YMMV / Columbo

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • There are two major competing alternate theories about Columbo (other than Obfuscating Stupidity). One is that he's a Genius Ditz. The other is that he isn't smart at all, just an average cop. He himself claims in one episode that the main reason he's successful is that he's a professional with years of experience in hunting murderers, while most of the murderers he captures are amateurs who are doing it for the first time and thus making rookie mistakes.
  • There's also the theory that Columbo is a proletarian version of the classic Police Procedural. Almost all the villains are rich, powerful, wealthy people who look down on the disheveled and dogged Columbo, yet he proves time and time again that he is intellectually superior to them, despite his act.
  • Either that, or (as he freely admits) Mrs. Columbo solves all the crimes when they talk about it over dinner (which he probably cooks, given that he's shown quite a proficiency and interest in cooking on a number of occasions).
  • Is Columbo a Manipulative Bastard? He's overly nice to people in a bloodhound sort of way; he convinces people that he's just a country bumpkin more interested in whatever 'hat' the villain wears than solving the crime, only to reveal in the end a cold detachment and clinical mind that the bumpkin persona allowed free rein. He plays with the feelings of the criminals, making them like him (more often than not) or at least pity him and drop their guard, or he pushes them subtly and continuously to the point where they break. The answers to some of these questions depend on what you consider Canon. Core canon is the NBC series, natch. But if you accept the ABC Columbo movies as canon, then Obfuscating Stupidity and Manipulative Bastard are both Canon (since we get to see glimpses of them).
    • Peter Falk gives his take in his memoirs "Just One More Thing". In it he says Columbo is absent minded, but that's because he's concentrating all his thoughts on cases he hasn't solved.
    • Sometimes, he looks like a troll — plainly trying to annoy and distract the suspects so they may be provoked into blurting things he would never get via normal investigation.
  • There are some clear hints that, while he might not exactly be a literal genius and might be genuinely absent-minded and eccentric, at least some of it is for show or played up in order to throw the killer off guard. For example, in "Death Lends a Hand", when Columbo is only around the victim's husband — who he does not suspect is the killer — he acts in a professional and reasonably intelligent fashion. It's only when the actual killer (a private investigator hired by the husband) shows up, and Columbo gets a reason to suspect him (the ring the killer wears, which matches a cut on the victim's face from when he struck her) that he starts to act the clumsy oaf.
  • In "Double Shock", is Mrs. Peck merely enraged by Columbo's sloppiness and the mild property damage he causes? Or does she sense that the Lieutenant and his investigation mean trouble for the family she's served for so long and the two men she helped raise?
  • Was Abigail Mitchell really seeking revenge for the murder of her daughter, or had old age and her writing career left her mind in a state where she only perceived a murder? The episode itself really only offers a single piece of evidence for murder, that being Edmund has no pictures of Phyllis on display in his room, and he gives some sort of smile when he does look at a picture of her. However, her death had only been months prior & some grieving individuals do not like having open reminders of their loss out to be seen so soon after. That smile could be interpreted as either Edmund thinking of a successful killing or him having bittersweet memories of his late wife. Given Abigail's obsession with writing murder mysteries the episode leaves open the possibility that she constructed a scenario & killed an innocent man.
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: Fake fireplaces with a heater, fan and cheap orange plastic ribbons, as mentioned in "Dead Weight" — yeah, those actually existed. They've long been replaced by far more sophisticated heating units that better mimic the appearance of a fireplace.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
  • The broadcast control room scene from "Make Me a Perfect Murder", as outlined below in Padding. Needless to say, the scene itself is not only lengthy and adds nothing, but it's also just bizarre.
  • The scene where Columbo plays a tuba for a group of schoolkids in "Sex and the Married Detective." It comes out of nowhere, has nothing to do with the story, and is set to a montage of the fountains dancing.
