay, yeah, there you go. He was also really good at Sherlock Holmes in the seven Percent Solution as well. He's in here killing someone I've never seen before. Joel Beanni as Charlie Hunter. Nicole Williamson is Eric Mason.

He is based on the guy who created ST. We've talked about ST before. We talked about that when the woman came over to the accountant guy I think it was, and was talking about how I tried ST. You're okay, I'm okay, just started listening off all these self help things. So yeah, he's this mind controlled guru psychologist type of guy.

Psychiatrist. Baby. So the real point to the s training was to go down. Through layer after layer after layer after layer until you got to the last layer and peeled it off, where the recognition was that it's really all meaningless and empty. That's existentialism's endpoint.

S When I stepped further in that, people began to recognize that it was not only meaning empty, but it was empty and meaningless. That it was empty and meaningless. You're not really sure what death means, but you don't like it. You don't like the word. You're bothered by the word mother.

You're afraid of the word father, words, food, money, boss, right, sex, Mommy, and Daddy started setting you up right from the cradle, conditioning you. They took control with the control words. Then the words took control. Now who's got the control? I've got the control.

The words locked you into your locked up little lives. Kind are these guys that we've seen also a few times before, but we haven't seen any of them use dogs as a murder weapon. Chris, what did you think about how to dial a murder? If you want to get caught, immediately use your own dogs. To murder someone.

I love these shifting title names of this episode primarily because I feel like they knew how absurd the premise was, and they were trying to figure out a way to lean into the. Dog's murdering someone of it all. Obviously, that second title is Snips and Snails and Puppy dog Tails. Okay, like got it again? Like it's clever.

I just it's a little hokey, but not in a bad way. There are some fun moments in this episode. Actually really liked this episode a lot. I just think that the device through which you killed your friend and your wife, it's like Sweeney Todd cutting people's necks with a with a straight razor, Like, of course, the guy who's a barber is killing someone with a straight razor. Of course, the guy who can mind control people is killing them with his mind control dogs.

Like I find it's one of those things where it's like, of course you're the one doing it. There's not even a question as to who else it could be. And that's my issue with this episode is this is what where Colombo knew before he even came on screen that this guy did it, because it's like it's his dogs, but who else. It's the idea of dogs like this don't do this without prompting. Okay, who could have prompted them?

The mind control guy? You see what I mean. I'm not trying to be an ass. It is a little on the lazy side. However, I will say the laziness or the kind of high concept of it all gets glossed over by the fact that the episode is so fun and Nichol Williamson is such a fucking monster, willing to kill Colombo, willing to kill his dogs, willing to kill his.

Wife and his best friend. Like he is, I think one of, if not probably the worst person we've seen on this show in terms of the lengths he's willing to. Go to to save his own skin. Including again, like, I was watching this episode last night with my friend Lindsay, and she was like, how many times do people try to kill Colombo? As we were coming into the final moments of the episode, and I and my response, and you can check me on this.

I don't think really anybody up until this point has not like this, not where it's like so overt it where it's like, hey, I'm going to literally be like, hey, Colombo, I'm saying the word that I know is gonna get the dogs to kill you. And the only way this won't happen is if you somehow, unbeknownst to me, deprogrammed the dogs, which he did not know happened because he was expecting for Columbo to die at the. End of the episode. How he would explain that away would be beyond me. I'm assuming it would be the dogs were violent, and this might be one of the times where Nicol Williamson almost gets away with it frankly if Colombo dies in that moment, but obviously he didn't, so I enjoyed it.

But it is a little cutesy. I think it's probably the way I would put it. Maybe not lazy, but cutesy. Yeah, we don't tend to see too often the murderers trying to murder Colombo. I think we'll see that more in the ABC year.

I was kind of figuring as much. But we did see Louis Jordan give him the poison in the class. That's okay, So that was it. Though, when you think about the other person with wine, Donald Pleasants is enjoying a drink with him at the end, Johnny Cash is enjoying a song with him at the end, or he's having a cigar with Miguel Ferrer or sorry, Jose. The people that Columbo is catching that have killed someone are often have no beef with Colombo because they don't even admit what's going on up until that last moment, Like Nicole Williamson is just repugnant throughout.

