Day 231: Columbo, A Deadly State of Mind

Show: Columbo

Episode Particulars: S4EP6, “A Deadly State of Mind”, original airdate April 27^th, 1975.

 Summary: Doctor/psychiatrist Marcus Collier (George Hamilton) has been treating Nadia Donner (Leslie Ann Warren) using a combination of hypnotism and drugs. He’s also been having an affair with her, which her husband Karl (Stephen Elliott) eventually figures out. When he confronts Collier about it, the discussion turns violent, and Collier kills Karl with a fireplace poker. Not wanting to risk damaging his career/reputation, Collier convinces Donner to claim that Karl was killed by intruders attempting a robbery, which she hesitantly goes along with. Columbo is suspicious of the story almost immediately due to the evidence he sees at the crime scene, but it’s going to be hard to get anything out of Donner with Collier whispering in her ear. And yes, I meant that to sound disturbing.

Standalone Thoughts: What really struck me about the episode was how unsettling it was. That feeling hits immediately, with a dark room, a slow panning shot down an IV drip, and a woman talking in a childish voice about a dog she loved but wasn’t allowed to take care of. Then she starts repeating the word “Daddy” over and over again, and I decided I was officially creeped out. It does eventually ease up (this turns out to be a hypnosis session between Collier and Donner), but I swear the first few minutes of this episode would be right at home in a psychological horror movie.

What makes that opening all the more noteworthy is that it just kind of hangs there. Some information in that scene is important later (unsurprisingly, it becomes relevant in the other extremely creepy scene in the episode), but we never really learn what it all means. It seems like a setup to reveal that Donner had a troubled past, and indeed there’s a line that suggests she’s seen numerous psychiatrists over the course of her life, but we never get an answer to any of our questions. Similarly, Collier is apparently writing a book about Donner and is trying to skew the results so they’ll look good for the book, but we’re never told exactly what it is he’s researching, or how testing animals relates to hypnotizing Donner. This doesn’t exactly ruin the episode, but it does make the opening stick in your mind more, for good or for ill.

The other thing that gets me about this episode is that Collier has supplanted Dr. Mayfield from “A Stitch in Crime” as the most reprehensible murderer in the show. Collier is having an affair with his patient who’s clearly mentally fragile, is also having a relationship with his assistant Dr. Borden (Karen Machon) who may or may not be a subordinate, seems to be ignoring facts for the sake of having a better manuscript, manipulates the aforementioned fragile patient into lying to the police, and then uses the information he’s learned during his sessions with Donner to have her do something to save his own skin. The music, Hamilton’s performance, and especially Warren’s performance all combine to make you kind of hate Collier immensely, which I think works to the episode’s benefit but can sometimes make the material hard to watch. Well, at least it gave Columbo fans something to talk about while they waited for the next season to begin…

Number of “Columbo-isms”: A surprisingly bare-bones 2/6 today. There’s definitely shots of/discussion of Columbo’s car and some fumbling, but there’s no scene that really encapsulates “Just one more thing” (though a few come close), and I’m positive that there’s no mention of his wife. I’m as surprised about this as you are.

Other: *Columbo must have fantastic eyesight if he’s able to spot a tiny little broken flint on the carpet of the Donner beach house. I don’t care if it’s a mostly clean, light-colored carpet; I’m guessing people with natural 20/20 vision would have a problem seeing that. Ah well, that’s Hollywood fudging details again.

*Collier and Borden are running tests on a mouse to see how well it can learn, by having it follow colored lines to get to its reward. I can understand why the episode gave into temptation to draw a comparison between the mouse and Columbo, but the lengths they had to go to to make that joke work are absurd. What medical center has you figure out where you’re going by putting colored lines on the floor with no other signage to help you out? That’s a recipe for disaster even before you bring up the issue of people with colorblindness.

*I must assume that the scene near the end where Columbo and Collier are walking along a dock discussing the case, with Columbo near the water and Collier above him on the boardwalk, is meant to be symbolic in some way. I can’t for the life of me figure out what it could mean, though. Then again, maybe I’m reading too much into it.

*Season wrapup: This was definitely a stronger season than Season Three, although it’s less because all of the episodes are good and more because they have individual elements that stand out and get your attention. “An Exercise in Fatality” had Columbo’s slight shifts in personality; “Negative Reaction” did interesting things with the murder setup and execution; “By Dawn’s Early Light” had Patrick McGoohan; “Troubled Waters” had the cruise ship setting; “Playback” had the outdated technology; and this episode went surprisingly dark. The content surrounding these elements can be a little more hit or miss, but that may be a matter of opinion, and we have to keep in mind that I’m getting familiar with the routine now, so things that deviate from that routine are more likely to be on my radar. Still, I’d definitely rewatch this season over Season Three, and that should probably count as a recommendation.

Would This Hold Up in Court?: Initially, I was going to say no, because it looked like police trickery of the highest order. But then it turned out Columbo was playing mind games on Collier, and it became kind of brilliant. It’s still a bit of a dirty trick, but it’s more plausible than what you initially think is happening.