Mrs. Columbo

Welcome to the Shabby Detective, yet another Colombo podcast. I'm your host, Mike White, You and me, of course, is mister Chris Tashue. We've asked ourselves if there was a Missus Colombo on many episodes, and god, we didn't need the answer, but apparently we did. Yes, we've braved the world of Missus Colombo. No, we're not talking about all of Missus Colombo, not all thirteen episodes split out over two seasons, which seems pretty skint.

The first season was only five episodes long, and I don't think that these are all hour and a half episodes because the one we watched was about what forty five minutes? Forty five minutes. Yeah, we went through or I went through, and Chris was kind of enough to support my decision. I went through all of the ratings of Missus Columbo, the TV series that ran to ish seasons way back in nineteen seventy nineteen nineteen eighty. It debuted in February of nineteen seventy nine.

I believe that Peter Falk didn't want to have this happen. I don't think Lincoln Levinson wanted to have this happen, but it happened anyway, mostly because of Fred Silverman, who was a big shot at I Believe CBS, and then Richard Allan Simmons, who has been the showrunner that we were decrying over the last season of Proper Colombo. So I went through all of IMDb. I said, give us the best episode of Missus Colombo that we can watch. The one that came up to the top was the fifth episode of the second season, and it is called A Chilling Surprise, aired November twenty second, nineteen seventy nine, directed by Phil Leacock and written by E.

Arthur Keen. And the biggest thing for this one for me was Armanda Sante. Isn't it so you know we're coming up on big, big celebrities when Armanda Sante is right there in the middle of this episode, Chris, what did you think of a Chilling Surprise? I'd like to point something out for those of you playing along at home with us, This is not Missus Colombo. This is what would the show's name have been at this point, Kate Loves a Mystery or Kate the Detective, because she's not even called Missus Colombo in this episode.

Yes, Missus Columbo flashes on the screen at the beginning of the episode, but she's not referred to as Missus Columbo. She's Kate Callahan, which is not Colombo's name. Clearly, this is really bad in like a way that bad TV is bad. It feels like forty minutes of a waste of time. Kate mulgrew is given very little to do.

Shockingly, Armand de Santi is in it sure to what end, I guess is the real question. He's I would say, the most charming part of the episode in an otherwise kind of flat episode. This is such a derivative take on Colombo. This is so lazy and not at all interesting that it's insulting that this is Colombo or even Colombo adjacent because all they're doing is trafficking in the name Colombo. That's it.

And they're not even trying to hide it. No, absolutely, and this is not a how catchem This is a who done it? And they are really pointing all fingers toward Armanda Sante to the point where I'm just like, obviously he could not have done it, just because everything is pointing. There's a big flashing sign over his head that says guilty and I just yeah, it was so cut and dry that I was like, this is not how we run these shows. There's obviously somebody else moving things around, and he's coming up the works and everything is pointing towards the Sante.

But even though he normally plays villains, at least that's how I see him. I mostly associate him still with Rico Judged Fred's brother from that horrible Judge Dread movie. But he may. Man I have. Back in the day we got to interview Armanda Santi because of Judge Dread.

Nice. Oh wow, he's a nice guy. He's just kind of given a raw deal here because this episode is poorly written and uninteresting, and the framing device that they use, which is to say no framing device at all, is just it's nothing. It's not You could have named this whatever, and they did. That's that's the unfortunate part is it ends up being so not Columbo that they can literally rename it whatever they want and try to pass it off as not Colombo.

I'm very curious if there are versions of this that have the other title to it, because yeah, for sure, by this time in the second season, they were not calling this missus Columbo. Anymore. But like you said, the version we watched has a Missus Columbo tag on here, so as best I can figure out, she is now a reporter, not a housewife. She's a reporter. She works at a paper, and Henry Jones, one of the greatest character actors, he's her editor.

