Make Me a Perfect Murder

Welcome to the Shabby Detective, yet another Columbo podcast. I'm your host. Mike White joined me. Of course, is mister Christashue. Could be a concussion?

My doctor says he does not know. On this episode, we are talking about make Me a Perfect Murder. It is the third episode of the seventh season, directed by your old friend James Frawley. Came out February twenty fifth, nineteen seventy eight. It is a ninety seven minute episode and my god, you can feel the padding so much, including the opening scene this one.

I had the pleasure of reading the script for none of this shit with the quote unquote high speed chase and Colombo getting in the neck brace. None of that was in here. Can you believe it? Chris? I wonder why?

So? It does absolutely nothing to help move the story along. Is this the worst episode of Colombo? Come on, don't forget about the commodore here. Thank you for forcing me to remember.

This One's not great. No, it's not. I was just editing our last episode and I ended that episode saying I don't remember anything about this one, and I'll tell you. When this started, I go, oh, the gun in the elevator, So I remember the last five minutes of this episode. That's about it has.

We are just recycling from earlier episodes. I'm surprised you didn't get Chuck McCann back to be the projectionist. This is right out of that. I'm surprised that they didn't use subliminal messages to get her to think about the gun and the elevator. Yeah.

I'm disappointed Robert Culp isn't in this one as well, given the I mean again the screening of the movie of it All, because wasn't that also, Yeah, well that was the Robert Colp thing with Chuck mccannon. So yeah, I'm more disappointed we didn't invite Father Malone to be on this episode with us, given he was supposed to be on that one. This is the only other projection Booth episode I'm assuming. I do like that we get to hear someone say the projection booth at one point in this episode, which is nice. If you ever want to mine another one, Mike, there you go.

But yeah, this episode is not good. I did not really enjoy it a whole lot. And why Lady Kazan is in this episode is I was shocked that that went nowhere because I haven't seen an episode of the show where it has an extended subplot that goes nowhere. This is the first. This this episode is pretty bad.

Yeah, it has absolutely nothing to do with the plot. And we get the return of Patrick O'Neil, who we saw as a murderer. He murdered Forrest Tucker and tried to bury his body and the building that they were setting up. And here he is again as this high powered TV executive offering a job to who's at Lawrence, Luck and Bill, And this episode is basically addressing the glass ceiling, but not doing a very good job at it because the person who's not getting a job she doesn't really seem very qualified at all. Like when they run the movie that she thinks is going to really help out the network, it tanks and she's also a murderer.

Not only does a tank, but it's blamed directly on her for tanking. It is directly your fault for this film taking. Like I mean, that is in a way how the process and system works, but it is not one singular person's decision. The way that film and TV likes to break itself down, I think that's the way I look at it. Like film and TV likes to simplify its own process for theatrics and dramatics.

But it's not this simple, and it's never it never is. There are many hands in the pot. Go watch any documentary about failed films or successful films. They just one or two people. It's a whole bunch of people.

Yeah. Though you know the old saying what is a success has many fathers while failure only has one mother. That seems to be this. I was gonna say failure is an orphan even that's the one that I've heard, or you know, success has many fathers and failure has a guy sticking car keys in a tequila sunrise or a glass of grapefruit juice, I guess is what it is. I'm not sure what they're drinking.

To your point, it's almost like this episode did nothing to engage me, so I honestly, by the end of it, it was just like I couldn't care less about what's going on here. And Trisha van Dervert, she's fine, but we've seen better female killers in this show, and I would say the script does not suit her here. It's not really her fault. She's also post SYNCD through this entire thing, and you can just hear it so much like whenever Colombo talks, he's pretty much that live audio. Whenever she talks, it is one post sync sound.

I don't know what happened, why they read her redo reloop all of her lines, but they sure did, and man it is very distracting. Yeah, it doesn't help out an already poorly written performance, you know. And again it's on the page that it's the problem. It's not her performance that's the issue. Like she's a great actress, obviously she's George c Scott's widow.

