Last Salute to the Commodore

Welcome to the Shabby Detective, yet another Columbo podcast. I'm your host, Mike White. Joining me, of course, is mister Christashue. Boy, you, my friend. You did not bury the lead far enough.

Mike, this is just. Whoof I thought you were just going to say, isn't it isn't? Yeah, paint tis more like you. On this episode, we are wrapping up season five of Colombo with the sixth episode of that fifth season came out May second, nineteen seventy six and ninety one minute episode written by Jackson gillis directed by our old friend Patrick McGowin. Welcome to the most bizarre episode of Colombo that ever aired.

Last salute to the commodore. This is it. No matter what, Chris, no matter how bad the ABC years get, and there's going to be some bad moments, it's never going to get as bad as this. Again, this is the nature of Colombo. That's good to know.

This is, without a doubt, the worst episode of the show that we have seen so far. And if it is the worst episode of the show overall, I believe it. It is a unusually framed episode of Colombo that the framework of the episode makes no sense in terms of the way that these stories are always told. It feels like somebody is I'm going to do something different, yes, and how did that work out for you? They don't know how to write the character of Colombo at all, and in not knowing how to write the character of Colombo, they effectively rob the episode of any goodwill that it would have had otherwise, because in not having Colombo act like Colombo, you have this weird fake Colombo facsimile, Colombo, pseudo Colombo who stumbles around the episode just being mean to everybody.

And I cannot abide this episode. Man. I know we're gonna have to talk about it. I know it's an hour and a half long. It's as long as a goddamn movie.

It's as long as the early Marvel films are. And yes, that should be insane, because this does not justify an hour and a half running time at all. I've seen this episode many times, more times than I wish to remember. I think I finally figured it out last time I was watching it. I said to myself, this is a bad Colombo parody.

This is somebody saying, let's make a complete fool out of Colombo for the entire episode. It might as well have been Bert Young playing Colombo in this episode. It has that tonality to it. It's the strangest, most perplexing, wrongheaded thing I've ever experienced. I felt like I was having a mental breakdown when I was watching this again the other day, because this is the first time I really sat down and paid attention to it.

Like, that's the thing with this show that I've really come to appreciate. And I really like watching Colombo with you. I really like hearing your thoughts about Colombo, and I really like watching these episode with new eyes thinking about how you might be experiencing them. But also for me, I grew up on this stuff, so now finally sitting down, I'm sure it was very much like with the Kolchak, where it's, oh, yeah, you grew up on that stuff. I had seen Kolchak before, but not nearly to the extent that you had, so you're familiar with it.

I was coming to it as a nube definitely, as we're watching the Sopranos, that's the exact same feeling. So this is giving me a new found appreciation of Columba, which makes this episode even more painful when I see just how weird this shit is. We've talked about double murderers before, but we've never been led down this path to think that somebody is a murder, to think that somebody else is a murderer, and then to finally come up with the real murderer. And I will tell you, and I know we're jumping ahead a little bit, but I will tell you as far as the oh, Robert Vaughan is covering up for Diane Baker, that never entered into my head whatsoever. Like I was never anywhere near that.

I was just like, yep, it's Robert Vaughan. And then when it wasn't, Robert Vaughan killed off screen, just disappears from the fucking episode. Then I'm like, you know what, I have no idea who killed him. Diane Baker never went through my head because she's fucking drunk through the entire fucking episode. I think there's like, what two scenes where she's not drunk.

Maybe well, I think she's hungover when they give the news that the Commodore is dead. Okay, fair god, I was wondering that the entire episode. I was like, man, Mike must really love this episode on top of everything else, because we all know how much you love people pretending to be drunk, and not only that, but like the most like on the nose kind of drunk possible, like the belligerent, like forgetful drunk, and it's like, who fucking care? I guess I had a hard time figuring out who fucking cares in this episode. This episode did a very poor job of getting me to understand why I should care.

And also I really hate that this episode does not play fair at all. I find that to be absurd because it's like I inherently trust this show, and the show is just squandering all the trust that I have in it because we want to do something different for one episode. It's like the formula of the show's not good enough, Like it's not good enough for you. Like I just I have a hard time understanding what would motivate you to write an episode so atypical for a show whose formula works so well and is so fine tuned that there's no need to like really upend the apple cart that much. And Jackson Gillis.

He's a regular writer on this show. I don't know why he did it. Yeah, he's written plenty of episodes for this show. Yeah, makes no sense. And I don't know how much is Jackson Gillison.

