Colombo - Murder in Malibu

I liked this episode enough, it was the only one where you couldn’t be sure of who had done it until the end… well, you knew, but at the same time you didn’t for sure, while usually we see all the process and know every detail for sure.

The episode and the plot was interesting, but I didn’t much care for this Wayne character. Ok, being the murderer, it’s normal that he wasn’t very likable, but that’s the point. To everyone else in the story, he was.  All the women loved him! Not just two or three, all of them. Helen the insurance woman, the producer’s wife, the woman at the tennis place, Jess and Theresa and even Jess’s maid, all of them had a story with him, but there were more that lilked him a lot even if they didn’t have an affair with him, and I can’t see why. He was reasonably handsome, but really nothing so earth-shattering…

Anyway, the plot is: despite his many women, the one he asked to marry him was Theresa, a successful writer. At first she was unsure, but then during a tv interview, pressed by her fans, she admitted that she loved Wayne and wanted to marry him.

Next thing we know, Theresa calls Wayne at night and tells him that she hates him and will never marry him. Now, we saw that her sister jess had a private investigator gather information on Wayne so maybe they wanted us to believe that after learning something she called it off, but they also showed us the shadow of the woman speaking, and that wasn’t Theresa’s hair, or head… and it’s very easy to recognize her as soon as we see her… (well, in Italian it’s rather ridiculous because the two voices were so very different that it was impossible to mistake them, and it was absurd that Wayne did).

Wayne drives back immediately and ends up killing her. When she showed up, Jess, sister and literary agent who has always been a bit jealous of her pretty sister (apparently… she was different, more aggressive, a tough character, which may explain whileall the boys turned to her sister once they met her…) is openly hostile to Wayne.

It doesn’t take too long for them to butt heads, and it doesn’t take long for Wayne to sort of confess that he came home and found that Theresa had destroyed all his love letters and had read the investigator’s notes, and he says that he lost his mind and shot her with her own gun that he found there, or something like that. Before they can arrest him though, they learn that the shot to the heart with the gun he admits to using was not what killed her. She had been killed with a blow to the head, I think, or a shot to the head, something like that, but for sure the gun shot to the heart happened when she was already dead. He faints. Apparently he’s free to go, it’s not a crime to shoot a dead body…

Let’s see what I remember: Wayne lives with Theresa, as his own room there, full of pictures of his many adventures (climbing, fishing, skydiving, tennis) and Colombo wonders when he has time to earn his living, but he doesn’t reply, I’m not sure he actually does anything. Jess tells Colombo about the investigator so he can talk freely. Wayne said he arrived around 7, and on the way left a message on Helen’s machine saying he was going to see Theresa (knowing that her phone records the hour too). Some men doing cable repairs were there since 5.50am to 6.20 am if I remember right, and didn’t see any cars. After checking the phone records Colombo guesses the truth and Jess confesses she made the call, since Theresa wouldn’t do it. 

When Colombo busts him, it’s because he studied her lingerie, to the curious looks of everyone in sight. He was with Jess, having won her over simply with a kiss, when Colombo explains. When they found her, Theresa was wearing pretty lingerie but also white knee length socks that she only wore with slacks, that she used when she wanted to be comfortable, like around the house or while travelling on a plane.

Her lingerie, though, really caught Colombo’s attention, and is the reason why he’s sure that it must have been a man, because no woman would make the same mistake. Wayne arrived early and killed her while she was asleep then he dressed her as if she was preparing to leave (she was supposed to leave forSeattle on a plane). In his plan he could have been back to play tennis and nobody would have noticed. Colombo  had the recorded message analized and apparently the noise that Wayne said was traffic was actually crows, and there were a lot annoying the cable guys while they worked…

Colombo says Wayne arrived very early and killed her, but then the cable guys arrived and he couldn’t leave without being seen, so he changed his plan and made that phone call, and then shot her heart. He figured that if he confessed and was proven ‘innocent’, as indeed happened, they would not look at him anymore, but Colombo is smarter than that. 

He says that someone dressed her, someone who knew her enough to know she would wear slacks and those white socks for the plane, and it could not have been a sister or a maid because no woman would put the panties on backwards. The picture of the body proves it because you can see the label on her right hip, but it should have been on the left, because they’re always on the left side…

Whn she gets it, Jess launches herself at Wayne, and I’d say she even assest one good punch :)

ITA omicidio a Malibu

Colombo - Death hits the jackpot

Quite nice, I liked it. Colombo was his usual nice self :) and the ending was nice, although a bit open to interpretation… 

So, the story is that Freddie is about to divorce his redheaded wife Nancy. Watching the tv he sees that he won the lottery, 30 millions (apparently only 24 after taxes… not too bad after all, if he was here he’d get much less…) and he doesn’t want to split it with her, so he asks for his uncle’s help.