And noticed it in a couple spots curious your thoughts, the George c Scott cameo that supposedly is here, but maybe is here that doesn't. Actually, I don't know if you found anything more about that than I could, but it's said that it's possibly the case, but it was maybe not the case. It shows up on the Wikipedia at least one or two other places. So the only thing that I noticed was another thing from the Wikipedia that this is the last episode to feature Mike Lally, who I didn't realize we have seen him on screen twenty eight times by this point. I have never noticed this man, he's the guy who in this episode comes in and looks he's a security guard and he's looking at a magazine.

I believe it is very, very quick little thing. But he's been in, like I said, twenty eight episodes. He just shows up, usually in the background, maybe has a line or two, and I'm just like, wow, another one in Columbo's Friends or Peter Falk's Friends that I just never noticed was here. As opposed to Bruce Kirby, who is in another completely unnecessary's seen what is this shit with dog likes to watch television. I don't have a fucking like is you know what?

And this is this is the thing that I wonder like it wouldn't have been better at times to lean more into this with Colombo. No, like no, he does not work as this kind of character for me, like you know. And that's that's the thing I've wondered, because you know, when we talk about a show that's adjacent to this one in a way, Poker Face, those moments in that show work like the kind of connected mythos of the show I think actually works in this show. I don't really have any interest of seeing Colombo doing things outside of pace driven stuff. Not because Peter folks not interesting, but because every time they've done it, for the most part, it's not interesting, and especially more you know, more recently of late, it's really not interesting when we into these scenes.

I for one, am disappointed because early on in the run of this show we had Tim Carey with Colombo talking about bowls of chili and that, you know, we've referenced that god knows how many times at this point, but the show itself just seems like it can't be bothered anymore to do anything like that. But hey, he's whistling this old man, Mike. I know that you had mentioned that the show was going to take a turn and that the show was going to have this moment where things started to hit the wall as it were, creatively, and I didn't expect it to be so drastic. But it does almost feel like this show is being written by people who watched the show when it was on the first six seasons up into this point, but aren't nearly as talented as the people who were writing before.

It's readily apparent because the show's quality has really, I hate to say this, but plummeted in the last two seasons but really this season, it's like it's a stark contrast from even something like, like you said, Last Loute to the Commodore, Like I would rather have that than this, genuinely because at least that episode, at least. That episode still feels like Colombo. But it doesn't. It's got that whole weird shit where he's trying to meditate and he's like laying down on the dock and everything. Next minutes shorter, there is that Chris in Last Flute to the Commodore.

You don't get the ballet of sine waves that we have for probably six minutes in this episode. This goes on for fucking ever. No kidding, no kidding, Yeah, it's I genuinely am jocked by the level of weird shit that this episode tries to pass off as interesting. And that's the stuff with Laney Kazan is up there like sine wave things is up there like I and again, you know, we go back to the cameras of it all. There's this moment where she is talking Trish Vandvir is talking with Colombo and she's in the booth and he's trying to get her to come out and she's switching between all the cameras and I feel like I'm gonna throw up.

It's so overwhelming visually what's going on, Like, I'm not sure who this episode is for, because I know that they're trying to make this like again a very very much like a technology thing, like lean into the technology of the times and this is seventy eight. But I'm not super interested in them remining the same ground again of you know, utilizing cameras and in the projection booth, you know, changing the the reels and stuff like, yeah, it was interesting when you did it last time, but it's not interesting enough for you to validate doing it a second time. It's really not. This is probably one of the more sloppy murders, you know, maybe maybe as sloppy as Ruth Gordon, but like this whole thing, like everything just points against her, right, it's super.

Obvious who is committed this crime from the moment he steps on screen. There's the whole thing about the glove and how tidy the guy runs his projection booth and you know, what is this glove doing here? And then there's like, well, of course there's a talk about you know, my my wife's nephew wants to be a filmmaker, YadA YadA, And at least we have a little bit of that stuff, but I still don't get the whole thing of like the changeover, that she screwed up the changeover, and he doesn't realize that until he's at Bruce Kirby's television repair place and watching the movie on TV. Like we were talking last episode about the well, shouldn't he catch something on television or rerun? Oh that's what it was of the Gourmet talking about blowfish on television.