I don't know how much is Patrick McGowin. I feel like a lot of this lance at the feet of McGowan just based upon that Identity Crisis episode that we watched, and to see how falk was playing Colombo differently in that one. Thinking about like the revelation of Colombo when he's walking down the beach and there's the smoke and all that stuff, and just the weirdness when he was flipping over the body and all that stuff. That's this for ninety fucking minutes is just why did you make this decision? Why are you doing this?

They are keystone copping it up. Every single time you see Dennis Stugan and Bruce Kirby on screen, they might as well be playing like Yakay Sacks or something. It is bizarre. The whole thing in the car, Oh my god, when they're just like, oh, excuse me, car bullshit, the clown car yes, and the zooming around the parking lot, I'm like, what are we doing here? What are we doing people?

Tonally, it is one of the weirdest episodes of this show because it makes no sense. And then on top of everything else because the tone doesn't make any sense, because we have Dennis Dugan in this episode, because we have Bruce Kirby in this episode. We have all of these moving parts exterior to Colombo that go nowhere and ultimately make Columbo seem like a moron on top of everything else, because it's like, why are you even having these people around if they're so in neept, Just get rid of them, like you don't need anybody, Like Bob Dishy in the last episode was great and all, but Colombo works alone. He works alone, that's his thing. He doesn't need anybody to help him.

And when people do help him sometimes they just get in the way. Literally, would you be surprised if I told you that Dennis Dugan was a late add to this show and had no dialogue written for him. It's all improv. What they're doing is fucking improv when they are having those conversations, the embarrassing conversations, and this whole thing about his character Mac having a Polish name and not being Scottish or Irish at all, and Colombo just can't accept that. For whatever reason, all of that horseshit totally made up on the spot.

That's why Duken is constantly repeating what people say. He doesn't know where to go. Dennis dukean' is a talented actor, but he was given this shiit sandwich and then we're expected to eat it. D This is uh Ensen, O'Connor, Tenna Columbo, Sergean Kramer, O'Connor, Stargust and sixteen Charles play and this is Bold and Mate Murray, Sorry, Lieutenant Columbo both in Mace Murray. This is Sergeant Kramer, argue.

This is a to Clay. Charles says Boden mart to gentleman, I'm a. Board, Okay, correct me if I'm wrong. We talked about this at the end of the last episode. Dennis Dugan had his own pilot for his own show that would cut or not even a pilot.

I guess it was a full show. It ran for one season where he's essentially playing a detective. And I don't know if that game I need to talk to. I've got a couple of friends that I think, even Richard Adam is a huge fan of The Rockford Files. I need to find out if Ricky Brockleman was before Rockford and then just showed up on The Rockford Files.

It was to. Watch the character. Okay, that makes a lot more sense because in one of the books that I read, I was just like, am I reading this right? This doesn't seem right? So I must have been incorrect about that.

And what's actually fucking wild to me is this came before that. Somebody saw this and was like, this is the guy we want to give a show too. He has no charisma whatsoever. Dennis Dugan is just I can't wait to see him in Haviy Gilmour too. What is one say about a guy who's clearly more adept at being a director than he is an actor.

And even you're directing Sandler movies, not to diminish what you do, but Adam Sandler movies, I feel like Adam Sandler knows what he's doing. And that's probably the benefit of working with Adam Sandler, as he knows what he wants and knows how to get there. So I mean he directed some of Adam Sandler's better movies. I would say Happy Gilmore Big Daddy. I know people like Big Daddy a lot.

I'm not a huge fan of Big Daddy. Jack and Jill. I think Honestly, it's just such a fucking weird ass movie. And that thing at the end without Pacino is truly you know what I'm talking You know what I'm. Talking about du from Jack and Jill.

That is the singular thing from that movie that is redeeming. But Dennis Dugan primarily just works with Adam Sandler from like the nineties on. So I don't like him as an actor because every time I've seen him in anything, I'm like, Okay, you've very just generic white guy. But to see him in like the Sefan Dei's and they're like trying to get him to be a thing, it's like Dennis Dugan's with hindsights, so not a thing. I remember liking him on Hill Street Blues and Mash, but that's about it.