Leon suggests taking the ticket and getting the money himself, and then giving it all back to him. Freddie insists on a 10% for him as a thank you, which would already be a lot of money totally legal and without doing anything, but he’s a greedy man indeed.

Nancy is his lover, and he wants all the money to himself. 

He tells nothing about the ticket being Freddie’s to anyone, obviously, his own wife is happy of the news and blissfully ignorant of all his schemes.

Leon throws a big costume party on Halloween, then he drives fully dresses as George IV to Freddie’s house where he hits him on the head and then drowns him in the bathtub, obviously going for the ‘accident’ scenario. 

Colombo notices many things, though. Freddie had a fake watch on his wrist, for example. Uncle Leon once gifted him a 3000$ watch, and Freddie probably sold it and got himself a 100$ watch -Leon touched it and watched it and never noticed… 2900$ well spent indeed… :-/

Colombo says that the fake watch (to Leon it’s cheap at 100$! It’s only cheap if you swim in money, ask Colombo if he’s ever had a 100$ watch!!!) is not waterproof and Freddie knewit so it’s weird that he kept it in the bathtub. 

Freddie had called Leon many times this last month, and if he was asking for money because he couldn’t pay rent, how come he had ordered an expensive car and had actually bought a box of champagne bottles? When Colombo sees the winning numbers on Freddie’s camera (he was a photographer) he understands who really won the money.

How Colombo busts the murderer: the George IV costume that Leon admits to wearing for the whole night of the party goes along with a pendant, all shiny, and the monkey (a chimp, not sure about the spelling) temporarily living in Freddie’s apartment loved to touch shiny, golden things, and that night she touched the pendant, so her fingerprints prove that Leon wore that costume in Freddie’s home, that night.

Colombo suspects Nancy too, of course, because that night someone pretended to be Freddie and called Leon’s home (she did).

When she arrives, called by the police, Colombo tells her that the money’s hers now, because it was Freddie’s and they never signedthe divorce papers. She’s all happy so petty Leon tells Colombo of her role as his accomplice. She doesn’t deny it, too busy being mad at him, a redheaded fury…

Well, here I guesss Colombo lied like he often does when it suits him, because there’s no way, that I can see, the money would go to Nancy. The lottery was officially won by Leon, he presented the ticket, so the money should now go to his wife. 

Leon - Rip Torn

Nancy - Jamie Rose  …  with that hair, that unfogettable head of red curls

Freddie - Gary Kroeger

Leon’s wife - Betsy Palmer

And Joey the chimp  (I wrote it correctly, good :D )

ITA misteriose impronte digitali

Colombo - Columbo goes to college

A nice episode, I liked it. We see Colombo giving a lecture, more or less, at a University, for the course of criminology of professor Rusk, and as he’s walking to his car with some of the students, they see the professor in a pool of blood, already dead. 

It was interesting. I liked that he told the kids of a previous episode, meaning of a past case that we also saw, when he took a chewing-gum from the bin to match it to a piece of  cheese (it was Agenda for Murder, s9e3).

The story is: Justin and Sooper are two rich kids who murder their professor because he wanted them kicked out of the university. Justin tells professor Rusk to meet his dad to talk (his dad is an important man, of course). It’s the same day Colombo’s there. Rusk goes out before he’s finished, and is shot as he reaches his car. The boys are still in class: they used a camera to watch, and the electronic key of the car to fire the gun. Somehow.

They took the second gun of the security guard - not much of a guard, really, but in his defence it’s just a university, and that’s a private parking lot, only for the teachers… and these two students because they give him free sport tickets.

The boys think that Colombo is useless, stupid, and often mock him, he even sees them mocking him. They think it’s all funny.

Their aim is to have Dominic, the guard’s brother, arrested because he has a criminal record. 

The shooting gets recorded by a neighbour whose satellite antenna caught the boys’ transmission, which finally gives Colombo the idea for how they did it. To bust them, he ‘lets them know’ he only needs Dominic’s car to search it to close the case. Cooper finds it and puts the gun in there. They’re so sure they were so clever, until Colombo reveals that it’s actually his wife’s car, and they were the only ones who thought it was Dominic’s. 