And then Don Stroud because we always have this relationship where it's the reporter with the cop and the cop doesn't believe the reporter. And in this era, and really, since I've been alive, it's the whole thing of you should probably listen to the person who actually can back up their story. Otherwise, especially when it comes to women, it's what a hysterical jerk this person is. They're lying, there's no way that this is the truth. And she gets caught in that what twice, This whole body moving thing keeps happening to her and everybody just doubts what is going on, and they just make her seem like she's being gas lit.

Does that make for a fun episode? No, not really. I was really paying attention to how the other women characters are being portrayed in this episode, which I guess it's just the way that my brain works now looking at something from nineteen seventy nine and being like, Okay, well, how did they actually treat these female characters? How many of them are just purely sex objects? But then the main sex object is actually the head chef, which was interesting.

I was happy about that. And there is one woman who is really casting doubt with Kate, but then later is oh, actually I understand what you're saying, and that kind of switches. But then, of course, towards the end, it's a woman that kind of sells out Kate because once she goes looking for the safety deposit box, and we'll talk a little bit more about the plot, she ends up calling somebody. This woman at the bank calls somebody who says, you wanted to know when ever somebody asked about this safety deposit box? Have I got a story for you?

So it's a woman that sold you out? What the hell? Kate? Yeah, aren't the optics of that strange? It is?

And I'm glad that I'm a jerk enough woke enough to pay attention to that stuff. But I feel it's very important, especially when looking back at old media and seeing like how people were being portrayed, even in a quote unquote modern era, like nineteen seventy nine, and. I'm with you on that. I'm disappointed we don't get to see the how the hell do they make this work? That she's a housewife solving murders or crimes.

I'm disappointed we don't get to see that because this is just a very basic, straightforward workplace. Who done it? Really in a lot of ways, no different than Colchak or other shows like this we've watched where it's just this character is on the trail or on the hunt for something someone, and that's the entire show. It doesn't feel as structured as Colombo. It feels like this is a weird Colombo through a dark lens of someone who doesn't understand what made Columbo Colombo.

And instead of hanging their hat on their own thing, they could have done any number of things here, they don't do anything. They don't do anything interesting. I guess they do the here's how I think it happened, and they show like a reenactment of it, which reminded me a little bit. And I can't believe I'm comparing it to this to Hannibal with Will with Will Graham, not the movie, but the show where it's like he can see in his mind the thing's happening and he recreates it. That's maybe the most interesting thing that they do.

But even that's are they doing that in every episode? It is this her talent or her thing. If she's not a investigator and she's just a journalist, she doesn't need to have a thing like Colombo does. She could just be a reporter who's good at her job. Yeah, and there's a little irony as far as Don Stroud not believing her story, and then by the end he starts to get convinced by her story because we should say that the thing that is gaslighting her or wrong footing her is that she's friends with this restaurant entrepreneur guy and his partner is Armand de Sante.

The guy who the restaurant is, I believe is Nicholas Coster, who plays zev Arno. Quite a name, Nicholas Coster. You have seen him a thousand times. He was on Dallas for a long time that I remember, but he was Markham in All the President's Men. I think he was also on Next Gen for at least one episode.

Very very famous character actor. And he is complaining he doesn't feel well at this restaurant, and he goes out and Kate runs to get a doctor because he collapses, and when she comes back, he's nowhere to be found. And there's also this shadowy detective guy who's hanging out in the wings as well, so a lot of things are being thrown at him as far as oh, maybe he's the killer, but really everything just like I said, keeps pointing at Armanda Sante, who just see SEMs to be taking it. Every time he opens up his mouth, he seems to make himself more guilty. But yeah, eventually, don Stroud, the detective character, is just like, Okay, maybe I do believe you, Kate, like towards the end of the episode, and by that time she's like no, no, she never says you were right all along, but yeah, no, all of this stuff that I've been putting forward is not true, and it's actually this thing over here and it just doesn't do anything for their relationship.