He earns some goodwill from me for those I haven't gone back and watched those episodes. He also lost a lot of goodwill from my perspective, because I want to say he played the astronaut in Moonlighting, and it was during that horrible last season of Moonlighting that just had like barely any episodes. It just felt so thrown together. That whole will they won't they thing that has ruined so many shows that for me, like the ground zero is Moonlighting and just how they just had no fucking idea how to handle the will they won't they with Bruce Willis and Sybil Shepherd and then they stuck Dennis Dugan in there like Dennis do and compete with rhyme Bruce Willis. No, no, not even remotely, man, that will they won't.

They became so oh it'd infected some of the best shows of the nineties, like The X Files ends up having a lot of that. Like, I'm so glad TV shows really have walked away from some of those conventions because that was just the worst, the drizzling shits, because man, once you give up the ghost, what do you do then? But you're so sucks. That's what happens with most of these shows. I was surprised they actually seemed to handle it okay for Bones, But that's one of the few shows that I can point at and say, oh, they fucked.

They stayed together, they had a relationship, they had kids, they got married, not in that order, and the show kept going and it was actually decent. But then yeah, even like some of the side characters that got together I was like, no, we don't need that. Keep that out of here. We don't need everybody to get married. We don't need everybody to ruin the will they won't they Just let's keep some sexual tension on the show.

Play Supernatural is the ultimate sexual tension show. Sam and Dean definitely got them kinkiest gay sex imaginable. My God, glad that Colombo doesn't have that, And to be fair, if it did, it would not be with Dennis Dugan, because Dennis Dugan is again a two by four with googly eyes, and that's being kind. Bruce Kirby, on the other hand, him and Colombo might have They have a good time two kind of gruff guys together. I want to talk about some of just the strange things in this episode eight minutes in the Commodore is dead.

First off, when they show the title Last Salute to the Commodore, it's not John Dyer on screen, it's Fred Draper. It's interesting too that their names sound a little similar, because there's this whole thing of them being mistaken for each other, which is also weird because I think the last time we saw Fred Draper, he was the twin brother of the Blind guy, and we've seen Fred Draper a lot. Fred Draper is not quite val Avery level as far as appearances on here, but he's definitely there. Like we've seen him four times maybe, and then I know we saw him in Woman on the Verge of a nervous breakdown. Woman on the Verge.

Sorry, keep getting mixed up with the al Madovar film, so we've seen him spoilers by the way, he is not the caliber of an actor. Sorry, Fred to be the Killer, he's not. He's just he's a big player suddenly elevated in this episode. To be at the Killer, we. Had to subvert the expectations of the audience.

Mike, It's like the most exhausting shit, so unrecking, believably exhausting. Like the thing that made this episode so exhausting is, see, I'm clever, and it's no, you're not. Everybody knows somebody like this. It thinks they're clever or smart or they're gonna ha gotcha. I don't know how to tell you this, but you fucked up the formula of Glumbo royally and you wasted our time, the audience's time, which is an affront in and of itself.

It almost feels like you wasted everybody else's time too, because to your point with Dennis Dugan and Bruce Kirby, like they're painted as morons. They're spinning their wheels all episode, like even the people that are meant to be the villains, it's that's not even believable. It's just you're doing this because you're trying to trick the audience, Like what tell a good story. Don't worry about tricking the audience. It'll come if it comes, and there will be some people that are just smarter than you anyways and will know exactly what you're doing.

So we have someone dead. Eight minutes into this episode. We get that weird shot of these curtains and Robert Vaughan looking out the curtains and him cleaning this boat part whatever, and then so we don't see the murder, which is unusual. Sometimes the deaths take place off screen or they're toned down, but this one we don't even see John Danner's face. He's in the outfit, maybe he was watching before, barely on screen.

No real reason to kill this guy either, Like a lot of times when we're watching these, it's just like, oh wow, there's a big reason why we want this person dead. You think of Ida Lupino or somebody, and it's just, oh my god, Like Johnny Cash wants to fuck these groupies. He's got this horrible Holy Roller wife. Let's get rid of her. If it's not sex, it's money.

We talked last time as far as like the whole thing of Okay, what's the motivation, Like, we don't know what the motivation is. We don't know that Jack Cassidy or Colombo didn't know that Jack Cassidy was a Nazi for the whole thing, and he's struggling to find out that motive. I don't think we really have a motive here at all. That the thing is. I don't know who Fred Draper's character is so much of this episode because I'm like, wait, is he like a cousin, a nephew, a hanger on?

Like it just seems so obscure as far as who he is and how he plays into this because he's just kept over to the side through ninety percent of this episode. It's almost like they bring him out to be like and it's this guy who you might remember from earlier. To your point again, all of this is serving a different kind of purpose than I would say is normally being served. And I think is the correct way of making this show, which is serve the fucking narrative. Don't serve these plot twists like your M proto M night Shamala.

