Line #62 Recap/ColumboS01E02


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3	[floatboxright:
4	Episode: Season 1, Episode 2\
5	Title:"Death Lends a Hand"\
6	Directed by: Bernard Kowalski\
7	Written by: Richard Levinson and William Link\
8	Air Date: October 6, 1971\
9	Previous: Murder by the Book\
10	Next: Dead Weight\
11	Guest Starring: Creator/RobertCulp, Creator/RayMilland, Creator/PatCrowley]
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13	"Death Lends a Hand" is the second episode of the first season of ''Series/{{Columbo}}''.
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15	Arthur Kennicutt (Creator/RayMilland) thinks his much younger wife Lenore (Patricia Crowley) is cheating on him. He hires delux private investigator Brimmer (Robert Culp) to find out. Brimmer reports back to Arthur that Lenore is innocent. The thing is, though, that he's lying; Lenore has been having an affair with the golf pro at the country club.
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17	Brimmer's motivations soon become clear: he wants to use Lenore as a spy on her husband, who is a newspaper magnate with a lot of enemies. Lenore refuses and says she'll confess her infidelity, along with telling Arthur that Brimmer lied to him and is running a blackmail racket. Brimmer panics and violently slaps her in the face in rage, causing her to fall down and die from head trauma by striking a table on the way down. Brimmer dumps Lenore's body in the middle of nowhere after cleaning up the crime scene.
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19	He thinks he's in the clear, but he forgets about one thing: Lt. Columbo of the LAPD. Columbo notices that Lenore has a wound on her face from being punched, suggesting a killer with a bad temper and that the killer was wearing a diamond ring on their hand. Columbo zeros in on Brimmer, especially after noticing that he has a ring on one hand and later from his trouble with angry outbursts.
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21	First of three ''Columbo'' episodes in which Robert Culp played the murderer (he played the father of one of the murders in another appearance). First of two appearances for Ray Milland, who would play the murderer in Season Two's "The Greenhouse Jungle".
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24	!!Tropes:
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26	* AccidentalMurder: Brimmer didn't mean to kill Lenore. He hit her after losing his temper, and she fell down and hit her head on a table.
27	* AndStarring: Ray Milland, who was an A-list movie star (he won an Oscar for ''Film/TheLostWeekend''!), gets a "Special Guest Star" credit.
28	* BadassInANiceSuit: Investigator Brimmer.
29	* BananaInTheTailpipe: The murderer Brimmer's car fails at a crucial juncture. When Kennicutt muses about how Brimmer’s car was out of action at such a crucial stage, Columbo spins him a merry yarn about how his misspent youth, putting cars out of action with a potato up the exhaust, must have played a part in him wanting to become a lawman, so he could make amends for these misdemeanors. The enigmatic Lieutenant then turns tail to leave the garage. A bemused Kennicutt turns to look at the car exhaust, checks himself, then spins on his heel and follows Columbo’s lead as credits roll…
30	* BeneathTheMask: Brimmer projects a coolly professional image, but actually has a terrible temper.
31	* BerserkButton: When Lenore refuses to budge and tells Brimmer she's going to confess to her husband instead, we see the first boil-over of Brimmer's rage as he backhands Lenore, leading to her fall and her death.
32	* TheBigBoard: Brimmer has a big board of the Los Angeles neighborhood where Lenore's body was found. He uses it when pretending to direct his investigators on how to handle the case.
33	* BlackmailBackfire: Brimmer attempts to blackmail Lenore, demanding that she spy on her husband for him. It backfires spectacularly and she even decides to admit the affair to Arthur herself. Then it ''really'' backfires when Brimmer accidentally kills her in a fit of rage.
34	* BluffingTheMurderer: Columbo claims that one of Lenore's contact lenses is missing. When Brimmer breaks into the auto mechanic's shop to ransack his car, looking for the contact lens, Columbo has him. Afterwards, Columbo reveals to Arthur that actually, both of Lenore's lenses were still on her eyes when they found her.
