Colombo - Undercover

 Well, I don’t really care about this story, but I do like that we see Colombo in quite a few different situations than we’re used to. Like, we see him at a murder scene in a very poor area, so he’s more loose and direct, none of all that fake humility he uses to soothe rich people; we see him undercover, we see him working at the police station (although not in his own office of course :lol:), we see him getting dress inside a car and then pretending to be a mafioso…all things that are surely part of his life but we usually don’t see in the other episodes.

These are the things I like of the episode, the scenes that show us our beloved character’s job and life and soul. 

The story is a little bit boring, unfortunately. Two men are found dead (and I’m actually not sure who killed them, at the end… did they kill each other?) and this starts an investigation on an old theft. While Colombo is discussing it with Brown, a man named Irvin Krutch comes in saying that he works for an insurance company that had to pay a lot of money when the robbery money were never found. It’s an old robbery, something like 2 million dollars, and the place where the money was hidden can only be found putting together the pieces of a photograph. Irvin shows them one, saying an old woman gave it to him along with the whole story. Colombo has one found at the murder scene, and one found in the house of the other victim. Colombo finds one by giving some money to an alcohol-loving woman (when the played the widow picked up and carried around by football players, she used to drink all the time as well :lol).

One piece h finds by going undercover and exchanging information with a small thief or something. This Weinberg will also be found dead, and Colombo will be attacked in his hotel room. Hit on the head, our poor lieutenant. Miss Ferguson has another piece but she refuses to cooperate and then she’s found dead. Her partner gives Colombo her piece of the picture.

Most pieces are simply grey. The picture is in black and white and it mostly shows… grey. It will be revealed at the end that Irvin had two pieces but he kept his piece with the X marking the right place hidden. It was quite easy to suspect him, but at first it seems like he might have an alibi since a girl swears that she was with him all day and all night when Weinberg was killed, but then Colombo finds his proof: a parking meter with a coin with Irvin’s fingerprints, and it had been emptied recently so they have a specific time range when he could have put it there - and he had to put it there because cars could be towed away otherwise. After bein told this, and also that it involved murder, the girl tells the truth.

At the end, the cops recover the money hidden underwater, but Colombo is not really interested anymore after the puzzle has been solved.

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Colombo - Murder: a self portrait

Well, this wasn’t too bad but it wasn’t good either, it’s quite in the middle, really nothing special though. The main character is very arrogant and full of himself, a famous painter, an artist who has three women and demands they get along so he can have whatever he wants whenever he wants. Really, this Max Barsini lives with his second wife Vanessa and his young model Julie and their nextdoor neighbour is his first wife Louise, and he wants them to have dinners together and everything.

It all changes when he finds out that she’s seeing again her old psychologist, only for personal reasons now. They have a relationship and she wants to leave and live with him. She vaguely mentions something that happened in the past but sh’s adamant that she’d never do anything against him, or to cause him trouble. God only knows why.

He decides to kill her and prepares well. He goes to Vito’s, it’s a bar with a small apartment upstairs where he used to live with Louise when they were younger and broke. Max says he’ll paint something for him that will attract people to his bar, but while he’s supposed to be there behind a big canvas painting, he’s actually sneaking out to reach the small beach where he knows he’ll find her. Louise always went swimming, and he starts with friendly words, to depart as friends… and then covers her mouth with the rag and the white spirit that he uses to clean the brushes. After she’s passed out, he carries her into the water where he drowns her. 

I’s supposed to look like an accident, but of course there are details, like the fact that she only had one contact lense in her eyes, the other one was in its box, so she was interrupted… and also the smudge of colour on her face. It wasn’t lipstick, it was oil paint, and a specific colour indeed, the one called Barsini red because he makes it himself, of course. And there’s lipstick traces on the rag.

When Max mentions doing a portrait, Colombo accepts with enthusiasm, so he has the perfect chance to spend time together to talk to him and they listen together to the recordings of Louise’s nightmares, three of them, a bit different but all three alluding of a man with a monocle that they knew years before. This Harry was Max’s agent when he was starting out, and not an honest one. More than once he sold someone’s art and never gave them the money. Colombo is sure that Max killed him, and probably buried him in Vito’s basement, but he can prove nothing about that. What he can prove is this murder, because of the colour and lipstick.

Colombo had also noticed that in the apartment where Max was supposed to have painted that last piece, the water was all mud, hadn’t been used in a long time, so he hadn’t used it to clean the brushes of the spirit, and also that there were no paint stains on the floor.

After a lot of shouting,because of course neither of them is happy with the situation, finally Vanessa and Julie actually talk to one another and decide to do something for their own sake instead of always for Max, so they both leave him.

Colombo’s portrait is quite nice :)

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