I'm like, you've taken something that Again, there had to be a show bible. We're five seasons in. You're taking the show and what I would perceive to be the show bible and just throwing it out the window. And I don't and like, you can do it. I'm not saying you can't anymore than you are.

It's just it's like offensive comedy. There's all these assholes that complain that offensive comedy is gone. He can't be offensive anymore. No, you can. If you're not funny, you're not funny and people aren't gonna laugh and people will find it offensive.

If you're funny, people don't give a shit that you're offensive. And if this episode had been atypical Colombo had been shirking all the conventions of the show but had nailed it, we would have nothing but praise. But because this episode is such a fucking dud, because the reveal at the end is he knew that the watch was broken. The most circumstantial motherfucking evidence I've ever seen, Colombo. Saying that the watch wasn't broken.

Is your confession to the crime, and you basically just said I did it? Who gives a shit? Even there's not even any. Way, there's no way to even prove it at this point, like this guy actually gets away with a crime like he could. He actually does, even though he says, no, isn't the watch, Like, I don't think that would stand up in a court of law.

We talked about this before, like not to be that guy, but I will be that guy this time. This is one of those times where I feel like Fred Raper just walks out of the room and is like, can't fucking prove it? Can't fucking prove it, can't That wasn't me, Cisco's himself, you know, wasn't me? Like all right, just because he knew the watch wasn't broken, what. Are you gonna You're gonna hold a watch up to somebody's ear and say this is the Commodore's watch.

Could be any watch, we don't know. Yeah, you get out of this. It's not even a Trump deny, deny, deny until the papers finally fall in line, or you just move on to the next thing. It's just no, you have no legal standing yet I know it's so bad. And we spend so much time with Vaughan covering up this crime because he thinks that his wife murdered her father.

And like I said, I did not get that impression at all. Even after Robert Vaughan just mysteriously disappears from this show, I never for one time thought, oh, what must have been Diane Baker and her drunken thing, even when they go, well, we found lipstick and we found this brooch, or that he handed the brooch over to her. I didn't even get that, Chris. I didn't get when he handed her the brooch that was left at the scene of the crime, and that was implicating her. That's how.

And I'm a smart person. I will sometimes I downplay it and I go, I could have missed that. Sometimes you gonna play it up for the plot. And sometimes yeah, I mean we get into midnight viewing and a lot of times I'm honestly baffled by some of these plots of The Night Gallery or whatever. Shit.

Though, Like there are some episodes of that show that are beyond understanding, Frank. This is storytelling, one oh one. This is the basics here that I should have no, oh, maybe she was the one that did this. No, that never crossed my mind one time. Oh my god.

And then it just continues to go on from there. We have one of the earliest appearances of Colombo. And even then it is the strangest thing of the finger on the lips and the turn, and then Diane Baker finally comes to the door, like he's standing there with his finger over his lips for it feels like thirty solid seconds, and I'm like, what is happening? I was wondering the same. I'm wondering what the fuck is going on through most of this episode because Colombo just we've seen these episodes before where Colombo doesn't feel like he's part of the episode in a substantive way, and this is one where I'm just like, this crime seems beneath Colombo.

It's not even a crime. For the first yeah, quite a bit of it. It's a missing person's crows. He shouldn't be involved at all, that's true, Tue Colombo. But it's Colombo.

He knows, he already knows, and That's why it's again with Columbo, you just have to sit and think to yourself. With this show, I know that you know that we know that Colombo is already aware as to who the killer is. But it's like with wrestling, you don't have to break kfad and I don't know. It's really frustrating to me that the show knows that we know that they reveal who the killer is at the beginning of the show, because this is the only reason you're doing what you're doing. It's not to be entertaining, but it's not to do anything creative.

It just seems more like a shitty slide of hand gag that ends up not working. The thing that I'm glad about ultimately is that we have another episode that is Robert Vaughan, because if this was the only episode with Robert Vaughan, ooh god. Because I like Robert Vaughn a fair amount, especially from basketball. That's what I think of when I think of Robert Vaughan, and he is he was great in that episode where he was on the boat and Colombo knew he was the killer immediately, like he was great in that. However, this episode not the best use of his skills.