35	* BribeBackfire: Brimmer believes that Columbo would be willing to abandon the Kennicutt murder case if offered a well-paying job in exchange (effectively an indirect bribe). At this point, he is pretty desperate, however.
36	* DeathByFallingOver: How Lenore dies when Brimmer knocks her into his shelf.
37	* EvilCannotComprehendGood: More like "unscrupulous", but Brimmer cannot believe that Lenore would rather confess her previous affair to her husband and try to patch things up than accept his blackmail and cover it.
38	* TheExitIsThatWay: One scene where Columbo is quizzing Brimmer and Kennicutt ends with the lieutenant attempting to leave and realizing he is walking into a closet. To his defense, both doors are completely identical and he's told that he's not the first one to make the same mistake.
39	* {{Foreshadowing}}: Brimmer believed that Lenore would want to cover her infidelity up and is surprised when she decides to 'fess up instead. When he accidentally kills her, his first reaction is to immediately devise a plan to cover it up rather than confess.
40	* GilliganCut: When Columbo brings up the missing contact lens from Lenore's body, he "remarks" that he'd love for the murderer to know that, because that means they would have to go through the crime scene with a fine tooth comb looking for the lens and get rid of it. Cut to Brimmer having frantically ripped his carpet out of the floor doing just that at some ungodly hour of the morning.
41	* GracefulLoser: When Brimmer falls for Columbo's [[BluffingTheMurderer bluff]] about Lenore's missing contact lens and springs the trap, he tries to walk away but is searched and caught with the contact lens. Brimmer surrenders and apologizes to Arthur with a hint of sadness.
42	* HairTriggerTemper: Brimmer has this big time, as it ultimately resulted in him accidentally killing Lenore. This shows up again later on when Brimmer [[NoIndoorVoice loudly chews out one of his employees]] for revealing some confidential client information to Columbo, something Columbo takes note of.
43	* HiredToHuntYourself: Sort of. The LAPD has the case but Brimmer's private detective agency is assisting. Later in the episode, Brimmer also offers Columbo a job in his company with a minimum of triple of his old salary, but he immediately confirms that if Columbo took the job, he wouldn't be involved in the Kennicutt case anymore.
44	* IdiotBall: Brimmer offers Columbo a job at his investigation firm and even mentions that he will assign him a different case. This only serves to draw attention to Brimmer and confirm more of Columbo's suspicions about him being the prime suspect.
45	** Subverted in Brimmer's other actions throughout the episode. While he doesn't confess, and tries to derail the investigation, he doesn't do what a typical ''Columbo'' murderer does, like pin the blame on an innocent character. Also, he doesn't COMPOUND his actions by committing another murder, like every other accidental ''Columbo'' murderer has done in the series. In all the episodes of ''Columbo'', Brimmer is the ONLY one who commits one accidental murder, and that's it.
46	* TheKillerWasLeftHanded: The fact that Lenore had a bruise and a cut on the left side of her face leads Columbo to conclude that she was backhanded by a left-handed person wearing a ring. He starts to zero in on Brimmer as a suspect after noting that Brimmer is left-handed (well, ambidextrous) and wears a ring.
47	* LikeADuckTakesToWater: When Columbo is asking the golf instructor if he knew Lenore, he claims to want to take some lessons from him as a pretense to keep talking to him, and once he's done, he takes a single swing at the ball, makes it to the green and instantly states, "Nevermind, I'm not any good at this game".
48	* MalMariee: Subverted. Lenore and Arthur are introduced as the stereotypical "vivacious young wife married to a wealthy man old enough to be her father, whom she cheats on," but Lenore regarded the affair as a mistake and genuinely cared for her husband.
49	* MayDecemberRomance: Lenore Kennicutt is considerably younger than her husband Arthur, enough so to make him (rightly) suspicious. However, while she did have an affair with a younger lover, she genuinely loves Arthur and ended the fling before the episode.