Jose Ferrer is doing something for someone else, like Donald Pleasance. It's look, Donald Pleasant isn't justified in what he does, but he's such a sad sack you feel really sorry for him, really really feel for his character. Nicole Williamson is the first one of the few characters other than Luis Giordan really who's just this guy is a real piece of shit. And even like, we don't see this scene in this episode, but I could imagine a similar scene like we got was it with Luise gj Ordan where he's I don't like you, suspect you even because I think that, like with Jose Ferrer's character, there's clearly a mutual respect between him and Colombo. Colombo almost feels bad for having to take him in in a way, there's no universe where Columbo feels bad here he shouldn't.

Yeah, I think other than maybe Leonard Nimoy and maybe going all the way back to Gene Barry, Colombo generally has maybe a little bit of respect for these criminals that he's catching. He knows when they are good adversaries. But Nicole Williamson is not a strong adversary. He is not at all the first time we see Colombo in this episode, he's got the dogs kissing him and rolling around, and he's. Just like, ah, that's enough, fellas, that's.

That whole thing, which he's gonna do later on at the end of the episode. But he knows already these are not violent dogs. He's coming to a crime scene where a man was ripped apart by dogs. They haven't taken the dogs away yet, and he's they're rolling around with these dogs and having the time of his life because finally the he'se got dogs that are way more active than his own dog, who I'm glad makes it. It's actually makes sense that dog is in this episode.

It isn't just like a throwaway kind of thing. For this being seventy three minutes, it's a pretty darn tight episode. It doesn't feel like we've run into the things we've run into before where it's oh my god, get rid of this scene. There's really not a lot in here where I'm just like, oh, this doesn't need to be here. I feel like it's it's very well paced and plotted.

I one hundred percent agree. I like the length of this episode looking at the other episodes this season. Seventy minutes, seventy three ninety seven seventy three ninety three, like this one is in the shorter camp. I think it is better off. For being shorter than longer.

I really don't see how you could have stretched this out any further unless you brought more complexity into it with the Kim Katroll character, which, by the way, nineteen. Seventy eight Kim Katrol whoa like young. When her name showed up, I was like, oh wow, like she's been acting for a really long time. I think she's really good in this episode, they don't really go far. Enough with her character.

In my opinion, I feel like they could have added some more complexity to it. I actually thought the twist was going to be that Colombo finds out that the girlfriend actually killed the wife because the girlfriend or the house mate or whatever she was to live in college student was jealous of the relationship that the wife and the husband had Nicole Williamson and his wife and murdered her so that he could be all for herself. That's where I thought it was going, because because again, like some there have been episodes like that that take a little kind of complex note as opposed to just being straightforward. I actually thought that that's what was going to happen, because it almost made it seem like that might be where it was headed.

Maybe I could be wrong here. Obviously it didn't go there, but it seemed like for a moment that they were going to introduce the Kim Control characters like the fly in the ointment. For Nicole Williamson, there was supposed to be a lot more of her character, and there was supposed to be there was supposed to be a whole thing about Nicole Williamson because he's already cuckolded by this other doctor in the earlier drafts of the script. He can't get it up. He's suffering from a dysfunction impedance.

Yes, and when Colombo is needling him, he talks about how strong and virile this killer must be and all this kind of stuff, and just. That would have been really good to have in this episode. I agree, And yeah, there was supposed to be more about those two together, Kim Kttrall and Nicole Williamson, and that just didn't happen. What a bummer. I actually liked the two of them on screen together, like it's not it is a little May December romancy.

She's young and he's Nicol Williamson is one of those guys that looks kind of like Richard Harris. Until he was old, he just always looked old. Until he looked really old, he just kind of looked the same. I guess not, I don't know, you know what I mean. Until he was old, he just I never really saw him look any different in anything, and so I can't really tell what age he's supposed to be, quote unquote, but I liked the two of them.

