The Conspirators

Welcome to the Shabby Detective. I'm your host, Mike White. Join me, of course, is mister Christashue. I would do something Irish adjacent, but I feel like that's mildly offensive. Hey, we are just a few days out here from Saint Patrick's say it's fine to make fun of the Irish.

Let me take a moment here and talk about how we shouldn't be calling drinks Irish car bombs anymore, because, according to an article I read on the internet, the use of the term Irish carbomb and I shit you not. According to the person who wrote this article, to order an Irish car bomb in Dublin is to like go to New York and order a quote and I'm quoting this article directly a flaming twin Towers, which to me, by the way, would be a very funny drink to sell at ground zero in New York. So the fact that no one's done it is a little bit more surprising than anything else, given that UFC fights are being held in the front lawn of the White House. So do we really have any shame anymore? I don't think so.

Folks, thank you for coming to my ted talk. If you want to order an Irish car bomb. The acceptable term is an Irish slammer. Oh all right, which is I believe where Joe Devlin is going at the end of this episode, straight to the. Pen to the Leo Penn, directed by Leo Penn.

This is The Conspirators. It is suggested by the story by Pat Robinson, I'm sorry, Robeson with the teleplay by Howard Burke, and it aired originally May thirteenth, nineteen seventy eight. It's a ninety three minute episode, so we've got some good time killing going on in. Here, mostly just like a bad time killing, like. A musical sequence saying that music haunts my dreams.

It's rough. It's rough. So we talked about this well quite a few times, actually, because I kept talking about what if what farked? This whole series ended on back on May thirteen, seventy eight. It's funny because I didn't mind this episode as much as I used to, but I still think it's a pretty bad episode.

Chris, what did you think of The Conspirators? This is a real bummer of a way to end ostensibly, what is the original run of the show. It's a bummer because, like you just said, there's a lack of care to the story in this episode, and it makes Colombo and I can't believe I'm saying this, and I'm sure we're probably inclined to agree. It makes Colombo effectively useless. He's not really useful.

I mean he's useful in this episode and that he catches Joe Devlin. But there's a point where it's like the FBI are involved, like this, this is above Columbo's head in a way, and it feels like the show doesn't understand what makes this show so great. It's not these kind of like broader, culturally interesting things that are going on, because it does feel like a bit of a stretch that we're talking about the Irish Republican Army here in southern California. There is a point where a character goes here in southern California and it's like, yeah, I would find it slightly as unbelievable as you would, because that feels like the least efficient way to do anything, to smuggle guns from California to Ireland.

What it's a long trip. It's almost like there's a big American city on the East Coast that's much closer that feels like you could smuggle guns from a lot easier, but Colombo's not there, he's not based there. So for me, this episode just feels kind of it feels very forced for what they're talking about. I love Colombo, Clive Ravel is great, but and they're back and forth, I think is fine. You know that never is really the problem in these episodes?

Is it a problem that we've had more than once that Colombo and the guest murderer have a bad back and forth. It's been like a handful of times in the last seven seasons, So it's almost like saying, in this day and age, a well, the movie looks nice. I would hope a movie made in twenty twenty six is well made. So I would hope that the back and forth between Colombo and the murderer is well written, because that ends up kind of being the backbone of any of these episodes. And that's probably the best part of this episode for me, is Colombo and Joe Devlin, the murderer played by Clive Ravel.

They're back and forth. Everything else just it's either above Columbo's head or it's just kind of broadly uninteresting. So I'm curious what your thoughts are Mike, because you said you enjoyed it more this time, and as someone who'd never seen it before, It's gonna be a while until I come back to see if I can have a repeat viewing that I might reappreciate it in a different way. So I'm curious what you thought, you know, reappreciating something you clearly did not like the first time he saw it. Yeah, pretty much anytime that I ever saw this episode, every time I've seen it.

This is not one that I tend to see in reruns very often, and when I would catch it, it always felt like a fever dream because of this whole Northern Ireland thing that's going on. So we should probably explain a little bit. So it's Joe Devlin, who you mentioned, played by Clive Ravel, who's this author, poet, piano player, banjo player, raconteur. It just seems to be he's almost like the Will Rogers of Ireland or something, just like you know, oh, I'm this. General bing Crosby type like a yeah, like he's like a I like a folk hero but cultural icon.