And I'm just I'm so tired of these This is nineteen seventy nine. How long has this been going on? When it comes to the scrappy reporter or the scrappy female character, she could be, I don't know. Working for the Jeffersonian and doing a lot of things with bones, and then there's the FBI agent who doesn't believe her, but then they eventually have maybe a romantic thing. I don't know if she and Don Stroud of her romantic on this show, but it's all set up that way, especially that she has this and I don't think this is Columbo's daughter.

She has this daughter with her as well, and it's okay, so we're trying to create this nuclear family by having this. And you even have Dad, who's being basically played by the Henry Jones character, where he's the hermudgeny uncle. He's the Vincenzo to this whole thing. But even Vincenzo has a way better relationship Henry Jones. I don't know if he shows up in more episodes, but he's barely in this episode.

Yeah, he's barely in it, and he's really not given a whole lot to do, which seems like a shame for someone of his caliber in terms of actors. Exactly. Yeah, you would think like he would maybe be like the Watson to her Sherlock Holmes. There's usually a character like that. I think of, Oh gosh, I can't remember the Robert Sean Leonard from House, where he was always the one who talk with House towards the end and say something, and then House would glom onto it and have the big Eureka moment and have to storm out of the up.

He couldn't storm out because he was limping all the time, but he would limp out of the office and then go in and yell at the rest of the team and say, it's not lupus. And that's the thing for me, is like this show. And yes we only watched one episode, but this show I don't even think it could realistically ever get there. It doesn't. And you've mentioned him a little bit, and I think it's worth talking about the George Springer or the Don Stroud of it all?

Right, the Don Stroud of it all. In my mind, him and Kate mulgrew aren't bad together. But could that really that back and forth really sustain an entire show? I can't get that barely sustains in an episode an episode. Yeah, And I also feel like, and again this is to your point from before, I feel like, in my mind, if you're gonna have this kind of back and forth, will they won't they bullshit?

The two people have to be charismatic to begin with, and they're not. They're really not not at all together. Are they charismatic with one another? And I don't know what universe they saw the way that the two of them were together and were like, this is what we want to hang our hat on for this show is these two people together and they're like, weird. She has more chemistry with Armanda Santi.

Frankly, and he's only in the show for one episode. Ostensibly, I'm assuming it's only one episode. There's definitely a lot more because Armanda Sante feels very much alive and he's making a lot of interesting faces. But yeah, he just definitely has a lot of charisma and I've seen that in other films that has been in as well. Every time he's on screen, I'm interested in watching him every time that Don Stroud is on screen, and I do like Don Stroud for other things.

I want to say, he was in some biker films and some really good something yeah, yeah, yeah, I got that little Tarantino bump. But yeah, I think Django Unchained possibly was a reference to Angel Unchained, which he was in way back in nineteen seventy, So yeah, it was kind of nice to see him still show up, and he was in Hey, Licensed to Kill Too, which we talked about on our ranking on Bond podcast. I don't dislike Don Strout as an actor. I just don't think he's given anything to do here, no more than Kate Mulgrew is. And I think that that's the funniest part about this is how do you waste Kate Mulgrew, who would go on to have a massive television career.

Here's the thing. We know that Kate Mulgrew will go on to helm her own show and be the lead in a Star Trek spinoff. If you were to watch this, you would get none of that, literally, none of that. No, though, I really got mad at Kate Mulgrew when I finally watched the there was a documentary. I can't even remember if it was about Next Gen or if it was about Deep Space nine, but it was.

There were a lot of interviews with her, and there were clips of her making fun of Genevieve Boujeold, who was almost Captain Jane Way, and I'm just like, what are you doing? Why are you making fun of another actress who didn't get the role that you did have a little fucking Decorumoda. That's weird. Yeah, it's very weird. I was just like, this is strange.

