Day 211: Columbo, The Greenhouse Jungle

Show: Columbo

Episode Particulars: S2EP2, “The Greenhouse Jungle”, original airdate October 15^th, 1972.

 Summary: One night, Cathy Goodland (Sandra Smith) receives a threatening phone call that suggests that her estranged husband Tony (Bradford Dillman) is in trouble. In actuality, it’s a ruse being staged by Tony and his uncle Jarvis (Ray Milland); they’re going to fake Tony’s kidnapping, get the ransom money out of his heavily controlled trust fund, and then split the cash, with Tony using his cut to try to win his wife’s affection back. The plan goes off mostly successfully, though once Columbo gets involved, it’s only a matter of time before it all unravels. Although Columbo has something of his own to deal with for once—he’s been assigned an assistant/partner, Sergeant Frederic Wilson (Bob Dishy) who’s a little too excitable and into the latest police technology. This being Columbo, though, he’ll find a way to use that to his advantage.

Standalone Thoughts: This episode contains not one, but two deviations from formula, which makes it extra interesting to me. The first is of course the main plot, which spends almost exactly half the running time focusing on a phony kidnapping plot. Savvy viewers will suspect that this is going to end in murder before the case is done, but it’s not a sure thing for a long while, and that’s a neat deviation.

The other deviation is Columbo being assigned Wilson as a partner of sorts. This is kind of a typical formula—cops with different styles are forced to work together—but it seems like something that just won’t work on Columbo, given his way of going about things. Unless the partner plays along with his bumbler act, he’s going to have trouble getting the information he wants out of people. And Wilson is the excitable, fresh out of the academy type, so he’d probably be completely confused as to what Columbo was up to. But the writers clearly wanted to explore this idea, so they got around it by having Columbo basically find ways to ditch Wilson at every opportunity, but doing it in such a way that Wilson isn’t aware of it. In fact, I’m not entirely sure myself what Columbo’s opinion of the whole thing is. I did get the feeling that he wasn’t too fond of having a partner, and wondered, especially near the end, if he was letting Wilson take the lead just to take the guy down a peg, or at least teach him a lesson about real police work. But maybe I’m just reminded of Poirot’s treatment of Hastings and am grafting the two shows together. Certainly Columbo’s a little less blatantly rude about it than Poirot was, so it’s more puzzling than irritating this time.

Everything else in the episode is pretty good too. I have no complaints about the acting, technical aspects (for once), or most of the costumes. I’m also very fond of the little moments, like a scene that seems destined to end in blackmail and murder ending up in a different place entirely, or one of Columbo’s lines of inquiry that you forget about and then turns out to be essential. It’s things like that that make me really admire writers, and they did a bang up job today. It’s probably not going to be my favorite Columbo episode, but it’s certainly going to fit in the list of “Most Well Planned” episodes.

Number of “Columbo-isms”: 4/6. There’s a running thing about Mrs. Columbo’s love of African violets, several shots of his car, and two variations of “Just one more thing”. He also does a little bit of digging through his coat, once for papers and once for a match. The amusing thing about the match, though, is that he starts to do it, but Wilson has a lighter ready for him within seconds. It was amusing because I initially thought Wilson knew Columbo so well that he was heading him off at the pass. Later, though, it turns out he’s just eager to please, which is amusing in its own way.

Other: *I believe today’s episode marks the first time we have an actor return to Columbo but play a different character. Ray Milland was the husband in “Death Lends a Hand”, and now he’s got a much more central role. Given that his two characters have entirely different personalities, this shouldn’t be a problem for most people; I just wanted to mention it because this will be happening a few times. One man in particular is going to show up a whopping four times. And that’s just when he’s in front of the camera…

*Speaking of Milland, there’s an interesting little detail I noticed. In American English, we pronounce Lieutenant as “Loo-tenant”, while the British say “Lef-tenant”. In “Death Lends a Hand”, Milland (who is British) clearly calls Columbo “Lef-tenant” at one point. In this episode, by contrast, he generally sounds like he’s saying “Loo-tenant”, but if you listen carefully, he kind of squashes the first syllable, so it’s difficult to tell if he’s saying “leff” or “loo”. It’s not relevant to the plot in any way, but I thought it was an interesting little tic.

*At the very beginning of the episode, once Cathy gets the phone call warning about the “kidnapping”, she goes to her desk and opens a drawer. There’s a gun front and center in the drawer, but Cathy ignores the gun and digs through the drawer until she finds what she’s looking for, which is an address book. This is a fantastic way to give the audience information, and sets up a sort of Chekov’s Gun to boot. Nice work, writers and cameramen.

*Columbo handles himself remarkably well after stumbling down a steep hill and winding up flat on his back in a ditch. Sometimes it feels like nothing fazes this guy.

*There was a closeup on Columbo’s face in one scene where it looked like he had a black eye. I wondered vaguely if it was intentional (related to that aforementioned fall) or if Falk had had an accident and the makeup guys hadn’t covered it up successfully. However, the black eye disappeared in subsequent scenes, and sometimes didn’t even look like it was present in the scene where I first noticed it. So now I’m just wondering if it was a shadow thing.

*Columbo does feel a bit out of character when he relays some information to Cathy that has nothing to do with the case and would do nothing but cause some emotional strife. We don’t even get a payoff for that, so I don’t know why they felt the need to put that in there.

Would This Hold Up in Court?: Yes, assuming there isn’t any trouble involving Columbo searching a location without a warrant. Though maybe he did have a warrant and didn’t bring it up.