Robert Culp plays Justin’s father. This is the fourth Colombo episode for him, he’s played three murderers and a murderer’s father, quite the record :lol

ITA omicidio telecomandato

Colombo - No time to die

This is the only episode where nobody dies… well, until the end when they kill the villain. Still, up to that point he had only kidnapped the girl but our heroes arrive before he can touch her or otherwise hurt her.

As it often happens, what I liked most were the scenes with Colombo, I wasn’t too fond of everybody else.  It was nice seeing him in a smoking at his nephew’s wedding, not as a lieutenant but as an uncle.

The story is simple: his nephew Andy Parma, another detective, marries rich Melissa who recently started a career as a model. It’s all nice and happy, with Colombo dancing and laughing with the bride, until the newlyweds retreat to their room and he has a very loud shower, singing his lungs out :-/  and someone breaks in and takes her away. He calls Colombo and his other cop friends and they start investigating right away. 

Since it had to be someone waiting for Andy to be away and Melissa to be alone, they search for someone who was at the party but shouldn’t have been, someone nobody knows, stuff like that.

Colombo drives to photographer Alexìs house,, the one who ‘discovered’ Melissa and took lots of pictures  for a magazine who will dedicate a few pages to the event.

Colombo asks Andy, his two cop friends and Melissa’s father to point all the people they know and can therefore be discarded, then he sends three cops to check with the few singles who did they bring, and when it’s all over there’s only one young man not accounted for. 

Colombo also gets many depliants of vans to show a man in order to find out what van was used to take her away, and he finally realises it was an ambulance.

This Rudy guy is rather troubled and talks about his dead mother in a ‘psycho’ way. Honestly, it was the boring part of the episode. I don’t know if it was scary in any way back when it aired the first time, but it certainly isn’t to me.

He keeps her in a room with a mattress on the floor and little else, until he thinks it’s time that he ‘marries’ her, meaning that he says all the words and that’s enough for him, then they lay in the bed when our heroes finally arrive. It seemed to me like this Rudy guy wanted to eventually slid her throat, like his mother died, but as soon as he gets in Andy shoots him before he can do anything.

The only scene I didn’t like - other than Rudy talking about their love and their wedding - was at the end when they were to enter the house…slowly, one at a time… it probably was the right way but still I didn’t like how it was shown.

By magic of television, Melissa spends a long time pouring lots and lots of vinegar and even more oil on the door hinges to try and get out, and yet her light white silk nightgown is still perfect, like her hair despite her hands touching it a lot.

At least she tried to freed herself, it’s better than nothing, but then she ignored the kitchen and was completely frozen by the next room, like a shrine in her honor, with a video, pictures, a white bed and everything. I don’t get why she was so shocked, he had talked to her a lot about their love and their wedding, it was abundantly clear that he was obsessed with her.

The episode ends immediately after she’s saved, not a minute more.

Colombo drove in the night with a map on the wheel and a light to actually see it, when he was trying to find Alex’s house :lol:  *safetyprocedures*

Alex - Daniel Davis

cop Mulroney - Doug Savant

Andy Parma - Thomas Calabro

ITA non c’è tempo per morire

Colombo - Agenda for murder

 I liked this episode and the scene where Colombo tells a joke is memorable, those two men laughing out loud never fail to make me laugh :)

The story is : Oscar Finch is an important lawyer, his best friend McKay’s career is flying since governor Montgomery, who is running for President, wants him as his second, and Oscar would get an important position as well.

Everything could be ruined by Frank Staplin. When Finch and McKay were young, they made a document disappear, saving Staplin from prison, and Staplin now wants Finch to do it again. Finch refuses and Staplin blackmails him with revealing that story. So Finch kills him in his house, making it look like suicide. Being a lawyer and therefore knowing about this stuff, he thinks of wearing gloves, and putting gun powder on Staplin’s hand, and leaving the fun where it should fall after the death but he also makes some mistakes. Some are not talked about, so it seems like they’re real mistakes, like: Finch touches the newspaper clip without gloves, and also when he presses Staplin’s fingers on it he only does it on the front, but nobody can take a neat piece of paper without touching its back…

But it’s no matter.

The mistake that matters the most to Colombo is this: when Finch shot Staplin, a drop of blood stained the floor, and when he finished to pu the scene as he wanted it, the gun ended up on top of the blood and yet didn’t get stained because the blood was dry. That screams of murder.

One thing Finch couldn’t know is that before opening the door for him, Staplin had just sent a fax to his wife with a handwritten joke on it; Finch told Colombo that Staplin sounded desperate when he called him, shortly before his death, and yet he had just sent a funny joke to his wife… the two things don’t match.