And we've got Wilfred Hyde white back as well, who sleeps with prostitutes. Okay, that whole weird exchange where he's talking about being at this CD hotel with a woman of ill repute and he says, shall we say we weren't formally introduced. I'm like, okay, yeah, you just fucked to prostitute. That's fine, sex workers work. But it just felt so out of place in this episode.

I don't think this episode really knows what it wants to be in the grand scheme of Colombo, because it does feel like it wants to be its own thing, that's setting its own tone that we're not familiar with, and it's trying to maybe do a little bit more not more per se, but again trying to be a little bit more of a creative Colombo in terms of the expectations of what the audience normally gets with these kinds of things. And I got I just have a hard time thinking that when this episode aired, people resonated with it. I know. I've gone and looked at information subsequent to this episode coming out, and the episode was not well received, and it's not well received by the Colombo fandom. As it were.

People are posting about it this. Week, yeah, consistently. Well, they're like, this is one of the weaker episodes. I'm like, no, it's not one of the weaker, it's the weakest one. Yeah, it is horrible.

And Peter Falk is not playing Colombo. He's playing some preity version of Colombo. Him invading that girl's space which is trying to transcendental meditation and the thing with the legs, and I'm like, oh my god, yeah, what are you doing. I didn't understand what is his problem in this episode. It's like the person writing the episode has never written for the show before, which is not the case.

Which is not only not the case, He's written plenty of times for this show. So I don't understand why were this far? Like why is the gap between expectation and reality this wide? David Kaning had that great book about unfilmed Colombo, and you get to hear some of the or read some of the different ways that things could have gone, and I think they might have had some who done it rather than how catch him type stuff, But every single one of those descriptions of stuff I read was way better than this. And to your point, yeah, go ahead, subvert expectations.

We're ready for it. We've seen some weird shit happen. I was one of the people that was just like, Hey, why don't we have an episode of Lost that's all from the dog's perspective. Why not let's try it out. I think there's an episode of Supernatural that's all from the car's perspective.

There's an episode of Supernatural where they meet Scooby Doo and they literally become animated, and the people who watched the show were one hundred percent on board with it totally. I watched that episode and I really liked that episode. Episode. There were some like the I always hate to pick on this episode because one of my best friend's brother wrote it, the like teenage werewolf type thing that was like supposed to be a backdoor pilot for another show. It was horrible, absolutely horrible, And it's okay.

There's an episode that didn't work that tried to subvert expectations. I think you could have subverted expectations with Colombo and had a very successful thing if you didn't choose to do it this way and make this thing a literal parody of Colombo. Well, and that's What I don't understand is why inject it with this like weird amount of comedy, Like it doesn't not saying Columbo's not a funny show. There is comedy in the show. I just don't think that it's a comedic show the way that the Rider Jackson Gillis wrote this episode.

And I don't understand. I guess for me, I don't understand what is the point of doing this? And in your mind, I want your thoughts, what are your thoughts on doing this way? Does it smack of obviousness to have this episode end the fifth season? We have to talk about the end of the episode a little bit.

This whole him trying to quit smoking cigars through the whole thing, right, and then him at the end when it's like he's lighting at the cigar and Bruce Kirby's I thought you said you quit, Oh not yet, and then goes off smoking a cigar and whistling at the same time, which seems like a really cool skill to have because it's so eighty yard. It's not even funny of him whistling. This old man getting in a boat and going out to sea. Okay, I guess we haven't seen the last of columb Oh yeah, this could have been the last Columbo episode. Thank god that it wasn't.

Boy, wouldn't that have been a shame? My god? It would have been the end of Lost all over again. It would do you know what it would have been. It would have been the fucking end of the Prisoner.

Because that's the guy who I just blame for this, Peter. Let's do something a little different with the character this time. What say, maybe when these two gentlemen from the lagoon come in and we have Dennis introduce them, and he'll introduce the one person to each one of you, and then he'll introduce the second person to each one of you. There'll be a flurry of handshakes and it will take at least five minutes for this joke to play out. It will be marvelous.

This is, for me, just the worst Patrick McGowin experiment ever. This is up there with the end of the Prisoner for me. Okay, can we talk about Patrick mcgo in for a second. What kind of fucking clowns? Sometimes?

Right like, he clearly kake it out of his own way. He could be brilliant at times, but he could also be his worst enemy. Often I think he's his worst enemy. I think you're right in your mind, because you've watched this show a lot, and I really want to know as somebody's a big fan of this show. There's no episode that comes as close to being as bad as this episode.