  • The small bit in the ending of Murder, Smoke, and Mirrors, when Columbo is suddenly and randomly wearing a circus ringmaster's outfit for a few seconds, as he is bowing to Alex. While this would be symbolism (given that Alex was just foiled and likely hallucinated from the stress), it's made all the more random because Columbo had just played the part of film director.
• Broken Base: Even to this day some people heavily debate the ABC seasons. Some fans don't consider them to be canon- despite the fact Falk made them. Some consider Columbo's behavior to be sillier- even though he had plenty of oddball moments in the classic episodes. Others consider the tone to be too different, in part because they were set in the 80s and 90s when the times had changed. Other fans however don't see any issue with them and accept the entire series as a whole.
• Ending Fatigue: Some episodes may leave a feeling that it's about to reach a conclusion but can't finish up. May overlap with Padding:
  • A Trace of Murder could have concluded shortly after Columbo meets the killer and their accomplice at a diner and noticed that the two seem to know one another, but it takes more time for Columbo to tie up more loose ends and find a way to provoke both to sell each other out.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Lisa from "Double Shock" is a particularly popular guest star for being a Ms. Fanservice character who is a Manic Pixie Dream Girl before learning of the murder and a borderline Broken Bird afterward, while subverting the expectations she was a Gold Digger. Fans wish they could disregard her falling victim to Never One Murder later in the episode.
• Fair for Its Day: While they're not necessarily supportive or protective, the male network executives in "Make Me a Perfect Murder" (aside from Mark) never mistreat Kay Freestone on the basis of her gender, and their one main criticism of her work (making guesses in programming) is shown to be totally justified later.
• Fountain of Memes: Since 2021, Columbo memes have exploded in popularity on Twitter, Tumblr and Reddit. The detective's manner of speaking and gruff, working-class attitude has made the franchise the darling of Internet culture.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
  • While fairly popular in the US where it was made, Columbo was a smash hit in Japan, to the point where there were several novelizations of its episodes in Japanese and some episodes were released on home video there that weren't released in the US (until the full series was released on DVD decades later). It also managed to get a full Blu-ray set in Japan years before any other region. Lt. Columbo often receives affectionate parodies in Japanese media, such as his son Bolonco in Lupin III: Part II, or Dick Gumshoe in Ace Attorney.
  • The show was extremely popular in Soviet-era Romania, which had a policy that limited the amount of American TV shows that could be imported and aired. It reached the point that when they ran out of new episodes, anti-censorship protests erupted due to a rumor that the government had banned the show. Things got tense enough that the Romanian and American governments brought Peter Falk in to record a PSA explaining the situation, fearing that the resultant unrest could lead to outright riots.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • In "Mind Over Mayhem" the boy genius remarks that he's "too smart" to become a police officer. At the time this was written off as him being too much of a genius to work in anything other than a scientific field. HOWEVER, 30 years later, it came to light that some police departments refuse to hire police applicants with high IQ scores^note although this is generally only seen in small police departments refusing to hire candidates who are clearly only using them as a stopgap while waiting for a bigger city police force to open its hiring process.
  • In a way this information also sheds an oddly-tragic light on Columbo's interactions toward the Mensa-style organization seen in "The Bye-Bye Sky-High IQ Murder Case." Columbo ducks the question of his IQ several times and refuses to take an IQ test when offered, even after the episode's killer acknowledges that he's clearly a genius. Columbo stoically claims that even when he was a new recruit he was never any brighter than any other officer.
  • Two actors who played murder victims later became murder victims themselves: Barbara Colby ("Murder By The Book") and Sal Mineo ("A Case of Immunity"), and unlike her character, Colby's murder was never solved.
  • In "Forgotten Lady", the twist of Grace Wheeler having a memory disorder is tragic given Peter Falk himself died of practically the same condition that she was suffering from.
  • A rather nasty one courtesy of "The Conspirators"- modern day terrorist groups may very well be doing the exact same thing to supply their own organizations.