And then you know, like coming back to that like this whole like, oh, she made the change over two seconds early. That never adds up to anything, but yet they treat it like it's this huge revelation, whereas really I think what sinks her the most is having her dry cleaning delivered to the dead man's house. And that's what tips off Colombo, Like, Colombo, were you not going to do any sort of forensic accounting and find out that this guy had bought a car for this woman and that they were bumping uglies all the time? I mean, of course, like when we first see him, he's laying on the couch with the script, with his glasses up and just is recreating this crime and kind of throws her off almost immediately.

And then he starts talking about, oh, it's like the little voice in your head, and he's obviously making a reference to her listening to that tape of her own voice, which is a weird conceit of her counting off the time that she has to do this crime. But that never comes back. He never finds the tape, So why is he even bringing that up? The way that he ultimately catches her is so it's so lazy because the ways that you just mentioned were so much more interesting. Is it even explained how they see the gun in the elevator?

Is it even is it even explain how the gun in the elevator is addressed and how Columble finds it all of a sudden, it's like, there's the gun in the elevator. No, he does, he gives it. He does the classic screenwriting thing. He tells he doesn't show because he says, oh, yeah, it must have moved because of the elevator having a bumpy ride or something. And I'm like, what, Like, it's.

So unbelievably lazy that we don't actually get an explanation as to how the gun is found. But the gun ends up being the thing that sinks her because the gun is up there. She is in the elevator with Colombo at one point. It's and it's what's so lazy about this scene for me, is at one point Columbu's looking at her and it's a reverse shot of her looking at him, and she literally looks up her eyes look up at the gun, and it's like Columba would have seen her do that. And if they had said that was why the gun was found, Okay, got it.

I understand. It's never explained how they found the gun. We just like you said here from Colombo. Oh, by the way, we found the gun. We took the gun down, put another gun up there, and put a camera and filmed it.

And then you went and came and took it and then it was gone, so we knew it was you. Like, Okay, fine, I can believe that. However, I need a better explanation as to how you got to that point because you're not giving me much to work with here. And you just gilded the lily a little bit there because you said, oh, they took a camera and filmed her no, it was still images, like had they had a video camera in the elevator to be like, here, here's the fucking footage of you fishing that gun. No, no, but it was.

It's that worst thing, like you said, it's worse than that because it's the they went They were doing it to show what they were doing when Colombo puts the gun in there, and then they film it after just because she was there. It's like, okay, so like you already knew, you know what it is. It's those fucking keys from Ruth Gordon's yard. You know. It's the Oh we took a picture of this sprinkler.

Oh, and here it is again with the keys now and in this case it's the absence of the gun instead of the appearance of the keys. Again, like this is like you mentioned so much a we've seen this before. I don't know why we're needing to see it again because this is a murder mystery. Like, let's just take a step back, right, this is a murder mystery show. So you can continue to do the same kind of things over and over again, but you have to dress them up in a different way as to not feel trite, because if you have a murder like this with project like, this is an oddly specific thing again to do.

You could set this anywhere, and they're choosing to set it here in this way to do this. It's like, I don't understand why we keep coming back to these same like five or six stomping grounds when the world is so open for this show with a murder mystery. You want there to be some variety. That's where these things become interesting, not because you're doing the same thing over and over again. That feels lazy comparatively, like that feels like late season Murder, she wrote with Jessica Fletcher, where it's so lazy that she, you know, Angela Lansbury is just like and while I'm off doing something else, here's another episode where I'm building it and get money, but I don't actually have to star in it.

Like that's like, that's what we're talking about, Like lazy where you just don't want to write anything at all. I get it, But this is like, why are we just doing this oddly specific thing again? It doesn't really serve a purpose. Coms in, she flips the projectors, we do the whole real switch. She takes off her glove, she just throws her glove away.