And he's friends with these two people and in well, actually three people because he's got kind of his what'd you call this guy like his his ward. Maybe this younger guy kind of looks a little bit like Jeff Bridges. You know what, This actually really reminds me of Spalding Gray because there's even like a night with Joe Devlitz. You know, it's like that same like again, like they're tapping into something that I think is interesting, but then they start mudding the waters with the thing that you're talking about. Where it's like and he has award and he's also Irish, and he's also a domestic he's also a for the Irish people, a domestic terrorist.

You've wrapped too much into this one character is kind of what it feels like. Yeah, that's his deep dark secret. Is that with the collusion of the o'connells, Kate and George Kate played by Janette Nolan and George played by Bernard Barons. And I love Bernard Barons. By the way, he was in a John Pays film called Top of the Food Chain.

I think it's also called something Else nowadays and I'm invasion. It might have been called He plays this hilarious Mayor character, Mayor Claire. Everybody every male character in the movie has female names or like the gender neutral names, which is great. He's great. I love them in this and this.

I still kind of don't know everything that's going on with this couple. But yeah, basically, Clive Ravella as Joe Devlin is a terrorist and they are running guns to you. And I really shouldn't say terrorists because they're not. I mean, I don't think they're terrorists. But again by Ireland at the time standard.

That's why I said what I said to be very specific, I don't consider any of this terrorism now, like fighting for freedom and your own right to do what you want is not terrorism. But by the Irish definition at the time, they were. It's hard for me to consider it that because you know, I wasn't there. I'm only hearing about it secondhand, you know, the troubles and stuff like that. I mean, again, the Irish carbon opening of this episode was a joke in a way, but at the same time it was just Saint Patti's Day.

That is a thing that I'm assuming if you did go order in Ireland, people would not look at you in a very positive way. And that's because of this, like because of the Irish Republican Army, because of them wanting freedom Northern Ireland from Southern Ireland, Like this was a real thing. It's a weird thing for Colombo to be trafficking in. Like yeah, and so the idea of this episode actually came from I believe it was a book that the author had written. And then our producer friend, who to me is kind of, you know, ruined this whole season, Richard Allen Simmons.

You know, he's been the showrunner for this season and I really feel like he took it in this weird direction. Again, We've got fucking this old man. We can't go an episode now without this old man coming into it somehow. I'm surprised that there wasn't a duet between Falk and Ravel in this episode. But yeah, just this whole thing of the guy who gets killed and then the whiskey bottle that gets kicked over to him.

I guess it was another brand of whiskey that was a real brand. So then they had to make up the fake brand here with the dew, which I've never heard of do as a drink before, but that sounds really good. It sounds like there's a lot of alcohol in there. So that's where Mountain Dew comes from. The term mountain dew comes from that colloquialism for you know, Tullamore do, so mountain dew was supposed to be the non alcoholic do Tullamore do?

That's a Scotch whiskey. How much do you think this guy drinks? Because whenever he goes. Yow barely, like a metric fucked ton. It's like they made him every stereotypical thing that people think of Irish people in nineteen seventy eight, which is so lazy on top of everything, Why didn't they make him four foot tall wearing a green suit with orange hair and a small pot of gold.

I mean he has an Irish accent too. I mean like they lean into effectively everything the way I look at it, like it's it's lazy. Oh yeah, yeah, I'm surprised he didn't say gosh and Bigora at some point. I know that in nineteen seventy eight this was a thing that was known to the world that was going on, and there was a lot of violence in Ireland. But why Colombo.

I can't figure that out. And on all the research, I didn't see anything that was like, well, there's somebody's cause, celeb or something. It's just just because seemingly because, like you said, someone read a book and was like, this seems like an interesting thing Columbo would be involved in, Like does it? It was like Columba being involved in the jfk assassination investigation, which is totally not a real thing in one of those. Books, Disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa or the Helter Skelter killings.

Yeah, oh yeah, is that are those the other? Yes? Yes, I can. I can see him from here, So yeah. Colombo and Manson in the same room together would be pretty great.