Yeah, that's odd. Yeah, I have perceived Kate mulgrew not that way. So it's a little odd for me because, you know, I assume that she's not prickly like Shatner is, but maybe she is. Yeah, or maybe she just thought it was a hilarious thing, because I remember her saying, well, you know when uh chenev Boujeold said it, because she's got that thick French Canadian accent she said in gosh, And I'm like, what, really, what are you doing? Why do you have to make fun of the person that didn't get the role that you got?

Haha? Their life didn't change and mine did. Yeah. Yeah, that's kind of weird. Is weird?

Yeah, I mean the optics of this show are weird. I know that Colombo was a massive success and that people wanted more Columbo. We get that, right, and I understand that that's the reason behind the show. But this was not the best foot forward. I don't even feel like this was a genuine attempt and maybe maybe those first four or five episodes of that first season are much better.

But my god, this is one of the worst things I've ever watched for a podcast. It's just it's pedantic. It drags, and Kate mulgrew is not interesting, and the people in the episode are not interesting. It's about as cookie cutter as it gets, other than having Armanda Santi being the one who's ostensibly framed for everything. For forty five minutes, it felt like an hour and a half.

That's the worst thing about this is that, specifically, it drags so much that it feels three times the length. It's, oh God, like this is a forty minute episode of a show. It shouldn't be like this. This is actually the last thing this should be. Yeah, and it does.

It takes forever. I mean, there's like finding the restauranteur's dead body twice. First time, I guess he wasn't alive. Second time he was, and he kept waiting for there to be more of an aha, gotcha type of moment, but really it never ended up being there. If the guy hadn't eventually been killed for real, she never would have solved this case because she's there chasing her tail the whole time putting it together that this wouldn't have worked this whole like time delay because she gets gas light a second time, because she goes in, she finds the dead body in the freezer, and then comes out, calls her buddy, goes outside, allegedly is looking at the door, and in eight seconds, this whole thing takes place.

And I'm just like, eight seconds, that's your time estimate, and that's how long it took for this other murder to happen. That's pretty wild, But okay, we see that shadowy man. He ends up being in the meat locker afterwards, and they're just like, how could this have happened? And I have no idea, And then they start to try to recreate the crime and she's it's impossible, it's impossible, until she finally figures out like, oh, if I stood over here, if it was two people, then this might actually work out. But that doesn't really tell her obviously that guy was still alive.

Then it takes a while for her to find the get to that point. We were supposed to believe at one point that this is Colombo's wife who can can solve a murder. Aside from the fact that they essentially let her solve it by being stupid. I think it's I don't understand even what the point of having her be this inept is. If she's supposed to be Columbo's wife, Colombo is the least inept detective on TV and he and she is made to be a complete bumbling moron.

Yeah, I'm really curious how much they lean into her being Columbo's wife. Is that a thing that they have earlier in this show, because yeah, like she makes no mention of her husband at all in this It really feels like she's divorced because she's got her name and then she's got. Her daughter's for Don Stroud too. And yeah, her eyes for Don Stroud. I'm just like, Okay, I had to remind myself when I was watching it that this was a Columbo thing, oh, because I was like, why are we watching this?

Because this woman acts like she's not married because she's not missus Colombo, So what is even the point anymore? I understand and appreciate that they tried to fix it in the second season, but just don't even do a second season. This is not even well if we change the name, it's like an edge of tomorrow thing where it's like if we change the name, more people might show up. No, this is not good, and in it not being good, you can't name change fix anything. With thirteen episodes exactly.

That is an order for a mid season replacement with her showing up, the show showing up February of nineteen seventy nine, and then we're this episode that we're talking about is November of seventy nine. So they played, Okay, I'm looking at the dates here, so they start in February, they go feb March, March, March, March, March, and then it goes on hiatus. I feel like they just had a mid season replacement with her played the five episodes and then they said, you know what, we have the rest of this run. We should do that next season because then the next season, let's see, we start October, October, November, November, November, November, December, and then nothing until March. I can't even imagine how many people tuned out between December sixth and March nineteenth.