The thing that I was really glad to see. Speaking of people that show up in this episode, our dear friend, the tall blonde man himself Ed Bagley Junior. Yes, that was so great to see him. As the animal Control office. It's so funny because I'm doing an episode this year about cat people, Paul Schrader's Cat People, and so I just saw him as a zoo keeper with Ed.

There's a fucking panther in a cage and he gets his arm ripped off, so as he's got these vicious dogs, I'm like, oh, man, be careful at Begley Junior. You do not want to get too close to that cage. You were going to say, you're doing an episode, a tell all episode. Finally, on Transylvania six five thousand. No, that's my dream.

Jeff has yet to agree to that, so we'll find out. Yeah, maybe that's your dream and my nightmare. I love Ed Begley. No, I love Ed Begley Junior as well. He's great.

It's too bad that he doesn't get a whole lot to do, but it is just a trip to see him in Peter Falk in a scene together, in a couple scenes together. Yeah, I have yet to buy his autobiography. I have that in my cart in on Audible. I would love to interview him sometime, and I'm very curious if he even mentions this role. He's probably too busy talking about electric cars or something.

How much he loves clean energy. That Ed Bagley. I love him as well. I was recently rewatching Arrested Development, which he is in as a guest character reoccurring character as a man with alopecia, which is a very funny role. To have someone who is as kind of visually distinct as Ed Begley is, especially with his like blonde hair.

To have him in a wig almost. The entire show is very funny, and so I always think of Ed Begley in more comedic roles, and so this is more of just like be fuddled ed Begley. So he's fun, he's fun here. He's good. Like I said, I just like seeing him opposite, like seeing anybody opposite Peter Falk.

Peter Falk, I think brings out the best in everybody. Frankly, like he's just such a good actor period, Like I think, just a preternaturally gifted actor. So I just did the math. And Nicole Williamson was forty two when this episode came out, and I agree, I had no idea, Like looking at him was just like, I don't know if this guy's thirty fifty six, sixty six at this point, I really don't know. And Kim Cattrall at the time is twenty two, so she's half his age.

Shit is my point. And I couldn't tell like I can't, Yeah, I can't tell you what age he's supposed to be. Like I said, he's very Richard Harris esque in that way. And it's very funny because they both I think, had similar temperaments. They were both in King Arthur's stories.

Let's say, if you really want to go down a strange rabbit hole, and I know you're a fan of MythBusters. Adam Savage, who loves making his own armor, went and had a suit of armor King Arthur's suit of armor made by the guy who make the made the armor for the movie, and he like helped him make it, and they like videoed the whole process. It's on YouTube. It's thirteen or fourteen hours long. And you could just sit there and just watch them like banging on the metal and the guy's and this is how you using like the ten like the ten sheer snips and shit, and it's just like, what's crazy is I don't really think about it in relation Nextcaliber, but I think of it in relation to Lord of the Rings, which is the thing that like they was that they said they had those wetta fucking ovens rolling for four years straight where they just couldn't turn him off.

So yeah, no, I think I know, Nichol Williamson from Excalibur, I guess it's not. It wasn't as big of a deal when it came out. It's one of those things that things that's gotten reappraised in years since, which is too bad. I get why it wasn't at the time. It is a fucking weird movie.

It's a strange movie admittedly, so I'm not going to pretend like this is the Richard Harris King Arthur's story. But I think Nichol Williamson is so good because he's just he's such a weird looking guy, like he just s has this distinct look to him that anytime he's in something you can just drawn to him. Especially in this Colombo episode. Yeah, I just recently downloaded Robin and Marion or he plays Little John, so I'm curious to see that. Like I said, it's just so much about the voice to me with him, and just what a sonorous tone he has, and him in front of the lecture hall and just screaming at all of these students.

What's the word? What is the word? That's wrightened you? You are locked in? And I'm like, okay, I thought he was really effective at that point.

Yeah, I wish there was more of that. And then yeah, I love his whole cinephilia thing too, where he's got all the posters and he's got W. C. Fields's pool table and he's just always collecting little trinkets, which also is undoing by bringing that baby spot back from the ranch. Nearby, where everything is pretty much set up completely to show Colombo.

