Day 266: Columbo, A Trace of Murder

Show: Columbo

Episode Particulars: S10EP11, “A Trace of Murder”, original airdate November 4^th, 1997.

 Summary: Wealthy Southern stereotype Clifford Calvert (Barry Corbin) is in some legal trouble with a man named Howard (Raye Birk), and makes no bones about how much he hates the man. Meanwhile, his wife Kathleen (Shera Danese, who has now played a murderer, a victim, and an innocent bystander in addition to being Falk’s real life wife) is having an affair with someone else, a guy named Patrick (David Rasche). Wanting to be together while enjoying Calvert’s money, the two of them cook up a scheme where they murder Howard and make it look like Calvert did it, by planting evidence both at the scene and on Calvert’s person. To make it even better, it turns out that Patrick works for the Forensics department at the police station, so that makes it easier to fudge evidence. But of course, he can’t tidy up everything, and Columbo’s been known to seize on the oddest discrepancies…

Standalone Thoughts: This is another fairly solid outing, which is reassuring after the relative blandness of most of this “season”. Maybe another break (there was a nearly two year gap between “Undercover” and “Strange Bedfellows”) allowed the various parties to regain some energy. There are still some problems with the episode, of course, but with one exception, they’re relatively minor.

First, the stuff I liked. Columbo is in fine form, really showing his friendly, charming side to draw the audience in, while also making it clear that he’s noticing all the little discrepancies. It’s also refreshing to have Patrick in particular completely underestimate him, instead of just being exasperated by his antics like so many of the murderers have done this “season”. The key piece of evidence Columbo uses to catch Patrick and Kathleen is smart and subtly foreshadowed, and it’s just overall very well put together. Though depending on how you want to look at it, they could have done a little more with it.

See, according to the Columbo Episode Guide, this episode is related in some way to the 25^th anniversary of Columbo. I know that other shows and movie franchises that hit milestones like that often try to have a celebration of some sort; DS9 had “Trials and Tribble-ations”, the Bond franchise has as many visual references as possible in Die Another Day, I’ve heard that Doctor Who went all out on their 50^th anniversary, etc. The thing is, I can’t tell if “A Trace of Murder” was celebrating it or not. On the surface, it seems like it didn’t, because the story is pretty straightforward and doesn’t directly call back to any of Columbo’s previous cases. But if you look over the various elements of the story, you’ll see elements that popped up in earlier episodes. Most obviously, you’ve got the fact that the murderer works for the police (“A Friend in Deed”), but you’ve also got lovers collaborating to murder someone (“Death Hits the Jackpot”), photographs helping to crack the case (“No Time to Die”), cigars playing an important role (“Short Fuse”), and a good chunk of time taken up with tension about whether the plan is about to be derailed (“Prescription: Murder” and “The Most Dangerous Match”). I’m not sure if that was deliberate, and therefore I don’t know how to feel about it. If it was deliberate, I’d approve, and say that they need to throw more references in there. If it wasn’t, then it feels like a bit of a knockoff without the benefit of a good excuse. Still decent on the whole, but not as clever.

That one’s not a problem, per se, but there are definitely some flaws here. The writers tried to shake things up a little by having Columbo not realize until near the end of the episode who the murderer is, instead of being suspicious from the start. It’s not a bad idea to explore, but it does deprive us of the potential “dancing around the issue” scenes, or the “Columbo scares the murderer by revealing he knows more than he’s letting on” moment. Plus, it’s not handled very well here, so it doesn’t have the impact that it should. Furthermore, while the pacing is generally good, I wonder how many of the scenes were actually necessary in the grand scheme of things, because on reflection, it feels like there were a lot of scenes that weren’t too relevant. This is nothing compared to the ending of the episode, though. Not only does Columbo blow his chance to catch the killers fairly (see “Would this hold up in court” below), but the last few minutes of the episode are dedicated to Columbo explaining how he figured everything out, complete with flashbacks. In another context, I’d be all over this (how many times did I bring up my disappointment in Poirot because of a lack of a reveal scene?), but here it just feels like blatant padding, especially because there was enough discussion in prior scenes that we can figure out for ourselves how he put the pieces together. If he’d just explained it simply to the killers the way he normally does or the writers had cut out some of the earlier bits, it might have been more tolerable, but as it stands, it makes the episode screech to a halt and leaves you feeling a bit annoyed. Which is something you don’t want to happen in your media anyway, and definitely not at the ending.

