Day 218: Columbo, Lovely But Lethal

Show: Columbo

Episode Particulars: S3EP1, “Lovely but Lethal”, original airdate September 23^rd, 1973.

 Summary: Viveca Scott (Vera Miles), is the head of a cosmetics company that’s been losing popularity of late, while her competition, David Lang (Vincent Price) is doing just fine for himself. She thought she’d hit the jackpot with a new wrinkle cream that makes wrinkles disappear entirely, but further tests seem to have quashed that. At least, until she finds out from her spy in Lang’s office, Shirley Blaine (Sian Barbara Allen) that he’s in negotiations for a similar wrinkle cream. It turns out that one of the assistant chemists, Karl Lessing (Martin Sheen) has sabotaged things for her, partly for his own gain but partly out of spite, since he and Viveca used to be lovers. When her attempt at bribery fails, she winds up killing him in anger, and all she’s got to show for it is one tin of the correct cream. Well, that and an annoying police lieutenant hanging around her office.

Standalone Thoughts: If I’m perfectly honest, this episode lacks substance. While Columbo is definitely investigating the murder, somehow it feels like he doesn’t show up all that much, even if that’s actually untrue. Instead, it kind of feels like a lot of the episode is taken up with Columbo’s visit to Viveca’s sensitively named “fat camp”, and again, even though he’s present in the scene and he’s talking about the case, it just comes across as padding rather than important. I guess my problem is that even though the episode is the usual 75 or so minutes, when you actually think back over what happened, it doesn’t feel like it should have taken that much time to tell the story.

This is a shame, because there are some interesting hooks in here. From a story perspective, Viveca actually has a good reason to be angry at Lessing, because he ruined their tests to make it look like the cream didn’t work and then was going to sell the real formula to her competitor, Lang. I’m not entirely sure what you could do with the premise that the victim (kind of) deserved it, but there’s certainly potential there. Then of course, there’s the fact that they got Vincent Price to play Lang, which means he was on hand to either play creepy or ham it up a bit. But he’s only in two scenes, and is never even considered as a suspect, which is baffling because the explanations Blaine gives for why she doesn’t think he’s the murderer just felt off to me. He looked like he was going to faint when he found out Lessing was dead and then deposited the money he was going to give Lessing back into his bank account? Those seem more suspicious to me, not less. At any rate, it’s a waste of an entertaining actor, and I hate it when that happens.

Then there’s the thing surrounding the formula/cream itself, which also ties into how Columbo catches Viveca. I won’t spoil it here (although I do down below; consider that a pre-emptive warning before the actual warning), but while I appreciate the fakeout that we eventually get, it’s not as interesting as what might have been. I preferred the idea that Lessing tampered slightly with the cream he let Viveca take, because she’d almost certainly have the cream analyzed and possibly figure out the formula that way. That way, he keeps her from having the formula so he can still have some leverage over her. Then, after she killed him, it became one last “screw you” from beyond the grave. Either that, or the cream works in the short term but causes problems in the long term, so she still doesn’t get what she wants. It’s not that big a deal on its own, but combined with the other problems, it all adds up to a weak presentation. It’s definitely not what I would have opened the season with, that’s for sure.

Number of “Columbo-isms”: 4/6, though three of them are fairly cursory. We’ve got a few mentions of the wife, one glimpse of the car, and a little bit of fumbling with papers. The “Just one more thing”, however, is more notable, because one of them is actually deployed as a jumpscare for both Viveca and the audience. It’s not on par with what you see in horror movies, but it might startle you a bit nevertheless.

Other: *Just one today. The very opening of the episode has a bit of a horror movie vibe, to the point where Frankenstein is discussed. This has nothing to do with the rest of the material, so I wonder if it was thrown in there because of Vincent Price’s involvement. I know I might not have been able to resist the temptation.

Would This Hold Up in Court?: Yes, although it’s an incredibly weak case. To explain that, though, I’ll have to warn for SPOILERS.

Columbo catches Viveca because he and she both were exposed to a poison ivy slide that was in Lessing’s microscope (the murder weapon). Columbo says that was the only way they could have been exposed, because there’s no poison ivy in California. I had severe doubts about that, and did some googling. On the one hand, it’s true that there’s no poison ivy in southern California. On the other, there is poison oak, which causes a very similar reaction. Maybe a jury will buy it, and there’s other things Columbo can look for that can probably support his main “proof”, but personally, I’m not wholly convinced.