  • In "Etude in Black", Columbo leaving his new dog locked in his Peugeot can raise eyebrows due to hot car fatalities receiving more frequent news coverage. Columbo even gets called out for this.
  • Columbo dismisses the possibility of the killer wine in “Murder Under Glass” being accidentally adulterated at the source due to there being no reports of poisoning outbreaks attached to French wineries, but less than a decade later the Austrian wine industry would be all but destroyed when it was discovered wineries had been purposely lacing their drinks with diethylene glycol - and while no deaths were reported in that case, a year after that, a similar (if less widespread) event in Italy would indeed end up killing people.
  • In "Publish or Perish," Riley Greenleaf gets drunk and visits various bars and restaurants where he makes a scene so he will be noticed. This is a coincidental precursor to what Jack Cassidy did on the night of his own death in December 1976. Then he had consumed alcohol at various bars across West Hollywood before returning to his apartment, drunk. Tragically he lit a cigarette then fell asleep. The cigarette started a fire in which he was killed.
  • "Caution: Murder Can Be Hazardous to Your Health" features cigarettes laced with nicotine sulfate as the murder weapon. On Forensic Files II S3 E10, Paul Curry used a scheme of extracting nicotine from cigarettes to poison Linda Kincade's food since she didn't smoke. He managed to avoid conviction for 16 years due to varying the dosage to make it appear like an illness. Paul was motivated by the life insurance policy she had. Like Wade Anders, Paul had also been on television, only he was a Jeopardy! champion.
  • Throughout the series, Columbo expresses a severe dislike of dentists, and the few times he has to go it ends up being a total nightmare for him. It's believed that a bad reaction to drugs during a dental visit is what led to the onset of Peter Falk's dementia, the illness that killed him.
  • In "Ashes to Ashes", Columbo discusses potential funeral arrangements with Eric Prince, for Mrs. Columbo and he himself. This was the third-to-last episode before Peter Falk had to retire due to his onset of dementia that was ultimately fatal.
  • "Double Shock" only ended as it did because both twins were in on it. Real criminal cases involving a twin as a suspect can be difficult to prosecute if only one of them committed the crime as, even with witnesses & other evidence placing one at the scene, proving which one is guilty & which is innocent can be borderline impossible.
• He Really Can Act:
  • In "Fade in to Murder," William Shatner's chillingly persuasive and ambiguous portrayal of an actor who may or may not have split personality disorder comes as a bit of a shock to those familiar with his usual hamtastic style.
  • In "Swan Song", Johnny Cash delivers an excellent performance as a gospel singer who murders his abusive wife, managing to make the character both arrogant and creepy and sympathetic.
  • "Negative Reaction" stars Dick Van Dyke, best known for comedies and light-hearted musicals, as a hateful photographer who murders his wife in cold blood. It's worlds away from his most famous performances and all the creepier for it.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • "Etude In Black" is the same episode in which Columbo gets Dog. Trying to think of a name and hearing that the victim named her bird Chopin, he considers naming his dog Beethoven.
  • Twenty years before The Professional existed, a subplot of "Make Me a Perfect Murder" revolves around a TV studio producing a film by the same title, also about a professional hitman.
  • Patrick McGoohan's "old man" Steinmetz makeup from "Identity Crisis" isn't too far off from the way he'd look some 25 years later in the ABC episodes.
  • Leonard Nimoy, most famous for playing the Vulcan Spock on Star Trek played one of the killers in season 2. Some 25 years later, Lt. Tuvok, another Vulcan character, would make use of the "one more thing" Columbo line a few times on Star Trek: Voyager (and that's not getting into that series starring Kate Mulgrew, who played the title role in Mrs. Columbo....)
  • Speaking of Mrs. Columbo, it puts Columbo's stock response to Fielding Chase in a new light in "Butterfly in Shades of Gray."
  • "Double Shock" is about two brothers, Dexter & Norman Paris, and it is initially ambiguous who the real killer is. They both are actually helping each other. Then in 2006, a show about a Serial-Killer Killer named Dexter Morgan premieres and he finds out he has a brother in the first season. Dexter's brother is the arch villain of said season.
