Day 220: Columbo, Candidate for Crime

Show: Columbo

Episode Particulars: S3EP3, “Candidate for Crime”, original airdate November 4^th, 1973.

 Summary: During a special election for California senator, candidate Nelson Hayward (Jackie Cooper) receives threats against his life. In actuality, the threats were cooked up by his campaign manager, Harry Stone (Ken Swofford), who also wants Hayward to stop jeopardizing his campaign by having an affair with secretary Linda Johnson (Tisha Sterling). Hayward deals with this by setting up an elaborate ruse where Stone sneaks out of the hotel wearing Hayward’s clothes while Hayward theoretically uses the time to break it off with Johnson personally. Instead, he follows Stone and murders him, arranges it to look like he died later than he did, then sets up the alibi that he was throwing a surprise party for his wife Victoria (Joanne Linville) at the time of the murder. To everyone else, it looks like the person who has it out for Hayward killed Stone by mistake. Columbo, of course, thinks otherwise.

Standalone Thoughts: This episode starts out with a really interesting idea…and then kind of squanders it. It’s established right from the beginning that Stone set up the death threats against Hayward to boost his ratings in the polls, and if the entire episode had revolved around him and Hayward making it look like there were repeated attempts on his life, that would have been another good example of shaking up the Columbo formula. But they decided to go with a more traditional murder, which is a bit disappointing but not too bad. My bigger problem is that they don’t seem to know what they’re doing with the traditional murder, either.

Again, there were two interesting directions the episode could have gone once they decided to have Hayward murder Stone. First, he could have been doing it to further his political ambitions, killing two birds with one stone by making it look like a case of mistaken identity while also getting rid of the guy who knows his biggest secrets. Instead, the episode makes it seem like Hayward did it because he’s tired of Stone interfering with his love life. If that was the case, he should have used it to his advantage; once he killed Stone, he then should have found a way to do something similar with his wife, again insisting that the bullet was meant for him. It would have tied everything together nicely, since he gets even more sympathy, the way is clear for him to get the girl, and the person who most vehemently opposed the relationship is dead. But once Stone is shot…his relationship with Miss Johnson is pretty much relegated to the background. He finds a few reasons to see her, Victoria makes a few snarky comments, and Columbo appears to have figured out that Johnson is attracted to him. Other than that, she’s unimportant to the case. If she was the primary motive, you’d think she’d have a bigger part to play. And if she wasn’t the primary motive, then I’m not entirely sure what was.

Furthermore, the episode feels like there’s a lot of padding. Columbo does his usual thing of talking about innocuous but actually important things, yet some of those lines of inquiry don’t really seem all that relevant, even to the audience. They also go on long enough that instead of being amused by Columbo’s methods, they run the risk of making the audience as annoyed as the in-universe listener. Then the episode takes it a step further by having a very long segment that revolves around Columbo’s car, first when he’s stopped by traffic cops, then when he’s having the car repaired based on what the traffic cops saw. There’s even an interlude where he drives a tow truck and uses it to test a theory. Granted, this all winds up going somewhere and it makes perfect sense once Columbo explains it, but it feels like a lot of work for a minor payoff.

I’d say this is one of the weaker Columbo episodes, though it’s not quite as weak as “Lovely but Lethal” or “The Most Crucial Game”. Once we know what Columbo’s looking for, the material is good, and Cooper’s performance is excellent. The episode just feels more convoluted and bloated than it needed to be. This one might have benefited from being 75 minutes instead of 100 minutes; less time can mean more streamlined. But Hollywood’s been making things overlong for years, so I shouldn’t be surprised that TV gets in on the act as well.

Number of “Columbo-isms”: Another 5/6. Columbo’s wife is used as an excuse to get more information, the car plays a large role as I mentioned before, Columbo fumbles in his coat for practically everything, and “This old man” is sung or whistled twice. But the big winner is “Just one more thing” which shows up a whopping four times in the course of one conversation. I think that may be a record. I have to applaud Columbo for managing to keep it up for so long.

Other: *This episode once again shakes things up a bit by having Columbo appear in the first two minutes. It’s just a brief glimpse as Hayward is giving an interview in the police station, but it’s always interesting when the show deviates from the formula, no matter how big or small.

*There’s an (in theory) neat camera trick where the camera zooms out from the scene that’s supposedly taking place in real time to reveal that it’s being broadcast on TV. In practice, though, something feels off about it, and I’m not sure exactly what it is. Maybe it’s the fact that the scene doesn’t quite fit the TV screen. Whatever it is, it was probably due to the limitations of special effects in 1973, so while I’ll notice it, I won’t hold it against the episode.

*After my discussion about the odd “A” shirt Nora Chandler was wearing in “Requiem for a Falling Star”, I feel like I should mention that Miss Johnson wears a shirt in one scene that’s also covered with A’s. I now must conclude that the A is, in fact, a designer’s logo. But it must be out of business now, because I’ve never seen it here in 2017. Anyone who knows more about fashion than I do can feel free to chime in.

Would This Hold Up in Court?: This one’s a definite yes. Columbo has hard evidence and doesn’t even have to worry about not having a warrant for once. Given how much publicity this case is going to get, he played things very well this time around.