Day 202: Columbo, Ransom for a Dead Man

Show: Columbo

Episode Particulars: Pilot Episode 2, “Ransom for a Dead Man”, original airdate March 1^st, 1971.

To explain the two pilots; according to Wikipedia, “Prescription: Murder” was designed as a made for TV movie that was based off a stage play (itself based off an episode of a TV anthology). It was so popular that the studio asked for another movie to see if the character and concept had potential as a TV series. I think we can all tell how that turned out.

 Summary: Mrs. Leslie Williams (Lee Grant), a lawyer, has decided to murder her husband (Harlan Warde) without making it look like a murder. After killing him and disposing of the body, she rigs up an elaborate charade involving a ransom note out of newspaper letters, fake phone calls, and splicing audio from a recording of her husband’s voice to make it sound like he’s still alive. Then she fakes a drop-off of the ransom money, concealing the actual money in a hidden panel in her closet. Unfortunately, two people are suspicious of her from the start. One is her stepdaughter Margaret (Patricia Mattick), and the other, of course, is Columbo, who was there as a police liaison to the federal agents and therefore was present for Williams’ act practically from the beginning. Which of course means that she has that many more opportunities to give the game away.

Standalone Thoughts: While this episode is decent, I think “Prescription: Murder” was the better pilot episode. A large reason for this is that it doesn’t feel like Columbo is actually in this episode all that much. Obviously, time needs to be spent showing us the murder and the coverup, but it just feels like our focus is on Williams more than it is on Columbo, even if that’s not actually the case. On a related note, it takes most of the episode before we get any sort of motive for Williams murdering her husband. We can hazard a guess, but because we don’t know for sure, it kind of undermines the material because we’re sitting there thinking, “Ok, but why?” Not knowing the motive makes some of Williams’ actions inexplicable, and when you pair it with the (ultimately unanswered) question of “So what exactly was her plan here?”, it winds up feeling a bit sloppy.

But all of this is nothing compared to the visual tricks that are clearly meant to be clever but just are baffling at best and annoying at worst. It starts off almost immediately, when Williams shoots her husband; instead of just having a dramatic music sting as she whips out a gun and shoots him, we keep cutting back and forth between/zooming in on two freeze frames, one of Williams firing the gun, and one of her husband looking horrified. Slo-mo would have felt less out-of-place than that. And it just keeps popping up in weird ways, like blurry fade-outs and fade-ins between scenes, jumps or cuts between locations as a character is speaking to indicate the passage of time, and my personal favorite, this completely unnecessary shot;

I have no idea what the intent of this was, but all it does is distract you from the matter at hand. Though there does come a point where you start to wonder if it’s representative of Williams’ mental state, which would be an interesting touch if it wasn’t for the fact that her acting and what we’re told about her doesn’t seem to support this. All I know is I really hope this doesn’t become a common occurrence; the stories don’t need to be gussied up like this.

If you can ignore the visual flair and look at the story, I’d say it’s hit or miss, and mostly miss. One of the few hits is that Columbo has a beautiful moment when he pulls rank (or rather, jurisdiction) on a federal agent, and of course Falk continues to do an excellent job with the character. But even Columbo himself isn’t perfect in this episode, given that he picks a lock to look for evidence and makes a comment about women that might have been acceptable in 1971 but is outrageous today. As for other misses, you’ve got the sudden appearance of Margaret when there was no prior mention that she even existed, an annoying soundtrack (one song sounds like someone’s just repeatedly banging a triangle in the background), and material that doesn’t have the impact that it should, for one reason or another (I’ll discuss these more in the “other” section). I wouldn’t go so far as to say the episode is bad, but it’s got a bunch of little issues that ultimately stick in your mind longer than the rest of the material. Or maybe the visual tricks are so ridiculous that it warped my perspective on the rest of the episode. I’d certainly believe it.

Number of “Columbo-isms”: 3/6 (asking for a pen, mentioning his wife at least twice, “Just one more thing”).

Other: *We get a scene of Williams in court to establish her character and start to get the “ransom” underway, and I actually kind of like it. Yes, she’s defending someone she knows is guilty, but she’s not only clever and somewhat witty about it, she manages to raise a legitimate objection to the prosecutor’s statement even though she was involved in a conversation about her missing husband. In a slightly different set of circumstances, she might have qualified for my “Best Female Character” list over on Allison Tooey. Although the whole “murder” thing kind of puts a damper on that.

*The episode includes something that I know was supposed to be a clever touch, but blew up in the writer’s faces, at least for me personally. At one point, Margaret is seen watching TV, which is tuned to the movie Double Indemnity. In that movie, we learn from a girl that her stepmother killed her actual mother, married her father, and then eventually killed him, too. This obviously parallels Margaret’s situation (although even she admits that Williams had nothing to do with her mother’s death), and as a movie buff, I kind of appreciate the subtle detail, especially since the scene Margaret’s watching isn’t the scene where the daughter reveals this information to Walter Neff. But the problem is, not only is it a little too on-the-nose, but it makes a later scene where Margaret talks to Columbo ring false. Part of the problem may be that Patricia Mattick isn’t a good actress, but her explaining the backstory of her father and stepmother didn’t feel genuine. I actually thought she’d decided to follow the example of Double Indemnity, spinning a similar story to the police in the hopes that they’d arrest Williams. Instead, we’re apparently supposed to believe her. Like I said up above, the episode wound up undermining itself for the sake of a reference, which is never a good thing to do.

*A slightly different undermining moment comes when Columbo points out how suspicious it is that Williams remained so calm during the period where her husband was just considered kidnapped, only for her to fall apart when she was told he was dead. Firstly (and I speak from some personal experience here), sometimes you can be optimistic and/or in a state of denial about something, only for the reality to come crashing in like a ton of bricks once you get confirmation that no, this bad thing is actually happening. And secondly, Williams actually wasn’t wholly calm. She started off fairly calm, then got a little more frantic immediately after the “phone call”, which seems pretty believable to me. I don’t know if this was a case of Grant playing the role a little too well or me reading too much into it, but the end result is that it feels like one of Columbo’s weaker arguments. Fortunately, he has plenty of other reasons to be suspicious of her, so it’s just a minor stumbling block.

*This is somewhat immature of me, but it was pointed out to me that during the scene where Columbo and Williams are flying in a plane, the dialogue can sound very…naughty. And to make matters worse, every time you think you just have a dirty mind, there’s a line about “experience” or “taking control” that just sends you right back to the gutter. At least it’s good for an unintentional chuckle, I suppose.

*Much like “Prescription: Murder”, this episode also includes a character laying out the way Columbo operates, although I don’t feel it’s as strong this time around in part because it doesn’t feel like Williams respects Columbo’s abilities, whereas Flemming did. Flemming’s speech makes it feel like he and Columbo are playing a mental chess game; Williams’ speech feels like it was just thrown into the script. But I don’t entirely mind its existence here, so it can re-remind people what they can expect in the show going forward. Though hopefully they won’t feel the need to reiterate it in every single episode.

Would This Hold Up in Court?: Considering that this episode features a lawyer who actively points out that Columbo needs solid evidence, this episode kind of had to make sure it held up in court. Now, there’s a slim chance the method Columbo used to catch Williams could be considered entrapment, but he does have actual proof this time, so I’d say he has enough to convict. Besides, Williams seemed to believe she’d been caught, and if she thinks that, then it’s good enough for me.