  • "Now You See Him..." has the magician killer thank a couple named "Mr. and Mrs. Wright" after their audience participation, which brings to mind a certain other Mr. Wright whose exploits are closely tied with a troupe of magicians, some of them likewise murderous, and yes, he also has an adoptive daughter who's also a magician herself.
  • "Columbo Goes To College'' has two students rig a gun to a garage door opener.
  • Jonathan Demme directed "Murder Under Glass" - it wouldn't be the last time he directed something about a gourmet murderer.
  • William Shatner wears a blue jumpsuit at one point in "Fade In to Murder" a few years before Michael Myers, who happened to wear a Captain Kirk mask that was painted white.
  • After playing the murderous Paul Galesko and facing a great detective in Columbo, Dick Van Dyke would go on to play a damn good sleuth himself.
  • "Any Old Port in a Storm" has a wine connoisseur murder his half-brother Rick because the latter wanted to sell off the family vineyard. Gary Conway, who played said half-brother Rick, will eventually retire from acting and run a vineyard.
• LGBT Fanbase: The series picked up a large queer following in the 2020s. This is mainly owed to Columbo being an unconventional portrayal of masculinity, especially for the show's time, which allows him to resonate well with queer viewers.
• Memetic Badass: Columbo has become one in the 2020s (partially owing to Gianni Matragrano's portrayal of him), quickly becoming a humble individual who can solve any crime, no matter how trivial, and may, in fact, be a god. In particular, one short depicting Columbo as having the supernatural ability to banish people to "the Columbo dimension" has been widely accepted as something Columbo can actually do.
  "We wanted to keep him almost mythological. He comes from nowhere and goes back to nowhere."
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "An exciting meal has been ruined by the presence of this... LIQUID FILTH!"
  • Columbo vs. Light Yagami^ExplanationOriginally from tumblr, later given a dub and comic strip, the idea being that lieutenant Columbo would be able to beat Kira far easier than L, not the least of which because Columbo's first name is completely unknown, rendering him immune to the Death Note
  • In a similar vein, it's become popular to make posts where Columbo exposes the crimes of other villains from fictional universes, such as figuring out that Palpatine is Darth Sidious or using his Stand on Yoshikage Kira.
• Narm: Even forgoing that Rudy Strasse is insane and plans to commit rape and murder, a lot of what he does falls into this, especially when he tries on lipstick.
• Narrowed It Down to the Guy I Recognize: Zig-zagged. The "narrowed it down" bit is missing due to the show's format, but very often memorable actors like Johnny Cash or Leonard Nimoy would be in episodes as the killer (the killer often takes up the most screentime in an episode, even more than Columbo himself). Other episodes would have big-name actors in minor roles. The episode "Lovely But Lethal" features both Vincent Price and Martin Sheen, who are the killer's professional rival and the murder victim respectively.
  • Exploited in "Last Salute to the Commodore", in which the audience is led to believe that the killer is Robert Vaughn, who had already played the killer in a previous episode — we don't see him commit the murder, but he gets rid of the body, he is established as having a strong motive, and generally acts suspicious, and Columbo treats him as the prime suspect. It later turns out that he is innocent, and he actually becomes a victim himself, revealing the episode to be a true "whodonnuit".
• Padding:
  • Many of the two-hour episodes suffer noticeably from this; since the Lieutenant didn't have a personal life by conceptual mandate, the writers were forced to stuff in scenes like him taking the dog to the vet or asking a suspect where he'd bought his shoes.
  • Probably worst in "Make Me a Perfect Murder" where he plays with the control console in a TV broadcast studio, making various 2D shapes "dance" with simple animations on the screens while music plays (this being the mid-70s, so don't expect anything too fancy out of these simple vector images), as he has a cheerful expression on his face. This goes on for over two minutes and has zero bearing on the plot or character development whatsoever, and it makes it clear that a lot of Columbo's behavior throughout the series may not be that much of an act, because no one is even around to watch him!