Well, it's really strange too because of the actual murder that happens in this episode. Basically, what is it. They don't want to pay this mister Pauley, the gun runner guy. They don't want to pay him what he's asking for for these weapons, and I guess guy thinks that he can scam weapons from him. He murders mister Paully kicks over this whiskey bottle because it says give every man.

Because it's it's on every single bottle that he scratches with his ring. This far and no farther. So we've got like two things that we just hear constantly this far and no farther, which is the whole thing of the scratch across the bottle where I want to only drink this much because I guess he's a functional alcoholic. And then yeah, give every man his due, which is the line on the bottle, which is basically Clive Ravel's character is so clever that he's like, oh, I'm giving this guy's come uppance, but I don't think he deserved to die. And it just seems like a very weird plan.

It feels very unmotivated that he even murders this guy. I don't understand why he murders him because the guys taking money. Okay, we've seen more interesting reasons for people being killed in this show, and that is such an uninteresting one when you have this setup, I guess that's the other thing for a setup this complex, a setup this kind of involved, because again, like we have to get people in southern California to believably be smuggling guns for the IRA. I'm not saying they don't get there. I'm just saying they do a lot of heavy lifting in ninety minutes to get there, and it feels like a bit of a stretch.

Everything leans into it is a bit of a stretch. All of this is a bit of a stretch. So I guess what it is is that Holly is selling these guns to Devlin and his friends, but he's trying to take money off the top. He's skimming off of this. But I'm like, he's a gun dealer, Like, if Chrisy's gonna skim, you know this is illegal stuff, of course you're gonna try to make money off of it.

I stopped buying from my dealer back in the day before I started going to legal states to buy because they ripped me off twice. What am I gonna do? Go to the cops? What do you do when your dealer rips you off? That's the cost of doing business on a black market, is the way I look at it, which in my mind like that's not really much of a reason.

In this episode, Cliverville is already doing something illegal. Why would he care that somebody else is stealing from him. I guess it's because he believes in the cause so much that he feels that Paully is a trader, because he says, we execute traders. After he murders this guy. One less person for the cause I guess fucking stupid.

Last time I checked, he steals all of the papers out of this guy's room except for the one big clue that the guy has kept under a lamp that says what Lab two thirteen or something, And that's the whole the sh and the berth and all this kind of stuff. There's this whole thing of him, Revel's character going to all of these people trying what was he trying to do it buy guns or like figure out a way to get the guns out of the country. I guess it is, but yeah, figure out how to get him out of the country. It just feels so convoluted. I mean, I was glad to see l Q.

Jones. I always enjoy seeing him show up, though not on screen very much. And also surprisingly I don't remember a scene with LQ. Jones and Colombo. I mean, that's one of the problems that I have with this episode is that I understand we move away from Colombo quite often to come back to the killer and see what the killer is up to, but it really feels like Colombo is the guest star in this episode and he's barely on screen.

And that's what I was kind of driving at with my statement about this being above Colombo, Like, it doesn't feel like an episode where Columbo is necessary to solve it. It doesn't feel like Colombo solves it in a way that no one else could. And that's always that. That's the thing about Colombo, that is the idea behind the Columbo character, is that he is someone that you bring in or comes in to solve a crime that no one else could because of his deductive skills. And this is a waste of his time because this is an FBI thing.

The FBI are going to catch this guy. The Coast Guard are going to catch this guy. Columbo's not needed here. It feels almost like two disparate ideas that got mashed together because Ira. Or because of the Hey, this was a cool book idea.

We're going to take this and try to slam Columbo inside of it. Is topicality something that's necessary in nineteen seventy eight to write a good mystery show. No, because it's we haven't had topicality for most of this show. There are sometimes like little nods to things, but not like this, not this, Yeah, the politics, I mean this reminds me a lot of the Leslie Nielsen, Patrick mcgoin one where it's you know, the by Games, and again it's like, what is Colombo doing trying to solve this? And yes, there is one level where it's a murder that happened in California and Colombo is assigned to it, and you know, he walks out of that cloud of smoke and comes in that whole magoon over directing kind of thing.

