Awesome / Columbo

• Columbo's deductive flourishes — as revealed to his target at the end — sometimes approach this. As do the occasional brief scenes in which he drops the fawning and tells the perp exactly what he thinks of him.
• Every episode when he says "Just one more thing..." — that is, until the later seasons where most bad guys are wise to his act.
• Any of the four episodes with Patrick McGoohan as the guest villain. Pure classics, and McGoohan won two Emmys for his guest roles. (He also directed five episodes and wrote the scripts for two.)
  • McGoohan himself stated that his first guest appearance in "By Dawn's Early Light" was probably his favorite of all the roles he took while working in America.
• When Columbo confronts the murderer's accomplice in "Prescription: Murder,"^note Columbo's first appearance with Peter Falk in the role he drops all pretense and accurately describes the role she's played in her lover's plot, even screaming at her in an attempt to force her to confess. It can honestly be a little discomforting, especially for viewers more familiar with the Lieutenant's more docile nature in the main series.
  • Columbo's final gambit in the episode is pure genius. He fakes the accomplice's death then tricks the murderer into admitting that he was planning to murder her as well, right in earshot of the still very much alive accomplice which convinces her to expose the murder.
• In "Ransom For A Dead Man," the second pilot movie, Columbo explains to Leslie Williams what her mistake was:
  Mrs. Williams, you have no conscience and that's your weakness. Did it ever occur to you that there are very few people who would take money to forget about a murder? It didn't, did it? I knew it wouldn't.
  • A smaller moment earlier. Although it wasn't the right call, Margaret slapping Leslie during her father's funeral wasn't uncalled for. After all, her gut feelings about her step-mother killing her father were right on the money. As far as she was concerned, she was just avenging the only family she had left.
• In the first regular episode, "Murder by the Book", Columbo is able to deduce that Ken's idea for the murder came - much like the rest of his writing ideas - from his co-author and victim, Jim. After producing the vital evidence and proving Ken's guilt, however, Ken manages to drop one bombshell before walking off to his arrest.
  You want to know the irony of all this? That is my idea: the only really good one I ever had. I must have told it to Jim about five years ago. [Chuckles, then sneers] Whoever thought that idiot would write it down?
• The ending of Suitable for Framing, where the greedy art critic murders his uncle for his valuable paintings, then tries to frame the uncle's ex-wife for the crime by planting the paintings at her house. When they'e discovered, Columbo orders fingerprint testing. The murder smugly assures him that it wouldn't matter, since he'd frequently handled the paintings anyway. But Columbo clarifies that they're not looking for the murderer's prints; they're looking for Columbo's. See, earlier in the episode, Columbo had met the murderer while he was carrying the stolen paintings in a case and casually reached in, professing interest in seeing them before the murderer stopped him. The murderer then furiously and desperately accuses the detective of planting the evidence just now, prompting Columbo to pull his hands out of his pocket, revealing that he's been wearing gloves ever since they were called to Edna's. The look on the art critic's face is priceless.
• One of the rare times Columbo is seen upset is in "A Stitch In Crime," when he's facing Dr. Mayfield, an open heart surgeon who's working on a crucial research project with a senior partner, Dr. Hiderman. Mayfield also has to operate on his partner, by repairing his heart valves with permanent sutures. He instead uses dissolving sutures, which when dissolved will cause his partner's heart to rupture, killing him in a few weeks, leaving Mayfield to hog all the credit for the project. Sharon Martin, a nurse, discovers this and Mayfield kills her (which is how Columbo first gets on the case).
  • In a genuinely chilling moment, Columbo abruptly drops all pretense and slams a beverage pitcher onto a table. He informs Mayfield in a calm, yet recognizably furious voice that if his partner dies anytime soon, Columbo will have a full autopsy performed to see if the real cause of death was that the sutures that were supposed to keep his heart valves in place were no longer there. This forces Mayfield to re-operate on his partner, saving the life of the man he was initially plotting to murder.