  • "Last Salute to the Commodore" has many detractors on the IMDB, due to pacing. Much of the film has Columbo learning nautical vocabulary, while Columbo's usual chemistry with interviewing the murderer is absent, due to the episode being a Who Dun It.
  • The opening of "Murder, a Self Portrait" has Columbo at a Basset Hound contest with other Basset owners, except that the dog does not play any real role in the murder plot where Mr. Barsini murders his ex-wife.
• The Problem with Licensed Games: In a rare example predating video games, there was a Columbo board game. The problem was, it really had little to do with the character and the only image of Columbo was a simple drawing showing him from the back, one can assume because they didn't have permission to use Peter Falk's likeness.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Robert Culp appears three times in the series as a villain and one time in a supporting role. He would later become well known for doing the voice of Wallace Breen in Half-Life 2 who is a villain even greater in scope with complex motivations.
  • Jamie Lee Curtis plays a waitress in "The Bye-Bye Sky High IQ Murder Case".
  • Steven Spielberg directed the 1971 episode "Murder by the Book".
  • The nurse Columbo asks when looking for Dr. Collier in "A Deadly State of Mind" is played by an uncredited Priscilla Barnes.
  • Hasan Salah would serve his time in an American prison and later get a new identity as a therapist to another famous Californian detective.
  • While they weren't unknown at the time, Ron Rifkin and Lainie Kazan appear in "Make Me a Perfect Murder" as TV special director Luther and Valerie Kirk, respectively.
  • Jorge Garcia briefly appears as a nightclub bouncer in the final episode, "Columbo Likes the Nightlife."
  • Cosner, the chauffer from "Columbo Cries Wolf" would later play Hector Salamanca
  • Justin Price looks an awful lot like Philip Jennings, although their accents are certainly different.
  • There are quite a few actors^note And these are just from the first season! that can be recognized from Disney movies, however a special shout out goes to Blueprint for Murder for having one of the side characters played by Piglet.
• The Scrappy: Detective Sergent Fredric Wilson, the outcome of a long and bitter attempt to foist an eager young sidekick on Falk.
• So Bad, It's Good: Some episodes are a let down, depending on who you ask, and/or some can be enjoyed for their badness.
  • "Last Salute to the Commodore" feels like the script was written while doing drugs. Columbo invades personal space a couple times, the cast, save for Robert Vaughn, acts like they're on tranquilizers, and the pacing feels like nobody even cares about finding the killer. The film opens with a ferry called "TITANIC" carrying a rather happy group of people who seem to magically teleport onto the boat. A YouTube review highlights the episode.
  • "Butterfly in Shades of Gray" features an over-acting William Shatner playing Fielding Chase. It's like he was having a laugh playing the role, and he was given permission to fool around and act over dramatic.
• Special Effect Failure:
  • At the end of "Columbo Cries Wolf," Columbo finds the location of the body by dialing the number of the victim's wrist pager and punching in a message, the resulting beeping revealing where the body is hidden inside a wall. However, as these bracelets are more than a decade ahead of real technology (this being the late 80s), the message is a small slip of paper glued to the bracelet - and it's not even cut straight, which really makes it obvious (the clarity of modern DVD copies also makes the grain of the paper stand out even worse).
  • "Mind over Mayhem" features a robot programmed by a boy genius which is used by the killer to operate the war room computer to establish an alibi for the time of the murder. However, the robot's claws are so large that it presses several keys at once when it types.
