Show: Columbo
Episode
Particulars: S1EP5, “Lady In Waiting”, original airdate December 15th,
1971.
Standalone
Thoughts: This episode intrigues me for two reasons. The first is that it
shakes up the formula again in a neat way. Instead of murdering her brother and
trying to make it look like a burglary gone wrong, Chadwick actually admits to
shooting her brother, although she’s trying to make it look like an accident.
It’s different and novel, and I appreciate the fact that the showrunners were
experimenting while keeping their core formula intact. See, this is the sort of thing I was
expecting from Poirot.
The other thing that fascinates me about this episode is
trying to figure out if we’re supposed to sympathize with Chadwick or not.
Maybe it was supposed to be clear-cut in 1971, but I can’t help but applying
some nuance to it with my modern eyes (either that or I’m still used to grey
morality thanks to Deep Space Nine). It
starts with the conflict that leads up to the shooting; Bryce suspects Hamilton
of being a fortune hunter, and forbids Chadwick from seeing him, and sends a
letter to Hamilton to stay away or else he’s fired. You can understand Chadwick
being frustrated that she’s not allowed to make her own decision on the matter,
but you can kind of see Bryce’s position as well. But this turns out to be a
small part of a much larger character motivation. You see, while Chadwick is
obviously in the wrong for shooting her brother, there’s a heavy implication
that she hasn’t been treated very well by her family. Her mother (Jessie Royce
Landis) clearly liked Bryce best and thought her daughter was almost totally
incompetent. She practically says that to Chadwick’s face, so I have to imagine
Chadwick felt that negativity practically every day of her life. When you look
at her in that light, her actions become more understandable, even if you don’t
condone what she did.
Now, the more I think about it, the more I suspect we
were supposed to be unsympathetic to Chadwick. As soon as she’s in charge, she
starts buying flashy clothes and cars (including an outfit that I cannot
believe would be sold in a major department store) and declares she’s going to
make lots of changes to the advertising firm. Pretty much everyone disapproves
of this, including Hamilton, who repeatedly states variations of “you’ve
changed, and I don’t think I like it”. But here in 2017, I see a woman who’s
breaking loose and getting to live her own life. Sure, she’s going a bit
overboard, but that’s common when people finally get a taste of freedom (look
at what happens when a lot of teenagers arrive in college). Besides, we never
see whether or not the decisions she’s making are bad for the company or not;
Chadwick gets caught before we see results. Since her plans made a certain
amount of sense to me, someone with no boardroom or advertising experience
whatsoever, I think there’s a fifty-fifty chance that it would have made the
business more successful. Honestly, I think if you took Columbo out of this and
made a few more changes, you could make a drama or tragedy out of Chadwick’s
situation. Or maybe that’s just the writer in me who always seizes on
potential.
At any rate, this is a long way of saying that the
episode is pretty good. The situation is believable, the ideas are interesting,
and the actors all do fine jobs. I particularly like Leslie Nielsen, partially
because he’s a face I recognize but also because he turns out to be a decent
guy despite initially being given a negative first impression of him. About the
only weakness I see is wondering why Columbo’s superiors are allowing him to
pursue a case that has gone to trial and is considered closed. Surely they’d
want him to be pursuing recent or unsolved murders instead of poking around
what seems to be a case of accidental death. Or is that me just trying to bring
real-world logic into fiction again?
Anyway, I think this is one of the best Columbo episodes I’ve seen so far, and
I’d be fascinated to hear other people’s opinions on the episode and Chadwick’s
situation. I’m curious to see if others agree with me, or if I’m going against
the grain as usual.
Number of
“Columbo-isms”: 3/6, all of which in pretty major ways. There’s a scene
that takes place in Columbo’s car, his wife is apparently partially responsible
for him solving the case, and Columbo literally says “Just one more thing”,
although he doesn’t do it as a parting shot (though he has a similar moment
without the famous line a little later). Not a bad showing, I’d say.
Other: *The
opening shot of the episode is of a nighttime cityscape as seen from above,
with a very shaky camera. This has no connection to the rest of the episode and
is honestly a little dizzying. A slow pan up the driveway to the Chadwick house
might have been a better choice here.
*By contrast, I do like a brief shot where Chadwick and
her brother are walking on opposite sides of a fountain/manmade pond. It’s a
nicely composed shot and says something about the distance between them, so I
applaud the cinematographer for that one.
*At one point when Chadwick is in the garden, you can see
a faint reflection of her back. What makes this weird is that she’s not
standing in front of anything that should be creating a reflection. My best
guess is that it was some sort of glass that the filmmakers put up to limit the
wind or something, and we’re only able to see it now thanks to better quality
electronics. Still, it was puzzling for a moment there.
*When I first saw Leslie Nielsen in this episode, I had
two immediate thoughts. The first was “Man, Nielsen was practically born old,
wasn’t he? He’s got silver hair already despite a youthful face.” The second
was “Wait, how old was he at this
point, and how old was Susan Clark?” The answer; 45 vs. 28. Assuming we map
that onto their characters, that’s a seventeen year age gap. That’s not
necessarily a problem, but it does make me raise an eyebrow. Then again, based
on Chadwick’s home life, we could probably draw some conclusions about this if
we wanted to. Though I’m not sure how well either character would come off.
*The whole sequence surrounding the murder is
interesting, though not necessarily always in a good way. We start off with
Chadwick fantasizing about how she’s going to murder her brother and make it
look like an accident. This seems like a weird decision, especially since it
has dreamy music and those wavy lines that indicate dreams or flashbacks. Then
the actual murder takes place, and we realize why the filmmakers did that; so
we can see what should have happened
and understand how it all went wrong. That turns it from an odd choice to a
good choice, but it is undermined somewhat by having the scenes where Chadwick
has to quickly make things fit her original plan intercut with scenes of
Hamilton running across the lawn to investigate. It stops being tense and
starts feeling like padding after awhile. Or, given that Nielsen’s involved,
unintentional comedy.
*This episode contains quite possibly the most
interestingly conceived department store ever. In addition to shopping for
clothes, you can also play pool there, and the store even appears to have a
bar. I feel like this is something all department stores should look into; that
way, there will be something for people to do while their family members go
shopping.
*In keeping with the points I was making about Chadwick
in the “Standalone Thoughts” section, I love the way the episode shows how much
she’s changed just by showing us what her nighttime routine is, both before and
after the murder. Show don’t tell indeed.
Would This Hold Up
in Court?: I think this one depends entirely on execution. Columbo himself
kind of intimates that the case relies on poking holes in Chadwick’s story, and
depending on how she spins it, it’s possible a jury will find her innocent. So
I’m going with a tentative “no” on this one, although it’s a very thin divide
this time around.
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