And then eventually Larry Take from Bewitch shows up and he's just like, hey, you know, you're kind of out of your depth, like we you know, this is a CIA matter, Like you don't really need, you know, see your way out of it kind of thing, and this, yeah, it feels like what are you doing in this world political stage? Yes, there was a murder that took place here in California, But to your point, Chris feels like it's pretty easy to solve. Like him mulling over this whole birth thing. It's like, I feel like he's just playing cat and mouse with Ravel where he's just like, oh, what could this stand for? And the way that they're both laying back on these beds trying to come up with different ideas of what that number and acronym could stand for I'm like, Okay, this feels like a big stretch and yeah, like I agree.

I like the back and forth between Falcon revel. I think that's probably the best part of the show. But the rest of it the mystery itself, and last I checked, this was a mystery show. It's just not there theoretically anyways. It has the concept of a mystery.

Mike, what are you guys doing here? I feel like what they're doing is trying to bring something else to the show that it doesn't need, and what it doesn't need is involvement in world events in a sideways way to stay I don't know what they're doing it for unless they're thinking, like, well, Columbo's not gonna stay relevant if we don't do this, and it's like, what does it They're still showing reruns of murder? She wrote, Now, like those episodes are not relevant nothing, because that's the point, Like, there's nothing relevant that's happening in those episodes. What's happening in those episodes is just good old fashioned murder, and that's timeless. Like I don't need you to connect it to things that are going on unless that's literally the point of the show, but the fact that this is taking place on the West Coast and that's on the East coast, Ireland is effectively closer to the East Coast than is the West Coast.

It's just it's goofy and it makes it feel like, like you said, Colombo is a passenger on his own tugboat, his own boat out to see and they've sent Colombo out to see in this show. Like this season has just really made me disappointed that the people that were writing the show seemingly must. Have worked on Night Gallery beforehand deep cut. There's some time wasting parts the whole thing with Devlin on the radio and Colombo calling them up, you know, having his was it his car breaks down, and it's just like okay enough and just all of the oh, we're not finding anything on this boat, lieutenant, and it's like, all right, dress me you will eventually, because you're going to figure out this whole idea of the matter.

Yeah, exactly, You're going to figure out the whole thing with the flag because that was kind of ham fistedly shoved in there. Or needle Point is the same. His nephew wanted two things that night, needle Point or weightlifting. That's what it was. It's like, okay, great, Yeah, what.

A stretch as a fan of Colombo, as someone who's seen past here, because this is this big inflection point that we've been leading up to with the show. Does where we are now and having rewatched it up to this point together, do you feel like this is this last season is as bad as you remember it being having gone through and rewatched it critically together. It's so tough with just five episodes. It's weak sauce, you know, five episodes and spirats. You know, I said last time, this is as bad as you know, last Slute to the Commodore.

I guess it's the idea of the tug boat and the boat and all that stuff that reminds me of last Salute. It's not nearly as bad as that, but it's not a good episode. I you know, I really enjoyed talking with you about How to Dial a Murder, which isn't a perfect episode but is enjoyable. But other than like Bill, like Murder under Glass, even though again it was a lot. Yeah, that's it, like like a couple of bright spots basically between Louis Jordan and Nicole Williamson.

That's it. I mean, like, yeah, Clive Revelle's fying in this episode, you know, playing the embodiment of a leprechaun that wants to murder people, who wants to murder the British. So he's more wicked. Yeah, it's gotta be smoking down pretty soon. Going out into space got to be great.

I on a bashed love those Leprechaun movies and we'll hear no Slandero. I hear they've got a lot to offer, so. Yeah, there sure are a lot of them, that's for sure. Also casual homophobia in some of those movies, with Warwick Davis being forced to deliver such lines as I was looking for my magic flute, not a bunch of fucking fruits or something. It's great.

And I mean if Clive revel had delivered that line, I don't think we'd be having this conversation in such a hush tones. He definitely is a poet, that's for sure. Rack on tour, Clive ravel No, it's a. Weird, weird season. I mean, yeah, this is like the break.

I think there are probably some Colombo shows that just don't ever go further than this. They might just be like, Nope, we're not going to talk about the. What sort of completionist ass shit is that? Or lack of commit to the fucking bit or not. No, we're gonna be watching you know what a Romanian film I think it is with the Colombo character.

We might talk about some Japanese films that have a Columbo character. I mean, yeah, we're completionists here, come on. Yeah, we know that you the listener are here for the due diligence that we as podcasters have our reputations precede us here. You wouldn't expect us to do anything less. So yeah, we're not We're not done for a while.