• Spiritual Successor: The series and character arguably shows quite some similarity to Maigret.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • "Rest in Peace, Mrs. Columbo" involved Vivian Dimitri, the ex-wife of Pete Garibaldi, a man Columbo had arrested years before, plotting to kill Columbo's wife because her husband died in prison of a heart attack, for which she blames Columbo, as well as her husband's partner Charlie Chambers. It's too bad that the case in question was never one that had been filmed as an episode. In a strange way though, much of the given backstory sounds similar to the plot of "The Bye-Bye Sky High IQ Murder Case"
  • "Lovely But Lethal" casts Vera Miles (Lila Crane from Psycho) and horror icon Vincent Price as major characters. The plot is about rival cosmetics companies. There was so much potential here to have Vincent Price as a killer in a plot worthy of him alongside another actor from a prominent horror film, rather than an episode about makeup.
  • Given how "Double Shock" and "Last Salute to the Commodore" are two of the only episodes with a genuine whodunit element for at least part of the story, some fans are frustrated that both of them fail to subvert the show's overdosed Evil Nephew trope. Having both twin nephews be murderers in the former episode deprives the viewers of a scene where an innocent one could react to being given indisputable proof of his brother's guilt, and the nephew from the latter episode was too obvious of a suspect despite also being set up as having a relationship with his uncle that would have been heartwarming if not for the Bitch in Sheep's Clothing murder.
• Ugly Cute: Columbo.
  • And his dog.
• Values Dissonance:
  • In "Death Lends a Hand," Columbo in one scene is caught by a woman pushing her kid on the swings, before he even introduces himself as a detective. The woman is not even a suspect, but the wife of a witness who has gone abroad. Obviously, most police forces today would be in serious trouble if a woman complained that a middle-aged man in a trench coat claiming to be an officer randomly started playing with her child in a park - seemingly innocent in The '70s, but looks outright predatory in the modern era.
  • "Swan Song": Viewers today will lose a lot more sympathy for Tommy Brown, since an early scene reveals that he had slept with Maryann when she was only sixteen.
• Unintentional Period Piece: Inevitable for a series that is an archetypal 70s Cop show. There are also several out-of-date references, such as in "Forgotten Lady" Dr. Willis mentioning the Shah of Iran. For modern viewers unfamiliar, the Shah was the leader of Iran before the country’s revolution only a few years after the episode was filmed.
• The Woobie:
  • Helen Stewart from "Dead Weight." While Columbo questioning what she saw is understandable given it's his job, the episode only makes her more miserable. Her emotionally abusive mother doesn't believe her and takes every opportunity to say needlessly cruel things to her. Her ex-husband cheated on her with apparently numerous women during their marriage, and her own mother blames her for the breakup. And the episode's murderer, Hollister, charms her into doubting what she saw while starting a relationship with her. At the end, when Columbo reveals how Hollister committed the murder, she is left in tears.
  • No doubt made much worse due to some severe behind-the-scenes issues during the filming of this episode thanks to the fact Falk was having a heated negotiation over his salary, which showed in his acting skills and apparent indifference to the other actors or even the job itself. Suzanne Pleshette had been friends with Falk for some time, but the experience not only led to them not speaking with each other for many years, but Eddie Albert called Falk an "asshole." The tensions were so high that when Falk ironed things out and returned, reportedly Pleshette and Albert refused to reshoot any of the scenes that were done with a stand-in during Falk's absence.
  • Numerous murderers are pushed around by Asshole Victims, such as Beth from "Lady in Waiting" who is held down by her dominating brother and mother for her whole life. Once her brother is dead, her life turns around and she's suddenly more assertive and in control of her life for once. She later takes it to the point of becoming a Jerkass Woobie, or just a plain Jerkass, however.
  • Paul Galesko of "Negative Reaction" starts out as this, until he frames and kills an innocent man to cover up his crime. The fact he didn't merely leave his nagging wife and instead opts to kill her and an innocent party pushes him into Jerkass territory.
  • One has to feel sorry for Karen Fielding, Adrian Carsini's secretary in "Any Old Port in a Storm", as she was willing to marry Adrian to keep him out of prison and he rebuffed her. However, had he not been caught out by Columbo, he might have met her demands to marry.

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