Finch left his car at his own parking lot, near his office, and walked to Staplin’s house. When he walked back, it rained a lot. In the morning, Colombo can see that under his car it’s dry and only there, and wet everywhere else. He hopes to get his suit from the laundry service, to prove he was out walking at that hour, but it gets cleaned by a zelous worker.

McKay gives Finch an alibi, and it really seems like Colombo can’t find any proof. Then, he takes a chewing-gum from Finch’s office bin, and his team succeeds in matching it to a piece of cheese on Stapliin’s desk, and to Finch’s dental records I guess, and it’s over for him. 

This Finch waas quite the character, always in a hurry to do something, starting his car with the turbo, so to speak, and thern there’s the joke. Colombo tells him Staplin’s joke, and Finch’s face is marble for a couple of seconds, then there’s a loud HAH! and then he starts laughing out loud, bent at the double, leaning on the car laughing, and I love that scene :lol

I really like Finch’s secretary, both the actress and the character, who gives Colombo a deodorant for the house to give his wife, who sends back a note of thanks. It’s weird to hear her say that she won’t accept his money for it because this is not from the office but it comes from her directly, she buys it herself… weird because it usually would be the opposite, like ‘since she took it from the office it gets lost in the many things needed and bought and she won’t lose any money by giviing it to him’ sort of thing. What a super honest woman :)

It’s sweet to see Colombo so awed by a fax machine :) but this episode has a rather weird solution, the teeth marks on the cheese… Colombo and the writers were proud enough of it to mention it in other episodes too, but really… what use is the chewing-gum? If it’s actually really possible, they’d need to match the cheese to Finch’s mental records, gotten from his dentist, or whatever. But the gum… if it has marks, it’s not from his front teeth! I don’t know but… I don’t care over much, I still like Colombo :)

Colombo - A bird in the hand

 A nice episode, I liked it. I liked the fact that the whole time I was waiting to see how could Colombo bust our murderer, Harold, and then he gets killed too. Nice twist a-la-psycho.

And I liked a lot this Dolores character, played by Tyne Daly.

The plot:

Harold is a compulsive gambler which means he is full of debts. His uncle Fred is rich, owner of a football team, but he’s tired of Haroldd’s debts, so Harold plans to kill him by placing a bomb in his car. In the morning though, he learns that Fred has been run over and is now dead. There’s police officers everywhere, there’s nothing he can do to get that bomb out of there. He even finds Colombo in the car! ‘Luckily’ Colombo never tried the engine :)

Fred’s funeral sees Harold stick to Dolores like glue because she’s the heir and he wants access to that money. She is not his aunt, he’s known her only five years and they’re occasional lovers, but now he seems to have a lot of competition :p she likes the company of all those football players :lol:

He tries to ‘win her back’ with lots of words, but when she refuses to give him 15000$ he changes his tune and blackmails her. This is when things change.

I had not thought about it because all the attention had been centered on Harold, but his words make sense,  when he accuses her of having killed Fred herself. The fact that she agrees to pay means she did it, and now she knows he’s  a threat so she kills him to shut him up. She tells Colombo that Harold called her that morning, scared because he was being threatened due to his many debts, so he wanted to run away but had no money, so she went to him with 1000$ and found him already dead. The policeman says a professional entered the house using a glass cutter (we saw Dolores putting one of those in her bag) and made noise knocking over the cat’s milk bowl (she also put milk in her bag), so Harold tried to reach for his gun but got killed first.

But Colombo sees many things the others just ignored :)

First of all: Harold was indeed a murderer because he didn’t say a word and let the old gardener try to move the car, so he got blown up. 

Colombo figures out how he attached the bomb to the car and that he left marks when he pushed himself below the car with his boots’ heels (it’s a funny scene when he goes to a car dealer with the same type of expensive cars and starts mumbling about where a bomb could be put, and after explaining he’s police he starts crawling underneath the car to study it personally, and people stop outside the window to look at him an when he notices he’s sitting there and smiling at them like a child ).

Colombo even shows Dolores a recording of Harold closing his eyes and averting his face right before the explosion, sign that he was expecting it.

Regarding Harold, he had 5000$ in his room, and wet socks inside his boots. This meant nothing to the other cops because it didn’t go along with their perfect, simple theory, so they just ignored it, but not Colombo. He does a proper investigation: Harold had been at a Casino all night, where he won the 5000 and had a haircut. This is important because Colombo saw Harold’s cowboy hat in Dolores’ house, and it contained freshly cut small hairs, meaning he had lefty it the same morning he was killed.

Busted.

ITA il gioco è fatto / asassinio per gioco