We've got a little bit of a break here, and we'll talk about Peter Falk, we'll talk about some more Lincoln Levinson here. But yeah, we're gonna take a little little hiatus from Colombo itself until we get to well, well we feel satisfied, and then we'll come back and we'll start talking about those later years. So hopefully we will Colombo go Later. Well, I'm hoping we'll find some good things in that because I'm very curious where we go with this, because I remember liking some of these later episodes. I don't remember liking all of them.

In fact, there's at least one that's pretty embarrassing. But yeah, I'm excited to talk about this with it. Chris, Yeah, I am as well. And you know, I have no preconceived notion about what Colombo is going to be when we come back. I guess the only thing I can compare it to, and you tell me how oft I am.

And I don't know how much frame of reference you have with this, and it would be something fun to do as like a follow up show to this when we're done would be I wonder if this is like what happened with Perry Mason, because Perry Mason has that same thing where Perry Mason was a black and white show obviously, and then it came back as a television movie the way Colombo did. So I'm wondering if this is going to have that same feel when we come back to it, because again, it's not like I know a lot of Perry Mason fans, but I mean I know a fair amount of Columbo fans, So I wonder if it'll have that same feel. And I don't know, I don't know if you've seen that the Perry Mason TV movies I'm talking about or the original show.

But that's kind of the only thing I could compare this to in terms of like what I think my expectations might be for the next phase of our Columbo show. The thing I always remember about the Perry Mason shows is there are some that don't even have Raymond Burr. I want to say it's the guy who was in It's a. Great American hero. Well, believe it or not, Mike, he's walking on air.

Oh. He was Tommy Lee Jones's brother in No Country for old Men, mostly known for northern exposure. I believe he was like the foe Perry's out of the country. I'm going to take this case type of thing, kind of like when Tom Bosley would show up and be Jessica Fletcher. William Katt is in Perry Mason.

Yeah, he's Paul Drake Junior. Yeah, because his mother is Della Street. So yeah, oh yeah, yeah. I don't know why I just thought that he wasn't in that one. Mattlock was Matt Luck a came back show where Matt Luck was just always old Andy Griffith.

Matt Luck was always older reference until he became old Kate Kathy Bates. You mean Bobo Baits. That's her real name, Bobo Baits. I remember that because we movie. I watched some movie where she's like in it at the it's like her first movie.

I forget what the hell it is, but it was like and now and starring Bobo Baits. I do remember seeing some young Kathy Baits and I'm just like, it might have been she was just old aage. We've forgotten whatever it was we were watching. Yeah, yeah, she would like show up out of nowhere and we're like, what what is going on here? I remember showing up in like straight time because I did an episode on that one forever ago.

Is that what it was? It has to be something else because you weren't on that episode? Was taking off? Is what it was? Oh?

There you go, common film, sir. That was when we did that whole Milosh forman month. Credited as Bobo Baits. I forgot that. She became Mattlocke, Where's Where's that?

Where's Colombo? Recast as a one? Oh wait? Near mind? I got canceled, And that's why I canceled my Peacock TV subscription because I don't support platforms that do shit like that.

And also there's no more Columbo too. You're not getting any more of my money Peacock TV. That's right. Yeah, no Missus Colombo. And maybe we should do a Missus Colombo.

Yeah, I was about to say, maybe we should do a Missus Columbo episode. I have a weird sideways connection to Missus Columbo through a previous previous project I worked on with Alan Sachs, the co creator of Welcome Back Cotter. The Gentleman who allegedly murdered Peter Ivers's daughter plays Kate Mulgrew's daughter on Missus Colombo, which is super weird and a sideways connection and also, like Missus Colombo not a thing that people even realize happened. And I want to say, a couple episodes into that show, they unbranded it as a Missus Colombo. Yeah, it had a few names.

It was Kate Colombo and Kate the Detective and Kate loves the Mystery. Yeap, what does that have to do with Killumbo? Who is Kate in all of this? Yeah? Maybe we should go through and see, like, what is the top rated episode via IMDb and pick one of those.

