Columbo shows the benefits of having reality bent around the assumption that you know the culprit instantly even if you don't know why. Is there a single Columbo episode where he asks "just one more thing" of someone who isn't the murderer?
The shows don't show everything, but what they do imply is that Columbo starts by pulling on all the strings and then doggedly chasing the inconsistencies and loose ends. Also, in a lot of cases there could only be a handful of suspects. The main thing they actually is the interplay between Colombo and the culprit, and the rest is (almost always) offscreen.
IMHO, the main weakness of the show are how over-eager the culprits sometimes are act like they're helping Columbo. Not just answer his questions, but play detective with him.
> Is there a single Columbo episode where he asks "just one more thing" of someone who isn't the murderer?
I haven't watched the whole series and don't recall a specific episode, but I'm pretty sure he's done that episodes where the murderer is trying to frame someone. There was also a not-great episode where the owner of a boat-builder was murdered and there were like 5 suspects (this one: https://columbophile.com/2019/08/11/trying-to-salvage-last-s...).
Okay, fine, Last Salute to the Commodore is an exceptional case; it's widely regarded, along with the two later Ed McBain ones, as way out-of-character for the show.
Usually when he confronts a character who has something to hide but isn't the murderer, he's over-the-top friendly and apologetic, like with the affair in Columbo Goes to College or the victim's bride in Double Shock. There are probably some better examples.
Yeah, the usual formula is that the culprit tries to demonstrate innocence by helping with the investigation until Columbo gets too close, and then abruptly shuts up. I think that mostly speaks to Columbo's style, though; it's realistic that a murderer would do one or the other given how they're being questioned.
I'd still maintain that the biggest weakness of the show is that Columbo almost never has the wrong suspect, and sometimes he has the correct suspect far too early (why does he read the palm in Death Lends A Hand?).
I've watched most Columbos multiple times and I think that's by design. Columbo plays dumb, and tries to make the suspect think that Columbo can easily be misdirected or manipulated; so suspects volunteer to "help" Columbo in order to protect themselves. This overconfidence on the part of suspects' is deliberately engineered by Columbo.
It also plays in the consistent "Columbo vs. the highly educated upper-class" motif, where the "dumb" cop who earns $11k a year asks for help from millionaires who are "much smarter and more worldly" than him.
Interesting quirk of English idioms here. Maybe regional?
* Pulling strings often means to control, as a marionette
* Pulling threads often means to inspect closely and follow a pattern> Interesting quirk of English idioms here. Maybe regional?
> * Pulling strings often means to control, as a marionette
> * Pulling threads often means to inspect closely and follow a pattern
That's way too clever for me to have done intentionally. I just had my idioms scrambled.
[0]: Though I'd use "pulling the strings" and "pulling at threads".
I might be wrong and it is an exception that tests the rule.
Edit: Another one I can think of is "Murder in Malibu", it is really hard to tell who is the murderer in this one. And even Columbo seems unsure for a while.
The bad guy gets away because they don’t have enough evidence.
People confess when there is hardly any evidence (a lot).
The detectives realize they were wrong.
Lots of things happen.
Detectives being wrong isn’t a very dramatic like you might think. Many operate like scientist, gathering data, testing their theory along the way and adjusting.
One of the most interesting episodes was when they investigated a murder of a local girl in a park. Whole department assigned to work it because her ex and the main suspect was a guy who was a local criminal who had done time for murder before and was suspected in other cases.
Lots of misc evidence pointed at bad guy, but not enough to prosecute him, just lots of elements that pointed to him. Bad guy was smart enough not to talk to the police when they brought him in.
Near the end they got back some cell phone location info ... in the park that night wasn't the bad guy... but her current boyfriend (the local good college boy) phone was there. He claimed he was elsewhere / hadn't seen her that night...
Good boy confessed when they confronted him.
That episode was wild.
I would assume that "successes" here are people in prison who turned out were innocent.
Of course the show is not a broad coverage of the detectives process. The detectives featured almost always are the most senior detectives and of course they cover situations on camera where ... maybe somethings won't happen.
The cases featured in the show they almost never actually end up prosecuting anyone without quite a bit of evidence. They're not really the kind of cases you hear about where someone is just prosecuted on hearsay and one bit of evidence and so on, that i'm sure is by design (for the tv show). Detectives show a lot of skepticism about what people too, that was interesting. They follow those leads but those featured seem highly flexible.
I wonder how much of the bad prosecutions / situations are about the prosecutor rather than detectives.
The prime example is Sherlock Holmes who points at murder based on bit of dust caught of hat or some such. Any show where capture is based on subtle clues or manipulative trics would likely lead to a lot of false convictions. Or the ones where detectives mistreat suspects until they admit guilt - false guilt of admission from mistreated prisoner is actually a thing (especially when they are also sleep deprived or mentally challenged).
Plenty of cold case shows that start the episode 5 years after the original investigation, when new evidence comes in to clear the convict.
VERY surprising how many people talk to the cops and give them all sorts of information that the cops then disprove, stories that make no sense, or even hand them info / leads that leas right back to them so on.
I want to say maybe the folks in a Columbo episode wold be more likely to talk to a lawyer first / not talk but ... Martha Stewart talked herself into jail...
I had zero idea of the 911 call before this.
A lot of complexity in the legal system is so that at least most of the time even if someone is smart and can hire someone who has built their career on covering their ass, deflecting blame, understanding and using all the technicalities, obfuscating the facts as much as possible when not in their favor, calls to emotion when it helps them, calls to reason when it helps them, and all the other tricks (aka high end defense attorneys), we still end up with outcomes that aren’t clearly obviously wrong eventually.
And at least most of the time if someone is a real dumbass and can’t afford someone to at least help them pull their foot out of their mouth (aka low end defense attorneys), they don’t get railroaded and we end up with outcomes that are clearly obviously wrong either. Most of the time.
As the quote from Charles Babbage goes:
> On two occasions I have been asked, 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.
Yes, sometimes that's exactly what happens.
Stupid, I agree, but not nearly as politically incorrect as our "hero".
The humor is more of the cringe-variety (if you like that sort of thing) when our detective makes the big reveal only to walk right into it.
David Brent (The Office) is more like our detective.
Yours might be the starting point for the "case" for our bigoted detective, but these leads invariably run cold but inadvertently reveal a piece of information or suspect that had not yet come to light (solved — maybe even simply by the process of elimination for our sad detective).
The later episodes turn the show more into a parody.
Yep, for example "Fade in to Murder," an episode with William Shatner. Also "Murder by the Book," "A Friend in Deed," etc. The writers played lots of little tricks on the audience with the show. But also sometimes the Lt. simply asked procedural questions to somebody who wasn't involved.
I guess in Murder By The Book he sits down and asks the victim's wife if she can come up with anything. Fade Into Murder had the whole blackmail thing going on in the background. Where did Columbo hound someone who wasn't Robert Culp in A Friend In Deed? He was a little squirrely getting the private-spy's info at the water fountain (and the whole ice-cream/swing encounter) but that's all I can think of.
Ticket update: He uses "just one more thing" on Mrs. Halperin, but she was not the murderer.
in real life, we know that crimes are often “solved” not by evidence at hand but by confession of accomplices. i mean that’s why “snitches get stitches” is a thing. columbo takes that to the next level, extracting the suspects own admission through his apparent bumbling. in every single episode, if the perp had only just kept their mouth shut …