Look, here's a hook, and here's this thing, and here's the straw, and here's the speaker. And I'm like, okay, yeah again sloppy, super sloppy. And I guess it is the hubris of it where he just thinks he can't be caught. But he doesn't strike me as that person. He has arrogance, a lot of arrogance, but he doesn't strike me as arrogant as say, like a Robert Culp or something where it's just like, how dare you even speak to me, little man?

That's what this episode was missing, was that vitriol directed at Colombo, and I don't understand why it was missing it. I don't understand why they chose to leave it out. Nicole Williamson's character feels it. You can see like he does. He is not putting up with this any longer, like he has no interest in dealing with I don't understand why the episode doesn't lean more into it, because it doesn't paint him.

As very smart. He's an idiot and I have a hard time believing he's this careless, like Colombo shouldn't have this easy of a time catching him. It doesn't really serve the plot very well. And to your point, there's no twists. There's no oh no, it was actually this, Like the closest we get to a twist is when he's about to kill Kim Katrol and then Colombo just comes wandering in.

That's it, And that's not very much of a twist at all, because I felt that she was too big of a character to just be out swimming in the pool doing a Cato kalin impersonation, living in the guest house and needed to have something more. Again, I think them having more of a love interest and that kind of stuff would have brought more to it. But really we just don't pick that up at all. What, by your approximation is the reason, because it's not like they didn't have ninety three minutes to play with, My point being like they could go as long as ninety three minutes. Clearly nothing prevented them from going that long in these other.

Two episodes this season. Well, yeah, even if you think about murdered by the book and the whole thing of the woman who sees Jack Cassidy and all of his stuff, again, you've got she's not a witness here. Kim Katral is not a witness, but she's smart enough to have figured things out. And again, we've got this whole thing of the murder off screen, so the whole thing with the wife, because we just talked about that recently too, when it came to maybe the old fashioned murder episode where the murder takes place, there's a pre murder that takes place off screen. Might have been that one.

I might have just been thinking about the guy that. Left, what about the guy buried under the fountain? There was that, yeah, for sure. And it feels like there was one other we talked about where there was a murder in the past. Oh, I know it was the one, the Ruth Gordon one where she's you killed my niece and tries to kill the nephew or the nephew of the.

Law up at the light with the arrow ashes right. And we don't know for sure did he actually have something to do with this one? We know for sure that he killed the wife. But that also seems like they left money on the table. I think it feels like they left money on the table.

I think it feels like they should have done a better job with a twist. I think if you had had the twist I was talking about where Kim Katral outs herself as the one who kills the wife, So take Nicole Williamson out of it as the killer and have him wondering how his wife died, as opposed to him having been the one who killed his wife, and then have it revealed that she's the one who killed his wife. Then you could give him a reason to kill her in a fit of rage towards the end of the episode, further implicating himself in both murders, in all three murders, because now there's the singular tie between the three, and I think that would have been infinitely more interesting. And there were like two steps away.

They're like a half step away from that. It's one script revision away. You have these three characters already in this like love square, not really a triangle. I guess I don't understand why a show like this that goes in that direction. Just didn't because it just falls flat.

For me. It's by the end of it. I was like, Oh, that's it, Like that is it? Okay? She was underwater, Mike.

I do appreciate that she was underwater, so she couldn't hear the phone ringing, Like how Columbus he would have been underwater? Though, like I appreciate that moment. That's like the one moment where it's like, Okay, the show gets it, because like I was asking that same thing in that moment, what if she was swimming underwater? Good? But there's so much, like you said, left on the table that it's just it feels like a lot of missed opportunities once again, especially with the caliber of actor.

To me, the most memorable part of this episode and the thing I go back to when I think about this all these years later, is the Word Game and then the end of the episode. Of course the gotcha moment, but the Word Game I really like that. I like that it's turning psychiatry against the psychiatrist. Colombo is really trying to and I know that Nicole Williamson realizes it trap him. And then just the inadvertent capturing of Rosebud I thought was wonderful.