That's crazy. And that last episode also directed by e Arthur Keen, who goes by the name Alan Smithy in that last episode, so wasn't happy about it. It sounds that one is about a former Czechoslovakian freedom fighter who's now a chief suspect in the murder of a video dating service worker. Wow, well that sounds like a mad lib. If I've ever heard give me a country checko Slovakia, give me a job of your recording machine artists Czechoslovakia, and next immigrant murders of people?

Who what the fuck is this show? Seriously? What is this show? In a lot of ways, it's such a weird vestigial anomaly that still exists in the TV industry because if there's a fucking dune TV show that was not needed, is not interesting, could not have been any less of a fucking wet fart if you've ever heard one. And yet they're still doing it.

So they still are trying to ham fiss their way into people like X, so let's give them more of it. It's but you can't just hang your hat on that alone. I'm looking back through the first season, it looks like these episodes are also okay. So the pilot word Games that was an hour and a half. After that, it looks like they all switched to about forty five forty four minutes.

I'm looking at episode three, A Riddle for Puppets, which has the guy who was the ventriloquist on soap all those years ago. So I guess that was his shtick, was I'm gonna be on here. I think it's Jay Johnson had his puppet and yeah, showed up on this one as well. So yeah, and you mentioned Renee Abajonois was in an episode. I saw Ted Danson was in an episode.

So we had some decent guest stars in here. Obviously they're not pulling down Hollywood royalty like Colombo would, but some decent stars. And yeah, this was just a weird thing. So what I was trying to say before with the whole thirteen episode thing is I don't think that this was two seasons. I think this was one season.

They just split it up over basically a full year's time. It's smacks of something like you said, that existed for a singular purpose, and that's not to do anything other than further the Colombo brand make some money at old Hopefully maybe we can make something of this. Kate Mulgrew is lucky that she wasn't like I wouldn't say run out of town because of this. But Kate Mulgrew's lucky that her rear had a really high upside, because this is a really bad start to your career, like genuinely, and this is the thing. She doesn't look great in this either, so it's not well, she looks great, and it's just the writing like she's just kind of not given much to do and doesn't even really rise to the occasion either way.

And so I don't know, it's just you gotta wonder, you've really got a wonder. I know that they tried really hard in the days of Jony and Chachi and Happy Days and doing all that, but not every time you do it is gonna work. And boy, this is a good example of that. And there are plenty of these kinds of things. It's just for me, it feels really weird that Colombo has one, because Colombo is not a thing where I'm like, yeah, that's a thing that needs a weird Sideway sequel show, Like, not even remotely is this a thing like that.

It is just purely a money grab. They're like, oh cool, we can take Columbu and make this offshoot of it. So it looks like maybe they retooled it before that second season, because I'm looking at the credits for the first season, I'm seeing an empty ash tray with a cigar in it. I'm seeing dog, I'm seeing her. Basically, it's her hands moving all of these or an actress's hands moving all these things around.

And then we have her sit down at the typewriter again very a la bull chack. No scary monster frightens or her or anything. But even by the second episode we do have her in this opening sequence anyway, working at the newspaper. In this episode that I'm looking at, it must be from the French DVD set, because I think you told me recently that it was released in full on DVD in France and under that name it was Madame Colombo. So this episode two is lemisterre de Lily corde As opposed to murder as a parlor game.

Maybe the French love it just like they love Jared Lewis. I am glad that this show failed, but I want to say, and this is the thing we haven't talked about, and this is the thing I want to ask you. Was it not obvious to everybody involved how bad this was going to be? Because Peter Falk said, fuck you, I'm not doing this, and Lincoln Levinson said, fuck you were not doing this? Why was that not enough?

I know why it wasn't. But you're gonna call the show Missus Colombo and Colombo's never gonna show up. Yikes, that's the joke. See, she never shows up on Colombo. I'm gonna missus Colombo and he's never going to show up on her show?