She doesn't even put it in her fucking pocket. And then that glove, she never picks it up. It's just laying there on the floor. I mean, it's just one sloppy move after another after another after another. And then when the news starts to close in on her towards the end of the show, she's freaking the fuck out.

Her shows up with the license plate a number one. She runs away like she's the most guilty person I've ever seen on a Columbo show. It's almost comical how guilty she makes herself look by just making herself look guilty. I don't know how to explain it, Like she's making herself look guilty by making herself look guilty, like by just acting like someone who murdered the person there investigating the murder of. And I can't believe I'm going to this level.

But some of the first production design that I've seen, like that CNC, which I guess is there, you know, station instead of CBS at CNC, and that logo is plastered everywhere, and I'm just like, if I was in the CNC office, I'm sure that they have posters of other shows that they would be running. But they never really show anything other than yeah, the Lady Kazan stuff, which it just feels like asked off from Scrooge to the way that they're shooting this thing. Interesting to see Ron Rifkin, young Ron Rifkin, and here as the director of that. Who I guess is he supposed to be kind of a Spielberg stand in? Are they still mining that thing where we're making references to Spielberg.

I don't know. I don't know who that's I guess, if I have any guests, it is probably Spielberg. But they don't do anything with it. And they don't talk about other shows that are on the network or ratings or this or that. So many opportunities to do tongue in cheek stuff and they just let those opportunities go whistling by, And I don't understand why.

Again, I don't understand why unless it's just chalked up to the lack of quality writing at this point. And I think when we talk about a show like this with the quality of writing, I think what stands out is your ability to write Colombo as a character and then put him in a world that makes sense for that character to be and because you're building the world around the character. And I think that's the right way to do it, because these kinds of characters often have to live in a specific kind of world where sometimes certain kinds of rules that exist in our real world don't necessarily matter. We've talked about this so many times with Colombo and maybe has made our audience a little frustrated at us.

But these people are not going to jail after the credits. Oh, she says that. But this is one of the few times where we get in an emission of that which almost again to go against the logic of this show. There's a level of fantastical realism here where they're admitting to Colombo at the end of the episode that they have done the murder, and in the court of public opinion of this show, that's enough. But we have joked about it multiple times that if that's the case, there's just a wing of the of a you know, San Quentin with all these people that have been put there by Colombo, which is not the case in reality.

Most of these people would probably be suing the LAPD for entrapment because this guy is using evidence and in some of these people are entrapped. Some of these people would never go to prison, wouldn't stay a day in jail, because the evidence that Colombo has even to catch them at the end is circumstantial. Not all of them admit and confess to him directly. Plenty of them don't confess directly. They are just caught in a lie and then they admit it for the sake of the narrative on the TV show.

But my point being like, this episode tries to have a real where it's like, I'm going to fight this. It's like, what, That's not part of this show's makeup. That's not how this show works. At the end of the show, it's assumed that you are going to jail because Colombo has passed judgment on you. And that's the world that Colombo lives in as a character, and it works.

That's the world that's been constructed around him by Lincoln Levinson initially, and it worked. But when you try to picket that stuff, it doesn't work. And that's why I think partially this episode doesn't work for me is that the people who wrote it don't understand the character and really don't understand how he interacts in the world that he is occupying because you have to write to the character. You can't write around the character. You have to write to him, especially if he's this specific of a kind of character.

But hey, Mike, he's whistling that old man once again. Well, I wonder if her fighting it that little speech at the end. I wonder if we're supposed to sympathize with her because of her being over for this promotion. I don't know. I wonder if that's some sort of like it's interesting, like she We've talked so many times before about criminals who tried to help out Colombo or who tried to wrong foot him with different things, and in this one, she's got one thing.

