Day 242: Columbo, Murder Under Glass

Show: Columbo

Episode Particulars: S7EP2, “Murder Under Glass”, original airdate January 30^th, 1978.

Note: For some odd reason, the Season Seven episodes are all jumbled around on the DVD, to the point where it looks like the third episode is actually the last episode of the season. I have no idea what happened, but if you want to watch things in chronological order, I’d rely on Wikipedia rather than the DVD box for this particular season.

 Summary: Chef and restaurant critic Paul Gerard (Louis Jourdan) clearly has been doing something that rubs Italian restaurant owner Vittorio Rossi (Michael V. Gazzo) the wrong way. Over a private dinner, the two of them argue, and then Gerard politely bows out. A few minutes later, Rossi falls over dead, and given that we saw Gerard handling the very poisonous fugu (blowfish) earlier, we can connect the dots pretty well. Columbo, however, isn’t privy to the same information we are, and therefore only knows that Rossi was poisoned, but not how, and that means both what poison was used and how the poison got into his system. On the bright side, since Rossi was popular with his fellow L.A. chefs, Columbo’s not going to go hungry as he investigates the case…

Standalone Thoughts: On the one hand, there are some fun things about this episode. I like the running theme of Columbo being fed excellent food throughout the episode, and there’s a fantastic moment when he tricks someone into revealing important information (though not in a way that’s of questionable legality). Things like that help keep the episode engaging, but it doesn’t quite disguise the fact that there are some fairly large weak spots in the episode. To begin with, Columbo and Gerard don’t actually interact all that much, which isn’t necessarily a problem but can be a disappointment for some people. Plus, doing something like that can make the rest of the episode feel heavily padded, though to this episode’s credit, I think it mostly avoids doing that. Secondly, we don’t really get a full sense of the motive or the method that Gerard used to kill Rossi; we get enough to know the basics, but we really don’t get the whole picture until very late in the episode. This can again feel like a cop-out, but again, I consider this a weak point more than a major problem. Third, I find it a little bit off that Gerard would have a cooking segment where he talks about fugu, and then immediately use fugu poison to kill Rossi. Either it was a rerun of an old episode of his show and it’s just a case of Admiral Plot Device at play so that the audience can put the pieces together, or it’s a brand new episode, which makes it hard to believe that Columbo wouldn’t eventually have learned about that or mentioned it. Heck, they would have had a great opportunity for Columbo to have a line like, “Oh, so that’s why you were talking about fugu on your latest show! You were doing it in preparation for having this dinner for your friend! I was wondering where that fish had got to.” It would have made for some great interplay between him and Gerard, but instead it’s just quietly dropped. Or is this the same sort of modern day thinking that caused me some trouble with “Étude in Black”…?

For all those issues, though, the one that wound up bugging me the most was probably the most inconsequential one. Over the course of the episode, Columbo is not only seen enjoying various fancy dishes, but also suggests that he’s the cook of the Columbo family, and that he has familiarity with gourmet foods. It just feels to me like this goes against everything we know of Columbo. Knowing how to cook a little, sure, but being the one who makes dinner? When he’s going to be out at all hours investigating crimes? And given how he seemed to dislike escargot once he knew what it was in “A Case of Immunity”, him being on board with things like foie gras and wanting to make sauces with fancy French names just clashes with both previous episodes and the more down to earth vibe he gives off. I know he kind of reinvents himself and his interests for each suspect, but the writers went a little overboard on this one, at least from my perspective.

Trying to leave my own biases at the door, I’d say this is an ok episode, never destined to be one of the greats but perfectly enjoyable if you aren’t looking at it with an overly critical eye. That’s a problem unique to me and other critics, and it’s up to you to decide if you want to follow my example or not.

Number of “Columbo-isms”: 3/6 for sure, and possibly a quick glimpse of Columbo’s car in the background. As for the definites, we’ve got a few mentions of Mrs. Columbo, at least two variations of “Just one more thing”, and quite a few moments when “This Old Man” pops up, including in the end credits. That really seems to be becoming a thing now, and I’ll be curious to see how far it goes.

Other: *I do like that Columbo has a conversation with Rossi’s nephew Mario (Antony Alda) entirely in Italian, leaving us to interpret what’s going on entirely through intonation and hand gestures. That being said, it does mean that us non-Italian speakers are left wondering if important information is being withheld from us, and it also means that when Columbo starts speaking loudly and angrily, we have no idea why he’s doing it and makes us wonder why or if he’s acting out of character. It’s one of the perils of including a foreign language scene in your story, though, so I won’t hold it against the episode too much.

*Speaking of Mario, he’s got a very odd look on his face during the funeral scene. He doesn’t look overly sad, he kind of looks like he’s either surprised by something or possibly that he drank too much or got a little stoned before the funeral. I have my doubts about that last one, but I suppose the other two are possible. I guess I’ll never know for sure.

*During the scene where Columbo is investigating Rossi’s kitchen shortly after the murder, he handles the various pieces of cooking equipment, sometimes in a good way (moving a copper pan around in a way that was almost certainly meant to go directly into Gerard’s eyes), and sometimes in a very bad way (holding a knife so that he looks a few seconds away from stabbing himself in the stomach). It keeps the scene from being too exposition heavy, but sometimes the material can wind up catching your attention more than the actual important information.

*The show seems to have returned to its old method of running the end credits over stills from the episode instead of one random still shot. We’ll see if that becomes the new norm or not in the next few reviews, I guess.

Would This Hold Up in Court?: Yes, I suppose, although it was a very roundabout way to get there. It’s fairly solid proof, though the way it was obtained might raise a few eyebrows. Then again, that may be par for the course whenever one of Columbo’s cases comes to trial…