So we're going to come back and do that, because that was nineteen seventy nine to nineteen eighty kind of filling in this gap of no Colombo. Or we're going to talk about a Romanian film called Uncle Maren the Billionaire because there is a character in there who is based on Colombo. So and we've got a we found a English subtitled version of it, so we can actually watch it and not have to learn to learn Romanian. So we should be good with that. I'm disappointed that we're not covering Dirhomel Uber, but at some point, oh, I mean, I mean we should.

I don't mean, I don't know. That's just Peter folks showing up, but it is technically also Columbo. It was like, also it is Glombo apparently. Yeah, everybody calls him Colombo in there, and yeah he's he's great in that. That movie is it's a really good never seen it at least that's oh well, yeah, we should probably talk about it.

I've never seen City of Angels either. Maybe I should leave that one off the list. Maybe leave that off the list. Yeah I'm an angel whoa Okay, yeah, I didn't realize that that's what that movie was. The remake of.

And there was a sequel far Away So Close that is not good at all. I do love me some Bruno Gons though. So yeah, No, Gons is great, and especially Wings of Desire, well. I love him. In the House that Jack built, he where he plays Verge or Virgil.

Probably not a movie that people who listen to this show which should go and watch. But you know, I don't know when it comes to Kate Colombo. Looks like there's a few episodes that they list is top rated on IMDb. The highest rating is either season two episode five or season two episode six. So maybe we'll take a look at who the guest stars are and choose one of those.

And yeah, the daughter is Lily Hayden, who is Yeah, she is the daughter of David Joe who I have one of his albums on my wall. There's a whole Yeah, it's a very it was a very weird sideways connection because I know we had talked about maybe talking about it many moons ago, but I didn't think we'd actually get to it. Yeah, well here we are, or we will be. Peter Falk said it was disgraceful and a bad idea, And you know, he's the arbiter of all the good things. Maybe we'll watch the one with Armanda sante In here is Teddy Faust.

I'm sure there's nothing evil about him with that name, Teddy Faust. Both seasons of Missus ca Lumbo are available on a five disc set, by the way, Madam Colombo Sezon's one and two or un and doa possibly because it's only in France, which is wild that it's actually gotten a physical release like Jesus Christ, right, Like, that's the most shocking thing to learn today other than a couple other physical media releasings. But my god, who would buy that? Big Kate mulgroof Hans. Somebody must have.

There's no other reason that this show would have had any sort of reappropriation in this day and age. Right. I remember watching episodes when I was growing up and just being like, what the hell is this, especially when it was like Missus Colombo and I'm like what, Like this doesn't make any sense. Not only does it not make any sense, it feels like a real stretch, Like I mean, I get it, like I understand what they were going for and they're trying to be clever, but it was just a joke. In the show, it's like it's like a It's used over and over again, and we even make light of the fact that like he may not even have a real wife, could just be a total, total kook.

Could just be a way to get inside of the criminal's heads. But yeah, I think we should watch an episode or two of that. Sure, why not? So Yeah, maybe what I'll do is I'll make a list of what we're going to watch, and maybe for the super fans, the people that are on our patreons or something, I'll post that so people know what's coming up, and for the rest of you slobs, get on over to our patreons and join up there. How's that I couldn't have put any better myself.

I don't know if I would have called them slobs, But you know you said the quiet part out loud. Well, until we come back with that, Chris, whatever that may be. What are you working on these days? I am working on all things podcasts and podcasts related over a weirdingwaymedia dot com where the culture Cast comes out once if not twice a week, where I talk about movies either by myself screaming into a microphone like a bozo, or with other people screaming into the microphones collectively like bozos. You can find all that at weirdingwaymedia dot com or at patreon dot com slash culture Cast, where I ask for money on the internet and get some Mike what about you?

Yeah, pretty much the same thing. The only thing is our patreons, which is patreon dot com slash Culturecast and patreon dot com slash Projection booth, where yeah, go on over. I try to post some episodes early. We've got our exclusive Patreon show which will be ending pretty soon ranking on bond. Hopefully we'll come up with something to replace that.

Oh we will. I'm sure we will, so we'll have some good times with that one. But yeah, come on over check those out, and in the meantime, stay tuned for something that we're not quite sure what it's going to be, but it will definitely be Columbo related in some way. I love it, how vague Add add