Day 267: Columbo, Ashes to Ashes

Show: Columbo

Episode Particulars: S10EP12, “Ashes to Ashes”, original airdate October 8^th, 1998.

 Summary: Eric Prince (Patrick McGoohan in his final acting appearance, though he directed the next episode I’ll be reviewing) is an undertaker who specializes in celebrity funerals. Back in his early days, he used this position to sell information to tabloid gossip Verity Chandler (Rue McClanahan), but he eventually blew her off, which obviously didn’t sit well with her. Approaching him during a funeral, Chandler threatens to expose Prince’s shady activities, especially one concerning a diamond necklace, and Prince murders her with an embalming tool. Then he hides her in the freezer, eventually swapping her body for that of the man from the funeral as a quick way to dispose of the evidence. As the crowning touch, he goes to her house, removes what he thinks is all the evidence of her story about him, then makes it look like she was abducted from her home. But while he may have burned the evidence, Columbo’s gradually able to get enough evidence to be able to burn him.

Standalone Thoughts: Overall, I’d say this is a pretty strong episode. McGoohan brings his usual stern dignity to his role, and he interacts with Columbo very well. In fact, we get not one, but two “dancing around the issue” scenes between the two of them, complete with a pointed pun. We haven’t gotten a scene like that in a long time, so I was overjoyed to get another one so close to the end of the series. While those moments are the clear highlights, there’s other good points, like the general aesthetics of the various locations (which feel separate and distinct), or the work of most of the supporting actors. I also kind of admire how quickly it takes to establish the motive, commit the murder, and conceal the crime. On average, these things take about half-an-hour of the runtime; here it took about fifteen minutes. I’d praise this as economy of storytelling, but the fleetness in the beginning just meant that there was more need for padding later in the episode.

As you can guess, the padding is one of two weak spots of this episode. In particular, the scene at the undertaker’s banquet where Prince is being honored as Man of the Year gets a little tiring when it’s not about the interactions between Prince and Columbo. I especially hate the singer/piano player in that scene, because his voice is grating and his parodies of classic songs to make them funeral themed are smarmy instead of funny. What makes it worse is that there was a setup for what seemed to be an important clue—the furnace was broken after Prince burned Chandler’s body—but it seems to be totally forgotten about in favor of the banquet scene. Making more of that information and moving Columbo’s interactions with Prince to another scene would probably have made the episode stronger.

The other weak spot is/are two supporting actors who play their characters a little too broad. One is Rodger Gambles (Spencer Garrett), who gives off all the signs of “flamboyantly gay”. This isn’t a problem per se, but Garrett apparently decided to let those tropes do the bulk of the heavy lifting, instead of developing Gambles as a character. Granted, he’s only in two scenes, but it can make him a bit annoying to watch. I feel the same way about Sheik Yarami (Richard Libertini), who only gets one scene, but who has an obviously fake Middle Eastern accent and talks about himself in the third person, chewing the scenery the whole while. Neither character is in the episode long, but it’s enough to bring down the overall quality of the material. Still, this is definitely a high point of the “season”, and worth appreciating in as many ways as you can.

Number of “Columbo-isms”: Another perfect 6/6. Dog plays a semi-important role, Columbo uses Mrs. Columbo as a cover to get more information, the car shows up here and there, Columbo has two cases of fumbling (and the fact that he always carries lots of stuff in his pockets is commented on by Prince), “This Old Man” appears on the soundtrack in a minor key, and while Columbo doesn’t literally say “Just one more thing”, he does the usual routine surrounding it, so I’d say it counts. I don’t know what scores the remaining two episodes will get, but if this is the last perfect score, I’m more than happy that it happened during the last Patrick McGoohan episode. It seems fitting that it happened under the watch of the old guard.

Other: *Look closely in the opening credits and you’ll see that one of the characters is played by Catherine McGoohan, Patrick McGoohan’s daughter. I’m not surprised that a little bit of nepotism snuck in there (McGoohan also directed the episode), but McGoohan knew better than to overuse her, so I consider it a fun quirk instead of a problem.

*While it only plays a minor part in the episode, we get what I believe is our first reference to e-mail in this show. And the march of technological progress continues…

*Columbo displays a startling lack of personal space when he first encounters Prince. Not ten minutes after meeting him and he’s already patting the guy on the arm. I’m honestly not too surprised that Prince returned the favor a few seconds later; turnabout is fair play, after all.

*We get official confirmation in this episode that Columbo will just make up relatives to explain how he knows so much. We see him get information from a random taxi driver earlier in the episode, but when he talks about the incident with Prince, the man has been changed to Columbo’s cousin. Since he could have just been straightforward with Prince, I assume Columbo had a reason for making up a relative. Other than maintaining his cover as a slightly rambling detective, though, I’ve got no ideas.

Would This Hold Up in Court?: Yes, I think so. It’s a fairly solid piece of evidence obtained without any trickery, which is excellent as far as Columbo is concerned. Again, I’m glad it happened on McGoohan’s watch.