Columbo putting the screws on Patrick McGoohanAs part of the recovery process we've been watching a lot of television from Netflix. It's hard to stay alert for a whole movie, so television is a good substitute. This includes discs of Dallas (oh my God, Kristin had that baby and now what's JR going to do?) and a whole collection of great episodes of 1970's mystery television that we stream through our PlayStation.
They've got a pretty good set on that Netflix. So far we've watched some Kojak and McCloud and a little McMillan and Wife, but the best is definitely Columbo.
When I took the television detectives class at U of O only a few of the kids had some idea of who Columbo was. They'd heard of him, but it was "before my time, ya know?" so they didn't bother with him at all. Their idea of a television detective was Jack Bauer.
No. Really.
In trying to explain Columbo to the kids, our professor, Bish Sen (take his classes)(do it), said that Columbo was something of a monster who liked to torture his victims until they confessed.
Nooooooooo. Little Peter Falk? Peter Falk who wanted to read Knut Hamson? For whom I gave up some seriously flirting with an architect so I could help him go through Books in Print trying to find a copy of Hunger? Okay so Knut Hamson was a Nazi, but it was Peter Falk asking and I like to believe he was interested in what makes guys like that tick.
So wait a minute. Maybe Professor Sen was right. Maybe there's more to Columbo than I thought ... more to Peter Falk than the wrinkled sweater, the tuna sandwich and the glass eye. Columbo hides behind his shabbiness so he can really pick at these guys. I mean, think about it, he's dealing with killers. Leonard Nimoy, Laurence Harvey, William Shatner, John Cassavetes --- they all came up with elaborate plots to kill people and would get away with it if Columbo didn't stick to them like dirty fly paper. He gets up to them, goes to their houses, invades their space to take them apart and find that thing that made them do what they did. He's got to know and then, when he figures it out, he's got to pin it to these guys so they feel it. He's got to make them break.
And there's no doubt he enjoys it. He starts off innocently enough just looking for information, but when he marks his killer he likes to get at them bit by bit, question by question, irritating persistence by irritating persistence. "Sir. Sir? I gotta tell you, my wife loves [fill in the profession of the killer] and..."
Therefore it's true, he really does like to torture his victims, and this means that he is kind of a slower, more wrinkled version of Jack Bauer.
The End.
3 comments:
Dang, I love me some Falk, as you know, even with the knowledge that his breath smells like cat food.
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By Dawn's Early Light is such a classic, too! "Is it wrong....to want to be....beloved?" No, though trying to pin a murder on some nervous kid in your charge might not endear you to others, buddy.
oh my God, I heard that in my head with McGoohan's voice. He's the best. By the way, he's absolutely the only reason to watch a movie like "Braveheart".
"And how would you ... deal ... with this ... brigand?"
I always thought of Columbo as the Socrates of sleuths. "You know, Sir, you're absolutely right about that...But, it just occurs to me that..." By the time he was done with them they'd be ready to admit to wearing ladies underwear.
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