Day 244: Columbo, How to Dial a Murder

Show: Columbo

Episode Particulars: S7EP4, “How to Dial a Murder”, original airdate April 15^th, 1978.

 Summary: Psychologist Eric Mason (Nicol Williamson) is a man who specializes in two things; control and making words have more or less power. After finding out (offscreen) that his wife was having an affair with his colleague Charles Hunter (Joel Fabiani), Mason comes up with a particularly brutal way to have his revenge (the wife also having been killed prior to the start of this episode). He trains his two dogs to go on alert at the sound of the phone ringing, and then attack whoever says the word “Rosebud” (Mason is a huge movie fan). After arranging for Hunter to come play tennis at his house, Mason goes to a doctor’s appointment, and then calls his home, allowing things to play out exactly as he expected. At least until Columbo shows up to take charge of the case…

Standalone Thoughts: Once again, I’m not going to be totally objective on this episode, because Mason being a movie buff is a large part of the episode. It’s not quite as pervasive as in, say, “Requiem for a Falling Star”, but given that the kill command is “Rosebud”, that the opening shot is clearly aping the opening shot of Citizen Kane, that Mason’s house is full of movie memorabilia, and that there’s a wonderfully atmospheric scene in a run-down Western movie set, I think I’m justified in saying it’s essential to the episode, and a real treat for film buffs. That being said, the movie paraphernalia is more of a treat; what I really enjoy about the episode is the interplay between Columbo and Mason, especially as the episode continues. It’s not quite the “dancing around the issue” that I love, but it’s just about as good in some places, especially in the last scene, where Columbo casually lays out his case against Mason as he effortlessly plays pool. If you like that sort of thing as much as I do, then you’ll have a pretty good time with this episode.

There is, however, one weak spot I wanted to mention, and that’s the young woman who lives in Mason’s guest house, Joanne Nichols (Kim Cattrall). I’m not entirely sure what purpose she serves in the episode proper, other than being the person who alerts the police to Hunter’s death. The worst part is, it feels like they were planning to do something with her, and then backed out. She’s established as being a bit neurotic, given how often we see her clutching her teddy bear and acting like a child, despite apparently being in college. Then we learn that she’s in love with Mason, and he’s been rejecting her advances. Then, we find out that she also knew Mason’s wife was having an affair with Hunter, and Mason seems on the verge of strangling her so that secret won’t get out, only for Columbo to interrupt just in time. And after that…she disappears. There’s no indication of whether Mason followed through on his murder attempt, or if she went back home like she was gearing up to do, or if she got scared by Mason’s behavior and went to the police. Why dedicate a decent amount of time to her only for her to vanish? Unfortunately, I don’t have a good answer for that.

I’d probably say this was the second best episode of the season, falling behind “Try and Catch Me”. While the episode's definitely entertaining in a variety of ways, it’s not quite as consistently good as “Try and Catch Me” was. We’ll have to see if this ranking changes after the next episode…

Number of “Columbo-isms”: 5/6. There’s a few mentions of Mrs. Columbo, a pretty solid “Just one more thing”, a quick whistle of “This Old Man”, and a few shots of the car. And given that dogs play a big part in the plot, it’s inevitable that Dog will show up too. All we needed was some fumbling and we’d have another perfect score. Too much to hope for, I suppose, especially since we just got one in the previous episode.

Other: *During the scene where Mason is in the doctor’s office and having his heart rate examined, we can hear his heartbeat on the soundtrack, which makes sense. Then we cut to Hunter arriving at Mason’s house, and the heartbeat can still be heard. I’m guessing this is supposed to be significant, or perhaps a bit of foreshadowing, but I’m not entirely sure I like it. Sometimes these things feel just a little too pretentious.

*Mason attempts to poison his dogs at one point in order to prevent his secret from getting out. He was planning on using chocolate, which nowadays would make perfect sense, since we know chocolate is poisonous to dogs. But then Columbo stops him because the dogs are only supposed to be fed by the guard on duty, and when asked “even chocolate?” he calmly says “even chocolate”, as if dogs eating chocolate was entirely normal. Talk about an unexpected sign of the times.

*On a related note to the above point, Mason takes a bite of the chocolate after being caught out, and I wondered if he’d done that to avoid suspicion, but now had to race against the clock to avoid getting poisoned himself. It certainly seemed to be going that way given how eager he seemed to get out of the room, but there was no official followup of him running to the bathroom or quickly drinking water. So I’m not entirely sure how Mason was intending to poison the dogs. Then again, maybe he did know that chocolate was bad for dogs, and it’s just Columbo who wasn’t aware of it. We’ve seen him feeding Dog ice cream in previous episodes, after all; he might be very smart about some things, but animal care doesn’t always seem to be one of them.

Would This Hold Up in Court?: It depends. On the one hand, Columbo’s obtained a lot of evidence, including the kill command Mason used on the dogs. On the other hand, it feels like he obtained a lot of that information without permission, given that he keeps popping into Mason’s house at all hours, sometimes while Mason’s not present, and apparently was recording conversations without Mason’s knowledge. Plus, as delightful as the final scene is from a mind game perspective, Columbo was clearly baiting Mason into giving the game away, which I don’t think a judge would look too kindly on. So while it seems like a yes on the surface, I have my doubts once you go a little deeper.