Is mass joke? Yeah, exactly. No, it's fucking lazy because this time it's lazy. You're right, I guess maybe lat that's the thing. I don't know.

Is it lazy the other way too? No, because it's not the point of the show here. When you go into this show, the literal fucking expectation is Colombo isn't gonna be in this in some capacity because it's called this is Colombo. Peter Falk would never have come two fucking feet near this goddamn thing, and nobody did. Nobody involved in the original show had anything to do with this.

For good reason. It's funny because there were directors who worked on this that had worked on Colombo. I know Leo Penn had directed in an episode, and again I think that's the Richard Allen Simmons of it. They want to say, yeah, Boris Segaal worked on the pilot episode, so there are crossovers, and then even to the point of I think it's the second episode the murder is a parlor game that has Donald Pleasants as it is in there, and I don't know if he's the murderer or not. I doubt that he drinks a lot of wine in that episode.

But so there is these weird crossover things. But at the same time, paycheck is a paycheck, so I don't blame Donald Pleasants for anything when it comes to this. The other guys they're probably also just yeah, whatever, give it to me, I'll shoot it. But yes, for me, it's like Fred Siliverman and Richard Allen Simmons, what the hell are you guys doing? Don't do this stuff.

The reason Richard Allen Simmons came to The four so much was because it was always like fulk having to trust his showrunners so much. So I'm just like, Wow, what a betrayal of trust to make this new show. And the other thing, when look to go to an example that's a little out of left field, Robert England showed up in Freddy's Nightmare, the television show. Right, he did the wrap around. That's how you're gonna do it.

If you're gonna do that kind of thing. This is the thing where now this is just a literal bait and switch. This is just lazy and really, like you said, smacks of a cash in. But it wasn't even successful. So that's the thing.

It's this is what happens when you try to do this. Yeah, it doesn't work. It just doesn't work. Now it's strange which shows actually succeed that are spinoffs of things, And there are probably a lot of spin offs of stuff that we don't even know were spun off of other things. But I think of stuff that was going on in the nineteen seventies, like Mash.

Mash was huge. Mash ran for what eleven seasons. The finale of Mash was one of the highest rated programs in history apart from Super Bowl performances. It was ginormous. And that's when everybody still had the few networks and everything.

Do you look at something like Fargo and you forget the Fargo was spun off twice once with Kathy Bates where it was much more of a comedy cat And then what Noah Hawley did, which is so far afield and so smart the way that he does it. That's great, But like you said, Hannibal, you brought up Hannibal, and that was a very smart way of doing things as well. And also they were a little hamstrung because of the rights issues that were going on with Dino de Laurentis, so there were certain people, certain characters that they couldn't even talk about on the show. But despite that, they still made a very entertaining show. That's the thing that I think is maybe a more of a now thing to so much more of your point that we are living in a time when people can go, I'm going to make a thing, but it's I'm going to make a Star Wars thing, but it doesn't have to be the Skywalkers.

I'm going to make an alien thing and it doesn't have to be Ripley. I'm going to do something, and it's just going to be set in this broad, massive universe that I don't understand why anybody didn't want to play in to begin with. If I were to make a Star Wars thing or a Game of Thrones, thing or shit most ips, Why the fuck would I fuck with the main thing that they've already had established, that's done its job and made this so popular. I would go to the other end of the universe, galaxy, what have you, and stay far away because and that's the problem with this show is this universe wasn't some interesting, exciting universe. It's just La.

So the fact that Missus Columbo's just running around in La just goes why isn't Columbo solving these Frankly, that's my question here, not not why is Missus Columbo so ineptis like, why isn't Columbo just solving these? Oh? Because she's the B team. The optics of that are fucking weird. It feels like even if she was going to start doing some of the stick.

