Day 221: Columbo, Double Exposure

Show: Columbo

Episode Particulars: S3EP4, “Double Exposure”, original airdate December 16^th, 1973.

 Summary: Advertising advisor Bart Kepple (Robert Culp, back for round three of playing the killer) has decided to murder his current client, Victor Norris (Robert Middleton) for somewhat unclear reasons. To do this, he feeds Norris caviar, then splices images of drinks into the print of the film he made for Norris’ company (for an added bonus, he inserted them into scenes of a desert and cranked the heat up to 90 degrees). When the subliminal messaging works, Kepple is waiting for Norris in the lobby and shoots him. It was all very cleverly done…but of course, advertisers aren’t the only ones who know how to read people. Policemen have been doing it for years, and Columbo in particular has it down to an art form.

Standalone Thoughts: I found this episode interesting, although I’m probably biased in that regard. Much like “Requiem for a Falling Star”, the episode has a lot to do with film (sometimes literally), and so it’s got my attention almost immediately. There’s also the added bonus of the fact that they don’t make or run movies in the same way nowadays, so we get the time capsule effect, which is always fun for people who like history. If you’re just in it for the story, you’ll probably enjoy it too. However…

The episode is so excited to focus on the subliminal messaging and the interactions between Kepple and Columbo that it feels like a lot of relevant material got shoved to the sidelines. Kepple’s entire motive for murdering Norris was because Norris was (I think) being set up to be blackmailed by being caught in a compromising position with a lady Kepple used for his advertisements. Norris also intimates that Kepple has done this before. But once the motive is established and the deed done, that entire thing mostly falls by the wayside. Columbo talks to Mrs. Norris (Louise Latham) once, and then that whole aspect isn’t really brought up again until near the end. In fact, the lady in question never even appears on screen, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing (after all, they do it in every episode with Mrs. Columbo), but it does make you realize that things that should be important are kind of being ignored.

But I forgive a lot of that, because the episode also contains something I didn’t (appropriately enough) consciously realize I liked until right now. Namely, Columbo and Kepple have a conversation where Columbo knows Kepple’s the murderer and Kepple knows he knows, but the two of them dance around the subject, both confident that they can beat the other eventually. Most of the time, Columbo just makes vague innuendos, and if he’s confronted by the murderer, it’s generally an angry “stop accusing me or I’ll report you to your superiors”. I don’t think we’ve seen something like this since the original pilot, and I’d forgotten how enjoyable that sort of knowing subtlety can be to watch. Then again, given my love for both Garak and Weyoun over on Deep Space Nine, I shouldn’t be surprised that I’d respond so well to it.

While it’s still not as strong as other episodes have been, this is the strongest episode of the season so far, although I’ll freely admit that these could be my biases talking. It’s got good acting and good writing, and even if it ignored some elements, what we do get is worth watching. It may be a bit flawed, but it’s not irreversibly so.

Number of “Columbo-isms”: 2/6 for sure, and two maybes. There’s definitely several mentions of his wife and a very clear-cut “Just one more thing”, but he doesn’t do a lot of fumbling, and while we get a brief glimpse of him behind the wheel of a car, the shot is tight enough that we can’t be entirely positive that it is his car. That being said, he does drive a golf cart at one point, so that kind of makes up for it.

Other: *It’s not worth taking a screencap of, but one of the characters is wearing a tie that is the exact color and pattern as her shirt. To each their own, of course, but that seems like an odd fashion choice to me.

*During one conversation, Kepple talks to Columbo about body language in a way that made it sound like reading body language was this brand new concept, which I absolutely refuse to accept. The only other explanation is that Kepple’s talking to Columbo assuming he’s an idiot, which makes some sense but didn’t feel like the case in this instance. I don’t mind them having the conversation, but I think that one line needed to be tweaked a bit.

Would This Hold Up in Court?: Despite the fact that they caught Kepple red-handed, no. When the guy Columbo gets to help him out points out that they need a search warrant, Columbo says “I’m not searching, I’m looking.” It makes sense in context, but I’m pretty sure a lawyer could convince a jury that it was searching without a warrant. Also, if the technique he used to catch Kepple was banned in innocuous settings, I refuse to believe it would be accepted as hard evidence. It’s a clever trick and very entertaining to watch, but the prosecuting attorney assigned to the case would not be amused. Again.