That whole thing of when they're playing the word game and they just have Colombo's coat with that recorder so prominent on the side of the screen, and then when they do the two shot, it is so front and center. You cannot miss that he is recording this conversation. May we play the game again? Sorry, the game the word game, only this time I'll. Start money, work, work, teach, elephant, tusk, wolf dog, gog kill, Kill, Charlie, wife, love animal.

Crap. Weird game. But yeah, that whole thing when he takes the tape back and he's talking on the phone and the dogs start going crazy and ed big, the junior gets to run in and be like, Lieutenant, something's going on. But I also really love Trishaw O'Neil. And this is the second time I think we've talked about trisho O'Neil.

She was in Gumball Rally, and I believe when we were talking about her on the Gumball Rally episode of The Projection Booth, we also brought up that she was Captain Rachel Garrett of the Enterprise see in one of the best episodes of TNG. So she's great as this other dog trainer that helps Colombo out, except for with dog, because dog is just completely useless. It definitely says no, especially when Columbu tells them to sit, he just pushes them down. We have something interesting in this episode we have a movie being used as the way to kill, so we have Citizen Kane being used, which I find very interesting because at the time, Citizen Kane was getting reappraised, right, this is the Pauline Kale times, right.

Like exactly, I'm trying to remember when the Pauline Kale article came out that was just tearing down Citizen Kane and especially trying to tear down mister Wells himself. Because this was April fifteenth of nineteen seventy eight, and I'm assuming that that Kale article had to have come out sometime around then, because again, like this isn't. Looks like nineteen seventy one. It looks like and. Then the book comes out in seventy four.

I grew up in as similar time as you. For me going to film school, I saw a Citizen in I don't know how many classes. It was drop of a hat. People are going to show you the. Greatest movie ever made.

That is what it was called when I was growing up as well. And you and I are separated by fifteen years, and that's a wide amount of time. It may not sound like it, but it being considered the greatest movie of all time. I don't think that's the case anymore, but for a time, for certain generations of people, just like The Exorcist was the scariest. Movie ever made for a time.

Yeah, And I don't know when that reappraisal was happening, but I think you're right. I think it was around this time that people started to embrace Kane, because it really hadn't been for a long time. And then yeah, you had people like Pauline Kle who are just like, oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, this is not good and oh, he stole credit from Mankowitz and all this kind of bullshit. So the term sour grapes just describes Pauline Kal to. Me, hey stole my music and framed me.

I just love that we have a cinophile using movies as his own undoing and I really love that. And again using I would say one of the more well known one word movie catchphrase, memes, whatever parlance you want to use based on the generation you grew up in, I would almost say meme at this point in terms of the level it's entered into our culture, especially for some of us. But I love that they are using something that at the time anyone might have said casually in conversation, which is dangerous but hilarious at the same time. The script goes into a lot more of the opening of Citizen Kane than you get that at the beginning of this episode, Like you get the camera moving up and seeing the k but what's supposed to happen, and I don't think it happens in the episode, is a light goes off in the background, because we can see there's lights on in the house.

But I don't think we see the light go out, because that's always the thing. It's like that weird time jump in Citizen Kane. The camera goes up, you see the house Xanadu, and then a light goes off in the window, and then we backtrack a few seconds to show Cain in the room, and we don't really see him. We mostly see the mouth saying Rosebud. We see the snow globe, and we do get to see the snow globe in here, which is nice.

I was just like, oh, this is cool. Didn't go far enough for me, but I was just like, all right, James Frawley, this is a pretty well done You did a good job with this. And then Colombo and Eric Mason talking about the movie and just like giving those shots and everything, and I love that being his undoing. He's so passionate about the film. It's just oh and then the snow globe.

Oh yeah, and then the final words. It's so nice. The opening shot of the movie, just through the gate to the Big House and just. A single light in the window in the crystal ball, snowing in the crystal ball. And Charles Foster Caine dives.

That's where it all. With his last word, rose Bud. The slag, the one that's hanging on your study wall. We go on like this, or we'll be playing the Earth word game again. Huh good, nice sir.