No, there are some moments. The first thing that pops in my head is later on during the ABC years. Again, sometimes it feels like Folk is playing at Colombo parody rather than Colombo. There's one section speaking of this old man somehow he plays a tuba, and he plays this old man on the tuba and there's dancing water going on at the same time. It's so strange and just so tonally off from everything else in that episode.

But in the Columbus overall, that is a moment that sticks out like a sore thumb for me. That's a moment, that's a scene that's not ninety five ninety minutes of just absolute ass clownery. It's shocking to me how bad this episode is, because this feels, again, it feels like it's up there with some of the worst things I've seen that we've watched together. This is the length of a goddamn feature film and one of the things we've talked about so much with this show is they have all these random paths that they don't go down, and then they ultimately go down this one path to solve the crime. Obviously, as if we've alluded to this episode already is not playing fair because this episode is not being clear with who they murderer is.

So that's fine in and of itself, but then on top of everything else, to have the way the murder is done solved with a watch in Colombo's hands just smacks of running aground in the last act and having nowhere to go and just throwing caution to the wind. It's so disappointing to me that it's just the watch in his hand. There were so many other directions to go, and that's the direction that they ultimately chose. It's just like a lot of other episodes of this show that have happened this way. It just feels very unearned.

And there's no breaks. There's no breaks in this episode. I prayed for commercials because I talked about the handshake thing that takes forever, and then they're on that boat and they're talking about these jibs and mizzens and all this stuff. And then at one point Peter Falk just crouches down and is crawling around on the deck of this boat, and I'm like, what the hell's going on here? And then within five minutes of screen time, it's the whole scene of him yelling up to the guy while all the machinery is going on, and it's so loud that they can't hear each other, and Folk is literally breaking character and laughing at how ridiculous this scene is.

But I think he is having the time of his life, and it's great. Great, Peter, I'm so glad you're happy. But it feels to me like this is just some sort of weird our play to get more fucking money or something. And if I was NBC at the time, I would have said, or what's it? Yeah, the Universal and NBC, I would have said, you know what, if you're gonna produce episodes like that, I don't need you.

I don't need you around, get the fuck out of here. That was fucking stupid what you're doing. I don't even think stupid is a strong enough word. I think for me, the best thing you can say about this episode is that we're lucky it wasn't the last episode of Colombo. That is the best thing you can say about this episode, because if this had been the last episode of Columbo, like my god, talk about a show that just fucking shits the bed in a way that like the only shows like The Prisoner really can't.

Like I said, Fred Draper is no star. Robert Vaughan would have been a good killer. Of course, we've already seen that, even though they're handing it to us. I guess that's why he's the red hearring. Yeah, is because we've before queuing to the expectations of the audience, which has nothing to do with the fun Like, how is this as meta as it?

It's so meta it hurts in a way, but it's not metada in a way that matters. And I think that's maybe the biggest problem is we know that you expect that the killer is going to out himself immediately in the first like ten minutes, So we're not gonna do that, and that's I guess for me, I don't necessarily think when I sit down to talk about something that I want to spend more time being subversive than getting to the point. And that's the problem. There's an episode here that needs to be entertaining, and if you can't nail that, don't care about anything else. The fact that he's not Columbo is also a huge failing of the episode.

I'm thinking of the scene where he's taking a phone call and he like basically sits on Robert Vaughan's lap for a moment and then scooches next to him, and Vaughn's just trying to move away, and Faulk puts his arm around Vaughn and like as his arm around him while he's on the phone. Like, that's not the character that is not Colombo. Colombo is respectful to people, Like we've already had the fucking clown car thing that you're talking about, and now he's doing this. Where is the obsequious little man that we've come to expect. And again, I'm okay, if you want to subvert those expectations, but do it in a way that makes fucking sense.

Man, go ahead, turn this into They literally have the drawing room scene at the end with all of the suspects there and Colombo laying it out. Okay, great, that's a little bit of a different way. We've not seen that very much before. Or Okay, thank you, but now just doesn't make sense. It's again, it's almost like you went and saw all these other things and we're just trying to paste Agatha Christie and Poirot and Miss Marple into this character.

Which again, look, I think at the end of the day, for me, it would be interesting to see Colombo doing those kinds of things, like it would be interesting to see Colombo being a character who does the drawing room scene at the end of the episode, because we've seen it before. But it doesn't work here because it's just there's so little motivation for me as an audience member to care because the story is very lackluster. The villain is very again, if you take away half of the episode, how am I supposed to like it? That's the other thing, right, We spend so much time with the villains in most of these episodes that they are essentially the main character of the episode, and Colombo is the one who's showing up to would have gone away with it if not for you, shabby detective, And here it's like we don't get to spend time with the villains.

