Day 205: Columbo, Dead Weight

Show: Columbo

Episode Particulars: S1EP3, “Dead Weight”, original airdate October 27^th, 1971.

 Summary: When former Marine General Martin Hollister (Eddie Albert) gets a visit from Colonel Rodger Dutton (John Kerr) and learns that the army is close to exposing some underhanded business practices they’ve been participating in, Hollister takes matters into his own hands. But he happens to live in a house near the ocean, so a passing woman in a rented boat, Mrs. Stewart (Suzanne Pleshette) sees it happen and calls the police, although she just caught a glimpse of them and has no idea who the two men are. Columbo investigates, but while he finds several old weapons from wars past, none of them seem like they could be the murder weapon, and there’s no sign of a body to boot. Once he leaves, Hollister tracks down Mrs. Stewart, but instead of trying to silence her, he starts courting her, apparently in the hope that she’ll like him too much to believe he’s capable of murdering anybody. Unfortunately for him, doing that sort of thing is just going to make Columbo even more suspicious.

Standalone Thoughts: This episode is interesting in that it shakes up the formula that has already been established for the show. We still know who did it, and we have a very good sense as to how, but instead of showing us the actual murder and the cover-up, most of it happens offscreen. It takes over half the episode before we see where Hollister has been hiding the body, and the body itself is only found with about twenty minutes to go. Furthermore, a lot of the episode revolves around witness testimony that is very hard to prove, which is very different from the usual “Columbo examines the crime scene and then badgers the murderer about contradicting details” style. Oh, some of that happens, certainly, but the main focus seems to be on the witness. It’s a creative deviation, but I must confess, I don’t think I entirely like the way they executed it.

To begin with, I’m not entirely sure what the episode was going for with Mrs. Stewart’s character. Is she supposed to be seen as a little weird, with her awkward attempts at art, bad sailing skills, and the fact that she works at a petting zoo? Certainly we don’t exactly get the greatest impression of her, which I’m guessing was somewhat by design so that the police wouldn’t necessarily believe her statement. And if that was the end of it, it might be all right. Instead, the episode then swerves from odd into downright uncomfortable.

I really don’t want to throw around loaded words that are often misused, but I think it’s accurate here. Simply put, I think Mrs. Stewart is being gaslighted, intentionally or unintentionally, by pretty much everyone. Hollister’s obviously doing it in the hopes of getting Columbo off his back, but her mother (Kate Reid) seems equally dismissive (and honestly never seems to treat her daughter very well) and even Columbo questions what she saw initially. I know Columbo was doing it because at the time he had very little to go on and was drawing a conclusion based on what he saw of Mrs. Stewart’s character, but it’s so in keeping with what we see in the rest of the episode that it starts feeling icky by association. And when you later realize that she’s feeling very fragile because of her divorce from an unseen Mr. Stewart who didn’t treat her right, the whole thing just doesn’t sit very well with me. Unfortunately, this winds up taking up the bulk of the episode (it doesn’t feel like Columbo gets that much screentime), so it’s kind of hard to focus your attention on anything else.

If you stripped that aspect out of the plot, or at least only had the manipulation coming from Hollister’s end, I think this would have been a pretty good episode. Heck, it could have been an original movie in its own right. As it is, it’s probably my least favorite Columbo episode so far, though at least it lacks the flashy camera tricks from “Ransom For a Dead Man”, which was much more annoying and will probably linger with me more than the issues with this episode. Both of them are a matter of opinion, but this one is more about interpretation. Odd, out of place cinematography is a straightforward fact.

Number of “Columbo-isms”: 4/6, though some of them were near things. We definitely get a glimpse of Columbo’s car and he fumbles through his coat several times (I decided to change this trope to him rooting around in his coat or asking for items like matches instead of just limiting it to asking for pencils or pens), but there’s only one very obvious “Just one more thing” and while he mentions various family members a few times, his wife only comes up once, right at the very end. And even that’s not a direct discussion of anything his wife has said or done. It all adds up to another way that this episode feels like it’s going against formula slightly.

Other: *I like the establishing shot of Hollister’s main room that we see underneath the opening credits. It helps give us a sense of who the general is, with all the various pictures of himself in military uniform, some other pictures that suggests that he played sports, the large bar, the classical statues, and of course the guns strewn all over the place. Now that’s a good example of establishing character through the contents of their room.

*As with Poirot, I have no intention of keeping track of fashions like I did on Deep Space Nine, but some outfits just cannot be ignored. Like this one;

When your coat literally looks identical to a bandana, I think things have gone too far. Maybe that was in in the 70’s, but it’s just weird now.

*When Mrs. Stewart gets offended that Columbo thinks Hollister is only interested in her because she’s a potential witness and asks if he really thinks people couldn’t like her for herself, Columbo protests and says that she’s “a very individual person”, which is about the most backhanded compliment you could possibly give to a person. What on earth does that even mean? Personally, if I heard that, I’d get even more offended. You couldn’t think of one better adjective that at least sounded somewhat complimentary?

*Much like his reluctance to ride in planes in “Ransom for a Dead Man”, Columbo doesn’t seem very happy to be on a boat in this episode. I’m not sure if either of these are going to be recurring elements, but I’ll keep an eye out for them.

*VAGUE SPOILER WARNING. At the very end of the episode, Columbo is in a museum and just opens up one of the cabinets, grabbing an item with his bare hand. I’m hoping this was a special case because he’s a policeman and this was all set up beforehand, but it does kind of feel like this museum leaves their cabinets unlocked. I know this was the 70’s when security was a bit different, but I don’t think they were that lax about valuables.

Would This Hold Up in Court?: On the one hand, Columbo’s reasoning behind his key piece of evidence is very flimsy. On the other, it sounds like he ran tests that provided definitive proof of what the murder weapon was, so I’m guessing that would be enough for a jury. So let’s say “yes” to this one, even if it initially doesn’t feel like it.