That's some terrific gid. It's just a bit from super Troopers. Hey, Farvo, what's that all the place? With that goofy shit on the walls of the Manzarelli sticks? You mean rose Bud?

What did you say? You mean? Rose? Oh? My good god, dude, if your friend ever calls you from who wants to be a millionaire asking you to say Rosebud very loudly next to his two dom Erman pinchers, maybe don't.

The thing that cracks me up is the ineptitude of Nicol Williamson after he ostensibly, in my mind, other than the fact that he's using his own dogs, almost gets away with it. It would be really hard to prove if you didn't have Columbo's And that's why he tries to kill Colombo because this is one of those few cases where this guy's really close to getting away with it because most of it's all circumstantial, like it really is until the end where he knows the kill word and he gets him that, he gets him in the trap and he traps him entrapman, as they always say, Colombo entraps everybody and nobody goes to jail because of it. But this is one of those cases where Colombo did not have him dead to rights.

Colombo had to trust his own judgment here frankly that when he was in that moment that the dog trainer did in fact d program the dogs. I think this came out before the movie White Dog, with the Sam Fuller movie that was so hard to see for a long time because it was quote unquote racist. Yeah, that was nineteen eighty two, and it was basically a dog had been trained to attack black people. And I think our friend Paul Winfield, I think it is. I think he is the one that suffers the most from that.

And it's guys, the movie isn't racist. The person who trained this dog as racist. And this is pointing out like institutionalized racism kind of stuff. It's what is your problem? Why are you doing that?

I want to say. There's a scene in the episode where Nicole Williamson visits his dogs in the pound. It felt like that should have been a bigger thing, like they should have found poison in that food he was trying to give. I guess what I don't understand in that moment is I think at that moment he's just going to give them chocolate and that it's not actually poisoned or it is poisoned, and only two of them are poisoned, and he's not eating the two that are poisoned in the bag. Like it's never made clear.

In another better written episode, I think they would have clarified that a little bit. This is a very well acted episode. I would say that's the issue with this episode is it's a well acted episode because Nicole Williamson and Peter Fall could elevate the phone book. Begley Junior can elevate cameos, because wasn't at Begley the junior, the one who did your cameo for projection booth vodka or whatever he thought it was for. Yeah, he thought it was Pete, not a Patreon.

Yes, they can elevate anything that they're given. For the most part, however, the script writing in this episode is just hinky at best. Like it's very it's not very well thought out. I wish there had been more intricacy to what was going on here, a little bit twister tight tightening of the spring, as it were, because these episodes tend to twist the spring pretty tightly, and this episode doesn't. It does to an extent.

Again, we have a guy, a killer, trying to kill Columbo at the end, which is pretty pretty intense in that moment. You get a sense of tension there. But that's it. People listening at home, Your dogs can have some chocolate. Milk chocolate is okay.

The more pure the chocolate is the worst it is for your dogs. So don't give them baking chocolate that will kill him right off. Dead, dead to rights. Don't give them Dutch cocoa powder. The other thing that kept cracking me up is I think of putting dogs down, but they're putting them what up?

Or out? Like it's a different But isn't there an order for the dogs to be put away. In forty eight hours? Judge Jacob Mexler handed down the order yesterday. I understand he's a friend of yours.

What we're putting the dog? That's what you do at night. You put the cat out, you put the dog down. Oh wait, no, I don't do that. You don't have opposable thumbs.

You're not as good as I am. It really hurts their feelings. Until they rip you apart. By the way, I'd like to mention because this is the other thing we keep talking about. Nichol Williamson as this kind of mustache twirling villain.

In this episode, he listens to his friend get ripped apart by dogs. And he does this little yes, oh geez. Man, And and here's the thing, like, I don't I'm sure, but I don't know, listener, how much you know about dog attacks? Dog attacks are fucked up at Like any animal that has a mouth, and human beings have squishy face parts, they will rip your face parts off and eat them and swallow. Them and that's it.

