Colombo - Last salute to the Commodore

Unfortunately this was one of the most boring episodes of Columbo, I didn’t like it at all. I say unfortunately because it was different, meaning that for once we didn’t really know the culprit, and it had a final à-la-Poirot, where the detective gathers everyone to give his speech, sort of… but it didn’t go well. The whole episode was very boring, Colombo’s scenes were boring as well because all centered around nautical terms and stuff, and the final revelation was in part too out of the blue and in part sort of silly. 

When the Commodore dies, we see his son-in-law Clay taking things away, cleaning things and then hiding the body at sea, so that it might be thought of as an accident…

Colombo soon has the right idea, that Clay went from one place to the Commodore’s ship by swimming underwater so that nobody could see him, then pretended to be the Commodore going out at sea, then dumped the body there.

As soon as they know this, Clay is found dead.

There’s a lot of talking about ships and Colombo trying to understand all the new terms.

Then the solution:

Clay thought his wife had killed her father and since she’s always drunk she has no memory of what she did that night. It wasn’t her though. He tried to cover for her only because he wanted her to have her father’s inheritance so he could get his hands on it.

Apparently the Commodore wanted to marry young Lisa, and this was so out of the blue that when I saw that he wanted to give her name to a ship/boat/whatever, I thought she might have been his secret daughter or something, but no. They were in love and she loved him for what he was and did not want his money and never cared for it, so she’s not a suspect. I’m not sure how they can be sure of it or why this relationship matters anyway…

The Commodore’s brother’s son Swanny killed him, and Colombo’s only evidence seems to be that when Colombo made them hear ticking and said ‘the Commodore’s watch’ he was the only one that said “impossible!”, because he was the only one who knew it had broken during the murder.

That’s it. 

I’m not sure of how he killed him, or even why since the daughter is the heir.

I did not like this episode at all, all that ship-talking was boring to me that I don’t care, and maybe it’s boring to those who care too, since they probably already know it all already. 

There was very little investigation, nothing of the usual Colombo we know.