But by this time second season apparently that's when they firmly declared that she was no longer with Philip Colombo, and that's why she went back to Callahan, which I believe was her other husband, Harry Harry Callahan. He lives in San Francisco. Now he's down in San Francisco. They visit on occasional weekends. She takes the daughter down to visit him.

Is that not intentional? I don't know if it is or not. It feels like it, though, right. I don't know. Seemed like it to me.

You're going to pick the name of another very famous male detective. Sure, so it'd be like calling her missus parroh. The pro ro never shows up in the show. Nor does she say, well, I ran this past my husband and he said once something about little gray cells, and then he touches mustache, and then he came up with this potential answer. Because that was the thing that I love about Columbo when he talks about Missus Colombo, is that in all of his stories, she's the one who's the fan of this.

She's the one who knows about that. When the whole shtick about his whole family, Oh yeah, I've got a nephew who's really into those things. Oh yeah, I've got a nephew who's doing this thing. Oh my brother in laws is this There's always something that will bring it back into this and creates this false sense of human interest where it's like, oh, yeah, I would love to get your autograph for my wife. He's complimenting the person, while at the same time, probably one hundred percent bullshitting.

Now, No, no, Mike, Missus Columbo actually exists. If you say so, that's. My takeaway from this is like, all right, I guess that's what it's for me. The Missus Columbo of it all reminds me of was Decker to replicate. Oh my god, get out of my head, Chris, That's exactly what I was just thinking.

Yeah, it's like, I am sorry. If that was your takeaway from Colombo, go rewatch Colombo, Like, I don't know what to say. Really, was McCready the thing? Could you not just watch the movie and enjoy the movie? Yeah, it can be and it can't be all at the same time.

That's really okay. Colombo could have a wife or not have a wife. It really doesn't matter. It's think about either way. It's literally so unimportant it should not matter.

And yet that is not what this show cares about. This show cares about shoehorning and Missus Colombo and then pulling up two seconds off the ground because we're about to crash, so it's not miss Columbo anymore. Doesn't matter. The damage has been done. This isn't interesting enough in any other capacity to justify existing past you changing it from Missus Colombo.

Yeah, this was really rough. I'm not gonna say, Mike why why Mike why? But why Mike why? We are between seasons right now, and there's a lot of stuff that we need to kind of catch up on, So I think, what did we decide? Next one is going to be the Romanian film where there is a Colombo character, which apparently was one of the top grossing Romanian film of all time at the time, So hopefully we're in for a treat with that.

Anything is better than this and literally anything. Chriss I got a question for you, which is better or worse, Missus Columbo or Fish. I was actually going to ask you something similar because that's the only other time we've done this. I don't know. I think probably Fish because we had to watch more of it.

I think if I had to watch two or three more episodes of this show, I'd be like, yeah, get me the fuck out of here. But I think Fish. Honestly, here's the thing which one feels like more of a stretch. Ugh, gosh, that's tough. Man.

At least Fish was still a cop. But he wasn't though he was like fucking running a fucking daycare. That's the thing. Like I almost feel like that is the stretch further, but. At least with that, Like Dietrich showed up right, and I want to say Wojo showed up, so there was some parody between.

Ah gosh, it's been a long time since I've seen Enis, the spin off from The Dukes of Hazzard. But I'd be curious to know how much, because I think that's Enis goes to the big city type of things. So I don't see Roscoe p. Coltrane or Boss Hog or any of the other Yahoo's showing up at his door. God, yeah, you're putting into my mind all of these bad spinoffs of other TV shows like Sheriff Lobo coming off of BJ and the Bear and Archie Bunker's Place and some of these other ones.

Gosh, yeah, this is rough man. This just follows a precedent that was happening a lot, and unfortunately there were very few really good spin off TV shows. Of course, after we hang up, I'm going to think of five where it was just like, oh, yeah, the original show wasn't that good, but the spinoff was even better, which I don't think happens that often. We were talking about Mash earlier, and there's after Mash. There was one called I want to say it was called Walter that was about Radar Walter O'Reilly, but yeah, these were these are wretched, wretched shows.