• Columbo similarly loses his cool in "An Exercise in Fatality." After the victim's wife ends up in the hospital following an argument with Milo Janus, the episode's murderer, Columbo foregoes his usual friendly demeanor and tells Janus he thinks he's the culprit, debunking his previously-given alibi in front of half-a-dozen witnesses in the hospital's waiting area. Notably, unlike the previous example in "A Stitch in Crime," Columbo chooses to drop all pretense not in pursuit of a carefully-controlled plan to manipulate the killer into creating damning evidence or saving a life, but simply because he's genuinely fed up with this guy.
  • A lighter example from the same episode: the normally-patient Columbo has to wait for an interminably long time to get the information he needs from an uncooperative receptionist, who then directs him to the pay-phone to call the witness... only to find out he can't reach them. Columbo gets his little revenge for the inconvenience via the message he leaves, which he makes sure is loud enough for the receptionist to hear so that she knows who exactly she was jerking around:
    "Hello. This is Lieutenant Columbo: homicide. It's very important that I talk to you. You can call me at the main precinct. The number there is: you can look that up."
• The ending of every episode in which the villain realizes how thoroughly Columbo has played them like a piano.
  • At the beginning of "Death Lends A Hand," Columbo says he believes in astrology and palm reading, then to prove a point, he reads the palms of the murderer and the husband of the victim. It's easy to throw that just as another of his Obfuscating Stupidity quirks... until the end of the episode, where it's revealed Columbo carefully inspected the ring the murderer was wearing and was able to match it to the cut on the victim's cheek, which then led to him focusing his efforts on the murderer. The murderer's face upon hearing that is priceless. Then, seconds later, it turns out the way the murderer was caught was a particularly clever plan by Columbo.
  • In "A Friend in Deed", Columbo has to bust his own superior, the deputy police commissioner, who has attempted to make a Detective Patsy out of him. The commissioner's (and the audience's) realization that Columbo has so ingeniously outwitted him—"He doesn't live here. I live here."—is a series highlight.
  • In "Negative Reaction", Paul Galesko is convinced that Columbo is both an incompetent cop and an incompetent photographer to boot. When Columbo produces a photograph of the crime scene that seems to blow Galesko's alibi, he says that Columbo has managed to flip the image of a clock and picks up a camera in the police laboratory to get the negative. Columbo then asks how Galesko knew which camera to pick up. Galesko isn't even particularly mad, only shocked that Columbo had tricked him so perfectly into incriminating himself.
  • The end of Playback has Columbo discovering a simple but utterly conclusive clue - the fact that the murderer's invitation to the art gallery he went to that night to provide his alibi is visible on the tape of his mother-in-law being shot - and laying it out forcefully before the killer:
    Columbo: This. (holds up the invitation) Is this. (points to the screen) This is what you presented at the art show the night of the murder. The problem is it was on the desk immediately after the shooting. How did it get to the art gallery? By your own testimony you took it there. But in order to get it, you practically had to step over the body.
  • In "The Bye-Bye Sky High IQ Murder Case," an Insufferable Genius who had murdered a fellow member of a Mensa-like organization asked Columbo if he had ever been tested himself. After Columbo said no, the killer pulled down a book with an example test in it and asked him a random question, which Columbo answered correctly after only a moment's thought. The killer was almost relieved to have been caught by what he now considered a Worthy Opponent.
• In "Any Old Port in a Storm", Adrian Carsini had killed his half-brother by locking him in a wine cellar with the ventilation system shut off, sealing the room. Columbo nicked a bottle of wine from the cellar and set up an opportunity for Carsini to sample it at a restaurant, claiming it was his own. Carsini notices that the wine was heat damaged, and though he did not realize it was from his own collection, this caused him to realize the contents of the wine cellar were damaged as well. His subsequent action of destroying his own damaged collection confirmed for Columbo where the murder actually took place.
• In "Double Exposure", the criminal uses subliminal cuts on a tape to get the victim out into the open. At the end of the episode, Columbo uses a subliminal cut with photos of him looking around the murderer's office to get him to pull out the weapon.
