A good episode. The pilot, if I’m not mistaken. Or one of two pilots, anyway. It’s very good, no wonder the show got the thumbs up. Columbo himself is much neater, in a way, his hair is shsorter and therefore more styled, more in place, and his attire is also neater, with his close knitted tie. But he already has his raincoat, and most importantly he has all his mannerism, that way of coming back to ask just one more little thing, and the habit of writing things down and not having a pen, and most of all the fact that he never finds what he’s looking for right away, he’s always checking various pockets before he finds the right one. Columbo was our beloved Columbo already from the start.
This murder was very planned ahead, psychiatrist Ray Fleming wanted to get rid of his wife because he liked her money but he wanted a free life to do what he wanted and was tired of her. He knows Joan Hudson because she’s a patient of his, and so he’s had time to groom her to his liking, she’s in love with him, or thinks she is. I actually don’t think that’s love at all, not even on her part, but she thinks it is, because he made her think so, she’s dependent on him. Anyway, he convinces her that in order to be together they have to get rid of her, and she needs to help him. So they put things in motion to the last detail.
Everybody knows that he’s going on a little vacation with his wife, all the way to Acapulco, and so that night he has the wife call the dry cleaners to say she’ll leave a bag outside the door for them, and then he strangles her. When a friend calls, he says they’re almost ready but she’s still changing herself. Then Joan comes and he has her wear one of Carol’s dresses, plus her gloves and big sunglasse. She took a wig at the studios where she’s working as an actress, so they’re ready to go to the airport. She’ll play the part of his wife Carol.
He tried to make it look like it had been a robbery gone wrong, so he took a lot of silver stuff and her jewels, put them in a bag and took it to the airport. They did all the formalities and got on the plane, and then they staged an arguemen, they started arguing quite loudly and then she stormed off the plane. Both because Carol had to be home to be ‘murdered’ while he was away, but also because Joan could not disappear like that, she was working those days.
So Joan got off the plane, changed her clothes, went to his house and put the dress in the bag for the cleaners, and then got home, while he stayed a few days in Acapulco and got rid of all the things from the apartment, by throwing them at sea.
When he comes back home, he opens the door silently, and moves to look at where he left her, but Carol’s body is not there anymore, but her outline on the floor is. From the other room comes Columbo, already there, who immediately becomes suspicious because any other man, no make that every other person, would have called, wouldn’t they? He would, and I would too. But Fleming didn’t. Columbo explains what happens, and Ray is quite shock to hear Colombo say that someone ‘attempted’ to kill her… because she is indeed still alive. They go to the hospital and of course he’s eager to know what’s happening, how is she, if she can talk… at some point they say she woke up and was speaking… but then a doctor told them that she died, and the only thing she said was his name… lucky jerk.
Columbo keeps turning up here and there as is his way, but Fleming becomes tired pretty quickly and asks his lawyer friend to keep him away. So a few calls are made to switch Colombo to another case… and Ray is so smug and sure of himself that Colombo now can see that there’s no way he can catch him at fault somewhere. There’s no proof against him whatsoever, he was even out of state when it supposedly happened… so Colombo’s only chance is to look elsewhere.
Colombo is absolutely sure that the husband is responsible, he’s sure of it as he always is at some point, in all his cases, and it’s that certainty that makes the difference, because if it was Ray who did it, then it’s obvious that he must have done it before going away, which means that Carol had to be dead already when he boarded the plane, which means that it must have been another woman playing her part… and one day, at Ray’s studio, Colombo has met Joan, come for her appointment with her ‘doctor’. Maybe Colombo got the measure of her right away, or maybe he checked and she was the only actress, or the only free that day… that’s not been explained to us, but Colombo knows that she was the accomplice, and also the weakest link, so Colombo talks to her and puts her under pressure until she cries, and he thinks he made it, but for this time she actually finds her strength and tells him nothing, says she’s got nothing to do with it… but it’s not the end, and Colombo says it clearly. He will keep at it, hounding her day after day until she’ll break and confess. It doesn’t take too long before it works.
Some day, she doesn’t appear for her usual appointment at Ray’s office, so his secretary calls and is informed of some ‘accident’… so he rushes to her house and sees her body being taken out of the swimming pool, dead. Colombo tells him that they both killed her, but that he (Ray) has more guilt than anyone because he got her involved in all of that, and he also adds that he did it all for nothing. Yes, because he killed his wife to get the girl, but now the girl is gone, so he’s got nothing, so he could just free his conscience and confess… but Ray laughs in his face, saying he never loved her, and that IF he killed his wife then he did it for himself, not for some girl he cares nothing about… and of course Joan is alive and also right there, listening to every word they say. It was all planned to make her see the truth, so now she gives Colombo that deposition, and Ray is busted.
Great episode, and I rather liked this actress, she looked peculiar.
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