One of the better Columbo episodes. Not as funny as some, but an engaging plot that pits Peter Falk against Jose Ferrer, chief of the Cybernetics Research Institute, who has just murdered his colleague, Lew Ayres, in order to protect his own son, Robert Walker Jr., from exposure as a chemical plagiarist and utter phony.
Like the other episodes in the series, the plot is implausible if only because of Columbo's fulgurating intuition. Example: Columbo arrives at the scene of the crime, is shown the body in the living room, and told that a can of heroin was stolen from the laboratory in the garage. Columbo pauses, puzzled, and says: "I don't get it. The man was killed here and the heroin was in the garage?" Any viewer with wit must think, "Sure. Why the hell not?" Some salivating doper came in through the living room, was discovered leaving by the same route with the can of smack, and clobbered Lew Ayres with a baseball bat in the living room, afterward escaping with the goods. To find a flaw in that scenario requires not just a willing suspension of disbelief but an attack on the viewer's common sense with some kind of bone drill or sledge hammer.
Maybe that alternative isn't good enough? Okay, how about this? The doper enters the doc's house, beats the location of the stash out of him, and kills him in the process.
Just one more instance of Columbo's spiritual guidance. There is a scuff mark of the victim's shoes on a door, suggesting the body had been carried into the house from somewhere else. Suspicion is cast on Research Assistant Ross, but Columbo dismisses him as a suspect because he's too short to have carried the body in his arms and left a scuff mark that high on the door. Alternative: Ross IS the murderer but carried the body not in his arms but slung over his shoulder, thus elevating the shoes to the proper distance from the floor. In any case, had I been Columbo, I'd have had the Ross character charged with inability to act, even in a bit part in a TV series.
So it goes. We fans don't mind such things. These implausibilities are like the ray guns in science fiction movies. We don't ask how they work. They're just there, taken for granted as necessary to the advancement of the plot.
For the added zest that comes from celebrity recognition, there is a supporting role for Jessica Walters, a fine actress who never really got the parts she needed. Robbie the Robot from "Forbidden Plant" is in here too. Then there is Lee Montogomery as a child prodigy of about ten or eleven, named Steve Spelberg. (Get it?) Not a bad actor for a kid. At least I didn't feel the usual impulse to stomp him like a roach. Robert Walker has the misfortune of being narrow shouldered and skinny. He wears tight trousers too. And with that big stylish mop of hair the image he always evokes is that of an olive on a toothpick.
The Beagle is in this one too. The dog is being kicked out of a tony training school because he's impossible to teach. He just sits around and drools. "Geez, Doc," says Columbo, "My wife and kids are in Fresno and I'm busy right now. Couldn't you keep him for another week?" The veterinarian refuses. "He demoralizes the others." That's an example of the writer (Steven Bochko) putting that sloppy dog to good use, whereas, say, feeding him an ice cream cone and expecting the viewer to coo over the cuteness, is not.
Enjoyable episode.
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