When Columbo comes in to her office, she brings out this big old folder of crank letters which are talking about, you know, all the violence on TV and how these people are so angry and how they're going to go after this guy and like, oh, yeah, he had tons of enemies. And here we are, just what three months ago, we're talking about the storyteller and talking about violence on TV. And you've got the projectionist here talking about like, oh I turned on TV and this guy was going to shoot himself in the head and we get that constantly and the professional it looks like a very very violent show, and I'm just like, Okay, well, there's your opportunity to actually talk about violence on television. Also there's your opportunity to take swipes at a producer and the fickle nature of television.

Like you, this should be a very meta episode where you're talking about ratings and maybe even go back to that thing we talked about with William Shatner where it's just like, this guy gets away with everything, and just like, really make it pointed about Colombo, or make it pointed about the producers, and maybe talk about, you know how shitty some of the producers are. Take aim at somebody that you have, but they don't want to do anything. It's like, there's no teeth to this dog's mouth. It's just chompinhatch and you're just like, what else you got paled? There's nothing there.

It's even worse than that because they also approach the opportunity and miss it completely to talk about, like you mentioned in the opening of this episode, the glass ceiling. Because again we have female characters Trish Van Derveer and Laney Gazon, which again Laney is On is criminally criminally wasted in this episode, because hey, playing drunk Mike your favorite. I know, you know how much I love. That playing it just you know, like the most obvious drunk of drunks. She might as well be drinking out of a jug that says triple X on it, you know, is really that it's really that lazy.

H Meanwhile, they've got the cartoon musical. Lady Kazan is tripping and falling all over herself in a way that is, you know, very lazy in terms of writing drunk characters. But all that to be said, it's more of an issue that you have two female characters, one who is meant to be a successful singer who is again being just criminally underwritten or written I guess criminally underwritten or written poorly, depending on how you want to look at it. And then you have Trish Vanderveer, who, like we said, she is passed over by a promote for a promotion by an asshole man who just think, goes here, honey, here's a car as opposed to a promotion, which, by the way, ain't enough that yeah, that those two things are not equal at all, And instead of, like you've said, addressing it in terms of dealing with the glass ceiling.

They kind of talk about it for about a second, get uncomfortable with the idea of having a genuine conversation about it, and then just ignore it for the rest of the episode. And that's a bummer because for me, you have an opportunity here. If you're not going to do the movie TV producing angle, do that angle, because that's an easy layup of an opportunity to take to task the industry, and you know, you know, maybe have her get away with it. Maybe don't make her so kind of reprehensible as a character, Maybe make her a little bit more sympathetic. I don't know, just don't do this this being nothing at all and kind of just feeling like a waste of an hour and a half.

That's the This is one of the worst hour and a half I've spent in a while. That's how bad this episode is, genuinely. And with Lady Kinzan, she didn't have to be drunk. She could have just been quote unquote difficult. Because there have been so many actresses that are considered difficult, and it's probably because they have a fucking brain in their head and want things the way that they want them.

I'm always concerned and always questioning when I hear about specific actresses where it's just like, oh, yeah, they're very difficult to work with, And I'm like, are they difficult or do they actually want something and they aren't being given what they want? You know, Like I think of Linda Fiorentino. Maybe she's a bitch on wheels. Maybe she's just wants things the way that she wants it. I don't know, but yeah, she didn't have to be a drunk.

She could have had some other problem. I don't know, but yeah, they really and they don't do krish Van Devere any favors either, because she treats sex so transactional because basically she just is like, well, I was giving you this, like pointing at her crotch, basically like I'm giving you this, you know, puppy ray here, where's the job? And it's just like, oh wow, that's really cold, and like again, they're not doing anything to make me like this woman, even though I kind of want to like. And the other thing that really was driving me crazy is how in awe Colombo is about real changes when he's seen that twice now between Chuck McCann, the whole nickel and the projector thing, and then also the Forgotten Lady.

Like I thought, you know, when he sees the glove and he says like, oh, did somebody make a splice? Somebody fix the film? I'm like, yeah, remember when Janet Lee was fixing the film and that the whole time differential, like how she ran out and did the murder and then came back and had to splice the film and put it back on and all those things he knew about real changes back then. Why is this suddenly new information for him? There's no consistency in this character.