Put this in that camp because my god, this is an affront to mystery television. And hey, there's a car chase though, because that's what Colombo was missing, a car chase. I'm glad you said that, because I was like, what did I just see an unnecessary car chase? And oh it's Missus Colombo. Okay, yeah, the guy.

I don't even understand why there was a car There's never been anything remotely action or action adjacent in Colombo. But Missus Columbo, on the other hand, Missus Colombo is a woman of action. Reading from Wikipedia, the show received poor ratings, and as part of the efforts to revamp it, the linkage between this Kate Colombo and the Missus Columbo of the original television series was reduced. The name of the character was changed the Cake hand after an off screen divorce, and the series was renamed Kate the Detective at the beginning of the second season, followed by Kate Loves a mystery. So we've got three titles for this show within thirteen episodes, which is fucking crazy.

You've got to wonder what was going through their minds when they were just can we just not air it? Nope, we got to change the name. We got those episodes written. It's okay. It's a miracle that they ever aired that thirteenth episode, no kidding, because it came three almost four months, over four months, because December sixth to nineteen seventy nine to March nineteenth, nineteen eighty so over four months later.

There was like two people waiting with baited baths. They're like, when's she coming back? Oh love on instant replay is going to happen. I know it's going to happen. God, yeah, oh boy.

Yeah. There's not a lot written about this. I I read my usual sources. I think Mark Dewitziak wrote two pages about this in the Colombo File, and mister Koonang not too much more than that if that, and then there was talk as early as nineteen eighty two, I want to say about Colombo coming back. So that's why that's another reason why we were taking this little break and catching up on Colombo fhemera, as it were, and we'll also be talking more about Lincoln Levinson stuff that they were actually really involved in, and we'll talk about stuff that mister Fulk was involved in as well.

I don't know. Should we watch Vibes. That's been my biggest struggle right now, because I took all of the movies that I've been interested or TV shows and watching, and I put those through the ringer and I said, Okay, what are the best best episodes of these what are the best highest rated of these things? And Vibes came in as dead last. But I don't know, there's just something about it that appeals.

I'll watch whatever, all right. I know you will. You're eiven that we've already watched this bullshit. I can't say no at this point because in good conscience I should have said no already. I think this might have been your suggestion, but I'm not going to put that on you, Chris.

I'm a completionist and a massacrest, so yeah, probably it was my suggestion. Yeah, I blame myself, as they would. Say normally, I just blame me. But that's okay, all. Right, Okay, lucky you you can blame me.

So yes, next month we'll be back with Uncle Maren the Billionaire, also from nineteen seventy nine, hopefully better than this by law of averages, it has to be, and then we'll we'll go into another nineteen seventy nine property murder by natural causes, which was a Lincoln Levinson thing, which I have a personal story to talk about with that one, so I'm very excited to discuss that. But until then, Chris, what are you doing these days? Just working on podcasts and everything all audio related over at weirdingwaymedia dot com, where you can find this show and so many other great shows like eightiestv Ladies, the Projection Booth, the Culturecast, Midnight Viewing. Go check those out. Stop listening to me and go check them out, because this is the end of this episode.

What about you, Mike. Do you think adiestv Ladies? Do you think just because there's one episode of Missus Colombo that fell in that decade, that they would do a whole episode about Missus Colombo. I really think we should be asking Susan this question. I think we should too.

Yeah, Susan, how do you feel about Missus Colombo? What as for me? Everything that I do is over at weirding Way Media as well. It's kind of boring when we get too weiriting Way Media guys on here, because we just say waitingwaymedia dot Com a bunch of times. I want to thank John Walker for our opening theme and Colin Gallagher for our closing theme, and I want to thank everybody for listening.

It's always a good time. Hopefully you survived, Missus Colombo, just like us inclu