Even if I dislike the ending, though, I still say this episode is fairly high on the “Season Ten” rankings, and would be middle to upper-middle in an overall ranking. I’d certainly suggest checking it out if you like Columbo, though I might turn it off immediately after he’s caught Patrick and Kathleen, so you can end on a relatively high note. If it enhances your enjoyment, there’s no shame in that.

Number of “Columbo-isms”: 5/6, and a brief mention of Dog. We also get a literal “Just one more thing”, a practically toss-off line about Mrs. Columbo, a few glimpses of the car, a few cases of fumbling (including one in a briefcase), and a “This Old Man” motif appears on the soundtrack, though it doesn’t really show up proper until the end. Not too bad, but I had really been hoping for another perfect score, especially given something I’ll discuss below.

Other: *We get another cat appearance today, but instead of being shoved in there randomly like in “Undercover”, it plays an important role in the case, both because it helps find an “incriminating” cigar butt and also because its fur is another important piece of evidence. Not only that, but Columbo wants to find the cat after it runs off so he can give it some food, thus showing that he’s a general animal lover and doesn’t take sides in the cat vs. dog wars, which just makes me like him more. As I hinted above, though, I do wish Dog could have shown up and interacted with the cat. Given Dog’s lazy nature, that could have been a very interesting encounter.

*In the interest of trying to be fair (especially given what I did with DS9), I will say that most of Kathleen’s outfits are actually pretty nice. I especially love the green dress she wears at the start of the episode. About the only two exceptions are a mostly nice black jacket with completely pointless fringe, and a black and purple bodysuit that has an uncannily similar design to Bashir’s absurd workout outfit in “Rivals”. Maybe that was a thing in the 90’s? And if so, why did anyone think it was a good idea?

*Initially, it looks like there’s going to be a running motif of Columbo and fruit. He arrives at the crime scene with bananas and offers them to various guys, and later he’s given a basket of apples and passes them out to everyone in the Forensics department. I actually liked those beats and was kind of sad that they were unexpectedly dropped. I’d certainly take that over the blatant padding that closed out the episode.

*There’s a wonderful moment late in the episode when Columbo invites Patrick to help him question Kathleen to see if she’s hiding something. His main reason is because Patrick has some psychological training, but as he’s leaving, he mentions that “three eyes [are] better than one”. Falk, of course, had a glass eye, though it’s very hard to tell that even when you know about it. Throwing in that line is a lovely meta moment, and one that no one calls attention to. If nothing else, it’s good for a laugh for serious Peter Falk/Columbo fans.

*In a clever move of getting around the censors, Calvert slams the lid of his cigar case down just as he’s saying a bad word. We know what the word is thanks to the lead-in, plus it’s not hard to read his lips, but because we don’t actually hear it, apparently the censors were satisfied. I’ve always enjoyed that sort of “getting around the Hays Code” stuff, though I wouldn’t have expected to see it in Columbo. But then, Columbo’s often been full of surprises.

Would This Hold Up in Court?: On the one hand, a lot of Columbo’s evidence is excellent, and if he’d left well enough alone, it would have been an unquestionable yes. But unfortunately, he lied in order to get both suspects to accuse each other, which I think is an actual police tactic but is shady nevertheless. I suppose the episode needed to do it so he could catch Patrick as well as Kathleen, but I wish there could have been a more legal way to go about it.