Well, that was the other question I was going to ask, because, like you just mentioned, there are opportunities to mention the things we've seen before, and there's none of it. If you're not gonna do it sometimes, don't do it other times. But that's again the problem here. Robert Bleese's script and this episode it's not written by other people. It's written by Robert Blees.

So there you go. If he doesn't want to, he's not going to. And if it wasn't a requirement from you know, those on high as it were, the powers that be they're not going to include it because what does it ultimately matter, not at all, especially you know, not at the time that was not the expectation. Now, we'd like for that to be the case, because we'd like for there to be some consistency. We'd like for the people who are working on the show then to be held to the same standard we hold people to now.

But I just don't think people put the same expectation on content. And that's unfortunate because, like you said, we get stuff like this where it's just lazy. But you when you make something, you should expect that it's not You should expect and want for it to stick around for more than after it's done airing. And so you know, with something like this, it's just like, man, you had an hour and an give me and you an hour and a half to do Colombo. Like, seriously, give anybody at the time an hour and a half.

But this is just not not a best foot forward in any capacity, not at all. That whole thing with the neck brace was we don't see Colombo until thirty minutes into this episode. We have to get him in sooner, and then the neck brace just he keeps having misunderstandings that people are talking about something else. They're talking about the murder and he's talking about his neck brace. I'm like, oh my god, please please for me.

I you know, I know, I know you said, oh this is you know, Commodore, that a worse episode. I think that this is worse in a different way. This is worse than the I don't understand what makes this show good, and I am on the way out like the Commodore. The problem with the Commodore obviously was that the Commodore was in you know, season five. So where there are still some good episodes, the good episodes have been kind of at a premium at this point.

I'm not expecting to get a lot of good episodes moving forward given what you've said. So this being kind of not great, I guess is the new expectation. If not the kind of the norm that we're gonna get moving forward, we're gonna get people who don't understand the character, not writing the character very well. And are you familiar with the term dead pat bounce? No, okay, I think it comes from maybe a financial thing, like when you're looking at a stock that's coming down and coming down and then right at the end, it does a little bounce, comes back up and then goes down.

Like a corpse shutter, like a little like you know, okay, okay, god, yeah, yeah, I get it now. In my opinionet our next episode, How to Dial a Murder, also directed by James Frawley. By the way, I think that's the dead cap bounce of this season of Colombo. It's been a while since I've seen it, but it's Nicole Williamson as our criminal, and I seem to remember liking it quite a bit. I want to say, maybe even at Begley Junior comes back in the next episode, which which is nice, Oh nice, okay, but yeah, I'm curious, and then after that flatline, if anything, it's it's a negative.

The last episode, surprisingly, Colombo goes out on the wettest of wet farts you can possibly like, you better check your pants, buddy, because this really is not good. It's it's that scene from what was the Johnny Knoxville Bad Grandpa movie or Old Grandpa whatever that was. I get that mixed up with the Robert de Niro one and Grandpa. Yeah, it's it's when he sharts on the wall, like that's the conspirators, but I think we have a good one next month when we talk about how to dial a murder. Well, I was gonna say Nicol Williamson is a great actor, but I do have belief of a dead cat bound.

You know, there's always the outlier, as it were in the in the final you know, in the in the final waning moments. You know, there's often a last gasp moment with shows, especially shows like this, where there's not any connective tissue, where every every episode can be different. I mean that's the thing. You know, this is a anthology show with a character who shows up from episode to episode, but this is ultimately an anthology show. And we've spent a lot of time with anthology shows, just not in this format.

I mean, this is the closest you get to in horror. Anthology that's not horror is murder mysteries, especially with this format, and so it's not surprising. It's disappointing. But if this were a serialized show, then I think we'd be having a much different conversation because rarely with serialized shows, in the late seasons, when the show starts really struggling to be successful in any capacity, most of the time. At that point, it's like there's nothing anybody can do to write the ship here.