50	* NoNameGiven: Brimmer's first name is never given; he's only "Investigator Brimmer." (Of course this is also true of Lt. Whatever Columbo.) In some places, Brimmer's first name is listed as "Carl."
51	* PlausibleDeniability: After hearing Columbo's anecdote about stuffing potatoes into the exhaust pipes of cars in his youth, and given that Brimmer's car had a remarkably convenient breakdown which enabled Columbo to expose him, Arthur Kennicutt is clearly very tempted to have a peep into the exhaust pipe to see what's up, but ultimately decides that it's probably better if he remains ignorant, and maintains Columbo's mystique.
52	* PrivateDetective: Investigator Brimmer and his team, but unlike the usual trope of a single borderline drunk or loner at odds with the police, Brimmer and his agency are highly-regarded by Kennicutt and are presented as being at least as evenly advanced as the police, and possibly even MORE high tech than Columbo's department. So sure of Brimmer's talents, Kennicutt actually hires Brimmer and his agency to investigate Brimmer's own accidental murder of Kennicutt's wife.
53	* RiddleForTheAges:
54	** The key to catching Brimmer is set up when his car conks out and has to be taken to the mechanic's, which Kennicutt thinks is a remarkable coincidence and wonders what was wrong with it. Columbo casually comments to Kennicutt that when he was a boy, he and his buddies used to cause car failures by stuffing potatoes up car exhaust pipes. At the end, Kennicutt nearly looks at the exhaust pipe of Brimmer's car, before turning to follow Columbo.
55	** Whose contact lens did Brimmer find in his car boot, and why was it there?
56	* SharpDressedMan: As with all of his other appearances, Creator/RobertCulp, who supplied much of his own wardrobe in the episodes, is always dressed to the nines in this episode, and his well-kempt attire makes for a startling visual contrast to the ever-rumpled Columbo.
57	* SherlockScan: Brimmer gets the measure of Columbo around the time that Columbo deduces that Brimmer lives by the beach from looking at his car. Columbo notes corrosion of the chrome on Brimmer's car that is cased by salty sea air.
58	* SinisterSurveillance: One of Brimmer's detectives is shown following Columbo and reporting on his movements.
59	* SomethingOnlyTheyWouldSay: The bike cop picks up on the clue that the driver he pulled over for a broken taillight is a police officer, right as soon as Columbo mentioned being "on the way to a 187 PC" (California Penal Code 187: Murder). Lieutenant Columbo then shows the bike officer his police badge in order to verify his identity.
60	* SplitScreen: A rather inventive use of this trope. The camera zooms in on Brimmer and his glasses right after he kills Lenore. A freeze-frame on a close-up of his face leads to a split screen effect with his glasses, in which each lens is replaced with different images of Brimmer getting rid of evidence such as by wiping away fingerprints and preparing to transport Lenore's body.
61	* SympatheticAdulterer:
62	** Lenore's affair is portrayed as something she regrets, and she cares about Arthur so much that she refuses to be blackmailed into hurting his company, even if it means coming clean.
63	** Her paramour, Archer, is a pleasant guy who sincerely cared for Lenore. Columbo immediately suggests to him that he hire a lawyer, correctly deducing that the guy would make an easy patsy if things went downhill.
64	* SympatheticMurderer: While other killers have fallen into this category, Brimmer might be one of the most sympathetic of all. He's a blackmailer with a terrible temper, but he really didn't mean to kill Lenore. Nor does he attempt to falsify evidence to directly point the police on another innocent victim, nor does he further make things worse by murdering a second victim, as every other accidental killer on ''Columbo'' has done.
65	* UnwittingPawn: Leo Gentry, the detective at Brimmer's Agency who followed Lenore and got the blackmail information, seems to be a law-abiding family man who wasn't aware of what his boss was going to use the information for, judging by how quick Brimmer is to send him out of town on a pretext to avoid him talking to Columbo.

Context Recap / ColumboS01E02