Your nose is gone. And that's and like they allude to that in this episode. They're like, oh, you know what I k and Kim Cantrell's like I have a new word of the day. Blood holy shit. Like this is one of also one of the most grotesque kills that we've seen.

I might go as far as to say this is the most grotesque kill. It's so grotesque we don't even see it, Like, it's actually so grotesque. It's one of those guy comes out of the building, is puking into his hand, but the guy's ripped apart by Domberman pincers. What the fuck do you think is gonna be left? Yeah, I'm surprised it doesn't take a week to just clean up the mess.

Sorry, you can't go make a sandwich in your kitchen. There's blood everywhere. Yeah, it's a gruesome, gruesome way of being murdered. And yeah, I'm surprised that it take them that long to put them away, but pretty disgusting. Yeah, it's just it's wild because this show rarely goes that far.

We have not really had the show take that much of a turn. The Donald Pleasants episode where he suffocates his brother or cooks him to death. I guess it takes takes him to death. That's pretty gnarly. But this is like animals tearing you apart.

Is just it's fucked up. It's a lot. Yeah, yeah, again, they don't show it for a reason. Yeah. But like I said, and I think you said as well, I still this episode even if it is a week nentry, but there are charming parts to it.

I wish Nicole Williamson had a meteor role to play with, or I don't know, just a better teleplay to go off of. But I still found a lot of this, especially for a season seven episode. I found this to be pretty delightful as opposed to our next episode, Chris, which for me is one of my least favorites. I don't know how the fans feel about the Conspirators, but I feel like it's pretty insulting, especially since it's technically the last episode of Colombo, at least when it was on regular rotation. This episode was a good episode for season seven.

I don't know how good of an episode it was for what we've seen as a body of work so far. That being said about the next episode, it being one of the worst episodes at this point with this season. I'm not surprised because this season has been very, very very hit or miss, and I would say leaning further into miss than hits, because even the hit with this episode, it wasn't that good of an episode. It was just better than other things we'd see this season, which were okay. Some of the episodes this season have been not great, like the Luis ordn one is I think the other one that was really good.

All the other ones have been okay. They've all had their really weird, specific problems, and I'm disappointed because I don't I feel like this needs to be the moment where I stop going the good Columbo's not coming back. The next one is rough, and then I want to say there are some okay things in the ABC ars. There are some pretty rough moments as well. Yeah, we'll get there, We'll definitely get it.

I'm excited because this, like you said, this feels like a moment, penultimate moment, and I'm glad we've gotten this far. It's taken a while, though, but this is. A definite inflection point from here on out with the show. Chris. When you're not trying your dogs to kill people.

What are you up to these days? I'm training my cat to feed me pasta in bed instead. It's a much. Harder prospect, but he is Italian, so he takes to it rather easily. Creepy pasta, that's what the kids talk about.

Yeah, creepy. My cat is actually slender Man. He is black and white, so he's a tuxedo wearing cat. I am over Weirdingwaymedia dot com, where you and I and our friends sit and talk about movies and TV shows and pop culture stuff of all variety. Of My show, The Culture Cast can be found over there.

Your show, The Projection Booth, Susan and Sharon's show, The Eighties TV Ladies can be found over Their father Malone's show Midnight Viewing can be found over there. Jamie Bennings show, The Filmentaries podcast can be found there. All those things to be found at Weirdingwaymedia dot com. That's where I'm at. What about you, Mike White?

Oddly enough, that's also where the Projection Booth is at, and this show and what else we got? Yeah, I'm working on Midnight Viewing and doing anything else. These say, Oh, I know we're going to be doing what no fucking ZD, which I believe when this episode comes out, it'll be the first episode we'll be available for people so they can hear our new Sopranos recap show where I've never seen any of the Soprano episodes, and Chris is the big spender coming in and tell me all about Joey Pants and Richie Aprile and all these guys. So I'm very excited for people to hear just how out of touch with pop culture I. Am, how to touch with pop culture are with a show that ended twenty years ago.

At this. With that, let's just go ahead and fade to black and play it out with some journey music. Bowers take the bows Now,