So to your point, Fred Draper is just a guy who killed someone. Okay, Okay, that's fine. I just I don't care because you haven't made me care, and in the lack of making me care is the problem. We love the cat and mouse, but he's playing cat and mouse with the wrong person. Yeah.

Intent, and that's the intent of the writer is we're gonna bait you into thinking it's one thing when it's another. Again, that's perfectly fine. I just don't think this episode does a very good job in executing it. And so because it doesn't do a very good job in executing it, it just it feels like it digs itself a much deeper hole than know what have otherwise if it had just been a normal, middle of the road episode. It feels like this episode is setting itself up to be like a punching bag almost.

If you fail like this doing something different, all you deserve is for people to go You should have just done a normal episode. I can't even say that there is a decent mystery in here, things like the one I don't know nautical thing being clean, or the stencils that they find the oh it's sales period. Oh boy, it's like Jesus Christ, How easy is this for you? Guys? There's a woman named Lisa that you just had transcendental.

Meditationes sale, sale, Mike, don't you know the only letters that go together is sale. It couldn't be a word with three or four of the letters. And then it gets fuck off. Columbo's not this stupid. I have a hard time believing Columbo's this stupid.

I think is the issue? Like, and again it goes back to the clown car seat. This is not something anybody wanted from Columbo, So why are we injecting it into the character. I was talking about Dugan with his whole thing of just having to come up with stuff. Colombo him back on that Doc and the way that Mac comes up and is your leg is the shore in this?

And I'm like, oh my god, how long is this gonna go on? And how stupid is this? And you just see this man floundering. It's an embarrassment. It's an embarrassment for me with Bruce Kirby when he's holding that lamp forever and he's like, oh, Lieutenant, can I put down the lamp?

And I'm like, who thought that was funny? Who honestly got a guffall out of that? Is that a Colombo? Is that a Peter Falk. Choice is that a Magoon choice?

Is that a Jackson Gillis choice? And what's your read on it? It felt to me like Magooin had some sort of influence over Falk. I'm like, Peter, stick with Cassavetti, stick with Gazara, Stick with these guys. They're leading you down the right way.

If you want to challenge things that way, do not challenge them. As in, let's make the least entertaining episode of this show that we possibly can. It feels like that was the mission statement. Let's piss off the audience, Like I. Said end of the Prisoner, Let's just go ahead and just say fuck you, roll the die.

And yeah, I'm trying to remember which Mark Mallar comic it is, if it's kick Ass or if it's Wanted or whatever. But there's one graphic novel that he ends with the main character breaking the fourth wall and talking to the reader about basically what pieces of shit the readers are and how stupid they are. And I'm like, what are you doing? Why are you I bought this book, Why are you insulting me? Your reader?

You just wake up on the wrong side of the bed. This whole episode feels like this, this episode woke up on the wrong side of the bed. If the intention is to be subversive, at least be entertaining, because otherwise it just feels like you're coming out of left field, like you said, coming out of left field, and seems like you have what's the term, seems like you have a fucking bone to pick and it's an agenda. Yeah, And I'm like, what fucking agenda do we have with Columbo? Like I don't want to reveal who the villain is in the first twenty minutes.

Jackson Gillis probably said, I hate that we have to reveal who the villain is at the beginning of the episode, And so in me hating it, I'm going to do something completely different. And because I have been trusted enough by the creators of the show previously to write for this character, they are going to give me free reign to write for this character again. Literally, that should not have been the case, because this is not a good episode. And Jackson Gillis's other episodes have been fun, they have not been affronts to good sensibility like this episode. But not everything that anyone writes is going to be the best foot forward.

This just seems like we've already alluded to it. It seems like there was an intention here that I don't I don't think is necessary with the show like Columbus. You want to do something like that, there are shows that are on TV at the time where you can go and just do a very stereotypical murder mystery who on it? Like? You don't have to go and make a show fit into a very narrow box that you want it to be part of.

What a shame, What a weird way to end the fifth season. What a bad taste to leave in our mouths. If you want some entertainment, I would recommend going over to the Columbo file and reading that review of it. It's as acerbic as ours was, if not more. He put a lot of words into this very well written stuff.