• In "A Deadly State of Mind", Columbo is trying to get a better feel for a possible suspect by talking to a doctor who happens to be both a peer and lover to him. She repeatedly brushes him off until Columbo says...
  No I'm asking YOU! I'm asking you about a murder!
  • This exchange from the same episode:
    Dr. Collier: "I presume you have no proof?"
    Columbo: (looking him steadily in the eye) "Not yet."
    Collier: "Well, you will let me know when you do?"
    Columbo: "You'll be the first to know."
• A subtle one in "Now You See Him:" Columbo tricks the Great Santini into demonstrating that he could have picked the lock to the room where the murder took place by challenging him on stage to escape from a pair of handcuffs with the same lock.
  • To add to the scene's brilliance, when the camera stops on Santini's face you can see that he recognizes the lock. It makes Columbo's follow-up line of "I knew you could do it" much more Machiavellian. He even winks at him.
• A small one in "Old-fashioned Murder". In a way, Ruth does one-up Phyllis. For one, when Phyllis is framed of murder, she keeps fainting despite claims she's not as fragile as she appears. She also blusters about how she never leaves a room unless she has a man holding her arm. Meanwhile, once she's ousted by Columbo, Ruth takes her arrest in stride, and even gets to leave the room with Columbo on her arm. For being a murderer who killed three people in cold blood, Ruth is twice the woman Phyllis ever was.
• The "endless fence" scene from "Murder, Smoke & Shadows" as Columbo and Alex Bradey discuss reality and perception.
  • Towards the end, Columbo appearing to Alex as a ringleader, quite symbolic of who's in charge here.
• Just as the killer in "Columbo Cries Wolf" thinks he's gotten away with it, Columbo reveals the location of the body by calling the pager embedded in her bracelet. The message displayed on it once it's found? "Gotcha"!
  • The Killer does get his own MoA. For a good while, he actually managed to trick Columbo, some thing bona fide geniuses haven't been able to manage.
• Uneasy Lies the Crown: The dentist, who is drowning in gambling debt and failed investments, tries to conceal the source of a lethal digitalis dose in a tooth crown he laced with the drug (to murder the actor who is marrying his ex wife). Columbo uses the dentist's admitted lack of chemistry knowledge against him, to lure him into confession. Columbo convinces him that the underside of the crown turned blue because digitalis reacts that way at body temperature, "providing" that's where he planted the overdose.
• The real killer in Murder in Malibu is caught due to their mistake of dressing the victim with the panties on backwards. Seeing the victim's sister yell in grief how much she hates them and getting closure is so satisfying, even if they'll be in turmoil for a while over their loss.
• Justin and Cooper in Columbo Goes to College feel so overconfident after murdering their professor (they got found out cheating on an exam). However, it turns out that as usual, Columbo only appears to be misled by their deception. The duo is very terrified when they find out that it was Columbo who was playing around with them.
• In "Undercover," Columbo, undercover as Artie Stokes, is walking to the apartment of Mo Weinberg, one of the criminals to meet him for an arranged deal. He looks through the key hole and sees the guy with a gun. Columbo takes out his notepad, writes "you're a horse's ass" on a piece of paper and slips it through the crack in the door. As the criminal takes the paper, Columbo kicks the door in and, despite his previously established distaste for the weapon, points his gun straight at the guy.
• In "A Butterfly in Shades of Grey" has Victoria demonstrate such a strong sense of right that she leaves her foster father after he dirties a senator's good name with dishonest facts. Bear in mind that she's normally blind to Chase's ego. But seeing his true nature is what prompts her to pack her bags and go with the publisher to New York. Chase tries desperately to keep her, but to no avail. And when he threatens he'll make things hard for them, the publisher declares that he'll take her chances, possibly sick of Chase's manipulating and smothering Victoria.
  • Unto itself, she demonstrates a lot of emotional maturity to restrain saying anything she'll regret later to Chase. For someone Chase still treats like a child who doesn't know her own mind, Victoria certainly acts her age.

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