Like with a show like this, there's still plenty of runway for people to have good episodes. So I'm excited, and I'm sure there will be as we continue past this season, some possible dead Cat bounces of their own. But yeah, this is not it. This is this is the dead cat. This is the dead cat going out the window.

Really, I was gonna ask you, because you know you mentioned the conspirators, so obviously that's the That's a pretty poor episode. I'm assuming if you could have had this show end, would you have had it end at season four or season five? Oh boy, Now I gotta go back and look at season five and see what's is the patient worth saving? Do? He's in five ends with the Commodore.

Season four ends with Deadly State of Mind. Now I do like a Case of Immunity. I think I liked that one more than you, and I liked A Matter of Honor, the one with Ricardo Montlebon, and I like now you see him the Great Santini with Jack Cassidy. I think I would have stopped. Well, got that.

That means the last Salute to the Commodore would have been the last episode. I think that's okay, because I don't think that's the one where Colombo is rowing out to see at the end, but it might as well have been. Yeah, that's tough, man. I think I might have. I think I might like Last Salute to the Commodore better than the Conspirators.

I'm not sure. I think unless the Conspirators is somehow, I mean, I guess it could be worse than Yeah, I think. I mean, I guess it can be worse is my expectation. So I'm kind of with you. I haven't I would come at it from a different angle.

We haven't really seen any episode since the Last Loud to the Commodore that have been like this is worth saving out of this bunch. And that's too bad, because again this show, there's no guarantee that episode episode they needed to be bad, but they've just been kind of lackluster. And it's such a disappointment because yes, we get to see more Peter Folk as Colombo, but at some point that is even going to stop being a thing that is something we care about, unfortunately, and I know that's coming. Two episodes with. Season six, It gives you, it gives you bye by Skyhigh IQ Murder Case, which has that incredible performance by Jamie Lee Curtis but really good Theodore bikel But that also gives us fade into Murder, which is one of my favorite episodes.

So I would probably cut it off after season six. Yeah, oh yeah, okay. I mean that does have that horrible old fashioned murder in the middle of there, but it's just those three episodes. Yeah, I could really do even with the one that we talked about last time with Luijor Nan, I we could do without that. I would be willing to sacrifice that if it meant season seven never existed.

Season seven has been quite a tough one, and I'm I'm not surprised. You had kind of alluded to as much, you know, several times in the early runnings of this show, but this has been a pretty drastic drop off, and it's unfortunate because it feels just very much treading water, spinning wheels however you want to look at it. But that doesn't seem to be a whole lot of competency at the wheel here with the script. Everybody, I think in front of the cameras being asked to do whatever they're doing, whatever they're being asked to do, just fine. But the script writing at this point is just you know that, that's where this is failing.

Nothing else is really like I mean, yeah, there's other stuff that's not great, but if this is not short up in the script, these episodes are just going to be pretty rough, and they have been. At least we've got a the script for this season. We do have how to Dial a Murder, so I will be reading that one before we venture into that next episode. But yeah, until we come back and we do some dog training, Chris sweat you up to these days? Just a podcast in over at weirdingwaymedia dot com where you can hear this show and all the other shows that I work on, but more importantly, listen to the shows I'm not on, like eighties TV Ladies, Rejection Booth, Midnight Viewing.

Yeah, there's a lot of things over there. Just go go on over there, take a listen. In some cases, take a look. If you're looking for midnight Viewing, there's a video component to that as well. And yeah, that's where you can find all the stuff that I work on.

What about you, Mike White. Yeah, pretty much the same thing. Did you mention ranking on Bond, the once a month exclusive that we do at our patreons where we talk about James Bond. We are just about to wrap that up. We'll still be talking about Colombo, but we probably won't be talking about James Bond too much longer.

Well, boy, we're just about to get into Specter, So I'm on by and enjoy that at patreon dot com slash Projection Booth or patroon dot com slash Culture Cast and just hear all about being cuckoo James, cuckoo, cuckoo James, cuckoo cuckoo James