This is an episode that gets what it deserves. It is asking to be like again, it's painting a target on its forehead, willingly like, punch me in the fucking face please again? Like you want to subvert expectations. Cool, don't be surprised if people don't like the episodes. Yeah, and I wish there were more folkisms only because maybe that would redeem the episode a little bit.

But I think in the grand scheme of things, I'm glad that this episode is only an hour and a half because just give us, what if it was a two hour episode one top everything else? Fuck off? You are doing that. No, I'm good, Please don't subject me to that. So there are some benefits here that the way they subverted expectations weren't completely off the rails.

But I'm sorry that we had to watch this together. But you've been dreading this day since the moment we started this show. Like you said, I've made no bones about it. Now, literally since we started this fucking season, like five six months ago, whatever the fucking was at this point. The next episode of Colombo that we get to is it's going to redeem this one because it's so good.

Oh good, at least in my mind, it's that good. It's the first of two appearances of William Shatner. Oh no, you're in the rocket Man himself. He's here in the NBC years. He also comes back for one in the ABC years as well.

But before we do that, there's a couple of things that we should probably watch because around this time, Peter Falk was in a TV movie. Now, I've never seen this in the This is very unusual for me as far as like these two titles. So first we're going to talk about the TV movie he made called Griffin and Phoenix, and then after that we're gonna look at Elaine May's Mikey and Nicky. So it's actually going to be paired with Cassavetti's in a movie directed by Elaine May. And just having these two amper sayan joined titles is strange, but hey, let's do it.

Let's dive into those and take a look at that stuff. So, yeah, take a little bit of a break, definitely try to wash the taste out of our mouth with this Commodore episode. Holy fucking shit, we're the worst. Thing we've watched on this show. And I think that would surprise people because we have watched something that I think most people would gladly drag, which is Kirky Romano, which looks like a fucking masterpiece compared to this piece of shit.

It's chef's kiss to this. Yho. This is this really is an affront to the good will that this show is built up. Really, Yeah, oh my gosh, So I'm glad we made it through this. I'm glad you didn't lose your fucking mind, because I felt like I was losing my goddamn mind the other day when I was.

Watching this, I watched it three times. Holy fuck yeah, and one of those times with my girlfriend and she was just like, what's wrong with this episode? And I was like, I don't know. It feels like it showed up from a mirror universe. Right in the universe where someone doesn't know how to write this show.

In the multiverse, there's a version of Colombo that was written and directed by really stupid people, and this is the result. Not only that, but also again, we know that at some point somebody looked at Peter Fake and said, are you okay with this? And he was just like Robiley, like, I don't know if Peter Fall could have even fought hard enough to stop this vote from running ashore on the banks. But you know what, fine, oh man, Mike, I'm so ready to never have to talk about this again. We'll bring it up everyone.

Remember its fucking shared trauma. Now the low Water Mine I'm bonded by. How aw fucking full this episode is. My God, It's a link of a movie Mike, it's an hour and a half. To At least they didn't try to release this in it or something.

At least there's not some sort of Italian poster for this, Thank god. Luta Mossaluta a la camadora. With international superstar Dennis Duke, It Playboy, the. Eighties, The Love Dennis du Again. They can't get enough of the Big D, the Double D, the Double D.

Dennis dug canna have everybody? Uh, Chris, when you're not pretending to be drunk and embarrassing yourself in a cocktail lounge, what are you up to these? Oh? My god, boy? If I weren't doing that right now, what could I be doing otherwise with my time?

No? You can find me over at weirdingwaymedia dot com, where all the shows that I work on can be found, including this one and the Culture Cast and I shall but the projection ruths him to tie, and I'm on midnight viewing from time to time. I guess technically we're co hosts run that show. So I prattled on long enough. Those are the places you can find me.

What about you, Mike? Yeah, I have to admit I laughed pretty hard when it came to the victim in this episode. Oh, we just saw him in Airplane too, That's right, and it was much better in that episode. I think everybody's been better in everything I've ever seen them in other than this. Under percent as far as me, yep, same thing.

Weirdowomedia dot com. Definitely come on over check out some of the other shows that we work on at it. There's The Feminine Critique, Twisted and Court. There's eighties TV Ladies, all kinds of good stuff out there for your entertainment. It doesn't just have to be about Chris and I, but it can be.

You could live your whole life just listening to me and Chris just pratt a lot about different things. We've got a lot of opinions, and we are not afraid to show up. Burn this. I'm sorry. This must never be seen.

By anyone. Technicality inw